Great Poems of Yore: The Jabberwocky
Perfect nonsense
And now, for something completely different.
‘Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe
All mimsy were the borogoves,
and the mome raths outgrabe
Thus begins the finest example of English literature ever to be recorded, and I’ll fight anyone who says otherwise.
Ok, ok, there might be some Shakespeare that’s close. And LOTR is decent, sure.
But Lewis Carroll really takes the cake with Jabberwocky.
So, for something a bit different, we’re going to jump into this poem for a bit.
"Jabberwocky"
'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.
The Author
Lewis Carroll is a penname for Charles Luttwidge Dodgson (who knew?!). Lewis was a bit of a talent; perhaps close to a polymath. He was apparently a gifted academic whose father, an Anglican priest, could have easily had a career as a mathematician. Carroll didn’t appear to enjoy school, but nevertheless excelled at it.
I won’t bore you with a full bio; his Wikipedia page is decent, and the Lewis Carroll Society of North America has a wealth of info.
Suffice to say, Lewis was talented. He was apparently an early advocate for portrait photography and, being around Oxford most of his life, moved in literary and academic-adjacent circles.
And of course, Lewis enjoyed the company of children, and knew how to write for them. Alice in Wonderland rightfully is regarded as one of the best children’s books, and buried in it is the Jabberwocky.
Victorian Nonsense Genre
You know someone is good at something when they can seamlessly blend genres, or jump between one and the other without missing a beat.
Alice in Wonderland is a classic children’s story, uniquely Carroll’s in its adventure and wimsy. But the Jabberwocky is more than that. It’s a full-on nonsense poem in epic form; or maybe, an epic in nonsense form.
A word about that - nonsense poems. These are quite common in English. “Hey diddle diddle, the cat and the fiddle, the cow jumped over the moon” - a nonsense poem serving as a nursery rhyme. Or any number of limericks, which can be funny, dirty, nonsensical, or (often) all three.
The Victorians loved this stuff. Carroll is only one example, with other classics being figures like Edward Lear (The Jumblies, who, as you will remember, “went to see in a seive”).
The Victorians enjoyed creating nonsense, combining the serious and the silly. It was fairly common in those days to build follies, structures imitating old ruins or landmarks that were actually quite modern. In Edinburgh, Scotland, not far from where I live, there’s a half-formed Parthenon on the top of Calton Hill overlooking the city. Note that Edinburgh already has a rather impressive castle dominating its skyline, yet the builders of the 19th century felt the need to create parallel works of grandeur.
I’m not sure what in the Victorian mindset prompted that love of the sublime and ridiculous simultaneously; I do know that I like it, and the Jabberwocky is in the same vein.
An Epic in Miniature
One of the great things about Jabberwocky is that it’s actually an adventure or epic poem, in form if not in length.
There’s a setting (the initial stanza, with a coda at the end).
There’s a quest.
There’s a conflict.
There’s the victory/reward.
There’s an unsettling return, a vague sense of unease that lingers at the edge of sight and sound at the very end.
Let’s break it down a bit further.
The Brittanica defines an epic as a “long narrative poem recounting heroic deeds.” Right away, we can see that the core is there in Jabberwocky, with its focus on the defeat of the eponymous monster. Of course, there is that “long” bit; but arguably, for nonsense poetry, the Jabberwocky is quite long.
It’s easy to see right off the bat that Jabberwocky is intent on sailing well-known waters. This is a quest, pure and simple, of arguably the oldest form: man vs. beast. Sir Gawain and the green knight, St. George and dragon, Biblo and Smaug. Over even more applicable - Beowulf.
But because this is a nonsense poem, Carroll subverts the epic in a number of ways. Note the Brittanica again:
The aristocratic warriors of the heroic ages were thus members of an illustrious family, a link in a long chain of glorious heroes. And the chain could snap if the warrior failed to preserve the honour of the family, whereas, by earning fame through his own heroism, he could give it new lustre.
The hero of the Jabberwocky is concerned with family, sent on his quest and welcomed back by his father. But the actual conflict is completely overlooked in the poem, meriting only a single line - “he left it dead.”
Also. the brevity of the poem works to emphasise the ridiculousness of the whole thing. The setting, buildup, and sendoff get far more than the conflict, and there’s the whole seemingly-random aside of the hero’s break for some pensive reflection.
What makes it work?
So why then is the poem so effective, and so popular?
Three elements work in its favor. There are more, I’m sure, but these stand out to me.
First, there’s a sense of (false) antiquity. It feels like an epic poem, it has the same cadence, and the driving plot, as noted above, is the same. It’s not Beowulf, to be sure, but it feels like it might be Beowulf’s long-lost cousin twice removed on his mother’s side.
Second, it speaks to universal themes. Father/son, man/beast, quest/return. These ring true to our psyche in any form. Also note - this is in a children’s book, and yet that hasn’t hindered it at all. Kids get this, even when young.
Third, it’s hilarious. Look at these words:
brillig
slithy
mimsy
gyre
vorpal (my favorite)
frabjous
burbled
This is Carroll showing off. He’s making up words, sometimes mashing two together (slithy) sometimes out of whole cloth (vorpal). The effect is hilarious, but we still instinctively grasp what he’s aiming for. It makes sense, on some level.
That’s why Jabberwocky is perfect nonsense. It makes no sense, but we don’t struggle to understand it. Lewis Carroll - Charles Dodgson - grasped that there are universals at work in art and literature, and even for children. Dive deep enough, and you can have a lot of fun playing around in that sandbox.
Eat your heart out, Shakespeare.