Jabberwocky

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

For other uses, see Jabberwocky (disambiguation).

"Jabberwocky" is a poem (of nonsense verse) written by Lewis Carroll, and found as a part of his novel Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There (1871). It is generally considered to be one of the greatest nonsense poems written in the English language.

Contents

[edit] The poem

The Jabberwock, as illustrated by John Tenniel
Enlarge
The Jabberwock, as illustrated by John Tenniel
'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.
'Beware the Jabberwock, my son!
The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!
Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun
The frumious Bandersnatch!'
He took his vorpal sword in hand:
Long time the manxome foe he sought--
So rested he by the Tumtum tree,
And stood awhile in thought.
And as in uffish thought he stood,
The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame,
Came whiffling through the tulgey wood,
And burbled as it came!
One, two! One, two! And through and through
The vorpal blade went snicker-snack!
He left it dead, and with its head
He went galumphing back.
'And hast thou slain the Jabberwock?
Come to my arms, my beamish boy!
O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!'
He chortled in his joy.
'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.

[edit] Glossary

"Somehow it seems to fill my head with ideas--only I don't exactly know what they are!" -- Alice

Several of the words in the poem are of Carroll's own invention, many of them portmanteaux. In the book, the character of Humpty Dumpty gives definitions for the nonsense words in the first stanza. In later writings, Lewis Carroll explained several of the others. The rest of the nonsense words were never explicitly defined by Carroll (who even claimed that he did not know what some of them meant). An extended analysis of the poem is given in the book The Annotated Alice, including writings from Carroll about how he formed some of his idiosyncratic words. A few words that Carroll invented in this poem (namely "chortled", "galumphing", "frabjous") have entered the English language. The word jabberwocky itself is sometimes used to refer to nonsense language.

Twas brillig, and the slithy toves Did gyre and gimble in the wabe; All mimsy were the borogoves, And the mome raths outgrabe.
Enlarge
Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.
Bandersnatch – A swift moving creature with snapping jaws. Capable of extending its neck. [1]
Borogove – A thin shabby-looking bird with its feathers sticking out all round, something like a live mop. [2] The initial syllable of borogove is pronounced as in borrow, rather than as in worry.[3]
Brillig – Four o'clock in the afternoon: the time when you begin broiling things for dinner. [2][4]
Burbled – Possibly a mixture of "bleat", "murmur", and "warble". [5]
Chortled - Perhaps a blend of chuckle and snort. [6]
Frabjous - Probably a blend of fair, fabulous, and joyous . [6]
Frumious – Combination of "fuming" and "furious."[3]
Galumphing - Perhaps a blend of "gallop" and "triumphant." [6]
Gimble – To make holes like a gimlet. [2]
Gyre – To go round and round like a gyroscope. [2] [7] However, Carroll also wrote in a letter[citation needed] that it meant to scratch like a dog.
Jubjub – A desperate bird that lives in perpetual passion. [1]
Manxome – Combination of "monstrous" and "fearsome"; possibly related to the Manx cat. [citation needed]
Mimsy – Combination of "miserable" and "flimsy." [2]
Mome – Possibly short for "from home," meaning that the raths had lost their way. [2]
Outgrabe – Something between bellowing and whistling, with a kind of sneeze in the middle. [2] [8]
Rath – A sort of green pig. [2] (See Origin and structure for further details.)
Slithy – Combination of "slimy" and "lithe." [2] The i is long, as in writhe.[3]
Toves – A combination of a badger, a lizard, and a corkscrew. They are very curious looking creatures which make their nests under sundials. They live on cheese. [2] Pronounced so as to rhyme with groves.[3]
Uffish – A state of mind when the voice is gruffish, the manner roughish, and the temper huffish. [9]
Vorpal - Assumed to mean "deadly" or "extremely sharp", or perhaps to imply that the blade has magical properties.
Wabe – The grass plot around a sundial. It is called a "wabe" because it goes a long way before it, and a long way behind it, and a long way beyond it on each side. [2]

[edit] Pronunciation

Commons
 Wikimedia Commons has a spoken version of Jabberwocky in American English, read by Wiktionary contributor Dvortygirl.

In the Preface to The Hunting of the Snark, Carroll wrote:

[Let] me take this opportunity of answering a question that has often been asked me, how to pronounce "slithy toves." The "i" in "slithy" is long, as in "writhe"; and "toves" is pronounced so as to rhyme with "groves." Again, the first "o" in "borogoves" is pronounced like the "o" in "borrow." I have heard people try to give it the sound of the "o" in "worry." Such is Human Perversity.

Also, in an author's note (dated Christmas 1896) about Through the Looking-Glass, Carroll wrote:

The new words, in the poem "Jabberwocky", have given rise to some differences of opinion as to their pronunciation: so it may be well to give instructions on that point also. Pronounce "slithy" as if it were the two words, "sly, the": make the "g" hard in "gyre" and "gimble": and pronounce "rath" to rhyme with "bath."

[edit] Origin and structure

The first stanza of the poem originally appeared in Mischmasch, a periodical that Carroll wrote and illustrated for the amusement of his family. It was entitled "Stanza of Anglo-Saxon Poetry." Carroll also gave translations of some of the words which are different from Humpty Dumpty's. For example, a "rath" is described as a species of land turtle that lived on swallows and oysters. Also, brillig is spelt with two ys rather than with two is.

Roger Lancelyn Green, in the Times Literary Supplement (March 1, 1957), and later in The Lewis Carroll Handbook (1962), suggests that the rest of the poem may have been inspired by an old German ballad, "The Shepherd of the Giant Mountains." In this epic poem "a young shepherd slays a monstrous Griffin." It was translated into English by Lewis Carroll's relative Menella Bute Smedley in 1846, many years before the appearance of the Alice books.

The inspiration for the Jabberwock allegedly came from a tree in the gardens of Christ Church, Oxford, where Carroll was a mathematician (under his real name of Charles Lutwidge Dodgson). The tree in question is large and ancient with many sprawling, twisted branches somewhat suggestive of tentacles, or the Hydra of Greek mythology. [citation needed]

The poem is particularly interesting because, although it contains many nonsensical words, the structure is perfectly consistent with classic English poetry. The sentence structure is accurate (another aspect that has been challenging to reproduce in other languages), the poetic forms are observed (e.g. quatrain verse, rhymed, iambic meter), and a "story" is somewhat discernible in the flow of events. According to Alice in Through the Looking Glass, "Somehow it seems to fill my head with ideas – only I don't exactly know what they are!"

[edit] Translations

"Jabberwocky" has become famous around the world, with translations into many languages, including Portuguese, Catalan, German, Spanish, French, Italian, Czech, Hungarian, Russian, Bulgarian, Romanian, Japanese, Polish, Bengali, Danish, Finnish, Dutch, Latin, Bangla, Klingon and Esperanto.

The task of translation is the more notable and difficult because many of the principal words of the poem were simply made up by Carroll, having had no previous meaning. Translators have generally dealt with these words by inventing words of their own. Sometimes these are similar in spelling or sound to Carroll's words while respecting the morphology of the language to be translated into. For example in Frank L. Warrin's French translation below "'Twas brillig" is translated as "Il brilgue". In cases like this both the original and the invented words may echo actual words in the lexicon, but not necessarily ones with similar meanings. Translators have also invented words which draw on root words with meanings similar to the English roots used by Carroll. As Douglas Hofstadter has noted [10] the word "slithy" echoes English words including "slimy", "slither", "slippery", "lithe" and "sly". The same French translation uses "lubricilleux" for "slithy", evoking French words like "lubrifiaient" (lubricated) to give a similar impression of the meaning of the invented word.

It makes a great difference whether the poem is translated in isolation or as part of a translation of the novel. In the latter case the translator must, through Humpty Dumpty, supply explanations of the invented words in the first stanza.

[edit] Derivative works

  • Between 1905 and 1907, Chapman Hall published a children's magazine called Jabberwock.
  • In 1943, Henry Kuttner, writing as Lewis Padgett, published a science fiction short story called Mimsy were the Borogoves in the magazine Astounding, which has since been republished in several anthologies. It posits that the poem is actually a communication with hidden meaning from the future.
  • In 1949, four members of the Brown University Glee Club decided to quit the group and start their own a cappella group named the Jabberwocks, named after Carroll's work; today, they are Brown's oldest a cappella group.
  • In 1971, film director Jan Švankmajer made a 14 minute short film called Jabberwocky (Žvahlav aneb šaticky Slaměného Huberta) which features the whole poem. As the poem is read out, various toys come to life, dancing around. The only thing that seems to stop the toys is a black cat that appears. This animation film is available on the dvd Cinema 16: European Short Films.
  • In 1971, Donovan released his children's album H.M.S. Donovan, which features the poem "Jabberwocky" set to music. The melody is identical to that of "Celtic Rock", a Donovan song released on Open Road in 1970.
  • In 1972, Sam Pottle wrote an arrangement of the poem for SATB choir, piano, and toy orchestra.
  • In 1973, D. L. Covill's ARPAWOCKY was published as RFC 527. It is generally accepted as the first "joke" RFC.
  • in 1975, The band Ambrosia featured the poem on their debut LP in a song called "Mama Frog".
  • In 1977, Terry Gilliam directed a movie called Jabberwocky. A poster for the movie featured a colorized version of the Jabberwocky illustration, and the first stanza of the poem is recited at the start of the film. The movie's plot very loosely resembles that of the poem.
  • In about 1979, Alan Coren published a humorous story about Lewis Carroll being late at the printers, with the consequence that no proof reading took place before publication of his poem "January" (T'was chilly and the slimy roads / Did shine and shimer in the rain...) The story was published in "The Cricklewood Diet (1982)" or "Tissues for Men (1981)" or "Rhinestone as Big as the Ritz (1979)" or "Lady from Stalingrad Mansions (1978)".
  • In 1986, Graeme Base produced an illustrations to" Jabberwocky" and published them into a picture book.
  • In 1998, on indie hip-hop artist Aceyalone's album A Book of Human Language, track nine is a song entitled The Jabberwocky. In the song, Aceyalone recites the poem in its entirety, though he makes some small deviations from the original which may or may not have been intentional.
  • In 1999, Clive Nolan and Oliver Wakeman made Jabberwocky, a progressive rock concept album based on the poem.
  • Also in 1999, electronic music production group Solar Stone, released a single called Jabberwock under the alias Skyscraper. The "Fairytale mix" of the song features the whole poem.
  • In 2000, the band Thingy released an LP titled To the Innocent which features the song Jabberwocky.
  • In 2004, Mike Rahy created the ActionScript Jabberwocky, a rendition of the original poem in Flash's ActionScript. ActionScript JabberWocky
  • In 2005 experimental musicians The Books released an album entitled Lost and Safe, track three of which is entitled "Vogt Dig for Kloppervok", which translates to "Beware the Jabberwock" and is so named for the Danish translation by Arne Herløv Petersen.
  • Borogovia is a species of bird-like dinosaur described in 1987 and named for Carroll's poem.
  • There is a play (stageable by children) of the Jabberwock by the dramatist Chris Owen.
  • There is a musical play entitled Jabberwock by the composer Alan Fleming-Baird.
  • There has been a television series called Jabberwocky, and also a card game called Jabberwocky.
  • There is a short film of Jabberocky interpreted in ASL (simultaneous with English) by Lou Fant.
  • The Jabberwock appears in American McGee's Alice as a boss.
  • Emmy Award winning professional storyteller Mark Lewis performs Jabberwocky as a regular part of his act. The only words changed in his version are commonly added. (mostly its just when the Jabberwock is slain, he says "eww gross" and he tells his audience to say "Calooh" and "Callay" with him.)
  • The Jabberwock appeared in early versions of Dungeons & Dragons' Monster Manual; later it was replaced by the Tarrasque.
  • In 2002, Canadian rapper Jesse Dangerously included an unlicensed performance of Jabberwocky as track 5 on his Eastern Canadian World Tour 2002 album. In part, it represented a criticism of Aceyalone's previous hip hop rendition for its egregious errors which spoke to an overall misunderstanding of the work.
  • Darkwave band The Crüxshadows performed the poem on their 2002 EP, Tears.

[edit] References in popular culture

  • The Pop-Punk band Forgive Durden has a song called "Beware The Jub Jub Bird And Shun The Frumious Bandersnatch" on their CD Wonderland (on the Fueled by Ramen record label).
  • The online virtual pets game Neopets features a species of pet called the JubJub. It is not a bird, but a comical-looking creature resembling a ball of fluff with large feet. The Wocky is another Neopets species, more like a house cat than any other real animal, but in earlier incarnations appeared to be a cat/fox blend. It's possible the appearance of the foxy Wocky influenced its name, or vice versa, but given the JubJub's name, it's unlikely the British creators of Neopets were unaware of the poem. Also, the Gallery of Evil on Neopets has an excerpt from Jabberwocky on its front page.
  • Tao Ren from the animated series Shaman King uses a technique called the "Golden Vorpal Dance"
  • A ghost from the book series Harry Potter is named Sir Nicholas de Mimsy-Porpington.
  • One of the latest 87th Precinct police procedural novels by Ed McBain is entitled The Frumious Bandersnatch and its plot features a pop-rock version of Jabberwocky.
  • Outgrabe, the San Francisco alt-rock band, chose the last word of the first stanza of Jabberwocky as their name. Their record label is Boojum Productions.
  • A comic strip called Jabberwocky ran in Advertising Age and other publications in the early 1990s.
  • A local childrens program titled Jabberwocky was produced and broadcast in Boston by WCVB in the late 1970's. Although the production ended after a few years, the program continued to air on weekend mornings into the late 1990's.
  • British band The Bluetones recorded a song called "The Jub Jub Bird" on the 1998 album Return to The Last Chance Saloon.
  • An 8-Bit Theater comic shows a flashback from Fighter in which Vargus recites Jabberwocky for him.[1] In comics 217 to 221 fighter was underwater and making the noise "burble".
  • In a Batman comic entitled "Mimsy Were The Borogoves", Batman's enemy, The Mad Hatter, kidnaps Dr. Kirk Langstrom (A.K.A. Man-Bat) in order to create a formula to transform a Jewish doctor named Dr. Yorkes into a Jabberwock, having an uncanny resemblance to the Tenniel Illustration. The Mad Hatter has also occasionally quoted the Jabberwocky in various comics and episodes of Batman: The Animated Series.
  • In the BBC series "Michael Palin: Around the World in Eighty Days", host Michael Palin uses the word 'Jabberwocky' in homage to a film by the same title he had previously starred in as a password during his voyage.
  • The classic BBS door game, The Pit, featured a "vorpal" weapon, which was useful fighting elementals and gods, as it sometimes added extra damage to them.
  • The Vorpal Blade is included as a weapon in the Vertigo Fables comic. It can cut through anything, and it always makes the sound 'Snicker-snack'.
  • In the city of Leicester, UK there are two restaurants which trade under the name of Jabberwocky
  • In Fallowfield, South Manchester, UK, the Queen of Hearts public house was named Jabberwocky until 2000.
  • Jabberwock is the master of darkness in the manga series Legendz, yet his appearance is that of a dragon.
  • Jabberwocky is a childish action of hitting pressure points near the collarbone, usually accompanied by screaming "Jabberwocky!" at the victim and attempting to force them to the ground. [citation needed]
  • The first stanza of the poem was read (in a very dramatic fashion) in an episode of the online Flash cartoon Weebl and Bob.[11]
  • In the 2004 movie Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story, an announcer reads "Average Joe's hopes to drive their vorpal blade snicker-snack deep into the heart of the dodgeball jabberwocky that is the Globogym Purple Cobras."
  • In Larry Niven's Known Space series, the Bandersnatch are a race of aliens found in several parts of the galaxy, but especially on the planet Jinx. They are an engineered species of enormous intelligent single-celled animals.
  • in The Chronicles of Amber by Roger Zelazny, the character Merlin fights a Jabberwocky as part of an experience in a reality induced by a friend's bad acid trip. The entire reality is influenced by Alice in Wonderland. In "Divine Madness", a short story also by Zelazny, the main character sits on a bench "watching the slivey toves be brillig."
  • The 1960s UK Freakbeat band Boeing Duveen & the Beautiful Soup released a single: "Jabberwock/Which Dreamed It" (Parlophone R 5696, 1968)
  • In several of his albums, underground hip-hop musician Aesop Rock refers to himself as "Jabberwocky Superfly."
  • In the band Lawrence's song, The Invincible Cyclist a line reads "But oh, Beamish soul, everyone knows".
  • In an episode of the popular cartoon, Dexter's Laboratory, the character Dee Dee describes a sword making the sound "snicker snack" and beheading a dragon.
  • Jon Scieszka and Lane Smith wrote a parody poem called "Gobblegooky". It was about the nutritional content on the side of a cereal box.
  • In the children's cartoon The Real Ghostbusters there is an episode involving the Jabberwocky as one of the antagonists. The image given to the beast is very similiar to the illustration done by John Tenniel, with a slimey green coloration.

[edit] Games

  • Jabberwocky is a monster in the Project ARMS anime/manga series. Many characters of Alice in Wonderland appear in the series, but they bear no resemblance to the originals.
  • Jabberwocky is also the name of a boss monster in the SNES game Secret of Mana. However, the character's appearance bears little resemblance to the Tenniel illustration.
  • Jabberocky is the name given to a unit in the game Sacrifice. The 'w' presumably is removed because the units belongs to James, god of earth. The appearances of this unit are not like the Tenniel illustration at all.
  • Jabberwocky is a rare encounter in the game Tales of the Abyss for PS2. He has boss-like stats and is a huge, horned, yeti-like creature. He is one of the few sources for the rare item "sunlight chamber".
  • In the game Dragon Quest VIII there are four monsters you can encounter called Jab, Ber, and Woc, and Kee who can combine to create the monster Jabberwockee.
  • The Jabberwock appears as a monster in the AD&D Annual Monstrous Compedium III.
  • The Bandersnatch is also a magical creature in the roleplaying game Shadowrun. It is actually a sasquatch infected with the HMHVV (human metahuman vampiric virus). Nasty beast, able to camouflage a la Predator.
  • Jabberwocky is also the designation of a destroyer starship unit in Digital Reality's game Imperium Galactica.
  • In the game Pajama Sam, in a library the player can click on some books and Sam will read random verses every time. One of them is Jubjub bird part of the poem and after reading it Sam says "What in the world does that mean?"
  • In the game The Elder Scrolls, the Mad God Sheogorath has an artifact named Wabbajack, an obvious reference to Jabberwocky. It is a staff that transforms the target into a random creature, which may be better or worse than the creature the weilder was originally facing.
  • Resident Evil Code: Veronica features an enemy creature called the Bandersnatch which has an elastic, extendable arm -- similar to the Bandersnatch from Jabberwocky, which has an elastic, extendable neck.
  • In the videogame Fairly Odd Parents: Shadow Showdown, when battling the Jester you can hear him say random phrases that include many words from this poem, like "mimsy" and "outgrabe".
  • In the non-TV series versions of Deus Machina Demonbane (Novel, Manga, PC and PS2 game), Jabberwock makes an appearances as a monster created by Alison while under the influence of the Mirror of Nitocris, one of the fragments of Al Azif.
  • In the book Lila: An Inquiry into Morals Pirsig refers to the word jabberwocky as nonsensical speech in part 3 of the book, which is largely dedicated to linguistic histories to affirm and relate to the Metaphysics of Quality.

[edit] See also

[edit] Notes

  1. ^ a b From The Hunting of the Snark
  2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k Defined by Humpty Dumpty in Through the Looking Glass.
  3. ^ a b c d From the preface to The Hunting of the Snark.
  4. ^ According to Mischmasch, it is derived from the verb to bryl or broil.
  5. ^ According to Carroll in a letter. (Burble is an actual word, circa 1303, meaning to form bubbles as in boiling water.)
  6. ^ a b c Definition from Oxford English Dictionary, credited to Lewis Carroll.
  7. ^ Gyre is an actual word, circa 1566, meaning a circular or spiral motion or form; especially a giant circular oceanic surface current.
  8. ^ Humpty Dumpty says "outgribing" when explaining the meaning. Outgrabe is, in actual fact, the past tense; the present tense is outgribe.
  9. ^ According to Carroll in a letter.
  10. ^ Hofstadter, Douglas R. (1980). “Translations of Jabberwocky”, Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid. ISBN 0-394-74502-7.
  11. ^ Which can be found at http://www.weebls-stuff.com/wab/halloween/

[edit] External links

Wikisource has original text related to this article:
Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org../../../j/a/b/Jabberwocky.html"