Anyone reading Alice yet?

[M. Raven]

Knowing that Carroll wrote this for the amusement of Alice, Lorina and Edith Liddell, I have to admit that it sometimes reads as a giant inside joke. I wasn't all too surprised to find that some of the best known and loved parts of the manuscript (Tea Party, Cheshire Cat) were written later, when he was preparing the manuscript for publication, because these parts seem to have less of that feel to them.

All in all, I have to say that the literary nonsense genre is not really my thing, but I'm enjoying reading this much more than I thought I would.

Anyone else reading Alice yet? What are your impressions?

PS: Cross posting this to the Coursera forums. I hope no one minds!

[Seawood]

Yes, finished it yesterday - I'd read Wonderland with my daughter last year so I could whizz through that, but somehow never read Looking Glass. I can see why the latter isn't as popular, it seems a little darker and slower. Or perhaps not as interesting because you already know "it was all a dream". I also thought it relied rather too much on puns and got repetitive.

I was interested in just how many phrases and ideas from both Alice books have passed into common vernacular - although I don't know if that's a specifically British thing. Alice was a big part of my childhood - it was my favourite ride at the local funfair when I was little, and there is a sculpture of the Mad Hatter's Tea Party in the square of the town we shopped in every weekend. Sitting down with Alice was always fun. :)

[M. Raven]

Love the picture!

They say he wrote TTLG much later in life while he was depressed. I'm not looking forward to that, I have to say!

I will admit that I find myself constantly comparing the text to the Disney film. I thought I never liked Alice in Wonderland, but I realize I was completely basing that opinion off that film which is not nearly as interesting or clever as the original.

[Laura]

I have only read the first five chapters so far and I am not really amused. It has several details that caught my attention but maybe the fact that I already know the story is preventing me from actually engaging with the reading. Unlike the Brothers Grimm tales, who were more often than not different from my Disney childhood memories, this is exactly how I remember the story to be.

[Christian]

I finished Wonderland yesterday, and while I personally didn't like it, I can see the value of it for kids & teenagers. Even for adults who forgot how it is to be a kid.

[M. Raven]

Christian wrote: "I finished Wonderland yesterday, and while I personally didn't like it, I can see the value of it for kids & teenagers. Even for adults who forgot how it is to be a kid."

*SPOILERS FOR THE END OF ALICE IN WONDERLAND*

It's interesting that you say that, Christian, because I keep thinking as I read (now on TTLG) that here is Alice in her imaginary world and yet she is still being told what to do all the time! Alice says (or thinks) she doesn't like the way many of the characters treat her, and yet we know they are creations of her own mind....

[Xiri]

I'm rereading the Lithuanian copy I've got, hopefully will manage to get to the English text in time too.

[Jenny (Reading Envy)]

I've read this before, and I am almost done reading again. It never ceases to make me laugh - Carroll is so clever. I did a project on him once in my Calculus class; he was quite the puzzler as a mathematician too!

[Leona]

I've never read it (although of course I know the basic story), but just go it out of the library. Given all the positive reactions above, I'm looking forward to it.

[Xiri]

Just began linked English copy.

[edit]P.S. There is so much loss in translation, I'd say it's crazy even - for one matter, the dialogue between Mouse and Alice makes a lot more sense in English. Also, the "Caucus-race" carries a very different meaning - I'd assume - than "Lenktynės bėgti-lėkti" or so in the translation I own, approximately "wild, random running race".

[Xiri]

I also wish I had an annotated version, if it explains certain details, but so far I'm looking up the poems myself - thanks for the Internet!

[Ekaterina]

After I finished Alice yesterday (though it was not my first time) I started "The Annotated Alice", because if for some things a dictionary was enough (catch-dragon, for example), some things are still not clear enough. Hope it'll help!

[Sharon]

Does anyone have a link for all of the poems? I'm a native English speaker, but I don't understand any of Carroll's modified poems. That is, they sound a little bit silly to me, but I don't know how the original is supposed to go, so I'm not sure how it's changed.

[Xiri]

This site seems really good - someone has posted it in the discussion forums:

http://www.alice-in-wonderland.net/al...

[Sharon]

That's awesome! Thank you, Xiri :)

[Anna]

Thanks Xiri! I was just about to start Googling for this information.

[Xiri]

You're welcome - I googled out some myself, but the site is far more comprehensive :)

[Xiri]

I always thought it was very interesting that people referred to "Red Queen", whereas the translation is pretty much "Black Queen". Our chess figures tend to be Black and White, where does the Red come from, I wonder?

[Xiri]

The introduction is truncated too... only the paragraph about the chess remains :-s

[Caitlin]

Xiri wrote: "I always thought it was very interesting that people referred to "Red Queen", whereas the translation is pretty much "Black Queen". Our chess figures tend to be Black and White, where does the Red ..."

Bloody Mary?

[Seawood]

Maybe the Red Queen was designated so to link her back to the Queen of Hearts? Isn't draughts/checkers often done as red/white as well as black/white, too?

Ffft. Have to say I'm struggling a bit with the essay on this one; I have a nice observation/thesis but I'm not really sure where I'm going with the conclusion just yet.

[Xiri]

Caitlin wrote: "Xiri wrote: "I always thought it was very interesting that people referred to "Red Queen", whereas the translation is pretty much "Black Queen". Our chess figures tend to be Black and White, where ..."

Do you refer to the urban legend or?..

My point was more like - I am getting used to the idea of the translation "needing" artistic license, but where does one draw the line? How does a say, Lithuanian like me, understand if the change from Red to Black was significant or not? There were some rather absurd liberties taken with the "Through looking Glass" here - for example, the part with the insect that has pudding body, I think, was mostly skimmed and changed so that the insect literally translated into a "Flame-headed" one. "Butterfly" was translated into a different insect to match the translation of "Butter-and-bread-fly".

I'm a stickler for original texts meaning to be preserved whenever possible, and this drove me nuts after I was done with the original text :-s For the life of me, I had never understood before why there were references to a "Red Queen", now I know...

P.S. Do not get me started on abridged or censored texts, either.

[Seawood]

Urgh, that sounds super-annoying - my language skills are poor at best but mistranslation that loses the sense must be so frustrating.

Wrt to Red Queen I just wondered if the chess piece in Alice is red simply to link her back to the Queen of Hearts; Hearts being red in a deck of cards. Speculation only!

I ran across this little piece: http://www.guardian.co.uk/notesandque... which suggests red and white were "normal" colours for chess sets and that there was greater variation in colour and materials in earlier times. A red (or stained wood) set might have been completely normal for Carroll, I suppose. My set growing up was brown and cream because it was wooden! If chess sets in Lithuania were commonly made of, say, ebony and ivory, then black and white could be considered to be more culturally recognisable for the translator's audience.

Doesn't make it acceptable to change the original text but I suppose that could be a reason why that detail has been changed.

[Xiri]

Could be I guess :) I remember a wooden (I think) set my grandfather had, I think it was dark brown or black and creamish white, too.

I guess there can be many reasons, and your hypothesis about the Red Queen is very interesting - I thought White Queen was a little like Duchess.

[Xiri]

On the other hand, I totally don't get the change from the chapter on insects - the second insect they talk about, what-was-his-name?

In our version, it says it feeds upon fern flower's nectar and dust and nests within the flower. The fern flower here is related to this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fern_flo...

Whereas in the original I can read in the heavy symbolism of a winter holidays, maybe Christmas even...

P.S. Obviously, I mean what I'd call British or English winter traditions, not our own :) I have not checked, but I'm willing to bet that the poem that talks about Sun as he and Moon as a she had been changed too, since in our language it's the Sun that is a she and the Moon is a he.