Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland

Original title: Приключения Алисы в Стране Чудес

“Carroll’s book, in my opinion, is not a fairy tale. A fairy tale is devoid of paradox; it has a firm ethical foundation, and its plot is of the wandering kind. First, Alice is not a folk tale but rather a folkloric stylization.

Second, it is a kind of novel about the life of paradoxes.

Third, it may be seen as a parody by a traditional mathematician — Carroll — of the principles of new non-Euclidean mathematics, which, as we know, Professor Dodgson regarded with irony (though, as mathematicians have told me, the parody inadvertently grew into its opposite — an affirmation of the very ideas it mocked). I did not feel this aspect strongly, being unfamiliar with higher mathematics, and took it simply on faith.

Fourth, the book is written in the key of a visionary perception of existence — as if in a dream.

All of this had to be considered and reflected in the drawings, keeping all four aspects in mind.”