Alice behind the mirrors
Alice behind the mirrors (also: Alice im Spiegelland as well as: Through the mirror and what Alice found there ; in the original: Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There ) (1871) is a children's book written by Lewis Carroll and the sequel to Alice in Wonderland (1865).
History of origin
After the great success of his book Alice in Wonderland , published in 1865 , Lewis Carroll decided to write a sequel. As an illustrator, he wanted to win again John Tenniel , but this turned down the offer because he was too busy. There had also been a debacle when Alice was printing , as Tenniel was dissatisfied with the way his pictures had been printed and Carroll had to take the entire run off the market because of it. In the end, Tenniel was persuaded to start a new collaboration. The novel was published at Christmas 1871 with a first edition of 9,000 books and another 6,000 more copies later. Only seven weeks after the book was published, the 15,000 copies were sold.
content
Chapter I: The house behind the mirror
Where Alice in Wonderland begins on a warm day in May, Alice's birthday, this time the story begins on a snowy day in early November. Alice plays with her cat Dinah and their kittens, one black and one white, in front of the fireplace and philosophizes about what the world would look like on the other side of a mirror. She then climbs onto the mantelpiece and realizes that the mirror above the fireplace actually leads to a parallel world . On the other hand, she finds a reflected version of her house in which objects - e.g. B. Pictures, clocks and chess pieces - are alive. There she also finds a book written in mirror writing. It includes the nonsense poem of Jabberwocky . She decides to continue exploring the house and goes into the garden.
Chapter II: In the garden of speaking flowers
After Alice has left the house, she finds herself in a sunny garden, which is populated with talking flowers. There she also meets the Black Queen (in English the red queen ) and discovers that the landscape is laid out like a large chessboard . Alice wants to take part in the game too. She is used by the Black Queen as a white queen pawn (in the original White Queen's pawn ) and starts from the second field . When she gets to the eighth square, she becomes queen. The Queen then takes Alice by the hand and runs through the forest at an unbelievable speed without moving. After the Queen has moved on, Alice prepares for her first move.
Chapter III: A mirror snake and other insects
Alice gets an overview of the landscape and watches flying elephants collecting honey. She then decides to go on, crosses the first of six small streams and finds herself on a train. There she meets all sorts of unusual passengers (e.g. various animals and a man dressed in white paper). The train skips the third field and brings Alice directly to the fourth field by crossing the next stream . Alice finds herself under a tree, where you fan a large mosquito. She also introduces her to the mirror insects, e.g. B. the rocking horse fly or the Christmas butterfly.
Chapter IV: Zwiddeldum and Zwiddeldei
Alice meets the twins Zwiddeldum and Zwiddeldei (English Tweedledum & Tweedledee ) on her way through the forest . She asks the two of them for directions, but instead of helping her, they begin to dance and recite poetry in the form of the poem The Walrus and the Carpenter . Alice is distracted by a loud noise, which turns out to be the snoring of the Black King sleeping leaning against a tree. The twins want Alice to believe that she only exists in the king's dream and will disappear when he wakes up. Eventually , following the plot of the nursery rhyme from which they originate, the two brothers begin to fight, but are then chased away by a large crow. Alice takes refuge in the forest, where she finds a scarf.
Chapter V: Sheep and Oars
The scarf belongs to the White Queen , who seems to be very confused and keeps mumbling the word sandwich to herself, but in the next moment shows her gift of precognition , because she can predict future events. The White Queen and Alice cross a small stream together and get into the fifth field . The two are now in a small shop and the queen has taken the form of a talking sheep . Soon after, the shop transforms and Alice finds herself in a rowboat with the sheep, where the sheep instructs her to hold the leaf flat, otherwise she would catch a crab . Alice and the sheep are back in the shop, where Alice buys an egg but can't get hold of it. While wandering around the shop, she crossed a stream again and got into the sixth field .
Chapter VI: Goggle Smuggled
The egg that Alice wanted to buy in the shop continues to enlarge and change, until it finally turns into Goggelmoggel (English Humpty Dumpty ), a character from a well-known English nursery rhyme. Alice talks to the egg about her age and the tie , which Alice mistakenly thought was a belt that Gogglemoggle got from the White King and the White Queen for his non-birthday . She then asks him to explain the nonsense poem Jabberwocky from the first chapter to her. In the same breath he explains the concept of the suitcase word to Alice and the reader . When Alice tries to move on, she doesn't get far before she is surprised by a loud noise.
Chapter VII: Lion and Unicorn
The noise comes from the many soldiers marching through the forest at once. When she gets out of the forest into the open area, Alice finds the White King and his Anglo-Saxon messengers Hasa and Hutma (Tenniel's illustrations of the two show that it is the Hatter and the March Bunny from Alice in Wonderland ). The messengers report that the lion and the unicorn, as in the nursery rhyme from which they come, are fighting for the crown of the White King. Alice eventually moves away from the fight and jumps over another stream into Seventh Field .
Chapter VIII: The Inventions of the White Knight
Alice finds herself alone in the new field until she is discovered by a black knight who wants to take her prisoner, but a white knight comes to her rescue. The knight accompanies Alice through the forest and repeatedly falls from his horse. He also sings her a song she has composed before Alice says goodbye to him, crosses the last stream and finally arrives at Eighth Field , where she finds herself with a crown on her head.
Chapter IX: Queen Alice
By crossing the last brook, Alice was automatically crowned queen. Shortly afterwards she meets the black and white queens who want to use arithmetic problems, the ABC and practical questions to check whether Alice can really be a queen. Finally, a celebration takes place in honor of Alice's coronation, but it quickly degenerates into chaos. Alice grabs the Black Queen, who blames her for everything that happened, and begins to shake her.
Chapter X: Raw Treatment
Alice shakes the shrunken queen who keeps changing.
Chapter XI: Rapid Transformation
Namely a black kitten.
Chapter XII: Who Dreams Who?
Alice wakes up in her chair and holds her black kitten, which she associates with the black queen, while the white kitten stands for the white queen. Alice ponders whose dream it was finally, hers or that of the Black King. The book has a poem as an epilogue of sorts in which life itself is compared to a dream.
The Wesperich with the wig
Alice behind the mirrors was originally supposed to contain 13 chapters and 51 illustrations. The removed chapter was called The Wasp in a Wig . The reason for this was that Tenniel couldn't handle the illustration because he just couldn't imagine a wasp with a wig. So he wrote to Carroll that the episode was not qualitatively on the same level as the other twelve. Carroll accepted the criticism and completely deleted the story that had already been set. This part was considered lost for years until it reappeared in a catalog at the Sotheby auction house in 1974 .
The episode describes Alice's encounter with a wasp wearing a yellow wig, and includes another poem.
Chess motif
Where Carroll for Alice in Wonderland on playing cards oriented as a motive, he makes use of the Looking Glass now at chess . Most of the characters Alice meets are chess pieces and she herself moves across the huge chess board as a pawn. In order to be crowned queen, Alice has to come to the eighth space and, in order to get from one space to the other, has to cross a total of six streams, which are marked with asterisks (* * * *) in the text. These streams represent the boundaries of the fields on the chess board and document Alice's progress in the game. According to Carroll, the fact that black and white move alternately could have been better adhered to, but the rules of the game were generally followed.
characters
- Alice : The heroine from Alice in Wonderland goes on a journey behind the mirror half a year after her adventure in Wonderland. Although she is barely older (here: seven and a half), Alice is a lot more confident and clever in the second book.
- Black / Red Queen : The first chess piece that Alice talks to in the mirror world is the life-size black queen. She assigns Alice to the white side, which automatically makes the Queen Alice's opponent . The Queen is very pedantic and bossy and teaches Alice like a teacher. Carroll himself described them as cool and strict, but not entirely unfriendly; she has all the qualities of a governess. not to be confused with the Queen of Hearts from Alice in Wonderland . In film adaptations, the two characters are often merged into one, which then usually has the characteristics of the Queen of Hearts, but is named after the Red Queen.
- Black / Red King : The king remains passive throughout the game because he is sleeping under a tree. Zwiddeldum and Zwiddeldei then claim that Alice is only part of his dream and simply disappears when he wakes up. Alice later checkmates him when she picks up the Queen at the end of the feast and shakes him.
- White Queen : Alice sees the Queen and the King, still in their character size, in the mirror house for the first time when the two are looking for their daughter Lily. Later the Queen runs towards Alice when she has found her scarf. Carroll describes the White Queen as posh and empathetic, but at the same time as stupid and helpless like a newborn .
- White King : Like the white queen, Alice sees him for the first time in the mirror house, where he is still as big as a normal chess piece. The next time Alice meets him, this time life-size, in the fight between the unicorn and the lion.
- Goggle Smog : Better known as Humpty Dumpty, this character comes from the nursery rhyme of the same name . He is very skilled with language and uses words as he pleases. For him, names like Alice have a general meaning, and common words mean whatever Humpty Dumpty wants.
- Jabberwocky : The dragon-like creature only appears in the poem of the same name, which Alice finds in a book in the Spiegelhaus. Carroll initially wanted to use the Jabberwocky as the cover photo, but decided against it because children might find it too scary.
- Zwiddeldum and Zwiddeldei ( English Tweedledum and Tweedledee ): The two twins , which come from the nursery rhyme of the same name, are enantiomorphic , i. i.e., they are mirror images of each other. The two of them extend their right hand and the other their left hand to greet them.
- White Knight : One of the few characters that Alice approaches with kindness and treats her respectfully and politely. It is believed that the White Knight is based on Carroll himself, since both the physical description - tangled hair, friendly face, big eyes - and some character traits - fun in inventing and a tendency to see things from a different angle - on Carroll apply. Illustrator John Tenniel illustrated the knight as a self-portrait, which Carroll didn't like, but Tenniel prevailed. Tenniel's picture of the knight can also be seen as a parody of the popular painting Sir Isumbras at the Ford (1857) by John Everett Millais .
- Walrus and Carpenter : The two main characters from the poem of the same name, which Zwiddeldum and Zwiddeldei tell Alice. Carroll gave Tenniel the manuscript for the illustration, but gave him the choice of painting either a carpenter , a butterfly, or a baronet , since all three words matched the rhyme scheme . This shows that there is not always a certain symbolism behind Carroll's poems, but that they are mainly for the entertainment of children.
- Hutma and Hasa : The White King's two Anglo-Saxon messengers are the hatter and the March hare from Alice in Wonderland .
- Lion and Unicorn : Two other characters from a nursery rhyme are fighting for the crown of the White King, which makes their fight so absurd. The rhyme was popular in the early 17th century when Scotland and England merged, which resulted in a new coat of arms adorned with both the Scottish unicorn and the English lion . Tenniel's illustration of the two characters was taken as a caricature of the two politicians Benjamin Disraeli (unicorn) and William Ewart Gladstone (lion). It is still unclear whether this was Carroll's intention.
Media implementation
Movie and TV
Alice behind the mirrors has been filmed many times, but mostly in combination with Alice in Wonderland .
Based only on Alice behind the mirrors
One of the oldest film adaptations of the book dates from 1928 and was called Alice Through A looking Glass (directed by Walter Lang). In 1966 a musical version appeared with Judy Rolin and Jack Palance in the leading roles. (See Alice Through the Looking Glass (1966) ). Several television versions have also been produced, including the 1973 BBC version, a 1999 feature film starring Kate Beckinsale in the lead role, which also first featured the Lost Wesperich with the Wig episode, and an animated film with the voices of Mr. T. and Phyllis Diller from 1987.
In combination with Alice in Wonderland
Films that combined both stories were u. a. the 1933 film with Gary Cooper and Cary Grant . Elements of Alice behind the mirrors were e.g. B. the appearance of Humpty Dumpty, the White Queen and the White Knight. The 1951 released Disney - Cartoons Alice in Wonderland shows the two poems Jabberwocky and The Walrus and the Carpenter episodes from the second book. In the 2010 film by Tim Burton , many elements from Behind the Looking Glass also appear, such as the occurrence of the White Queen and Jabberwocky, who plays a larger role. The novel also served as a template for its sequel Alice in Wonderland , published in 2016 : Behind the Mirrors .
theatre
As early as 1886 Carroll brought the two books to the stage with the operetta Alice in Wonderland: A Musical Dream Play, in two Acts, for Children and Others . The play was a financial success, but Carroll himself gave it a mediocre rating. In 1980 Meryl Streep played the role of Alice in the stage production Alice in Concert . In 2007, an acrobatic version of the two books entitled Lookingglass Alice premiered and is currently running indefinitely in Chicago .
Cultural reception
In the literature
In the youth book Das Haus hinter dem Spiegel by Frank Schuster there are numerous intertextual allusions to Alice behind the mirrors . The novel is about a ten-year-old girl named Eliza who claims to have entered the human world from the realm behind the mirrors. The chess motif is also taken up as well as some characters from Lewis Carroll's novel, such as Gogglemoggle, Zwiddeldum and Zwiddeldei. The name of the math and English teacher Karl-Ludwig Hundsen, who helps the girl out of her misery, alludes to Carroll's real name Charles Lutwidge Dodgson.
In movies
The 1977 film Jabberwocky , directed by Terry Gilliam , continues the story of the poem of the same name. In the Disney short film Mickey in Dreamland , Mickey Mouse enters a bizarre land through a mirror. In the 1959 short film Donald in the Land of Math Magic, Donald Duck meets the Red Queen dressed as Alice on a chessboard.
Further
"In this country you have to run as fast as you can if you want to stay in the same place," said the Red Queen to Alice. Leigh Van Valen used this saying in evolutionary theory as the Red Queen hypothesis . Here one species has to become more efficient in order to be able to maintain its current position.
literature
- Lewis Carroll: Alice in the Mirror Land. With 12 color illustrations by Uriel Birnbaum , translated by Helene Scheu-Riesz . Sesam Verlag, Vienna 1923.
- Lewis Carroll: Alice in Wonderland. Alice behind the mirrors. With 37 illustrations by the author. 2 novels. Translated and edited by Christian Enzensberger . Insel Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1963.
- Lewis Carroll: Alice in the Mirror Land. With 50 illustrations from the original edition by Sir John Tenniel, In: Jürgen Häusser (Ed.): Lewis Carroll, the complete literary work. Completely newly translated by Dieter H. Stündel with all 365 illustrations. Zweiausendeins , Frankfurt am Main 1998, ISBN 3-86150-240-2 .
- Lewis Carroll: Alice behind the mirrors. Newly translated - with numerous illustrations by John Tenniel , translated by Nadine Erler . Null Papier Verlag , Neuss / Düsseldorf 2013, ISBN 978-3-95418-274-9 . (E-book edition)
- Will Broker: Alice's Adventures: Lewis Carroll in Popular Culture. Continuum, New York 2004, ISBN 0-8264-1433-8 .
- Morton N. Cohen: Lewis Carroll: A Biography. McMillan, London 1995, ISBN 0-333-62926-4 .
- Martin Gardner: Everything about Alice. Europa Verlag, Hamburg 2002, ISBN 3-203-75950-0 .
- Martin Gardner: The Annotated Alice: The Definitive Edition. WW Norton & Company, New York 1999, ISBN 0-393-04847-0 .
- Dieter H. Stündel: Charles Lutwidge Dodgson alias Lewis Carroll: Poet between mathematics and photographic art. Machwerk Verlag, Siegen 1982, ISBN 3-922524-08-7 .
- Jan Susa: The Place of Lewis Carroll in Children's Literature. Routledge, New York 2010, ISBN 978-0-415-93629-3 .
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ Cohen: Lewis Carroll .1995, S. 129th
- ^ Ibid. P. 132.
- ^ Ibid. P. 133.
- ↑ In Chapter 6 (Pepper and Pig) the Cheshire Cat mentions that it is May and in Chapter 7 (A Crazy Tea Party) the hatter asks Alice for the date, to which she replies that it is the fourth of the month (i.e. the 4th of May ) . May).
- ↑ In the Mirror House chapter , Alice talks about boys collecting wood for a bonfire the next day, which is likely Guy Fawkes Day on November 5th, meaning that Alice will begin her adventure on November 4th. This is confirmed in Chapter 5 (Bread and Wool) when Alice tells the Queen that she is exactly 7½ years old (her birthday is May 4th).
- ↑ According to the rules of chess, a pawn who makes it to the 8th row of the playing field can be exchanged for any piece; Because of their great skill level, the queen is usually chosen (the pawn "becomes a queen").
- ↑ An allusion to the fact that the queen is the strongest and, above all, the most agile piece, as she can move an unlimited number of squares in any direction.
- ↑ see Red Queen's Race
- ↑ This alludes to the rule that pawns can move two spaces forward on their first move
- ↑ Both terms actually come from rowing .
- ↑ Hour: Charles Ludwidge Dodgson as Lewis Carroll. P. 188.
- ^ Ibid. P. 192.
- ^ Carroll, Lewis: Alice behind the mirrors , Insel Verlag, Frankfurt am Main, 2015 (21st edition), p. 74
- ^ Gardner: The Annotated Alice. P. 206.
- ^ Ibid. P. 245.
- ↑ ibid. P. 263.
- ↑ Susisa: The Place of Lewis Carroll in Children's Literature. P. 63.
- ^ Gardner: The Annotated Alice. P. 231.
- ^ Annotated Alice 296
- ↑ Hour: Charles Ludwidge Dodgson as Lewis Carroll. P. 187.
- ↑ Michael Gibson: Symbolism. , Benedikt Taschen Verlag, Cologne 2006, p. 73.
- ^ Gardner: The Annotated Alice. P. 233.
- ^ Ibid. P. 283.
- ^ Ibid. P. 288.
- ↑ Alice Through A Looking Glass (1928)
- ↑ Alice Through The Looking Glass (1966)
- ↑ Alice Through The Looking Glass (1973)
- ↑ Alice Through The Looking Glass (1999)
- ↑ Alice Through The Looking Glass (1987)
- ↑ Alice in Wonderland (1933)
- ↑ Alice in Wonderland (1951)
- ↑ Alice in Wonderland (2010)
- ↑ Susisa: The Place of Lewis Carroll in Children's Literature. P. 66.
- ↑ Alice in Concert (1980)
- ↑ Lookingglass Alice (2007) ( Memento from July 27, 2011 in the Internet Archive )
- ↑ Frank Schuster: The house behind the mirror. 2014, ISBN 978-3-944124-72-8
- ↑ Jabberwocky
- ↑ Mickey in Dreamland (1936)
- ↑ Donald in Mathmagic Land (1959)