An Audio Guide to Poetry Recitation - 8. "Jabberwocky"

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The most important thing to learn when you study poetry is that sound itself is part of sense. Even when a poet deliberitly tries to make nonsense, words, images and rythm still communicatemeaning. In the following poem by Lewis Carroll odd sounds and invented words create a weird kind of understanding.

Here is the actor David Schwimmer.

Jabberwocky
by Lewis Carroll
[Read by David Schwimmer]

’Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
      Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:
All mimsy were the borogoves,
      And the mome raths outgrabe.

“Beware the Jabberwock, my son!
      The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!
Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun
      The frumious Bandersnatch!”

He took his vorpal sword in hand;
      Long time the manxome foe he sought—
So rested he by the Tumtum tree
      And stood awhile in thought.

And, as in uffish thought he stood,
      The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame,
Came whiffling through the tulgey wood,
      And burbled as it came!

One, two! One, two! And through and through
      The vorpal blade went snicker-snack!
He left it dead, and with its head
      He went galumphing back.

“And hast thou slain the Jabberwock?
      Come to my arms, my beamish boy!
O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!”
      He chortled in his joy.

’Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
      Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:
All mimsy were the borogoves,
      And the mome raths outgrabe.


[Voice of David Schwimmer] I have my own association with Jabberwocky and speaking those lines is an emotional experience for me because my experience with those words goes back fifteen, twenty years or so when I first saw them, when I performed them in college, when I directed these actors, when we went to the Edinburgh Festival in Scottland and took this play about some wonderland and spoke those lines to people from all over the world and it actually was the bases and fundation of the theater company that I have been with now for fifteen years. So I have all these kind of emotion that I associate with that poem. So when I speak some of those lines, I am actually hearing some of my dearest friends and actors in my head say those lines from fifteen years ago. I like that poem because it's funny, it's an adventure,  because of the language and the made up words, but at the same time, there is the sadness in it as well.
 

所有跟帖： 

• jabberwocky...may be used by my critics or criticasters :) -走馬讀人- ♂ (1 bytes) () 12/23/2014 postreply 16:56:46

• "Sound itself is part of sense." Got it.Thanks. Merry Christmas. -紫君- ♀ (0 bytes) () 12/23/2014 postreply 23:59:41