The Anti-Subtle Humour of Clowning

The only halfway effective strategy I’ve come up with for exploring Kafka’s funniness in class involves suggesting to students that much of his humor is actually sort of unsubtle — or rather •anti•-subtle. 

“All I need to make a comedy is a park, a policeman and a pretty girl.”

Charlie Chaplin,

My Autobiography (1964), Ch. 10

Multiple Selves and Information Systems
by Robert Anton Wilson

Between 1910 and 1939, Charlie Chaplin always played the same character in all his films — the beloved little Tramp that became world-famous. 

In 1939, Chaplin wrote, directed and starred in The Great Dictator, in which the little Tramp did not appear. Instead, Chaplin played two charac-ters — a tyrant, based on Hitler, and a Jewish tailor, one of Hitler's victims. 

Audiences all over The World (except Germany, where the authorities banned the film) complained, mournfully and angrily, that they missed The Little Tramp. 

Chaplin, however, having gotten rid of The Tramp once, never did bring that persona back. 

In later films, he played many characters (a serial killer, a kindly old vaudevillian, a deposed king), but never the Tramp. People still com-plained that they wanted to see the Tramp again, but Chaplin went on creating new characters. 

(We will leave it to Jungians to explain why Chaplin had to become two opposite characters before he could personally escape the Archetype of the Tramp...) 

Many actors have had equally hard battles in getting detached from, if not a specific character, a specific type. Humphrey Bogart remained stuck in villain roles, usually gangsters, for nearly a decade before he got to play his first hero.

 Cary Grant never did escape from the hero type — either the romantic hero or the comic hero; when Alfred Hitchcock persuaded him to play a murderer, in Suspicion, the studio over-ruled both of them and tacked on a sur-prise ending in which the Grant character did not commit the murder, after all. Etc.

Back in "the real world," if a member of a family changes suddenly, the whole family suddenly appears agitated and disturbed. 

Family counselors have learned to expect this, even when the change consists of something everybody considers desirable — e.g., an alcoholic who suddenly stops drinking can "destabilize" the family to the extent that another member becomes clinically depressed, or develops psychosomatic symptoms, or even starts drink-ing heavily (as if the family "needed" an alcoholic). 

It seems that we not only speak and think in sentences like "John is an old grouch" but become disoriented and frightened if John suddenly starts acting friendly and generous. 

(Audiences rejected the previously "lovable" Chaplin most vehement-ly when he played the multiple wife-killer in Monsieur Verdoux. Probably, audiences would not have felt upset if the role had gone to the actor who originally wrote it for himself and sold it to Chaplin when the Hollywood moguls blacklisted him — Orson Welles.) 

If Dickens’ Scrooge had changed, in actuality, as he changed in the book, several people in his social field would have suddenly developed bizarre behaviors they had never shown before... 

Chaplin, amusingly, once made a comedy about the chaos created by a man who conspicuously does not exhibit the "isness" or "essence" our subject-predicate language programs us to expect, City Lights. 

In this film, The Little Tramp encounters a millionaire with two entirely different personalities: a generous and compassionate drunk, and a greedy, somewhat paranoid sober man. 

The Tramp and all the other characters soon exhibit behaviors that would look like clinical insanity to the audience, if we did not know the secret none of the characters guess: namely that each "personality" in the rich man appears when brain chemistry changes. 

The Russian mystic Gurdjieff claimed that we all contain multiple personalities. Many researchers in psychology and neuroscience now share that startling view. As Gurdjieff indicated, the "I" who toils at a job does not seem the same "I" who makes love with joy and passion, and the third "I" who occasionally gets angry for no evident reason seems a third personality, etc. There does not appear anything metaphysical about this; it even appears, measurably, on electroencephalograms. 

Dr. Frank Putnam of the National Institute of Health found that extreme cases of multiple personality — the only ones that ortho-dox psychiatry recognizes — show quite distinct brain waves for each "personality" almost as if the researchers had taken the electrodes off of one subject and attached them to another. (O'Regan. op. cit.) Dr. Rossi defines these separate personalities as "state specific information systems." 

Not only do we show different personalities when drunk and when sober, like Chaplin's emblematic millionaire, but we have different information banks ("memories") in these states. 

Thus, most people have noted that something that happened to them while drunk appears totally forgotten, until they get intoxicated again, and then the memory "miraculously" re-appears. 

This observation of state-specific information occurs even more frequently with LSD; nobody really remembers the richness of an LSD voyage until they take another dose. Emotional states seem part of a circular-causal loop with brain chemistry — it seems impossible, for science in 1990, to say that one part of the circle "causes" the other parts. 

Thus, we can now understand a phenomenon mentioned earlier, namely that we tend to remember happy experiences when happy and sad experiences when sad. The separate "personalities" or information systems within a typical human seem to fall into four main groups, with four additional groups appearing only in minorities who have engaged in one form or another of neurological self-research (metaprogramming).

“ The Gospel of Thomas is not in our canon for several reasons.

The Gospel of Thomas has become very famous, though, in the last part of the twentieth century because it was rediscovered and published and created something of a sensation.

According to the tradition, according to the Gospel of Thomas, Jesus had a Twin Brother and his name was Didymus Judas Thomas. 

Now, Didymus is simply the Greek word for "Twin," it's also used as the Greek word for "testicles" for obvious reasons; there are usually two of them. 

Didymus is the Greek word for "Twin" and Thomas is from a Semitic word, either Hebrew or Aramaic, or Syriac, which are all three similar languages, "Thomas" would look like in "Twin" in those. 

The guy's name is Judas, the Hebrew version would be Judah, the Greek word would be Judas, and the English version is Jude, so you sometimes see it in English translations Didymus Jude Thomas but it's the same word, Judah or Judas. 

His real name is Judah or Judas and Didymus, and Thomas are his nicknames, one Greek and one Semitic or Aramaic. 

He was The Twin Brother of Jesus, according to early Christian tradition, now just one strand of early Christian tradition that is Thomasine Christianity, the forms of Christianity, popular especially in Syria and the east which traced their existence back to the Apostle Thomas. 

There really was an Apostle Thomas among the 12 of Jesus' disciples and having the nickname "Twin." 

Traditional orthodox Christians don't believe he was •Jesus'• Twin Brother, they just believe that he had the •nickname• “Twin” because he was Somebody Else's Twin Brother. 

But in Thomasine Christianity he was connected to Jesus himself as Jesus' Twin.

According to some forms of eastern Christianity therefore, especially the early forms in Syria, Mesopotamia, and India--and yes there was very, very early forms of Christianity in the west coast of India. 

And if you meet an Indian person who's from that part of India and who considers themselves Christian, and they've been Christian for generations they will tell you, “Yes, Thomas was the apostle who brought The Gospel to India the first time.”

There are ancient traditions about this and modern Indian Christians still trace their church back to the Apostle Thomas.

There are all kinds of Thomas literature from the ancient world. It's not all alike, it doesn't all represent one kind of Christianity or one church, or even one region. 

Besides the Gospel of Thomas we know of The Infancy Gospel of Thomas, this is a wonderful documentary if you took my historical Jesus class you get to read the fragments of The Infancy Gospel of Thomas that we still have. 

It shows Jesus--everybody wonders, well what was Jesus like as a kid? 

What games did he play? 

Did he play cops and robbers? 

Did he play with dolls? 

What did Jesus do as a kid? 

Well Thomas tells you, it tells you for example, that he made a bunch of clay pigeons, and when this Jew--it's kind of anti-Jewish document, this Jew comes up and says, “You’re not supposed to be doing that on the Sabbath”, so Jesus claps his hands and the pigeons all fly off, the clay pigeons fly off. 

Or when one of his buddies get--when he gets mad at one of his buddies so he strikes the kid dead and then has to raise the kid up again. 

When one of his teachers criticizes him, he says, ‘What do you know you bimbo?’ and strikes the teacher dumb and blind or something. 

Jesus as a Little Kid in The Infancy Gospel of Thomas, is kind of a little rat but that's the way people imagined him as a child.”

“ My point is not that his wit is too subtle for US students. In fact, the only halfway effective strategy I’ve come up with for exploring Kafka’s funniness in class involves suggesting to students that much of his humor is actually sort of unsubtle — or rather •anti•-subtle. 

The claim is that Kafka’s funniness depends on some kind of radical literalization of Truths we tend to treat as metaphorical. I opine to them that some of our most profound collective intuitions seem to be expressible only as figures of speech, that that’s why we call these figures of speech expressions. 

With respect to “The Metamorphosis,” then, I might invite students to consider what is really being expressed when we refer to someone as ‘creepy’ or ‘gross’ or say that he is forced to ‘take shit’ as part of his job. 

Or to reread “In the Penal Colony” in light of expressions like ‘tongue-lashing’ or ‘tore him a new asshole’ or the gnomic “By middle age, everyone gets the face they deserve.” 

Or to approach “A Hunger Artist” in terms of tropes like ‘starved for attention’ or ‘love-starved’ or the double entendre in the term ‘self-denial’, or even as innocent a factoid as that the etymological root of ‘anorexia’ happens to be the Greek word for ‘longing’.”

SOME REMARKS ON KAFKA’S FUNNINESS FROM WHICH PROBABLY NOT ENOUGH HAS BEEN REMOVED,

by David Foster Wallace

The River in The Middle of The Rock in The Middle of The River

Lorelei Ambrosia: 

Ross’ assistant and girlfriend. 

Lorelei, a voluptuous blonde bombshell, is well-read, articulate and skilled in computers, but conceals her intelligence from Ross and Vera, to whom she adopts the appearance of a superficial fool. 

As part of Ross’ plan, she seduces Superman.

RAW: Well, to start from Joyce.  Joyce was probably the greatest anthropologist who ever lived, and it’s a scandal that he’s not taught in all anthropology classes.  And it was through the study of Joyce that Joseph Campbell developed his unique approach to anthropology.  The first book he wrote after “The Skeleton Key” was “The Hero of a Thousand Faces”, and that book would be impossible without “The Skeleton Key”; “The Skeleton Key” gave him the monomyth, the archetype behind all the other archetypes that he uses in “The Hero with a Thousand Faces” and then develops in his later books like the four-volume “Masks of God”.  But Joyce was Campbell’s guide, just as he’s the guide to quantum mechanics in many senses.  Murray Gell-Mann, the Nobel Prize winner, got his three-quark model out of FW.  The three quarks are the three major characters in FW: the two twins who are opposite, and the third who was both twins combined and still a third independent character.  To understand thoughts like two twins who are the opposite of a third who combines both twins together, you’ve got to think in a Taoist way.  Like the joke: how many Zen masters does it take to change a light bulb?  Two: one to change it, and one to not change it.  Well that’s the logic of the Sham-Ham-Japheth relationship in FW, which is also the Bacon-Shakespeare-Raleigh relationship and the Tom-Dick-and-Harry and the many other types of trilogies in the human mind, including the Holy Trinity and Dogfather-Dogson-and-Co, which sounds like an English company name, but it’s actually Charlles Dodgson - Lewis Carroll - the two twins who are opposite, Charles Dodgson the logician and Lewis Carroll the fantasist are united in one body: a certain man, who was Dodgson part of the time and Carroll part of the time, like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.  He wrote treatises on the pure mathematical foundations of logic with one part of his mind and he wrote “Alice in Wonderland” with the other part.  So Dogfather-Dogson-and-Co is Dodgson divided up into three parts, like the holy trinity - the Father, the Son, and - Coo! - the Holy Pigeon.

I: That’s like James Keys and G. Spencer Brown.  G Spencer Brown is a mathematician and James Keys is the expression that develops his anima.  He’s from England - Oxford I believe - have you ever run into him?

RAW: No, I haven’t.  But I’ve read “The Laws of Form”.

RAW : Joyce is so complicated.  There have been books written claiming that Joyce hated women, and the reason such books can be written is that Joyce’s characters are so complicated.  Every one of his female characters is marvelous and terribly flawed and full of imperfections, but that’s true of his male characters, too.  And so even though Joyce, to me, appears one of the great male feminists, his female characters are certainly not idealized any more than his male characters.  Joyce was the world’s staunchest enemy of idealism.

I: But they’re strong - the women are.

RAW: Yes, and they are tremendously flexible.  In the symbolism of FW, the woman is the river and the man is the mountain, and the mountain seems strong, but it’s kind of frozen, and the river is alive and dancing.  This is very much like the Yang and the Yin principles in the I Ching.  FW is isomorphic to the I Ching; I have an essay about that in the latest issue of “Semiotext(e)”.  It’s kind of hard to pursue verbally these mathematical symbols to show the full isomorphism.

The Windmills of Reality Fight Back

“In a village of La Mancha, the name of which I have no desire to call to mind, there lived not long since one of those gentlemen that keep a lance in the lance-rack, an old buckler, a lean hack, and a greyhound for coursing. An olla of rather more beef than mutton, a salad on most nights, scraps on Saturdays, lentils on Fridays, and a pigeon or so extra on Sundays, made away with three-quarters of his income. The rest of it went in a doublet of fine cloth and velvet breeches and shoes to match for holidays, while on week-days he made a brave figure in his best homespun. He had in his house a housekeeper past forty, a niece under twenty, and a lad for the field and market-place, who used to saddle the hack as well as handle the bill-hook. The age of this gentleman of ours was bordering on fifty; he was of a hardy habit, spare, gaunt-featured, a very early riser and a great sportsman. They will have it his surname was Quixada or Quesada (for here there is some difference of opinion among the authors who write on the subject), although from reasonable conjectures it seems plain that he was called Quexana. This, however, is of but little importance to our tale; it will be enough not to stray a hair's breadth from the truth in the telling of it. 

You must know, then, that the above-named gentleman whenever he was at leisure (which was mostly all the year round) gave himself up to reading books of chivalry with such ardour and avidity that he almost entirely neglected the pursuit of his field-sports, and even the management of his property; and to such a pitch did his eagerness and infatuation go that he sold many an acre of tillageland to buy books of chivalry to read, and brought home as many of them as he could get. But of all there were none he liked so well as those of the famous Feliciano de Silva's composition, for their lucidity of style and complicated conceits were as pearls in his sight, particularly when in his reading he came upon courtships and cartels, where he often found passages like "the reason of the unreason with which my reason is afflicted so weakens my reason that with reason I murmur at your beauty;" or again, "the high heavens, that of your divinity divinely fortify you with the stars, render you deserving of the desert your greatness deserves." Over conceits of this sort the poor gentleman lost his wits, and used to lie awake striving to understand them and worm the meaning out of them; what Aristotle himself could not have made out or extracted had he come to life again for that special purpose. He was not at all easy about the wounds which Don Belianis gave and took, because it seemed to him that, great as were the surgeons who had cured him, he must have had his face and body covered all over with seams and scars. He commended, however, the author's way of ending his book with the promise of that interminable adventure, and many a time was he tempted to take up his pen and finish it properly as is there proposed, which no doubt he would have done, and made a successful piece of work of it too, had not greater and more absorbing thoughts prevented him. 

Many an argument did he have with the curate of his village (a learned man, and a graduate of Siguenza) as to which had been the better knight, Palmerin of England or Amadis of Gaul. Master Nicholas, the village barber, however, used to say that neither of them came up to the Knight of Phoebus, and that if there was any that could compare with him it was Don Galaor, the brother of Amadis of Gaul, because he had a spirit that was equal to every occasion, and was no finikin knight, nor lachrymose like his brother, while in the matter of valour he was not a whit behind him. 

In short, he became so absorbed in his books that he spent his nights from sunset to sunrise, and his days from dawn to dark, poring over them; and what with little sleep and much reading his brains got so dry that he lost his wits. His fancy grew full of what he used to read about in his books, enchantments, quarrels, battles, challenges, wounds, wooings, loves, agonies, and all sorts of impossible nonsense; and it so possessed his mind that the whole fabric of invention and fancy he read of was true, that to him no history in the world had more reality in it. He used to say the Cid Ruy Diaz was a very good knight, but that he was not to be compared with the Knight of the Burning Sword who with one back-stroke cut in half two fierce and monstrous giants. He thought more of Bernardo del Carpio because at Roncesvalles he slew Roland in spite of enchantments, availing himself of the artifice of Hercules when he strangled Antaeus the son of Terra in his arms. He approved highly of the giant Morgante, because, although of the giant breed which is always arrogant and ill-conditioned, he alone was affable and well-bred. But above all he admired Reinaldos of Montalban, especially when he saw him sallying forth from his castle and robbing everyone he met, and when beyond the seas he stole that image of Mahomet which, as his history says, was entirely of gold. To have a bout of kicking at that traitor of a Ganelon he would have given his housekeeper, and his niece into the bargain. In short, his wits being quite gone, he hit upon the strangest notion that ever madman in this world hit upon, and that was that he fancied it was right and requisite, as well for the support of his own honour as for the service of his country, that he should make a knight-errant of himself, roaming the world over in full armour and on horseback in quest of adventures, and putting in practice himself all that he had read of as being the usual practices of knights-errant; righting every kind of wrong, and exposing himself to peril and danger from which, in the issue, he was to reap eternal renown and fame. Already the poor man saw himself crowned by the might of his arm Emperor of Trebizond at least; and so, led away by the intense enjoyment he found in these pleasant fancies, he set himself forthwith to put his scheme into execution. The first thing he did was to clean up some armour that had belonged to his great-grandfather, and had been for ages lying forgotten in a corner eaten with rust and covered with mildew. He scoured and polished it as best he could, but he perceived one great defect in it, that it had no closed helmet, nothing but a simple morion. This deficiency, however, his ingenuity supplied, for he contrived a kind of half-helmet of pasteboard which, fitted on to the morion, looked like a whole one. It is true that, in order to see if it was strong and fit to stand a cut, he drew his sword and gave it a couple of slashes, the first of which undid in an instant what had taken him a week to do. The ease with which he had knocked it to pieces disconcerted him somewhat, and to guard against that danger he set to work again, fixing bars of iron on the inside until he was satisfied with its strength; and then, not caring to try any more experiments with it, he passed it and adopted it as a helmet of the most perfect construction. 

He next proceeded to inspect his hack, which, with more quartos than a real and more blemishes than the steed of Gonela, that "tantum pellis et ossa fuit," surpassed in his eyes the Bucephalus of Alexander or the Babieca of the Cid. Four days were spent in thinking what name to give him, because (as he said to himself) it was not right that a horse belonging to a knight so famous, and one with such merits of his own, should be without some distinctive name, and he strove to adapt it so as to indicate what he had been before belonging to a knight-errant, and what he then was; for it was only reasonable that, his master taking a new character, he should take a new name, and that it should be a distinguished and full-sounding one, befitting the new order and calling he was about to follow. 

And so, after having composed, struck out, rejected, added to, unmade, and remade a multitude of names out of his memory and fancy, he decided upon calling him Rocinante, a name, to his thinking, lofty, sonorous, and significant of his condition as a hack before he became what he now was, the first and foremost of all the hacks in the world. 

Having got a name for his horse so much to his taste, he was anxious to get one for himself, and he was eight days more pondering over this point, till at last he made up his mind to call himself "Don Quixote," whence, as has been already said, the authors of this veracious history have inferred that his name must have been beyond a doubt Quixada, and not Quesada as others would have it. Recollecting, however, that the valiant Amadis was not content to call himself curtly Amadis and nothing more, but added the name of his kingdom and country to make it famous, and called himself Amadis of Gaul, he, like a good knight, resolved to add on the name of his, and to style himself Don Quixote of La Mancha, whereby, he considered, he described accurately his origin and country, and did honour to it in taking his surname from it. 

So then, his armour being furbished, his morion turned into a helmet, his hack christened, and he himself confirmed, he came to the conclusion that nothing more was needed now but to look out for a lady to be in love with; for a knight-errant without love was like a tree without leaves or fruit, or a body without a soul. As he said to himself, "If, for my sins, or by my good fortune, I come across some giant hereabouts, a common occurrence with knights-errant, and overthrow him in one onslaught, or cleave him asunder to the waist, or, in short, vanquish and subdue him, will it not be well to have some one I may send him to as a present, that he may come in and fall on his knees before my sweet lady, and in a humble, submissive voice say, 'I am the giant Caraculiambro, lord of the island of Malindrania, vanquished in single combat by the never sufficiently extolled knight Don Quixote of La Mancha, who has commanded me to present myself before your Grace, that your Highness dispose of me at your pleasure'?" Oh, how our good gentleman enjoyed the delivery of this speech, especially when he had thought of some one to call his Lady! There was, so the story goes, in a village near his own a very good-looking farm-girl with whom he had been at one time in love, though, so far as is known, she never knew it nor gave a thought to the matter. Her name was Aldonza Lorenzo, and upon her he thought fit to confer the title of Lady of his Thoughts; and after some search for a name which should not be out of harmony with her own, and should suggest and indicate that of a princess and great lady, he decided upon calling her Dulcinea del Toboso—she being of El Toboso—a name, to his mind, musical, uncommon, and significant, like all those he had already bestowed upon himself and the things belonging to him.

BoyTalk : The Discussion is Never Over.

The Storm had now definitely abated, and what thunder there was now grumbled over more distant hills, like a man saying 'And another thing...' twenty minutes after admitting he's lost the argument.

The Joker :

How can you shoot women?

And children..?

The Vietnam War Helicopter Door-Gunner :

S’easy!

Just try not to lead ‘em too much!

[ Because nursing women, old women, women without sports-bras and children run less fast than adult men ]

Hyah-haha! 

Ain’t War Hell...?

Andrew: 

We are really super-villains now, like... like Dr. No.

Warren: 

Yeah, back when Bond was Connery, and movies were decent.

Jonathan: 

Who remembers Connery? 

I mean, Roger Moore was smooth.

Warren: 

You're Insane. 

You're Short, and you're Insane.

Andrew: 

I like Timothy Dalton! 

Hey!

Warren: 

Don't make me pull over, okay?

••••••••

Warren: Connery is Bond. He had style.

Jonathan: Yeah, but Roger Moore was funny.

Warren: Moonraker? The gondola turns into a hovercraft? It's retarded. 

Besides, the guy had, like, no edge.

Andrew: Dalton had edge. In Licence to Kill he was a rogue agent. That's edgy. 

And he was amazing in The Living Daylights.

Jonathan: 

Yeah, which was written for Roger Moore, not Timothy Dalton!

Warren: 

Okay, this is stupid! 

We're wasting time. 

End of Discussion. 

I mean, there's a shot of like pigeons, doing double-takes when the gondola blasted by!

Moonraker... is inexcusable.

••••••

Warren: 

Connery is the only actor of the bunch.

Andrew: 

Timothy Dalton should get an Oscar and beat Sean Connery over the head with it!

Andrew: 

Oh, she's coming over here! What do we do?

Warren: 

Jonathan, grab your magic bone.

Red Pawn, Blue Queen

As the Knight sang the last words of the ballad, he gathered up the reins, and turned his horse’s head along the road by which they had come. ‘You’ve only a few yards to go,’ he said, ‘down the hill and over that little brook, and then you’ll be a Queen—But you’ll stay and see me off first?’ he added as Alice turned with an eager look in the direction to which he pointed. ‘I shan’t be long. You’ll wait and wave your handkerchief when I get to that turn in the road? I think it’ll encourage me, you see.’

‘Of course I’ll wait,’ said Alice: ‘and thank you very much for coming so far—and for the song—I liked it very much.’

‘I hope so,’ the Knight said doubtfully: ‘but you didn’t cry so much as I thought you would.’

So they shook hands, and then the Knight rode slowly away into the forest. ‘It won’t take long to see him off, I expect,’ Alice said to herself, as she stood watching him. ‘There he goes! Right on his head as usual! However, he gets on again pretty easily—that comes of having so many things hung round the horse—’ So she went on talking to herself, as she watched the horse walking leisurely along the road, and the Knight tumbling off, first on one side and then on the other. After the fourth or fifth tumble he reached the turn, and then she waved her handkerchief to him, and waited till he was out of sight.

‘I hope it encouraged him,’ she said, as she turned to run down the hill: ‘and now for the last brook, and to be a Queen! How grand it sounds!’ A very few steps brought her to the edge of the brook. ‘The Eighth Square at last!’ she cried as she bounded across,

  *    *    *    *    *    *    *

    *    *    *    *    *    *

  *    *    *    *    *    *    *

and threw herself down to rest on a lawn as soft as moss, with little flower-beds dotted about it here and there. ‘Oh, how glad I am to get here! And what is this on my head?’ she exclaimed in a tone of dismay, as she put her hands up to something very heavy, and fitted tight all round her head.

‘But how can it have got there without my knowing it?’ she said to herself, as she lifted it off, and set it on her lap to make out what it could possibly be.

It was a golden crown.

CHAPTER IX. Queen Alice

‘Well, this is grand!’ said Alice. ‘I never expected I should be a Queen so soon—and I’ll tell you what it is, your majesty,’ she went on in a severe tone (she was always rather fond of scolding herself), ‘it’ll never do for you to be lolling about on the grass like that! Queens have to be dignified, you know!’

So she got up and walked about—rather stiffly just at first, as she was afraid that the crown might come off: but she comforted herself with the thought that there was nobody to see her, ‘and if I really am a Queen,’ she said as she sat down again, ‘I shall be able to manage it quite well in time.’

Everything was happening so oddly that she didn’t feel a bit surprised at finding the Red Queen and the White Queen sitting close to her, one on each side: she would have liked very much to ask them how they came there, but she feared it would not be quite civil. However, there would be no harm, she thought, in asking if the game was over. ‘Please, would you tell me—’ she began, looking timidly at the Red Queen.

‘Speak when you’re spoken to!’ The Queen sharply interrupted her.

‘But if everybody obeyed that rule,’ said Alice, who was always ready for a little argument, ‘and if you only spoke when you were spoken to, and the other person always waited for you to begin, you see nobody would ever say anything, so that—’

‘Ridiculous!’ cried the Queen. ‘Why, don’t you see, child—’ here she broke off with a frown, and, after thinking for a minute, suddenly changed the subject of the conversation. ‘What do you mean by “If you really are a Queen”? What right have you to call yourself so? You can’t be a Queen, you know, till you’ve passed the proper examination. And the sooner we begin it, the better.’

‘I only said “if”!’ poor Alice pleaded in a piteous tone.

The two Queens looked at each other, and the Red Queen remarked, with a little shudder, ‘She says she only said “if”—’

‘But she said a great deal more than that!’ the White Queen moaned, wringing her hands. ‘Oh, ever so much more than that!’

‘So you did, you know,’ the Red Queen said to Alice. ‘Always speak the truth—think before you speak—and write it down afterwards.’

‘I’m sure I didn’t mean—’ Alice was beginning, but the Red Queen interrupted her impatiently.

‘That’s just what I complain of! You should have meant! What do you suppose is the use of child without any meaning? Even a joke should have some meaning—and a child’s more important than a joke, I hope. You couldn’t deny that, even if you tried with both hands.’

‘I don’t deny things with my hands,’ Alice objected.

‘Nobody said you did,’ said the Red Queen. ‘I said you couldn’t if you tried.’

‘She’s in that state of mind,’ said the White Queen, ‘that she wants to deny something—only she doesn’t know what to deny!’

‘A nasty, vicious temper,’ the Red Queen remarked; and then there was an uncomfortable silence for a minute or two.

The Red Queen broke the silence by saying to the White Queen, ‘I invite you to Alice’s dinner-party this afternoon.’

The White Queen smiled feebly, and said ‘And I invite you.’

‘I didn’t know I was to have a party at all,’ said Alice; ‘but if there is to be one, I think I ought to invite the guests.’

‘We gave you the opportunity of doing it,’ the Red Queen remarked: ‘but I daresay you’ve not had many lessons in manners yet?’

‘Manners are not taught in lessons,’ said Alice. ‘Lessons teach you to do sums, and things of that sort.’

‘And you do Addition?’ the White Queen asked. ‘What’s one and one and one and one and one and one and one and one and one and one?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Alice. ‘I lost count.’

‘She can’t do Addition,’ the Red Queen interrupted. ‘Can you do Subtraction? Take nine from eight.’

‘Nine from eight I can’t, you know,’ Alice replied very readily: ‘but—’

‘She can’t do Subtraction,’ said the White Queen. ‘Can you do Division? Divide a loaf by a knife—what’s the answer to that?’

‘I suppose—’ Alice was beginning, but the Red Queen answered for her. ‘Bread-and-butter, of course. Try another Subtraction sum. Take a bone from a dog: what remains?’

Alice considered. ‘The bone wouldn’t remain, of course, if I took it—and the dog wouldn’t remain; it would come to bite me—and I’m sure I shouldn’t remain!’

‘Then you think nothing would remain?’ said the Red Queen.

‘I think that’s the answer.’

‘Wrong, as usual,’ said the Red Queen: ‘the dog’s temper would remain.’

‘But I don’t see how—’

‘Why, look here!’ the Red Queen cried. ‘The dog would lose its temper, wouldn’t it?’

‘Perhaps it would,’ Alice replied cautiously.

‘Then if the dog went away, its temper would remain!’ the Queen exclaimed triumphantly.

Alice said, as gravely as she could, ‘They might go different ways.’ But she couldn’t help thinking to herself, ‘What dreadful nonsense we are talking!’

‘She can’t do sums a bit!’ the Queens said together, with great emphasis.

‘Can you do sums?’ Alice said, turning suddenly on the White Queen, for she didn’t like being found fault with so much.

The Queen gasped and shut her eyes. ‘I can do Addition, if you give me time—but I can’t do Subtraction, under any circumstances!’

‘Of course you know your A B C?’ said the Red Queen.

‘To be sure I do.’ said Alice.

‘So do I,’ the White Queen whispered: ‘we’ll often say it over together, dear. And I’ll tell you a secret—I can read words of one letter! Isn’t that grand! However, don’t be discouraged. You’ll come to it in time.’

Here the Red Queen began again. ‘Can you answer useful questions?’ she said. ‘How is bread made?’

‘I know that!’ Alice cried eagerly. ‘You take some flour—’

‘Where do you pick the flower?’ the White Queen asked. ‘In a garden, or in the hedges?’

‘Well, it isn’t picked at all,’ Alice explained: ‘it’s ground—’

‘How many acres of ground?’ said the White Queen. ‘You mustn’t leave out so many things.’

‘Fan her head!’ the Red Queen anxiously interrupted. ‘She’ll be feverish after so much thinking.’ So they set to work and fanned her with bunches of leaves, till she had to beg them to leave off, it blew her hair about so.

‘She’s all right again now,’ said the Red Queen. ‘Do you know Languages? What’s the French for fiddle-de-dee?’

‘Fiddle-de-dee’s not English,’ Alice replied gravely.

‘Who ever said it was?’ said the Red Queen.

Alice thought she saw a way out of the difficulty this time. ‘If you’ll tell me what language “fiddle-de-dee” is, I’ll tell you the French for it!’ she exclaimed triumphantly.

But the Red Queen drew herself up rather stiffly, and said ‘Queens never make bargains.’

‘I wish Queens never asked questions,’ Alice thought to herself.

‘Don’t let us quarrel,’ the White Queen said in an anxious tone. ‘What is the cause of lightning?’

‘The cause of lightning,’ Alice said very decidedly, for she felt quite certain about this, ‘is the thunder—no, no!’ she hastily corrected herself. ‘I meant the other way.’

‘It’s too late to correct it,’ said the Red Queen: ‘when you’ve once said a thing, that fixes it, and you must take the consequences.’

‘Which reminds me—’ the White Queen said, looking down and nervously clasping and unclasping her hands, ‘we had such a thunderstorm last Tuesday—I mean one of the last set of Tuesdays, you know.’

Alice was puzzled. ‘In our country,’ she remarked, ‘there’s only one day at a time.’

The Red Queen said, ‘That’s a poor thin way of doing things. Now here, we mostly have days and nights two or three at a time, and sometimes in the winter we take as many as five nights together—for warmth, you know.’

‘Are five nights warmer than one night, then?’ Alice ventured to ask.

‘Five times as warm, of course.’

‘But they should be five times as cold, by the same rule—’

‘Just so!’ cried the Red Queen. ‘Five times as warm, and five times as cold—just as I’m five times as rich as you are, and five times as clever!’

Alice sighed and gave it up. ‘It’s exactly like a riddle with no answer!’ she thought.

‘Humpty Dumpty saw it too,’ the White Queen went on in a low voice, more as if she were talking to herself. ‘He came to the door with a corkscrew in his hand—’

‘What did he want?’ said the Red Queen.

‘He said he would come in,’ the White Queen went on, ‘because he was looking for a hippopotamus. Now, as it happened, there wasn’t such a thing in the house, that morning.’

‘Is there generally?’ Alice asked in an astonished tone.

‘Well, only on Thursdays,’ said the Queen.

‘I know what he came for,’ said Alice: ‘he wanted to punish the fish, because—’

Here the White Queen began again. ‘It was such a thunderstorm, you can’t think!’ (‘She never could, you know,’ said the Red Queen.) ‘And part of the roof came off, and ever so much thunder got in—and it went rolling round the room in great lumps—and knocking over the tables and things—till I was so frightened, I couldn’t remember my own name!’

Alice thought to herself, ‘I never should try to remember my name in the middle of an accident! Where would be the use of it?’ but she did not say this aloud, for fear of hurting the poor Queen’s feeling.

‘Your Majesty must excuse her,’ the Red Queen said to Alice, taking one of the White Queen’s hands in her own, and gently stroking it: ‘she means well, but she can’t help saying foolish things, as a general rule.’

The White Queen looked timidly at Alice, who felt she ought to say something kind, but really couldn’t think of anything at the moment.

‘She never was really well brought up,’ the Red Queen went on: ‘but it’s amazing how good-tempered she is! Pat her on the head, and see how pleased she’ll be!’ But this was more than Alice had courage to do.

‘A little kindness—and putting her hair in papers—would do wonders with her—’

The White Queen gave a deep sigh, and laid her head on Alice’s shoulder. ‘I am so sleepy?’ she moaned.

‘She’s tired, poor thing!’ said the Red Queen. ‘Smooth her hair—lend her your nightcap—and sing her a soothing lullaby.’

‘I haven’t got a nightcap with me,’ said Alice, as she tried to obey the first direction: ‘and I don’t know any soothing lullabies.’

‘I must do it myself, then,’ said the Red Queen, and she began:

   ‘Hush-a-by lady, in Alice’s lap!
   Till the feast’s ready, we’ve time for a nap:
   When the feast’s over, we’ll go to the ball—
l!
   Red Queen, and White Queen, and Alice, and a
l

‘And now you know the words,’ she added, as she put her head down on Alice’s other shoulder, ‘just sing it through to me. I’m getting sleepy, too.’ In another moment both Queens were fast asleep, and snoring loud.

‘What am I to do?’ exclaimed Alice, looking about in great perplexity, as first one round head, and then the other, rolled down from her shoulder, and lay like a heavy lump in her lap. ‘I don’t think it ever happened before, that any one had to take care of two Queens asleep at once! No, not in all the History of England—it couldn’t, you know, because there never was more than one Queen at a time. Do wake up, you heavy things!’ she went on in an impatient tone; but there was no answer but a gentle snoring.

The snoring got more distinct every minute, and sounded more like a tune: at last she could even make out the words, and she listened so eagerly that, when the two great heads vanished from her lap, she hardly missed them.

She was standing before an arched doorway over which were the words QUEEN ALICE in large letters, and on each side of the arch there was a bell-handle; one was marked ‘Visitors’ Bell,’ and the other ‘Servants’ Bell.’

‘I’ll wait till the song’s over,’ thought Alice, ‘and then I’ll ring—the—which bell must I ring?’ she went on, very much puzzled by the names. ‘I’m not a visitor, and I’m not a servant. There ought to be one marked “Queen,” you know—’

Just then the door opened a little way, and a creature with a long beak put its head out for a moment and said ‘No admittance till the week after next!’ and shut the door again with a bang.

Alice knocked and rang in vain for a long time, but at last, a very old Frog, who was sitting under a tree, got up and hobbled slowly towards her: he was dressed in bright yellow, and had enormous boots on.

‘What is it, now?’ the Frog said in a deep hoarse whisper.

Alice turned round, ready to find fault with anybody. ‘Where’s the servant whose business it is to answer the door?’ she began angrily.

‘Which door?’ said the Frog.

Alice almost stamped with irritation at the slow drawl in which he spoke. ‘This door, of course!’

The Frog looked at the door with his large dull eyes for a minute: then he went nearer and rubbed it with his thumb, as if he were trying whether the paint would come off; then he looked at Alice.

‘To answer the door?’ he said. ‘What’s it been asking of?’ He was so hoarse that Alice could scarcely hear him.

‘I don’t know what you mean,’ she said.

‘I talks English, doesn’t I?’ the Frog went on. ‘Or are you deaf? What did it ask you?’

‘Nothing!’ Alice said impatiently. ‘I’ve been knocking at it!’

‘Shouldn’t do that—shouldn’t do that—’ the Frog muttered. ‘Vexes it, you know.’ Then he went up and gave the door a kick with one of his great feet. ‘You let it alone,’ he panted out, as he hobbled back to his tree, ‘and it’ll let you alone, you know.’

At this moment the door was flung open, and a shrill voice was heard singing:

   ‘To the Looking-Glass world it was Alice that said,
   “I’ve a sceptre in hand, I’ve a crown on my head;

   Come and dine with the Red Queen, the White Queen
   Let the Looking-Glass creatures, whatever they be
,, and me.”’

And hundreds of voices joined in the chorus:

  ‘Then fill up the glasses as quick as you can,
  And sprinkle the table with buttons and bran:
 And welcome Queen Alice with thirty-times-thr
  Put cats in the coffee, and mice in the tea—
 ee!’

Then followed a confused noise of cheering, and Alice thought to herself, ‘Thirty times three makes ninety. I wonder if any one’s counting?’ In a minute there was silence again, and the same shrill voice sang another verse;

  ‘“O Looking-Glass creatures,” quoth Alice, “draw near!
  ‘Tis an honour to see me, a favour to hear:

  Along with the Red Queen, the White Queen, 
  ‘Tis a privilege high to have dinner and te
aand me!”’

Then came the chorus again:—

  ‘Then fill up the glasses with treacle and ink,
  Or anything else that is pleasant to drink:
ine—
  And welcome Queen Alice with ninety-times-n
  Mix sand with the cider, and wool with the 
wine!’

‘Ninety times nine!’ Alice repeated in despair, ‘Oh, that’ll never be done! I’d better go in at once—’ and there was a dead silence the moment she appeared.

Alice glanced nervously along the table, as she walked up the large hall, and noticed that there were about fifty guests, of all kinds: some were animals, some birds, and there were even a few flowers among them. ‘I’m glad they’ve come without waiting to be asked,’ she thought: ‘I should never have known who were the right people to invite!’

There were three chairs at the head of the table; the Red and White Queens had already taken two of them, but the middle one was empty. Alice sat down in it, rather uncomfortable in the silence, and longing for some one to speak.

At last the Red Queen began. ‘You’ve missed the soup and fish,’ she said. ‘Put on the joint!’ And the waiters set a leg of mutton before Alice, who looked at it rather anxiously, as she had never had to carve a joint before.

‘You look a little shy; let me introduce you to that leg of mutton,’ said the Red Queen. ‘Alice—Mutton; Mutton—Alice.’ The leg of mutton got up in the dish and made a little bow to Alice; and Alice returned the bow, not knowing whether to be frightened or amused.

‘May I give you a slice?’ she said, taking up the knife and fork, and looking from one Queen to the other.

‘Certainly not,’ the Red Queen said, very decidedly: ‘it isn’t etiquette to cut any one you’ve been introduced to. Remove the joint!’ And the waiters carried it off, and brought a large plum-pudding in its place.

‘I won’t be introduced to the pudding, please,’ Alice said rather hastily, ‘or we shall get no dinner at all. May I give you some?’

But the Red Queen looked sulky, and growled ‘Pudding—Alice; Alice—Pudding. Remove the pudding!’ and the waiters took it away so quickly that Alice couldn’t return its bow.

However, she didn’t see why the Red Queen should be the only one to give orders, so, as an experiment, she called out ‘Waiter! Bring back the pudding!’ and there it was again in a moment like a conjuring-trick. It was so large that she couldn’t help feeling a little shy with it, as she had been with the mutton; however, she conquered her shyness by a great effort and cut a slice and handed it to the Red Queen.

‘What impertinence!’ said the Pudding. ‘I wonder how you’d like it, if I were to cut a slice out of you, you creature!’

It spoke in a thick, suety sort of voice, and Alice hadn’t a word to say in reply: she could only sit and look at it and gasp.

‘Make a remark,’ said the Red Queen: ‘it’s ridiculous to leave all the conversation to the pudding!’

‘Do you know, I’ve had such a quantity of poetry repeated to me to-day,’ Alice began, a little frightened at finding that, the moment she opened her lips, there was dead silence, and all eyes were fixed upon her; ‘and it’s a very curious thing, I think—every poem was about fishes in some way. Do you know why they’re so fond of fishes, all about here?’

She spoke to the Red Queen, whose answer was a little wide of the mark. ‘As to fishes,’ she said, very slowly and solemnly, putting her mouth close to Alice’s ear, ‘her White Majesty knows a lovely riddle—all in poetry—all about fishes. Shall she repeat it?’

‘Her Red Majesty’s very kind to mention it,’ the White Queen murmured into Alice’s other ear, in a voice like the cooing of a pigeon. ‘It would be such a treat! May I?’

‘Please do,’ Alice said very politely.

The White Queen laughed with delight, and stroked Alice’s cheek. Then she began:

    ‘“First, the fish must be caught.”
   That is easy: a baby, I think, could have caught it.
    “Next, the fish must be bought.”
uld have bought it.

    “Now cook me the fish!”
   That
   That is easy: a penny, I think, w
o is easy, and will not take more than a minute.
    “Let it lie in a dish!”
!”
   It is easy to set such a dish on the ta
   That is easy, because it already is in it.

    “Bring it here! Let me su
pble.
    “Take the dish-cover up!”
   Ah, that is so hard that I fear I’m unable!

    For it holds it like glue—
dishcover the riddle?’
  Holds the lid to the dish, while it lies in the middle:
    Which is easiest to do,
  Un-dish-cover the fish, or
 

‘Take a minute to think about it, and then guess,’ said the Red Queen. ‘Meanwhile, we’ll drink your health—Queen Alice’s health!’ she screamed at the top of her voice, and all the guests began drinking it directly, and very queerly they managed it: some of them put their glasses upon their heads like extinguishers, and drank all that trickled down their faces—others upset the decanters, and drank the wine as it ran off the edges of the table—and three of them (who looked like kangaroos) scrambled into the dish of roast mutton, and began eagerly lapping up the gravy, ‘just like pigs in a trough!’ thought Alice.

‘You ought to return thanks in a neat speech,’ the Red Queen said, frowning at Alice as she spoke.

‘We must support you, you know,’ the White Queen whispered, as Alice got up to do it, very obediently, but a little frightened.

‘Thank you very much,’ she whispered in reply, ‘but I can do quite well without.’

‘That wouldn’t be at all the thing,’ the Red Queen said very decidedly: so Alice tried to submit to it with a good grace.

(‘And they did push so!’ she said afterwards, when she was telling her sister the history of the feast. ‘You would have thought they wanted to squeeze me flat!’)

In fact it was rather difficult for her to keep in her place while she made her speech: the two Queens pushed her so, one on each side, that they nearly lifted her up into the air: ‘I rise to return thanks—’ Alice began: and she really did rise as she spoke, several inches; but she got hold of the edge of the table, and managed to pull herself down again.

‘Take care of yourself!’ screamed the White Queen, seizing Alice’s hair with both her hands. ‘Something’s going to happen!’

And then (as Alice afterwards described it) all sorts of things happened in a moment. The candles all grew up to the ceiling, looking something like a bed of rushes with fireworks at the top. As to the bottles, they each took a pair of plates, which they hastily fitted on as wings, and so, with forks for legs, went fluttering about in all directions: ‘and very like birds they look,’ Alice thought to herself, as well as she could in the dreadful confusion that was beginning.

At this moment she heard a hoarse laugh at her side, and turned to see what was the matter with the White Queen; but, instead of the Queen, there was the leg of mutton sitting in the chair. ‘Here I am!’ cried a voice from the soup tureen, and Alice turned again, just in time to see the Queen’s broad good-natured face grinning at her for a moment over the edge of the tureen, before she disappeared into the soup.

There was not a moment to be lost. Already several of the guests were lying down in the dishes, and the soup ladle was walking up the table towards Alice’s chair, and beckoning to her impatiently to get out of its way.

‘I can’t stand this any longer!’ she cried as she jumped up and seized the table-cloth with both hands: one good pull, and plates, dishes, guests, and candles came crashing down together in a heap on the floor.

‘And as for you,’ she went on, turning fiercely upon the Red Queen, whom she considered as the cause of all the mischief—but the Queen was no longer at her side—she had suddenly dwindled down to the size of a little doll, and was now on the table, merrily running round and round after her own shawl, which was trailing behind her.

At any other time, Alice would have felt surprised at this, but she was far too much excited to be surprised at anything now. ‘As for you,’ she repeated, catching hold of the little creature in the very act of jumping over a bottle which had just lighted upon the table, ‘I’ll shake you into a kitten, that I will!’

CHAPTER X. Shaking

She took her off the table as she spoke, and shook her backwards and forwards with all her might.

The Red Queen made no resistance whatever; only her face grew very small, and her eyes got large and green: and still, as Alice went on shaking her, she kept on growing shorter—and fatter—and softer—and rounder—and—

CHAPTER XI. Waking

—and it really was a kitten, after all.

CHAPTER XII. Which Dreamed it?

‘Your majesty shouldn’t purr so loud,’ Alice said, rubbing her eyes, and addressing the kitten, respectfully, yet with some severity. ‘You woke me out of oh! such a nice dream! And you’ve been along with me, Kitty—all through the Looking-Glass world. Did you know it, dear?’

It is a very inconvenient habit of kittens (Alice had once made the remark) that, whatever you say to them, they always purr. ‘If they would only purr for “yes” and mew for “no,” or any rule of that sort,’ she had said, ‘so that one could keep up a conversation! But how can you talk with a person if they always say the same thing?’

On this occasion the kitten only purred: and it was impossible to guess whether it meant ‘yes’ or ‘no.’

So Alice hunted among the chessmen on the table till she had found the Red Queen: then she went down on her knees on the hearth-rug, and put the kitten and the Queen to look at each other. ‘Now, Kitty!’ she cried, clapping her hands triumphantly. ‘Confess that was what you turned into!’

(‘But it wouldn’t look at it,’ she said, when she was explaining the thing afterwards to her sister: ‘it turned away its head, and pretended not to see it: but it looked a littleashamed of itself, so I think it must have been the Red Queen.’)

‘Sit up a little more stiffly, dear!’ Alice cried with a merry laugh. ‘And curtsey while you’re thinking what to—what to purr. It saves time, remember!’ And she caught it up and gave it one little kiss, ‘just in honour of having been a Red Queen.’

‘Snowdrop, my pet!’ she went on, looking over her shoulder at the White Kitten, which was still patiently undergoing its toilet, ‘when will Dinah have finished with your White Majesty, I wonder? That must be the reason you were so untidy in my dream—Dinah! do you know that you’re scrubbing a White Queen? Really, it’s most disrespectful of you!

‘And what did Dinah turn to, I wonder?’ she prattled on, as she settled comfortably down, with one elbow in the rug, and her chin in her hand, to watch the kittens. ‘Tell me, Dinah, did you turn to Humpty Dumpty? I think you did—however, you’d better not mention it to your friends just yet, for I’m not sure.

‘By the way, Kitty, if only you’d been really with me in my dream, there was one thing you would have enjoyed—I had such a quantity of poetry said to me, all about fishes! To-morrow morning you shall have a real treat. All the time you’re eating your breakfast, I’ll repeat “The Walrus and the Carpenter” to you; and then you can make believe it’s oysters, dear!

‘Now, Kitty, let’s consider who it was that dreamed it all. This is a serious question, my dear, and you should not go on licking your paw like that—as if Dinah hadn’t washed you this morning! You see, Kitty, it must have been either me or the Red King. He was part of my dream, of course—but then I was part of his dream, too! Was it the Red King, Kitty? You were his wife, my dear, so you ought to know—Oh, Kitty, dohelp to settle it! I’m sure your paw can wait!’ But the provoking kitten only began on the other paw, and pretended it hadn’t heard the question.

Which do you think it was?

              ——

         A boat beneath a sunny sky,
         Lingering onward dreamily
       Children three that nest
         In an evening of July—

 
 le near,
         Eager eye and willing ear,
    Long has paled that sunny sky:
    
         Pleased a simple tale to hear—

    
      Echoes fade and memories die.
         Autumn frosts have slain July.

         Never seen by waking eyes.

     
         Still she haunts me, phantomwise,
         Alice moving under skies
    Children yet, the tale to hear,
     Dreaming as the days go by,
  
         Eager eye and willing ear,
         Lovingly shall nestle near.

         In a Wonderland they lie,
   
        Dreaming as the summers die:

         Ever drifting down the stream—
         Lingering in the golden gleam—
         Life, what is it but a dream?

                THE END