[lit-ideas] Dodgsoniana
- From: Jlsperanza@xxxxxxx
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Tue, 15 Oct 2013 23:47:36 -0400 (EDT)
In a message dated 10/15/2013 5:34:14 P.M. Eastern Daylight Time,
lawrencehelm@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx writes some very interesting things in his post on
C.
L. Dodgson. I will try to comment in what follows.
Helm writes:
"Actually, the title of Edmund Wilson’s article was “C. L. Dodgson: The
Poet-Logician,” but Wilson has very little to say about Dodgson’s poetry, a
bit more about his achievements as a logician and quite a lot about his
fondness for little girls."
Poet-logician is of course ambiguous. Compare: "Logician-poet". As I
recall, Dodgson's official post was 'tutor in logic' at Christ Church. Oddly,
at
Christ Church, 'fellows' are called 'students', and students, I guess, are
not called!
---- (Yet, it is my firm belief that Christ Church is the best of the
Oxford colleges -- much better than Grice's colleges: St. John's, Merton, and
Corpus Christi).
"Tutor in mathematics" may well have been his official post. I should
re-check this. I expect he was a 'university lecturer', i.e. that his lessons
would be open to any 'student' at Oxford, and not just Christ Church
affiliates.
I mention this because I don't think that 'poetry' entered into Dodgson's
professional life. He was of course a reverend, but that's a different
animal.
Helm goes on:
"Had I heard that before? I can’t be sure but it didn’t sound utterly
unfamiliar."
A good source for that is Dennis Potter's, "Dreamchild", originally for TV
-- not available on DVD, alas, I think. "Alice at eighty", a novel, covers
much the same ground. But I prefer Potter's view.
"What was new to me was the idea that Dodgson was an accomplished
photographer. Helmet Gernsheim wrote Lewis Carroll Photographer in 1950. I
stopped reading, looked the book up on Amazon, found a paperback copy in “like
new
” condition for $3.95 and ordered it. Turning back to Wilson I read that “
Mr. Gernsheim considers Dodgson ‘the most outstanding photographer of
children of the nineteenth century’ and after Julia Margaret Cameron, ‘
probably the most distinguished amateur portraitist of the mid-Victorian
era.’”"
----
I wonder what was the interest behind Dodgson. There is a sequence in the
dark room in Potter's "Dreamchild".
Grice considers photography briefly in his "Meaning". He wants to say that
if I draw a drawing of the cow jumping over the moon, I mean that the cow
jumped over the moon. This is the good use of 'mean'.
If I take a PHOTO of the cow jumping over the moon, the photograph, or my
displaying of the photograph, still MEANS that the cow jumped over the moon.
But this is a metaphorical use of 'mean', as in "Dark clouds mean rain".
It's a 'natural' (and thus derived) use of the proper use of 'mean' which
applies to a different realm.
----- Keywords: photography as art. -- artist's intentions, photographer's
intentions, photography & meaning.
---
Helm goes on:
"Reading some reviews of Gernsheim’s book it seems that many in the 20th
century were convinced that Lewis Carroll was a pedophile. Wilson
considered that and thought not, at least not one that acted upon his
thoughts. But
wasn’t he acting upon his thoughts by taking photos of these little girls,
some of them nude. Wilson observed that no one would be able to get away
with such behavior in the 20th century – nor in the 21st century I would
add."
I think his adage was: "I like children but not boys" -- but should double
check this.
----
"Wilson admired Through the Looking-Glass: The Life of Lewis Carroll by
Florence Becker Lennon. He notes its faults then writes, “But this study is,
nevertheless, the best thing that has yet been written about Lewis
Carroll. The literary criticism is excellent; the psychological insight
sometimes
brilliant; and Mrs. Lennon has brought together, from the most scattered
and various sources, a good deal of information. The impression that she
actually conveys was what Dodgson’s existence was like is more convincing
than some of her theories. Mrs. Lennon believes that Charles Dodgson was
intimidated by his clergyman father, so that he felt himself obliged to take
orders and never dared question the creed of the Church. She seems to
believe that he might otherwise have developed as an important original
thinker.
She also worries about what she regards as his frustrated sexual life: if
he had only, she sighs, been capable of a mature attachment for a woman
which would have freed him from his passion for little girls!”"
----- Oxford tended to be homosocial, as we now say. I think Victoria --
the queen -- was well aware of Dodgson's geniality. There is a nice anecdote
about it. She was so fascinated by the Alice books that she asked Dodgson
to dedicate the next book to her. It was a treatise on trigonometry (I
think).
---
"In regard to Dodgson’s novel Sylvie and Bruno, Wilson writes, “Mrs.
Lennon has, I believe, been the first to point out the exact and complicate
parallels between the dreams and actualities that make this book
psychologically interesting . . . but the novel for grown-ups is otherwise
childish; and
in mathematics and logic, according to the expert opinions cited by Mrs.
Lennon, he either ignored or had never discovered the more advanced work in
these fields, and did not perhaps get even so far as in his exploration of
dreams.”"
Borges loved Dodgson and prefaced the Alice books. Sylvie and Bruno has a
beautiful passage where a map is described. It is a map of Germany, as I
recall, made on a scale of 1:1. "The farmers objected, since it covered all
the sun from the fields". And the inventor suggested that they use Germany as
its own map (I should doublecheck the wording!).
I wouldn't know who Dodgson's intended audience (or addressee) were. I
guess he basically wrote for himself or hisself. He did that from an early
age, when he published "Mischmasch" for the entertainment of his family back
in Cheshire.
---
I say that because it's childish to say a novel is childish if the author
(or 'utterer') never meant it as other.
Helm continues:
"Wilson wrote his initial article in 1932; later, collecting it in the
volume The Shores of Light, published in 1952 he added to it, primarily
perhaps because of the publication of Gernsheim’s Lewis Carroll Photographer
in
1950 and of Lennon’s Victoria through the Looking Glass: The Life of Lewis
Carroll in 1945. The originality of Dodgson might qualify him as “great” in
the mind of F. R. Leavis as well although I don’t recall mention of
Dodgson in anything I’ve read by Leavis. Both Leavis and Wilson would I’m
sure
consider William Blake “great” and their opinions would be shared by
Harold Bloom, Northrop Frye and many others, but what if Blake’s originality
were fueled by madness? And what if Dodgson’s were fueled by arrested
development?
We know that any writer’s work is influenced by his presuppositions.
Perhaps these presuppositions are based on childhood lessons, teachings and
things a person hears or reads, but perhaps sometimes they are developed out
of madness or other influences deviating from the “norm.” On a scale of
greatness where the greatest gets 100, shouldn’t we penalize such writers as
Blake and Dodgson if their “originality” was to some extent due to their
arrested or perverted development? I’m inclined to penalize them, but I’m
not sure I’m right in doing so . . . or, madness in any case would have to
be so qualified that any penalizing would have to be severely questioned.
I’m thinking now of bipolar disorder which used to be called
manic-depressive. We all have ups and downs and writers can be expected to
write when
they are up and feeling good or perhaps down and feeling so depressed that
only writing out of their depression can bring them relief. If we concede
that it is okay to write when we are feeling like it and that it is equally
okay to not write when we don’t feel like it then that puts into question
any penalty applied to a manic-depressive. And if we don’t penalize a
manic-depressive, how do we justify penalizing a paranoiac or a schizophrenic?"
I would think that Dodgson would not regret the label 'minor'. He
influenced so many generations that he was pretty big in ways.
I expect his intended audience were _girls_ -- as opposed to Edward Lear
who wrote for _boys_.
Their work is different from 'juvenile' literature ('boys' literature,
say).
It's certainly not meant for adults. But the child is the father of the man
(and woman) so no wonder so many -- and not just the members of the Lewis
Carroll Society -- who edit the delightful "Jabberwocky" -- are fascinated
by this SO OXONIAN personality!
In Dennis Potter's film, "Dreamchild", Dodgson is played by Ian Holm
(genially), and Alice (at eighty) played by Corale Browne (genial). The main
event is the awarding of an honorary degree to Alice at Columbia University.
But most of the film includes flashbacks. Alice ends up re-constructing the
real 'love' Dodgson felt for her. The soundtrack is particularly charming,
as it includes settings to some of Dodgson's best poetry:
would you walk a little faster
said the whiting to the snail
there's a porpoise right behind me
and he's treading on my tail
---- this bit is sung magnificently by an all-male chorus at Columbia.
It also includes another passion of Potter: dance-band music, and there is
a nice rendition of "Confessin'" as Alice ventures into a radio studio to
promote some product.
Cheers,
Speranza
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