Jabberwocky
by Lewis Carroll · first published 1881
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The illustrations set the classic nonsense poem taken from "Through the Looking Glass" in medieval times.
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I think one of the best counterexamples is The Jabberwocky by Lewis Carroll. If names (and more generally English words) conveyed no meaning on their own and were simply keys in a large fuzzy hash table, the poem would be completely opaque. However, despite…
on “Names do not transmit meaning” ↗Jabberwocky by Lewis Carroll has to be the definitive example I feel. Half of it is in a made up language but every English person instinctively knows what it means.
on “Fernando Pessoa’s Disappearing Act (2017)” ↗I've always enjoyed the Jabberwocky by Lewis Carroll. It is full of emotive gibberish that creates wonderful imagery and feeling out of meaningless sounds. Which is all poetry really is in the end! ’Twas brillig, and the slithy toves…
on “Ask HN: Who are your favorite poets?” ↗…mind is a boon...eventually. It's so easy to dig into the mathematical structure of it all and not deal with the actual thing. So start with the rollicking and absurd, and read it aloud!. Lewis Carroll's Jabberwocky, for example. I have yet to meet someone that doesn't get a grin out of that. Isherwood, 'The Common Cormorant'. These are poems that beat you over the head with their structure and meter. Limericks,…
on “Ask HN: What Skills to Acquire in 2020?” ↗A beautiful “asemic” example in English is “The Jabberwocky” by Lewis Carroll which consists mostly of nonsensical words but when read by an English speaker is clearly written in the English language. A different level of abstraction/representation from this…
on “Generative Bad Handwriting” ↗…'Java' and 'document-object-model' in the same sentence, the intellectuals who base validity solely on academic authority, the intellectuals who try to standardize intellect. I leave you with the poem Jabberwocky, by the master Lewis Carroll. 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…
on “Poet: I can’t answer questions on Texas standardized tests about my own poems” ↗One of my favorite parts of Gödel, Escher, Bach was the description of translating Lewis Carroll's Jabberwocky into various languages -- particularly troublesome since the original poem contains few English words to begin with.
on “A kinda okay text generator” ↗When I was ten I memorized “Jabberwocky” by Lewis Carroll for performance. Still remember that frabjous poem!
on “Now Is the Perfect Time to Memorize a Poem” ↗As Wikipedia points out, Lewis Carroll's https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jabberwocky has very similar spirit.
on “Zaum” ↗…Carroll" around a particular nonsense word, one that hasn't been written down before. Will that poetry treat the word as if it has one consistent pronunciation? (This question doesn't quite apply to Jabberwocky - Lewis Carroll himself would obviously have passed the test, but he doesn't reuse his nonsense words.)
on “Why language models hallucinate” ↗