The Snark in your Dreams

The lower image is the only Snark illustration by Henry Holiday which shows the Snark. However, in this case the beast appeared in The Barrister's dream. Therefore it is just a Dream Snark.

[top]: Detail from the etching (1566-1568) The Image Breakers by Marcus Gheeraerts the Elder.

[bottom]: Detail from the illustration (1876) by Henry Holiday to The Hunting of the Snark. Lewis Carroll (C. L. Dodgson) did not want Henry Holiday to depict the Snark in the illustrations to The Hunting of the Snark. But Holiday was allowed to let it appear veiled by its "gown, bands, and wig" in The Barrister's Dream.



Also in this case, Holiday pictorially alluded to the etching by Marcus Gheeraerts the Elder. In this comparison several shapes - see notes (1) to (5) - provide the beholder of the illustration with pictorial quotes which point to that etching.

This is just the place to repeat a textual quote which I like a lot:
"We have neglected the gift of comprehending things through our senses. Concept is divorced from percept, and thought moves among abstractions. Our eyes have been reduced to instruments with which to identify and to measure; hence we suffer a paucity of ideas that can be expressed in images and in an incapacity to discover meaning in what we see. Naturally we feel lost in the presence of objects that make sense only to undeluted vision, and we seek refuge in the more familiar medium of words. ... The inborn capacity to understand through the eyes has been put to sleep and must be reawakened."
(Rudolf Arnheim: Art and Visual Perception, 1974, p. 1)

Images like this could be used in class by arts teachers to reawaken that inborn capacity. This also is a training to make and discuss decisions based on incomplete information.

Am I wrong? Am I right?
"Only those questions that are in principle undecidable, we can decide."
(Heinz von Foerster: Ethics and Second-Order Cybernetics, 1990-10-04, Système et thérapie familiale, Paris)

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2014-05-19