Wednesday, February 22, 2006

Alice II

.....`No, no!' said the Queen. `Sentence first--verdict afterwards.' `Stuff and nonsense!' said Alice loudly. `The idea of having the sentence first!' `Hold your tongue!' said the Queen, turning purple. `I won't!' said Alice. `Off with her head!' the Queen shouted at the top of her voice. Nobody moved. `Who cares for you?' said Alice, (she had grown to her full size by this time.) `You're nothing but a pack of cards!' ..... Each of them is the centre of her own universe. The Queen is at a disadvantage, because she is but one card out of a pack, and she must suffer, guessing at the thin substantiality of her existence. In Alice's case it is the dream: Developing obliquely, gaining size, as it were, through a mental process, of which, finally, there would be no outward sign. Fortunately for Alice, her dream is already a lingual one, so that to recount it in "after-time", as is envisaged by her sister at the end of the book, is simply a reaffirmation of what she already knows as a child: Development consists of mediating one's encounters with the meaninglessness of the world in a meaningful way.

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

<< Home