Carrolliana

Jo Elwyn Jones & J. Francis Gladstone: The Red King's Dream (1995)

Jo Elwyn Jones & J. Francis Gladstone. The Red King's Dream: Or Lewis Carroll in Wonderland. 1995. Pimlico 230. London: Random House, 1996.

The other day I was in Dominion Books, a little second-hand shop on Jervois Rd which has provided me with numerous treasures over the years, when I came across the book pictured above.

The authors' thesis (I haven't finished reading it yet) appears to be that Lewis Carroll's two Alice books contain a complex web of references to the contemporary culture, politics and religion of Victorian England - not in itself a particularly contentious claim, but one which they feel convinced offers a genuine key to the books' oddities and private in-jokes.

Funnily enough, a couple of weeks earlier I'd picked up a copy of that terrifyingly inclusive classic of political biography, Morley's Life of Gladstone:

John Morley: The Life of William Ewart Gladstone (1903)

John Morley. The Life of William Ewart Gladstone: In Two Volumes: Vol. I: 1809-1872. 1903. Lloyd's Popular Edition. London: Edward Lloyd, Limited, 1908.

John Morley. The Life of William Ewart Gladstone: In Two Volumes: Vol. II: 1872-1898. 1903. Lloyd's Popular Edition. London: Edward Lloyd, Limited, 1908.

John Tenniel: Dr Punch and the Two Head Boys (1878)

One of the two authors of The Red King's Dream is actually Gladstone's great-grandson, and their book takes its departure in a very probable reference to Gladstone in the section of Through the Looking Glass devoted to the 'Lion and the Unicorn' (pictured by Tenniel as, respectively, Gladstone and Disraeli).

John Tenniel: Through the Looking Glass (1871)

Much of the book is less convincing, and it certainly owes a heavy debt to the maniacally detailed researches of Martin Gardner, editor of three successive annotated versions of the Alice Books, culminating in the (posthumous) "150th Anniversary Deluxe Edition" of 2015:

The Annotated Alice: 150th Anniversary Deluxe Edition (2015)

Lewis Carroll. The Annotated Alice: Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland & Through the Looking Glass. Illustrated by John Tenniel. 1865 & 1871. Ed. Martin Gardner. Bramhall House. New York: Clarkson N. Potter, Inc., 1960.

Lewis Carroll. More Annotated Alice: Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland & Through the Looking Glass. 1865 & 1871. Illustrated by Peter Newell. Ed. Martin Gardner. New York: Random House, 1990.

Lewis Carroll. The Annotated Alice: The Definitive Edition. Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland & Through the Looking-Glass. Ed. Martin Gardner. Illustrations by John Tenniel. 1960 & 1990. New York & London: W. W. Norton, 1999.

Lewis Carroll. The Annotated Alice: 150th Anniversary Deluxe Edition. Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland & Through the Looking-Glass. Ed. Martin Gardner & Mark Burstein. Illustrations by John Tenniel. 1960, 1990 & 1999. New York & London: W. W. Norton, 2015.

Martin Gardner, ed.: More Annotated Alice (1990)

However, it got me to thinking about just how many hare-brained books (and films) I've seen which claim to 'explain' these strange little books - some amusingly and tongue-in-cheek, others with ponderous earnestness. Quite apart from the intrinsic merits of the 'Alice' books themselves - my parents read them aloud to me even before I could follow print myself - I have to say that I think there are some genuine masterpieces among them.

Chief among these (after the Gardner book in its various manifestations) would have to be Bryan Talbot's extraordinary phantasmagoria in the form of a graphic novel Alice in Sunderland:

Bryan Talbot: Alice in Sunderland (2007)

Bryan Talbot. Alice in Sunderland: An Entertainment. Jonathan Cape. London: Random House Group Limited, 2007.

Talbot, a graphic virtuoso, one of whose previous books, The Tale of One Bad Rat, was composed almost entirely in the style of Beatrix Potter, really pulls the stops out for this, his masterpiece:

Bryan Talbot: The Tale of One Bad Rat (1994)

Bryan Talbot. The Tale of One Bad Rat. 1994-5. Jonathan Cape. London: Random House Group Limited, 2008.

His bizarre script doubles as a potted history of Sunderland, a social history of Victorian England, and a penetrating analysis of Alice itself - both as a biographical and an aesthetic document. Along the way we encounter such local characters as George Formby, Sid James, and the Lambton Worm, as well as the more obvious Charles Dodgson, Alice Liddell and John Tenniel. It has really to be read to be believed:

Bryan Talbot: Back Cover Blurb (2007)

Here are a few extracts to give you an idea of the kinds of connections he specialises in:

Alice in Sunderland (1)

Alice in Sunderland (2)

Alice in Sunderland (3)

To continue with the theme of graphic novels, Lewis Carroll's favourite muse, Alice Pleasance Hargreaves (née Liddell), also makes an extended appearance in Alan Moore and Melinda Gebbie's weird semi-pornographic extravaganza Lost Girls, alongside Dorothy Gale, from L. Frank Baum's The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (1900), and Wendy Darling, from J. M. Barrie's Peter Pan (1904).

Alan Moore & Melinda Gebbie: Lost Girls (2006)

Alan Moore. Lost Girls. Illustrated by Melinda Gebbie. 3 vols. Marietta, Georgia: Top Shelf Productions, 2006.

As Wikipedia puts it, in its characteristically po-faced fashion:

They meet as adults in 1913 and describe and share some of their erotic adventures with each other.

The book culminates with the eruption of the First World War in 1914. Here's a medley of the original covers for the 3-volume slipcase edition to give you the general idea:

For the Birds: Lost Girls (2009)

Like all of Alan Moore's books, this one is both intricately plotted and technically ingenious. Beyond that, though, it's hard to see as much substance in it as in Talbot's almost exactly contemporaneous non-fiction novel.

Tim Burton, dir.: Alice in Wonderland (2010)

Which brings us to films. The Alice books have a varied - and, for the most part, indifferent - filmography. They've had to endure a poor Disney animation, and two weird Tim Burton adaptations. There are, however, some high points here and there.

Jonathan Miller, dir.: Alice in Wonderland (1966)

Alice in Wonderland, dir. & writ. Jonathan Miller (from the book by Lewis Carroll) – with Anne-Marie Mallik, John Gielgud, Peter Cook, Leo McKern, Peter Sellers – (UK, 1966).

The first of these is Jonathan Miller's trippy BBC TV adaptation. It may be low on budget, but it's big on ideas and disturbing images. The 13-year-old unknown, Anne-Marie Mallik, who plays the main character is disturbingly sensual in her impersonation (or enactment) of a mid-60s flower child.

The central metaphor (it was mostly filmed in an old 19th century hospital) is of Victorian England as a madhouse full of cracked, elderly monologists, expertly impersonated by the principal comedians of the time. Its application to contemporary conditions in that embattled island remains rather current, unfortunately.

Gavin Millar, dir.: Dreamchild (1985)

Dreamchild, dir. Gavin Millar, writ. Dennis Potter – with Coral Browne, Ian Holm, Peter Gallagher, Nicola Cowper, Amelia Shankley – (UK, 1985).

Dreamchild, at the time, attracted most attention as a showcase for the admittedly impressive animating skills of Jim Henson and his Creature Shop. The central (truish) story of an elderly Mrs. Hargreaves - Lewis Carroll's original Alice - sailing to New York to receive an Honorary Doctorate from Columbia University is somewhat marred by a mawkish love story.

However, the intercut scenes of her younger self in and out of Carroll's dreamscapes are beautifully done, with pitch-perfect performances from both Ian Holm as Carroll/Dodgson/the Dodo and Amelia Shankley as a mischievously flirtatious young Alice.

Jan Švankmajer, dir.: Alice (1988)

Alice [Něco z Alenky], dir. & writ. Jan Švankmajer (from Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland) - with Kristýna Kohoutová - (Czechosolvakia, 1988).

Last but not least is this piece of weirdness from the great Czech film-maker Jan Švankmajer. His film (whose title translates as 'Something from Alice') combines the cracked genius of his stop-motion animation skills with the darkness of his Freudian vision of a world of broken-down dolls and malevolent animals.

While it's not precisely fun to watch, it proves once again the seemingly inexhaustible power of the Alice books as a reservoir of imagery for our troubled modernity.

It was, I think, W. H. Auden who remarked of Alice herself:

In Wonderland, she is the only person with self-control.

We continue to foist our visions - social or sexual, literary or psychological, mathematical or historical, eccentric or universal - upon her. She remains, however, unreachable, untouchable, immaculate - like Thurber's Walter Mitty, 'inscrutable to the last.'

Robert Phillips, ed.: Aspects of Alice (1971)

•


Charles Dodgson: Alice Pleasance Liddell as a beggar girl (1858)

Gallery:
A Baker's Dozen of Alices
(1858-?)

Lewis Carroll: Alice's Adventures Underground (1862-4)

John Tenniel: Alice in Wonderland (1865)

Arthur Rackham: Alice in Wonderland (1907)

Mervyn Peake: Through the Looking Glass (1946)

Walt Disney: Alice in Wonderland (1951)

Maraja: Through the Looking Glass (1959)

Jonathan Miller: Anne-Marie Mallik as Alice (1966)

Salvador Dalí: Alice in Wonderland (1969)

Gavin Millar: Amelia Shankey as Alice (1985)

Jan Švankmajer: Kristýna Kohoutová as Alice (1988)

Melinda Gebbie: Alice in Wonderland (2006)

Bryan Talbot: Alice as Angel of the North (2007)

•


Lewis Carroll

Charles Lutwidge Dodgson ['Lewis Carroll']
(1832-1898)

Lewis Carroll: The Complete Works (1939)


Collected Works:


1. Lewis Carroll. The Complete Works: Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland; The Hunting of the Snark; Through the Looking Glass; Sylvie and Bruno; Sylvie and Bruno Concluded; All the Early and Late Verse, Short Stories, Essays, Phantasmagoria. Games, Puzzles, Problems, Acrostics, and Miscellaneous Writings . Illustrated by John Tenniel. Introduction by Alexander Woollcott. 1939. Modern Library Giant. New York: The Modern Library, n.d.


2. Roger Lancelyn Green, ed. The Works of Lewis Carroll. Illustrations by John Tenniel. Spring Books. London: Paul Hamlyn Ltd., 1965.


3. Roy Gasson, ed. The Illustrated Lewis Carroll: Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland; Through the Looking Glass and What Alice Found There; The Hunting of the Snark; A Carroll Selection; Appendix: The "Alice Verses" and their Originals. 1978. Poole, Dorset: New Orchard Editions Ltd., n.d.


4. Edward Giuliano, ed. The Complete Illustrated Works of Lewis Carroll: Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland; Through the Looking Glass and What Alice Found There; The Hunting of the Snark; Rhyme? and Reason?; A Tangled Tale; Alice’s Adventures Underground; Sylvie and Bruno; Sylvie and Bruno Concluded; Three Sunsets and Other Poems. Illustrated by John Tenniel, Lewis Carroll, Arthur B. Frost, Henry Holiday, Harry Furniss, & E. Gertrude Thomson. Avenel Books. New York: Crown Publishers, Inc., 1982.




Lewis Carroll: The Wasp in a Wig (1977)


Editions of 'Alice':


5. Alice’s Adventures Underground: Facsimile of the Author’s Manuscript Book with Additional Material from the Facsimile Edition of 1886. Introduction by Martin Gardner. New York: Dover Publications. Inc., 1965.


6. Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland & Through the Looking Glass, and What Alice Found There. Illustrated by John Tenniel. 1865 & 1871. Ed. Roger Lancelyn Green. 1971. Oxford English Novels. London: Book Club Associates, 1976.


7. Alice in Wonderland: Authoritative Texts of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland; Through the Looking-Glass; The Hunting of the Snark. Backgrounds, Essays in Criticism. Ed. Donald J. Gray. A Norton Critical Edition. New York: W. W. Norton, 1971.


8. Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. Introduction by Langford Reed. Illustrated by Helen Monro. Nelson Classics. London: Thomas Nelson & Sons Ltd., n.d.


9. Alice Through the Looking-Glass. Illustrated by Maraja. London: W. H. Allen, 1959.


10. The Wasp in a Wig: A "Suppressed" Episode of Through the Looking Glass, and What Alice Found There. Preface, Introduction & Notes by Martin Gardner. Ed. Edward Giuliano. 1977. London: Macmillan Limited, 1977.




Martin Gardner, ed.: The Annotated Snark (1962)


Poetry:


11. Carroll, Lewis. The Annotated Snark: The Hunting of the Snark – An Agony in Eight Fits. Illustrations by Henry Holiday. 1876. Ed. Martin Gardner. 1962. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1987.


12. Carroll, Lewis. The Humorous Verse of Lewis Carroll. [Formerly: 'The Collected Verse of Lewis Carroll']. With illustrations by Sir John Tenniel, Arthur B. Frost, Henry Holiday, Harry Furniss, & the Author. 1933. New York: Dover Publications. Inc., 1960.




Lewis Carroll: Symbolic Logic & The Game of Logic (1887-97)


Mathematics & Logic:


13. Charles L. Dodgson, M.A. Euclid and His Modern Rivals. 1879. Introduction by H. S. M. Coxeter. New York: Dover Publications. Inc., 1973.


14. Symbolic Logic and The Game of Logic (Both Books Bound as One): Mathematical Recreations of Lewis Carroll. 1897 & 1887. Preface by Edmund C. Berkeley. New York: Dover Publications. Inc. / Berkeley Enterprises, 1958.




Lewis Carroll: The Story of Sylvie and Bruno (1904)


Miscellaneous:


15. Carroll, Lewis. Diversions and Digressions of Lewis Carroll (Formerly Titled: The Lewis Carroll Picture Book): A Selection from the Unpublished Writings and Drawings of Lewis Carroll, together with Reprints from Scarce and Unacknowledged Work. With a New Selection of Lewis Carroll’s Photographs. Ed. Stuart Dodgson Collingwood. 1899. New York: Dover Publications. Inc., 1961.


16. Carroll, Lewis. The Story of Sylvie and Bruno. Ed. Edwin Dodgson. Illustrated by Harry Furniss. 1904. Facsimile Classics Series. New York: Mayflower Books. Inc. / London: Macmillan & Co., Ltd., 1980.


17. Carroll, Lewis. The Rectory Umbrella and Mischmasch. Foreword by Florence Milner. 1932. New York: Dover Publications. Inc., 1971.


18. Fisher, John, ed. The Magic of Lewis Carroll. Line Illustrations by Sir John Tenniel, Henry Holiday, Arthur B. Frost, Harry Furniss, & Lewis Carroll. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1973.


19. Ovenden, Graham. Masters of Photography: Lewis Carroll. London: Macdonald & Co (Publishers) Ltd., 1984.




Roger Lancelyn Green, ed.: The Diaries of Lewis Carroll (2 vols: 1954)


Diaries & Letters:


20. Cohen, Morton N., with Roger Lancelyn Green, ed. The Letters of Lewis Carroll. Vol. I: ca.1837-1885. Vol. 1 of 2. London: Macmillan London Limited., 1979.


21. Cohen, Morton N., with Roger Lancelyn Green, ed. The Letters of Lewis Carroll. Vol. II: 1885-1898. Vol. 2 of 2. London: Macmillan London Limited., 1979.


22. Cohen, Morton N., with Roger Lancelyn Green, ed. The Selected Letters of Lewis Carroll. 1979. Papermac. London: Macmillan Publishers Limited., 1982.


23. McDermott, John Francis, ed. The Russian Journal and Other Selections from the Works of Lewis Carroll. 1935. New York: Dover Publications. Inc., 1977.




Colin Gordon: Beyond the Looking Glass (1982)


Biographical:


24. Collingwood, Stuart Dodgson. The Life and Letters of Lewis Carroll (Rev. C. L. Dodgson). 1898. London: Thomas Nelson & Sons, n.d.


25. Lennon, Florence Becker. The Life of Lewis Carroll [aka 'Victoria through the Looking-Glass']. 1945. Rev. ed. Collier Books. New York: The Crowell-Collier Publishing Company, 1962.


26. Gordon, Colin. Beyond the Looking Glass: Reflections of Alice and Her Family. San Diego & New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Publishers, 1982.


27. Cohen, Morton N. Lewis Carroll: A Biography. 1995. Vintage Books. New York: Random House Inc., 1996.




Francis Huxley: The Raven and the Writing Desk (1976)


Literary Critical:


28. Huxley, Francis. The Raven and the Writing Desk. London: Thames & Hudson, 1976.


29. Phillips, Robert, ed. Aspects of Alice: Lewis Carroll’s Dreamchild as seen through the Critics’ Looking-Glasses, 1865-1971. 1971. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1981.


30. Sigler, Carolyn, ed. Alternative Alices: Visions and Revisions of Lewis Carroll’s Alice Books. An Anthology. Lexington, Kentucky: Kentucky University Press, 1997.

•


Carolyn Sigler, ed.: Alternative Alices (1997)

Jan Kemp's Tripstones

Jan Kemp: Tripstones (2020)

Expatriate Kiwi poet Jan Kemp's latest collection, Tripstones, is a beautiful piece of bookmaking as well as making an important statement about her poetic identity.

Titlepage. Tripstones (Puriri Press, 2020)
[photograph: Bronwyn Lloyd]

The central image here is the Stolperstein, the stumbling block, the stone that trips you up when you least expect it.

Stolperstein with 27th January ribbon
[photograph: Jan Kemp]

Here's Jan's own picture of the Stolperstein she discovered in her own (new) hometown, Kronberg im Taunus. As she herself explains in the note at the back of the book:

A Stolperstein is a small square burnished brass plaque about 12cm x 12 cm set flush with the walkway paving in many German towns, villages and cities - gold against grey - so that you might notice one shining underfoot. You 'stumble' upon it, and then perhaps look down and read the inscription engraved on it, the name of a murdered victim of the Holocaust who lived in a nearby building.

The poems, too, drawn from the last thirty years of her writing life, from The Other Hemisphere (1991) to Black Ice & the Love Planet (2020), seem to be those she wishes us to be stopped by, to stumble over, not to be able to move on from too rapidly.

They range widely in theme and content, mind you. From the evocative local imagery of "Swimming" (which you can hear the author reading here), dated from Waiake Beach, Torbay, 2004 - just a few miles down the road from where I live:

Jan Kemp: "Swimming." Tripstones (2020)
[photograph: Bronwyn Lloyd]

Nothing reduces you to your skin like the sea:
cold plunge into reality,
a tongue already salty
& all that power
self-propelling you through our other element,
body loving
every pummelling second,
as your mind slips on the (no wonder)
Madonna-blue beach wrap of the sky.

Jan Kemp: "Golden Week, Kyoto." Tripstones (2020)
[photograph: Bronwyn Lloyd]

To the Alice in Wonderland-like restrictions of 'Golden Week' in Kyoto:

Giants in yukatas,
a 4-tatami-mat room,
we bend far to unroll beds

open, half-open, close, re-open
the double sequence of glass
bamboo, paper square-framed doors,

duck, enter a garden.

To her new Heimat in Germany ('The Kiwi in me' - joint English / German reading available here):

I've swapped Tane Mahuta
for two mighty Eiben,
the woods for the sea -

tui, tuatara for
Rotkehlchen, Eidechse,
but the Kiwi stays me.

Jan Kemp: "The Kiwi in Me." Tripstones (2020)
[photograph: Bronwyn Lloyd]

Increasingly the new poems need glossaries, peppered as they are with German terms. Did you know a Rotkehlchen was a robin redbreast and an Eidechse a lizard? I knew that Eiben were yew trees, but the linguistic realm inhabited by her more recent work does seem to presuppose a reader equally familiar with the particularities of New Zealand and German discourse.

Clearly this isn't an accidental choice. When you go international, you can go bland and unitone: an idiom suited for the airport bookshop; or, alternatively, you can cherish the peculiarities of your own idiolect.

Characteristically, this is the choice that Jan has made, something which fits with her life-long fascination with the spoken word, the sound of a particular poet reading a particular poem at one precise time - the reason she worked so hard for so many years on the Waiata (1974) and Aotearoa New Zealand (2002-2004) Poetry Sound Archives, as well as on our three published anthologies of work from those collections (2006-2008).

After all, as the first of the poems I quote from above concludes:

The straightest line imaginable
just over the breakers
visibly separating the two
doesn't exist.
You do.

Yet, can you hold
a handful of salt water
to prove it
for just one moment
before you go?

The straight line, the centrist discourse, doesn't exist - except in the abstractions we're invited so vociferously to inhabit and believe in - but, unprovably yet demonstrably, 'you do'.

This is a lovely and thought-provoking collection from a poet who's been making a contribution to our literature for almost half a century. Judging from the poems here, she's still going strong!

Poetry NZ 48 (2014)


•

The book has been published by John Denny of Puriri Press in a limited edition of 50 copies. Most of these have already been sold or distributed to friends, but there are still a very few copies for sale. John Denny adds that:

People wanting a copy should contact me first to make sure there are some still available (puriripress@gmail.com), in which case I'll confirm and send them an invoice. The price is $NZ50 plus $5.90 pack & post.

As you can see from the sample pages included in this post, it's a lovely piece of printing: on sumptuous paper, with a handprinted cover, and all the things we collectors cherish so much in a small-press book.

[NB: As of Sunday, 25th October, this edition is officially
SOLD OUT
so from now on you'll have to consult it in a public collection near you!]

Jan Kemp: "Stolpersteine / Tripstones." Tripstones (2020)
[photograph: Bronwyn Lloyd]

Finds: Ernest Fenollosa & Arthur Waley

Ernest Fenollosa: Epochs of Chinese and Japanese Art (1921)

Fenollosa, Ernest F. Epochs of Chinese and Japanese Art: An Outline History Of East Asiatic Design. 1912. Rev ed. with Copious Notes by Professor R. Petrucci. Foreword by Mary Fenollosa. 2 vols. London: William Heinemann Ltd. / New York: Frederick A. Stokes Company, 1921.

The other day I was browsing through the new books table at Bookmarks in Devonport when I chanced across the title above. The two volumes lacked their original dustjackets, but were still quite striking in their way.

Ernest Fenollosa: Epochs of Chinese and Japanese Art (1912)

Not that I have any real knowledge of Chinese or Japanese art, mind you: it was more the name of the author that caught my attention.

Ernest Francisco Fenollosa (1853-1908)

I imagine that any student of the works of Ezra Pound would feel the same. Ernest Fenollosa is definitely a name to conjure with in such circles!

Ezra Pound: Cathay (1915)

The title-page above says it all. One of Pound's most canonical works, Cathay, his dazzling versions from the Chinese (or, rather, from Fenollosa's annotations on Japanese transcriptions of the Chinese originals), was based on this strange posthumous collaboration.

Ezra Pound: Noh or Accomplishment (1916)

Not only that, but the craze for Japanese Nō theatre - increasingly evident in the work of dramatists such as W. B. Yeats throughout the 1920s - could also be claimed to have stemmed from this chance juxtaposition.

Ernest Fenollosa: The Chinese Written Character. Ed. Ezra Pound (1936)

Pound's final gleaning from Fenollosa's notes is the essay above, 'edited' (i.e. rewritten) by himself, which first appeared in his book of essays Instigations in 1920, and which has attracted much argument ever since.

Ezra Pound & Ernest Fenollosa: Instigations (1920)

This blurb from the City Lights website probably provides as good a summary of the controversy as any:

The old theory as to the nature of the Chinese written character (which Pound and Fenollosa followed) is that the written character is ideogrammic — a stylized picture of the thing or concept it represents. The opposing theory (which prevails today among scholars) is that the character may have had pictorial origins in prehistoric times but that these origins have been obscured in all but a few very simple cases, and that in any case native writers don't have the original pictorial meaning in mind as they write.

However (as they go on to say):

Whether Pound proceeded on false premises remains an academic question. Let the pedants rave. An important extension of imagist technique in poetry was gained by Pound's perception of the essentially poetic nature of the Chinese character as it is still written.

'Let the pedants rave', eh? Perhaps it would be more accurate to say that this 'European hallucination' about the true nature of Chinese ideograms has been immensely influential not only on the development of Imagism, but on a range of further directions in English poetry - not just Pound's, but the work of all those influenced by him.

So who was this Fenollosa, and how did these notes of his fall into the clutches of crafty old Ez in the first place?

Streets of Salem: Salem's Orientalist (2000)

It would be great if the print above depicted Fenollosa himself. Alas, the picture simply shows one of the many Western journalists who went prowling around Japan in the latter half of the nineteenth century, after the enforced modernisation brought about by Commodore Perry's unilateral 'opening' of Japan in the 1850s.

Fenollosa first went to Japan at the age of 25, in 1878, and stayed there for twelve years in a variety of distinguished jobs. His sympathy for Japanese art and culture culminated in his conversion to Buddhism. On his return to America in 1890 he became curator of the department of Oriental Art at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. He was fired from this position after divorcing his wife and marrying a much younger woman, writer Mary McNeill Scott, most famous for a series of novels written under the pseudonym 'Sidney McCall'.

Mary McNeill Fenollosa (née Scott) (1865-1954)

Fenollosa died in his mid-fifties, with his major work on Chinese and Japanese art sketched out in rough manuscript, but still awaiting work on the illustrations and referencing. His widow Mary attempted, with the help of various experts, to supply these deficiencies in her 1912 edition of the book.

The 1921 version which I bought in Devonport contains further revisions and annotations by a certain Professor R. Petrucci. Judging from the remarks made in her preface to this new edition, Mary Fenollosa somewhat resented Petrucci's suggestion that the Japanese versions of Chinese artists' names used routinely by her husband should be replaced entirely by their actual names. On the face of it, Petrucci's view seems a not unreasonable one, but it appears that Fenollosa placed great stock in his Japanese take on Chinoiserie (hence, for instance, Pound's use of the name 'Rihaku' for the poet better known as Li Bai).

The immense strain of this work must have taken a toll on her, however, and it was probably with a certain relief that she handed over his poetry notes to her fellow-American poet-about-town Ezra Pound. She may have been slightly disconcerted at the results, but there can be no doubt that it was these publications of Pound's that really put Ernest Fenollosa on the map, for all the careful fidelity of his wife's work on what he himself fondly imagined to be his magnum opus.

•

Arthur Waley: An Introduction to the Study of Chinese Painting (1923)

Arthur Waley. An Introduction to the Study of Chinese Painting. 1923. London: Ernest Benn Limited, 1958.

I found the book above in an antique shop in Cambridge (the one in New Zealand, not the one in England). The dust jacket was pretty battered but the book itself seems to have weathered the last sixty years quite well.

Waley lists Fenollosa's work with various others in the bibliography at the back of his book. He makes no direct comment on it, but simply states that the mere presence of a book in his listings should not be construed as agreement with or endorsement of its ideas.

This rather barbed comment may or may not be directed at Fenollosa - there are other books there which may have irritated Waley even more - but it would be fascinating to know what his opinion of Fenollosa's rather fanciful Orientalist theorising actually was.

It would be inaccurate to describe Waley as a protégé of Pound's, but there certainly was a time when the former was greatly influenced by the new approach to translation pioneered by Cathay. Not only that, but Waley helped Pound with his Chinese at various times in those early days. Pound could never get him to agree to revise his own translations away from accuracy to more effective sounding phrases. Hence, perhaps, their respective places on the bookshelf: Waley among the translators, Pound among the poets.

In the introduction to his 1918 volume 170 Chinese Poems, Waley outlined his own 'method of translation' - one greatly at variance with that of Pound, and doubtless designed as a riposte to his views:

It is commonly asserted that poetry, when literally translated, ceases to be poetry. This is often true, and I have for that reason not attempted to translate many poems which in the original have pleased me quite as much as those I have selected. But I present the ones I have chosen in the belief that they still retain the essential characteristics of poetry.

I have aimed at literal translation, not paraphrase. It may be perfectly legitimate for a poet to borrow foreign themes or material, but this should not be called translation.

Above all, considering imagery to be the soul of poetry, I have avoided either adding images of my own or suppressing those of the original.

Arthur Waley (1889-1966)

Waley was no inconsiderable writer. His pioneering translation of The Tale of Genji (1925-33) was as influential on Bloomsbury aesthetics as E. M. Forster or Proust. His abridged version of Wu Cheng'en's masterpiece Monkey is still the most readable and entertaining one available in English.

Nor do his Chinese Poems (1946) or his Japanese Poetry (1919) seem likely to be superseded anytime soon. His work remains both stylish and accessible. Here's one of his translations from Li Bai (whom he referred to, according to the earlier Wade-Giles conventions, as Li Po):

Liang K'ai: Li Bai Strolling (c.1200)

Drinking Alone by Moonlight

A cup of wine, under the flowering trees;
I drink alone, for no friend is near.
Raising my cup I beckon the bright moon,
For he, with my shadow, will make three men.
The moon, alas, is no drinker of wine;
Listless, my shadow creeps about at my side.
Yet with the moon as friend and the shadow as slave
I must make merry before the Spring is spent.
To the songs I sing the moon flickers her beams;
In the dance I weave my shadow tangles and breaks.
While we were sober, three shared the fun;
Now we are drunk, each goes his way.
May we long share our odd, inanimate feast,
And meet at last on the Cloudy River of the sky.

If you'd like to see a comprehensive listing of his books, here are some of the highlights of my collection (the ones I own are marked in bold):

Ray Strachey: Arthur Waley (c.1925-37)

Arthur Waley (1889-1966)

Translations:


1. One Hundred and Seventy Chinese Poems. 1918 (London: Jonathan Cape, 1969)
2. More Translations from the Chinese (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1919)
3. Japanese Poetry: The Uta. A selection drawn mostly from the Man'yōshū and the Kokinshū (1919)
4. The Nō Plays of Japan. With Letters by Oswald Sickert. 1920. Evergreen Books (New York: Grove Press, Inc., n.d.)
5. The Temple and Other Poems (1923)
6. Lady Murasaki: The Tale of Genji: A Novel in Six Parts (1925-33):
   • Volume One: Part 1. The Tale of Genji; Part 2. The Sacred Tree; Part 3. A Wreath of Cloud. 1935. 2 vols. London: George Allen & Unwin, 1965.
   • Volume Two: Part 4. Blue Trousers; Part 5. The Lady of the Boat; Part 6. The Bridge of Dreams. 1935. 2 vols. London: George Allen & Unwin, 1973.
7. The Pillow-Book of Sei Shōnagon. 1928. Unwin Books (London: George Allen & Unwin Ltd., 1960)
8. The Way and Its Power: The Tao Tê Ching and Its Place in Chinese Thought. 1934. A Mandala Book (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1977)
9. The Book of Songs. 1937 (New York: Grove Press, 1960)
10. The Analects of Confucius. 1938 (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1971)
11. Three Ways of Thought in Ancient China (1939)
12. Translations from the Chinese: A Compilation (1941)
13. Wu Ch’êng-Ên. Monkey. 1942. Penguin Classics (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1973)
14. Chinese Poems (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1946)
15. 77 Poems (1955)
16. The Nine Songs: A Study of Shamanism in Ancient China. 1955 (San Francisco: City Lights Books, 1973)
17. Yuan Mei: Eighteenth Century Chinese Poet (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1956)
18. Ballads and Stories from Tun-huang: An Anthology. Ruskin House. London: George Allen & Unwin Ltd., 1960.

Original works:


19. An Introduction to the Study of Chinese Painting. 1923 (London: Ernest Benn Limited, 1958)
20. The Life and Times of Po Chü-I (1949)
21. The Poetry and Career of Li Po, 701-762 A.D. Ethical and Religious Classics of East and West (London & New York: George Allen and Unwin & The Macmillan Company, 1950)
22. The Real Tripitaka and Other Pieces. London: George Allen & Unwin Ltd., 1952.
23. The Opium War Through Chinese Eyes. 1958. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1968.
24. The Secret History of the Mongols and Other Pieces. London: George Allen & Unwin Ltd., 1963.

Secondary:


25. Ivan Morris, ed. Madly Singing in the Mountains: An Appreciation and Anthology of Arthur Waley. London: George Allen & Unwin, 1970.

Arthur Waley: An Introduction to the Study of Chinese Painting (1958)

Classic Ghost Story Writers: Arthur Machen

Arthur Machen (1863-1947)

A while ago I wrote a post about the famous "Christmas truce" of 1914, when British and German soldiers came out of their trenches to fraternise, in defiance of the bellicose mouthings of their respective High Commands.

James Hayward: Myths & Legends of the First World War (2004)

Whether or not this actually took place, and - if it did - what exact form it took, it forms an important part of the mythology of that larger-than-life conflict. A good source for all such matters is James Hayward's fascinating book, Myths & Legends of the First World War.

Among the most perplexing of these is the story of the Angels of Mons:

The phenomenon occurred when British troops, exhausted from many days marching to battle, reported sightings of a troop of angels on the battlefield at Mons. The story goes that the supernatural presence terrified the German soldiers, who were forced to retreat.

Charles Sturridge, dir.: Fairy Tale: A True Story (1997)

There's a wonderful moment in Charles Sturridge's film Fairy Tale - about the almost contemporaneous Cottingley Fairies - where a soldier is seen testifying at a spiritualist meeting about his own experience of having seen these 'Angels,' and having been assisted by them in escaping from the oncoming German hordes.

So what happened, exactly? Or, rather, what is now generally thought to have happened?

Arthur Machen: The Bowmen and Other Adventures of the War (1915)

On 29 September 1914 Welsh author Arthur Machen published a short story entitled "The Bowmen" in the London newspaper the Evening News, inspired by accounts that he had read of the fighting at Mons and an idea he had had soon after the battle.

- Wikipedia

Note that the 'idea' Machen had did not concern angels of any description:

Machen ... set his story at the time of the retreat from the Battle of Mons in August 1914. The story described phantom bowmen from the Battle of Agincourt summoned by a soldier calling on St. George, destroying a German host.

So in what sense can this be said to have 'inspired' the legend of the Angels of Mons? The Wikipedia article I've been quoting from continues as follows:

Machen's story was not ... labelled as fiction and the same edition of the Evening News ran a story by a different author under the heading "Our Short Story". Machen's story was written from a first-hand perspective and was a kind of false document, a technique Machen knew well. The unintended result was that Machen had a number of requests to provide evidence for his sources for the story soon after its publication, from readers who thought it was true, to which he responded that it was completely imaginary, as he had no desire to create a hoax.

Whether or not he had any desire 'to create a hoax,' Machen - or his publishers - were canny enough to see this as a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to make a stir. My own copy of his 1915 volume The Bowmen and Other Legends of the War has that as its subtitle only - the book is clearly entitled The Angels of Mons.

• The Angels of Mons: The Bowmen and Other Adventures of the War. London: Simpkin, Marshall, Hamilton, Kent & Co., Ltd., 1915.

Machen comments in his own preface to the collection:

it began to dawn on me that if I had failed in the art of letters, I had succeeded, unwittingly, in the art of deceit. This happened, I should think, some time in April [1915], and the snowball of rumour that was then set rolling has been rolling ever since, growing bigger and bigger, till it is now swollen to a monstrous size.

Various attempts were made at the time to refute this theory. The lack of resemblance between Machen's hardy bowmen and the long line of shining angels which had allegedly protected the retreating British did admittedly make it seem somewhat tenuous. However:

A careful investigation by the Society for Psychical Research in 1915 said of the first-hand testimony, "We have received none at all, and of testimony at second-hand we have none that would justify us in assuming the occurrence of any supernormal phenomenon". The SPR went on to say the stories relating to battlefield "visions" which circulated during the spring and summer of 1915, "prove on investigation to be founded on mere rumour, and cannot be traced to any authoritative source."

So it seems there were no angels, just as there were no Russian soldiers with snow on their boots coming down from the North of England in trains to defend her in her direst need, nor did the ghost of a Belgian child appear by the Kaiser's bed to plague him with nightmares (a possibility dreamed up by J. M. Barrie).

Appalling atrocities were committed by the German armies in Belgium, however. One of the most pernicious World War One myths is that the majority of these stories were somehow refuted in subsequent years. Some were, admittedly, repeated without clear confirming evidence, but the general tenor of their behaviour in 1914 bears more than a passing resemblance to the actions of the advancing German armies on the Eastern Front in 1941.

As for Arthur Machen, according to Wikipedia, at any rate:

Machen was associated with the story for the rest of his life and grew sick of the connection, as he regarded “The Bowmen” as a poor piece of work. He made little money from the story then or later.

John Coulthart: Arthur Machen (1988)

So who exactly was Arthur Machen? Well, for a start, that wasn't his name. He was born Arthur Llewelyn Jones in 1863, and died at the age of 84 in 1947. His main notoriety now is probably as the author of some of the most horrifyingly effective ghost stories - 'The Great God Pan' and 'The Novel of the Black Seal' prominent among them - in the English language, as well as having been a major influence on H. P. Lovecraft and his contemporaries.

Arthur Machen: Tales of Horror and the Supernatural (1949)

• Tales of Horror and the Supernatural. 1949. 2 vols. St Albans, Herts: Panther, 1975.
  1. The Novel of the Black Seal (1895) [short story]
  2. The Novel of the White Powder (1895) [short story]
  3. The Great God Pan (1894) [novella]
  4. The White People (1904) [short story]
  5. The Inmost Light (1894) [short story]
  6. The Shining Pyramid (1895) [short story]
  7. The Bowmen (1914) [short story]
  8. The Great Return (1915) [short story]
  9. The Happy Children (1920) [short story]
  10. The Bright Boy (1936) [short story]
  11. Out of the Earth (1915) [short story]
  12. N (1936) [short story]
  13. The Children of the Pool (1936) [short story]
  14. The Terror (1917) [novel]

Perhaps the best place to start reading him might be the collection above, reprinted in two paperback volumes in the 1970s:

Arthur Machen: Tales of Horror and the Supernatural (1975)

That was really only a small part of his activities as a fin-de-siècle man of letters, however. He first achieved fame in a rather backhand manner, as the translator of one of the strangest classics of world literature, the Memoirs of the eighteenth-century adventurer and confidence trickster Giacomo Casanova:

Arthur Machen, trans.: The Memoirs of Giacomo Casanova di Seingalt (1922)

• The Memoirs of Giacomo Casanova di Seingalt, Translated into English by Arthur Machen. Privately Printed for Subscribers Only. 1894. Limited Edition of 1,000 numbered sets. 12 Volumes. [+ The Twelfth Volume of the Memoirs of Giacomo Casanova; Containing Chapters VII. and VIII. Never Before Printed; Discovered and Translated by Mr. Arthur Symons; and Complete with an Index and Maps by Mr. Thomas Wright]. London: The Casanova Society, 1922[-1923].


• Jacques Casanova, Chevalier de Seingalt. My Life and Adventures. Trans. Arthur Machen. 1894. London: Joiner & Steele, 1932. [abridged edition of the complete work]


• Frederick A. Blossom, ed. The Memoirs of Jacques Casanova de Seingalt. Trans. Arthur Machen. 1894. Introduction by Arthur Symons. 1924. Illustrated by Rockwell Kent. Complete in Two Volumes. New York: Albert & Charles Boni, Inc., 1932.


• Arthur Machen. Casanova's Escape from the Leads: Being His Own Account as Translated with an Introduction. London: Casanova Society, 1925.

Arthur Machen: Casanova's Escape from the Leads (1925)

Machen's translation can no longer be considered reliable, since he was obliged to make it from the then standard text, not known at the time to have been heavily expurgated and abridged from Casanova's original heavily Italian-influenced French by an officious editor, Jean Laforgue, in the early nineteenth century. The true, unbowdlerised version did not appear in print until the 1960s - first in the original, then in a wonderfully spirited English translation by Willard R. Trask - when its comparative frankness and directness of utterance caused a major sensation.

Giacomo Casanova: History of My Life, trans. Willard R. Trask (12 vols: 1967-71)

Despite its clear textual superiority, Trask's translation has never quite succeeded in replacing Machen's in popular favour. The many different ways in which his work was reprinted bears testimony to that. Not unreasonably, given how beautifully illustrated and bound some of them are. It's nice to have both, but important to remember how far from Casanova's actual words and deeds the earlier version strays.

A set of Machen's own collected works was published in 1923, the year after the 12-volume deluxe edition of his 'Casanova' pictured above:

Arthur Machen: The Caerleon Edition (9 vols: 1923)

The Caerleon Edition of the Works of Arthur Machen. 9 vols. London: Martin Secker, 1923:

1. The Great God Pan / The Inmost Light / The Red Hand. 1894.
2. The Three Impostors. 1895.
3. The Hill of Dreams. 1907.
4. The Secret Glory. 1922.
5. Hieroglyphics. 1902.
6. A Fragment of Life / The White People. 1906.
7. The Terror / The Bowmen / The Great Return. 1915 & 1917.
8. Far Off Things. 1922.
9. Things Near and Far. 1923.

This, admittedly, contains only a few of his works, but in a particularly sumptuous form:

Arthur Machen: The Caerleon Edition (vol 1: 1923)

I have a few other books by him, but really only a small number of those he wrote:

• Machen, Arthur. Dog and Duck, A London Calendar et Caetera. 1924. The Traveller’s Library. London: Jonathan Cape, 1926.


• Machen, Arthur. The London Adventure. 1924. New Adelphi Library. London: Martin Secker, 1928.


• Machen, Arthur. Holy Terrors: Short Stories. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1946.

The only other substantive selection of his works I own, I'm sorry to say, is the following:

Christopher Palmer, ed.: The Collected Arthur Machen (1988)

Christopher Palmer, ed. The Collected Arthur Machen. London: Gerald Duckworth & Co., 1988.

1. A Fragment of Life (1904) [novella]
2. Far Off Things (1922) [essay]
3. The Hill of Dreams (1907) [novel]
4. The Bowmen (1914) [short story]
5. N (1936) [novella]
6. The Ars Magna of London: A Machen Miscellany
7. Introduction to A Handy Dickens (1941) [essay]
8. The Mystic Speech (1924) [short story]
9. A New Year Meditation [essay]

•


Arthur Machen: The Great God Pan (1894)

Here, then, is a (partial) list of those works, with those that I myself own marked in bold:

1. The Chronicle of Clemendy (1888) [novel: incorporating short stories]
2. 'The Lost Club' (1890) [short story]
3. The Great God Pan (1894) [novella]
4. 'The Inmost Light' (1894) [short story.]
5. 'The Shining Pyramid' (1895) [short story]
6. The Three Impostors (1895) [novel: incorporating short stories]:
7. 'The Novel of the Black Seal' [novella]
8. 'The Novel of the White Powder' [short story]
9. 'The Red Hand' (1895) [short story]
10. The Hill of Dreams (1907) [novel]
11. Ornaments in Jade (1924) [prose poems]
12. 'The White People' (1904) [short story]
13. Hieroglyphics: A Note upon Ecstasy in Literature (1902) [essay]
14. A Fragment of Life (1904) [novella]
15. [with Arthur Edward Waite] The House of the Hidden Light (1904) [correspondence]
16. The Secret Glory (1922) [novel]
17. 'The Bowmen' (1914) [short story]
18. 'The Great Return' (1915) [short story]
19. The Terror (1917) [novel]
20. Far Off Things (1922) [autobiography, 1]
21. Things Near and Far (1923)[autobiography, 2]
22. 'Out of the Earth' (1923) [short story]
23. The London Adventure (1924) [autobiography, 3]
24. Dog and Duck (1924) [essays]
25. The Glorious Mystery (1924) [essays]
26. The Canning Wonder (1925) [essay]
27. Dreads and Drolls (1926) [essays]
28. Notes and Queries (1926) [essays]
29. Tom O'Bedlam and His Song (1930) [essays]
30. 'Opening the Door' (1931) [short story]
31. The Green Round (1933) [novel]
32. 'N' (1934) [short story]
33. 'The Children of the Pool' (1936) [short story]
34. Holy Terrors (1946) [short story collection]
35. Bridles and Spurs (1951) [essays]
36. [with Montgomery Evans] Letters of a Literary Friendship, 1923–1947 (1994) [correspondence]

S. T. Joshi, ed.: The Best Weird Tales of Arthur Machen (3 vols: 2003-7)

New Zealand Speculative Fiction website launch

Jack Ross: NZSF website

When Massey flew me to Beijing late last year, I foresaw a certain amount of downtime between classes. It does sound strange to say that, doesn't it? Imagine a state of affairs where one could simply fly from country to country with minimum fuss! All Science Fiction to us now, of course.

Accordingly, I decided that I'd better bring some stuff to work on - and what better project to concentrate on than my long-projected, long-protracted series of essays on NZSF (whether defined as 'Science' or "Speculative' Fiction).

Things went much as I forecast. Nothing focusses the mind like being away from home comforts, in the somewhat inimical precincts of the Ariva Hotel:

Some of the essays first appeared in such scholarly contexts as Ingrid Horrocks and Cherie Lacey's 2016 VUP anthology Extraordinary Anywhere: Essays on Place from Aotearoa New Zealand, and John Geraets' special 'New Writing 1975-2000' issue of the Journal of New Zealand Literature (2016). One, on Mike Johnson's Lear (1986), was published in brief magazine. Quite a few of the others first saw the light of day on this very blog.

All this meant a certain amount of rewriting and reconciliation of various competing referencing systems had to be accomplished before I could think of the end result as in any way unified.

It did take a while. The main work was done in those ten concentrated days in the hotel in China, but putting the website together has taken me quite some time, too. Funnily enough, a thing called the Coronavirus interrupted all my lofty plans for 2020, and - like everyone in the education industry - I've been struggling ever since to roll with the punches and try to keep on top of my students' needs.

It's good to have a hobby, though - and this has been mine for the past decade or so, before more intensive work on it started this time last year.

And what have I ended up with? A series of essays on what I believe to be some of the true masterpieces of NZSF. I don't claim that anyone else would compile the same list, and I'm certain I've left out a lot of wonderful books, but the great advantage of a website is that it can be added to over time. I've provided a chronology at the end which will certainly be supplemented frequently.

I suspect that new essays will be added as well, however. In any case, if you're curious to know more about it, you can find the table of contents here.

The SF genre seems to be exploding in Aotearoa New Zealand at present, so it will become harder and harder to compile a comprehensive summary such as this. It's hard to move forwards if you don't know where you've been, however, so I don't myself see too much of a problem in taking such a long lingering look at the past. Way back is way forward, as they say, and if I know anything about SF fans (I should do, since I'm one myself), they love detail.

If you have any comments, queries or corrections, feel free to share them with me on this site or the relevant page of the NZSF. As for my dominant metaphor, Psychogeography, you can find out more about that here.

Will Self & Ralph Steadman: Psychogeography: Disentangling the Modern Conundrum of Psyche and Place (2007)