Arf Psychotherapy, Vol. 2 PP. 45-54, Pergamon Press, 1975. Printed’in the U.S.A.

MONSTERS OF THE MIND: NONSENSE POETRY

AND ART PSYCHOTHERAPY’

ANTHONY PIETR~PINTO, M.D.

Medical Director, Mental Health Program, Lutheran Medical Center, Brooklyn, New York

“Beware the Jabberwock, my son! The jaws that bite, the claws that catch! Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun The frumious Bandersnatch!”

He took his vorpal sword in hand: Long time the manxome foe he sought- So rested he by the Tumtum tree And stood awhile in thought.

And, as in uffish thought he stood, The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame, Came whiffling through the tulgey wood, And burbled as it came!

-Lewis Carroll, from “Jabberwocky”

It has been observed that participants involved in creative workshops, expressing their feelings in non- verbal media, have often been spontaneously stimulated to produce “therapeutic poems” as well, “as if the non-verbal creative energy released in the art experience had overflowed into the verbal form of poetic expression” (Leedy & Rapp, 1973). Conversely, it can happen that poetry will move its readers to the production of highly original “thera- peutic” works of art. I define therapeutic art as that which gives its creator a sense of satisfaction, preferably through an expression, understanding and even resolution of his previously unconfronted emotional conflicts. Such conflicts tend to nest deep in the unconscious mind, the pathways to which are few: psychoanalysis is a long and costly

road and requires an expert guide; dreams, if properly interpreted, provide “the royal road to a knowledge of the unconscious activities of the mind,” as Freud (1965) said, but it remains for poetry to give us an everyman’s highway to be traveled by day, the loveliest, quickest road of all.

I therefore embarked on a quest for the Jabber- wock, employing Lewis Carroll’s magnificent non- sense poem “Jabberwocky” from 7hrough the Looking Glass and What Alice Found There to stimulate a group of subjects into capturing the fabulous monster on paper.

Many people fail to take nonsense literature seriously. The problem, as in the case of Dr. Pepper, “the misunderstood soft drink,” lies in the name. Nonsense literature is not without sense, but rather is that which deals in a humorous or whimsical way with odd or grotesque themes, characters or actions, often employing coined words that are evocative, but have no accepted meaning. If poems are con- sidered to be like dreams - for.poetry, like dreams, uses symbols (metaphors), free association of words and images, condensation and merging of concepts, and deliberate distortion of reality in the service of heightening or softening emotional response - then it is fitting for poems to be humorous, for Freud (1965) realized early in his exploration of the dream phenomena that dreams and jokes are closely related. “In waking reality,” he wrote, “I have little claim to be regarded as a wit. If my dreams seem amusing, that is not on my account, but on account of the peculiar psychological conditions under

*For reprints apply to Dr. A. Pietropinto, Lutheran Medical Center, Brooklyn, NY, 11220.

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ANTHONY PIETROPINTO

which dreams are constructed; and the fact is inti- mately connected with the theory of jokes and the comic. Dreams become ingenious and amusing because the direct and easiest pathway to the expression of their thoughts is barred: they are forced into being so.”

Nonsense poetry is evocative enough to stimulate the reader’s imagination, yet ambiguous enough to afford wide latitude for interpretation. Humpty Dumpty made the often-quoted remark, “When I use a word, it means just what I choose it to mean - neither more nor less . . . . The question is which is to be master - that’s all.” One of my subjects, a ldyear-old boy, seemed to echo these sentiments exactly, saying of “Jabberwocky,” “It gives you a chance to use your imagination and the opportunity to make the words mean what you want them to mean and, therefore, a chance to almost write a poem yourself by interpreting the words.”

If nonsense words provide license for a wide range of verbal expression, monsters, such as the Jabberwock, allow the same freedom for non-verbal creations. Monsters are creatures with no counter- parts in the real world, and so the artist may depict them as his unconscious sees them, for this is their only domain. Nonsense poetry abounds with mon- sters, from Edward Lear’s “Pebble” to She1 Silver- stein’s “Squishy Squashy Staggitall” (Heavlin, 1964). Monsters are a natural part of every child’s world, sometimes frightening, usually fascinating, and always present. Just as educational television’s “Sesame Street” is populated by such grotesque but loveable creatures as Cookie Monster and Herry Monster, the child’s imagination invariably houses a menagerie of monsters with whom, despite their fearsome characteristics, the child is quite at home. Ask any child whether he ever has bad dreams and what they are about, and he will usually reply, “yes . . . . about monsters,” in a nonchalant tone, as though he instinctively knows that it is the most usual thing to find a monster in its natural habitat, the nightmare.

Parents, unfortunately, are not so insightful and, on finding their children nocturnally molested, tend to blame the nearest communications medium, be it comic strips, movies or television. They somehow forget that dragons, ogres and demons were with us long before the motion picture camera or even the illustrated manuscript; give a caveman a burnt stick and a stretch of rock, and he will most likely fill his wall with a procession of fearsome beasts.

Still, parents will be parents, and even that creator of the “Magic Kingdom,” Walt Disney, came under attack for his realistic portrayal of the wicked witch in “Snow White,” later succeeded by such horrors as Monstro, the whale, in “Pinocchio.” and Satan himself in “Fantasia.” Perhaps we should include the creature that struck terror in the heart of every forest animal in “Bambi” - Man. When the controversy finally subsided, most psychologists had advanced the opinion that a child could actually experience a great deal of pleasure in the quick and simple resolution of a threatening element; that children, at an early age, should be able to separate real from make-believe; and that no psychic damage was likely to result from confronting frightening material unless it happened to touch on a child’s specific phobia. Monsters in particular provide an early symbolic concept of the good-evil dichotomy and the necessity of overcoming evil (Schickel, 1969).

Dr. Lee Salk, child psychologist, tends to support these views 35 years after the “Snow White” controversy. “Youngsters are on the receiving end of a lot of domination and discipline,” he says, “but usually they can’t express their rage because they fear losing the parents’ love. They are over- whelmed with hostility and aggression unless they find some release - which they do get in nursery rhymes, fairy tales and taking on different roles in play” (Cohen, 1972). Dr. Salk points out that we do not leave such sources of gratification behind when we progress into adulthood, but often continue to attend horror films in order to play out hostilities and to prove that we can master our anxieties, a phenomenon to which the incredible popular response to such films as “The Exorcist” will attest.

Dr. Jean B. Rosenbaum (1967) is among the psychiatrists who, like Dr. Salk, find a therapeutic quality in monsters. “Dream-provoking anxieties grow out of the intrinsic conflicts existing between small children and the adults around them,” he writes. “If anything, horror stories seem an effective way of confronting and mastering these very fears.” Before turning his medical skills toward psychiatry, Dr. Rosenbaum presented the world with his in- valuable invention, the cardiac pacemaker. This life- sustaining device, he confesses, was inspired by his memories of the film “Frankenstein,” in which the monster’s dead organs were given life through elec- tricity.

NONSENSEPOETRY AND ARTPSYCHOTHERAPY 41

Monsters and healing have been associated with one another since at least the fifth century B.C. when Ctesias, a Greek physician, prescribed the powdered horn of a unicorn as an infallible remedy against any kind of poison. If the horn was hollowed out and used as a drinking vessel, it prevented epilepsy. These beliefs persisted essen- tially unchanged for the next 1.5 centuries.

The unicorn is probably the earliest of monsters, with seven direct references to it in the Bible, and, more remarkable, a 20,000-year-old drawing of a creature quite like it found in a prehistoric cave of

the Dordogne region of France (Carrington, 1960). It is fitting that the unicorn serve as a prototype, since it possesses those two quintessential hallmarks of monsters, great power and sexual symbolism. “God brought them out of Egypt; he hath as it were the strength of a unicorn,” the scriptures say (Numbers, chapter 23). Children find the size and strength of monsters quite plausible, since children dwell in a world of towering adults. Movie monsters such as King Kong and Godzilla are terrifying by virtue of size and strength alone.

The sexual symbolism of the single erect horn of the unicorn is so apparent that a psychiatrist need not explain it. Each writer in the progress of history (male writers, of course) added to the length of the fabled horn in his description; thus, Ctesias cited it to be 18 inches long, Pliny three feet, and Albertus Magnus (13th Century) a staggering ten feet. Rabelais augmented its phallic properties by stating that the horn usually dangles down like a cock’s comb, but stands erect when the unicorn wishes to put it to use. The unicorn’s irresistable impulse to lay his horn in the lap of maidens is a frequent theme in story and art (Carrington, 1960).

It is not just the horn of the monster that is symbolic; the entire unicorn is a hybrid composite, part horse, part lion, part deer, part goat. Its mythical successors, the griffin, centaur, faun, chimera, manticore and hippogriff, have echoed this theme of two or more creatures in one, and the chain extends to such celluloid horrors as the Wolf Man, vampires (man and bat) and the Creature from the Black Lagoon (half man, half amphibian). It is probable that this fascination with two or more creatures combined in one body stems from the child’s screen memories or fantasies of the parents in the act of intercourse.

Beyond this basic symbolism, the hybrid, especially the man-beast, represents the superego-id

dichotomy of man, his basic drives versus his need for a set of moral convictions with which he can cope with life. Man’s moral sense is so much a part of his basic nature, George Bernard Shaw argued in “Man and Superman,” that moral passion is the only real passion. (“Our moral sense! And is that not a passion? Is the devil to have all the passions as well as all the good tunes? If it were not a passion - if it were not the mightiest of the passions, all the other passions would sweep it away like a leaf before a hurricane.“)

We can therefore understand how the unicorn has been regarded both as a symbol of the devil, with its cloven hooves and beard, and as a symbol of Christ, its horn representing the unity of the Holy Trinity and its capture by a virgin as an allegorical representation of the Incarnation.

Children and adults frequently find themselves sympathizing with the monster, for it is a victim of its own nature and ignorance, ultimately suc- cumbing to the more powerful intellects of those who succeed in curbing its violence. The monster’s passion is too much akin to our own subconscious drives for us to exult wholeheartedly in its sub- jugation.

Lewis Carroll’s Unicorn, who thought children such as Alice were fabulous monsters because he had never seen one, emerged unscathed from his battle with the Lion. The Lion, likewise, miracu- lously escaped unhurt, although the Unicorn had run his horn through him. This was typical of Lewis Carroll’s Wonderland and Looking Glass worlds, where destruction and decapitation were constantly threatened, but never actually befell any creature except those in the books’ nonsense poems - the oysters being devoured by the Walrus and the Carpenter, the little fishes by the little crocodile, and the owl by the panther. Humpty Dumpty meets his downfall, of course, but that was preordained by the nursery rhyme. And, of course, there is the beheading of the Jabberwock, my original subject, to whom we now finally return.

While “Jabberwocky” contains 28 different non- sense words, comprising nearly half of the poem’s nouns, adjectives and verbs, the poem does tell a definite story. (“Somebody killed something; that’s clear at any rate,” said Alice, the book’s 7H-year- old heroine.) The theme is one of the oldest and most oft-repeated in world literature, that of the slaying of the dragon. It is a tale that dates back to the earliest of heroes, such as Perseus and the

48 ANTHONY PIETROPINTO

Gorgon or Hercules and Hydra, progressing through Beowulf and Grendel, then the medieval legend of St. George and the Dragon, and extending to modem fantasy heroes, such as Tolkien’s Frodo Baggins. A seemingly invincible monster is con- quered by a virtuous young man; in psychoanalytic terms, it is the subjugation of powerful id drives by the superego. The dragon-slayer often performs his valorous feat in the service of an older king or lord. Beowulf has his Hrothgar, Lancelot his King Arthur, and the hero of “Jabberwocky” conveys the head of the monster to his father and is embraced by him. Here again, the theme is an Oedipal one, wherein the child overcomes his incestuous drives toward the mother in order to identify with and insure the love of his father (Pietropinto, 1973).

Thus, “Jabberwocky” speaks directly to our unconscious minds, and the monsters that are called forth to take form through the artist’s hand are likely to be highly original and invested with personal meaning, making them worthy denizens of the field of art psychotherapy.

And so I presented the nonsense poem to a group of subjects, male and female, ranging in age from 15 to 36, having nothing in common other than their willingness to participate in the quest and their status as people without diagnosed mental disorder, who were not receiving any form of psychotherapy. I was personally acquainted with some; there were others who remained anonymous to me, save for their age, sex, and the monster they produced. 1 asked them all to describe or draw the Jabberwock. I do not pretend that their drawings and verbal depictions gave me a complete under- standing of their psyches - in most cases, I could only view their creations and say, along with Alice, “Somehow it seems to fill my head with ideas - only I don’t know exactly what they are.” Perhaps their unconscious was communicating with my unconscious, as the poem had communicated itself to them. It sufiiced to make the quest worthwhile.

One 17-year-old boy said the Jabberwock was “much like an average, everyday, fire-eating dragon.” And the majority concurred with the classic dragon image, none thinking it worthy of a drawing, since everyone knows exactly what a dragon looks like. Others likened the Jabberwock to more common varieties of fauna, a bird ranking next in frequency to the dragon, with mentions of its resembling a man, bear, bat, cat, alligator, wolf, dog, lizard or combinations of the preceding. Here

again, no drawings were deemed necessary. But for some, the creature took on a more

unique appearance, resembling nothing ever seen in a zoo or mythology book, and in such cases, nothing short of a drawing could possibly suffice.

Charlie was a 17-year-old high school student, who lived with his divorced mother and maternal grandmother. His mother was a reliable bread- winner, but fell short in domestic achievements, and she and her mother often tended to limit their meals to whatever could be served “on-the-rocks.” This led to a prodigious omnivoristic quality in Charlie, a lanky youngster whose appetite seemed boundless whenever a hot meal came his way. If asked, “Would you like a hamburger, or some chicken, or some stew?“, he would reply, “Yeah!” and devour available quantities of all three. While not unsociable, he tended to spend much time alone, and he maintained a wry, intellectual yet self-effacing facade. He gave his age precisely as 17 years and 10 months and said of “Jabberwocky,” in pseudo-erudite fashion, “It is different from most poetry taught in high school. It works more with a different linguistic concept similar to ‘Old English’ (A.D. 450-650) construction.” Charlie’s drawing of the monster portrayed a hybrid to end all hybrids, for the Jabberwock seemed to contain features of every creature that ever ascended the phylogenetic ladder in the course of evolution (Fig. I). Behind its eye, where its ears, or possibly gill slits, should be, were the fins of a fish. Its snout also resembled that of a fish, with the sharp teeth of a crocodile, so numerous that some seemed to be crowded out of the large but inadequate mouth. Its chest bore the scales of a reptile. Its large head, suggestive of an intellectual animal, was overmatched only by huge feathered wings. (“Jabberwock could be similar to the mythical dragon. It could fly by the word ‘whiffling’ for it conjures a sound of flight.“) Its back was furry, as were its bear-like limbs, which ended in long, sharp claws. The Jabberwock stood erect on its hind legs, as man did at the end of evolutionary epochs, its body bent forward as though trying to balance its asymmetric bulk, its wide eyes giving it an aspect of bewilderment rather than fearsomeness. To Charlie, the Jabberwock was everything, timeless and incorporating every form that life itself embraced.

Cathy was a 2%year-old secretary, attractive, fun-loving and single. Raised by first-generation Italian-American parents, Cathy’s failure to marry

NONSENSE POETRY AND ART PSYCHOTHERAPY 49

Figure 1.

was a source of constant irritation to her mother, who felt Cathy should have long ago followed the example of her older sister, already the mother of two children. Cathy’s most ardent suitor was her childhood sweetheart, but after a 15-year on-and-off courtship, Cathy was no closer to the altar, and her mother’s intense approval of the man seemed to be working more to his detriment than his advantage. Cathy shared a two-family house with her parents, a half-hearted move toward independence that enabled mother to continue her obsessing about Cathy’s marital status at close range.

Cathy’s Jabberwock, which she produced with much enjoyment and enthusiasm, abounds in phallic symbolism, from the single horn rising from the left side of its head to its unique feet, which resemble scrotums surmounted by phallic protuberances. Its arms, legs and neck are long and tubular, and its fingers, three on the left hand and one on the right, are, likewise, long and pointed. (“It lost some in battle,” Cathy explained.) Its razor-sharp teeth beneath its twin-nostriled snout indicate that it can mutilate as well as be mutilated, and its cyclopean eye recalls fearful memories of Polyphemus, the cannibalistic monster who threatened Ulysses, and his twentieth-century successor, the “one-eyed, one- horned flying purple people-eater“ of rock-and-roll fame. (Fig. 2). This drawing seems to incorporate sexual and aggressive elements in a humorous way. Cathy, now happily married to a man other than her old boy friend, still fails to see any sexual symbolism in the drawing. Her husband agrees with my interpretation. In any event, Cathy’s personal

Figure 2.

Jabberwock has never returned to haunt her. Speaking of mothers and daughters, the strange

bird supplied by an anonymous 15-year-old female high school student has always struck me as a perfect caricature of the domineering mother (Fig. 3). Unfortunately, I know nothing about the artist, so I can only conjecture. Her Jabberwock was described as “ugly, ugly, ugly - a giant chicken with teeth.” The bird looks more like a cross between a garrulous parrot and a fearsome bird of prey. Its elegant plumage and its accentuated eyes give it a definitely feminine appearance. Its talons are enormous and sharp, indicating that when some- thing is in its grasp, it will never let go. Its beak is large, its teeth vicious and its tongue forked. On its right leg, it wears a “two-way wristwatch - (shock proof),” probably similar to Dick Tracy’s two-way wrist-radio, with the added element of time control. If this bird could say something other than “erp,” it might be, “Remember the time! I want you home by ten, and don’t forget to call me when you get

50 ANTHONY PIETROPINTO

Figure 3.

there and before you leave.” Too bad the device on its leg is shock-proof, I’m sure the artist would have loved to smash it.

Andre was a 36-year-old theatrical director who had an intimate acquaintance with the Jabberwock, for he had constructed an unusual stage version of “Alice in Wonderland” that won critical acclaim as the best off-Broadway show of 1970. The show was in rehearsal for two full years, as the six-member cast explored the “Alice” books for new insights. The play opens with the entire cast huddled under a closed umbrella, clinging and struggling, looking like a twelve-legged beast, as they recite “Jabberwocky.”

To Andre’s cast, the Jabberwock means different things. “I hate the Jabberwock,” says Larry, who plays the Caterpillar and the Dormouse, among other characters. “I wanted to create a far-out monster with people doing really crazy things. But nobody would do it. Nobody else had my vision. So finally Andre told us each to take a verse. It got to the point where the only thing we could do with it was to try and outscream the other person until we all broke apart . . . . I think Jabberwocky is the most like us, the way we are with each other. We just can’t come togehter on it; we always have a hard time agreeing on what’s good.” Angela, the play’s Alice, finds the umbrella-monster rather re- assuring: “It’s a wonderful way to begin the per- formance. We’re back behind the paper curtain, all huddled together under the umbrella. And we start back there. For me it’s a very secure feeling being

togetlier with a group and coming hidden. It’s a wonderful entrance shielded. I’m protected. I’m with (Ansel, Arbus & Avedon, 1973).

out on stage for me. I’m my friends”

Does a thorough knowledge of Carroll’s books inhibit the artist from forming his own conceptions of the Jabberwock and other characters? Apparently not. Angela is familiar with John Tenniel’s classic illustration, which depicts the Jabberwock as a huge dragon-like monster, hovering in the air on wings like a bat, possessing a serpentine neck, a long tail, multiple facial antennae and elongated claws; it wears a waistcoat and its face vaguely resembles that of an anguished old man. Yet, Angela has her own ideas: “It is asexual. It is very large, fat and clumsy. Unlike Tenniel’s drawing, it has no wings. It is very earthbound. It has a large mouth and eats everything in sight. It has great difficulty breathing.”

“Jabberwocky” has a personal meaning for Andre: “I reached a brick wall in my life when monsters of the unconscious tried to destroy me, but I harnessed the monster instead, used his energy and created something wild with it. Then, back to business as usual.” A psychoanalyst would say Andre was referring to the process of sublimating the drives of the id via the creative process; Andre says it more artistically. Andre’s personal Jabber- wock was nothing like the umbrella creature in his production. It was an amoebic blob, having one central eye and seven hair-like projections extending from its amorphous body. The eyebrow sur- mounting its eye is arched, as though the creature is in a state of wonderment over what it is perceiving (Fig. 4). As a physician, 1. am tempted to say it resembles a nerve cell - but it is all dendrites and no axon; that is, all its extensions are directed toward receiving stimuli, with no main trunk for effecting action. This is not surprising, knowing Andre, for although he directs his cast, he works meticulously, basing his changes on what he observes in actors and audience. No matter how long the show has been running, Andre is always in the audience, and meets with his cast afterward to analyze the factors that make every performance a unique one. If Andre’s Jabberwock could sit beside him, it would no doubt be waving its projections toward various members of the audience while its eye would be focused unwaveringly on the stage.

Two male high school students provided drawings of humanoid Jabberwocks with remarkable eyes. Unlike the one-eyed horrors of Cathy and Andre,

NONSENSE POETRY AND ART PSYCHOTHERAPY 51

Figure 4.

John’s fantasy had a superfluity of visual organs, five eyes in alI (Fig. 5). Two were conventionally positioned, with a centrally located third eye above the monster’s nose. High above the winged beast’s head, another pair were located on two sausage- shaped protuberances, possibly ears, horns or antennae. Its teeth were sharp and pointed, its nose looking much like one more triangular tooth. It had claws on its feet, as well as its hands. Its torso was bulky, with a broad shield-shaped chest. Of the poem, John said, “It’s just a situation that can be applied to any place today where someone over- comes a greater force.”

An anonymous classmate .of John’s said initially that he didn’t like the poem because “it just doesn’t do anything for me,” but then said the poem made him feel good - “I like mild insanity. This really sparks your imagination.” The Jabberwock evoked by these sparks was “really ugly, eyes of fire, long claws and fangs and pretty hairy.” The accom- panying drawing showed only the Jabberwock’s head, a human one, with hair neatly parted in the middle. Its teeth resembled those of a sharp saw and its eyes were two balls of fire, making it literally a “Jabberwock with eyes of flame” (Fig.

6). Figure 5.

ANTHONY PIETROPINTO

Figure 6.

It might be expected that eyes would play such a prominent role in the drawings of the Jabberwock, because of its voyeuristic psychoanalytic impli- cations. The monster is a typical child’s “bogey- man,” which young minds take delight in fabri- cating. “Many children have some fabled ogre, often in animal form,” writes Phyllis Greenacre (1955), “or some ‘secret’ with which they scare each other and themselves. Psychoanalysis reveals that it is generally some representation of the primal scene, in which the sexual images of the parents are fused into a frightening or awe-inspiring single figure.”

Subjects certainly found the Jabberwock fasci- nating, but almost unbearable to encounter and see, like children approaching the parental bedroom. “I can mentally see it, but wouldn’t dare try to describe or reproduce it,” stated one l6-year-old girl. And, in response to a request to describe what a Jabberwock looks like, the stage manager for Andre’s production said, “I don’t know. But I wouldn’t if I could.” A fellow cast member of his said of the monster, “He looks like what you don’t

expect, and is always more fearful in the imagi- nation than the reality.”

Any movie viewer who has sympathized with Frankenstein’s monster fleeing the torch-bearing villagers or King Kong swatting airplanes from the Empire State Building will understand the feelings of the high school girl who mourned, “It’s depressing that the Jabberwock is so big and hulking, and then only burbles like a little kid. Everybody’s so happy about the boy killing the Jabberwock, they don’t think about the Jabber- wock.”

Are the primal scene implications of “Jabber- wacky” that valid? I am inclined to think so, based on the gusto with which adolescents engage the poem and the reluctance of latency age children to get involved with it. While children under twelve may warm up to it once they are reassured the nonsense poem has no generally accepted meaning, they approach it initially with considerable anxiety - its nonsense words seem too suggestive of all those sexual secrets to which their environment constantly exposes them without ever letting them behind the veil of mystery that obscures an ill- understood domain (Pietropinto, 1974).

Did Lewis Carroll’s mind, at least on the uncon- scious level, intend the Jabberwock to represent a sexual image as Greenacre contends? “Jabber- wacky” offers scant support to the primal scene hypothesis, but three years later, Carroll pursued the theme in “The Hunting of the Snark,” a long nonsense ballad that includes many of “Jabber- wocky”‘s unique words, such as “mimsy,” “galum-

phed, ” “beamish, ” “frumious,” and “outgribe,” as well as two of its monsters, the Bandersnatch and the Jubjub. It is a tale in which ten (the number of Carroll’s siblings) adventurers hunt the mysterious Snark. The Baker knows that if the Snark is a Boojum species, he who views it will instantly vanish. Yet, he hunts it, and seems to reenact symbolically the primal scene:

Erect and sublime for one moment of time, In the next, that wild figure they saw (As if stung by a spasm) plunge into a chasm While they waited and listened in awe.

He pays the price:

In the midst of the word he was trying to say, In the midst of his laughter and glee, He had softly and suddenly vanished away For the Snark was a Boojum, you see.

NONSENSE POETRY AND ART PSYCHOTHERAPY 53

“The Hunting of the Snark,” which began in the ridged back and flipper-like extremities terminating author’s mind with the last line, and then the last in a thumb and three fingers. This drawing was stanza (quoted above), was never understood by apparently acceptable to Carroll because this Snark Carroll, as he later confessed. He did admit, “Still, was only a dream of the Barrister, who had never you know, words mean more than we mean to seen one, and might well have been, even if accu- express when we use them; so a whole book ought rately envisioned, one of the non-Boojum species to mean more than the writer meant” (Gardner, (Gardner, 1967). 1967).

But whatever meaning the Snark had for Carroll, he had the intuitive good sense of the artist to allow his reader to find his own shape and rationale for the monster. Carroll vetoed one of the drawings by Henry Holiday, illustrator of “The Hunting of the Snark,” which depicted the Snark confronting the vanishing Baker. Four years earlier, Carroll had entertained the idea of suppressing Tenniel’s illus- tration of the Jabberwock, for a different reason; writing to about thirty mothers in a private poll he conducted, he said, “It has been suggested to me that it is too terrible a monster, and likely to alarm nervous and imaginative children.” The mothers approved his retaining the drawing, although it was printed in Chapter I, where the ballad occurs, instead of as the frontispiece, for which it was originally intended (Gardner, 1960). Carroll’s refusal to use the Snark drawing had nothing to do with the monster’s appearance, which is far more benign than the Jabberwock’s; Holiday conceived it as a cross between a sea-turtle and a piranha fish, which is coming into focus simultaneously with the Baker’s fading away. Carroll felt it was a “delightful monster,” but that all his descriptions of the Boojum were quite unimaginable and he wanted the creature itself to remain so. Holiday assented, though he maintained jocularly that he was con- fident that his was an accurate representation, adding, “I hope that some future Darwin will find the beast, or its remains; if he does, I know he will confirm my drawing” (Gardner, 1967). But such is the nature of the Snark, the Jabberwock and other monsters of the mind; their reality in each indi- vidual imagination which conceives them is valid and unassailable.

Is it life of which it tells? Of a pulse that sinks and swells Never lacking chime of bells?

Carroll asked this question in a dedicatory verse inscribed on a copy of the book for a little girl. Twenty-three years later, the year before his death, he wrote, “To the best of my recollection, I had no other meaning in my mind when I wrote it: but people have since tried to find meanings in it. The one I like best (which I think is partly my own) is that it may be taken as an allegory for the pursuit of happiness.”

People have, indeed, tried to find meanings for this tale of an impossible voyage by an improbable crew to find an inconceivable creature, sailing on a ship with a befouled rudder, following a blank map and led by a captain who does nothing but inces- santly ring a bell. (Holiday keeps up the chiming by incorporating the Bellman or his bell into almost every illustration.) In addition to Greenacre’s primal scene theory relating to infantile sexuality, the Snark has been said to represent material wealth, social advancement, the business world and the philosopher’s search for the Absolute.

Ultimately, the Snark can bring us to the very brink of existence and force us to face our own inevitable final state of non-being.

It is this, it is this that oppresses my soul, When I think of my uncle’s last words. And my heart is like nothing so much as a bowl Brimming over with quivering curds.

Is it existential anxiety the Baker feels? Sartrean nausea?

Interestingly, Holiday did portray the Snark in another illustration, which was retained in the published work. It is found in “Fit the Sixth: The Barrister’s Dream,” and this Snark is quite different from the one in Holiday’s unpublished drawing. The dream Snark, shown only from the back, wearing a judge’s gown and powdered wig, can nevertheless be perceived as a seal-like animal with a pointed head,

But if ever I meet with a Boojum, that day, In a moment (of this I am sure), I shall softly and suddenly vanish away- And the notion I cannot endure.

Could any existentialistic philosopher or psycho- therapist have better expressed those transient moments of horror when the thought of our own

54 ANTHONYPIETROPINTO

mortality breaks through our defenses and we confront the certain knowledge that we must all someday “softly and suddenly vanish away” - and we painfully realize for whom the Bellman tolls his bell.

The link between monsters and mortality is a sturdy one. In a recent poetry therapy session, my group quickly proceeded from a poem about the finality of death to a discussion of possible after-life to the occult to monsters, One member recalled his childhood dread of King Kong, and how from ages 6 to 10, he and his companions would spend hours fantasizing how they would deal with the giant ape if he ever returned from the ocean into which he had vanished at the conclusion of “King Kong Meets Godzilla.” While the group chuckled nostal- gically, he explained, “Dracula was easy to deal with; all you needed was a silver crucifix. And Frankenstein’s monster was afraid of tire, so you could carry a tank of gasoline. But King Kong . . .!” I could not help but feel that any youngster willing to consider confronting King Kong would find life’s other challenges somewhat less formidable.

Art often gives form to our monsters and makes them possible to deal with. At a creative growth workshop session, we passed around clay to partic- ipants and asked them to model whatever they felt while “Jabberwocky” was read. Several people fashioned fantastic beasts, but one young woman approached me with a creation resembling a sea- scape, with several rocky mounds, channels and a Wall. “I learned something,” she said. “At first, I saw this as a wall, completely blocking me. But look!” She traced her finger in a channel, following an alternate route around the wall. “See, I can avoid it completely if I want to. I just thought at first that I couldn’t.”

I was amazed that she had created something so different from Carroll’s monster and yet quickly grasped its basic truth - that the most terrifying feature of the monsters of the mind, the fears and conflicts that nest in the unconscious, is that they have never been fully confronted. Like the adults

who haunt Saturday midnight movies to chuckle at Dracula and Frankenstein, we may find that some of these monsters are more enjoyable than fright- ening.

Or, as Ogden Nash concluded in “Dragons Are Too Seldom”:

. . . I don’t mean to be satirical But where there’s a monster, there’s a miracle. And after a thorough study of current affairs, I have concluded with regret That the world can profitably use all the miracles it can get.

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CARRINGTON, R. (1960) The natural history of the unicorn. In J. Hadfield, (ed.), The Saturday Book, vol. 20, Hutchinson & Co., London.

COHEN, M. (1972) Dr. Lee Salk: ghosts, goblins, monsters - how much fright is OK for kids. Today’s Health, 50, 38-41.

FREUD, S. (1965) The Interpretation of Dreams, Avon, New York.

FREUD, S. (1966) A General Introduction to Psycho- analysis, Washington Square Press, New York.

GARDNER, M. (1960) The Annotated Alice, Clarkson N. Potter, New York.

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HEAVLIN, J. (1964) The Nonsense Book of Nonsense, Random House, New York.

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P~ETROPINTO, A. (1973) Exploring the unconscious through nonsense poetry. In J. Leedy. (ed.), Poetry the Healer, Lippincott,- Philadelphia.

PIETROPINTO. A. (1974) A psychiatrist’s case for Jabber- wacky and .other violent nonsense. Learning 2, 80-83.

ROSENBAUM, J. (1967) A flash from the flicks. Med. Opin. & Rev. 3, 121.

SCHICKEL, R. (1969) The Disney Version, Avon, New York.