First published in 1865, Alice´s Adventures in Wonderland has just turned 150. This timeless children book, playful and puzzling, was inspired by real events and a real child. Lewis Carrol, Charles L. Dogson´s pen-name, was a lecturer in maths in the Christ Church college in Oxford. Although he suffered from a bad stammer, he was a natural storyteller who liked to invent tales to entertain his friends and this speech dysfunction seemed to disappear when he spoke to children.
On a summer day, three years earlier, he had taken a boat trip up the river Isis (the Thames in Oxford) accompanying the Dean of his college and his three young daughters for a picnic. Lewis Carrol started recounting them about a bored little girl called Alice who, while looking for adventure, tumbled down a rabbit hole. So enthralled was everybody that the medium girl, also called Alice, implored him to write it down.
Once published, it soon cut the mustard and people of all ages were drawn to it. Both Queen Victoria and Oscar Wilde adored it, for instance. His personal circumstances might have had a bearing on the creation of this masterpiece. The mathematician is well-known to have suffered a rare neurological disorder that provoked hallucinations in him and affected his vision of the size of objects. Besides, the surreal world into which Alice falls is oddly mathematical and logical.
Both Alice in Wonderland and its sequel, Through the Looking Glass, inaugurated a new era of children literature, which did not longer have to be didactic or moralistic. Lewis Carrol broke new ground by adding a whole world of imaginative whimsy which would let the children´s minds roam free. The tragic and unavoidable loss of childhood innocence, life as a meaningless puzzle or whatever it might represent, what is certain is that Alice is considered one of the most beloved characters in the classics today and she has kept us good company ever since.
No comments:
Post a Comment