Down the Rabbit Hole (I)
Down the hole and back again. (The Bus 8.18)
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ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED (4.12) 2 November 2023
The Stop
One of my favourite things about visiting a good library is giving into the temptation of losing myself amongst the books. This would regularly happen in university and graduate school when, off in the stacks searching for the books I needed, I’d inevitably find others that were often much more interesting. It was like falling down a rabbit hole of information, and this thought inspired me to make today’s Stop into the first instalment of another miniseries.1 Come along ….
Alice in Wonderland (1865) is a famous children’s novel by Lewis Carroll, the pen name of Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (1832-1898). An English author, poet, logician, mathematician and photographer, Dodgson was educated at Rugby School and Christ Church, Oxford. He was a prolific writer, authoring 11 books of mathematics and 12 of literary fiction.
In addition to fiction, Lewis Carroll was also the author of numerous poems of nonsense, including ‘Jabberwocky’ and ‘The Hunting of the Snark.’ A very odd poem about a ‘bizarre crew of nine tradesmen and one beaver’ on a search to find the mysterious ‘snark’, the poem was commercially popular on publication, though it was met with ‘mixed reviews’ by critics and his friends. One of these friends was the Pre-Raphaelite painter Dante Gabriel Rosetti, with whom Carroll was closely associated, and over time Rosetti became convinced that the poem was about him.
Dante Gabriel Rosetti (1828-1882) founded the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood in 1848, a group of painters, poets and art critics who had ‘come together in opposition to the Royal Academy's promotion of the ideal as exemplified in the work of Raphael.’ A highly influential movement, the group consciously ‘revolt[ed] against the triviality of the immensely popular genre painting of the time,’ believing instead in that ‘serious subjects’ should be ‘treated with maximum realism.’ Inspired by the theories of the writer and philosopher John Ruskin, its principal members were Rosetti, William Holman Hunt and John Everett Millais.
John Everett Millais (1829-1896) was a child prodigy who entered the Royal Academy Schools at the age of 11. An enormously gifted artist, he would produce many famous paintings and portraits - and eventually become a well-respected academic. One of his most famous early paintings, considered a perfect example of the pre-Raphaelite style, is Ophelia (1851-1852).
Ophelia is a painting of the doomed one-time/potential lover of Hamlet in the eponymous play. Controlled by her meddling father and hypocritically over-protective brother and an unwitting toy in Hamlet’s mind-games as he avenges the murder of his father at the hands of his uncle, Ophelia’s short life ends in insanity and death by (most likely) suicide by drowning. Millais’s painting is based on the description of her death by Queen Gertrude in Act IV Scene vii:
There is a willow grows aslant a brook,
That shows his hoar leaves in the glassy stream;
There with fantastic garlands did she come
Of crow-flowers, nettles, daisies, and long purples
That liberal shepherds give a grosser name,
But our cold maids do dead men's fingers call them:
There, on the pendent boughs her coronet weeds
Clambering to hang, an envious sliver broke;
When down her weedy trophies and herself
Fell in the weeping brook. Her clothes spread wide;
And, mermaid-like, awhile they bore her up:
Which time she chanted snatches of old tunes;
As one incapable of her own distress,
Or like a creature native and indued
Unto that element: but long it could not be
Till that her garments, heavy with their drink,
Pull'd the poor wretch from her melodious lay
To muddy death.
Hamlet was, of course, written by William Shakespeare (1564-1616), who was born in Stratford-upon-Avon in the county of Warwickshire. A largely rural ceremonial county in the West Midlands of England, Warwickshire has three large metropolitan areas - one of which is Rugby. Three years after Shakespeare’s birth, Rugby School was founded, and 279 years later 14-year-old Lewis Carroll entered as a first year student.
The Detour
Today’s Detour is to CGP Grey’s One in a Million (2:58), a version of the classic Rock, Paper, Scissors game in which players go against the house. At some point, the house will will - unless you try to cheat. But at that point, you will discover Grey is already ahead of you.
It’s interesting in itself, but what made it perfect for today’s Stop is that when it popped into my inbox today, the description under the link was prefaced: ‘Danger: rabbit hole ahead.’
The Recommendation
Today’s Recommendation is Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland (1865), the original text that took its readers (literally) down the rabbit hole. A classic of Victorian literature, its story has enchanted and puzzled readers since its publication, and - like Monday’s Frankenstein - is known to most because of its many film adaptations. The novel, however, is remarkably different - filled with puzzles and logic games, odd poems, mathematics, linguistic play and complicated puns, reading it is an experience not even the best film adaptation can match. Highly recommended.
From the back: Alice in Wonderland is an 1865 novel written by English author Charles Lutwidge Dodgson under the pseudonym Lewis Carroll. It tells of a girl named Alice falling through a rabbit hole into a fantasy world populated by peculiar, anthropomorphic creatures. The tale plays with logic, giving the story lasting popularity with adults as well as with children. It is considered to be one of the best examples of the literary nonsense genre. Its narrative course and structure, characters and imagery have been enormously influential in both popular culture and literature, especially in the fantasy genre.
The Sounds
Today’s playlist is a selection of five tracks that slip down a specific rabbit hole:2 ‘The Saga of Rodney Toady: Little Children’ (Giles, Giles and Fripp, 1968), ‘I Talk to the Wind’ (King Crimson, 1969), ‘Baby’s On Fire’ (Brian Eno, 1973), ‘Wire’ (U2, 1984) and ‘Falling at Your Feet’ (Daniel Lanois, 2003). Enjoy!
The Thought
Today’s Thought is from Alice in Wonderland. During a conversation with the Cheshire Cat about the inhabitants of the strange world she’s entered, the Cat mentions that it doesn’t matter which direction she goes in, she’ll only encounter mad people. To Alice’s reply that she doesn’t want to ‘go among mad people,’ the Cat responds with one of the ‘most concise descriptions of the strange world down the rabbit hole’:
‘We’re all mad here.’
Unlike the world she’s left behind, down the rabbit hole ‘mad’ isn’t necessarily a bad thing: here one should embrace the quirky, unpredictable side - and maybe little bit of it back to reality.
If you have a thought on this Thought - or any part of today’s issue - please leave a comment below:
And that’s the end of this Stop - I hope you enjoyed the diversion!
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Until the next Stop …
Other miniseries Stops include ‘Exquisite Words’ (1.47, 2.16, 2.36, 3.16, 3.47), ‘Basic Buddhist Beliefs’ (1.39, 2.3, 2.27), ‘Logical Fallacies’ (3.1, 3.31, 4.5), ‘Turning 50 in ‘23 (3.25, 3.33, 3.41) and ‘Turning 40 in ‘23’ (4.2, 4.10). Cobbled together during a field trip to the Royal Holloway University library yesterday, this was a fun Stop to create. Sources include various titular Britannica articles, Pre-Raphaelites (Tate) and Shakespeare (MIT).
There’s a specific path linking these five that I have in mind, though there are undoubtedly other connections, too. Let me know in the comments if you figure out the relationship between these songs. For the King Crimson nod, I’ve got to thank Ian Sharp from LP who on Monday did a deep dive into an album I’d not listened to in years. It’s now on heavy car-stereo rotation.
This one feels well suited to this particular time, as I feel like I’ve fallen down the rabbit hole of consumerisms on the internet. Even more than ever, everybody wants me to buy something. We’re all mad here.