long nonsense essay

Sense of Nonsense: Alan Watts on How We Find Meaning by Surrendering to Meaninglessness

By maria popova.

In his early thirties, Watts walked away from a career as an Episcopal priest and set out to popularize Zen teachings in the West. His singular fusion of secular philosophy and Eastern spirituality guided, and continues to guide, the openhearted and openminded toward figuring out how to live with presence , make sense of reality , master the art of timing , and become who we really are .

Between 1965 and 1972, Watts delivered a series of talks exploring various facets of Zen. The transcripts of eight of them were posthumously published as The Tao of Philosophy ( public library ). In the sixth lecture, titled “Sense of Nonsense,” Watts explores how we arrive at meaning by surrendering to meaninglessness — an inquiry that has rattled some of humanity’s greatest minds, from Margaret Mead in her dream about the essence of life to Chinua Achebe in his creative struggle against meaninglessness .

Here is the original recording of Watts’s talk, found in the comprehensive compilation Out of Your Mind: Essential Listening from the Alan Watts Audio Archives — please enjoy:

Why do we love nonsense? Why do we love Lewis Carroll with his “‘Twas brillig, and the slithy toves did gyre and gimble in the wabe, all mimsy were the borogoves, and the mome raths outgrabe…”? Why is it that all those old English songs are full of “Fal-de-riddle-eye-do” and “Hey-nonny-nonny” and all those babbling choruses? Why is it that when we get “hep” with jazz we just go “Boody-boody-boop-de-boo” and so on, and enjoy ourselves swinging with it? It is this participation in the essential glorious nonsense that is at the heart of the world, not necessarily going anywhere. It seems that only in moments of unusual insight and illumination that we get the point of this, and find that the true meaning of life is no meaning, that its purpose is no purpose, and that its sense is non-sense. Still, we want to use the word “significant.” Is this significant nonsense? Is this a kind of nonsense that is not just chaos, that is not just blathering balderdash, but rather has in it rhythm, fascinating complexity, and a kind of artistry? It is in this kind of meaninglessness that we come to the profoundest meaning.

Complement The Tao of Philosophy , which is mind-bending and soul-stretching in its totality, with Watts on true happiness , the ego and the universe , and the vital difference between money and wealth , then revisit D.T. Suzuki — who was a major influence for Watts — on how Zen can help us cultivate our character .

— Published March 25, 2015 — https://www.themarginalian.org/2015/03/25/sense-of-nonsense-alan-watts-tao-of-philosophy/ —

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Nonsense Literature by Anna Barton LAST REVIEWED: 28 July 2015 LAST MODIFIED: 28 July 2015 DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780199846719-0099

In the preface to his 1872 collection, More Nonsense , Edward Lear describes his work as “nonsense, pure and absolute” (p. 12 in Carolyn Wells’s A Nonsense Anthology ). This appealing description attributes to the genre a kind of simplicity that is, in fact, rare. “Nonsense” is a literary genre that is difficult to define in absolute terms, and examples of literary nonsense are frequently found in other kinds of text. It is, on the one hand, a fairly recent invention. The Oxford English Dictionary describes Edward Lear as “the parent of modern nonsense writers,” and it is certainly the case that “modern nonsense” originates with Lear and Lewis Carroll in the mid-19th century. However, it is equally true that the work of Lear and Carroll also belongs to a much-older literary tradition that might be traced back to 11th-century England or even further, to the literature of classical Antiquity. This broader definition understands nonsense as a kind of literature that is inseparable from the literature of sense, so that, as its name suggests, “non-sense” always exists in relation to, and as a comment on, “sense.” T. S. Eliot, whose poetry learns from that of Lear and Carroll, meant something similar to this when he wrote that Lear’s nonsense “is not a vacuity of sense; it is a parody of sense, and that is the sense of it” (“The Music of Poetry”). Eliot suggests that nonsense is latent in all kinds of literature, so that nonsense might best be described as a kind of writing that draws attention to and takes advantage of the arbitrary nature of language. Nonsense is, therefore, literature that complicates or obstructs the relationship between word and world, or word and meaning, rather than using words as a conduit to the world they describe. Nonsense might do this by drawing attention to language as a thing in itself, with its own sonic and visual qualities, or it might use puns, which demonstrate how easily meaning can be turned upside-down by a slip of the tongue. This makes nonsense a near neighbor of poetry, which is also literature that creates meaning out of sound and form. But, as Eliot suggests, it also lends nonsense a kind of anarchic potential because, by making fun of language, nonsense presents a significant challenge to the power language has to name, know, and own the world. For these reasons, nonsense has attracted attention not just from readers of children’s literature and Victorian literature, but also from linguists, theorists, and philosophers. This article attempts to give readers a feel for the broad appeal of nonsense, while at the same time maintaining a focus on nonsense as a particular kind of literature.

Sewell 1952 is the earliest scholarly attempt to define the genre that has stood the test of time. Alongside this, Stewart 1979 , which considers nonsense from the perspective of language and literature, and Malcolm 1997 , which takes a literary-historical approach to the genre, are the two most important studies of literary nonsense, both understanding nonsense in fairly broad terms that open it up to a wide range of critical possibilities. Tigges 1988 is narrower in its approach, but the author’s attempts at defining the different features of literary nonsense are, nevertheless, instructive. Readers with a particular interest in Victorian nonsense should begin with McGillis 2002 , whereas those interested in more-abstract theories of nonsense might consult Charlton 1977 and Haight 1971 . Colley 1988 takes a different approach, focusing on the poetic form most associated with nonsense: the limerick.

Charlton, William. “Nonsense.” British Journal of Aesthetics 17.4 (1977): 346–360.

DOI: 10.1093/bjaesthetics/17.4.346

Sets out a theory of nonsense that divides the genre into three kinds—“grammatical,” “logical” and “factual”—and distinguishes between “intentional” and “unintentional” nonsense. Opens up the relationship between nonsense and poetry and also includes a helpful account of nonsense in relation to a Kantian aesthetic.

Colley, Ann C. “The Limerick and the Space of Metaphor.” Genre 21.1 (1988): 65–91.

The limerick is an important form for the history of nonsense verse, and Colley’s article, which focuses on the limericks of Lear, demonstrates the teasing complexity of this deceptively slight form.

Haight, M. R. “Nonsense.” British Journal of Aesthetics 11.3 (1971): 247–256.

DOI: 10.1093/bjaesthetics/11.3.247

Seeks a definition of nonsense by using examples from Edward Lear, Lewis Carroll, Jorge Luis Borges, Samuel Beckett, James Joyce, Eugène Ionesco, François Rabelais, and Aristophanes. Argues that nonsense is produced by the deliberate distortion of language, and comes to the interesting conclusion that, although “its intellectual range may be as wide as the language itself will allow . . . , certain emotions are beyond it” (p. 255).

Malcolm, Noel. The Origins of English Nonsense . London: HarperCollins, 1997.

This important work of scholarship rewrites the history of English nonsense by locating its origins at the beginning of the 17th century, with the work of poets such as Sir John Hoskins and John Taylor. Malcolm anthologizes work by these early nonsense poets and provides an astute, engaging account of medieval and Renaissance nonsense traditions.

McGillis, Roderick. “Nonsense.” In A Companion to Victorian Poetry . Edited by Richard Cronin, Alison Chapman, and Antony H. Harrison, 155–170. Blackwell Companions to Literature and Culture 15. Oxford: Blackwell, 2002.

A good, accessible account of Victorian nonsense that introduces Lear and Carroll alongside poets and authors less frequently associated with the genre, such as Christina Rossetti and A. C. Swinburne.

Sewell, Elizabeth. The Field of Nonsense . London: Chatto & Windus, 1952.

Sewell’s study remains a readable and worthwhile introduction to the genre. It aims at a definition of nonsense, using a “logical approach” (p. 5) that compares nonsense to a game that is played according to its own rules. Republished as recently as 1981 (Folcroft, PA: Folcroft Library Editions).

Stewart, Susan. Nonsense: Aspects of Intertextuality in Folklore and Literature . Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1979.

Stewart’s influential work is the most important monograph study of nonsense literature. Her thesis, that nonsense reveals the contingent nature of common sense, touches on a wider range of literary examples and cultural references, making a strong claim for the relevance of nonsense beyond the field of Victorian children’s literature.

Tigges, Wim. An Anatomy of Literary Nonsense . Costerus, n.s. 67. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1988.

As its title suggests, this book takes a systematic approach to defining and describing literary nonsense. Taking the work of Lear and Carroll as exemplars of the genre, Tigges includes chapters on different features of nonsense (puns, portmanteaux, neologism, etc.). His book also considers kinds of literature that are near neighbors of nonsense, which do not class as nonsense proper according to his own definition (nursery rhymes, surrealism, fantasy, etc.).

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A Short Analysis of ‘Jabberwocky’ by Lewis Carroll

By Dr Oliver Tearle

‘Jabberwocky’ is perhaps the most famous nonsense poem in all of English literature. Although the poem was first published in Lewis Carroll ‘s novel  Through the Looking Glass  in 1871, the first stanza was actually written and printed by Carroll in 1855 in the little periodical  Mischmasch , which Carroll (real name Charles Dodgson) compiled to entertain his family. Below is ‘Jabberwocky’ (sometimes erroneously called ‘The Jabberwocky’), followed by a brief analysis of its meaning. ‘Nonsense’ literature it may be, but let’s see if we can make some sense of the glorious nonsense.

‘Twas brillig, and the slithy toves Did gyre and gimble in the wabe: All mimsy were the borogoves, And the mome raths outgrabe.

‘Beware the Jabberwock, my son! The jaws that bite, the claws that catch! Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun The frumious Bandersnatch!’

He took his vorpal sword in hand: Long time the manxome foe he sought— So rested he by the Tumtum tree, And stood awhile in thought.

And, as in uffish thought he stood, The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame, Came whiffling through the tulgey wood, And burbled as it came!

One, two! One, two! And through and through The vorpal blade went snicker-snack! He left it dead, and with its head He went galumphing back.

‘And hast thou slain the Jabberwock? Come to my arms, my beamish boy! O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!’ He chortled in his joy.

Jabberwocky: a summary

In terms of its plot, ‘Jabberwocky’ might be described as nonsense literature’s answer to the epic Anglo-Saxon poem  Beowulf : what Christopher Booker, in his vast and fascinating The Seven Basic Plots: Why We Tell Stories , calls an ‘overcoming the monster’ story.

The structure of Carroll’s poem echoes this basic plot structure (‘overcoming the monster’) in two ways: through adopting the ballad metre traditionally used for poems telling such a story (that is, the four-line stanza, or quatrain form), and through repeating the opening stanza in the closing stanza, suggesting the hero’s return home after his adventure.

Jabberwocky: an analysis

‘Jabberwocky’, in one sense, takes us back to the very earliest ‘English’ poems, such as the great Anglo-Saxon epic poem Beowulf , in which the titular hero faces the fearsome monster Grendel (and, after that, faces the wrath of Grendel’s mother as well as a mighty dragon). Such stories of ‘overcoming the monster’ are as old as English literature itself, then, and there are other myths associated with England – such as the story of the patron saint of England, St George, slaying the dragon – which utilise this motif.

Another useful way of interpreting ‘Jabberwocky’ is through considering the oral fairy-tale tradition. Fairy tales tend to use similar tropes, character types, and plot lines, as Vladimir Propp demonstrated in his Morphology of the Folk Tale . So a hero often absents himself or herself from home (much as the intrepid hero of ‘Jabberwocky’ has to head off to face the Jabberwock), and has to face a villain or monster (the Jabberwock), before triumphing and returning home. These elements are obviously present in Carroll’s poem.

But is this where the chief appeal of the poem lies, when so much of the language Carroll uses is, clearly, nonsense?

After all, as well as being an example of a fantasy quest, the poem is also a masterpiece of linguistic inventiveness: every stanza is a feast of neologisms – new words, coinages, nonsense formations. Several of them have even entered common usage: ‘chortle’ (a blend of ‘chuckle’ and ‘snort’) and ‘galumph’ (meaning to move in a clumsy way) are both used by many people who probably have no idea that we have Lewis Carroll to thank for them. (‘Mimsy’, too, is often credited to Carroll – though it actually existed prior to the poem.)

Consider that opening stanza:

’Twas brillig, and the slithy toves Did gyre and gimble in the wabe: All mimsy were the borogoves, And the mome raths outgrabe.

Consider Carroll’s use of (invented) words in this stanza. What are ‘toves’, and why are they ‘slithy’? What does ‘slithiness’ (is that a word?) look or feel like? The same with ‘mimsy’. Noam Chomsky’s ground-breaking work in linguistics surrounding children’s ability to acquire a linguistic ‘grammar’ demonstrated that even if we don’t know the meaning of a word, we can often deduce what kind of word it is: i.e. we know ‘mimsy’ is an adjective, or describing-word, even though we don’t fully know what ‘mimsiness’ is.

Carroll is using both ‘slithy’ and ‘mimsy’ as portmanteau words: slithy , for example, is a blend of slimy + lithe , while mimsy suggests miserable + flimsy . Another term for a portmanteau word is, in fact, a blend , and some linguists prefer to use the word blend . But the term ‘portmanteau’ came about because, after Alice has encountered the poem ‘Jabberwocky’ in Through the Looking-Glass , and puzzled over the meaning of these unfamiliar words, she meets Humpty Dumpty , who tells her, when she quotes the above stanza:

‘That’s enough to begin with,’ Humpty Dumpty interrupted: ‘there are plenty of hard words there. “Brillig” means four o’clock in the afternoon — the time when you begin broiling things for dinner.’

‘That’ll do very well,’ said Alice: ‘and “slithy”?’

‘Well, “slithy” means “lithe and slimy”. “Lithe” is the same as “active”. You see it’s like a portmanteau — there are two meanings packed up into one word.’

A portmanteau was, in Victorian times, a case or bag for carrying clothing while travelling; the word is from the French meaning literally ‘carry the cloak’.

So, as well as being a fine piece of imaginative literature, ‘Jabberwocky’ also demonstrates a central principle of language: what linguists call productivity or  open-endedness , namely the phenomenon whereby users of a language can endlessly create new words or phrases. As Noam Chomsky’s theory of a Universal Grammar shows, users of a language demonstrate an innate linguistic creativity from a young age, and this is how children are able to pick up a new language relatively quickly: they learn not simply by acquiring knowledge, but by using an in-built talent for spotting how words are put together to form meaningful utterances. If something is both lithe and  slimy , why not combine the two words – both their sounds and their meanings – to create  slithy ?

Here is a brief glossary of what the various nonsense words in ‘Jabberwocky’ mean. As poems go, this one must have one of the highest rates of neologism-to-words of all classic poems in the English language. Perhaps surprisingly, many of them have found their way into the  Oxford English Dictionary ; we have put ( OED ) after those words which have an entry in the dictionary.

Jabberwock: the monster (with jaws and claws – we aren’t given much else by way of description) ( OED  with the extended meaning ‘incoherent or nonsensical expression’)

brillig: the time when people begin broiling things for dinner (around 4pm)

slithy: lithe and slimy ( OED )

toves: a (fictional) species of badger with horns like a stag and which lives predominantly on cheese ( OED )

gyre: twirl around like a gyre (actually predates Carroll)

gimble: bore holes like a gimlet

wabe: the wet side of a hill soaked by the rain ( OED )

mimsy: unhappy or miserable ( OED )

borogoves: (fictional) type of bird

mome: grave or solemn ( OED )

raths: (fictional) turtle with a mouth like a shark and a smooth green body; lives on swallows and oysters  ( OED)

outgrabe: emitted a strange noise (past tense of, presumably,  outgribe ) ( OED )

Jubjub bird: ‘An imaginary bird of a ferocious, desperate and occasionally charitable nature, noted for its excellence when cooked’ ( OED )

frumious: so angry or furious as to be fuming ( OED )

Bandersnatch: ‘A fleet, furious, fuming, fabulous creature, of dangerous propensities, immune to bribery and too fast to flee from; later, used vaguely to suggest any creature with such qualities’ ( OED )

vorpal: (of a sword) keen and deadly ( OED )

manxome: fearsome or monstrous ( OED )

Tumtum tree: a fictional tree

uffish: huffish ( OED )

whiffling: blowing in puffs or gusts of air (this word predates Carroll)

tulgey: thick, dense, and dark ( OED )

burbled: to speak in murmurs ( OED )

snicker-snack: with a snipping or clicking sound ( OED )

galumphing: to gallop in triumph ( OED )

beamish: radiant or shining (this word predates Carroll)

frabjous: fair and joyous; fabulous ( OED )

chortled: chuckled and snorted ( OED )

For more information about what individual words of the poem mean, see Humpty Dumpty’s explanation of ‘Jabberwocky’ from  Through the Looking-Glass . Continue your odyssey into the world of nonsense verse with our discussion of Edward Lear’s ‘The Owl and the Pussycat’ .

About Lewis Carroll

Lewis Carroll (1832-98) is celebrated around the world as one of the great purveyors of ‘literary nonsense’: his books  Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland  (1865) and  Through the Looking-Glass  (1871) have entertained countless readers since they were published nearly 150 years ago. For many, the name ‘Lewis Carroll’ is synonymous with children’s literature.

But ‘Lewis Carroll’ was really a man named Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, a mathematician at Christ Church, Oxford. As such, he led something of a double life: to the readers of his  Alice  books he was Lewis Carroll, while to the world of mathematics and to his colleagues at the University of Oxford he was (Reverend) Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, a man who formed his pen name by reversing his first two names (‘Charles Lutwidge’ became ‘Lewis Carroll’).

There is a famous anecdote about Carroll and Queen Victoria. Victoria enjoyed  Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland  so much that she requested a first edition of Carroll’s next book. Carroll duly sent her a copy of the next book he published – a mathematical work with the exciting title  An Elementary Treatise on Determinants . Unfortunately, like most good anecdotes, this one isn’t true, but the fact that it is often told highlights the oddness of Carroll’s double life. Carroll, despite the radical nature of his nonsense fiction, was a conservative mathematician who resented and dismissed many of the new ideas emerging in mathematics during the nineteenth century.

Carroll was a shy man who suffered from a stammer throughout his life and from being deaf in one ear (the result of a fever he suffered from in childhood). Carroll identified himself with the Dodo in  Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland , leading some to suggest (though it remains only a suggestion) that this was because of Carroll’s own difficulty in pronouncing his last name (‘Do-Do’, from Dodgson).

Image: Illustration for ‘Jabberwocky’ by John Tenniel, 1871;  Wikimedia Commons .

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14 thoughts on “A Short Analysis of ‘Jabberwocky’ by Lewis Carroll”

The second-best poem in the world. First-best is “The Walrus and the Carpenter.”

Reblogged this on Kathy Waller ~ Telling the Truth, Mainly and commented: An analysis of the second-best poem in the English language.

What fun! Making up words is a a wonderful way to use one’s imagination.

This is what I tell people when they ask how I can possibly do my job at MIT’s Writing Center, reading all those crazy technical papers. Who cares what it means? It’s English.

Thanks for the analysis of what is my all time favorite poem.

Love this post! Fantabulous! (of course I love it, I like making up words, too – :)

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Lewis Carroll was a linguistic and mathematical genius, whose writing continues to fire the imagination.

I like your ref to Christopher Booker’s book and the overcoming a monster theme! The Seven Basic Plots has changed (or focussed) the way I read literature completely! I’d recommend it to anyone who hasn’t read it.

Indeed – I always recommend that book to people who want to gain a deeper understanding of the mechanics of plot. A terrific (and almighty) read!

Reblogged this on Musings of a Penpusher and commented: Of interest to fellow ‘Alice’ fans.

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Modern Tosh: Making nonsense in poetry

Young poet and producer tash keary tells us about poetry, absurdity, and the art of talking nonsense..

When we write and edit poetry, or any writing, one of the key things we’re often looking for is that it “makes sense”. In many ways, anything we read we expect at least to be comprehensible: in everyday life we tend to prize “common sense” and “logical thinking”. It might seem to make sense for us to include this kind of thinking in our writing. But some of the biggest names in poetry and elsewhere have frequently not made sense, but made nonsense instead.

“Don’t for heaven’s sake, be afraid of talking nonsense! But you must pay attention to your nonsense.”  – Ludwig Wittgenstein

Taking its roots from 14 th century nursery rhymes, nonsense writing can be seen as a serious literary movement. There are clear examples in children’s classics like Lewis Carroll’s Jabberwocky and Edward Lear’s limericks, but nonsense poetry can also be found in writings in the Romantic, modern and post-modern periods, and well into the present day. It has been written by some of the most famous and canonized poets from these periods, suggesting the  versatility and appeal of nonsense for a whole range of writers.

“‘Twas brillig, and the slithy toves     Did gyre and gimble in the wabe”   – from ‘ The Jabberwocky ‘ by Lewis Carroll

Nonsense writing was first used in part as a way of mocking scholarly conventions, of making fun of the big figures in philosophy, science and academia. It played on the idea of nonsense as a lowly form of writing which was intended for children, rather than ‘serious’ adults. Closely aligned with comic writing, this is the type of nonsense we find in Edward Lear’s limericks:

“There was an Old Person whose habits, Induced him to feed upon rabbits; When he’d eaten eighteen, He turned perfectly green, Upon which he relinquished those habits.” from A Book of Nonsense by Edward Lear

Nonsense writing also finds a place in the Romantic period, for example in Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s poetry. Instead of being used to send up stuffy conventions, it becomes a way of describing the sublime, the otherwise indescribable. According to Coleridge’s contemporaries and critics, his great poem ‘ Kubla Khan’ is on the verge of being nonsensical, and his ‘Christabel’ is the “best nonsense poetry ever written”:

“A little child, a limber elf Singing, dancing to itself, A fairy thing with red round cheeks, That always finds, and ever seeks” From ‘ Christabel ‘ by Samuel Taylor Coleridge

What ‘Christabel’ does is use nonsense to create a kind of magical world, the kind we also recognise in Lewis Carroll’s ‘Jabberwocky’ . It is as contradictory and nonsensical as ‘Kubla Khan’s’ “a sunny pleasure dome with caves of ice”: two images which do not inherently follow logic or common sense.  

Coleridge is just the first of many famous poets who use nonsense to great effect. W.H. Auden was a keen reader of Edward Lear’s nonsense, and he played on strange and unusual images in just as contradictory a way as Coleridge did. These strange and unexpected images are particularly prevalent in ‘Nonsense Song’:

“No steeple-jack shall part us now Nor fireman in a frock; True love could sink a Channel boat Or knit a baby’s sock” from ‘ Nonsense Song ‘ by W.H. Auden

But nonsense is not always used for playful effect. If we examine the poetry of the First World War, it takes on a much more serious import. E. E. Cummings nonsensical ‘next to of course god America I’ uses nonsense in a much more serious context:

“why talk of beauty what could be more beaut-  iful than these heroic happy dead   who rushed like lions to the roaring slaughter”               from ‘ next to of course god america I ’ by E. E. Cummings

What Cummings famously does here is take patriotic phrases and turn them into a jumble of nonsense, condensing each idea down until it becomes a stream of never ending platitudes. What makes Cummings’ nonsense even more in-your-face is his lack of punctuation and capitalization. In following stylistic conventions such as these, we associate them with ‘sense’: grammar and punctuation are ways of making meaning clearer in writing, turning streams of words into digestible bites. ‘next to of course god america I’ is an anti-digestible poem, and that is precisely its message about war and patriotism. Its point is in its opaqueness, its sense in its nonsense: these patriotic phrases are just as senseless as the ongoing war.

The thing that most attracts me to nonsense writing is its total disregard for anything you might expect from poetry, or from writing in general. Describing completely illogical images, breaking words half-way through, ignoring standard grammatical conventions – when done well, these are all intriguing ways of making writing seem urgent and interesting. The lack of linear lines of thinking provokes us to think more about what we’re reading ourselves.

“OK OK OK listen. You mincepied? You roastpotatoed? You goosefatted? You burping in public? No worries, no worries, come, come and see what we have here.” From ‘ Crash ‘ by Annie Katchinska

Sometimes it is just as important to make nonsense in poetry as it is to make sense. In fact, it is useful at times to take a step back from concrete “sense” rules to see where a path into the field of nonsense can take you in your poetry.

Tash Keary is an English student at the University of York. Her poetry has been commended in the Foyle Young Poets of the Year Award, the National Student and Cape Farewell competitions, and most recently published in PBS anthologies and Cadaverine Magazine. She was a Young Producer for National Poetry Day Live 2015, and completed a Foyle Young Poets internship in 2016. Recently, she co-founded The Kindling , a new journal aiming to unite poetry written in universities across the UK and Ireland.

Published September, 2016

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Chesterton Essays – A Defense of Nonsense – Explanation

A defence of nonsense (1902).

by G.K. Chesterton

Complete explanation of the essay by G.K. Chesterton with additional explanatory notes

Original text – 1.

There are two equal and eternal ways of looking at this twilight world of ours: we may see it as the twilight of evening or the twilight of morning; we may think of anything, down to a fallen acorn, as a descendant or as an ancestor. There are times when we are almost crushed, not so much with the load of the evil as with the load of the goodness of humanity, when we feel that we are nothing but the inheritors of a humiliating splendour. But there are other times when everything seems primitive, when the ancient stars are only sparks blown from a boy’s bonfire, when the whole earth seems so young and experimental that even the white hair of the aged, in the fine biblical phrase, is like almond-trees that blossom, like the white hawthorn grown in May. That it is good for a man to realize that he is ‘the heir of all the ages’ is pretty commonly admitted; it is a less popular but equally important point that it is good for him sometimes to realize that he is not only an ancestor, but an ancestor of primal antiquity; it is good for him to wonder whether he is not a hero, and to experience ennobling doubts as to whether he is not a solar myth.

Explanation

When you see a half-filled glass of water, you may either say, “The glass is half-filled.” or ‘The glass is half-empty.” It depends upon your mental make-up. In the same way, when the sky is filled with a light golden hue, you may say that it is the evening setting in, or the morning setting in. In case of evening, the Sun just buries itself under the horizon splashing an orange light all over the sky. In the same way, when the dawn arrives, the Sun just begins to emerge from the horizon, causing identical coloration of the sky. In different realms of human life on earth, similar ambiguities confront him all too often.

As we all know, human civilization is constantly evolving becoming more and more sophisticated as the years go by. Mankind has become incredibly enriched by knowledge, nobleness, creativity, and humane tendencies. Countless bright and benevolent minds have contributed to this evolution. When we look back, we feel humbled by the great gift of these great men and women in bringing us to this stage of enlightenment.

In the next breath, we feel somewhat uncomfortable thinking how our descendants living on this earth a thousand years from now will feel about our primitive state of science, arts, culture, religion etc. Just as the way, we fail to comprehend how humans lived and thrived in the Stone Age, and the Copper Age, and the Bronze Age, with no smart phones, no cars, no hospitals, no jet flights etc., our descendants will have a hearty laugh thinking that we didn’t know the cure for cancer, and how we struggled to set foot on moon. Standing on a certain point of time, and looking back is as disconcerting as looking to posterity. The travel of time brings us all such confusion. Therefore, it will be wise not to think of ourselves as heroes who have made great strides. Similarly, humans will do well not to assume themselves to some sort f solar myth.

Original Text – 2

The matters which most thoroughly evoke this sense of the abiding childhood of the world are those which are really fresh, abrupt and inventive in any age; and if we were asked what was the best proof of this adventurous youth in the nineteenth century we should say, with all respect to its portentous sciences and philosophies, that it was to be found in the rhymes of Mr. Edward Lear and in the literature of nonsense. ‘The Dong with the Luminous Nose,’ at least, is original, as the first ship and the first plough were original.

Inventors have a propensity to think about their own invention as the first milestone of a long road of astounding inventions to come in future. They think so, because they get thrilled by the new vistas their own work opens up paving the way for far more thrilling inventions to come in the times ahead. Thus, a sense of ‘permanent childhood’ remains in the minds of great scientists and philosophers. They think they are just children, beginning their path of knowing the unknown. So, if someone asks the author what was the most exciting new knowledge added in the nineteenth century, he would say that it was the poem of nonsense written by Mr. Edward Spear titled ‘The Dong with the Luminous Nose’. The author dares to say so, because the style, content, and the thought behind the poem, although pure vulgar, was original, at least. On the contrary, the inventions we see are just improvements or additions to whatever knowledge that already existed. It is to be noted here that Mr. Spear wrote many such short poems that were pure nonsense, but greatly hilarious.

Original Text – 3

It is true in a certain sense that some of the greatest writers the world has seen—Aristophanes, Rabelais and Sterne—have written nonsense; but unless we are mistaken, it is in a widely different sense. The nonsense of these men was satiric—that is to say, symbolic; it was a kind of exuberant capering round a discovered truth. There is all the difference in the world between the instinct of satire, which, seeing in the Kaiser’s moustaches something typical of him, draws them continually larger and larger; and the instinct of nonsense which, for no reason whatever, imagines what those moustaches would look like on the present Archbishop of Canterbury if he grew them in a fit of absence of mind. We incline to think that no age except our own could have understood that the Quangle-Wangle meant absolutely nothing, and the Lands of the Jumblies were absolutely nowhere. We fancy that if the account of the knave’s trial in ‘Alice in Wonderland’ had been published in the seventeenth century it would have been bracketed with Bunyan’s ‘Trial of Faithful’ as a parody on the State prosecutions of the time. We fancy that if ‘The Dong with the Luminous Nose’ had appeared in the same period everyone would have called it a dull satire on Oliver Cromwell.

The author concedes that there were great writers like Aristophanes, Rabelais and Sterne who really wrote some very absorbing essays, but these were also nonsense, though in a different way. These eminent writers resorted to satire while des cribbing the work of eminent scientists and philosophers of their times. Such satire was both intelligent and creative. For example, a creative nonsense artist could draw the moustache of Kaiser, which, as it is, were quite conspicuous and impressive. The artist could make the moustache longer and longer and make his viewers derive great fun out of such nonsense. The artist could even think of the venerable Archbishop of Canterbury having such an over-sized moustache. Such a thought is absurd, but genuinely hilarious.

The author feels that only in his times, people could quickly discern that such imaginative art meant nothing at all. They were just some harmless nonsense. Mr. Lear wrote about the Jumblies who had blue hands and green heads. Such creatures never existed, nor would they exist in future. Yet, Lear created them and wrote about the lands in which they lived.

The author cites the book of John Bunyan titled ‘The Trial of the Christian and Faithful’. It was published in the seventeenth century. If the story of ‘Alice in Wonderland’, where a knave has been tried for his misdeeds, would have been published around the same time, it could have created very unpalatable consequences. Readers would have seen a parallel between the knave’s trial with the more serious trial mentioned in Bunyan’s book, and concluded that the State Prosecutor had been mocked by the Knave’s trial story. All these point to the inability of the reading public to appreciate genuine and harmless humour. If the nonsensical poem The ‘Dong with the Luminous Nose’ would have been written around this time, the readers would have mistakenly ascribed it to the honourable Oliver Cornwell.

Original Text – 4

It is altogether advisedly that we quote chiefly from Mr. Lear’s ‘Nonsense Rhymes.’ To our mind he is both chronologically and essentially the father of nonsense; we think him superior to Lewis Carroll. In one sense, indeed, Lewis Carroll has a great advantage. We know what Lewis Carroll was in daily life: he was a singularly serious and conventional don, universally respected, but very much of a pedant and something of a Philistine. Thus his strange double life in earth and in dreamland emphasizes the idea that lies at the back of nonsense—the idea of  escape , of escape into a world where things are not fixed horribly in an eternal appropriateness, where apples grow on pear-trees, and any odd man you meet may have three legs. Lewis Carroll, living one life in which he would have thundered morally against any one who walked on the wrong plot of grass, and another life in which he would cheerfully call the sun green and the moon blue, was, by his very divided nature, his one foot on both worlds, a perfect type of the position of modern nonsense. His Wonderland is a country populated by insane mathematicians. We feel the whole is an escape into a world of masquerade; we feel that if we could pierce their disguises, we might discover that Humpty Dumpty and the March Hare were Professors and Doctors of Divinity enjoying a mental holiday. This sense of escape is certainly less emphatic in Edward Lear, because of the completeness of his citizenship in the world of unreason. We do not know his prosaic biography as we know Lewis Carroll’s. We accept him as a purely fabulous figure, on his own description of himself:

‘His body is perfectly spherical, He weareth a runcible hat.’

Mr. Lear is credited to be the foremost proponent of the role of nonsense in human life. This is because he was born before and had earned a lot of praise for his promotion of nonsense in his writings. Lewis Carroll (real name Charles Lutwidge Dodgson) was also famous for her nonsense poems. In real life, he was a serious, academic person who commanded a lot of respect. He was particular about minor details, and was known to be hostile to art and culture. Lewis Carroll had two facets of personality, one serious, and the other dealing with fantasy and nonsense. People ascribe such divergence to his hidden desire for an escape. Perhaps, he wanted to escape into an world that was odd, chaotic, and had no set rules. He loved to think of a place where some humans had three legs, and apples grew  in orange trees.

In one avtar, Lewis Carroll would have revolted on seeing disorderly people doing odd things. In his second avtar, he would roam around in a fantasy world that had no rules, no norms, and no place for practicality. With such duality, he epitomized modern day nonsense. Alice lived in a wonderland that was so odd to conceive. It had a disproportionate number of crazy mathematicians. It is natural to conclude that the wonderland of Alice had people in disguise. A sane person like Professor or a Doctor would never have tolerated such nonsense and gone forward aggressively to unravel their true self.

Mr. Lear surely does not have such bizarre urge to escape, because he is full-fledged citizen of a world where the sense of reason is conspicuously absent. Mr. Lear’s biography is not very well-known. This apart, Mr. Lear describes himself as a very normal person with normal ways.

Original Text – 5

While Lewis Carroll’s Wonderland is purely intellectual, Lear introduces quite another element—the element of the poetical and even emotional. Carroll works by the pure reason, but this is not so strong a contrast; for, after all, mankind in the main has always regarded reason as a bit of a joke. Lear introduces his unmeaning words and his amorphous creatures not with the pomp of reason, but with the romantic prelude of rich hues and haunting rhythms.

‘Far and few, far and few, Are the lands where the Jumblies live,’ is an entirely different type of poetry to that exhibited in ‘Jabberwocky.’ Carroll, with a sense of mathematical neatness, makes his whole poem a mosaic of new and mysterious words.

Lewis Carroll’s Wonderland has strong intellectual undertones. On the contrary, Lear’s treatment of nonsense has poetical and emotional moorings. Lewis Carroll relies on reason, but this can’t be regarded as a strong element of contrast, because humans have treated reason more as a joke than as wisdom. The words Lear uses appear nonsensical, and the imagery of grotesque creatures he describes have remote connection to reason. Instead, they are meant to entertain, and amuse his readers. The jumblies he conceives live in far-off lands, and are really very funny creatures whose shapes can’t be reasoned in any way. His poem, ‘Far and few, far and few, Are the lands where the Jumblies live,’ is in sharp contrast with Lewis Carroll’s poem “Jabberwocky.’’ Lewis Carroll does not take much liberty with her selection of words. She uses new and mysterious words in her creations.

Original Text – 6

But Edward Lear, with more subtle and placid effrontery, is always introducing scraps of his own elvish dialect into the middle of simple and rational statements, until we are almost stunned into admitting that we know what they mean. There is a genial ring of commonsense about such lines as,

‘For his aunt Jobiska said “Every one knows That a Pobble is better without his toes,” ‘

which is beyond the reach of Carroll. The poet seems so easy on the matter that we are almost driven to pretend that we see his meaning, that we know the peculiar difficulties of a Pobble, that we are as old travellers in the ‘Gromboolian Plain’ as he is.

Lear is quite daring in his ways to twist words and introduce them at the middle of his sentences. This catches the readers off-guard. His lines, “For his aunt Jobiska said “Every one knows That a Pobble is better without his toes,” are really unique in their construction. Lewis Carroll comes no where such creativity using nonsense as its bedrock.

Original Text – 7

Our claim that nonsense is a new literature (we might almost say a new sense) would be quite indefensible if nonsense were nothing more than a mere aesthetic fancy. Nothing sublimely artistic has ever arisen out of mere art, any more than anything essentially reasonable has ever arisen out of the pure reason. There must always be a rich moral soil for any great aesthetic growth. The principle of  art for art’s sake  is a very good principle if it means that there is a vital distinction between the earth and the tree that has its roots in the earth; but it is a very bad principle if it means that the tree could grow just as well with its roots in the air.

The argument that nonsense writing is a new form of literature will not stand if it is shown that nonsense is nothing more than aesthetic fancy. No great literature has ever emerged out of pure art, just as no reasonable idea has been born out of pure reason. Aesthetic creativity proliferates only when it gets a morally fertile soil. The saying ‘Art for Art’s Sake’ is valid only when we concede the difference between the earth and the tree that grows on it. Tree grows from the soil, but is very much different from it. Soil and tree are inseparable, but are quite distinct from one another.

Original Text – 8

Every great literature has always been allegorical–allegorical of some view of the whole universe. The ‘Iliad’ is only great because all life is a battle, the ‘Odyssey’ because all life is a journey, the Book of Job because all life is a riddle. There is one attitude in which we think that all existence is summed up in the word ‘ghosts’; another, and somewhat better one, in which we think it is summed up in the words ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream.’ Even the vulgarest melodrama or detective story can be good if it expresses something of the delight in sinister possibilities–the healthy lust for darkness and terror which may come on us any night in walking down a dark lane. If, therefore, nonsense is really to be the literature of the future, it must have its own version of the Cosmos to offer; the world must not only be the tragic, romantic, and religious, it must be nonsensical also. And here we fancy that nonsense will, in a very unexpected way, come to the aid of the spiritual view of things. Religion has for centuries been trying to make men exult in the ‘wonders’ of creation, but it has forgotten that a thing cannot be completely wonderful so long as it remains sensible. So long as we regard a tree as an obvious thing, naturally and reasonably created for a giraffe to eat, we cannot properly wonder at it. It is when we consider it as a prodigious wave of the living soil sprawling up to the skies for no reason in particular that we take off our hats, to the astonishment of the park-keeper. Everything has in fact another side to it, like the moon, the patroness of nonsense. Viewed from that other side, a bird is a blossom broken loose from its chain of stalk, a man a quadruped begging on its hind legs, a house a gigantesque hat to cover a man from the sun, a chair an apparatus of four wooden legs for a cripple with only two.

This is the side of things which tends most truly to spiritual wonder. It is significant that in the greatest religious poem existent, the Book of Job, the argument which convinces the infidel is not (as has been represented by the merely rational religionism of the eighteenth century) a picture of the ordered beneficence of the Creation; but, on the contrary, a picture of the huge and undecipherable unreason of it. ‘Hast Thou sent the rain upon the desert where no man is?’ This simple sense of wonder at the shapes of things, and at their exuberant independence of our intellectual standards and our trivial definitions, is the basis of spirituality as it is the basis of nonsense. Nonsense and faith (strange as the conjunction may seem) are the two supreme symbolic assertions of the truth that to draw out the soul of things with a syllogism is as impossible as to draw out Leviathan with a hook. The well-meaning person who, by merely studying the logical side of things, has decided that ‘faith is nonsense,’ does not know how truly he speaks; later it may come back to him in the form that nonsense is faith.

All great works of literature have been based on experiences that can be directly or indirectly related to real life experience. The ‘Iliad’ is straight from the battle field, and the Odyssey is on a homeward sea voyage. The Book of Job relates to life’s riddles. When people sit down to imagine something out of this world, they conjure up Ghosts. Others think of plots such as ‘A Mid-summer Night’s Dream’. Detective stories and melodramas also can be entertaining too, because we rarely do come across devilish characters on the streets in dark nights.

Therefore, it can be argued that nonsense can be the backbone of future day literature if it can present the world in its form. There is always the place for nonsense-themed literature as an alternative to religious, romantic or tragic styles of literature. Time might come when nonsense can form an element of spiritual literature. After all, for propounding religious notions or stories, humans have mixed some doses of nonsense in to them. A perfectly sensible story can not grip the way religious stories do, because the latter are always mixed with certain elements of nonsense.

If we see the reason behind the trees is to provide fodder for the giraffes, we will stop wondering at the trees. Only when we learn to wonder at its vertical leap to the skies for no rational reason, do we realize how beautiful it is.

The moon, similarly might be a celestial body of dry barren rock, but it inspires so much nonsense in us.

Viewed from that other side, a bird is a blossom broken loose from its chain of stalk, a man a quadruped begging on its hind legs, a house a gigantesque hat to cover a man from the sun, a chair an apparatus of four wooden legs for a cripple with only two.

Additional explanatory notes

The use of the word ‘nonsense ’ – We in India seem to treat this word ‘nonsense’ as rude and derogatory. We use this word while angrily criticizing anybody. However, the native English speakers use it for describing something that does not or lacks sense. An argument, or a theory, or a story can be described as nonsense, if it too removed from fact or reason to be plausible.

In a similar manner, we treat the word ‘stupid’ as a coarse rebuke. The meaning is not this. ‘Stupid’ means something that utterly lacks brain or intelligence.

In this essay, Chesterton sings the praise of nonsense in literature. He says, nonsense adds beauty, imagination, and enjoyment to a literary piece. Without a dose of nonsense, literature will lose its charm, and wilL become dull.

Our Puranas, Mahabharat and Ramayana have a heavy mix of nonsense that makes them so very fascinating. Lord KrisHna lifts a whole mountain with his little finger, and Hanuman sets the whole Lanka ablaze with his burning tail are irrational, and impractical, but they make the text so very enjoyable. In the same way, James Bond films are replete with scenes that, in real life, can never happen. They don’t rely on extraordinary fantasies like the Greek or Hindu mythological stories, but are contrived to appear gripping despite the rationality that underlines the plots.

So, the author argues, nonsense is essential and desirable for Art.

Sense behind the first paragraph – The human race is constantly evolving. Anthropological changes are happening slowly, but steadily. Similarly, arts, science and technology are also evolving continuously. When compared to our Stone Age ancestors, we might appear very advanced, but 1000 from now, our descendants might judge us to be very primitive and backward. Therefore, logically, we can be described both as advanced, when compared to Stone Age, and primitive in the eyes of our far-off descendants.

Another example – A man in deep sleep gets up suddenly and finds that the outside light is faint, and the horizon is golden. He might get confused to determine if it is dawn, or dusk—whether Sun is rising or is setting.

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The explanation is simply superb n clear. It has made more sense than the original. Thank you

What a delightful and intelligent article. I so enjoyed it. I’m a native English speaker by the way. I went up to Oxford in 1988.

Thank you for your appreciation.

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Book Review: “A Professor’s Guide to Writing Essays: The No-Nonsense Plan for Better Writing” by Dr. Jacob Neumann

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Many students feel too overwhelmed with their curriculum to do any additional reading. It’s understandable as they have millions of tasks that need urgent focus, so fiction and non-fiction genres are left in their past, freer life — as long as they aren’t assigned them in college or uni. This trend is depressing since reading is essential in many ways, from cognitive to social. Researchers from Psychology Today Schwanenflugel and Knapp confirm that reading improves brain function and helps in studies. Interestingly, it might happen both directly and indirectly.

 “A Professor’s Guide to Writing Essays: The No-Nonsense Plan for Better Writing”written by DoctorNeumann is a non-fiction book with the power to bring benefits in two ways at once. First, it’s deeply engaging and stimulating. Second, it’s essential for studies because regardless of whether you are still in high school or if you’re tackling complex uni challenges, writing essays is a task that will follow you everywhere. Knowing how to do it will save you tons of time.

The Content of Neumann ’s Book and What Makes It Stand Out

DoctorNeumann has worked as a professor in many areas and on different educational levels. He’s seen the struggles his students face with crafting their essays personally, and it encouraged him to write a book that would help them improve their writing. So, Neumann’s book explores the concept of academic essays and provides useful tips on how to structure ad compose them. He raises such topics as the creation of helpful outline, effective introduction, strong thesis, and logical paragraphs. Neumann also explains how to avoid plagiarism, which is essential since unless your paper is 100% unique, you risk facing a disciplinary hearing and even suspension. This way, his book presents a complex of suggestions aimed at facilitating your writing.   

But what makes this book special? Neumann discards the idea of each essay type differing from one another. Instead, he promotes the idea that writing principles stay the same in all cases, claiming that if you get a grasp on them once, you’ll be able to apply them over and over again.  He uses practical demonstrations and builds excellent and relevant associations that stay in the memory of his readers for a long time. For example, when explaining transitions and their role in the structuring of the paragraphs, Neumann draws the comparison with road signs. Such vivid examples help demonstrate the rules much better than long theoretical explanations.

The Audience Neumann ’s Book Targets

Published in 2016, Neumann’s book has quickly gained popularity because of how relevant and useful its central topic is to different groups of people. Since it revolves around academic writing, all people involved in this sphere can benefit from reading it. There are four specific groups that can be seen as its target audience.

·         The youth. Young people of all ages study in schools, colleges, or universities, and all of them have to inevitably write essays. Nearly all of them face problems on their way to a good grade, so Neumann’s book is perfect for them. They’re the primary audience since it’s students who inspired the author to write his guide.    

·          Professors. Teachers are also an important audience since they might grow frustrated with having to explain the rules of writing to their classes repeatedly. With Neumann’s book, they have a chance to save their time and make explanations rich and on-point. 

·         Academic writing professionals. The area of academic writing is fast, and many specialists are joining it daily to help students with their tasks. Some essay structure nuances might be a novelty to them, which is why Neumann’s book is a recommended reading in such places. To understand the rules intimately, people working for admission essay writing service from EduBirdie all read this book thoroughly before they start working. This helps them avoid mistakes and achieve the best results for their clients.   

·         Adults entering the education sphere. Many adults who didn’t have a chance to graduate go back to school or get jobs where knowing how to write academically is essential. Neumann’s book targets them as well. It’s written in a way that will be engaging to people regardless of their age, so they will all find it worth their time. 

The Best Kind of Books: Easy and Beneficial Reading

Best books don’t underwhelm you — they stimulate and relax you at the same time, capturing your interest and teaching you something useful. “A Professor’s Guide to Writing Essays: The No-Nonsense Plan for Better Writing”by Neumann is a great example of such books. Dunn from Psychology Today mentioned how academic writing doesn’t have to be boring or stuffy, and Neumann has met this particular goal brilliantly. If you wonder how to cope with your essay tasks, just give it a try. It’s short but extremely illustrative.

Robert is a writer from Edubirdie who unwaveringly stays in touch with the modern content market. He understands the reasons underlying the popularity of books or research and the uniqueness of their creation. The world of literature is diverse, and Robert strives to make it brighter by adding his own contributions to it.  

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Nonsense Poetry

This material remains under copyright in some jurisdictions, including the US, and is reproduced here with the kind permission of  the Orwell Estate . The Orwell Foundation is an independent charity – please consider making a donation or becoming a Friend of the Foundation to help us maintain these resources for readers everywhere. 

In many languages, it is said, there is no nonsense poetry, and there is not a great deal of it even in English. The bulk of it is in nursery rhymes and scraps of folk poetry, some of which may not have been strictly nonsensical at the start, but have become so because their original application has been forgotten. For example, the rhyme about Margery Daw:

See-saw, Margery Daw, Dobbin shall have a new master. He shall have but a penny a day Because he can’t go any faster.

Or the other version that I learned in Oxfordshire as a little boy:

See-saw, Margery Daw, Sold her bed and lay upon straw. Wasn’t she a silly slut To sell her bed and lie upon dirt?

It may be that there was once a real person called Margery Daw, and perhaps there was even a Dobbin who somehow came into the story. When Shakespeare makes Edgar in  King Lear quote ‘Pillicock sat on Pillicock hill’, and similar fragments, he is uttering nonsense, but no doubt these fragments come from forgotten ballads in which they once had a meaning. The typical scrap of folk poetry which one quotes almost unconsciously is not exactly nonsense but a sort of musical comment on some recurring event, such as ‘One a penny, two a penny, Hot-Cross buns’ , or ‘Polly, put the kettle on, we’ll all have tea’ . Some of these seemingly frivolous rhymes actually express a deeply pessimistic view of life, the churchyard wisdom of the peasant. For instance:

Solomon Grundy , Born on Monday, Christened on Tuesday, Married on Wednesday, Took ill on Thursday, Worse on Friday, Died on Saturday, Buried on Sunday, And that was the end of Solomon Grundy.

which is a gloomy story, but remarkably similar to yours or mine.

Until Surrealism made a deliberate raid on the unconscious, poetry that aimed at being nonsense, apart from the meaningless refrains of songs, does not seem to have been common. This gives a special position to Edward Lear , whose nonsense rhymes have just been edited by Mr R. L. Megroz [1] , who was also responsible for the Penguin edition a year or two before the war. Lear was one of the first writers to deal in pure fantasy, with imaginary countries and made-up words, without any satirical purposes. His poems are not all of them equally nonsensical; some of them get their effect by a perversion of logic, but they are all alike in that their underlying feeling is sad and not bitter. They express a kind of amiable lunacy, a natural sympathy with whatever is weak and absurd. Lear could fairly be called the originator of the limerick, though verses in almost the same metrical form are to be found in earlier writers, and what is sometimes considered a weakness in his limericks — that is, the fact that the rhyme is the same in the first and last lines — is part of their charm. The very slight change increases the impression of ineffectuality, which might be spoiled if there were some striking surprise. For example:

There was a young lady of Portugal Whose ideas were excessively nautical; She climbed up a tree To examine the sea, But declared she would never leave Portugal.

It is significant that almost no limericks since Lear’s have been both printable and funny enough to seem worth quoting. But he is really seen at his best in certain longer poems, such as ‘The Owl and the Pussy-Cat’ or ‘The Courtship of the Yonghy-Bonghy-Bò’ :

On the Coast of Coromandel, Where the early pumpkins blow, In the middle of the woods Lived the Yonghy-Bonghy-Bò. Two old chairs, and half a candle One old jug without a handle These were all his worldly goods: In the middle of the woods, These were all the worldly goods Of the Yonghy-Bonghy-Bò, Of the Yonghy-Bonghy-Bò.

Later there appears a lady with some white Dorking hens, and an inconclusive love affair follows. Mr Megroz thinks, plausibly enough, that this may refer to some incident in Lear’s own life. He never married, and it is easy to guess that there was something seriously wrong in his sex life. A psychiatrist could no doubt find all kinds of significance in his drawings and in the recurrence of certain made-up words such as “runcible”. His health was bad, and as he was the youngest of twenty-one children in a poor family, he must have known anxiety and hardship in very early life. It is clear that he was unhappy and by nature solitary, in spite of having good friends.

Aldous Huxley , in praising Lear’s fantasies as a sort of assertion of freedom, has pointed out that the ‘They’ of the limericks represent common sense, legality and the duller virtues generally. ‘They’ are the realists, the practical men, the sober citizens in bowler hats who are always anxious to stop you doing anything worth doing. For instance:

There was an Old Man of Whitehaven, Who danced a quadrille with a raven; But they said, ‘It’s absurd To encourage this bird!’ So they smashed that Old Man of Whitehaven.

To smash somebody just for dancing a quadrille with a raven is exactly the kind of thing that ‘They’ would do. Herbert Read has also praised Lear, and is inclined to prefer his verse to that of Lewis Carroll , as being purer fantasy. For myself, I must say that I find Lear funniest when he is least arbitrary and when a touch of burlesque or perverted logic makes its appearance. When he gives his fancy free play, as in his imaginary names, or in things like ‘Three Receipts for Domestic Cookery’ , he can be silly and tiresome. ‘The Pobble Who Has No Toes’ is haunted by the ghost of logic, and I think it is the element of sense in it that makes it funny. The Pobble, it may be remembered, went fishing in the Bristol Channel:

And all the Sailors and Admirals cried, When they saw him nearing the further side — ‘He has gone to fish, for his Aunt Jobiska’s Runcible Cat with crimson whiskers!’

The thing that is funny here is the burlesque touch, the Admirals. What is arbitrary — the word ‘runcible’, and the cat’s crimson whiskers — is merely rather embarrassing. While the Pobble was in the water some unidentified creatures came and ate his toes off, and when he got home his aunt remarked:

‘It’s a fact the whole world knows, That Pobbles are happier without their toes,’

which once again is funny because it has a meaning, and one might even say a political significance. For the whole theory of authoritarian governments is summed up in the statement that Pobbles were happier without their toes. So also with the well-known limerick:

There was an Old Person of Basing, Whose presence of mind was amazing; He purchased a steed, Which he rode at full speed, And escaped from the people of Basing.

It is not quite arbitrary. The funniness is in the gentle implied criticism of the people of Basing, who once again are ‘They’, the respectable ones, the right-thinking, art-hating majority.

The writer closest to Lear among his contemporaries was Lewis Carroll, who, however, was less essentially fantastic — and, in my opinion, funnier. Since then, as Mr Megroz points out in his Introduction, Lear’s influence has been considerable, but it is hard to believe that it has been altogether good. The silly whimsiness of present-day children’s books could perhaps be partly traced back to him. At any rate, the idea of deliberately setting out to write nonsense, though it came off in Lear’s case, is a doubtful one. Probably the best nonsense poetry is produced gradually and accidentally, by communities rather than by individuals. As a comic draughtsman, on the other hand, Lear’s influence must have been beneficial. James Thurber , for instance, must surely owe something to Lear, directly or indirectly.

Tribune , 21 December 1945

The Lear Omnibus edited by R. L. Megroz

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Enduring Endearing Nonsense: The Alice in Wonderland Stories and Their Legacy

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ENDURING, ENDEARING NONSENSE by AndrewGreen Did you read and enjoy Lewis Carroll’s Alice inWonderland books as a child? Or better still, did you havesomeone read them to you? Perhaps you discovered themas an adult or, forbid the thought, maybe you haven’tdiscovered them at all! Those who have journeyed Throughthe Looking Glass generally love (or shun) the tales for theirunparalleled sense of nonsense . Public interest in thebooks–from the time they were published more than acentury ago–has almost been matched by curiosity abouttheir author. Many readers are surprised to learn that theMad Hatter, the Cheshire Cat and a host of other absurdand captivating creatures sprung from the mind of CharlesLutwidge Dodgson, a shy, stammering Oxford mathematicsprofessor. Dodgson was a deacon in his church, an inventor,and a noted children’s photographer.

Wonderland , and thusthe seeds of his unanticipated success as a writer, appearedquite casually one day as he spun an impromptu tale toamuse the daughters of a colleague during a picnic. One ofthese girls was Alice Liddell, who insisted that he write thestory down for her, and who served as the model for theheroine. Dodgson eventually sought to publish the first bookon the advice of friends who had read and loved the littlehandwritten manuscript he had given to Alice Liddell. Heexpanded the story considerably and engaged the servicesof John Tenniel, one of the best known artists in England, toprovide illustrations.

Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland andits sequel Through The Looking Glass were enthusiasticallyreceived in their own time, and have since becomelandmarks in childrens’ literature. What makes thesenonsense tales so durable? Aside from the immediate appealof the characters, their colourful language, and thesometimes hilarious verse (“Twas brillig, and the slithytoves/did gyre and gimble in the wabe:”) the narrative workson many levels. There is logical structure, in the relationshipof Alice’s journey to a game of chess. There are problems ofrelativity, as in her exchange with the Cheshire Cat: “Wouldyou tell me please, which way I ought to go from here?””That depends a good deal on where you want to get to.

“There is plenty of fodder for psychoanalysts, Freudian orotherwise, who have had a field day analyzing thesignificance of the myriad dream creatures and Alice’sstrange transformations. There is even Zen: “And she tried tofancy what the flame of a candle looks like after the candle isblown out. . . ” Still, why would a rigorous logical thinker likeDodgson, a disciple of mathematics, wish children to wanderin an unpredictable land of the absurd? Maybe he felt thateverybody, including himself, needed an occasional holidayfrom dry mental exercises. But he was no doubt also awarethat nonsense can be instructive all the same.

As Alice andthe children who follow her adventures recognize illogicalevents, they are acknowledging their capacity for logic, inthe form of what should normally happen. “You’re a serpent;says the Pigeon and there’s no use denying it. I supposeyou’ll be telling me next that you never tasted an egg!” “Ihave tasted eggs, certainly,” said Alice. . . “But little girls eateggs quite as much as serpents do, you know.

” EthelRowell, to whom Dodgson taught logic when she wasyoung, wrote that she was grateful that he had encouragedher to “that arduous business of thinking. ” While LewisCarroll’s Alice books compel us to laugh and to wonder, weare also easily led, almost in spite of ourselves, to think asBibliography:FURTHER READING: Lewis Carroll. Alice’sAdventures in Wonderland ; Through the Looking-Glass,with an introduction by Morton N. Cohen, Bantam, 1981. Lewis Carroll: The Wasp in a Wig, A “Suppressed Episodeof Through the Looking-Glass, Notes by Martin Gardner,Macmillan London Ltd, 1977. Anne Clark: The Real Alice,Michael Joseph Ltd, 1981.

Raymond Smullyan: Alice inPuzzleland, William Morrow and Co. , 1982.

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longform articles & essays 101

A comprehensive guide on longform journalism: favorite sites, newsletters, and a starter pack of my favorite articles.

what is longform journalism and why should you read it?

Longform journalism is essentially an article that is a long read, typically ranging between 2,000 to over 10,000 words. The lengthy word count allows for more detailed, developed pieces of writing that have room to expand and truly breathe. The content can vary, from investigative reporting to personal essays, from interviews to short fiction published in magazines and newspapers.

In the last year or so, I’ve begun reaching for longform essays often. It’s long enough to feel as satisfactory as a good nonfiction book, but it is also short enough that I can read it on my commute to work or other places. They are also just massively underrated outlets for reading—they are incredibly diverse in content and style and very informative. Articles pack the same depth of analysis and research as nonfiction books while being more accessible due to their short length.

I constantly strive to keep myself educated and knowledgeable even if I’m not in a classroom setting. Longform articles fill that education void for me, so I always try to make it a habit of reading at least one article daily, even when I don't have time to read actual books. It also increases my attention span (something I direly need to do because social media doomscrolling has been killing it). I treat these essays and articles like brain food, so it's always fun to learn something new.

where do you find articles & essays?

My go-to sites for articles are: The New Yorker, Aeon, The Paris Review, and The Atlantic. On these sites, will always be able to find a fantastic article on so many different topics.

Here is a big list of around 30 newspapers, magazines, and sites that have excellent long-form articles and never let me down. I tried to put them in order of the ones I read from the most, with descriptions of what you can expect to find on each magazine/newspaper.

The New Yorker : An American magazine that covers everything from politics to culture to art to fiction. Most articles are gems, and many of my favorite writers also write longform content on here every now and then. Here are some of the journalists I consistently follow and read from: Patrick Radden Keefe (true crime), Kathryn Schulz (anything from science to geography to memoirs), Peter Schjeldahl (art), Rachel Syme (profiles), and Jia Tolentino (feminism and culture).

Aeon : The best free magazine out there. Aeon covers essays about philosophy , psychology , science , society and culture . Every article is so well researched and written. So many of my favorite articles of all time are from this site, and everything feels like brain food. Here is an article about sulking , one about nostalgia , and one about female friendships .

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Joseph Epstein, conservative provocateur, tells his life story in full

In two new books, the longtime essayist and culture warrior shows off his wry observations about himself and the world

Humorous, common-sensical, temperamentally conservative, Joseph Epstein may be the best familiar — that is casual, personal — essayist of the last half-century. Not, as he might point out, that there’s a lot of competition. Though occasionally a scourge of modern society’s errancies, Epstein sees himself as essentially a serious reader and “a hedonist of the intellect.” His writing is playful and bookish, the reflections of a wry observer alternately amused and appalled by the world’s never-ending carnival.

Now 87, Epstein has just published his autobiography, “ Never Say You’ve Had a Lucky Life: Especially if You’ve Had a Lucky Life ,” in tandem with “ Familiarity Breeds Content: New and Selected Essays .” This pair of books brings the Epstein oeuvre up to around 30 volumes of sophisticated literary entertainment. While there are some short-story collections (“The Goldin Boys,” “Fabulous Small Jews”), all the other books focus on writers, observations on American life, and topics as various as ambition, envy, snobbery, friendship, charm and gossip. For the record, let me add that I own 14 volumes of Epstein’s views and reviews and would like to own them all.

Little wonder, then, that Epstein’s idea of a good time is an afternoon spent hunched over Herodotus’s “Histories,” Marguerite Yourcenar’s “Memoirs of Hadrian” or almost anything by Henry James, with an occasional break to enjoy the latest issue of one of the magazines he subscribes to. In his younger days, there were as many as 25, and most of them probably featured Epstein’s literary journalism at one time or another. In the case of Commentary, he has been contributing pieces for more than 60 years.

As Epstein tells it, no one would have predicted this sort of intellectual life for a kid from Chicago whose main interests while growing up were sports, hanging out, smoking Lucky Strikes and sex. A lackadaisical C student, Myron Joseph Epstein placed 169th in a high school graduating class of 213. Still, he did go on to college — the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign — because that’s what was expected of a son from an upper-middle-class Jewish family. But Urbana-Champaign wasn’t a good fit for a jokester and slacker: As he points out, the president of his college fraternity “had all the playfulness of a member of the president’s Council of Economic Advisers.” No matter. Caught peddling stolen copies of an upcoming accounting exam for $5 a pop, Epstein was summarily expelled.

Fortunately, our lad had already applied for a transfer to the University of Chicago, to which he was admitted the next fall. Given his record, this shows a surprising laxity of standards by that distinguished institution, but for Epstein the move was life-changing. In short order, he underwent a spiritual conversion from good ol’ boy to European intellectual in the making. In the years to come, he would count the novelist Saul Bellow and the sociologist Edward Shils among his close friends, edit the American Scholar, and teach at Northwestern University. His students, he recalls, were “good at school, a skill without any necessary carry-over, like being good at pole-vaulting or playing the harmonica.”

Note the edge to that remark. While “Never Say You’ve Had a Lucky Life” is nostalgia-laden, there’s a hard nut at its center. Epstein feels utter contempt for our nation’s “radical change from a traditionally moral culture to a therapeutic one.” As he explains: “Our parents’ culture and that which came long before them was about the formation of character; the therapeutic culture was about achieving happiness. The former was about courage and honor, the latter about self-esteem and freedom from stress.” This view of America’s current ethos may come across as curmudgeonly and reductionist, but many readers — whatever their political and cultural leanings — would agree with it. Still, such comments have sometimes made their author the focus of nearly histrionic vilification.

Throughout his autobiography, this lifelong Chicagoan seems able to remember the full names of everyone he’s ever met, which suggests Epstein started keeping a journal at an early age. He forthrightly despises several older writers rather similar to himself, calling Clifton Fadiman, author of “The Lifetime Reading Plan,” pretentious, then quite cruelly comparing Mortimer J. Adler, general editor of the “Great Books of the Western World” series, with Sir William Haley, one of those deft, widely read English journalists who make all Americans feel provincial. To Epstein, “no two men were more unalike; Sir William, modest, suave, intellectually sophisticated; Mortimer vain, coarse, intellectually crude.” In effect, Fadiman and Adler are both presented as cultural snake-oil salesmen. Of course, both authors were popularizers and adept at marketing their work, but helping to enrich the intellectual lives of ordinary people doesn’t strike me as an ignoble purpose.

In his own work, Epstein regularly employs humor, bits of slang or wordplay, and brief anecdotes to keep his readers smiling. For instance, in a chapter about an editorial stint at the Encyclopaedia Britannica, Epstein relates this story about a colleague named Martin Self:

“During those days, when anti-Vietnam War protests were rife, a young woman in the office wearing a protester’s black armband, asked Martin if he were going to that afternoon’s protest march. ‘No, Naomi,’ he said, ‘afternoons such as this I generally spend at the graveside of George Santayana.’”

Learned wit, no doubt, but everything — syntax, diction, the choice of the philosopher Santayana for reverence — is just perfect.

But Epstein can be earthier, too. Another colleague “was a skirt-chaser extraordinaire," a man "you would not feel safe leaving alone with your great-grandmother.” And of himself, he declares: “I don’t for a moment wish to give the impression that I live unrelievedly on the highbrow level of culture. I live there with a great deal of relief.”

In his many essays, including the sampling in “Familiarity Breeds Content,” Epstein is also markedly “quotacious,” often citing passages from his wide reading to add authority to an argument or simply to share his pleasure in a well-turned observation. Oddly enough, such borrowed finery is largely absent from “Never Say You’ve Had a Happy Life.” One partial exception might be the unpronounceable adjective “immitigable,” which appears all too often. It means unable to be mitigated or softened, and Epstein almost certainly stole it from his friend Shils, who was fond of the word.

Despite his autobiography’s jaunty title, Epstein has seen his share of trouble. As a young man working for an anti-poverty program in Little Rock, he married a waitress after she became pregnant with his child. When they separated a decade later, he found himself with four sons to care for — two from her previous marriage, two from theirs. Burt, the youngest, lost an eye in an accident while a toddler, couldn’t keep a job, fathered a child out of wedlock and eventually died of an opioid overdose at 28. Initially hesitant, Epstein came to adore Burt’s daughter, Annabelle, as did his second wife, Barbara, whom he married when they were both just past 40.

Some pages of “Never Say You’ve Had a Lucky Life” will be familiar to inveterate readers of Epstein’s literary journalism, all of which carries a strong first-person vibe. Not surprisingly, however, the recycled anecdotage feels less sharp or witty the second time around. But overall, this look back over a long life is consistently entertaining, certainly more page-turner than page-stopper. To enjoy Epstein at his very best, though, you should seek out his earlier essay collections such as “The Middle of My Tether,” “Partial Payments” and “A Line Out for a Walk.” Whether he writes about napping or name-dropping or a neglected writer such as Somerset Maugham, his real subject is always, at heart, the wonder and strangeness of human nature.

Never Say You’ve Had a Lucky Life

Especially if You’ve Had a Lucky Life

By Joseph Epstein

Free Press. 304 pp. $29.99

Familiarity Breeds Content

New and Selected Essays

Simon & Schuster. 464 pp. $20.99

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Longtime Clinton Adviser Sounds The Alarm With ‘Biden Is Doing It All Wrong’ Essay

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A longtime adviser to former President Bill Clinton has spelled out what he believes could cost President Joe Biden victory in the 2024 election.

Mark Penn suggested in an essay for The New York Times — titled “ Biden Is Doing It All Wrong ” — that the president should stop pandering to his “political base on the left” and “chart a different course” if he wants to beat presumptive GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump in November.

“By pitching too much to the base, he is leaving behind the centrist swing voters who shift between parties from election to election and, I believe, will be the key factor deciding the 2024 race,” Penn wrote of Biden.

“If Mr. Biden wants to serve another four years, he has to stop being dragged to the left and chart a different course closer to the center that appeals to those voters who favor bipartisan compromises to our core issues, fiscal discipline and a strong America,” he argued.

Biden is currently polling slightly behind Trump .

The president is “not reaching out to moderate voters with policy ideas or a strong campaign message,” and although “the 2024 election is a rematch” between Biden and his quadruply indicted predecessor, Biden’s victory in battleground states is anything but guaranteed, Penn said.

Biden could “still move more to the center, hoover up swing voters who desperately want to reject Mr. Trump, strengthen his image as a leader by destroying Hamas, and rally the base at the end,” he continued. “But that means first pushing back against the base rather than pandering to it, and remembering that when it comes to the math of elections, swing is king.”

Read the full essay here .

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What is climate change mitigation and why is it urgent?

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• Climate change mitigation involves actions to reduce or prevent greenhouse gas emissions from human activities.
• Mitigation efforts include transitioning to renewable energy sources, enhancing energy efficiency, adopting regenerative agricultural practices and protecting and restoring forests and critical ecosystems.
• Effective mitigation requires a whole-of-society approach and structural transformations to reduce emissions and limit global warming to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels.
• International cooperation, for example through the Paris Agreement, is crucial in guiding and achieving global and national mitigation goals.
• Mitigation efforts face challenges such as the world's deep-rooted dependency on fossil fuels, the increased demand for new mineral resources and the difficulties in revamping our food systems.
• These challenges also offer opportunities to improve resilience and contribute to sustainable development.

What is climate change mitigation?

Climate change mitigation refers to any action taken by governments, businesses or people to reduce or prevent greenhouse gases, or to enhance carbon sinks that remove them from the atmosphere. These gases trap heat from the sun in our planet’s atmosphere, keeping it warm. 

Since the industrial era began, human activities have led to the release of dangerous levels of greenhouse gases, causing global warming and climate change. However, despite unequivocal research about the impact of our activities on the planet’s climate and growing awareness of the severe danger climate change poses to our societies, greenhouse gas emissions keep rising. If we can slow down the rise in greenhouse gases, we can slow down the pace of climate change and avoid its worst consequences.

Reducing greenhouse gases can be achieved by:

• Shifting away from fossil fuels : Fossil fuels are the biggest source of greenhouse gases, so transitioning to modern renewable energy sources like solar, wind and geothermal power, and advancing sustainable modes of transportation, is crucial.
• Improving energy efficiency : Using less energy overall – in buildings, industries, public and private spaces, energy generation and transmission, and transportation – helps reduce emissions. This can be achieved by using thermal comfort standards, better insulation and energy efficient appliances, and by improving building design, energy transmission systems and vehicles.
• Changing agricultural practices : Certain farming methods release high amounts of methane and nitrous oxide, which are potent greenhouse gases. Regenerative agricultural practices – including enhancing soil health, reducing livestock-related emissions, direct seeding techniques and using cover crops – support mitigation, improve resilience and decrease the cost burden on farmers.
• The sustainable management and conservation of forests : Forests act as carbon sinks , absorbing carbon dioxide and reducing the overall concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. Measures to reduce deforestation and forest degradation are key for climate mitigation and generate multiple additional benefits such as biodiversity conservation and improved water cycles.
• Restoring and conserving critical ecosystems : In addition to forests, ecosystems such as wetlands, peatlands, and grasslands, as well as coastal biomes such as mangrove forests, also contribute significantly to carbon sequestration, while supporting biodiversity and enhancing climate resilience.
• Creating a supportive environment : Investments, policies and regulations that encourage emission reductions, such as incentives, carbon pricing and limits on emissions from key sectors are crucial to driving climate change mitigation.

Photo: Stephane Bellerose/UNDP Mauritius

Photo: La Incre and Lizeth Jurado/PROAmazonia

What is the 1.5°C goal and why do we need to stick to it?

In 2015, 196 Parties to the UN Climate Convention in Paris adopted the Paris Agreement , a landmark international treaty, aimed at curbing global warming and addressing the effects of climate change. Its core ambition is to cap the rise in global average temperatures to well below 2°C above levels observed prior to the industrial era, while pursuing efforts to limit the increase to 1.5°C.

The 1.5°C goal is extremely important, especially for vulnerable communities already experiencing severe climate change impacts. Limiting warming below 1.5°C will translate into less extreme weather events and sea level rise, less stress on food production and water access, less biodiversity and ecosystem loss, and a lower chance of irreversible climate consequences.

To limit global warming to the critical threshold of 1.5°C, it is imperative for the world to undertake significant mitigation action. This requires a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 45 percent before 2030 and achieving net-zero emissions by mid-century.

What are the policy instruments that countries can use to drive mitigation?

Everyone has a role to play in climate change mitigation, from individuals adopting sustainable habits and advocating for change to governments implementing regulations, providing incentives and facilitating investments. The private sector, particularly those businesses and companies responsible for causing high emissions, should take a leading role in innovating, funding and driving climate change mitigation solutions. 

International collaboration and technology transfer is also crucial given the global nature and size of the challenge. As the main platform for international cooperation on climate action, the Paris Agreement has set forth a series of responsibilities and policy tools for its signatories. One of the primary instruments for achieving the goals of the treaty is Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) . These are the national climate pledges that each Party is required to develop and update every five years. NDCs articulate how each country will contribute to reducing greenhouse gas emissions and enhance climate resilience.   While NDCs include short- to medium-term targets, long-term low emission development strategies (LT-LEDS) are policy tools under the Paris Agreement through which countries must show how they plan to achieve carbon neutrality by mid-century. These strategies define a long-term vision that gives coherence and direction to shorter-term national climate targets.

Photo: Mucyo Serge/UNDP Rwanda

Photo: William Seal/UNDP Sudan

At the same time, the call for climate change mitigation has evolved into a call for reparative action, where high-income countries are urged to rectify past and ongoing contributions to the climate crisis. This approach reflects the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) which advocates for climate justice, recognizing the unequal historical responsibility for the climate crisis, emphasizing that wealthier countries, having profited from high-emission activities, bear a greater obligation to lead in mitigating these impacts. This includes not only reducing their own emissions, but also supporting vulnerable countries in their transition to low-emission development pathways.

Another critical aspect is ensuring a just transition for workers and communities that depend on the fossil fuel industry and its many connected industries. This process must prioritize social equity and create alternative employment opportunities as part of the shift towards renewable energy and more sustainable practices.

For emerging economies, innovation and advancements in technology have now demonstrated that robust economic growth can be achieved with clean, sustainable energy sources. By integrating renewable energy technologies such as solar, wind and geothermal power into their growth strategies, these economies can reduce their emissions, enhance energy security and create new economic opportunities and jobs. This shift not only contributes to global mitigation efforts but also sets a precedent for sustainable development.

What are some of the challenges slowing down climate change mitigation efforts?

Mitigating climate change is fraught with complexities, including the global economy's deep-rooted dependency on fossil fuels and the accompanying challenge of eliminating fossil fuel subsidies. This reliance – and the vested interests that have a stake in maintaining it – presents a significant barrier to transitioning to sustainable energy sources.

The shift towards decarbonization and renewable energy is driving increased demand for critical minerals such as copper, lithium, nickel, cobalt, and rare earth metals. Since new mining projects can take up to 15 years to yield output, mineral supply chains could become a bottleneck for decarbonization efforts. In addition, these minerals are predominantly found in a few, mostly low-income countries, which could heighten supply chain vulnerabilities and geopolitical tensions.

Furthermore, due to the significant demand for these minerals and the urgency of the energy transition, the scaled-up investment in the sector has the potential to exacerbate environmental degradation, economic and governance risks, and social inequalities, affecting the rights of Indigenous Peoples, local communities, and workers. Addressing these concerns necessitates implementing social and environmental safeguards, embracing circular economy principles, and establishing and enforcing responsible policies and regulations .

Agriculture is currently the largest driver of deforestation worldwide. A transformation in our food systems to reverse the impact that agriculture has on forests and biodiversity is undoubtedly a complex challenge. But it is also an important opportunity. The latest IPCC report highlights that adaptation and mitigation options related to land, water and food offer the greatest potential in responding to the climate crisis. Shifting to regenerative agricultural practices will not only ensure a healthy, fair and stable food supply for the world’s population, but also help to significantly reduce greenhouse gas emissions.  

Photo: UNDP India

Photo: Nino Zedginidze/UNDP Georgia

What are some examples of climate change mitigation?

In Mauritius , UNDP, with funding from the Green Climate Fund, has supported the government to install battery energy storage capacity that has enabled 50 MW of intermittent renewable energy to be connected to the grid, helping to avoid 81,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide annually. 

In Indonesia , UNDP has been working with the government for over a decade to support sustainable palm oil production. In 2019, the country adopted a National Action Plan on Sustainable Palm Oil, which was collaboratively developed by government, industry and civil society representatives. The plan increased the adoption of practices to minimize the adverse social and environmental effects of palm oil production and to protect forests. Since 2015, 37 million tonnes of direct greenhouse gas emissions have been avoided and 824,000 hectares of land with high conservation value have been protected.

In Moldova and Paraguay , UNDP has helped set up Green City Labs that are helping build more sustainable cities. This is achieved by implementing urban land use and mobility planning, prioritizing energy efficiency in residential buildings, introducing low-carbon public transport, implementing resource-efficient waste management, and switching to renewable energy sources. 

UNDP has supported the governments of Brazil, Costa Rica, Ecuador and Indonesia to implement results-based payments through the REDD+ (Reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation in developing countries) framework. These include payments for environmental services and community forest management programmes that channel international climate finance resources to local actors on the ground, specifically forest communities and Indigenous Peoples. 

UNDP is also supporting small island developing states like the Comoros to invest in renewable energy and sustainable infrastructure. Through the Africa Minigrids Program , solar minigrids will be installed in two priority communities, Grand Comore and Moheli, providing energy access through distributed renewable energy solutions to those hardest to reach.

And in South Africa , a UNDP initative to boost energy efficiency awareness among the general population and improve labelling standards has taken over commercial shopping malls.

What is UNDP’s role in supporting climate change mitigation?

UNDP aims to assist countries with their climate change mitigation efforts, guiding them towards sustainable, low-carbon and climate-resilient development. This support is in line with achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), particularly those related to affordable and clean energy (SDG7), sustainable cities and communities (SDG11), and climate action (SDG13). Specifically, UNDP’s offer of support includes developing and improving legislation and policy, standards and regulations, capacity building, knowledge dissemination, and financial mobilization for countries to pilot and scale-up mitigation solutions such as renewable energy projects, energy efficiency initiatives and sustainable land-use practices. 

With financial support from the Global Environment Facility and the Green Climate Fund, UNDP has an active portfolio of 94 climate change mitigation projects in 69 countries. These initiatives are not only aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions, but also at contributing to sustainable and resilient development pathways.

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Gov. Jim Justice Faces Heavy Business Debts as He Seeks Senate Seat

The Justice companies have long had a reputation for not paying their debts. But that may be catching up to them.

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By Campbell Robertson and Maureen Farrell

Campbell Robertson covers West Virginia and reported from Charleston, W.Va. and Lewisburg, W.Va. Maureen Farrell covers Wall Street and reported from New York.

Jim Justice, the businessman-turned-politician governor of West Virginia, has been pursued in court for years by banks, governments, business partners and former employees for millions of dollars in unmet obligations.

And for a long time, Mr. Justice and his family’s companies have managed to stave off one threat after another with wily legal tactics notably at odds with the aw-shucks persona that has endeared him to so many West Virginians. On Tuesday, he is heavily favored to win the Republican Senate primary and cruise to victory in the general election, especially after the departure of the Democratic incumbent, Joe Manchin III.

But now, as he wraps up his second term as governor and campaigns for a seat in the U.S. Senate, things are looking dicier. Much like Donald J. Trump , with whom he is often compared — with whom he often compares himself — Mr. Justice has faced a barrage of costly judgments and legal setbacks.

And this time, there may be too many, some suspect, for Mr. Justice, 73, and his family to fend them all off.

“It’s a simple matter of math,” said Steven New, a lawyer in Mr. Justice’s childhood hometown, Beckley, W.Va., who, like many lawyers in coal country, has tangled with Justice companies.

Mr. Justice and his scores of businesses would be able to handle some of these potential multimillion-dollar judgments in isolation, Mr. New said. But “when you add it all up, and put the judgments together close in time, it would appear he doesn’t have enough,” he said.

The son of a coal magnate, Mr. Justice took over the family business in 1993 and expanded its interests beyond coal, with acquisitions in agriculture and high-end hospitality . Like many sprawling enterprises, the Justice companies have taken on prodigious debts. But they have also taken on a reputation for not paying them — and that may be catching up to them.

A bank in neighboring Virginia that has served the Justice family for decades has begun the process of collecting on more than $300 million in defaulted loans. Some of the family business’s prized assets, chief among them the 246-year-old Greenbrier resort, are in the bank’s sights, and collections on the governor’s personal bank accounts and even his house are now a possibility. Efforts have already been underway in Virginia to seize properties belonging to Mr. Justice’s son, James C. Justice III, the president of the family companies.

In West Virginia, the tax authorities have placed liens on Greenbrier properties for millions in unpaid taxes, only months after auctioning off tax-delinquent properties owned by the governor elsewhere in the state.

Collecting on such substantial debt has pitted creditors against one another, at times to the Justices’ benefit. One bank sued Mr. Justice along with a number of banks last month after discovering that the collateral for one of its loans, some land near the Greenbrier, had also been pledged to a host of other lenders.

In a separate case, a federal judge forced the Justice-owned coal business to hand over a company helicopter to one creditor owed millions of dollars, which in turn agreed to share the proceeds of the helicopter’s sale with another creditor, also owed millions. And still, the suits , judgments and collection efforts keep piling up.

Neither the governor’s office nor lawyers for the Justice companies responded to questions. When asked about the growing mound of business troubles, Mr. Justice has repeatedly said that the daily operations of his companies are overseen by his children, and that he is focused on his duties as governor.

“There’s no way on earth that I’m going to take one second of focus off of what my job has been since day one,” he told reporters in February. “I’ve put up with this nonsense the whole time I’ve been here and everything. But absolutely, there’s no way I’ve taken my eye off the ball.”

The most serious of Mr. Justice’s troubles concerns Carter Bank and Trust, a regional bank based in southern Virginia. Carter Bank had been lending to the Justice family for decades, at one point extending roughly $775 million in loans to the Justice businesses, more than a quarter of the bank’s total net loans at the time.

Justice companies had been steadily paying that down, but in April, they defaulted on the remainder of that debt — $302 million in loans that had been personally guaranteed by the governor and members of his family. The bank demanded immediate repayment.

For the Justices, this was — as described in a deposition last summer by Mr. Justice’s son — a “mega crisis.” In November, the governor, his family and more than a dozen of their businesses sued the bank in federal court for a billion dollars, claiming that Carter Bank had engaged in unfair and coercive tactics that made it impossible to pay off the loans.

The suit against the bank did not slow things down. In January, a judge in a Virginia state court sided with Carter Bank, and the bank wasted no time starting the collections process.

The Justice companies took the case to the Court of Appeals of Virginia, saying that they could not pay the security bond, which could range from $25 million to well over $300 million and would stop the collections process. The court said it could not halt the collection effort.

In the meantime, the bank announced that it was auctioning off the Justice-owned Greenbrier Sporting Club, much to the shock and consternation of the club’s members, many of whom own multimillion-dollar homes near the club’s golf course.

That auction is being challenged in court, and an April hearing was postponed as discussions continue “in an effort to reach a resolution that might address all parties’ concerns,” a lawyer for Carter Bank said in a filing.

But the prospect of losing the sporting club portended a threat to the Justice empire’s crown jewel: the Greenbrier Resort. Mr. Justice’s decision to buy it out of bankruptcy in 2009 made him a state hero, and since then, the resort, which is appraised at well over half a billion dollars, has hosted Republican congressional retreats, pro football training camps and big-money golf tournaments, including one for LIV Golf, the league created by Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund.

It is also among Carter Bank’s collateral, and not just Carter’s: A loan for up to $50 million from JPMorgan Chase to Mr. Justice is also partially secured by the Greenbrier. Legal matters involving the Justice businesses often reveal a tangle of overlapping liabilities, and the fight with Carter Bank is no exception. In February, the Justice empire’s biggest creditor, Credit Suisse, stepped in and sued Carter Bank. Credit Suisse, which is owed about $850 million, says in its suit that Carter Bank’s collection efforts have made it harder for Credit Suisse to collect its own debt from the Justice businesses.

Lawyers for Justice-owned businesses have frequently claimed that companies being sued can’t pay because they simply have no money. But an array of plaintiffs have argued that this is a feint: that Justice officials quietly empty company accounts being targeted by creditors and move the funds to other accounts, frustrating efforts to collect on debts.

A federal magistrate in Kentucky, where one company has for years been trying to collect on a judgment in the tens of millions, has called the Justice companies’ moves to avoid turning over financial information “the most egregious litigation misconduct” he has ever encountered on the bench. The federal district judge overseeing that case is now weighing whether to hold senior Justice company officials in contempt.

As these threats pile up, Mr. Justice insists that this is all a distraction. On his federal candidate disclosure form, he listed assets valued up to around $2 billion and liabilities at less than $110 million; this list, however, does not include any Carter Bank or Credit Suisse loans, where his companies were the borrower and he was a guarantor.

Routinely, he says that all will be right in the end.

“Our family’s built an empire of stuff that employs lots and lots of people,” Mr. Justice said in a news briefing. “At the end of the day, it all seems to work out.”

His creditors might not agree with that.

Thomas Link, 59, who owns a small excavating business, was hired to perform some work for Justice-owned businesses in 2021. People told him he would regret doing business with the Justices, but, he said, he was approached by the governor himself. Several months later, Mr. Link was broke.

“‘I told you so’: that’s all I heard,” he said.

On April 24, after a year and a half of litigation, the Justice company settled with Mr. Link, agreeing to pay him a fraction of the hundreds of thousands he says he was owed. The company defaulted on the first settlement payment.

Campbell Robertson reports on Delaware, the District Columbia, Kentucky, Maryland, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia and West Virginia, for The Times. More about Campbell Robertson

Maureen Farrell writes about Wall Street, focusing on private equity, hedge funds and billionaires and how they influence the world of investing. More about Maureen Farrell

Our Coverage of the 2024 Election

Presidential Race

Donald Trump leads President Biden in five crucial battleground states, a new set of polls shows , as young and nonwhite voters express discontent with the president over the economy and the war in Gaza.

Biden’s campaign brushed off the findings of the new polls , dismissing their significance and arguing that the president still has six months left before Election Day to persuade voters to support him.

The new polls showed that Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is polling stronger than any third-party candidate has in decades , sapping support from both Biden and Trump.

Trade War With China:  Biden ran for the White House as a sharp critic of Trump’s crackdown on trade with China. In office, though, he has escalated Trump’s trade war  with Beijing, albeit with a very different aim .

A Return to Normal?:  Biden has argued for years that he is the politician to restore normalcy to American politics. But a subset of American voters, have argued that they do not want his version of it .

Trump’s Exaggerated   Emails:  Trump’s campaign has sent supporters a steady stream of fund-raising solicitations that depict a highly dramatized account of his actions at his criminal trial .

Split Over Israel:  Democrats’ divisions over the war in Gaza flared in New York as a tense debate between Representative Jamaal Bowman and his primary opponent, George Latimer, exposed sharp divisions in their party .