GrayFoxDown
06-01-2007, 09:24 AM
I could never, and will never, accept LETTERS FROM THE EARTH as anything other than the voice of a Mark Twain crying in a imagined wilderness of despair and confusion. To him, a man who had given the world so much wit and humor, it must've appeared as if all the entities of heaven and hell had conspired to play a diabolical joke on him. The death of his beloved wife Livy and that of his daughters, his financial losses, the infirmities of age,...all of these had and were taking their toll on him, both physically and mentally.
For an added "laugh," while Twain's personal despairs were bringing him to his lowest point, his public acclaim was continually rising to that of legendary status...people from all over the world loved and admired him. He was in constant demand by nearly everyone: for his opinions and advice, for his lectures at various universities, for merely his appearance at social events, etc..Only his closest friends were aware of the dark and embittered moods of this great man; they alone knew of his anger toward everyone and everything.
It was inevitable that Twain would desire his bitterness to be made public in one way or another. Of course, for one such as him this would be the way of the printed word of which LETTERS FROM THE EARTH is the result. Within the course of its pages, it's as if he transformed all the love and devotion shown to him into scorn and contempt...throwing it into the faces of his admirers; a catharsis for his internal pain and for the irony of his prestige. This isn't the Mark Twain that brought to life the beloved characters of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn any longer; it's a "new" Mark Twain, one that the world would have been shocked to have seen.
I doubt if Twain's image and mythical persona could have survived such an unveiling; it's better for most of us that it was never put to the test. If anything, it was delayed long enough for Twain's tragic side to subside into research, footnotes and further reading. When I was young, I couldn't love Twain as much as I did if I knew him too well; now that I'm older, I don't love him any less for knowing him all too well. I suppose that's the way I feel about America, wherein Mark Twain played a considerable part.
For an added "laugh," while Twain's personal despairs were bringing him to his lowest point, his public acclaim was continually rising to that of legendary status...people from all over the world loved and admired him. He was in constant demand by nearly everyone: for his opinions and advice, for his lectures at various universities, for merely his appearance at social events, etc..Only his closest friends were aware of the dark and embittered moods of this great man; they alone knew of his anger toward everyone and everything.
It was inevitable that Twain would desire his bitterness to be made public in one way or another. Of course, for one such as him this would be the way of the printed word of which LETTERS FROM THE EARTH is the result. Within the course of its pages, it's as if he transformed all the love and devotion shown to him into scorn and contempt...throwing it into the faces of his admirers; a catharsis for his internal pain and for the irony of his prestige. This isn't the Mark Twain that brought to life the beloved characters of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn any longer; it's a "new" Mark Twain, one that the world would have been shocked to have seen.
I doubt if Twain's image and mythical persona could have survived such an unveiling; it's better for most of us that it was never put to the test. If anything, it was delayed long enough for Twain's tragic side to subside into research, footnotes and further reading. When I was young, I couldn't love Twain as much as I did if I knew him too well; now that I'm older, I don't love him any less for knowing him all too well. I suppose that's the way I feel about America, wherein Mark Twain played a considerable part.