On Nonsense

There is no reason to suppose that Carroll was in the slightest degree evasive in denying that he had intended his poem to mean anything at all. But, as he himself pointed out, words can mean much more than a writer intends. They can express meanings buried so deep in an author’s mind that he himself is not aware of them, and they can acquire meanings entirely by accident. Nonsense writing is a peculiarly rich medium for both types of “unintended” meaning.

Martin Gardner in the Hunting of the Snark