Delightful nonsense

By Shireen Senadhira

“Our mother was the Pussy Cat, our father was the Owl, And so we are partly little beasts and partly little fowl. The brothers in the family have feathers and they hoot, While all the sisters dress in fur and have long tails to boot.”

I uttered this poem one day and what did my friend Su do? To my amazement she replied;

“If a fly married a bumble bee What will the babies be? A bumble fly or fumble bee …..” “Whoa!” I said, “we are not in a nonsense poetry competition. I recited the sequel to the well known poem, The Owl and the Pussy Cat. “ “Go ahead, “said Su,” tell us more.” “The poem continues,” I replied . “Our mother died long years ago. She was a lovely cat Her tail was five feet long and grey with stripes, but what of that? “

Actually this sequel poem was in obscurity for a long time and then it appeared as a Penguin Classic, titled , Edward Lear: The Complete Verse and Other Nonsense, which is a collection of all the Poet’s verses. This has familiar and unfamiliar poems, stories and is illustrated with cartoon like drawings as well as his biographical details. Thus, the book gives us an insight to the mind of the man who wrote that “nonsense is the breath of my nostrils,” and reveals his particular bizarre genius.

Almost everyone knows the poem The Owl and the Pussy Cat, whose words have stuck in most memories. This is because it was a poem of such delightful nonsense. A poem that makes everyone smile, when it is recited. If ever you recite a line or two, it is certain that someone else would follow up with another line or two. This is a poem that takes one away from the humdrum reality of life to pleasantries and frivolities and one which could even give you fleeting moments of happiness. Such is the value of this poem. I asked some seven and eight year-old children whether they knew this poem. They clapped their hands and immediately recited it and thus made the ambience and impetus for good camaraderie.

Away from the pleasing frivolity which first hits you when you reread the poem you tend to ponder on the words and the lines. The poem is, of course, nonsense. There are two unlikely main characters, an owl and a cat with two minor characters, who are a pig and a turkey. The two main characters pack themselves in a boat with some honey and plenty of money. The poet had visualised that money is an all time asset and an inevitable necessity even among voiceless animals. The loved ones imbibed in each other’s beauty sing along and decide to marry after sailing a long time. There is order in the romance as they need a ring to solemnise their marriage.

The poem full of fantasy and imagination has rhythmic words that are emphatic and rhyming couplets add to it. The poet has achieved the sound and music in a way that the versification would have a specific impact on the readers. This is a nonsense poem that would be a fillip to parents cajoling their peevish children as well as to teachers to gain complete attention of young students.

Edward Lear

Edward Lear was the twentieth child in his family. He was only four years old when the family was faced with difficulties, his mother had no time for him and he was brought up by his elder sisters. One sister had a flair for comic stories, though it was edifying, it did not anyway compensate the rejection by his parents that he felt. Perhaps, it was such that gave his poems and stories the haunting sense of desertion.

Lear was a highly strung but thoughtful child and his nervous temperament was accentuated with epilepsy. This had him have a mix of fun, carnival type energy and melancholy after any small gaiety and most of all the snatching for happiness as the gaiety fades. These feelings are depicted in the famous nonsense songs like Calico Pie and The Jumblies.

In, The Calico Pie, poem, there are little birds, little fish and other animals who all go away and leave the writer bereft. All this could be in relation to him being left alone with the rejection of himself by his parents. Thomas Byrom too in his study of Lear and in his essay titled, Nonsense and Wonder, wrote that Lear’s poems meanings related to characteristics claimed to be part of the poet’s life and personality, mostly, epilepsy, fear of ostracism, sense of self alienation and intolerance of convention. In Lear’s poem, The Jumblies, the fabulous Bard of Nonsense, popularised and invented fantastic ridiculous words and rhymes. The words beg to be spoken, to be rolled impressively round the tongue and relished. Even if there are no obvious meanings to these words, you can make of it what you will.

The story is that the bi-coloured Jumblies set sail in their sieve to the hills of the Chankly Bore and what they did there. They returned after 20 years very tall and were welcomed by everyone with great festivity. Amidst all the nonsense, it could be said of the poem, that a person must do what he wants to do despite the obstacles and obstruction that are in the way. There are many other such poems including, The Dong with the Luminous Nose and the Quangle Wangle Quee whose hat was enormous that his face was never visible as well as there were Pobbles with no toes.

Lewis Carroll

In similar mode, Lewis Carroll’s poem, Jabberwocky, is able to involve excitement when one reads it.

The same happens with the rhythm of the word and the sounds they make when they tumble out when reciting. Even though most of the words are meaningless as seen in the first and last stanzas, it does have an appealing effect because one can fill in the blanks in whatever way one wants. It is also interesting to see how the words can be manipulated to say what is needed in different ways. It is stimulating too, as it becomes like reading a hidden code language. The first stanza is : T’was brillig,and the slithy toves Did gyre and gimble in the wabe; All mimsy were the borogoves, And the mome raths outgrabe.

What gibberish is this? Isn’t that the first though that comes to your mind? But, as there is method in madness, the words do have meanings. Brillig is four o’clock in the afternoon, the time for broiling things for dinner. Slithy is slimy and lithe and tove is a combination of a badger, a lizard and a corkscrew. Gyre and gimble are to go round and round and to make holes, while the wabe is glass plot round a sundial. Mimsy is a combination of miserable and flimsy and borogove is a thin, shabbly looking bird with feathers sticking out.

Brave boy

The rath is a green pig, outgrabe is a kind bellowing, whistling and sneezing and mome is from home. Then, with the words sorted out, the poem becomes more meaningful. The poem’s main character is a boy and his father, as most fathers do, warns him about the evil lurking nearby. The brave little boy stands on guard brandishing a sword and suddenly when the monster comes at him, he’s able to strike it dead. Then the father praises the brave boy.

Lewis Carroll (1832-1899) was an English novelist, poet, satirist and mathematician. He was an Oxford lecturer in mathematics. His real name was Charles Lutwidge Dodgson but it was under his pseudonym, Lewis Carroll that he published his most famous fantasy novels, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1865) and Through the Looking-Glass (1872). Originally intended for children, the Alice stories and his highly imaginative poetry have been subjected to intense scrutiny and widely varying interpretations by scholars around the world.

Several critics maintain that Carroll’s fictional work anticipates modernism and even postmodernism. His name has been linked with many of the literary figures of those movements. Michael Holquist says that Carroll’s Hunting of the Snark is a modernist text, Holquist also says that “Carroll’s work does not consist of meaningless gibberish, but rather, its own system of signs which gain their meaning by constantly dramatising their differences from signs in other systems.”

The Hunting of the Snark by Carroll describes with infinite humour, an impossible voyage of an improbable crew to find an incredible creature. Interesting it is, to note that the crew consists of 10 members whose descriptions all begin with the letter B: a Bellman (the leader), a Boots, a Bonnet-maker, a Barrister, a Broker, a Billiard-marker, a Banker, a Butcher, a Baker and a Beaver. The poem, as with his other poems has technically adept meter and rhyme, grammatically correct phrasing, logical chain of events and largely nonsensical content, frequent use of made up words such as Snark.

It is his longest poem and it rhymes from start to end. Gertrude Chataway was the most important child friend of the author, after Alice Liddell for whom he wrote Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. It was Gertrude who inspired The Hunting of the Snark and the book is dedicated to her.

Peter Heath, however, says that Carroll should be properly categorized as an absurdist rather than a nonsense writer. Heath also says that Alice books are rational works “whose frolics are governed throughout, not by formal theory of any kind, but by close attention to logical principles, and by a sometimes surprising insight in to abstract questions of philosophy.”

Edmund Miller believes that the two Alice books should be treated as a whole and suggests that the resulting two-volume work has much in common with the early Victorian novel, particularly, Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights. He claims that “both works are infused with the sentiments of the age and yet combine traditional materials in completely original ways.”

In Nonsense writing, two kinds of wit are needed. A play of words is needed as well as well as those of fancy. Also, an exuberance of imagination is needed together with frothing and sparkling language. As with wine, the nonsense writing too must be clear, light, sparkling and dry. There are different kinds in this genre of literature. There is humourous literature and nonsense literature. Comic writers are not of the same category as the nonsense-writers. It is said that Edward Lear is the creator of a new and important kind of nonsense writing.

Comparatively, however, Lear’s verses are very funny with the owl, the pussycat in a pea green boat, his Jumblies who went to sea in a sieve, His Dong with the luminous nose , his Quangle Wangle and all the strange creatures he discovered and immortalized. But it could be said that Lear with all the amusement he evoked, does not have the subtle quality of wit that Carroll’s Alice found herself compelled to talk and listen to in wonderland and behind the Looking-glass.

Samuel Foote

The above however, has been preceded by the Great Panjandrum written by Samuel Foote (1720-1777). “So she went to the garden to cut a cabbage leaf to make and apple-pie; and at the same time a great she-bear, coming up the street, pops its head into the shop. “What! No Soap?” So he died, and she very imprudently married the barber: and there were present the Picninnies. And the Joblillies, and the Garyulies, and the great Panjandrum himself, with the little round button at top, and they all fell to playing the game of catch-as-catch-can till the gunpowder ran out of the heels of their boots.”

This introduced the nonsense term The Great Panjandrum into the English language and this was adopted for the Panjandrum or Great Panjandrum, an experimental World War II era explosive device.

Samuel Foote, author and playwright had plays running in the London theatres. He had a spot of trouble when he was theatre manager because his plays were satires and with Foote’s jabs at other actors, it brought the ire of many at Drury Lane. Later, when things were normal he produced a play incredibly satirizing a satirist, Henry Fielding. The play was titled, The Auction of Pictures.

A war of wit was launched onstage. Interesting to see how Foote, the playwright and satirist continued.

Foote found himself out of work in 1754 and he rented the Haymarket theatre and began mock lectures which satirized Charles Macklin’s newly opened oratorical school. This created a sort of a theatrical war, especially when Macklin began to appear at the lectures himself. At one particular lecture, Foote improvised a piece of nonsense prose to test Macklin’s assertion that he could memorise any text at a single reading. That’s how Foote became the creator of the Great Panjandrum.

Henry Sambrooke Leigh

Another writer and playwright, Henry Sambrooke Leigh (1837-1883) was a Londoner. For the stage he translated many French comic operas. Added to his qualifications were that he was a Spanish, Portuguese and French scholar, a witty conversationalist and a humorous singer.

He is well known for his poem, The Twins. The comical poem has all the probabilities and possibilities that could happen when you are one of a twin. This poem has four verses. The characters are introduced in the first verse. The 2nd and 3rd verses spell out the complications that occur with identical twins. The 3rd verse also shows the external and internal climax. The fourth verse gives the resolution of the story.

Nonsense or not?

In days like this when life is stern and strenuous with battling the high cost of living and juggling work together with family, one can be grateful to writers of charming nonsense. Such writers cast fanciful spells that could transport the mind for a brief space from this workday world, with all its petty troubles threatening cares, to visionary realms. To men oppressed by the weight of political responsibilities or business anxieties, it is a true relaxation to read nonsense poetry or prose. Actually the extravagant nonsense that fictitious creatures talk and enact is none the less welcome to the over worked brain, it acts like balm with its humour because it frequently conceals within a glittering shell of frivolity, the gems of truest and keenest kind of sense.

Nonsense is distinct from fantasy. Everything follows logic within the rules of fantasy whereas the nonsense world has no logic in it. Riddles only appear to be nonsense until the answer is found.

The nonsense riddles have no answers. Literary nonsense as opposed to the folk forms of nonsense that have always existed in written history was only first written for children in the early nineteenth century. It was popularized by Edward Lear and then later by Lewis Carroll. Today’s literary nonsense is enjoyed by both adults and children. Some may still think it absurd to speak of nonsense literature as fine art but it is said by high authority, “a little nonsense now and then, is relished by the wisest men. “