through the looking glass
[...] He invited her indoors, put an orange in her right hand and asked her in which hand she was holding it. Then, he put her in front of a mirror, and asked which hand the child in the mirror was holding the orange in. Alice told him that it was in her left hand. When he asked her for an explanation, she answered: "Supposing I was on the other side of the glass, wouldn't the orange still be in my right hand?" He was delighted with her answer and decided that his new book would be about the world on the other side of the looking glass.
Graham, E., Lewis Carroll and the writing of Through the Looking Glass
Mirrors are the entrance to another world. Make a step forward. Enter it. Then turn round. The reverse of your entrance doesn't show the world you have left.
Look in the mirror. There you see the world as it is. When you try too look directly at this world, you'll maybe die. Like Tennyson's Lady of Shalott: And moving through a mirror clear / That hangs before her all the year, / Shadows of the world appear.
You see the world, you see yourself reflected in this world. You are the world beyond the looking glass.
I was the shadow of the waxwing slain
by the false azure of the windowpane;
I was the smudge of ashen fluff -- and I
Lived on, flew on, in the reflected sky.
And from the inside, too, I'd duplicate
Myself, my lamp, an apple on a plate:
Uncurtaining the night, I'd let dark glass
Hang all the furniture above the grass,
And how delightful when a fall of snow
Covered my glimpse of lawn and reached up so
As to make chair and bed exactly stand.
Upon that snow, out in that crystal land.
Vladimir Nabokov, Pale Fire
Graham, E., Lewis Carroll and the writing of Through the Looking Glass
Mirrors are the entrance to another world. Make a step forward. Enter it. Then turn round. The reverse of your entrance doesn't show the world you have left.
Look in the mirror. There you see the world as it is. When you try too look directly at this world, you'll maybe die. Like Tennyson's Lady of Shalott: And moving through a mirror clear / That hangs before her all the year, / Shadows of the world appear.
You see the world, you see yourself reflected in this world. You are the world beyond the looking glass.
I was the shadow of the waxwing slain
by the false azure of the windowpane;
I was the smudge of ashen fluff -- and I
Lived on, flew on, in the reflected sky.
And from the inside, too, I'd duplicate
Myself, my lamp, an apple on a plate:
Uncurtaining the night, I'd let dark glass
Hang all the furniture above the grass,
And how delightful when a fall of snow
Covered my glimpse of lawn and reached up so
As to make chair and bed exactly stand.
Upon that snow, out in that crystal land.
Vladimir Nabokov, Pale Fire