Showing posts with label Wonderland. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Wonderland. Show all posts

19 May 2009

The Innocence of the Infant Gods Whose Dice Decide Our Fate, Nietzsche, Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the Greeks, section 6

by Corry Shores
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[The following is summary. The image was obtained gratefully from here. The original text is reproduced below.]


The Innocence of the Infant Gods
Whose Dice Decide Our Fate



Friedrich Nietzsche

Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the Greeks



Previously we saw that for Heraclitus, everything is in a state of Becoming. But unlike Anaximander, things are destroyed in their passing not as a punishment. Rather, each determinate thing's passing is a justification of Becoming's goodness. Eternal change is sustained by a continual struggle of opposites. This perpetual instability is its "homogeneous, severe justice bound by eternal laws."

Heraclitus' metaphor of struggling fighters supervised by severe judges does not hold entirely. For, there is no regular principle that governs determinately which fighter will win. Much is left to chance. And also, those fighters themselves by means of extraordinary will are able to determine outcomes even despite deterministic laws standing in their way. So Heraclitus' Justice is of another sort.

Justice is merely the right to fight. And so long as strife holds sway, the becoming of every passing instant is justified.

This one continual becoming is the reason why the many things come and go. Hence, the One is the Many.
The contest of The Many is itself pure justice! And after all: The One is The Many.
But Heraclutus does not posit a duality between an underlying process of becoming and the many things that become. The One and the Many are actually identical. For, every moment is Zeus' game. [In the next section we see that it is Zeus as an innocent child rolling the dice that decide our fate.] So the struggle of becoming is always a game decided largely by chance. It is One, because it is always a game. But it is many, because the rules, players, tables, judges, and outcomes are always changing.

So there is always Becoming. But this does not imply that there is a "world of eternal and essential pluralities." Anaximander's solution was to deny true and essential existence of particulars in favor of the metaphysical "Indefinite." It might seem at first that Heraclitus' solution is similar. It could be that if humans existed for all eternity, they would see that really there is an endless struggle of eternal qualities.

However, because the rules change each instant, we cannot equate anything in one instant with anything in another instant. Nonetheless, all the many things are one, because they are all parts of a game, even though the game is never the same. [See this entry for Deleuze's explanation of Lewis Carroll's Chance Changing Games and see (8) of this entry for Gregory Bateson's account.]

We perceive a variety of qualities around us. But unlike what Anaxagoras would say, they are not eternal entities for Heraclitus. And contrary to Parmenides' claim, they are not illusions. They are real. Now, given the way the rules keep changing, can we say that at the end of the Queen's Croquet game, the hedge-hog balls were really the same as when the game began? Or do they not take-on whole new identities as their functional role in the game keeps changing? A chess piece is defined by its rules of play. Hence any object could represent it. But if the piece's rules-of-play change, then so would the piece's identity. Suppose your pawn reaches the board's opposite side. So you promote it to a queen. But there is no extra queen pieces available. We keep it as the pawn, but let it move and function like a queen. We cannot say that the new 'queen' is the same as the old 'pawn,' even though it is physically the same playing piece. So if the "game" of reality keeps changing like the Queen's Croquet, so too are the many things in the world radically changing, even if it seems there are common properties or "essences" that recur or sustain. Yet, because in each case it is a game that the determines reality, the many are one. But because the game keeps changing, the one is many.

Nietzsche will now explain how fire is the world-shaping force for Heraclitus. To do so, he has us first recall Thales' theory that water is the fundamental substance. Anaximander goes a step further. He says that in order for there to be the Moist, there must first be warm and cold. For, the moist emerges from the Warm and the Cold. But they arise from the primordial "Indefinite." And Becoming begins as soon as they do. Heraclitus now modifies and advances the theory even one step further. He says that the Warm is the fiery element of becoming. When water descends, it becomes earth. When it ascends, it becomes fire. Hence the three "chief aggregate stages" of becoming are Moist (water), Firm (earth), and Warm (fire):
from the sea ascend only the pure vapors which serve as food to the divine fire of the stars, from the earth only the dark, foggy ones, from which the Moist derives its nourishment. The pure vapors are the transitional stage in the passing of sea into fire, the impure the transitional stage in the passing of earth into water. Thus the two paths of metamorphosis of the fire run continuously side by side, upwards and downwards, to and fro, from fire to water, from water to earth, from earth back again to water, from water to fire.
However, unlike Anaximander, Heraclitus excludes the Cold from these processes. Anaximander claimed that the Moist emerges from two polar opposites, Warm and Cold. But Fire (warm) is the primary process for Heraclitus that is involved even when things become Cold. If coldness were absolutely antithetical to warmth, as it is in Anaximander, then when things become cold, they would cancel Becoming itself. So nothing can be absolutely cold for Heraclitus. Whatever is cold has some measure of warmth in it.

Heraclitus deviates from Anaximander in another way as well. They both believe that the world periodically ends by an all-destroying world-fire, and each time an ever-renewed world emerges from the destruction. But Heraclitus explains the cause for this pattern using this reasoning: the all destroying world-fire hungers for more world to destroy. When it completely swallows up the world, it is satisfied. But the Greeks considered satiety to be a form of hubris. The world-fire is self-satisfied, and it obtained its satisfaction by placing its importance above everything else in the world. As punishment, the world-fire must give-up the world he consumed. So out of the ashes re-emerges the plurality of things in the world. But then, this would mean that all the things which are becoming no longer justify Becoming. They are victims of its hubris, so they suffer from its guilt. They would seem to be condemnations of Becoming's guilt.

In the next section, Nietzsche explains the child-like and artistic innocence of becoming. The destructive events in the world do not result from divine anger or punishment. Rather, they are the products of chance outcomes rolled with innocently-infantile artistic intentions.


From the Nietzsche Channel translation:

6

Whilst the imagination of Heraclitus measured the restlessly moving universe, the "actuality" [Wirklichkeit]with the eye of the happy spectator, who sees innumerable pairs wrestling in joyous combat entrusted to the superintendence of severe umpires, a still higher presentiment seized him; he no longer could contemplate the wrestling pairs and the umpires, separated one from another; the very umpires seemed to fight, and the fighters seemed to be their own judges yea, since at the bottom he conceived only of the one Justice eternally swaying, he dared to exclaim: "The contest of The Many is itself pure justice! And after all: The One is The Many. For what are all those qualities according to their nature? Are they immortal gods? Are they separate beings working for themselves from the beginning and without end? And if the world which we see knows only Becoming and Passing but no Permanence, should perhaps those qualities constitute a differently fashioned metaphysical world, true, not a world of unity asAnaximander sought behind the fluttering veil of plurality, but a world of eternal and essential pluralities?" Is it possible that however violently he had denied such duality, Heraclitus has after all by a round-about way accidentally got into the dual cosmic order, an order with an Olympus of numerous immortal gods and demons, viz., manyrealities, and with a human world, which sees only the dust cloud of the Olympic struggle and the flashing of divine spears, i.e., only a Becoming? Anaximander had fled just from these definite qualities into the lap of the metaphysical "Indefinite"; because the former became and passed, he had denied them a true and essential existence; however should it not seem now as if the Becoming is only the looming into view of a struggle of eternal qualities? When we speak of the Becoming, should not the original cause of this be sought in the peculiar feebleness of human cognition whereas in the nature of things there is perhaps no Becoming, but only a coexisting of many true increase indestructible realities?

These are un-Heraclitean loopholes and labyrinths; he exclaims once again: "The One is the Many." The many perceptible qualities are neither eternal entities, nor phantasmata of our senses (Anaxagoras conceives them later on as the former, Parmenides as the latter), they are neither rigid, sovereign Being nor fleeting appearance hovering in human minds. The third possibility which alone was left to Heraclitus nobody will be able to divine with dialectic sagacity and as it were by calculation, for what he invented here is a rarity even in the realm of mysticincredibilities and unexpected cosmic metaphors. The world is the gameof Zeus, or expressed more physically, the game of fire with itself, the One is only in this sense at the same time the Many. —

In order to elucidate in the first place the introduction of fire as a world-shaping force, I recall how Anaximander had further developed the theory of water as the origin of things. Placing confidence in the essential part of Thales' theory, and strengthening and adding to the latter's observations, Anaximander however was not to be convinced that before the water and, as it were, after the water there was no further stage of quality: no, to him out of the Warm and the Cold the Moist seemed to form itself, and the Warm and the Cold therefore were supposed to be the preliminary stages, the still more original qualities. With their issuing forth from the primordial existence of the "Indefinite," Becoming begins. Heraclitus who as physicist subordinated himself to the importance of Anaximander, explains to himself this Anaximandrian Warm as the respiration, the warm breath, the dry vapors, in short as the fiery element: about this fire he now enunciates the same as Thales and Anaximander had enunciated about the water: that in innumerable metamorphoses it was passing along the path of Becoming, especially in the three chief aggregate stages as something Warm, Moist, and Firm. For water in descending is transformed into earth, in ascending into fire: or as Heraclitus appears to have expressed himself more exactly: from the sea ascend only the pure vapors which serve as food to the divine fire of the stars, from the earth only the dark, foggy ones, from which the Moist derives its nourishment.The pure vapors are the transitional stage in the passing of sea into fire, the impure the transitional stage in the passing of earth into water. Thus the two paths of metamorphosis of the fire run continuously side by side, upwards and downwards, to and fro, from fire to water, from water to earth, from earth back again to water, from water to fire. Whereas Heraclitus is a follower of Anaximander in the most important of these conceptions, e.g., that the fire is kept up by the evaporations, or herein, that out of the water is dissolved partly earth, partly fire; he is on the other hand quite independent and in opposition to Anaximander in excluding the "Cold" from the physical process, whilst Anaximander had put it side by side with the "Warm" as having the same rights, so as to letthe "Moist" originate out of both. To do so, was of course a necessity to Heraclitus, for if everything is to be fire, then, however many possibilities of its transformation might be assumed, nothing can exist that would be the absolute antithesis to fire; he has, therefore, probably interpreted only as a degree of the"Warm" that which is called the "Cold," and he could justify this interpretation without difficulty. Much more important than this deviation from the doctrine of Anaximander is a further agreement; he, like the latter, believes in an end of the world periodically repeating itself and in an ever-renewed emerging of another world out of the all-destroying world-fire. The period during which the world hastens towards that world-fire and the dissolution into pure fire is characterized by him most strikingly as a demand and a need; the state of being completely swallowed up by the fire as satiety; and now to us remains the question as to how he understood and named the newly awakening impulse for world-creation, the pouring-out-of-itself into the forms of plurality. The Greek proverb seems talcum to our assistance with the thought that "satiety gives birth to crime (the hybris)" and one may indeed ask oneself for a minute whether perhaps Heraclitus has derived that return to plurality out of the hybris. Let us just take this thought seriously: in its light the face of Heraclitus changes before our eyes, the proud gleam of his eyes dies out, a wrinkled expression of painful resignation, of impotence becomes distinct, it seems that we know why later antiquity called him the "weeping philosopher." Is not the whole world process now an act of punishment of the hybris? The plurality the result of a crime? The transformation of the pure into the impure, the consequence of injustice? Is not the guilt now shifted into the essence of the things and indeed, the world of Becoming and of individuals accordingly exonerated from guilt; yet at the same time are they not condemned for ever and ever to bear the consequences of guilt?


Nietzsche, Friedrich. Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the Greeks. Available online at: http://www.geocities.com/thenietzschechannel/ptra.htm

PDF of Maximilian A. Mügge translation available at

http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924021569151

It is found on page 71 of the above book.


The image of Murillo Bartolomé Esteban's Young Boys Playing Dice obtained gratefully from:

Posted by Corry Shores at 5/19/2009 04:56:00 am 0 comments
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18 May 2009

Carroll's Games of Chance, Bacon's Controlled Chance, Pollock's "F__ing" Chance Operations, Cage's "Hazard of the Dice" & Brakhage's Colored Chaos


[The following is taken from my master's thesis, The Rhythm of Sensation on the Surface of Sense: Communication in Deleuze as NonSensed and Intense, pages 102, 112-113. Completed, defended, and archived June 2008]


Games of Skill, Carroll's Games of Chance,
Bacon's Controlled Chance,
Pollock's "F__ing" Chance Operations,
Cage's "Hazard of the Dice," and
Brakhage's Controled Color Chaos

The introduction of chance through diagramming endows the painting with rhythm;[1] for, it throws the formal regularities into disarrays which no mental calculation could have formulated, and thus the viewer’s faculties will never be able to synchronize and harmonize in agreement over a common recognition. For Deleuze, real artistic creation and thinking come about only when they affirm chance, but they do not do this by completely submitting to the random.

Deleuze distinguishes two sorts of games that make use of chance. In games of skill, the rules are fixed in advance; and, the element of randomness, the dice, is introduced in a controlled way that has no influence on those rules; it merely helps to determine a winner and loser. Games of chance, however, have changing rules, “each move invents its own rules;” that is to say, random events in this game change the very way the game is played. Deleuze illustrates by referencing the chaotic games Carroll portrays in Alice in Wonderland, yet he claims that a game of chance may “only exist in thought” and have “no other result than the work of art;” for, each dice-throw produces the aleatory point, which forces together incompatible series.[2] This is precisely Bacon’s diagramming technique: before making his involuntary marks, there is a different probability for what images can be placed into which zones of the canvass; for example, the more important figurations would more likely be placed in the center. Action painting equalizes those probabilities by painting past the canvass’ edges and letting the splatters land by pure chance. Abstract painting, accomplishes the opposite by predetermining with mathematical precision how the images are to be distributed, which almost entirely eliminates the element of chance. However, when Bacon diagrams with his involuntary marks, he creates new probabilities for the distribution of images, and he opens new possible dimensions and directions to take the painting. He neither obeys the rigid pre-formed unequal probabilities, nor does he reduce the painting to a single zone of equal probability; rather, he creates entirely new sets of possibilities and limitations.[3] Yet, Bacon’s chance is not totally blind; he explains that although his cleaning woman could take a handful of paint and throw it upon the canvass to produce a viable diagram, she most likely would not produce a fruitful outcome, because accident for him is a controlled chance: he has practiced throwing paint long enough to be able to aim its trajectory somewhat.[4]

Director Stan Brakhage narrates a story illustrating that Pollock’s aimed throws are also a sort of controlled chance.[5]

This misnomered painting was essentially finished and hung stuck on the walls of Pollock’s barn, and Pollock was dead drunk with a quart of whisky beside him, two-thirds down. And these New York painters . . . used the word ‘chance operations,’ which . . . really angered very deeply Pollock, and he said, ‘don’t give me any of your fucking “chance operations,”’ he said, ‘you see that doorknob?’ And there was a doorknob about [15 meters] from where he was sitting, that was in fact the door that everyone was going to have to exit-by. And drunk as he was, he just with one swirl of his brush, picked up a glob of paint, hurled it, and hit that doorknob smack-on with very little paint over the edges, and then he said, ‘And that’s the way out.’

Brakhage likewise does not see chance operations in John Cage’s works, which he created using the “hazard of the dice;” for, Cage rejected almost all the outcomes, until arriving upon one that seemed to express his “soul.” It needed to be a work that, although created by chance, was still something he could authenticate with his signature and take responsibility-for. Brakhage explains that his own chaotic color images come about much this way.[6]

It is for this reason that Bacon may enhance the force of communication; he both blends order & chaos while also maximizing the tension between them. Thus, our faculties remain farthest apart from each other, all while being under a profound pressure to try to synchronize; for, there is an element of order for them to recognize, but the diagrammed chaos keeps such a representation always at bay.


[1] “The painting thus becomes a catastrophe-painting and a diagram-painting at one and the same time. This time, it is at the point closest to catastrophe, in absolute proximity, that modern man discovers rhythm,” Francis Bacon: Logic of Sensation, Transl. Daniel W. Smith, (London: Continuum Books, 2003), p.74. Francis Bacon : Logique du la sensation (Paris : Les Éditions du Seuil, 2002), p.98-99.

[2] Gilles Deleuze, Logic of Sense, Transl. Mark Lester (London: Columbia University Press, 1990, reprinted by Continuum, 2001), p.69-71. Logique de sens, (Paris: Les Éditions de Minuit, 1969), p.74-75.

[3] Logic of Sensation, p.65-66. Logique de la Sensation, p.88-89.

[4] Francis Bacon & David Sylvester, The Brutality of Fact: Interviews with Francis Bacon 1962-1979, (New York: Thames and Hudson, 1975), p.92.

[5] Stan Brakhage, Encounters 1.

[6] Brakhage, Encounters.



Posted by Corry Shores at 5/18/2009 01:26:00 pm 0 comments
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5 Apr 2009

Carroll's Wild Game. "The Queen's Croquet-Ground" in Alice's Adventures in Wonderland

[The following is summary. The full text is provided below. Image credits are given at the end.]


Lewis Carroll

Alice's Adventures in Wonderland

Chapter VIII: The Queen's Croquet-Ground


Playing-card gardeners paint white roses red. [Image 1.]



Alice nears. They rebuke each other for carelessly splashing paint. Five insults Seven, who angrily throws his wet brush to the ground.

Alice interrupts. She asks why they paint roses. Card Two explains that they were supposed to plant red roses instead. If the Queen learned, she would behead them.

Suddenly Five calls out that the Queen has arrived. The gardeners fall flat upon the ground.

The royal procession ensues. The Queen demands Alice's name. She responds politely. The Queen then asks who the fallen cards are. [2]



When Alice says it's none of her business, the Queen calls for her head. The King calms the Queen, who demands the Knave flip-over the cards. The gardeners rise and try explaining their deed. Before they can even begin, the Queen calls for their heads.

Then the Queen asks Alice if she plays croquet. Alice shouts her affirmation: "Yes!" Then the girl asks the White Rabbit where the Duchess is. He explains she has been imprisoned for boxing the Queen's ears.

The Queen demands everyone take their places, and the game begins.
Alice thought she had never seen such a curious croquet-ground in her life; it was all ridges and furrows; the balls were live hedgehogs, the mallets live flamingoes, and the soldiers had to double themselves up and to stand on their hands and feet, to make the arches.
[3]



Alice's first difficulty is holding the flamingo straight. She firmly tucks its body under her arm. But as soon as she swings it to hit the hedgehog-ball, the flamingo rebels. It twists its neck in a loop to raise its head, looking squarely into Alice's eyes. All the while, the hedgehog unrolls himself, and begins crawling away. [4]


besides all this, there was generally a ridge or furrow in the way wherever she wanted to send the hedgehog to, and, as the doubled-up soldiers were always getting up and walking off to other parts of the ground, Alice soon came to the conclusion that it was a very difficult game indeed.
The players all played at once without waiting for turns, quarrelling all the while, and fighting for the hedgehogs; and in a very short time the Queen was in a furious passion, and went stamping about, and shouting `Off with his head!' or `Off with her head!' about once in a minute.
Alice fears the confusion, and seeks secret escape.

Just then, she notices the Cheshire Cat's grin hover in the air. The disembodied mouth asks how Alice is doing. Gradually the Cat's head appears.
The players all played at once without waiting for turns, quarrelling all the while, and fighting for the hedgehogs; and in a very short time the Queen was in a furious passion, and went stamping about, and shouting `Off with his head!' or `Off with her head!' about once in a minute.
The cat asks Alice's opinion of the Queen. Seeing her approach, Alice says she thinks the Queen was so likely to win that there is no need to finish playing. The King asks Alice who she speaks-to. So she introduces the Cheshire Cat. He behaves rudely toward the King, who demands his removal. The Queen calls for his head.

Alice returns to the game. The Queen screams with passion, calling for the execution of players who missed their turns.
she did not like the look of things at all, as the game was in such confusion that she never knew whether it was her turn or not. So she went in search of her hedgehog.
But the hedgehog ball was fighting with another ball. So Alice decides to croquet one with the other. But her flamingo had escaped across the garden, trying to fly up into a tree to hide.
By the time she had caught the flamingo and brought it back, the fight was over, and both the hedgehogs were out of sight: `but it doesn't matter much,' thought Alice, `as all the arches are gone from the side of the ground.'
So Alice returns to the Cheshire Cat. But when she arrives, she sees commotion. [5]



The King, Queen, and executioner dispute. They each explain their argument to Alice.

The executioner claims that you cannot behead the Cat, because there is no body to sever it from. The King argues that anything with a head can be beheaded. To say otherwise is nonsense. The Queen threatens to cut off everyone's head if someone does not find a solution.

Alice explains that the Cat belongs to the Duchess, so they had better ask her. The Queen demands the Duchess be fetched from prison.
The Cat's head began fading away the moment he was gone, and, by the time he had disappeared; so the King and the executioner ran wildly up and down looking for it, while the rest of the party went back to the game.


From the original text:

CHAPTER VIII

THE QUEEN'S CROQUET-GROUND

A large rose-tree stood near the entrance of the garden: the roses growing on it were white, but there were three gardeners at it, busily painting them red. Alice thought this a very curious thing, and she went nearer to watch them, and just as she came up to them she heard one of them say, `Look out now, Five! Don't go splashing paint over me like that!'

`I couldn't help it,' said Five, in a sulky tone; `Seven jogged my elbow.'

On which Seven looked up and said, `That's right, Five! Always lay the blame on others!'

`You'd better not talk!'said Five. `I heard the Queen say only yesterday you deserved to be beheaded!'

`What for?' said the one who had spoken first.

`That's none of your business, Two!' said Seven.

`Yes, it is his business!' said Five, `and I'll tell him--it was for bringing the cook tulip-roots instead of onions.'

Seven flung down his brush, and had just begun `Well, of all the unjust things--' when his eye chanced to fall upon Alice, as she stood watching them, and he checked himself suddenly: the others looked round also, and all of them bowed low.

`Would you tell me,' said Alice, a little timidly, `why you are painting those roses?'

Five and Seven said nothing, but looked at Two. Two began in a low voice, `Why the fact is, you see, Miss, this here ought to have been a red rose-tree, and we put a white one in by mistake; and if the Queen was to find it out, we should all have our heads cut off, you know. So you see, Miss, we're doing our best, afore she comes, to--' At this moment Five, who had been anxiously looking across the garden, called out `The Queen! The Queen!' and the three gardeners instantly threw themselves flat upon their faces. There was a sound of many footsteps, and Alice looked round, eager to see the Queen.

First came ten soldiers carrying clubs; these were all shaped like the three gardeners, oblong and flat, with their hands and feet at the corners: next the ten courtiers; these were ornamented all over with diamonds, and walked two and two, as the soldiers did. After these came the royal children; there were ten of them, and the little dears came jumping merrily along hand in hand, in couples: they were all ornamented with hearts. Next came the guests, mostly Kings and Queens, and among them Alice recognised the White Rabbit: it was talking in a hurried nervous manner, smiling at everything that was said, and went by without noticing her. Then followed the Knave of Hearts, carrying the King's crown on a crimson velvet cushion; and, last of all this grand procession, came THE KING AND QUEEN OF HEARTS.

Alice was rather doubtful whether she ought not to lie down on her face like the three gardeners, but she could not remember every having heard of such a rule at processions; `and besides, what would be the use of a procession,' thought she, `if people had all to lie down upon their faces, so that they couldn't see it?' So she stood still where she was, and waited.

When the procession came opposite to Alice, they all stopped and looked at her, and the Queen said severely `Who is this?' She said it to the Knave of Hearts, who only bowed and smiled in reply.

`Idiot!' said the Queen, tossing her head impatiently; and, turning to Alice, she went on, `What's your name, child?'

`My name is Alice, so please your Majesty,' said Alice very politely; but she added, to herself, `Why, they're only a pack of cards, after all. I needn't be afraid of them!'

`And who are these?' said the Queen, pointing to the three gardeners who were lying round the rosetree; for, you see, as they were lying on their faces, and the pattern on their backs was the same as the rest of the pack, she could not tell whether they were gardeners, or soldiers, or courtiers, or three of her own children.

`How should I know?' said Alice, surprised at her own courage. `It's no business of mine.'

The Queen turned crimson with fury, and, after glaring at her for a moment like a wild beast, screamed`Off with her head! Off--'

`Nonsense!' said Alice, very loudly and decidedly, and the Queen was silent.

The King laid his hand upon her arm, and timidly said `Consider, my dear: she is only a child!'

The Queen turned angrily away from him, and said to the Knave `Turn them over!'

The Knave did so, very carefully, with one foot.

`Get up!' said the Queen, in a shrill, loud voice, and the three gardeners instantly jumped up, and began bowing to the King, the Queen, the royal children, and everybody else.

`Leave off that!' screamed the Queen. `You make me giddy.' And then, turning to the rose-tree, she went on, `What have you been doing here?'

`May it please your Majesty,' said Two, in a very humble tone, going down on one knee as he spoke, `we were trying--'

`I see!' said the Queen, who had meanwhile been examining the roses. `Off with their heads!' and the procession moved on, three of the soldiers remaining behind to execute the unfortunate gardeners, who ran to Alice for protection.

`You shan't be beheaded!' said Alice, and she put them into a large flower-pot that stood near. The three soldiers wandered about for a minute or two, looking for them, and then quietly marched off after the others.

`Are their heads off?' shouted the Queen.

`Their heads are gone, if it please your Majesty!' the soldiers shouted in reply.

`That's right!' shouted the Queen. `Can you play croquet?'

The soldiers were silent, and looked at Alice, as the question was evidently meant for her.

`Yes!' shouted Alice.

`Come on, then!' roared the Queen, and Alice joined the procession, wondering very much what would happen next.

`It's--it's a very fine day!' said a timid voice at her side. She was walking by the White Rabbit, who was peeping anxiously into her face.

`Very,' said Alice: `--where's the Duchess?'

`Hush! Hush!' said the Rabbit in a low, hurried tone. He looked anxiously over his shoulder as he spoke, and then raised himself upon tiptoe, put his mouth close to her ear, and whispered `She's under sentence of execution.'

`What for?' said Alice.

`Did you say "What a pity!"?' the Rabbit asked.

`No, I didn't,' said Alice: `I don't think it's at all a pity. I said "What for?"'

`She boxed the Queen's ears--' the Rabbit began. Alice gave a little scream of laughter. `Oh, hush!' the Rabbit whispered in a frightened tone. `The Queen will hear you! You see, she came rather late, and the Queen said--'

`Get to your places!' shouted the Queen in a voice of thunder, and people began running about in all directions, tumbling up against each other; however, they got settled down in a minute or two, and the game began. Alice thought she had never seen such a curious croquet-ground in her life; it was all ridges and furrows; the balls were live hedgehogs, the mallets live flamingoes, and the soldiers had to double themselves up and to stand on their hands and feet, to make the arches.

The chief difficulty Alice found at first was in managing her flamingo: she succeeded in getting its body tucked away, comfortably enough, under her arm, with its legs hanging down, but generally, just as she had got its neck nicely straightened out, and was going to give the hedgehog a blow with its head, it would twist itself round and look up in her face, with such a puzzled expression that she could not help bursting out laughing: and when she had got its head down, and was going to begin again, it was very provoking to find that the hedgehog had unrolled itself, and was in the act of crawling away: besides all this, there was generally a ridge or furrow in the way wherever she wanted to send the hedgehog to, and, as the doubled-up soldiers were always getting up and walking off to other parts of the ground, Alice soon came to the conclusion that it was a very difficult game indeed.

The players all played at once without waiting for turns, quarrelling all the while, and fighting for the hedgehogs; and in a very short time the Queen was in a furious passion, and went stamping about, and shouting `Off with his head!' or `Off with her head!' about once in a minute.

Alice began to feel very uneasy: to be sure, she had not as yet had any dispute with the Queen, but she knew that it might happen any minute, `and then,' thought she, `what would become of me? They're dreadfully fond of beheading people here; the great wonder is, that there's any one left alive!'

She was looking about for some way of escape, and wondering whether she could get away without being seen, when she noticed a curious appearance in the air: it puzzled her very much at first, but, after watching it a minute or two, she made it out to be a grin, and she said to herself `It's the Cheshire Cat: now I shall have somebody to talk to.'

`How are you getting on?' said the Cat, as soon as there was mouth enough for it to speak with.

Alice waited till the eyes appeared, and then nodded. `It's no use speaking to it,' she thought, `till its ears have come, or at least one of them.' In another minute the whole head appeared, and then Alice put down her flamingo, and began an account of the game, feeling very glad she had someone to listen to her. The Cat seemed to think that there was enough of it now in sight, and no more of it appeared.

`I don't think they play at all fairly,' Alice began, in rather a complaining tone,' and they all quarrel so dreadfully one can't hear oneself speak--and they don't seem to have any rules in particular; at least, if there are, nobody attends to them--and you've no idea how confusing it is all the things being alive; for instance, there's the arch I've got to go through next walking about at the other end of the ground--and I should have croqueted the Queen's hedgehog just now, only it ran away when it saw mine coming?'

`How do you like the Queen?' said the Cat in a low voice.

`Not at all,' said Alice: `she's so extremely--' Just then she noticed that the Queen was close behind her, listening: so she went on, `--likely to win, that it's hardly worth while finishing the game.'

The Queen smiled and passed on.

`Who are you talking to?' said the King, going up to Alice, and looking at the Cat's head with great curiosity.

`It's a friend of mine--a Cheshire Cat,' said Alice: `allow me to introduce it.'

`I don't like the look of it at all,' said the King: `however, it may kiss my hand if it likes.'

`I'd rather not,' the Cat remarked.

`Don't be impertinent,' said the King, `and don't look at me like that!' He got behind Alice as he spoke.

`A cat may look at a king,' said Alice. `I've read that in some book, but I don't remember where.'

`Well, it must be removed,' said the King very decidedly, and he called the Queen, who was passing at the moment, `My dear! I wish you would have this cat removed!'

The Queen had only one way of settling all difficulties, great or small. `Off with his head!' she said, without even looking round.

`I'll fetch the executioner myself,' said the King eagerly, and he hurried off.

Alice thought she might as well go back, and see how the game was going on, as she heard the Queen's voice in the distance, screaming with passion. She had already heard her sentence three of the players to be executed for having missed their turns, and she did not like the look of things at all, as the game was in such confusion that she never knew whether it was her turn or not. So she went in search of her hedgehog.

The hedgehog was engaged in a fight with another hedgehog, which seemed to Alice an excellent opportunity for croqueting one of them with the other: the only difficulty was, that her flamingo was gone across to the other side of the garden, where Alice could see it trying in a helpless sort of way to fly up into a tree.

By the time she had caught the flamingo and brought it back, the fight was over, and both the hedgehogs were out of sight: `but it doesn't matter much,' thought Alice, `as all the arches are gone from the side of the ground.' So she tucked it away under her arm, that it might not escape again, and went back for a little more conversation with her friend.

When she got back to the Cheshire Cat, she was surprised to find quite a large crowd collected round it: there was a dispute going on between the executioner, the King, and the Queen, who were all talking at once, while all the rest were quite silent, and looked very uncomfortable.

The moment Alice appeared, she was appealed to by all three to settle the question, and they repeated their arguments to her, though, as they all spoke at once, she found it very hard indeed to make out exactly what they said.

The executioner's argument was, that you couldn't cut off a head unless there was a body to cut it off from: that he had never had to do such a thing before, and he wasn't going to begin at HIS time of life.

The King's argument was, that anything that had a head could be beheaded, and that you weren't to talk nonsense.

The Queen's argument was, that if something wasn't done about it in less than no time she'd have everybody executed, all round. (It was this last remark that had made the whole party look so grave and anxious.)

Alice could think of nothing else to say but `It belongs to the Duchess: you'd better ask her about it.'

`She's in prison,' the Queen said to the executioner: `fetch her here.' And the executioner went off like an arrow.

The Cat's head began fading away the moment he was gone, and, by the time he had disappeared; so the King and the executioner ran wildly up and down looking for it, while the rest of the party went back to the game.

Posted by Corry Shores at 4/05/2009 04:26:00 am 0 comments
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