through the looking glass and what alice found there

This opening salvo perplexed readers more than the frumious language of “Jabberwocky.” Although the problem is a sort of funhouse mirror distortion of the novel (or vice versa), with eleven moves roughly corresponding to the book’s twelve chapters, Carroll’s notation displays a flagrant disregard for the basic rules of chess. You haven’t read Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There until you’ve read it in the original chess. This is made explicit from the very beginning of the book, when the reader is confronted with a chess problem and the following note: “White Pawn (Alice) to play, and win in eleven moves.” The story was designed around a game of chess.

But chess wasn’t just a recurring motif or symbol in Carroll’s story, it was, in fact, the basis for the novel’s structure. It makes sense that the two dominant symbols of the story are the mirror and the chess board-after all, the pieces on a board at the start of play are a reflection of one another. Whereas in the first story, Alice encountered a kingdom of playing cards after falling down the rabbit hole, in the sequel, she stepped through a mirror to find an entirely new wonderland populated by anthropomorphic red and white chessmen. Perhaps none moreso than Charles Lutwidge Dodgson aka Lewis Carroll aka the writer of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There. But writers too have found inspiration in the 64 square battlefield. We previously looked at examples from Marcel Duchamp, Man Ray and others.

Painters, sculptors and musicians have long since found inspiration in the complex movement of thirty-two pieces across a chessboard. ‘I declare it’s marked out just like a large chessboard!’ Alice said at last.” (original drawing by John Tenniel) There were a number of tiny little brooks running straight across it from side to side, and the ground between was divided up into squares by a number of little green hedges, that reached from brook to brook. “For some minutes Alice stood without speaking, looking out in all directions over the country – and a most curious country it was.

Through the looking glass and what alice found there