Cixous Carroll

Introduction to Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking-Glass and The Hunting of the Snark
Author(s): Hlne Cixous and Marie Maclean

Source: New Literary History, Vol. 13, No. 2, Narrative Analysis and Interpretation (Winter,
1982), pp. 231-251
Published by: The Johns Hopkins University Press
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Introduction to Lewis Carroll's
Through
the
Looking-Glass
and The
Hunting of
the Snark*
Helene Cixous
Concerning
a
reading
which
plays
at
working
HE READING which will follow settles down without
making any
bones about it inside Carroll's
text,
taking advantage
of the
remarkable work of
clearing
the
ground
which has been ac-
complished by
other
people.
Whoever wants to
survey
the
territory
completely,
to be informed about the different
biographical,
critical,
phenomenological,
and structural
aspects
of the work of Lewis Car-
roll,
should refer to the
publications
of
Jean
Gattegno
and Gilles
Deleuze.1
To be
honest,
the
territory
is so well
studied,
its stratifications un-
covered in
every
direction,
that it seems bold or even
impossible
"to
add"
anything.
That's
why
we're
going
to
play
at this
reading
"as if"
we didn't know
anything
about
preceding readings.
It suits us to move
forward,
with the
feigned
innocence-and the innocent feint-of
Alice,
following
the rule of "let's
pretend"
which
opens
the doors of
the House of the text: there we will work on the extraction of two
fragments,
in order to
pass
to the other side of the
Structure,
to
play
the
part against
the
whole,
and
fairly
and
squarely
to seize the
writing
and its adventures where it
pauses
for breath and
just
before,
as so
often
happens
in this
story,
it is cut off. In other
words,
let us reflect.
Or
again:
let's
pretend,
under cover of
reading,
to reflect the
text,
and
let us
methodically pursue
what
escapes
between sense and nonsense
and between nonsense and
appearance. Finally,
one should be
able,
if
one hasn't been thrown off the
track,
to
enjoy losing
and
relosing
the
game
in
many
different
ways: reading
as one dreams.
*
Introduction to Lewis Carroll's
Through
the
Looking-Glass
and What Alice Found
There/The
Hunting
of
the Snark. De l'autre c6te du miroir et de ce
que
Alice
y
trouva/La chasse au
snark,
tr. Henri
Parisot,
in
English
and French
(Paris, 1971).
0028-6087/82/130231-21$
1.00/0
Copyright?
1982
by
New
Literary History,
The
University
of
Virginia
NEW LITERARY HISTORY
Problems
of
Mediation
Translating?
In Alice's stories
language
works at all levels. The
organization
of
relationships,
of
series,
the
syntactical functioning,
the
production
of
meaning,
the
mastery
of
signification,
the movement from
designa-
tion to
expression,
the
totality
of
operations
executed
by
the
system
of
the
language
on its own
body
can
only
be
perceived precisely
if the ear
hears the beat or what makes the text beat: one should therefore as
far as
possible
have recourse to the
English
text in order not to miss its
effects. One of the insoluble
problems
that make translation in
gen-
eral so hazardous is this inevitable loss of all
types
of effect: no matter
how
scrupulous
and skillful the translator
is,
the translation is never
anything
but
another,
especially
when the surface of the
original
con-
stitutes a
play
of words as vital as that of the text of Lewis Carroll.
So here let us
point
out the value of certain effects for which even
the excellent translation of Henri Parisot can
inevitably
not find an
equivalent.
The
poems
are structured
by
the "noise" which
they
make in the
sense in
which,
in Alice in
Wonderland,
the Duchess
says,
"Take care of
the
sense,
the sounds will take care of themselves." The
rhymes,
echoes,
and redundancies attract the words and
deposit
them in
phonic layers
where
meaning
attaches itself here and there
by
acci-
dent. It's the sonorous site of that Nonsense which the
English
lan-
guage produces,
less an
"absurdity"
than a
system
of sounds whose
laws or hidden structures one could
probably
deduce.
The
style
of these
poems
in
English
is less conventional than their
French
translation,
with its basis of
alexandrines,
lets one
realize,
and
more
"whimsical,"
but it is as
grotesque
as
you
like,
and as the French
shows.
Humpty-Dumpty-Tweedledum
and Tweedledee: Let's
get
it clear here:
the
appearance
and
disappearance
of characters in
Through
the
Looking-Glass
is
apparently
not caused
by any
demands of the
story
and rests on a different basis: thus the
pawns
have their
places already
fixed from the moment when Alice sets the
game
of chess in
motion,
with the result that
kings, queens,
and
knights
are foreseeable
up
to
their smallest
gestures.
But it's
primarily
in obedience to the orders of
the
language
to which
they belong,
at once on a semantic level and on
a
phonetic
level,
that
Humpty-Dumpty
and Tweedledum and
Tweedledee make their
appearance
in a
cleverly multiplied
series of
echoes.
Egg,
full of
himself,
and master of words' desire for self-
expression, Humpty
refers
you
back to
Dumpty by
the
redoubling
of
his
very
name;
everything
comes back to what he decides to
be,
but
he's
already
himself
"quoted," repeated, imported
from the
nursery
232
INTRODUCTION TO LEWIS CARROLL
rhyme
which tells of his fall and his
breaking
into
pieces. Humpty-
Dumpty
is
produced by
the
phonemes
of his own name. While he
comes back into the book as the
plot requires,
the
appearance
of our
Egg
is an
example
of the double
functioning
of the
text,
at the level of
the
signifiers by
its surface
sound,
at the level of the
story by
the
association of unmatched sets linked to one another
by metonymy:
the
kings
call the
soldiers,
the
kings
and the soldiers call
Humpty-
Dumpty,
who calls himself. A
couple
in
himself,
the
Egg
makes a
couple
with the
pair
of
equally
round twins whose names-
Tweedle/Dum/Dee-revolve around a common
onomatopoeia
(Tweedle:
to scratch an
instrument,
to
produce
a series of
sharp
sounds):
complementary
rivals,
they
work
by doubling
and overbid-
ding;
their discourse is less a
conveyor
of
meaning
than a
producer
of
piercing
notes.
Because the
object
of Desire in this
Story
of Alice is a certain
knowledge
which cannot be dissociated from
language,
or
perhaps
language
itself,
the "other side"
frequently
refers to the sonorous
aspect
of
things
or of words. The
characters,
the
tests,
belong
to the
same
listening pattern:
their actions often
represent
roles in sound.
One can hear the battles and the falls
and,
in
general,
all the incidents
of the
Joust
as the enactment of an echo: in other words this book of
questions
never sends
you
back to
any reply
but
perpetuates
itself in
interrogation.
It's no accident if the confederate in Alice's transfor-
mation,
the
kitty-queen,
is an animal
deprived
of
speech-which
Alice
insists on
twenty
times-an animal which the little
girl
bombards with
questions
and which
"pretends"
not to understand. It is
necessary,
for
the
purposes
of the
whole,
that the
question
of the
subject
should
unendingly
come
up against
a refusal to understand and rebound
from
it,
and thus move from
point
to
point up
to the
leading question:
Who dreamed that? A
question
which
finally
turns on the
reader,
thus
sharply
recalled to the
reality
of his own role vis-a-vis the
text;
if Alice
is in the dream of the
King
which she
dreams,
the reader
may
be
addressed in the book which he reads.
Who reads? Who is there? Who dreams? Who is
dreaming?
One
can
imagine
some
simplifying reply
which would indicate the
origin
or the author: the title of the final
chapter
would seem to
point
to-
ward a
single
author: "Which dreamed it?"
(my
italics).
But the
quarrel
for
mastery
(of
meaning,
of
knowledge,
of
power)
rebounds indefi-
nitely
from
inside,
one
might
almost
say
from the inner wall of the
discourse: the text
appears
less as a
patchwork
("discourse
in several
pieces
of which one can reconstitute a coherent
version,"
says
Jean
Gattegno)2
than an
impossible
slide
along
itself,
a track which loses its
own
way,
a
slip
inasmuch as the text
slips
(in
the sense of
skidding),
233
just
as much as it
pursues,
since the
object
of this
pursuit
is
pursuit
itself as-and the
very recording
of the
gesture
here
produces
its
possibility-the very
condition of its existence.
Certainly
I'm aware
that at this moment I'm
perching my
discourse on the narrow crest of
the wall which
separates language
from the
place
where it settles its
own
affairs,
in the
dangerous
manner of
Humpty-Dumpty,
which is
also that of Lewis Carroll. It is not the
meaningless,
it is what
just
touches
it,
which makes this text
remarkable,
which
gives
it move-
ment, haste,
precipitation.
A text which
just brushes,
therefore a text
which never
stops,
not
only
because of the
chessboard,
which in itself
appears
to be
something
else
(see
further
on),
but because of Lewis
Carroll's
prophetic
deconstruction: if there are readers for Carroll
today,
it is not
only
because there are children to follow him
("the
child,"
an
imaginary species,
invented
by
a certain
type
of
psycholog-
ical
literature;
the "little
girl,"
a
complex
fantasm of Lewis Carroll's
own,
to which I will
return);
it's because he lost
himself,
as he left
these
mind-boggling
tracks,
on the side which is called
"modernity":
that is to
say,
a form of
writing
which doesn't settle in one
place any
more than a bird or an
operation,
but
skips,
flutters, moves,
"out of
breath,"
without
trying
to maintain sense or catch
it,
but moved
by
the
curiosity-in
the
etymological
sense of the word-which it feels about
its own existence: the
very writing questions
itself about what it will
possibly
be able to
say,
what it's
going
to
do,
how far it's
going.
Noth-
ing lasting,
no winner
(nobody
"wins" the chess
game
which finishes
in an
Apocalypse):
the end is
just
as hard to
grasp
as the
beginning,
and if
by
chance I am
tempted
to believe that I've
finally
seized some
concrete, solid, real,
heavy, capital object
(the
gold
crown,
for exam-
ple)
and that I'm
going
to be able to sit
down,
to take a
seat,
to
preside,
to
govern,
in an
atmosphere
of
inauguration,
of
political
or
religious
festival,
of
coronation,
then
"something happens":
a universal
upris-
ing
which seems to be caused
by
a reaction
against
the
Establishment,
which is mimed here
by
the
set,
overloaded table.
Nobody
wins,
no-
body keeps anything,
but
something happens
and the text is
pro-
duced: Carroll wasn't an
avant-garde
theoretician but a
scholar,
worried
by
the fact
that,
in
spite
of
himself,
his
knowledge
was un-
dermining
institutions. This is
why
the criticism of established
things,
and of the
Law,
of "the essence of all
governesses,"
remains
metaphorical
or
parodic;
the
game
allows subversion
by letting
it
happen
unknown to
itself;
every "egotistical" practice
(selfish
things!
Alice
exclaims,
whom the twins don't invite to shelter under their
umbrella)
is
denounced,
even in its
everyday
manifestations. Thus the
recitations which clutter the
meetings
are
literally weighed
out
by
the
pound,
measured out and chosen in consideration of their account-
234
able
length-excretions
of
memory,
which have the value of an
object
or a simulacrum of value for the same reason as the rattle is the
musical instrument which the twins
argue
about: the
derisory
be-
comes the mark of
property.
Surreptitiously,
the
story
which
subjected
itself,
by
the
intermediary
of the
chessboard,
to the laws of a
precise
number of moves is ev-
erywhere disrupted-beginning by
the
disruption
of the chess
game,
which is itself checkmated in as far as it is a
game aiming
at a
victory
according
to the rules-and defeats its own
game.
If Carroll were not the worried double of Charles L.
Dodgson,
who
insisted on each of the letters of his real name3 and
enjoyed doubling
those of his assumed
name,
one could see
Through
the
Looking-Glass
as
one sees the work of a
literary
machine. But there's no author's inten-
tion of that
sort;
Carroll wanted to tell a
story
to a little
girl,
the
story
loses its
way,
the little
girl changes,
Desire remains alone master of the
space
which is oriented
by
no
time,
while on the
edges
of the
text,
he
who
gave
the
signal
for
departure
laments,
and confides the
anguish
of an
ancient,
masochistic adolescent to its moist verses. The text
really
is
humid,
and it's
there,
between the banks of the dream
through
which the hidden
meaning
flows,
that are mirrored the text
and its timidities:
everything happens
as
though
Carroll,
instead of
taking
the risks of loss
(of time,
of
life,
of
strength,
of
meaning),
saw
himself at
risk,
took
pleasure
in
it,
exploited
this
pleasure,
while the
very
fact of
writing
down this
pleasure frightened
him out of his wits.
Several dreamers-readers-authors are at work "contrariwise" in the
same
way
as the two Tweedles-the one who knows that he doesn't
know,
the one who doesn't know that he
knows,
the one who doesn't
think that he's
expressed
himself so
well,
the one who sees that he's
afraid,
the one who's afraid of what he sees.
They
are what
anxiety
makes of
Dodgson-Carroll.
The axis of
patience/action
runs
right
through
the
landscape
and the
chessboard,
which also revolve around
the axis of
knowing/pretending
to know: if
Humpty-Dumpty
im-
presses
Alice because he makes words
say
what he wants them to
say,
he doesn't ask
any questions
about the
place
of
origin
of these words.
The main
thing
is to know who is the
master,
he
says. Actually,
who is
the master? While
Alice, obstinate, shrewd,
enterprising, ignorant,
curious, dissatisfied,
makes
people
write
(she
holds the
King's pencil
and the act of
writing
is
transformed,
another text stirs beneath the
royal
text),
Humpty-Dumpty gets
himself
said: Master of
meaning,
his
claims are
only
of
any
value in the world of
meaning:
he takes the
words,
but the
meanings evaporate:
he must
speak
to
get
the words to
consent,
and when he breaks off his recitation
(with
a
"but")
nobody
knows whether the silence into which he is absorbed is an effect of his
235
power
or of his
impotence:
is it
Humpty-Dumpty
who breaks off after
"but,"
or "but" which breaks off the discourse?
If there are words which come without
reason,
is it because I
wanted to
say
them
(then
I knew them
once,
and
they
come
up
from
the
place
to which I had
relegated
them,
and I do not
know,
and I
fear,
what
they
have to
say
since
they
have been
there),
or else do the
words
precede
me,
and do
they
come and look for me? If I make
sentences,
what do the sentences make of me?
Reply:
a Snark:
reply:
a
Boojum.
That is
quite something.
The
Hunting of
the Snark must be followed
until its
evaporation
in the
eighth
fit "in the middle of the word he was
trying
to
say"
...
softly
and
sharply,
in
every
direction,
the
right
direction,
the
wrong
direction,
the forbidden
direction,
that it can be
followed. "For the Snark is a
Boojum, you
see" is not
actually
devoid
of
meaning:
the hunt does
put up
a Snark in the
end,
an
object-word
which devours the
person
who
speaks
it,
which if it is not said cannot
be;
a hollow or a crack
which,
as soon as it is
split open,
closes
again
on
the
person
who is
opening
it. The
Snark,
like the
Subject,
can
only
exist in the
very
movement of its own
production,
which is at the same
time that of its loss. All that remains is to
go hunting
for the
Boojum.
Nothing
remains
except
the Snark who is a
Boojum.
A
Boojum
is
perhaps
the ..
jum,
or
perhaps
"a
passing
breath." Thus from S to
B,
and from K to
J,
one is carried
along
toward that secret
place,
un-
explored, perhaps unexplorable,
where science
gives up through
lack
or
incompetence
in its instruments of
research,
the
place
where drives
mold the breath into
phonemes.
And
now,
is the reader or the listener sure that he doesn't know at
all what a Snark is? Or
perhaps
does he think that he
knows,
or
sees,
after all? Before
language
who was he? And in his
beginning
what
letter drove Carroll
on,
from what S or K or W does he come?
What
chancy
desire
couples
Snark or
Boojum
thus
together,
so that
one cannot exist without the
other,
that one is the
other,
that one does
not exist if the other does
exist,
in that
nonplace propped up by
the
book,
which knocks the
props,
in the nicest
way,
from under the
reader?
If all Carroll's tale is
only
discourse,
so that discourse is
character,
subject, plot, reality,
etc.,
it is
only
so in a state of dissolution: even
talking
about the conditions of the work is
already reading after,
sus-
taining
one's
reading by
the
scaffolding
of the
ready-made
structures
of the
language,
while the text remains unattainable.
However,
let's
play
the
game:
we can show how the discourse
works,
catch it
showing
off,
accept
the
stage
of the dream as a convention:
and set in order what makes itself
clearly
visible
(even
if it doesn't
236
make itself
clear).
Let's
play
first the
game
of
meaning,
let's follow the
themes which it draws
together up
to the
point
where
they
are scat-
tered
again.
Alice
Through
the
Looking-Glass
or
the
escape
of
a text.
Escape,
from the
popular
French,
from
cappare,
Latin: in its
original
meaning,
to
get
out of the
cape, leaving
it in the hands of the
pursuer.
Thus it is with the
reader-pursuer
who almost
lays
hands on the
es-caped
text,
but never
completely.
In the same
way
it will never be
exactly
time for Alice to eat the
jam
if she enters the service of the
White
Queen:
symbolic
of the interdiction which
weighs
on all
food,
and on
consumption
in
general
or on
reward,
is the offer of
employ-
ment which the
Queen
makes to the little
girl ("twopence
a
week,
and
jam every
other
day,-jam yesterday
and
jam
tomorrow,
but never
jam today").
This stresses
allegorically
the
nongratifying relationship
which this book establishes with the reader: no
day
will be the
day
of
meaning,
but there is
meaning
on one side and on the other of the
time of
reading, meaning
both
promised
and inaccessible. Alice re-
fuses;
her refusals
give
to her
Crossing
its
trenchant,
energetic,
and
rebellious
aspects.
She never concedes
anything
but a little
time,
or a
little
ground, through politeness,
but she
resolutely
maintains the
critical
distance,
stronger,
more
impatient
than that which she dis-
played throughout
the
underground
adventures: in the
play
of forces
she
dominates,
as in
relationships
of stature. The world
through
the
Looking-Glass
is
reduced,
Lilliputian,
without there
being any
need
for recourse to
physical
modifications
(which
are so
impressive
a fea-
ture of the marvelous in
Wonderland).
On the
contrary,
Alice,
except
in the
episode
of the
rowing-boat,
remains
unshakable,
powerful,
and
full of
authority:
she is not deceived
by
the tricks of
others,
and listens
to
pleading
without
taking any
risks.
Observing
her close
up,
one feels
that there exists in Alice a certain
duplicity
which is hidden
by
a
pretense
of
"politeness":
the
only thing
childlike about Alice is her
age.
Her faculties of
adaptation,
the
compromises
which she unceas-
ingly puts
into
effect,
the
playacting
of which she is
capable
at
any
moment,
all these
belong
to the adult. Around her the characters of
all
types
are infantile. The sum of the
relationships
is marked
by
a sort
of diminution of
affectivity (less
pleasure,
less
violence)
simulta-
neously
with a diffused
growth
of
anxiety,
of uneasiness.
Something
is
lacking
or
presents
a
vague
threat,
and veils the former
petulance:
if
Through
the
Looking-Glass
is the
story
of a
surface,
which is told be-
tween
game
and
dream,
it is also the mantle of a drama whose obses-
sive features
produce
from the
very
first a
strongly symbolic space.
237
That is
why,
outside the
game
or exterior to the
discourse,
and ex-
amining
it from the
exterior,
the book
naturally
lends itself to a the-
matic
survey:
Alice-through-the Looking-Glass:
Read:
Alice/seen/through/the
mirror
Alice/through/the
mirror
seeing.
The
glass
for
seeing,
the
glass
to be
seen,
the
glass
which
sees,
the
glass
where I see
myself seeing,
and
seeing myself seeing myself,
and
starting
from there
reading
Alice
Through
the
Looking-Glass.
If one can
readily give
an
analytic interpre-
tation to Alice in
Wonderland,
this book lends itself less
readily
to such
an
interpretation; certainly
one is
immediately tempted
to think of the
Mirror
Stage
(in
Jacques
Lacan,
Writings),
and to take the whole ad-
venture for a
figurative representation
of the
imaginary
construction
of
self,
the
ego, through
reflexive
identification,
the other side of the
mirror never
being anything
else but this
side;
one could see in it the
advent of
narcissism,
thus the title And What She Found There would
point
toward the
discovery
of
herself,
through intersubjectivity,
a dis-
covery
which would be
triumphant.
And What She Found There would
thus be
split
into "what she
thought
she found there" and
especially
"what found
her,"
as one
may expect
that an
analytic
reflection bear-
ing
on the
Ego
and the unconscious should end
by putting
in
question
or between
parentheses
the
object-believed-found.
If Alice had be-
lieved that she had found
something,
one would
expect
that when she
left the House of the Mirror she would be marked
by
the
experience,
be
slightly
other.
But Alice "crosses" the mirror from side to
side,
and the
surface,
as
it
gives way,
makes
possible
an inverted
reading
of the world. This
reading
has as its essential
object Time-History-and
the effects
which the mirror inversion of its laws
produce:
inversion of
causality,
effect
preceding
cause. The effect thus becomes cause of the
cause,
the
pain
makes
necessary
the
cut,
the cake is
only
"cutable"
[coupable]
once it is eaten.4 One should read here a notable insinuation in the
choice of
examples:
it is the cut which writes in the
delay
and its
contrary,
the
leap-or
the revolution-in the order of
things,
or al-
ternatively
the
cutting up
(of
the
roast,
the
pudding,
the
fish)
as
though
through
a
disquieting
return of
breaking
into
pieces (right up
to the
moment of universal
overthrow):
the tales and the
poems
seem to
point
toward a sort of inverted
birth,
a sort of
regression
toward the
point
of
dismantling,
where there
gather together
all the fantasms
of
devouring
and
being
devoured. Even if one limits oneself to the
machinery
of frustrated
causality,
one must
recognize
in this time of
foreboding-about-to-come-true,
of the future
lording
it in the
past,
or
of the future
participle,
the world of Carrollian
Anxiety.
The moment
238
when the Imminent
jumps
onto the table will after all be
nothing
but
the sudden entrance of death where it doesn't seem to have been
invited,
in childhood itself. Carroll is a masochist but
also,
on the
side,
a bit of an
ogre.
Understated:
suggestive lfroleur]:
can
anyone
who reads the
open-
ing poem
not feel that
repressed
desire to
touch,
of which the
whole text is an extension? The last stanza is the
expression
of a
denial:
And,
though
the shadow of a
sigh
May
tremble
through
the
story,
For
"happy
summer
days" gone by,
And vanished summer
glory-
It shall not
touch,
with breath of
bale,
The Pleasance of our
fairy-tale.
I, Carroll, shadow
of
an
author,
phantom of my
desire which runs
through
this
Story
and makes its excuses
for belonging
to the
past-I
affirm
that I do not touch with
my
evil breath Alice Pleasance
Liddell,
pleasance of
our
tale,
she whom I wish to
please
and who
makes me think
of my
death.
Hard, bold,
without
hesitation,
but
equivocal,
the
queen
of the miss-
ing
teller
("vanishing"
is a favorite
procedure
of discreet
suicide).
Her
passage
and her return are
presented
as a
parenthesis,
similar to the
dream in its nature but different in its effects:
everything
which
hap-
pened
on the other side remains external to the
Subject.
Return could
be
experienced
as
repression.
If there is
something troubling
in this
outward
journey
and the
return,
it's what one
might
call its theatri-
cality,
or as we did
earlier,
its feint: Alice is not and does not want to
be either on one side or on the other but here or
there,
as a
visitor,
as a
tale-teller,
as neither a child nor a
grown-up,
neither out nor
in,
but in
fact,
in the same
way
as
portmanteau
words which are made
up
of
embedded
elements,
she is
subject
to this outside of the inside of the
outside,
to this
place
where the
language
is situated between
monologue, soliloquy,
and
dialogue,
to this one in the other in the
one,
analogous
to the
portmanteau
word: one cannot decide which of
the words is the
portmanteau.
But there it is. For the moment let us
think about one element which seems more
"portmanteau"
than the
rest and which we will call: White.
White:
taking
as
point
of
departure
the most exterior
space
of the
story,
one is from the
beginning caught
between fire and snow: one
sees Alice between the
wintry
window and the mirror
hanging
above
the
fire,
between
light
and its
reflection,
between white and red. The
239
Elements will work
through
and
through
the
text,
in
complex
re-
lationships
of
meaning
and forces where nevertheless white and the
words which connote it are dominant:
water,frozen
water, snow, cold,
etc. A winter
landscape
and what results from it. The
passage
from a
house to another house. Two
kitties,
one white
(innocent,
it has no
responsibility),
one black
(guilty
..
.),
just
as before there had
been,
penis
on
paws,
a rabbit with whiskers to entice Alice into her first
adventure. A skein of wool which
falls, unwinds,
gets
mixed
up, gets
twisted around the neck of a
kitty,
serves as a
ball,
but is
probably
intended for another use. Skein. Thread of the
story.
Alice mother or
mistress.
The
fire,
the snow will be found
again,
and the elements of
this first scene under kindred
guises
in all the
episodes.
Alice is herself
between fire and snow in the attitude of
desire,
of
waiting.
But she is
preceded
in this
"pleasure-nest" by
the
dedicator;
one must read the
strange opening poem
and its final echo to be
gripped by
the melan-
choly
which created this "nest"
(nest,
to
nest,
return
unceasingly, just
as
sun, sunburned, summer,
burning,
etc., return,
but stricken
by
cold
memory).
A sinister
metaphor
marks the fourth stanza of the
poem
with a fatal
warning:
a sad bed awaits the child and the
elderly
child;
wedding
bed and death bed are
superimposed.
How the elements are
displaced,
in different
shapes
and in differ-
ent
places,
as a result of the first
oppositions
which set the
story
in
motion,
in such a
way
that the summer with its
symbolism
and its
attributes seems to
emerge
from beneath the winter which carries it
within itself as
memory
carries a
memory
and as
writing
carries its
own unconscious: distillation of snow
through
fire,
of the white which
beats down on the
countryside
from the outside
through
the
green
of
Looking-Glass country:
the other side is not
exactly
an inversion but a
contrary
with its
charge
of desire.
Besides,
immediately,
the relation-
ship
of the
subject
to the elements
appears ambiguous:
the celebration
of fire has its effect on the coldness of the
atmosphere.
The
snowflakes endeavor as well to cross
through
to the other side of the
window. Thus there is set
up,
on one side and on the other of a
transparency
which makes one believe in its own
absence,
a wall
which rises
invisibly
like the
forbidden,
the theme of
breaking
through/repression
(and,
finally,
foreclosure in the sense that there is
rejection
of
any "signifier"-here
the snow inasmuch as it is
signifier
of death-which makes its return in
reality,
but on the other
side),
and that median
space
which so often causes an
abrupt
turn around in
the scenes. Take the door and the
speechless porter
of
chapter
nine:
Which side of the door is the side which
gives
inward,
which side is
that of the
reply?
The snow
flees,
driven
away,
checkmated
by
the fire
(bonfire
outside and fire on the
hearth),
comes back
by
means of
240
whiteness which connotes sweetness which is the
sign
of
physical
weakness or mental weakness
(the
timid White
Queen,
the
gentle
White
Knight).
It comes back
too,
we will
see,
by
means of the
rushes,
whose character is that the rushes that one is
going
to
pick
are
always
more beautiful than those which have been
picked--"the
real scented
rushes
melting
like snow."5
Following
the course of the water and its
avatars,
one sees the element
redoubled,
a
river-porter
with its banks
bordered with snow becomes
flower;
it dissolves and
reappears
then
vanishes in rain
(ch. 4)
which does not fall. In fact its thematic
opera-
tion is from the
very
beginning
diverted to serve the fantasm which
prevents meaning coming
into contact with it: the snow is from the
beginning
the kiss of
death,
the fantasm of old
age
which
only youth
can melt.
As for the
fire,
it breaks out with an
equally ambiguous
violence: as
a deterrent
force,
it
puts
on
quite
a show: as a volcano it is
Lilliputian
when it terrifies the
king
and the
queen
in
chapter
two,
or it sets fire
to
meaning
and reduces it to
ashes,
in the
language
of the Book-
reflection,
by
means of the
flaming eyes
of the
Jabberwock,
the
monster who is cut to
pieces.
The
fire-sun,
red
light, tangible light,
is
also
intelligible light, meaning:
it smolders under the words like a
Jabberwock
itself and
obeys
the
inconsequential
orders of
Humpty-
Dumpty
when he
interprets
the first
poem
of the Mirror
(ch. 6):
the
reading
of
Jabberwocky by
the
Egg,
an economical
polysemy
("I
can
explain
all the
poems
that ever were
invented")
is related to
transport,
and so is a
metaphor,
but a
metaphor
of
metaphor
itself,
a
transport
which makes its
way
inside the
very object
to be
transported,
the
portmanteau
word.
Besides,
transport
is itself a
major
theme,
and as it were
metaphor-
ical of
itself,
mirroring
itself as it makes itself available. It
is,
at one
and the same
time,
a theme of
displacement
associated with the
movements of the
air,
and a theme of
passage
which is
repeated
from
the outside to the
inside,
a theme of the
game
on the
chessboard,
of
the
trips
in the train or in the
boat,
and of the
message.
The Theme
of Displacement
involves not
only
the
wanderings
of the
whole text but
also,
by
means of
everything
which contradicts
it,
the
establishment of its
complement,
the
on-the-spot:
as soon as Alice
goes through
the
looking-glass (by
means of
melting
and
dispersal),
the surface
becoming
cloth
(gauze),
then
mist,
and enters the House
of the Same
(or
the House of
Mime)
and then
immediately
exits into
the
garden,
an exit acted out as a
gliding
dream,
one moves into the
appearance
of
depth:
as one moves from the
signifier
to the delusion
which it
constitutes,
or from the written word to the infinite
question
of
reading,
a
question
which is itself raised at
every square,
and often
241
even "consumed" or
passed
over
when,
through
an error or a bad
calculation,
it has been
placed
where it is threatened
by
a
pawn:
each
time
Alice,
or the
reader,
sets the
question
of
meaning
and one
meaning only
("what
does it
mean?"),
the
game
of
relationships
is
displaced
and transformed. The
pawns
and the characters have not
got
a fixed
place
but are determined
by systems
of movement which
constantly
renew the constellations of
meaning
and
give
a
plural
state
to
any
moment of the
game.
It is
impossible,
in the
space
of the
game,
to be an autonomous individual: each one involves all the others and
is
simultaneously
involved. The whole in an
atmosphere
of
violence,
for,
after
all,
this
game
is a war and moves toward the exhaustion of
the two
camps
(with
a minimal chance of
being brought
back for some
lost
pawn).
The
wear,
since the
game
is that of
chess,
is inevitable and
the
expense
enormous. As a
result,
in the last
analysis,
in an imitation
of
stalemate,
we
get
the motionless race and the theme of
having
to
get
faster and faster to
stay
in one
place.
To
change
without ever
changing:
the delusion of
History certainly,
but also the reverse side
of the desire for
immortality:
how hard one has to live so as not to
die,
how one has to
get
out of breath in order not to be
passed!
The breath
of
wind,
which carries Alice from here to
there,
forms a
pair
with the
breath so often lost. Between the
two,
as between the
Story
which
recreates the
pawn
(since
there is
always
a set or a
group
in the
book)
and the
biography
(the
desire of the
subject
remodeled
by
the
reality
principle),
blow
strong
winds,
"as
strong
as
soup,"
which
carry
off
hair,
pull
off the White
Queen's
shawl,
literally de/cape. Decapitate.
One should see there the threat of castration. The individual who
believes himself master of his movements
(progress, becoming)
is vic-
tim to an illusion: he is
always
determined
by
the structures which
frame him and force him to submit to scientific law:
constraining
nineteenth
century,
which shakes the
reassuring
foundations of
theology
and
replaces
them
immediately by overwhelming
materialist
determinism. Hence the ridiculousness of a belief in
autonomy,
or in
creative
strength
for the
exceptional
individual,
such as is
blindingly
exposed by
the
episode
of the White
Knight:
"I invented it
myself,"
he
repeats,
as he
collapses
at
every step.
His fall
(which
repeats
that of
Humpty-Dumpty,
a fall
equally
dictated in
advance,
even
by
a
nursery
rhyme)
is what he
accomplishes
with the
greatest
success. It is no
help
to leave on
time,
one
always
has to
run,
being
is born on the track and
in the
race,
the table is
set,
the desired hill raises its inaccessible and
provoking phallus,
but whatever
may
be Alice's
obstinacy
in
wishing
to reach
it,
the
already
drawn
path
corkscrews and carries her
away.
Is the
path
involuted or folded?
Displacement goes
side
by
side with enclosure and
changes places
242
with it: reversals and
comings
and
goings
lie in wait for Alice's en-
thusiasms and her nevertheless insatiable
curiosity. Certainly,
each
return to
zero,
to the
point
of
departure,
sets the movement off
again,
but
only up
to the
day
when it will no
longer
have the
strength
to leave
again.
Constant
wastage
of
energy, enjoyment
and
weariness,
work in
harmony.
In the end Alice
rejects everything.
Displacement
is
only permitted
within the rules which annul it or
limit it: on the
chessboard,
in the
cyclical
frame of the
seasons,
and in
the limited frame of the
totality
of the
countryside: hedges,
streams,
fences,
and
high points.
The
seasons,
the
day-night opposition
(which
is
invented),
all the false movements surround the
earth,
which
plays
with them as it assumes their reflections. The
play
of the four seasons
may
be taken
separately,
each one
involving
its own
mythology
in
symbolic
tradition and its familiar
props:
brown
leaves,
green
fields,
etc. These
props
are also too familiar and indeed subvert the differ-
ences
projected by
the
imaginary representation
of the four
periods
of the
year.
The seasons do
duty
as
limits,
as
frames,
and are no
longer
landmarks of climate but doublets of the
square; finally,
as
Humpty-Dumpty's poem
sets it
out,
they
seem to
organize
the
stages
of communication: in
winter,
I
sing;
in
spring,
I will
try
and
explain
what I
mean;
in
summer,
perhaps you
will
understand;
in
autumn,
take
pen
and ink and write down
my song
(winter
+
expression
+
present; spring
+
interpretation
+
future;
summer +
reception
+
future;
autumn +
inscription
+
law;
meaning
is
yet
to
come;
writing
comes under the rule of
law;
communication and
exchange belong
to
the order of desire and of the nonsatisfaction of
desire).
A
landscape
exists but it is
subverted,
turned into a
theme,
and so
uprooted,
the
figure
of another
space,
but visible and
green
in
oppo-
sition to the volatilization of the
element,
water:
Green: this
garden
into which Alice rushes is at first a real
piece
of
ground,
later extended. The
flowers,
before
being allegories
or
people,
are
planted naturally;
there is a
real,
soft
lawn,
... a
wood,
a
forest, trees,
but
they
have no name other than that of the
species.
Alice hides behind "a
tree,"
but
they
have no
specific property: they
are there to "make-believe" nature
which,
without
color,
without re-
lief,
without
properties, presents
an
image
"of the
great game
of chess
played
all over the world" which can be seen from the
(false)
hill.
It is
here,
before "Nature's
trompe
l'oeil,"
because of the renewed
dis-mantling
of the
ground/text,
that the
setting slowly gapes open.
This
gap
allows us to be
present
at the
scene,
the
only
scene which
really escapes
from
control,
and it is the same crack which shows us
the
sidestepping by
which the
game
itself is outmaneuvered. The
symbolic
denaturation of natural
objects
is inverted
by
the uncon-
243
scious,
which lifts the lid at the
very
moment when one no
longer
expects
it. And after the series of
fake-forest, mountain, streams,
gardens, suddenly
there
appear:
the real rushes! with a
guard
of honor
of sensual
qualifications,
a
bouquet
not of
people
or of words but of
signifiers, dazzling
return of the
dancing object-a
fin-de-siecle to
and fro between Narcissus and Salome-which eludes the
grasp again
and
again
and
again.
It is here that
everything
held fast
suddenly
takes its own
course,
but so
quickly
that it's
easy
to miss what is
nevertheless the true
raising
of the veil which is the text:
"Oh
please!
There are some scented rushes!" Alice cried in a sudden trans-
port
of
delight.
"There
really
are-and such beauties!"
"You needn't
say 'please'
to me about
'em,"
the
Sheep
said,
without
looking
up
from her
knitting:
"I didn't
put
'em
there,
and I'm not
going
to take 'em
away."
"No,
but I
meant-please, may
we wait and
pick
some?" Alice
pleaded.
"If
you
don't mind
stopping
the boat a minute."
The true rushes
escape
from the mirror in a sudden
upheaval
of
the structure. The
story undergoes
a disturbance
played
out
by
an
unexpected
element which has occurred in the
very functioning
of
the
game.
This lasts no more than the rushes do. The narrator and
nature renew the
pact
which makes them
accomplices
in
escape:
"Even the real scented rushes
only
last a
very
short
time,"
and these
"darlings" given
such
powerful
connotations have the fate of
snowflakes;
they
melt and lie at Alice's
feet;
they
are what snow is
when it falls in
dreams,
greeted by
shouts of
joy.
Subversion of the
landscape
as a result of the theme which is the
landscape.
The snow reassumes and remelts its water until
summer,
at
an
equal
distance from sense and non-sense. What can we
say
about
the adventure of sense at this
point?
The
landscape
is sensed to be
around the house which is around the room which is around the
mirror: the
embedding
of themes demands a
polysemic reading
of
what
appears
to be a
plaything
as well as a
game,
a
piece
of
machinery.
This
game
seems to be a
dazzling, prismatic
Effect: but
just
as Alice
sees the
signpost
which
points
toward Tweedledum's house and that
which
points
toward Tweedledee's house
repeat
itself,
which leads
one to
suppose
that two houses exist
(while actually
it's a house with
two
owners).
In the same
way,
this text is an
object
which works to
produce
the
appearance
of the illusion which it is: there is a
mirror,
but it's not on the side that one
imagines.
The mirror is itself reflected
by
those mirrors of
memory
which are the
fields,
the
sea,
the
streams,
and,
especially,
the
chessboard;
a vision of the world as a
planisphere,
244
an illusion of different levels which is
given
the lie
by
the
setting
out of
the chess
game, flattening
of the order of
meaning,
and
dispersal
of
relationships.
Flattening:
a contrived
polysemy
indicates and reindicates the other
self:
reality
is in the mirror which
was,
supposedly,
contained in the
room which was
contained,
etc. ... is in the mirror which in
reality
contains
them,
permits
them to
exist,
retains
them,
plays
with
them,
losing becoming
as it does so: the book moves without
moving
for-
ward,
and
reading
is
played
until it reaches checkmate. All this in the
end is
only
a leaf. And it is not to
produce
a
metaphor
to
say
so: the "is
only"
is not
only
the denial of the dreamer
who,
when he
wakes,
says
it's
only
a dream and
immediately wipes
it out: the
waking,
the return
to
things
in three
dimensions,
happens
in two
periods;
the first
period
is
destruction,
the second is the
period
of Alice's
story. Everything
happens
as if the other side had become intolerable
(or
perhaps
too
tolerable?);
the tension was taken to a
point
of such extreme vibration
that the text
suddenly
breaks off.
Alice,
attacked on all
sides,
screams.
And
wipes
out: "You're
nothing
but a
pack
of
cards,"
"I can't stand it
any longer!"
The
operation
of annihilation should be seen in two
ways:
first,
as a sudden return to the world after a
crossing
of the
mother
(the
two final scenes of Wonderland and
Through
the
Looking-
Glass are
superimposable:
Alice stands
up
to the
Queen
and
destroys
her
immediately
after
having acquired
her real
stature,
or the
mys-
teries of the maternal
tongue)
and so as Alice's
assumption;
but sec-
ondly,
as the realization of a failure.
Realization,
or desire to realize
the failure: for then
nothing
remains but to
immediately
move for-
ward to the second
period,
that of deferred
enjoyment,
that of writ-
ing,
of
repetition,
in
opposition
to the
paroxystic period
of the fan-
tasm. That is
why
the chessboard notes the
game
but is also its failure.
That is
why things
which were unbearable on the other
side,
heavy
with
anxiety,
are taken
up again by
the
story
(which
frequently
makes
sure we know it is on the other side
by
remarks like "and later when
Alice told..
.")
but without
anxiety.
What was violent becomes won-
derful at a distance.
Annihilation,
flattening, disaffection,
and
story go together:
that's be-
cause the mirror
wraps
the house and the snow covers the text. This
wrapping
of the house
is,
in
reality,
the whiteness of the mirror:
meaning
and
blank,
law and
death,
memory
and cold are inter-
changeable.
What is read in the mirror is erotic life and
death,
the
traces of the forbidden sown in the uncertain wake of the
signifiers;
the
poems
which frame the
story,
frozen and
concrete,
say
this in a
quite explicit way.
The
equivocal
nature of Carroll's
text,
its
general
dream
quality,
the scenes-fantasms-the
profusion
of
lapsus,
all
245
these
breakthroughs
of the unconscious which make their mark on
the other side of the silver
backing
are the traces of this frozen desire.
(Just
as Carroll was a
photographer,
a fixer of
light,
a caretaker of
images: photography,
the
retrospective
art
par
excellence.)
Two
examples of
scenes
of
desire:
1.
Chapter
one,
the
chapter
of Alice's
desire,
also records at the tex-
tual level the writer's desire:
"Do
you
hear the snow
against
the
window-panes, Kitty?
How nice and soft
it sounds!
Just
as if some one was
kissing
the window all over outside. I won-
der if the snow loves the trees and fields that it kisses them so
gently?
And
then it covers them
up
so
snug, you
know,
with a white
quilt;
and
perhaps
it
says
'Go to
sleep, darlings,
till the summer comes
again.'
And when
they
wake
up
in the summer,
Kitty, they
dress themselves all in
green,
and dance
about-whenever the wind
blows-oh,
that's
very pretty!"
cried
Alice,
drop-
ping
the ball of worsted to
clap
hands. "And I do so wish it was true! I'm sure
the woods look
sleepy
in the
autumn,
when the leaves are
getting
brown."
One should
regard
this
fragment
as
moving
between two scenes be-
tween which
reading
hesitates: these two scenes are each in their turn
the area of a
doubling;
and
yet
one and the other are moved
by
the
same
desire, insistent,
exclamatory, caught
between love and
wish,
which the edition underlines: the reader's attention is attracted at first
glance by
the
signs
of
lack,
of
expectation,
but it is the writer's ear
which is at first addressed:
actually
this
fragment
allows the
sugges-
tion,
to the attentive
listener,
of what one can
compare
to a
"primal
scene,"
which functions
here,
at the
beginning,
as the Ur-scene of the
entire
text;
the real and the fantasmatic are mixed in a scenario where
commentary goes beyond
what
actually happens:
the desire for in-
formation
(curiosity),
sexual
stirring, self-questioning
about the
libido,
it is the desire of desire which titillates Alice and
prepares
her
for
exploration:
what interests her takes
place
on the other side of the
pane,
and she
only grasps
its
noise,
as a result of which she recon-
structs the whole
relationship
between snow and earth.
The
subject
comes
up against
the window of
knowledge: against
implies
a barrier and so a desire to cross it.
(She
will not cross
through
the window to the true
snow.)
The scene
says
drive with an S:
nice-soft-sound
kiss
snow, etc., flutter,
a
phonetic production
of the unconscious. The same maneuver occurs
at the semantic level where cover and
quilt
cover and double one an-
other,
to be articulated at the zero
point
of
sleep, only
to be
rejected
at
the moment when summer
gets up.
But it is also
(and
which is "other"
in
relationship
to the first one cannot
decide)
a
mythological
scene:
dionysiac,
it is
played
from the moment of death/winter/burial until
the
waking
of
nature/summer/reemergence. Finally,
the distribution
246
of connotation
(color, movements,
noises . .
.)
implies,
in the whole
text,
not
only
the seasons but the hesitation between two
complemen-
tary
seasons.
Everything sways
between
seeming
and
truth,
dream
and
reality.
I do so wish it was true! .. .: the wish does not
necessarily
entail its
coming
true,
nor even the desire that the order of the fantasm should
come true in
reality.
The forests which seem
asleep,
are
they
or aren't
they?
The snow embraces and kills or
puts
to bed: it
suspends
life;
but
if there is
sleep,
one
may presume
that there will be
dream,
and hence
text. Then one can
play
with the ball of wool which
Alice,
in order to
clap,
has let fall:
globe
(skein,
guideline
of the
adventure)-if
it rolls
on the
analytic
axis,
it is the
mother;
if it
pivots
on the
mythological
axis,
it is the earth.
Unrolled,
it is the line without
beginning
or end
which acts as a
path
to the mirror.
2. The
outbidding of
the dreamer/the dreamed:
"If that there
King
was to
wake,"
added
Tweedledum,
"you'd go
out-
bang!-just
like a candle!"
"I shouldn't!" Alice exclaimed
indignantly.
"Besides,
if I'm
only
a sort of
thing
in his
dream,
what are
you,
I should like to know?"
"Ditto,"
said Tweedledum.
"Ditto,
ditto!" cried Tweedledee.
He shouted this so loud that Alice couldn't
help saying
"Hush! You'll be
waking
him,
I'm
afraid,
if
you
make so much noise."
"Well,
it's no use
your talking
about
waking
him,"
said
Tweedledum,
"when
you're only
one of the
things
in his dream. You know
very
well
you're
not
real."
"I am real!" said
Alice,
and
began
to
cry.
"You won't make
yourself
a bit realer
by crying,"
Tweedledee remarked:
"there's
nothing
to
cry
about."
"If I wasn't
real,"
Alice said-half
laughing through
her
tears,
it all seemed
so ridiculous-"I shouldn't be able to
cry."
"I
hope you
don't
suppose
those are real tears?" Tweedledum
interrupted
in a tone of
great contempt.
"I know
they're talking
nonsense,"
Alice
thought
to herself: "and it's foolish
to
cry
about it." So she brushed
away
her
tears,
and went
on,
as
cheerfully
as
she could. "At
any
rate,
I'd better be
getting
out of the
wood,
for
really
it's
coming
on
very
dark. Do
you
think it's
going
to rain?"
Tweedledum
spread
a
large
umbrella over himself and his
brother,
and
looked
up
into it.
"No,
I don't think it
is,"
he said: "at least-not under here.
Nohow."
"But it
may
rain outside?"
"It
may-if
it
chooses,"
said Tweedledee: "we've no
objection.
Contrariwise."
"Selfish
things!" thought
Alice,
and she was
just going
to
say "Good-night"
and leave
them,
when Tweedledum
sprang
out from under the
umbrella,
and
seized her
by
the wrist.
247
Here,
the
question
of
existence,
set between the twins who
comple-
ment one another and are
opposed by
Alice,
makes its
way
between
reality
and fiction toward
being,
but never attains it in
spite
of its
hops
and
jumps:
If
sets it
underway,
a
hypothesis
which raises the
question
and
pro-
duces the
space-but
the
King
remains on the other side of this little
scene,
there where the desire for
knowledge
and for
moving
forward
is
halted,
Alice is blocked
off,
seized
by
Tweedledum who takes her
wrist.
However,
the debate has wound its
way through
the verbs of exis-
tence,
looking
for a
meeting point, producing
as it moves forward a
system
with three
ontological pairs:
I am 1. I am/I am not
being/nonbeing
you
2. I/other
your
am
here 3. here/outside
outside
In
fact,
all the pairs which define the
ego
in a
logical
world are
questioned, apart
from the three selected
pairs:
these run
through
and
through
the chess
game
because of the
organizing power
of their
oppositions.
Thus the
plot
is a result of these
couplings:
attack/dis-
play, attack/display,
the
sequence
of blows delivered
by alternating
subjects
is set in motion
by couples
1 and 2:
(War)
dance of Tweedle-
dum/Tweedledee,
then
Tweedledee/Alice,
then Alice/Tweedledum.
As
well,
couple
3 reenacts the others: there
is,
of
course,
a fourth
subject,
absent,
the
sleeping King,
toward whom
everything
con-
verges: everything
which is said is said about him. Alice
occupies
the
place
of the
opposite
in
relationship
to the
King:
she is
present,
the
only permanent
feature in the
story,
and
except
for rare moments of
eclipse,
she assures the movement and
presence
of the
text,
some-
times with
uncertainty
in her
game,
but never
any deep-seated
un-
certainty
(even
her
name,
when it is
wiped
out in the wood of
forget-
fulness,
remains attached to her
by
one
letter).
As for the two
yelping
musicians,
instead of
replying
to
her,
they reply
to one another and
echo one another.
If + wake + added . .
bang,
imitate,
as in the
preceding fragment,
a rise and then a fall: when nearest to drive the semantic
rising
movements set
up
an overall vibration which comes
together
in the
diluted
totality
of a
great
semantic
unity
associated with
rising:
candle
is drawn into this
paradigm
to the extent that it is an erect
light;
but
248
although
it has connotations of
power,
it
(and
hence
Alice)
is never
anything
but a candle.
You'd
go
out,
bang
like a candle: the candle shows a
light (recalling
the theme of
fire)
and bursts
(phallic symbol),
but with an
onomatopoeia
which one must not underestimate. Its effect is
deep,
sonorous,
crack of a
weapon
or
bang
of a
door,
it's the sonorous echo
of a
suggestion
of
extinction,
strong
and
disproportionate
as in a
dream. It is not
only
Tweedledum's rhetoric which is exercised
here,
but also his
aggressivity:
at the
psychological
level the little man seeks
to
wipe
Alice
out,
to blow her out like a
candle,
to snaffle her like a
pawn. Bang
exclaims. Alice echoes it and the movement from exclama-
tion to the
expression
of exclamation
(exclaimed)
sets the
doubling
underway
at the
very deepest
levels of the
story:
in the same
way,
Alice's Besides outbids and
plays
the same
game
with added that
exclaimed does with
Bang.
The
rising
movement is sustained
by
a re-
newal of
aggression
which is still aimed at the
question
of existence:
what are
you
if I am what
you say
I
am;
what am I if I'm not
real,
if he
dreams
me;
who are
you?
If the
object
of her dream dreams her as dreamed in her
dream,
where is she what she is? An
exchange
of
being
between dreamer and
dreamed
perpetuates
the
uncertainty
and raises the
question
of
knowledge:
one comes back to the
question
of the
primal
scene. What
am
I,
I would like to
know,
if I am
engendered
in the
structure,
a
question
which
produces
an
anxiety
increased
by
the
very
existence of
Tweedledum and Tweedledee.
Moreover,
their manner of
being,
excess,
dysymmetry
in
asymmetry:
Ditto! Ditto! Ditto! their
way
of
relaying
one another with
slight
differences
produces
a
psychological
effect of enhanced
surreptitiousness.
The
reply
seems to
escape,
it is
always
elsewhere,
sometimes it is
already given
but without
content,
and in
foreign language.
However,
the
sequence,
noisier and noisier
(Bang!
Hush!),
produces
as it moves
along yet
another
couple,
that of
sleep/waking,
and all the
oppositions
which
accompany
them: reali-
ty/fiction, knowledge/ignorance,
silence/noise,
and so
on,
in a swarm-
ing
of other
pairs
which surround the
Subject.
I am real: this is
perhaps
the
great paradox
of the
Crossing
of the
Mirror. If it is written that Alice is real in the
dream,
then the
text,
insofar as it is
written,
denies itself. It
produces
the denial of the
dream which it
is,
since this
operation produces
the
escape
which
constitutes the written text.
Logic
of
meaning
on the side of the win-
dow,
logic
of lack on the side of the mirror: Alice is
asymptotic
to
being
in
relationship
to:
the surface which
separates
the exterior outside
the axis of
being
from the interior outside.
249
Tweedledee is all too close to the truth when he
says
that she won't
make herself
any
more real
by crying,
and there isn't anything to
cry
about. Lack is what
always
remains lack. "There's
nothing
to be
about." Because there isn't
any
other
side,
because one doesn't touch
the mirror even if one thinks one's
crossing
it:
Alice,
seeing
the whole
room of the House of the Mirror
except
the blind
point
where the fire-
place
is,
is at the level of
being
insofar as to
say
"mirror" is also to
say
that I am this mirror
(and
that
language
is itself the
thing
that reflects
rather than the
thing
which has
meaning).
When Tweedledee indi-
cates Alice's
lack,
he remains outside the
lack,
while she
struggles
inside
the
lack,
inside what remains outside
being.
She is
candle,
to the extent that
she is what one can blow
out;
but she's also
laughter through
tears:
If
the three
discourses,
which
displace
Alice's reflection from the
space
of the dream
(I am)
to the
space
of her discourse
(the real)
to
the
space
of her internal
discourse,
lead to an
impasse,
at least that
provokes laughter.
Outbursts of
gaiety,
movements
which,
both at the
psychological
level and at the
story
level,
produce
the same
rising
effect as
If.
If
by
chance . . .
As
cheerfully
as she could: renewed rise of
Alice,
who
stops crying
to
move on to another sort of
question:
this new
sequence
(Do
you
think
it's
going
to rain . .
.)
has the
strength
of
illusion,
which
gives
to the
subject something
to
go
on with after failure: as soon as the
question
is
asked,
a
big
umbrella is unfolded. The
supposition engenders
the
gesture
with remarkable
reciprocity:
the fantasm
engendered by
the
text
engenders
the text in its turn. The
darkening
of the scene works
in several different
ways: obscurity
of
meaning
(foolish, nonsense,
ridiculous), obscurity
of the
sky,
which demands rain. As if the rain
was a secretion of the absurd.
Besides,
it doesn't rain
except
outside.
Tweedledum extends the
umbrella,
which excludes
Alice,
protects
the
two characters but doesn't
protect
her. This umbrella in which
Tweedledum rolls
himself,
isn't it dream? Or could dream be made of
the stuff of the umbrella?
Last
mix-up-mixing
it: Tweedledum
(he
says
four times
no, no,
not, nohow)
moves at the same
tempo
as the text
(Strength
of the
spoken).
Alice
basically
is
isomorphic
with the characters she encoun-
ters: she is chosen
by
her
choice,
which is the character she dreams.
Only
the text
escapes, unexpected;
it is
up
to all the moves on the
board. "It
may,
if it
chooses"; it,
the
subject
which
gets away,
is the
escapee.
Free,
thinks
Alice,
who
has, however,
not broken the dream ... and
so she wants to move
away;
she
wants,
by escaping
the
cloud,
symbol-
ically
to
escape
the
night,
or
perhaps
to
precede
it.
But,
at the moment
250
251
when she
says goodnight,
Tweedledum seizes her
wrist,
and the
nightmare begins again.
Alice is
again
ensnared
by
the dream.
UNIVERSITY OF PARIS
VIII,
VINCENNES
(Translated
by
Marie
Maclean)
NOTES
1
Jean Gattegno,
Lewis Carroll
(Paris, 1970);
Gilles
Deleuze,
Logique
du Sens
(Paris,
1969).
2 Lewis
Carroll,
Logique
sans
peine,
ed.
Jean Gattegno
(Paris, 1966), p.
20.
3 Cf. letter of 27 December 1873:
"My
dear
Gaynor-My
name is
spelled
with a
'G',
that
is,
Dodgson
... If
you
do it
again
I'll call
you
...
'aynor:
Could
you
be
happy
with
such a name?"
4
[The French
coupable
means both
guilty
and cutable.
Tr.]
5 [The French translation adds "like snow in the
sun";
the
English
does not.
Tr.]

Cixous Carroll

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Cixous Carroll

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Introduction to Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking-Glass and The Hunting of the Snark

Author(s): Hlne Cixous and Marie Maclean

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