Alice in Wonderland
Tim days of man's life are threescore years and ten—what are the days of the life of a book ? There is one book, at least, which will live much longer than that, for on July 4th, 1982, Alice in Wonderland will be exactly the Psalmist's age, and it is as young as ever. I often think we English ought to celebrate that day as the Americans celebrate it, for it might well be called the day of our Declaration of Independence. It is the day on which a new republic was founded, and a new manifesto id freedom was published : a republic in which all of us are equally young, and a freedom for all of us to let our thoughts wander as they will - This little volume of Mr. de la Mare's is an doge on the Washington of the realm of Nonsense, of which Lear had been the Columbus. No one living is more fully gifted for the task than Mr. de la Mare ; he has in rich measure the poetry, the fancy, and the humour without which none should approach the shrine of Carroll, and he lives still in the heaven that lies about us in our infancy. The book is crowded with exquisite passages, and is indeed a " handful of pleasant delights." But it has also much penetrating criticism, and goes nearer than any other I know to marking the indistinct line which de- limits • " Nonsense " and futility. Nor is it without an occasional touch of caustic irony. There is grimness in the way Mr. de la Mare sets in the midst of his own delicate apprecia- tions Freud's analysis of the pleasure of wit, which " originated from an economy of expenditure in inhibition, while the comic originates from an economy of expenditure in thought, and humour from an economy of expenditure in feeling." One would have liked to hear Lewis Carroll on that. He might have said of it as he said of one of his own ericketing per- formances, that "the ball would have been a wide if it had reached the wicket."
If there is any defect in the book I think it lies in the in- sufficiency of the emphasis laid on Carroll's logic and mathe- matics. Not that Mr. de In Mare omits to notice it ; but I do not think he is quite fully conscious that it is this logicality which keeps Carroll's inconsequence straight, and prevents it from dribbling away like the " foiled and circuitous " Oxus amid the Chorasmian sands. Whenever Carroll slackens his hold of the mathematical clue he is in danger of losing his way ; as he does at times in the Snark and in Sylvie and Bruno. His true rile lay in putting mathematics into dreamland. I have known many schoolboys who think this exactly the right glare for it.
Mr. de la Mare wonders how Alice fare; in translation. There is certainly an admirable German version,* and I have seen one in Italian which I hope the Duce has read.
E. E. KELLEIT.
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