-Caveat Lector-
>From http://www.positiveatheism.org/tochtwai.htm
}}}>Begin
Mark Twain's Americanism
by H.L. Mancken
The New York Evening Mail
Index: Mark Twain
Index: H.L. Mencken
Index: Biographies
Home to Positive Atheism
November 1, 1917
When Mark Twain died, in 1910, one of the magnificos who paid public tribute to him
was William H. Taft, then President of the United States. "Mark Twain," said Dr. Taft,
"gave real intellectual enjoyment to millions, and his works will continue to give such
pleasure to millions yet to come. He never wrote a line that a father could not read to
a daughter."
The usual polite flubdub and not to be exposed, perhaps, to critical analysis. But it
was, in a sense, typical of the general view at that time, and so it deserves to be
remembered for the fatuous inaccuracy of the judgment in it. For Mark Twain dead is
beginning to show far different and more brilliant colors than those he seemed to
wear during life, and the one thing no sane critic would say of him to-day is that he
was the harmless fireside jester, the mellow chautauquan, the amiable old grandpa
of letters that he was once so widely thought to be.
The truth is that Mark was almost exactly the reverse. Instead of being a mere
entertainer of the mob, he was in fact a literary artist of the very highest skill and
sophistication, and, in all save his superficial aspect, quite unintelligible to Dr.
Taft's
millions. And instead of being a sort of Dr. Frank Crane in cap and bells, laboriously
devoted to the obvious and the uplifting, he was a destructive satirist of the utmost
pungency and relentlessness, and the most bitter critic of American platitude and
delusion, whether social, political or religious, that ever lived.
Bit by bit, as his posthumous books appear, the true man emerges, and it needs but
half an eye to see how little he resembles the Mark of national legend. Those books
were written carefully and deliberately; Mark wrote them at the height of his fame; he
put into them, without concealment, the fundamental ideas of his personal philosophy
-- the ideas which colored his whole view of the world. Then he laid the manuscripts
away, safe in the knowledge that they would not see the light until he was under six
feet of earth. We know, by his own confession, why he hesitated to print them while
he lived; he knew that fame was sweet and he feared that they might blast it. But
beneath that timorousness there was an intellectual honesty that forced him to set
down the truth. It was really comfort he wanted, not fame. He hesitated, a lazy man,
to disturb his remaining days with combat and acrimony. But in the long run he
wanted to set himself straight.
Two of these books, The Mysterious Stranger and What Is Man? are now published,
and more may be expected to follow at intervals. The latter, in fact, was put into type
during Mark's lifetime and
privately printed in a very limited edition. But it was never given to the public, and
copies of the limited edition bring $40 or $50 at book auctions to-day. Even a pirated
English edition brings a high premium. Now, however, the book is issued publicly by
the Harpers, though without the preface in which Mark explained his reasons for so
long withholding it.
The ideas in it are very simple, and reduced to elementals, two in number. The first is
that man, save for a trace of volition that grows smaller and smaller the more it is
analyzed, is a living machine -- that nine-tenths of his acts are purely reflex, and
that
moral responsibility, and with it religion, are thus mere delusions. The second is that
the only genuine human motive, like the only genuine dog motive or fish motive or
protoplasm motive is self interest -- that altruism, for all its seeming potency in
human concerns, is no more than a specious appearance -- that the one unbroken
effort of the organism is to promote its own comfort, welfare and survival.
Starting from this double basis, Mark undertakes an elaborate and extraordinarily
penetrating examination of all the fine ideals and virtues that man boasts of, and
reduces them, one after the other, to untenability and absurdity. There is no mere
smartness in the thing. It is done, to be sure, with a sly and disarming humor, but at
bottom it is done quite seriously and with the highest sort of argumentative skill. The
parlor entertainer of Dr. Taft's eulogy completely disappears; in his place there
arises
a satirist with something of Rabelais's vast resourcefulness and dexterity in him, and
all of Dean Swift's devastating ferocity. It is not only the most honest book that Mark
ever did; it is, in some respects, the most artful and persuasive as a work of art. No
wonder the pious critic of The New York Times, horrified by its doctrine, was forced
to take refuge behind the theory that Mark intended it as a joke.
In The Mysterious Stranger there is a step further. What Is Man? analyzes the
concept of man; The Mysterious Stranger boldly analyzes the concept of God. What,
after all, is the actual character of this Being we are asked to reverence and obey?
How is His mind revealed by His admitted acts? How does His observed conduct
toward man square with those ideals of human conduct that He is said to prescribe,
and whose violation He is said to punish with such appalling penalties?
These are the questions that Mark sets for himself. His answers are, in brief, a
complete rejection of the whole Christian theory -- a rejection based upon a
wholesale reductio ad absurdum. The thing is not mere mocking; it is not even
irreverent; but the force of it is stupendous. I know of no agnostic document that
shows a keener sense of essentials or a more deft hand for making use of the
indubitable. A gigantic irony is in it. It glows with a profound conviction, almost a
kind
of passion. And the grotesque form of it -- a child's story -- only adds to the
sardonic
implacability of it.
As I say, there are more to come. Mark in his idle moments was forever at work upon
some such riddling of the conventional philosophy, as he was forever railing at the
conventional ethic in his private conversation. One of these pieces, highly
characteristic, is described in Albert Bigelow Paine's biography. It is an elaborate
history of the microbes inhabiting a man's veins. They divine a religion with the man
as God; they perfect a dogma setting forth his desires as to their conduct; they
engaged in a worship based upon the notion that he is immediately aware of their
every act and jealous of their regard and enormously concerned about their welfare.
In brief, a staggering satire upon the anthropocentric religion of man -- a typical
return to the favorite theme of man's egoism and imbecility.
All this sort of thing, to be sure, has its dangers for Mark's fame. Let his executors
print a few more of his unpublished works -- say, the microbe story and his sketch of
life at the court of Elizabeth -- and Dr. Taft, I dare say, will withdraw his
prominciamento that "he never wrote a line that a father could not read to his
daughter." Already, indeed, the lady reviewers of the newspapers sound an alarm
against him, and the old lavish praise of him begins to die down to whispers. In the
end, perhaps, the Carnegie libraries will put him to the torture, and The Innocents
Abroad will be sacrificed with What Is Man?
But that effort to dispose of him is nothing now. Nor will it succeed. While he lived
he
was several times labeled and relabeled, and always inaccurately and vainly. At the
start the national guardians of letters sought to dismiss him loftily as a hollow
buffoon, a brother to josh Billings and Petroleum V. Nasby. This enterprise failing,
they made him a comic moralist, a sort of chautauquan in motley, a William Jennings
Bryan armed with a slapstick. Foiled again, they promoted him to the rank of Thomas
Bailey Aldrich and William Dean Howells, and issued an impertinent amnesty for the
sins of his youth. Thus he passed from these scenes -- ratified at last, but somewhat
heavily patronized.
Now the professors must overhaul him again, and this time, I suppose, they will
undertake to pull him down a peg. They will succeed as little as they succeeded
when they tried to read him out of meeting in the early '80s. The more they tackle
him, in fact, the more it will become evident that he was a literary artist of the very
first rank, and incomparably the greatest ever hatched in these states.
One reads with something akin to astonishment of his superstitious reverence for
Emerson -- of how he stood silent and bare-headed before the great
transcendentalist's house at Concord. One hears of him, with amazement, courting
Whittier, Longfellow and Holmes. One is staggered by the news, reported by Traubel,
that Walt Whitman thought "he mainly misses fire." The simple fact is that
Huckleberry Finn is worth the whole work of Emerson with two-thirds of the work of
Whitman thrown in for make-weight, and that one chapter of it is worth the whole
work of Whittier, Longfellow and Holmes.
Mark was not only a great artist; he was pre-eminently a great American artist. No
other writer that we have produced has ever been more extravagantly national.
Whitman dreamed of an America that never was and never will be; Poe was a
foreigner in every line he wrote; even Emerson was no more than an American
spigot for European, and especially German, ideas. But Mark was wholly of the soil.
His humor was American. His incurable Philistinism was American. His very English
was American. Above all, he was an American in his curious mixture of
sentimentality and cynicism, his mingling of romanticist and iconoclast.
English Traits might have been written by any one of half a dozen Germans. The
tales of Poe, printed as translations from the French, would have deceived even
Frenchmen. And Leaves of Grass might have been written in London quite as well as
in Brooklyn. But in Huckleberry Finn, in A Connecticut Yankee and in most of the
short sketches there is a quality that is unmistakably and over whelmingly national.
They belong to our country and our time quite as obviously as the skyscraper or the
quick lunch counter. They are as magnificently American as the Brooklyn Bridge or
Tammany Hall.
Mark goes down the professorial gullet painfully. He has stuck more than once. He
now seems fated to stick again. But these gaggings will not hurt him, nor even
appreciably delay him. Soon or late the national mind will awake to the fact that a
great man was among us - - that in the midst of all our puerile rages for dubious
foreigners we produced an artist who was head and shoulders above all of them.
Return to Top
End<{{{
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Forwarded as information only; no automatic endorsement
+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +
In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. section 107, this material
is distributed without charge or profit to those who have
expressed a prior interest in receiving this type of information
for non-profit research and educational purposes only.
+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +
"Do not believe in anything simply because you have heard it. Do not believe
simply because it has been handed down for many generations. Do not
believe in anything simply because it is spoken and rumored by many. Do
not believe in anything simply because it is written in Holy Scriptures. Do not
believe in anything merely on the authority of Teachers, elders or wise men.
Believe only after careful observation and analysis, when you find that it
agrees with reason and is conducive to the good and benefit of one and all.
Then accept it and live up to it."
The Buddha on Belief, from the Kalama Sutta
+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +
"Always do sober what you said you'd do drunk. That will
teach you to keep your mouth shut."
--- Ernest Hemingway
<A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/";>www.ctrl.org</A>
DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER
==========
CTRL is a discussion & informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic
screeds are unwelcomed. Substance—not soap-boxing—please! These are
sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'—with its many half-truths, mis-
directions and outright frauds—is used politically by different groups with
major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought.
That being said, CTRLgives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and
always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no
credence to Holocaust denial and nazi's need not apply.
Let us please be civil and as always, Caveat Lector.
========================================================================
Archives Available at:
http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html
<A HREF="http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html";>Archives of
[EMAIL PROTECTED]</A>
http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/
<A HREF="http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/";>ctrl</A>
========================================================================
To subscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email:
SUBSCRIBE CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To UNsubscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email:
SIGNOFF CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Om
