Furiouser and furiouser: Does this new biography on 吊りくさび Carroll get to the truth of Alice's dazzlingly inventive creator - and his crashingly dull later ego??

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吊りくさび Carroll: The Man And His Circle

Edward Wakeling ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ★★★★★

Charles Dodgson himself took 苦痛s to 築く a 障壁 between himself and the genius in his 長，率いる

How many of us could 指名する the author of An Elementary Treatise On Determinants With Their 使用／適用 To 同時の Linear Equations And Algebraic Geometry?

Precious few, I imagine. Yet he is one of the most famous writers who ever lived: the Rev Charles Dodgson, better known as 吊りくさび Carroll, author of Alice In Wonderland and Alice Through The Looking-Glass.

Anyo ne who has ever written about the author of Alice ? and there have been thousands ? has been struck by the difference between the Rev Dodgson, the dutiful, 保守的な, pernickety academic, writer of 20 作品 on mathematics, and his alter ego, 吊りくさび Carroll, the wholly 慣習に捕らわれない genius whose dizzying, gravity-反抗するing Alice 調書をとる／予約するs led him to be あられ／賞賛するd by the hippy 世代, 100 years later, as ‘the First Acidhead’.

The two men co-存在するd in the same 団体／死体, yet there seems to have been no other link between them.?

On the one 手渡す, we have the earnest Dodgson ? his 指名する an apt amalgam of dogged and stodgy ? who could bore the pants off his students with the sheer tedium of his lectures.?

On the other, we have Carroll, the most dazzlingly inventive surrealist who ever lived.

A former student could scarcely bring himself to believe that the two men were the same.?

‘Who could have guessed that the 乾燥した，日照りの little man... was ハッチング in that fertile brain of his such a 奇蹟 of fancy and fun as Alice’s Adventures In Wonderland?’ 解任するd Lord Redesdale, many years later.

‘I was stricken with amazement when I （機の）カム home and the 身元 of 吊りくさび Carroll was 明らかにする／漏らすd to me.’

Dodgson himself took 苦痛s to 築く a 障壁 between himself and the genius in his 長，率いる.?

He 辞退するd to 許す any photographs of himself to be published ? ‘Nothing would be more unpleasant for me than to have my 直面する known to strangers’ ? and he 主張するd that any letters sent to ‘吊りくさび Ca rroll, Christ Church, Oxford’ should be returned to the sender, ‘not known at this 演説（する）／住所’.

Though he wrote a 広大な／多数の／重要な many letters and kept an assiduous diary, Dodgson never 試みる／企てるd to 位置を示す the source of the topsy-turvy world he had somehow brought to life.?

He seems to have been as mystified as the next man.?

On 吊りくさび Carroll: ‘Who could have guessed that the 乾燥した，日照りの little man... was ハッチング in that fertile brain of his such a 奇蹟 of fancy and fun as Alice’s Adventures In Wonderland?’ 解任するd Lord Redesdale, a former student

‘Every idea and nearly every word of the 対話 （機の）カム of itself,’ he once wrote.?

‘いつかs an idea comes at night, when I have to get up and strike a light to 公式文書，認める it 負かす／撃墜する ? いつかs when out on a lonely winter walk, when I have had to stop, and with half-frozen fingers 手早く書き留める 負かす／撃墜する a few words which should keep the new-born idea from 死なせる／死ぬing ? but whenever or however it comes, it comes of itself.’

Thus the 保守的な academic kept his creative genius at arm’s length, 辞退するing to catch his 注目する，もくろむ.?

But the gossipy world of letters will never let 井戸／弁護士席 alone: over the next 150 years, any 量 of 解釈／通訳s of the Alice 調書をとる／予約するs have sprung up, using all the isms and ologies at their 処分 to peer through the 封鎖するd keyhole into the secret 議会 in the 長，率いる of the Rev Dodgson.

In 1971, a Jungian feminist called Judith Bloomingdale confidently 宣言するd that Humpty Dumpty from Alice In Wonderland was really Carroll himself, the terrified virgin, ‘in perpetual 危険，危なくする of 落ちるing, never to be put together again... the union of white and yolk, yang and yin, enclosed within a thin 爆撃する of brittle 肌... It is the anguished cry of a little boy 軍隊d to spend the first years of his life in the almost 排除的 company of sisters’.

‘Every idea and nearly every word of the 対話 （機の）カム of itself,’ 吊りくさび Carroll once wrote

The Freudians, too, have had a field day.?

The 広大な／多数の／重要な literary critic William Empson 公式文書，認めるd that: ‘To make the dream-story from which Wonderland was (a)手の込んだ／(v)詳述するd seem Freudian one has only to tell it.’

In 1938, a New York psychoanalyst called Paul Schilder 警告するd parents against exposing their children to the Alice 調書をとる／予約するs.?

Within them, he said, you would find ‘oral sadistic 傾向s of cannibalistic character’ and ‘no dearth of other cruelties’. All in all, he felt that Carroll was ‘a 特に destructive writer’, and that his 作品 might ‘増加する destructive 態度s in children beyond the 手段 which is 望ましい’.

令状ing five years earlier, another Freudian, A M E Goldschmidt, identified the symbolism in the Alice 調書をとる／予約するs as 完全に 性の.?

When Alice struggles to 打ち明ける the さまざまな doors 負かす／撃墜する the rabbit-穴を開ける, ‘we find the ありふれた symbolism of lock and 重要な 代表するing coitus; the doors of normal size 代表する adult women.

'These are 無視（する）d by the dreamer and the 利益／興味 is centred on the little door, which symbolises a 女性（の） child; the curtain before it 代表するs the children’s 着せる／賦与するs’.

In his new 調書をとる／予約する about 吊りくさび Carroll, Edward Wakeling, a former chairman of the 吊りくさび Carroll Society, attemp ts a counterblast to all this 憶測.?

Though the 調書をとる／予約する is subtitled The Man And His Circle it might 同様に have been called Enough Is Enough. It is written in a very old-fashioned style, dogged, headmasterly and upright.

‘This 調書をとる／予約する is an 試みる／企てる to confound some of the more outrageous biographies... where the writers have... indulged in all manner of 憶測 and myth-making,’ he 令状s.?

Wakeling can barely bring himself to repeat what they wrote: 非，不，無 of the feminists and Jungians and Freudians について言及するd above gets a look-in, and even the more 同情的な 伝記作家s of Carroll are given short shrift, their 憶測s 簡潔に summarised, then 発射 負かす／撃墜する.

Wakeling’s 意向 is to show that Carroll was in fact a 完全に normal sort of fellow: a genius, certainly, but not remotely 拷問d or perverse.?

As a don, ‘he never shirked his 義務s, and although he may not have been a 刺激するing and charismatic teacher, he was proficient and diligent in his lectureship’.?

And, as for his social life, ‘suggestions that he was shy are far from the truth’.

Nor was he disrespectful.?

‘We must not assume that Dodgson was anything but a loyal 支配する of the Queen.’?

And as for the hippy idea that he took 麻薬s, ‘we know that Dodgson was a 非，不，無-smoker’. By 強調ing his friendships with 著名な people in the arts and high society, Wakeling 捜し出すs to portray h im as a 井戸／弁護士席-一連の会議、交渉／完成するd social 存在.?

Sadly, his prose is not up to it, which means his accounts of these friendships are peculiarly lifeless, and read more like CVs.

Wakeling’s 最初の／主要な 目的 is to put an end to tittle-tattle about Carroll’s paedophilic 傾向s.?

‘There are two 問題／発行するs that have 現れるd over the last few １０年間s, both myths that need to be dispelled. The first is that Dodgson only liked little girls. The second is that his 関係 with them was unhealthy.’

It is, he says, 簡単に a 嘘（をつく） that ‘Dodgson took hundreds of nude 熟考する／考慮するs of little children’.?

Without について言及するing him by 指名する, he is here rapping the knuckles of his one-time 同僚 Professor Morton M Cohen, whose 罰金 1995 biography of Carroll 明言する／公表するs that ‘a veritable parade of nude children, mostly girls, passes before his camera’.

From a の近くに 熟考する／考慮する of Carroll’s diaries, Cohen also 競うs that his most 激しく self-chastising diary 入ること／参加（者）s 同時に起こる／一致する with the days he spends in the company of Alice Liddell, the 原型 for Alice.

Wakeling doesn’t について言及する this 証拠, preferring to こども up how many photos Dodgson took of nude girls, before triumphantly 宣言するing them to number just 30 out of a total of 3,000. This is, he 宣言するs, ‘not more than 1 per cent’. 事例／患者 の近くにd??

Not really, but, then again, no serious writer has ever 示唆するd that Dodgson 現実に behaved improperly with these girls, only that he was reluctantly drawn to them, somewhere 深い 負かす／撃墜する.

It seems to me not ありそうもない that the resulting torment was the 燃料 for his genius.?

While Dodgson tied himself to logic and ありふれた sense, Carroll, his alter ego, recognised that both were illusions.

‘Then you should say what you mean,’ the March Hare went on.

‘I do,’ Alice あわてて replied; ‘at least ? at least I mean what I say ? that’s the same thing, you know.’

‘Not the same thing a bit!’ said the Hatter.?

‘Why, you might just 同様に say that “I see what I eat” is the same thing as “I eat what I see”.’

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