Biography Lewis Carroll
English writer, professor of mathematics at Oxford University.
Charles Ludwidge Dodgson (this is the real name of Carroll) was born in a small
village of Dersbury in the Cheshire emblem. He was the eldest son of the modest parish
priest Charles Dodgson and Francis Jane Lutwidge. At baptism, as it often
happened in those days he was given two names: the first, Charles – in honor of his father, the second, Lutvij – in
honor of the mother. He grew up in a large family: he had seven sisters and three brothers. Children
received home education; taught them the law of God, the languages and the foundations of the
natural sciences, the “biography” and the “chronology” of the father. Charles Dodgson was an
outstanding man : profound religiosity and university education combined in
with the propensity to eccentric, which often distinguished in England the clergy
.
The father not
ideas in children, but also helped them in every possible way. The inventor of all of them was invariably Charles.
With the help of the village carpenter, Charles built a puppet theater; he wrote
plays for him, which he himself played. Often, disguised as a fakir, he
showed the excited audience amazing tricks. For his younger brothers and
sisters, he published hand-written journals in which all the “novels”, funny notes from
“natural history”, poems and “chronicles” – wrote himself. He not only copied them in
small handwriting, but also illustrated them with his own drawings,
intertwined.
Already in these early opuses the young author’s penchant for parody and
burlesque is clearly felt. The well
– known lines of the classics-Shakespeare, Milton, Gray, Macaulay, Coleridge, Scott, Keats,
Dickens, Tennyson, etc.- undergo a humorous reinterpretation and alteration. In these “first half-serious attempts to approach
giftedness.
When Charles was twelve years old, he was sent to school – from the beginning of
Richmond, and then to the famous Rugby. It was a privileged
closed educational institution, which caused Carroll’s strongest dislike.
“I can not say that the school years left pleasant memories in me,”
he wrote many years later, “I would not agree for any blessings to live through these three years again.”
Carroll’s training was easy. He showed special interest in mathematics and
classical languages.
The further life of Carroll is connected with Oxford. He graduated from the College of the Christ
Church (Christ Church College), one of the oldest in Oxford, with honors in two
faculties: mathematics and classical languages - a rare case even for those times.
In the year 1855, he was offered a professorship in his college, the traditional condition of
which in those years was the adoption of spiritual dignity and the vow of celibacy. Last thing
The restriction did not bother the young mathematician, for he had never experienced a craving for
matrimonialism; but for some time postponed the adoption of the rank, because he feared that he
would have to abandon his passionately fond of it-photography and
theater visits, which they might consider too frivolous for a clergyman.
In 1861, he accepted the rank of deacon, which was only the first intermediate step. However,
changes in university status have saved him from the need for further steps in
this direction.
Dr. Dodgson devoted himself to mathematics. His pen belongs to solid works
on mathematics, but “he achieved special virtuosity in composing and solving complex
logical tasks that can confound not only an inexperienced person, but also a
modern computer. ”
Dr. Dodgson led a lonely and strictly ordered way of life: lectures,
math classes, interrupted by modest lunch, again classes, long
walks (already in old age by 17- 18 miles per day), evening dinner for a “high”
head table in college classes and again all his life he suffered from.
stuttering and shyness; Me avoided; lectures were given flat mechanical voice in.
the university, he was known as a pedant, he was eccentric and chu. ACOM
Dr. Dodgson wrote many letters Unlike his contemporaries, did not.
wish to follow the glorious tradition of the epistolary XVII -. XVIII centuries, it is not only
wrote letters, but also started a special magazine in which he noted all
letters sent and received by him, having developed a complex system of direct and backward links. For
thirty-seven years, Carroll sent 98,721 letters.
Carroll suffered from insomnia. At night, lying awake in bed, he
thought out to distract himself from sad thoughts, “midnight tasks” – algebraic and
geometric puzzles – and solved them in the dark. Later, Carroll published these
puzzles entitled “Midnight tasks invented by sleepless nights,”
changing the second edition of “sleepless nights” to “sleepless hours.”
Carroll loved the theater passionately. Reading his diary, which he recorded
the smallest events of the day, you see what place in his life was occupied not only by a high
tragedy, Shakespeare, Elizabethans, but also comical burlesque, musical comedies and
pantomime. Later, when, as a well-known author, he personally watched the
production of his fairy tales on stage, he showed a subtle understanding of the theater and the laws of the scene.
In his early youth, Dodgson dreamed of becoming an artist. He drew a lot – in
pencil or charcoal, illustrating his own youthful experiences. He even sent a
series of his drawings to the “Humorous app for the Times.” The editors rejected them,
then Dodgson turned to photography and reached amazing heights here, according to
experts, Carroll was one of the best photographers of the 19th century.
However, most of all Dr. Dodgson loved children. I felt like
an adult, I felt heavy and stiff with them, stammering, painfully stammering, sometimes not being able to
say a word, he became an unusually cheerful and entertaining interlocutor, it was
worth to appear in the company of children. “I do not understand how you can not not love children,
” he wrote in one of his letters, “they make up three-quarters of my life.” He made
long walks with them, took them to the theater, invited them to visit, entertained
them with stories specially tailored for them, which were accompanied by rapid expressive
sketches during the story. Communicating with children, the game invariably served as an impetus to the
creative impulse for Carroll. His best works are both tales of Alice,
poems – emerged as improvisation, although subsequently they were finalized very
significantly.
Dodgson only traveled outside England. In the summer of 1867. Together with his
friend Rector Liddon, he went to Russia – a very unusual
trip at the time. Visiting the roads of Calais, Brussels, Potsdam, Danzig, Königsberg, he spent
a month in Russia from July 26 to August 26 – and returned to England via Vilna, Warsaw, Ems,
Paris. In Russia, Dodgson visited St. Petersburg and its environs, Moscow, Sergiev
Posad and went to the fair in Nizhny Novgorod. His impressions, he wrote briefly in the
“Russian diary.”
Moscow with its “conical towers,” which protrude from each other, “like
“with” huge gilded domes of churches, where an
inverted city seems to mirror, “Vorobyovy Gory, from where, as
Carroll recalls, he was looking for the first time on the city of Napoleon, a wedding ceremony so unlike the
English rite, the” amazing effect “of church singing – everything impresses his
imagination no less than the “city of giants” Petersburg. ”
True to his attachments, he visits the Small Theater and Theater in Nizhny
Novgorod, admires the” first-class actors’ play. ”
More Carroll did not leave England. and he was in London, where he
continued to closely monitor theatrical productions;
usually spent in Guildford, where his sisters lived. There he died on January 14, 1898. At the
Guildford cemetery, a simple white cross stands over his grave. In Carroll’s homeland,
in the village church of Darsbury, there is a stained-glass window where Alice is standing next to the thoughtful Dado,
and around him are the White Rabbit, the Hatter, the March Hare, the Cheshire Cat, etc.
The first edition of the book “Alice in Wonderland” was published on June 27 1865g. , and in
December 1871g. readers also met with the second part of the book – “Through the Mirror and what
Alice saw there, or Alice in the Zazekalye.”
The first book about Alice was given to Carroll not at once. There are at least three
options. Little is known about the first two. July 1, 1862. during a boat trip on
a small river that flows into the Thames near Oxford, Carroll began
telling Liddell girls, the daughters of his colleague, the rector of Christ
Church College, a tale of the adventures of Alice, named for his 10-year-old
Alice Liddell. Fairy tale girls liked, and during subsequent walks and
meetings they repeatedly demanded continuation. From the diary, Carroll knows that he was
telling his “endless fairy tale”, and sometimes, when a pencil was at hand, he
drew his heroes in the course of the story in the strange situations that fell to their lot. Later,
Alice asked Carroll to write down for her a fairy tale: “Let it be full of all sorts of
nonsense.” Already in the initial improvised version of “stupidity”
we now call them even in Russian) were present alongside with more traditional
“adventures.”
Only in 1863. Carroll finished the first handwritten version of the tale, which he called
“The Adventures of Alice Underground.” However, this option was not given to Alice Liddell; in
1864. Carroll began the second, more detailed. With his small calligraphic
handwriting, he copied it by hand and provided thirty-seven drawings in the text, and the
first variant was destroyed. January 26, 1864. he gave Alice this handwritten notebook,
pasting on the last page a photo of seven-year-old Alisa (the age of the heroine of a fairy tale
).
Finally, in 1865. the final version, known to everyone as
“definitive text”. It seemed that this was all, but it did not
happen. In 1890, at the height of the first wave of fairy tale popularity, Carroll publishes a version
for children. Perhaps, in disputes that have been
going on around the book of Carroll for more than a century, all researchers are united in only one: the book has a double “address”: it is
designed for two levels of perception – for children and adults.
Why did I like this tale?
For the joy that this story is filled with. It really is a real
funny tale. Her heroine, the girl Alice, is a funny girl. The fairy-tale characters with
whom she meets are funny characters. And they say funny, and behave funny, and
even get angry ridiculous.
Still for what?
For the sadness, which is filled with this story. This is really a real
sad tale. And how could she not be sad, if it was told by a man who so clearly
felt how Time flies. Not to the example of the Hatter, of which you still know and who
was with the Time on an equal footing, Carroll knew too well that the years would pass and the
girl Alice hardly remembered her journey to the Land of Wonders. But he was wrong.
She did not forget this tale, as all those adults who read “Alice in
Wonderland” by children have not forgotten her.
For the fact that this really is a real scary tale. True,
there are neither fire-breathing dragons, nor evil sorcerers, nor insidious sorceresses on the pages of it.
Instead of them, Alice (and before you) will face the indifferent and cowardly White
Rabbit, the indifferent and formidable Queen Tambourine, the indifferent and thoughtful
March Hare, and many other characters who are all extremely
indifferent to themselves, except themselves.
However, the most terrible fairy tale is worth reading for the sake of going through it right through
to the end, and, really, this fairy tale has a good ending.
Lewis Carroll did not flatter the genuine Alice, as, flattering artist
paints a portrait and depicting the face of the original a little more beautiful, and the view a little more noble than
it really is. And in the tale Alice is the same as she was in her life: smart, glorious, brave,
kind and funny. And most importantly, not only smart, but also kind, not only kind, but also smart.
How much can the mind and kindness do when they are together!
Carroll
‘s fairy tales, with some external features similar to the humorous folk tale, actually stand very far away from it. This is primarily
due to the fundamental difference in the nature of the scheme itself.
Carroll’s attention to folk art is not limited to just a fairy tale. He
appeals to the song folk art, also exposing it to rethinking.
In addition to the fairytale and song creativity, the muse Carroll had another powerful
stratum of national self-consciousness. In the tales of Carroll came to life ancient images,
embodied in proverbs and sayings. A special role in the context of Carroll’s fairy tale is
played by patriotic madmen and eccentrics. They are associated with “that mighty and audacious”
folklore tradition, which is one of the most striking features of the national
specifics of English identity.
Carroll’s fairy tales showed his excellent knowledge of the theater. This affects
primarily the brilliant construction of dialogues. In Carroll, dialogue is always a
duel (and not just a verbal one), always a confrontation in which the
characters manifest themselves. No less expressive and theatrical are the reflections of Alice herself,
invariably framed as monologues.
A special role in the text is performed by the drawings. They make up for the spectacular aspect,
the lack of which, because of the lack of descriptions, would otherwise inevitably be felt in the text.
Carroll’s tale from the very beginning is directly oriented to them. They not only
illustrate the text; they fill it and clarify it. Drawings are an organic part
of Carroll’s fairy tales.
Another powerful layer in Carroll’s fairy tales is the dialogue-literary layer,
formed from parodies, borrowings, treatments, allusions. Carroll seems to lead,
not for a moment, a never-ending dialogue with invisible interlocutors.
Finally, another important level of Carroll’s tale is the scientific level.
Of course, it would be a simplification to represent it in the form of a single layer, it is scattered
throughout the text, it lies at different depths. In fairy tales, Carroll was embodied not only
Artistic, but also a scientific type of thinking. That is why logicians, mathematicians, physicists,
philosophers, psychologists find material in “Alice” for scientific reflection and
interpretation.
Finally, there is one more aspect to consider the genre of Carroll’s literary tale.
It was suggested by the English logician Elizabeth Sewell. She considers the nonsense of
Carroll as a kind of logical system organized according to the principles of the game.
Nonsense, according to Sewell, there is some kind of intellectual activity (or
system) that requires at least one player to build one, and also –
a certain number of objects (or one thing) with which he could play. Such a
“series of subjects” in nonsense become words that represent a larger
part of the name of objects and numbers. “The game of nonsense” consists in the selection and organization of
material in the collection of certain discrete “chips”, from which a number of abstract,
detailed systems are created. In the “game of nonsense,” according to Sewell, the human mind
realizes two equally inherent tendencies-the tendency to disorder
and the tendency toward ordering reality. In the confrontation between two mutually mutually
exclusive tendencies, a “game of nonsense” develops. Is it because “Alice
” turns out to be “the most inexhaustible fairy tale in the world”?
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