O frabjous day!

Alice Liddell

Today IS a frabjous day -- see Chelsea's status for more info. "Frabjous" is probably a blend of fair, fabulous, and joyous. Since that nonsense word comes from Lewis Carroll's classic children's story Through the Looking Glass and What Alice Found There, it's particularly appropriate that we saw Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland movie the other night.

Lewis Carroll (aka Charles Dodgson) patterned Alice after a friend's daughter, Alice Liddell. Although the Alice in Tim Burton's movie does not resemble Alice Liddell (most of the Alices in numerous other movie adaptations haven't either), the moviemaker seems particularly well-suited to interpret this fantastic material. Burton's earlier works like Edward Scissorhands and Beetlejuice to name two, were visually unique and perfectly expressed his sideways view of reality.

Suburbia in Edward Scissorhands

The movie showed Alice returning to Wonderland as a young woman and at its climax, Alice fights the Jabberwock, This fearful beast is featured in a poem in Through The Looking Glass, a perfect example of nonsense verse, where the words seemed to be familiar but really are made up.  

Burton's Alice

"'It seems very pretty,' she (Alice) said when she had finished it, 'but it's rather hard to understand!' (You see she didn't like to confess even to herself, that she couldn't make it out at all.)" I wasn't exactly sure what it meant either, but I was so delighted that I memorized the poem.

Lewis Carroll's work is perfect reading for a summer day and makes you realize that life is not as serious as you think!

JABBERWOCKY

Lewis Carroll

(from Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There, 1872)

`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, has 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.