CHAPTER 11
The Jabberwocky
’Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.
Lewis Carroll penned those now immortal words, presumably in a haze induced by some mind-altering medication, nearly a century and a half ago (in a book titled Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There, by the way, and not Alice in Wonderland).
It may not seem like it, but 12 of the 23 words in that first quatrain of perhaps the best-known nonsense poem ever written actually are words. “Translators” have dissected the work and made sense of the nonsense. “Brillig,” for example, is 4 p.m. – the time one starts broiling food for supper.
But “translation” seems to me quite beside the point. Would anyone remember “Jabberwocky” had it started “It was 4 in the afternoon …” and shambled along from there?
(I once asked a poet of some middling fame to describe his feelings, his state of mind, when he wrote the phrase “... pissing gin at 3 a.m.” The poet replied that, if he could have stated it any better, he’d have written it that way in the first place.)
Brilligwriting illustrates a useful trick: If an appropriate word or phrase doesn’t spring to mind, jot in anything – literally anything – and continue on. Come back to the passage later and see whether that elusive word pops out ... and if not, consult a thesaurus, or just sit and ponder it for a bit. It’ll come.
(Mr. Nicolay, take a letter please: “Four score and seven years ago, our borogoves, on second thought, make that forefathers – no, fathers – brought forth upon this land, er, continent …)
(A word to the wise: Insert these placeholders in ALL CAPS and/or bold face so you don’t overlook them before signing off on a final draft.)
Nonsense writing can be an art form (Dr. Seuss: “There’s a wocket in my pocket), yet few people step back with the perspective of time to root out the actual origin of words. Words can be whatever we want them to be.
William Shakespeare, for example, coined hundreds of now-common words (including gnarled, frugal and bump) ... some anonymous caveman, presumably, the word “ooof.” Hundreds of new words enter common usage each year (e.g., waterboarding, vlog, frenemy …).
Me? Guilty.
While writing a term paper in junior high school, I inadvertently misspelled “peruse.” Now, this is “back in the day,” when papers were hand-written in blue or black ink; find a mistake and you recopy the entire page. Valor being the better part of discretion, I cleverly decided to append an asterisk to the offending word, and added a footnote that “petruse” was an Old English word meaning “to look over or study.”
My Social Studies teacher, to my enduring amusement, gave me an “A” on the paper, in part owing to my “effective use of footnotes.”
The world’s babble of languages illustrates the tenacity of man’s urge to make himself understood.
Those who agree, please say “Yes” – or si, da, ja, oui, hai, ken, gee or HISlaH. The last is Klingon, thankyewverymuch. Parenthetically, fans of “Star Trek: The Next Generation” will fondly remember an episode called “Darmok,” in which an alien spaceship captain struggles to the death to communicate in his allegory-based language with Jean Luc Picard.
Oh, the writer who opts for an odd turn of a phrase takes a risk. He may be ridiculed ... or in rare circumstances, revered in history as a master.
Those unwilling to hear the voice of inspiration – to bear the slings and arrows of oncoming criticism – are likely to look back and find that their writing has proved of little or no consequence.
In the end, perhaps the immortal Dr. Seuss said it best:
Be who you are and say what you feel
because those who mind don’t matter
and those who matter don’t mind.
Accept that mindset, and perhaps your skin will soon grow thick enough to succeed as a writer.
