In The Hunting of the Snark, the hunt ends without resolution.
Instead:
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one disappearance,
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lingering uncertainty,
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the field intact.
The Snark is never captured.
This is not narrative failure.
It is structural necessity.
1. What Capture Would Mean
To capture the Snark would require:
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Exhaustive identification,
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Complete stabilisation,
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Elimination of surplus potential.
Capture would mean that the field has been closed.
But if meaning were exhaustible, semiosis would terminate.
The hunt would end not because it succeeded, but because nothing further could occur.
2. Inexhaustibility as Condition
Every construal in the poem:
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actualises locally,
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stabilises temporarily,
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leaves global surplus untouched.
The system never collapses into total determination.
Why?
Because structured potential exceeds any single instance.
This is not a defect.
It is the generative condition of meaning.
The Snark remains uncaptured because meaning cannot be reduced to an object among objects.
3. Elusiveness Is Functional
The Snark’s indeterminacy sustains:
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distributed coordination,
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patterned repetition,
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differentiation of roles,
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renewal of expectation.
If the Snark were fixed, activation would freeze.
If the Snark were irrelevant, coordination would dissolve.
Its elusiveness is not evasiveness.
It is the structural property that keeps the system alive.
4. The Mythic Law
Across the series we have seen:
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The blank map → structured potential.
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The hunt → activation of that potential.
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The cut → local actualisation.
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The Boojum → catastrophic overreach.
Now we can state the governing principle:
Meaning must remain partially open in order to remain generative.
Total closure equals termination.
Perpetual openness equals vitality.
The Snark embodies this asymmetry.
5. The Reader’s Position
You, too, have hunted.
You have:
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formed hypotheses,
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stabilised interpretations,
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revised expectations.
And yet, the poem remains open.
This is not interpretive relativism.
It is structural inexhaustibility.
The text continues to function because its field of potential exceeds any local construal.
6. Final Thesis
The Snark is not a creature.
Not a riddle.
Not an allegorical token.
It is the mythic condensation of semiosis itself.
And pursuit is the point.
If the Snark were captured, meaning would cease becoming.
Instead, the poem leaves us where all living systems of meaning remain:
The hunt does not conclude.
It continues wherever potential meets construal.
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