The Hunting of the Snark: An Agony in Eight Fits
1876
The Hunting of the Snark: An Agony in Eight Fits
1876
Lewis Carroll's final masterpiece is a narrative poem in eight fits that follows the most unlikely crew in Victorian literature on a hunt for the impossible. The Bellman, a captain obsessed with rules that make no sense, leads his expedition across a sea of absurdity: a Baker who abandoned baking, a Banker distracted by a vanished fortune, a Barrister who gave up law for dreams, and a Beaver of unusual education. They seek the Snark with maps that show only blank spaces and certainty that crumbles under scrutiny. Carroll's genius lies in his deadpan delivery of pure nonsense, treating the illogical with mathematical seriousness. Each character arrives with quirks and baggage, their mania mounting as they near their quarry. But the poem's cruel genius is its twist: the Snark may be a Boojum, and to catch one is to vanish entirely. It's a darkly comic meditation on obsession, on the distance between wanting and having, on quests that succeed exactly as they destroy you. Carroll wrote it as pure amusement, but the poem haunts with its implications about certainty and doom.
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“If I had but the time and you had but the brain””
— Lewis Carroll
“For the snark was a boojum, you see.””
— Lewis Carroll
“For instance, take the two words "fuming" and "furious." Make up your mind that you will say both words, but leave it unsettled which you will say first. Now open your mouth and speak. If your thoughts incline ever so little towards " fuming," you will say "fuming-furious;" if they turn, by even a hair's breadth, towards "furious," you will say "furious-fuming;" but if you have the rarest of gifts, a perfectly balanced mind, you will say "frumious.””
— Lewis Carroll
“What I tell you three times is true.””
— Lewis Carroll
“They sought it with thimbles, they sought it with care; They pursued it with forks and hope;They threatened its life with a railway-share; They charmed it with smiles and soap.””
— Lewis Carroll
“This was charming, no doubt; but they shortly found out That the Captain they trusted so well Had only one notion for crossing the ocean, And that was to tingle his bell.””
— Lewis Carroll
“Again, the first "o" in "borogoves" is pronounced like the "o" in "borrow." I have heard people try to give it the sound of the "o" in "worry". Such is Human Perversity.””
— Lewis Carroll
“What's the good of Mercator's North Poles and Equators, Tropics, Zones, and Meridian Lines?" So the Bellman would cry: and the crew would reply "They are merely conventional signs!””
— Lewis Carroll
“A dear uncle of mine (after whom I was named)Remarked, when I bade him farewell”
— Lewis Carroll
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Carroll, Lewis. The Hunting of the Snark: An Agony in Eight Fits. Lex, lex-books.com/book/the-hunting-of-the-snark-an-agony-in-eight-fits-cdd7253c-a700-4102-87e2-e72a31772228.Carroll, L. (1876). The Hunting of the Snark: An Agony in Eight Fits. Lex. https://lex-books.com/book/the-hunting-of-the-snark-an-agony-in-eight-fits-cdd7253c-a700-4102-87e2-e72a31772228Carroll, Lewis. The Hunting of the Snark: An Agony in Eight Fits. Lex. https://lex-books.com/book/the-hunting-of-the-snark-an-agony-in-eight-fits-cdd7253c-a700-4102-87e2-e72a31772228.
