Through the Looking Glass...

I love the writings of Lewis Carroll, and indeed appreciate them far more today than when first I 'travelled' with Alice forty years ago. I believe the parodies and word play in Carroll's books have a brilliance perhaps unmatched in popular literature. I should like to write just one parody to match, "You are old, Father William, the young man said, and your hair has become very white, and yet you incessantly stand on your head, do think, at your age, it is right?" (It's far funnier if one has read the original, to which there is a link here." It is one of those pious little items which absolutely cries out for parody... and, as one of great piety but not excessive reverence, I find it delicious.)

I tend to be such a scholarly sort that my lighter (or, at any rate, not studious) reading is essential to a balanced life (not to mention one filled with the laughter which I could no more live without than I could go without music, red wine, or a cat.) My bookshelves, much as they are weighted down with theological works, history, and the arts and humanities, are amply stocked with Lewis Carroll, Dickens, Sherlock Holmes, an entire shelf of Jack the Ripper books (I cannot stand the details of the crimes, but love the 'case,' the more when anyone claims to know his identity), and (I'm blushing now) A. J. Cronin... even (much deeper blushing) Maeve Binchy. My 'problem' is that I cannot resist borrowing every book about my favourites from the library.

It will come as no suprise that I am no authority on the social sciences (which I really hate) nor on human sexuality (though, on that latter, I thank God for some Italian horse sense which my dad fortunately imparted. Otherwise, a super romantic such as myself might have melted into the arms of the first rake she encountered, assuming he just had to be overwhelmed with love.. but I digress.) Nonetheless, I think that Lewis Carroll himself had less of an imagination than some of the writers who are speculating about him today... Victorians were the last people who could both have intense (and not physical) friendships, and (since Freud already started loads of trouble but was not yet considered author of the fifth gospel) be honest. I have no addiction whatever to children, yet I have known many fanciful, gentle, unmarried people who find them fascinating, and indeed cherish their innocence (in which I personally disbelieve...) Those trying to cast Lewis Carroll in the role of paedophile are probably just catering to a currently popular market, but honestly!

I read a commentary on "Alice" recently which was just s-o-o-o earnest. Supposedly, Wonderland and the Looking Glass reflected (pun intended!) the fears children have of the adult world. (Yeah, sure... I can only imagine what Freud would have thought Alice feared at the rabbit hole...) I prefer duchesses whose babies turn into pigs than people who can turn brilliant usage of our language and wry parodies into musings of a wicked sort.

All I know, based on correspondence I sometimes receive (and recall that my site is about mediaeval culture, mostly the banal practise of Christian mysticism), is that I would shake my head less at encountering the creatures from Wonderland than the self absorbed nut cases who tend to send me e-mail or comment on my messages on fora. Please do not think me unkind - this is not a criticism of the mentally ill, only of those who pretend to be so because, apparently, they think it makes them fascinating. The worst are those who think the rest of the world is crazy and that they must set them straight.

I once wrote a satirical post about moving from Italian Franciscans to Anglican coffee hours - a stranger (and strange indeed she was) wrote me a missive, somewhere around the size of the first draft of my MA thesis, about her 'journey with Prozac' and how it could remove my idea of 'imagined slights.' (What imagined slights? Sigh! Even apart from encountering one who cannot understand satire, does she really think that a stocky working class kid, with olive skin and curly hair, imagines being slighted? Don't let on... but we peasants actually find it very amusing.)

We do need more of a sense of the ridiculous today. It seems to have disappeared with the Reformation, honourable though the aftermath of that was (not least for Rome, in the end.) Yes - boy bishops, miracle plays where Joseph moans about being 'olde and colde,' salty tongued friars who would say, as Francis of Assisi once did, "tell the devil 'open your mouth and I'll shit in it."

God himself is highly playful. Those of us who are firm believers in the Real Presence in the Eucharist (as I am indeed) can see his design in that, when we are rapt in prayer before the Sacrament, we equally realise that we are kneeling before a piece of bread. Abraham's haggling 'what if there are five just men?' - Aaron's 'but we just dropped the gold in and this golden calf popped out' - Jeroboam and the donkey... and people think the Old Testament is frightening! Can we imagine, today, a God so friendly and intimate as the one with whom Abraham chatted... and please spare me the tale of Isaac, because you'll recall that Abraham did not slay his son.

God keep me loving the Looking Glass. The Franciscan jester in me must not die! :)