{"id":8293,"date":"2010-11-19T03:13:21","date_gmt":"2010-11-19T03:13:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/?p=8293"},"modified":"2011-10-16T23:56:18","modified_gmt":"2011-10-16T22:56:18","slug":"scenes-from-a-carriage","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/2010\/11\/19\/scenes-from-a-carriage\/","title":{"rendered":"Scenes from a carriage"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"tenniel.jpg\"<\/a><\/p>\n

One of John Tenniel’s illustrations for Through the Looking-Glass (1871).<\/em><\/p>\n

The collaboration with Carroll, and the production of this clairvoyant illustration gave Tenniel the chance to accuse the killer, whose identity he knew \u2013 because he had, at some level<\/em>, shared in the crime. His capped (or crowned) Guard wears the Diamond and stares, eyeless, at the girl: because he is, or stands for, the Red King<\/em>. He is checkmated. The Goat accuses him, a Tarot Devil, representing ‘ravishment, force, fatality’. So Tenniel is able to put into his depiction of Alice the details of the murders that the police have never made public. The hands of the victims were always tied in front of them \u2013 as Alice’s are, within her muff. They were all strangled with a knotted scarf, such as the one that Alice wears. And a single feather was knotted into their hair<\/em>. I rest my case.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

There’s further divination by Iain Sinclair of Tenniel’s carriage scene in his 1991 novel Downriver<\/em><\/a> but you’ll have to search out the book if you want the rest. The picture above is scanned from my 1908 edition of the two Alice novels which has the sharpest reproductions of Tenniel’s illustrations I’ve seen, not least because they’re printed on quality paper. Later editions often print second- or third-generation copies with the cross-hatched areas reduced to black smudges.<\/p>\n

\"ernst.jpg\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Oedipus by Max Ernst from Une semaine de bont\u00e9 (1934).<\/em><\/p>\n

Tenniel’s carriage scene has always been linked for me with this collage by Max Ernst from his Surrealist masterwork, Une semaine de bont\u00e9<\/em><\/a>. Sinclair’s proposed murder scenario gives the two pictures an additional resonance when you notice the body on the floor of Ernst’s carriage. Is this Oedipus’s father, recently slain by his son, or some other victim?<\/p>\n

\"ernst2.jpg\"<\/p>\n

Lithograph by Max Ernst from Lewis Carroll’s Wunderhorn (1970).<\/em><\/p>\n

Salvador Dal\u00ed illustrated Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland<\/em> in 1969<\/a> which perhaps prompted Ernst’s own set of mysterious Alice-inspired lithographs a year later. I’ve yet to see a complete set of the Ernst prints, if anyone has a link then please leave a comment. The artist’s collage novel is a lot easier to find since it’s one of the many great books that Dover Publications<\/a> keep in print.<\/p>\n

Previously on { feuilleton }
\n\u2022 Through the Psychedelic Looking-Glass: the 2011 calendar<\/a>
\n\u2022 Jabberwocky<\/a>
\n\u2022 Alice in Acidland<\/a>
\n\u2022 Return to Wonderland<\/a>
\n\u2022 Dal\u00ed in Wonderland<\/a>
\n\u2022 Virtual Alice<\/a>
\n\u2022 Psychedelic Wonderland: the 2010 calendar<\/a>
\n\u2022 Charles Robinson\u2019s Alice\u2019s Adventures in Wonderland<\/a>
\n\u2022 Humpty Dumpty variations<\/a>
\n\u2022 Alice in Wonderland by Jonathan Miller<\/a>
\n\u2022 The Illustrators of Alice<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

One of John Tenniel’s illustrations for Through the Looking-Glass (1871). The collaboration with Carroll, and the production of this clairvoyant illustration gave Tenniel the chance to accuse the killer, whose identity he knew \u2013 because he had, at some level, shared in the crime. His capped (or crowned) Guard wears the Diamond and stares, eyeless, … Continue reading “Scenes from a carriage”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[2,30,42,1029,21,48,18],"tags":[745,218,787,374,114,112,87,552],"class_list":["post-8293","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-art","category-black-white","category-books","category-collage","category-fantasy","category-illustrators","category-surrealism","tag-charles-robinson","tag-iain-sinclair","tag-john-tenniel","tag-jonathan-miller","tag-lewis-carroll","tag-max-ernst","tag-salvador-dali","tag-tarot"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pq7rV-29L","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8293","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8293"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8293\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8293"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8293"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8293"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}