Contemporary review

Timothy Faulkner

Lewis Carroll wrote "The HUnting of the Snark" in 1876, eight years before Edwin A. Abbot; it does not directly take up the issue of the fourth dimennsion , but in someway Lewis's nonsensical fiction and fantasy plays upon the realm of the limited wwworld of "realistic" three-dimensions and enters a symbolicsll y rich plsce of (at least) more than three dimensions. It is this, the snark represents the idealized gosl of acquisition for the (so-called) hunter; however mixed in with the snark is the boojums [ the"un- mistakable marks" of the snark, but mixed in, unmistakably,"some are boojums."

The boojums represent a completely other-possibility for the hunter than do the snarks. The boojums, being the diametric opposite of thesnark, which is the goal of the hunter, shall one say of the third dimension; the result being thast if the hunt ends in a boojums, than "I shall softly and suddenly vanish away--And the notion I cannot endure"--possibly into the third dimension--as the sphere disappears in passing through Flatland.