"THROUGH THE LOOKING GLASS"
Sir,-As an admirer of Alice "through the looking glass" and elsewhere, may I protest against the indignities to which recordings force an astute and well bred little girl to submit. Anyone who allows her to sing nursery rhymes and be sung to by the other characters in similar vein, abuses the poor child shockingly. The whole essence of Alice’s and her companions’ remarks is that they should be in their own way completely logical. As she points out to Humpty Dumpty, etc., she already knows his story; hence why sing it? The premises are that she knows his story and all other logic follows from there. In order to retain her full character, Alice must be allowed to remain serious and questioning and all her informants must reply instantly and faultlessly to her questions with their own type of logic. The timing of the remarks is most important as they must be delivered so seriously and uninterruptedly that they appear to make sense; which is the chief charm of all of Alice’s adventures, The only legitimate excuse for music is when the text demands it in such cases as the Mock Turtle’s Song. Here, it is in character as part of his general verbosity and does not hold up the action any more than the reminiscence addict ever
goes. Academic attempts to turn, "twas brillig and the slithy toves" into dog Latin merely amused Lewis Carroll but I am sure it would have pained him to hear his intelligent little Alice singing "Humpty Dumpty," éte, and joining in with even more foolish songs as she did from 3YA on a recent night. Let recorders give the poor child a break to be her age and pursue her alert and civil inquiries without frivolous musical accompaniments.
FRABJOUS DAY
(Timaru).
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https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/periodicals/NZLIST19480305.2.14.6
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New Zealand Listener, Volume 18, Issue 454, 5 March 1948, Page 5
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302"THROUGH THE LOOKING GLASS" New Zealand Listener, Volume 18, Issue 454, 5 March 1948, Page 5
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