Jabberwocky
Lewis Carroll/Stephane Jorisch (illustrator)
KCP Poetry, 2004
ISBN: 1553370781
The full text of "Jabberwocky" follows this article. Click on the images below to view entire picture.
"[Alice] puzzled over this for some time, but at last a bright thought struck her. 'Why, it's a Looking-glass book, of course! And if I hold it up to a glass, the words will all go the right way again.'"
--from Through the Looking Glass by Lewis Carroll
Since its introduction in Through the Looking Glass (1872), "Jabberwocky" has been one of the most celebrated nonsense poems written in English. It has been translated into many other languages (including Klingon!) and has inspired artists, writers, and filmmakers to create their own weird worlds. This fall, KCP Poetry launches Jabberwocky, illustrated by Stephane Jorisch, as the first volume in a new series of graphic poetry books.
This Jabberwocky is very different from Carroll and John Tenniel's medieval configuration. Through the Looking Glass reflected (pun unintended) the fashions of its time; people were using early cameras for recreation--Carroll himself was an avid amateur photographer--and 'trick' mirrors for entertainment. In the Looking-glass world, many things are reversed or mirrored. "Jabberwocky," a Looking-glass book that is written backwards, is scarcely more sensible when Alice holds the book up to a mirror, because it is a play of word sounds, not narrative. Themes of the obfuscation of language and image-making are carried over in Jorisch's book with a contemporary perspective.
Jorisch's "Jabberwocky" adheres to the original plot--a boy slays a terrible creature--but it takes place in a bleak landscape punished by monstrous plants and sparse trees. The saga is told through the perspective of a bland young man who works as a dressmaker. His father is dressed like an old war veteran, who utters the immortal lines about the Jabberwock's "jaws that bite" and "claws that catch." Ubiquitous Big Brother-like screens show the visage of a medalled soldier, under which a ticker reads, "Beware the Jabberwock...Beware the Jabberwock..."
Though this Jabberwocky is futuristic, Jorisch's commentary on gender has a decidedly Victorian bent. Women on the street are dressed identically in drab gowns, holding the hands of children. While the old man warns his son about the fearsome Jabberwock, a woman dressed incongruously in a formal gown and oven mitts serves cake. She could be the daughter, forced to take a subservient role in the family. She applies war paint to the young man's face from a dainty cosmetic bottle, and her own sharp cheekbones are harshly rouged. She is limited by her clothing, as is the dressmaker's dummy--whose lower body is impaled with a giant sewing needle--hanging outside the tailor's window. They don't enter the battlefield, but they are repressed physically.
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