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The Hunting of the Snark


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About my Snark hunt

About my Snark hunt
===== How I got into Snark hunting =====

In December 2008, I searched for “Hidden Faces” in the Wikipedia. I wanted to see whether an illustration by Henry Holiday (left) to Lewis Carroll’s The Hunting of the Snark was mentioned there. (Now it is.) But instead of that I found Gheeraert's Allegory of Iconoclasm (right, aka The Image Breakers) in the Wikipedia article on hidden faces. And then I saw a little rhombic pattern in the “mouths” of the “heads” depicted in both illustrations. The Snark hunt had begun.

left:
2009: Illustration by Henry Holiday to fit the eight in Lewis Carroll's The Hunting of the Snark
(This is the 2007 version of an image in ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/c/carroll/lewis/snark/#fit8.)

center:
2008-12-16: Detail from "Hidden Faces" in en.wikipedia.org,
en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Hidden_faces&oldid=258354510

right:
Marcus Gheeraerts the Elder, Allegory of Iconoclasm, c.1566–1568 etching 15” x 10.4”, British Museum, London.
commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Gheerhaets_Allegory_iconoclasm.jpg
(In December 2008 the image was smaller: upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/archive/f/f5/20100214083045!Gheerhaets_Allegory_iconoclasm.jpg, but even there you can see the detail which cought my attention.)

Holiday and Gheeraerts I
(The blur is intentional. It removes unecessary details.)

Comments
 Götz Kluge
Götz Kluge club
===== My first "Snark comparison" =====
Snark Hunt: Square One

Illustration by Henry Holiday to The Hunting of the Snark (1876) and The Image Breakers (1566-1568) by Marcus Gheeraerts the Elder.

This is the first comparison which I made between a Snark illustration by Henry Holiday and another image. A second discovery followed. That is how the Snark hunt started in December 2008. At that time my dealing with Holliday's illustration perhaps was a bit too playful and some matches marked in this comparison are questionable. But it was a good start.

Improved version:
Holiday and Gheeraerts I
9 years ago. Edited 9 years ago.
 Götz Kluge
Götz Kluge club
===== How did I learn to know about The Hunting of the Snark? =====

I work as an engineer in the semiconductor industry and became increasingly interested in mental workload issues in the high tech industry as part of my involvement in labor issues. In the year 2005, I incidentally found an illustration (ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/c/carroll/lewis/snark/#fit5) by Henry Holiday to Lewis Carroll's Snark ballad which showed a workplace that had a quite high potential for ergonomic improvement.
h50
The illustration (www.snrk.de/snarkhunt/?newpics=no#353) can be used to depict various workplace hazards. It also shows all the unpleasant distractions which you don't really need during mentally challenging work. And teaching ((x+7+10)×(1000-8)/992)-17 with x=3 to a beaver is mentally challenging. (You may want to try it for other x.)

So I started to use that illustration for my work in the works council of my company. I also entered the illustration into some Wikipedia articles. And from there it made its way to Forbes online magazine (2013):
Snarked Workplace

High resolution vector graphics: www.academia.edu/attachments/36020688/download_file?s=work_strip
9 years ago. Edited 9 years ago.
 Götz Kluge
Götz Kluge club
===== From using the Snark to reading the Snark =====

After some time I got interested in the whole poem. It was easy to find online:
ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/c/carroll/lewis/snark. I forked their Snark edition, added line numbers, Carroll's dedication to Gertrude Chataway and Carroll's Easter Greeting, which he tipped in at front end paper of the first Snark editions in April 1876.
Easter Greeting

My forked online edition is www.snrk.de/snarkhunt/. (eBooks Adelaide have improved their site. The images still are bad. I offered them to use my scans.) I also bought myself an old edition of The Hunting of the Snark. I read it several times, which already may be difficult for English readers, but surely is very challenging for a German.

But as in 1876 the book was sold as a childrens' book, I thought that the pictures should help to explain the text. As I always was interested in the fine (more or less) arts, I looked closer at the illustrations. So, like so many other readers before, I "discovered" the hidden face in Holiday's illustration to the last "fit" of The Hunting of the Snark.
h80
9 years ago. Edited 8 years ago.
 Götz Kluge
Götz Kluge club
===== How I got into Snark hunting =====

So here we are again: The "hidden face".
Look into their Mouths

In December 2008, I searched for “Hidden Faces” in the Wikipedia. I wanted to see whether an illustration by Henry Holiday (left) to Lewis Carroll’s The Hunting of the Snark was mentioned there. (Now it is.) But instead of that I found Gheeraert's Allegory of Iconoclasm (right, aka The Image Breakers) in the Wikipedia article on hidden faces. And then I saw a little rhombic pattern in the “mouths” of the “heads” depicted in both illustrations. The Snark hunt had begun.

Yes, this comment is similar to the one at the top of this page.
9 years ago. Edited 9 years ago.
 Götz Kluge
Götz Kluge club
===== Why took it >130 years to discover Holiday's Snark allusions? =====

First: Maybe I am wrong. The allusions may be illusions.

Second: For the largest part of those 130 years there was no Internet. You had to walk to those images in order to see them. And prints were not cheap. But in 2008 I only needed a computer and access to the WWW. And I had tools to prepare images for comparison quickly.

Third: Perhaps I am not the first Snark hunter who discovered Henry Holiday's Snark allusions. Alfred Parsons may have discovered and continued Henry Holiday's game already in the year 1882:
The Uncle over Darwin's Fireplace
¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨ by Alfred Parsons (1882) ¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨ by Henry Holiday (1876) ¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨
9 years ago. Edited 9 years ago.