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What did Lewis Carroll encrypt in his book Alice in Wonderland. School Encyclopedia

What did Lewis Carroll encrypt in his book Alice in Wonderland. School Encyclopedia

19.02.2019

Alice) - the main character of Lewis Carroll's books " Alice in Wonderland" (at the beginning - " Alice's Adventures Underground") and " Through the Looking-Glass". The crater Alice on Charon is named in her honor (the name has not yet been approved by the International Astronomical Union).

Alice's image

The prototype of Carroll's heroine was his young acquaintance - Alice Pleasence Liddell, whom he met around 1856 (she was then about three or four years old). She would later become his favorite; many years later, after her marriage, he wrote to her: “After you, I had many little friends, but all this was not at all the same ...”. It was at her request that he wrote down a fairy tale composed for the Liddell sisters on July 4, 1862 during a boat trip. As for its continuation (Alice Through the Looking-Glass), then, according to some authors, in it we are talking no longer about Miss Liddell - the heroine of Through the Looking Glass is a certain Alice Raikes: "The theme of Through the Looking Glass, obviously, arose later than the main idea of the second fairy tale, which, as Alice Liddell recalled, was based on the impromptu that Carroll composed while teaching the Liddell girls to play chess Only in 1868 did the idea of a country lying on the other side of the mirror appear, prompted by a conversation with another Alice, a distant relative of the writer Alice Raikes, about which she spoke in an interview... However, some facts do not agree with this theory; in particular, in the finale of "Through the Looking Glass" there is an acrostic poem dedicated specifically to Alice Pleasence.

Alice Carroll in the visual arts

In the first illustrations for the stories about Alice, performed by John Tenniel, the heroine appears as a little girl with long blond hair. In reality, Alice Liddell had short, dark brown hair and bangs on her forehead.

Physical and philosophical interpretation

By profession, Carroll was a teacher of mathematics. No wonder, because many physical and mathematical paradoxes appear in his stories. There are especially many of them in the second book of the dilogy - everything (including the laws of physics) appears before us in mirror image: in order to approach the Black Queen, Alice must step not towards her, but away from her, time on the other side of the mirror flows “back to front” (the Royal Messenger is arrested for a crime that he must commit next Tuesday).

The faster you run, the longer you stay in place (according to Alexander Taylor, if in our world v = s/t(that is, speed is equal to distance divided by time), then in the Looking Glass, this formula is mirrored: v = t/s- "at high speed, time is great, and distance is small"). Philosophers have long wrestled with some of these paradoxes - such, for example, is the dispute between Alice and Tweedledum:

There is a huge amount of research on all sorts of allegorical readings of Carroll's tales. So, Shane Leslie explained them as "a ciphered history of religious battles Victorian England” (Gardner): “On this reading, Alice is a naive freshman who found himself in the thick of the theological disputes of that time; The White Rabbit is a modest Anglican priest who is most afraid of his bishop (the Duchess). The doors in the hall symbolize the English High and Low Church; a golden key - the key of the Holy Scriptures; the pie from which Alice bites off is a holy dogma. Dean's cat, which the Church Mouse is so afraid of, is, of course, catholic, and Alisyn Scottish Terrier, being Scottish, is Presbyterian, which is also very unpleasant Mouse ... All sorts of perturbations associated with Alice's desire to grow up and decrease in height, Sh. Leslie connects with fluctuations English believer between the High and the Low Church,” writes Demurova. W. Empson interpreted "Alice ..." as a hidden parody of the theory of evolution: the "sea of tears" from the 2nd chapter is the primordial ocean in which life is born; "Running in a circle", in which those who came out of the "sea" participate strange creatures and in which both everyone and no one win at the same time is the theory of natural selection; the fight between the Duchess and the Cook from the chapter "Pig and Pepper" - a dispute between Thomas Huxley and Bishop Samuel Wilberforce about the theory of evolution, embodied in the image of a child transforming into a pig.
Approximately in the 20-30s. psychoanalysis is becoming fashionable, and, naturally, many scientific works appear devoted to the interpretation of Carroll's fairy tales from this point of view: into German, J. B. Priestley expressed prescient fears that a good thousand important Teutons would soon be occupied with this book, that Freud and Jung with their followers would inevitably appear on the scene, and we would be offered monstrous volumes on sexual theory in "Alice in Wonderland" Associationstudent Jabberwocky and the hidden meaning of the conflict between Tweedledum and Tweedledum from a psychoanalytic and psychopathological point of view ... Tony Goldsmith, who, in fact, laid the foundation for the psychoanalytic interpretations of "Alice ..." - it was in his writings that Carroll's love for children first acquired an ominous connotation - extensively theorizes about the symbolism of doors and keys, noting that the object special interest it becomes precisely a small door (that is, a girl, not an adult woman). Further more. In Carroll's books, everyone was able to find what they were looking for: neuroses, psychoses, oral aggression, the Oedipus complex ... And of course, it is unnecessary to explain what In fact rabbit hole". However, modern researchers of Carroll's work often refer to such research with a dose of irony: “Woolcott once expressed satisfaction that psychoanalysts do not touch“ Alice ... ”. Twenty years have passed since then, and all of us - alas! - became Freudians. We don't need to explain what it means to fall down a rabbit hole or curl up in a little house, putting one foot into the pipe. Unfortunately, there are so many easy-to-interpret symbols in any nonsense that, having made any assumption about the author, one can easily find many examples for it, ”writes Martin Gardner (who, however, refers, however, in his Annotated Alice to the psychoanalyst Phyllis Greenaker) .
He also notes that images from Carroll's fairy tales have been repeatedly used by scientists as illustrations for certain physical and mathematical concepts, laws and paradoxes: “the episode when Alice increased so much in size is often cited by cosmologists to illustrate certain aspects of theories considering the expansion the universe…”; "the expression" a smile without a cat "is a good description of pure mathematics"; “Popularizers of quantum theory compared the difficulties Alice faced in wanting to take a closer look at what was in the shop with the impossibility of determining the exact position of an electron in its movement around the atomic nucleus”, etc.

Books

Alice also appears as a character in the following books:

Gilbert Adair. "Alice in Zaigolie"

Andrzej Sapkowski. "Golden Afternoon"

Jeff Noon. "Automatic Alice"

Hajime Sawatari. "Alice", "Alice from the Sea" (photo albums based on books by Lewis Carroll)

Mad in Wonderland book series by Cameron Jace

Series

Sophie Lowe plays Alice in the Once Upon a Time spin-off Once Upon a Time in Wonderland;

Caterina Scorsone plays Alice in the miniseries Alice;

Rose Reynolds portrayed Alice in Season 7 of Once Upon a Time. This Alice is very different from the traditional rabbit-chasing heroine.

Movies

Mia Wasikowska played a grown-up Alice Kingsley in the movie

The Tales of Alice are among the most famous books written in English, second only to the Bible and the plays of Shakespeare in terms of quotations. Time passes, the era described by Carroll goes deeper and deeper into the past, but interest in "Alice" does not decrease, but, on the contrary, grows. What is Alice in Wonderland? Fairy tale for children, collection logical paradoxes for adults, an allegory of English history or theological disputes? The more time passes, the greater the number of the most incredible interpretations of these texts.

Who is Lewis Carroll

Self-portrait of Charles Dodgson. Around 1872

The writing fate of Carroll is the story of a man who got into literature by chance. Charles Dodgson (namely, that was the real name of the author of Alice) grew up among numerous sisters and brothers: he was the third of 11 children. The younger ones had to be kept busy, and Charles had a natural gift for inventing the most various games. The puppet theater made by him at the age of 11 has survived, and in family papers one can find stories, fairy tales and poetic parodies composed by him at the age of 12 and 13. In his youth, Dodgson liked to invent words and word games Years later, he would write a weekly gaming column for Vanity Fair. Words galumph According to the definition of the Oxford Dictionary in English, the verb to galumph was previously interpreted as “to move in disorderly leaps”, and in modern language it has come to mean noisy and clumsy movement. And chortle To chortle - "to laugh loudly and joyfully.", invented by him for the poem "Jarmaglot", entered the dictionaries of the English language.

Dodgson was a paradoxical and mysterious person. On the one hand, the shy, pedantic, stuttering math teacher at Christ Church College, Oxford, and researcher in Euclidean geometry and symbolic logic, the prim gentleman and clergyman Dodgson accepted the rank of deacon, but he did not dare to become a priest, as was the custom for members of the college.; on the other hand, a man who kept company with all the famous writers, poets and artists of his time, the author of romantic poems, a lover of the theater and society - including children's. He knew how to tell stories to children; his numerous child friends Carroll's definition of children with whom he was friends and corresponded. they remembered that he was always ready to unfold in front of them some story that was stored in his memory, providing it with new details and changing the action. The fact that one of these stories (an improvised fairy tale told on July 4, 1862), unlike many others, was written down and then sent to print is an amazing coincidence.

How did the story of Alice come about?

Alice Liddell. Photograph by Lewis Carroll. Summer 1858 National Media Museum

Alice Liddell. Photograph by Lewis Carroll. May-June 1860 The Morgan Library & Museum

In the summer of 1862, Charles Dodgson told Provost Liddell's daughters Henry Liddell is known not only as Alice's father: together with Robert Scott, he compiled the famous dictionary of the ancient Greek language - the so-called Liddell-Scott. Classical philologists around the world still use it today. fairy tale improvisation. The girls insistently asked to write it down. In the winter of the following year, Dodgson completed a manuscript entitled Alice's Underground Adventures and presented it to one of the Liddell sisters, Alice. Other readers of The Adventures included the children of the writer George MacDonald, whom Dodgson had met while recovering from his stutter. MacDonald convinced him to think about publishing, Dodgson seriously revised the text, and in December 1865 The publisher dated the circulation to 1866. Alice's Adventures in Wonderland was released, signed by pseudo-nim Lewis Carroll. Alice unexpectedly received incredible success, and in 1867 its author began work on a sequel. In December 1871, Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There was published.

The British Library

A page from Lewis Carroll's handwritten book Alice's Adventures Underground. 1862–1864 The British Library

In 1928, Alice Hargreaves, née Liddell, finding herself short of funds after her husband's death, auctioned the manuscript at Sotheby's and sold it for an incredible £15,400 for the time. After 20 years, the ru-copy again went to auction, where for 100 thousand dollars, on the initiative of the head of the US Library of Congress, a group of American charitable-ri-te-ley bought it to give British Museum- as a token of gratitude to the British people who kept Hitler while the United States prepared for war. Later, the manuscript was transferred to the British Library, on whose website anyone can now look through it.

Alice Hargreaves (Liddell). New York, 1932 The Granger Collection / Libertad Digital

To date, more than a hundred English editions of Alice have been published, it has been translated into 174 languages, dozens of screen adaptations and thousands of theater productions have been created based on fairy tales. ---

What is Alice in Wonderland

Illustration by John Tenniel for Alice in Wonderland. London, 1867Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library

Library of Congress

Lewis Carroll with the family of writer George MacDonald. 1863 George MacDonald Society

Illustration by John Tenniel for Alice in Wonderland. London, 1867Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library

To truly understand Alice in Wonderland, it is important to keep in mind that this book came into being by accident. The author moved where his fantasy led him, not wanting to tell the reader anything and not implying any clues. Perhaps that is why the text has become an ideal field for searching for meanings. That's far from full list interpretations of books about Alice offered by readers and researchers.

History of England

The baby duke turning into a pig is Richard III, whose coat of arms depicted a white boar, and the Queen's demand to dye white roses red is, of course, a reference to the confrontation between the Scarlet and White Roses - Lancasters and Yorks. According to another version, the book depicts the court of Queen Victoria: according to legend, the queen herself wrote "Alice", and then asked an unknown Oxford professor to sign the tales with her name.

History of the Oxford Movement Oxford movement- a movement for bringing Anglican worship and dogmatics closer to the Catholic tradition, which developed in Oxford in the 1830s and 40s.

The high and low doors that Alice, changing height, is trying to enter are the High and Low Churches (gravitating, respectively, to the Catholic and Protestant traditions) and the believer who oscillates between these currents. Dean the Cat and the Scottish Terrier, the mention of which the Mouse (a simple parishioner) is so afraid of, is Catholicism and Presbyterianism, the White and Black Queens are Cardinals Newman and Manning, and Jabberwocky is the papacy.

Chess problem

To solve it, it is necessary to use, in contrast to ordinary problems, not only chess technique, but also “chess morality”, leading the reader to broad moral and ethical generalizations.

Encyclopedia of psychosis and sexuality

In the 1920s and 1950s, psychoanalytic interpretations of Alice became especially popular, and attempts were made to present Carroll's friendship with children as evidence of his unnatural inclinations.

Encyclopedia of the use of "substances"

In the 1960s, in the wake of interest in different ways“expansion of consciousness”, in fairy tales about Alice, who is constantly changing, drinking from bottles and biting off mushrooms, and has philosophical conversations with the Caterpillar smoking a huge pipe, they began to see an encyclopedia of the use of “substances”. The manifesto of this tradition is the song written in 1967 " white rabbit» Jefferson Airplane Groups:

One pill makes you larger
And one pill makes you small
And the ones that mother gives you
Don't do anything at all “One pill and you grow, / Another and you shrink. // And the ones your mother gives you, // There's no use.".

Where did it come from

Carroll's fantasy is surprising in that there is nothing fictional in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass. Carroll's method resembles an application: elements real life bizarrely mixed with each other, therefore, in the heroes of the tale, its first listeners easily guessed themselves, the narrator, mutual acquaintances, familiar places and situations.

July 4, 1862

"July noon golden" from the poetic dedication that precedes the text of the book is a very specific Friday, July 4, 1862. According to Wystan Hugh Auden, the day is "as memorable in the history of literature as it is in the history of the American state." It was on July 4 that Charles Dodgson, as well as his friend, a teacher at Trinity College And later - Prince Leopold's tutor and canon of Westminster Abbey. Robinson Duckworth, and the rector's three daughters, 13-year-old Lorina Charlotte, 10-year-old Alice Pleasence, and Edith Mary, eight years old, went on a boat trip down the Isis (as the Thames flowing along Oxford is called).

Page from Lewis Carroll's diary dated July 4, 1862 (right) with addition dated February 10, 1863 (left)“Atkinson brought his friends to me, Mrs and Miss Peters. I took pictures of them, and then they looked at my album and stayed for breakfast. Then they went to the museum, and Duckworth and I, taking the three Liddell girls with us, went for a walk up the river to Godstow; We drank tea on the beach and did not return to Christ Church until a quarter past eight. They came to me to show the girls my collection of photographs, and brought them home at about nine o'clock ”(translated by Nina Demurova). Addendum: "On this occasion, I told them fairy tale Alice's Underground Adventures, which I have begun to write for Alice and which is now complete (as far as the text is concerned), although the drawings are not yet even partially finished. The British Library

Strictly speaking, this was already the second attempt to go on a summer river trip. On the seventeenth of June, the same company, as well as two sisters and Dodgson's aunt, got into the boat, but soon it began to rain, and the walkers had to change their plans. This episode formed the basis of the chapters "Sea of Tears" and "Running in Circles".. But on the 4th of July the weather was fine, and the company had a picnic at Godstow, near the ruins of the ancient abbey. It was there that Dodgson told the Liddell girls the first version of the Alice story. It was impromptu: to the bewildered questions of a friend about where he heard this tale, the author answered that he was “composing on the go.” The walks continued until mid-August, and the girls asked to tell more and more.

Alice, Dodo, Ed Eaglet, Black Queen and others

Sisters Liddell. Photograph by Lewis Carroll. Summer 1858 The Metropolitan Museum of Art

The prototype of the main character was the middle sister, Alice, Dodgson's favorite. Lorina became the prototype of Lori's parrot, and Edith became Ed's Eaglet. There is also a reference to the Liddell sisters in the chapter "Crazy Tea Party": the "kissel young ladies" from Sonya's story are called Elsie, Lacey and Tilly. "Elsie" - a reproduction of the initials of Lorina Charlotte (L. C., that is, Lorina Charlotte); Teal-lee is short for Matilda, Edith's home name, and Lacie is an anagram of Alice. Dodgson himself is Dodo. Introducing himself, he pronounces his last name with a characteristic stutter: “Do-do-dodgson.” Duckworth was depicted as a Drake (Robin the Goose in Nina Demurova's translation), and Miss Prickett, the governess of the Liddell sisters (they called her Pricks), became the prototype of the Mouse and the Black Queen.

A door, a garden of amazing beauty and a crazy tea party

Rector's Garden. Photograph by Lewis Carroll. 1856–1857Harry Ransom Center, The University of Texas at Austin

The gate in the rector's garden todayPhotograph by Nikolay Epple

"Cat tree" in the rector's garden todayPhotograph by Nikolay Epple

View of the Rector's Garden from Dodgson's office in the library todayPhotograph by Nikolay Epple

Fridesvida's well todayPhotograph by Nikolay Epple

Looking through the door, Alice sees a "garden of amazing beauty" - this is the door leading from the garden of the rector's house to the garden at the cathedral (children were forbidden to enter the church garden, and they could only see it through the gate). Here Dodgson and the girls played croquet, and the cats sat on a large tree in the garden. The current residents of the rector's house believe that the Cheshire Cat was among them.

Even the crazy tea party, where the participants are always six o'clock and it's time for tea, has a real prototype: whenever the Liddell sisters came to Dodgson, he always had tea ready for them. The "molasses well" from the tale ------ ki, which Sonya tells during tea drinking, turns into "ki--sel", and the sisters living at the bottom - into "jelly young ladies". This is a healing spring in the town of Binzi, which was located on the road from Oxford to Godstow.

The first version of Alice in Wonderland was precisely a collection of such references, while the nonsense and word games of the well-known Alice appeared only when the fairy tale was reworked for publication.

Chess, Talking Flowers and Through the Looking Glass

Illustration by John Tenniel for Alice Through the Looking-Glass. Chicago, 1900 Library of Congress

Alice Through the Looking Glass also contains a huge number of references to real people and situations. Dodgson loved to play chess with the Liddell sisters, hence the chess basis of the tale. Snowflake was the name of the kitten Mary MacDonald, daughter of George MacDonald, and in the form of a white pawn, Dodgson brought out his eldest daughter Lily. Rose and Violet from The Garden Where the Flowers Spoke - Liddell's younger sisters Rhoda and Violet Violet (English) - violet.. The garden itself and the subsequent run on the spot were apparently inspired by the author's walk with Alice and Miss Prekett on April 4, 1863. Carroll came to visit the children who were visiting their grandparents in Charlton Kings (in their house there was the very mirror through which Alice passes). The episode with the train journey (chapter "Through the Looking-Glass Insects") is an echo of the journey back to Oxford on April 16, 1863. Perhaps it was during this trip that Dodgson came up with the topography of the Looking-Glass: the railway line between Gloucester and Didcot crosses six streams - this is very similar to the six horizontal streams that Alice the pawn crosses in Through the Looking-Glass to become queen.

What is the book made of

Words, proverbs, folk poems and songs

Illustration by John Tenniel for Alice in Wonderland. London, 1867 Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library

The elements of reality that make up the surreal world of Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass are not limited to people, places and situations. To a much greater extent, this world is created from the elements of language. However, these layers are closely intertwined. For example, for the role of the Hatter's prototype Translated by Demurova - Hatter. claim-blowing at least two real person: Oxford inventor and merchant Theophilus Carter It is believed that John Tenniel, who illustrated "Alice", specially came to Oxford to make sketches from him. and Roger Crab, a 17th-century hatter. But first of all, this character owes its origin to language. The Hatter is a Visualization English proverb"Mad as a hatter" - "Be-zu-men like a hatter." In 19th-century England, mercury was used to make felt for hats. Hatters have inhaled its fumes, and the symptoms of mercury poisoning are slurred speech, memory loss, tics, and visual distortion.

A character created from a linguistic image is a very characteristic device for Carroll. The March Hare is also from the saying: “Mad as a March hare” means “Mad as a March hare” in English: in England, it is believed that hares during the breeding season, that is, from February to September, go crazy.

The Cheshire Cat came from the expression "To grin like a Cheshire cat" "Smirk like a Cheshire Cat.". The origin of this phrase is not entirely clear. Perhaps it arose because there were many dairy farms in Cheshire and cats felt especially at ease there, or because these farms made cheese in the form of cats with smiling faces (and they were supposed to eat them from the tail, so the last thing from them remained - this is a muzzle without a torso). Or because local artist painted over the entrances to the pubs of lions with gaping mouths, but he got smiling cats. Alice's remark "Ko-there is not forbidden to look at kings" in response to the King's dissatisfaction with the stare Cheshire cat also a reference to the old proverb “A cat may look at a king”, meaning that even those at the very bottom of the hierarchy have rights.

Illustration by John Tenniel for Alice in Wonderland. London, 1867 Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library

But this technique is best seen in the example of the Quasi Turtle, whom Alice meets in the ninth chapter. Her original name is Mock Turtle. And to Alice’s bewildered question, what is she, the Queen tells her: “It’s the thing Mock Turtle Soup is made from” - that is, what “like turtle soup” is made of. Mock turtle soup - an imitation of a traditional delicacy green turtle soup made from veal That is why, in Tenniel's illustration, the Mock Turtle is a creature with a calf's head, hind hooves, and a calf's tail.. This play on word character creation is very typical of Carroll. In the original version of Nina Demurova's translation, the Mock Turtle is called Pod-Kotik, that is, the creature from whose skin fur coats are made "under the seal.".

Carroll's language also controls the development of the plot. So, the Jack of Diamonds steals pretzels, for which he is tried in the 11th and 12th chapters of Wonderland. This is a "dramatization" of the English folk song "The Queen of Hearts, she made some tarts ..." ("King of Hearts, wishing pretzels ..."). Episodes about Humpty Dumpty, the Lion and the Unicorn also grew out of folk songs.

Tennyson, Shakespeare and English Folk Poetry

Illustration by John Tenniel for Alice in Wonderland. London, 1867 Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library

In Carroll's books, you can find many references to literary works. The most obvious are outright parodies, primarily re-invented famous poems, mainly moralizing ("Papa William", "Baby Crocodile", "Evening Food" and so on). The parodies are not limited to poetry: Carroll ironically plays with passages from textbooks (in the chapter "Running in a circle") and even poems of poets whom he treated with great respect (the episode at the beginning of the chapter "The Garden where the flowers spoke" plays lines from Tennyson's poem Maud). The tales of Alice are so filled with literary reminiscences, quotations and half-quotes that their listing alone makes up weighty volumes. Among the authors cited by Carroll are Virgil, Dante, Milton, Gray, Coleridge, Scott, Keats, Dickens, Macdonald and many others. Especially often in "Alice" Shakespeare is quoted: for example, the line "Head off with him (her)", which the Queen constantly repeats, is a direct quote from "Richard III".

How logic and mathematics influenced "Alice"

Illustration by John Tenniel for Alice in Wonderland. London, 1867 Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library

Charles Dodgson's specialty was Euclidean geometry, mathematical analysis and mathematical logic. In addition, he was fond of photography, the invention of logical and mathematical games and puzzles. This logician and mathematician becomes one of the creators of the literature of nonsense, in which the absurd is a strict system.

An example of nonsense is the Hatter's watch, which shows not the hour, but the number. It seems strange to Alice - after all, there is no point in a watch that does not show time. But they don't make sense in her system of coordinates, whereas in the world of Hat-Now, in which it's always six o'clock and it's time for tea, the point of the clock is precisely to indicate the day. Inside each of the worlds, the logic is not broken - it goes astray when they meet. In the same way, the idea of lubricating a watch with butter is not nonsense, but an understandable failure of logic: both the mechanism and the bread are supposed to be lubricated with something, the main thing is not to confuse with what exactly.

Inversion is another feature of Carroll's writing method. In the graphical multiplication method he invented, the factor was written backwards and above the multiplicand. According to Dodgson, "The Hunt for the Snark" was written backwards: first the last line, then the last stanza, and then everything else. The game "Duplets" invented by him consisted in rearranging the letters in a word. His pseudonym Lewis Carroll is also an inversion: he first translated his full name- Charles Lutwidge - in Latin, it turned out Carolus Ludovicus. And then back to English - at the same time, the names changed places.

Illustration by John Tenniel for Alice Through the Looking-Glass. Chicago, 1900 Library of Congress

Inversion in "Alice" is found on the most different levels- from the plot (at the trial of the Knave, the Queen demands first to pass a sentence, and then establish the guilt of the defendant) to structural (meeting Alice, the Unicorn says that he always counted children fabulous creatures). The principle of mirror reflection, to which the logic of the existence of the Looking Glass is subject, is also a kind of inversion (and the “reflected” arrangement of pieces on the chessboard makes the chess game an ideal continuation of the card game theme from the first book). To quench your thirst, here you need to taste dry cookies; to stand still, you need to run; blood comes from the finger first, and only then it is pricked with a pin.

Who created the first illustrations for "Alice"

Sir John Tenniel. 1860s National Portrait Gallery

One of the most important components of the fairy tales about Alice is the illustrations with which the first readers saw her and which are not in most reprints. We are talking about the illustrations of John Tenniel (1820-1914), which are no less important real prototypes characters and situations described in the book.

At first, Carroll was going to publish a book with his own illustrations and even transferred some of the drawings to boxwood boards used by printers to make engravings. But friends from the circle of pre-rafa elites convinced him to invite a professional illustrator. Carroll chose the most famous and sought after: Tenniel was then the chief illustrator of the influential satirical magazine Punch and one of the busiest artists.

The work on illustrations under the meticulous and often obtrusive control of Carroll (70% of the illustrations are repelled from the author's drawings) slowed down the release of the book for a long time. Tenniel was dissatisfied with the quality of the circulation, so Carroll demanded that the publishers withdraw it from sale. It is interesting that now it is he who is most valued by collectors. and print a new one. And yet, in preparation for the publication of Alice Through the Looking-Glass, Carroll again invited Tenniel. At first, he flatly refused (working with Carroll required too much effort and time), but the author was persistent and eventually persuaded the artist to take on the job.

Illustration by John Tenniel for Alice Through the Looking-Glass. Chicago, 1900 Library of Congress

Tenniel's illustrations are not an addition to the text, but his full partner, which is why Carroll was so demanding about them. Even at the level of the plot, much can be understood only through illustrations - for example, that the Royal Messenger from the fifth and seventh chapters of Through the Looking-Glass is the Hatter from Wonderland. Some Oxford realities became associated with "Alice" due to the fact that they served as prototypes not for Carroll, but for Tenniel: for example, in the drawing from the chapter "Water and Knitting" a "sheep" shop is depicted at 83 St. Aldates. Today it is a souvenir shop dedicated to the books of Lewis Carroll.

Illustration by John Tenniel for Alice Through the Looking-Glass. Chicago, 1900 Library of Congress

Where is the moral

One of the reasons for the success of "Alice" is the lack of moralizing that was customary for children's books of that time. Instructive children's stories were the mainstream of children's literature at the time (they were published in huge numbers in publications like Aunt Judy's Magazine). Tales about Alice are out of this range: their heroine behaves naturally, like a living child, and not a model of virtue. She gets confused in dates and words, poorly remembers textbook verses and historical examples. And the very parodic approach of Carroll, which makes textbook poems the subject of a frivolous game, is not very conducive to moralizing. Moreover, moralizing and edifying in Alice is a direct object of ridicule: it is enough to recall the absurd remarks of the Duchess (“And the morality from here is ...”) and the bloodthirstiness of the Black Queen, whose image Carroll himself called “the quintessence of all governesses." The success of "Alice" showed that it was precisely this kind of children's literature that both children and adults lacked the most.

Illustration by John Tenniel for Alice in Wonderland. London, 1867 Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library

Further literary fate Carroll confirmed the uniqueness of "Alice" as the result of an incredible set of circumstances. Few people know that, in addition to Alice in Wonderland, he wrote Sylvia and Bruno, an edifying novel about a magical land, consciously (but completely ineffectually) developing the themes present in Alice. IN total Carroll worked on this novel for 20 years and considered it his life's work.

How to translate "Alice"

The protagonist of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Alice's Through the Looking-Glass is language, which makes translating these books incredibly difficult, and sometimes impossible. Here is just one of the many examples of the untranslatability of "Alice": jam, which, according to the "firm rule" of the Queen, the maid receives only "for tomorrow", in Russian translation is nothing more than another case of strange looking-glass logic “I would take you [as a maid] with pleasure,” the Queen replied. - Two
pen-sa a week and jam for tomorrow!
Alice laughed.
“No, I won’t go to the maids,” she said. “Besides, I don’t like jam!”
“The jam is excellent,” insisted the Queen.
- Thank you, but today I really don’t feel like it!
“You wouldn’t get it today anyway, even if you really wanted to,” answered the Queen. - My rule is firm: jam for tomorrow! And only for tomorrow!
But tomorrow will someday be today!
- No never! Tomorrow is never today! Is it possible to wake up in the morning and say: “Well, now, finally, tomorrow?”” (translated by Nina Demurova).. But in the original, the phrase "The rule is, jam to-morrow and jam yesterday - but never jam to-day" is not just strange. As is usually the case with Carroll, this strangeness has a system that is built from the elements of reality. The word jam, in English meaning "jam", in Latin is used to convey the meaning of "now", "now", but only in the past and future tenses. In the present tense, the word nunc is used for this. The phrase put into the Queen's mouth by Carroll was used in Latin lessons as a mnemonic rule. Thus, "Jam for Tomorrow" is not only a looking-glass oddity, but also an elegant language game and another example of Carroll's playing with the school routine.-

"Alice in Wonderland" cannot be translated, but it can be recreated on the material of another language. It is these translations of Carroll that are successful. This happened with the Russian translation made by Nina Mikhailovna Demurova. The edition of Alisa prepared by Demurova in the Literary Monuments series (1979) is an example of book publishing, combining the talent and deepest competence of an editor-translator with the best traditions of Soviet academic science. In addition to translation, the publication includes Martin Gardner's classic commentary from his "Annotated Alice" (in turn, annotated for the Russian reader), articles on Carroll by Gilbert Chesterton, Virginia Woolf, Walter de la Mare and other materials - and, of course, , reproduces Tenniel's illustrations.

Lewis Carroll. "Alice in Wonderland. Alice in the Wonderland". Moscow, 1978 litpamyatniki.ru

Demurova not only translated Alice, but performed a miracle, making this book a legacy of Russian-speaking culture. There is quite a lot of evidence for this; one of the most eloquent - made by Oleg Gerasimov on the basis of this translation musical performance, which was released on the records of the studio "Me-lo-diya" in 1976. The songs for the performance were written by Vladimir Vysotsky, and the release of the records became his first official publication in the USSR as a poet and composer. The performance turned out to be so lively that the listeners found political overtones in it (“There are many unclear things in strange country”, “No, no, the people do not have a difficult role: // Fall on your knees - what’s the problem?”), And the thin council even tried to ban the release of records. But the records still came out and were re-released until the 1990s in millions of copies.

Record sleeve "Alice in Wonderland". Recording company "Melody", 1976 izbrannoe.com

"Alice" is a godsend for the collector. For 150 years, it has been illustrated by so many artists that it is not possible to determine their exact number.
But it is likely that in this parameter, the fairy tale by Charles Lutwidge Dodgson is the expected record holder.

We are not targeted collectors of "Alice", therefore in Inostranka itself there are several more of them than in ours - there will be a separate post about the "Alices" stored in the fund, but for now I will show books from the open access of the Children's Hall.

First published with classic illustrations John Tenniel. Unfortunately, some of them have not preserved the original cover, so I give only the titles.

1. Carroll Lewis. The Lewis Carroll book\ill. by John Tenniel, Henry Holiday. - NY, 1939.

2. Carroll Lewis. The Annotated Alice. Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass\ ill. John Tenniel. - New York: Potter, 1966.

Martin Gardner - American writer, mathematician, popularizer of science.

3. Carroll L. Alice for kids / ill. J. Tenniel, cover by E. Gertrude Thomson, per. N. Demurova - - M .: TriMag, 2011.

Carroll was well aware that for very young readers the text would be difficult, so a quarter of a century after the first edition, he retold "Alice" especially for them. John Tenniel, based on his black and white illustrations drew new, enlarged, slightly modified color illustrations, and another famous artist Victorian era Edmund Evans created woodcuts and printed color illustrations from them.

The book was published last year in Russian by the TriMag publishing house. Like the original 1890 edition, the book contains: opening poem Lewis Carroll "Sweet Baby", his preface addressed to mothers, as well as the appendices - "Easter Greeting" and the poem "Christmas Message".

4. Carroll L. Alice in Wonderland. Alice in the Wonderland / ill. John Tenniel, per. N. Demurova . - M.: Nauka, 1991.

Domestic classic academic commented edition.
The publication includes both fairy tales by Carroll with detailed comments Martin Gardner, as well as articles by writers and scientists on various aspects of Carroll's work. Among them are the works of G.K. Chesterton, W. Wolf, W. de La Mara, as well as articles by Russian scientists. It is unique in that it also includes an episode from Through the Looking-Glass - "Bumblebee in a Wig", which Carroll left out during the proofreading process.

Much less well-known compared to John Tenniel's illustrations are the author's own illustrations, which appeared a few years earlier in a manuscript given to Alice Liddell at Christmas 1862 "in memory of summer day"- the very day when Lewis Carroll came up with and told the fairy tale to Alice and her sisters. Then he called it a little differently -" Alice's Adventures Underground ". With his illustrations, Carroll gave direction to many subsequent artists, his images are often imitated (along with the images, created jointly by John Tenniel) - which is not surprising, because this is how the author himself imagined his heroes.
The first facsimile edition of the manuscript appeared in 1886, when the work itself was already a huge success.
Ours came out 100 years later.

5. Carroll Lewis. Alice's Adventures Under Ground/ ill. Lewis Carroll. - London: Pavilion Books, 1989.

The Russian reader can get acquainted with Arthur Rackham's illustrations for "Alice" live, thanks to "ID Meshcheryakov", which released "Alice in Wonderland" with his illustrations in Russian in 2010.

6. Carroll L. \ ill. Arthur Rackham. - 1926.

7. Carroll L. Alice's Adventures in Wonderland \ ill. Robert Ingpen. - Sterling, 2009.

8. Carroll L. Alice's Adventures in Wonderland\ill. Barry Mozer. - Berkeley: University of California Press, 1982.

This solid deluxe edition for adult admirers of "Alice" was released for the 150th anniversary of the birth of Lewis Carroll.
Layout and illustrations done modern master woodcuts by Barry Moser.

Illustration from the scene of Alice's fall. "Do cats eat bats?"
Cats turn into mice. Mice in cats.

A very unusual image of the Quasi-Turtle.

Alice in Barry Moser is more of an image than a real girl. Facial features behind the bangs are barely distinguishable.

And here is the actual self-portrait of Barry Moser himself.
Such bright, capacious, memorable characters simply had to be created by an equally colorful person))

9. Carroll L. Alice's Adventures in Wonderland\ill. Helen Oxenbury. -

In a completely childish and good book Helen Oxenbury has a lot of drawings - the artist obviously wanted to illustrate every interesting episode.
The main character is very modern - not at all the Victorian girl that she is usually portrayed.

Cover fragment.

10. Carroll L. Alice in Wunderland\ill. Anthony Browne. - Oldenburg: Lappan Verlag, 1989.
Anthony Brownie

We are so accustomed to the fact that the great gorilla lover Anthony Brown illustrates mainly his books, that this find pleasantly surprised us.
True, it was not without gorillas :))

Actually, in this illustration you can find a gorilla.

11. Carroll L. Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. Through the Looking Glass\ill. Merwin Peake

The first edition of "Alice" with illustrations by Mervin Peak was published in 1946 in Sweden. Mervyn Peake was a writer and poet of nonsense, the author of the trilogy about Titus Groan, illustrated both his own and other people's books. He worked mainly with ink and pen.

Flirtatious Alice.

Gangster-looking rabbit.

Please note that Mervyn Peak's caterpillar has ears :).

Creepy cat.

The same edition included "Alice Through the Looking Glass" ( about editions of "Alice Through the Looking Glass" in our collection can be found in the next post).

12. Carroll L. Alice in Wonderland / ill. Tove Jansson.- M.: Ripol-Kit, 2009.

Tove Jansson took up Alice in Wonderland much later than the first Moomintroll was drawn. Moreover, by this time the entire Moomin Valley had already been created - with Moomin trolls, hemules, fillyjonks, Wifsls and tofsls and other conspicuous creatures inhabiting its nooks and crannies. And Jansson herself became a famous writer and artist and even managed to receive the Finnish Literature Prize and become the winner of another award - the most prestigious Hans Christian Andersen medal.

13. Carroll Lewis. Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, told for young readers by the author himself/ Per. from English. N. Demurova; ill. E. Bazanova. - Kaliningrad: Amber Tale, 2006.

Another "Alice for kids", this time with illustrations by contemporary Russian artist Elena Bazanova. Very touching, tender, completely childish "Alice", in which there are no evil or frightening images. The main character here is very similar to the real Alice Liddell.

14. Carroll Lewis. Anya in Wonderland / ill. A. Gennadiev, per. V. Nabokov. - M.: Children's literature, 1989.

In my opinion, one of the strangest, most frightening and at the same time beautiful artistic decisions for "Alice".
Especially for those who see blue and white dreams.

Alice here is very reminiscent of Anna Akhmatova - and in the whole book, it seems to me, there is some touch of decadence.

15. Alice in Wonderland. - M.: Egmont Russia Ltd., 1997.

Book version of the same name animated film Disney studios.

Gennady Kalinovsky participated in several editions of "Alisa". For each of them he created a new layout and new illustrations.
We have Alice in Wonderland in 1987 and 1988 editions.

16. Carroll Lewis. Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. Alice in the Wonderland/ ill. Gennady Kalinovsky. - Novosibirsk book publishing house, 1987.

18. Carroll Lewis. Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. Alice Through the Looking Glass/ ill. E. Nazarov. - M.: Pravda, 1989.

19. Carroll Lewis. Les aventures d "Alice au pays du merveilleux ailleurs / Dessinateur Jong Romano; Traduction Guy Leclerq. - Au Bord des continents, 2000.

Lewis Carroll's novel "Through the Looking-Glass" is completely filled with all kinds of puzzles, fantasy images, it is worth noting how well the author manages imaginary heroes and how deeply the reader knows them, as if he himself had been in this fairyland. In this part, the author again sends the little traveler to mysterious worlds, Alice, in search of adventure.

Read the summary of Carroll Alice Through the Looking Glass

This time, Alice, just like in the first part, thanks to her sly, curious kitten, finds herself in the world of the Looking Glass. The girl finds herself in a completely mirrored room, with the same decoration and furnishings, but to her great surprise everything was alive here: the wall clock smiled broadly, thereby welcoming her, the pictures introduced mysterious and stormy conversations, completely ignoring Alice, small chess the figures turned out to be alive and also had an interesting conversation with each other, while importantly walking along the chessboard.

As always, the fearless and curious Alice, terribly wanted to explore this place, but to her great regret, she couldn’t climb the hill, and every time she ended up in her original place. Then the girl decided to talk with the flowers that grew near her, they were quite talkative and happily answered Alice's questions, the flowers suggested that you need to go in the opposite direction.

After Alice was shown right direction, she is near the Black Queen, at that very hill. Looking around, the girl sees that everything is divided into straight and even sectors, so similar to the cells of a chessboard. She is madly eager to take part in this exciting game, and despite the fact that she is just a pawn here, Alice certainly dreams of becoming the queen of the Looking Glass.

The girl confidently goes on an adventure and discovers more and more interesting things for herself. So, for example, instead of yellow bees, a flock of miniature elephants circles above it. And the passengers on the train were a goat, a beetle and a horse, who provided tickets for travel with the size of their own height. The controller, however, studied Alice very carefully, looking through a variety of devices, and then concluded that the girl was moving in the wrong direction.

Life in this place was completely different and sometimes incomprehensible to Alice. So having met the White Queen, she still wanted to feed the guest with jam for tomorrow. The girl refused, but the queen explained to her that tomorrow never comes, because it already exists now. And the White Queen remembers exactly the details and events of the past and future time. And weeps over a cut finger, she's before it comes. The girl was also surprised that when she tried to cut the pie into pieces and distribute it, it constantly connected in its original form. The lion explained to her that everything should be done the other way around, that is, first treat everyone with a pie, and only after that cut it.

Alice was struck by absolutely everything in the looking glass, and especially how the inhabitants of this place deftly turned the words around, distorting them beyond recognition. So the girl reached the eighth line and felt the crown on her head. Thus, she angered the White and Black Queen, who constantly mumbled something. And a feast was announced in honor of the new queen, but this event greatly embarrassed the two disheveled queens. And even this holiday went awry, as in principle it should be for this place. An angry little girl attacks the Black Queen with great anger and starts shaking her with all her might.

And then suddenly Alice realizes that she is not shaking the Black Queen at all, but her little black kitten. And at the same moment, a strange journey, to the mysterious and unique country of the Looking-Glass, disperses and before her again her usual and so understandable world. And the same things seem to be in the room, but no one else argues, no one whispers and makes funny faces, everything is as it should be. And whether it was a dream is not at all clear, and if it was, then to whom it belongs. So Alice's journey ended, but how she would like to go there again, setting off for new adventures.

About the novel

The amazing novel by Lewis Carroll, of course, immerses the reader in a serene flight of fantasy and imagination, but meanwhile it awakens the brightest feelings that sometimes find themselves in the depths of human consciousness. The work is filled with genuine childlike kindness and pure, like spring water, consciousness, which is not capable of evil and conceited deeds, and this thereby makes one reconsider one's own self and can change something in it.

Picture or drawing Carroll - Alice Through the Looking Glass

History of creation

By teaching girls to play, as Alice Lidell recalled, Carroll invented different stories that beat the moves of chess pieces. Another girl Alice, a distant relative of the writer, involuntarily suggested the idea of a fairy tale to send the heroine to the room that exists behind the mirror. In 1871, the first edition of the tale appeared, which had the long title "Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Saw There, or Alice Through the Looking-Glass".

Description of the work. Main characters

The plot of the story is based on a chess game: a pawn passes the whole field and becomes a queen. Alice gets into fairy world behind a mirror, rushing after a black kitten. Becoming a white pawn, Alice moves from field to field, meeting different characters who introduce her to the world of absurdity, nonsense that reigns in the Looking Glass. Having reached the eighth field, she becomes a queen, who, however, is treated like a servant. Angry, Alice quarrels with the pieces and... wakes up.

The heroes of the fairy tale are the revived chess pieces with which the white pawn interacts. On different fields, Alice meets new characters. So, on the fourth field, the mirror twins Tweedledum and Tweedley take her to the sleeping Black King, warning that she exists only in his dream. Alice did not dare to wake the chess piece.

Humpty Dumpty, the character of the fairy tale, who passed into it from English folklore. He can not only turn into himself from a chicken egg, but also speaks in familiar words, producing speech that is incomprehensible to logical understanding.

Two characters were transferred to the Looking Glass from Wonderland: Zay Ats - Mrtovsky Hare and Bolvans Chik - Hatter.

Analysis of the work

The author used the well-known literary device. The action takes place in the dream of the main character, but throughout the story one can only guess about this, according to the chaos and nonsense reigning at the scene and in the heads of the characters. The decisiveness with which Alice tries to find a reasonable explanation for what is happening prevents her from finally recognizing what is happening as a dream.

The text of the work includes many riddles, charades, puns, designed in the limerick genre. "Alice Through the Looking-Glass" continues the direction of ironic absurdism, which distinguished the first story-tale of the dilogy.

Final conclusion

Carroll's contemporaries refused to consider the fairy tale "Through the Looking-Glass" as a children's story. She, indeed, could be understood, except perhaps by the author's little girlfriends, for whom he invented his puns and limericks. You can understand and appreciate the game that the writer filled the work with, having brilliant erudition. English writer Woolf wrote that Carroll's books cannot be classified as children's literature, but adults become children in them.