BS: 'The Mysterious Stranger' - Twain

Subject: BS: 'The Mysterious Stranger' - Twain
From: GUEST
Date: 28 Jul 03 - 12:30 AM

"The loud little handful - as usual - will shout for the war. The pulpit will - warily and cautiously - object... at first. The great, big, dull bulk of the nation will rub its sleepy eyes and try to make out why there should be a war, and will say, earnestly and indignantly, 'It is unjust and dishonorable, and there is no necessity for it.'

"Then the handful will shout louder. A few fair men on the other side will argue and reason against the war with speech and pen, and at first will have a hearing and be applauded, but it will not last long; those others will outshout them, and presently the antiwar audiences will thin out and char and lose popularity.

"Before long, you will see this curious thing: the speakers stoned from the platform, and free speech strangled by hordes of furious men...

"Next the statesmen will invent cheap lies, putting the blame upon the
nation that is attacked, and every man will be glad of those
conscience-soothing falsities, and will diligently study them, and refuse to examine any refutations of them; and thus he will by and by convince himself that the war is just, and will thank God for the better sleep he enjoys after this process of grotesque self-deception."

Mark Twain, from "The Mysterious Stranger" 1910

Subject: RE: BS: 'The Mysterious Stranger' - Twain
From: Allan C.
Date: 28 Jul 03 - 01:09 AM

I am a huge fan of Twain and could probably post a few hundred quotations every bit as interesting as this one. However, it is simply not enough to post quotations. One should include a few remarks as to why a particular quotation has captured your imagination. In other words, what's your point, bub?

Subject: RE: BS: 'The Mysterious Stranger' - Twain
From: Amos
Date: 28 Jul 03 - 10:20 AM

I think it captures the spirit of times recent most judiciously!


A

Subject: RE: BS: 'The Mysterious Stranger' - Twain
From: Wolfgang
Date: 28 Jul 03 - 11:10 AM

The words cited above are said, in Twain's story, by Satan.

Wolfgang

Subject: RE: BS: 'The Mysterious Stranger' - Twain
From: GUEST
Date: 28 Jul 03 - 11:15 AM

Right -- appropriately enough. A game plan by the dark side, eh?

A

Subject: RE: BS: 'The Mysterious Stranger' - Twain
From: Neighmond
Date: 28 Jul 03 - 11:22 AM

There will be war and rumors of war.

Bush out the door in twenty-oh-four!

Chaz

Subject: RE: BS: 'The Mysterious Stranger' - Twain
From: GUEST
Date: 28 Jul 03 - 12:02 PM

I've been reading this again, at the wonderful Electronic Text Center of the University of Virginia. You can read 'The Mysterious Stranger' in it's entirety there.

Wolfgang, here is another quote that gives some context to that conversation with Satan, from Chapter 1:

"Eseldorf was a paradise for us boys. We were not overmuch pestered with schooling. Mainly we were trained to be good Christians; to revere the Virgin, the Church, and the saints above everything. Beyond these matters we were not required to know much; and, in fact, not allowed to. Knowledge was not good for the common people, and could make them discontented with the lot which God had appointed for them, and God would not endure discontentment with His plans. We had two priests. One of them, Father Adolf, was a very zealous and strenuous priest, much considered.

    There may have been better priests, in some ways, than Father Adolf, but there was never one in our commune who was held in more solemn and awful respect. This was because he had absolutely no fear of the Devil. He was the only Christian I have ever known of whom that could be truly said. People stood in deep dread of him on that account; for they thought that there must be something supernatural about him, else he could not be so bold and so confident. All men speak in bitter disapproval of the Devil, but they do it reverently, not flippantly; but Father Adolf's way was very different; he called him by every name he could lay his tongue to, and it made everyone shudder that heard him; and often he would even speak of him scornfully and scoffingly; then the people crossed themselves and went quickly out of his presence, fearing that something fearful might happen.

    Father Adolf had actually met Satan face to face more than once, and defied him. This was known to be so. Father Adolf said it himself. He never made any secret of it, but spoke it right out. And that he was speaking true there was proof in at least one instance, for on that occasion he quarreled with the enemy, and intrepidly threw his bottle at him; and there, upon the wall of his study, was the ruddy splotch where it struck and broke."

This was Twain's final work, published in 1916. That edition was illustrated by N.C. Wyeth. I can't get the link to the site to work, but if you do a google search using: "The Mysterious Stranger" + Mark Twain, it will take you there.

Eerie how prescient it is to our times, that passage.

Subject: RE: BS: 'The Mysterious Stranger' - Twain
From: Amos
Date: 28 Jul 03 - 02:51 PM

Here ya go....

Subject: RE: BS: 'The Mysterious Stranger' - Twain
From: GUEST
Date: 28 Jul 03 - 03:46 PM

Thank you kindly Amos.

Subject: RE: BS: 'The Mysterious Stranger' - Twain
From: Amos
Date: 28 Jul 03 - 05:36 PM

This is a truly marvelous read; I have just finished it. I am deeply impressed -- I have always treasured Mark Twain as a humanist and a humorist, but I never saw him for the philosopher he is. He stands alone, that one. Many thanks.


A

Subject: RE: BS: 'The Mysterious Stranger' - Twain
From: Joe_F
Date: 28 Jul 03 - 06:14 PM

Wolfgang:

N.B., tho, he's not the Satan you might be thinking of. That one was his uncle. He was the only one in the family who ever got into trouble. The nephew was a perfectly respectable angel.

A curiosity about this wonderful story: It is in some respects a fake. Mark Twain made several starts on it, with different locales & characters' names, but never finished it. After he died, his literary executor, Albert Bigelow Paine, assembled the pieces, leaving out a fair amount, changing names & conflating characters, to produce the story we know. The original MSs have since been published in full (edited with an introduction by William M. Gibson, Univ. of California Press, 1969), so you can make up your own composite if you like. IMO Paine did a pretty good job.

Subject: RE: BS: 'The Mysterious Stranger' - Twain
From: alanabit
Date: 29 Jul 03 - 04:04 AM

I think so too. There are some very similar ideas expressed in the book "A Connecticut Yankee At The Court Of King Arthur". The book isn't like the Bing Crosby film at all! Any excuse for a chat about Mark Twain's masterpiece, but I can't help concurring with Allan C's desire to know why this extract was quoted by an anonymous guest without giving a context.

Subject: RE: BS: 'The Mysterious Stranger' - Twain
From: GUEST
Date: 29 Jul 03 - 09:12 AM

Last evening, I watched a beautiful segment on the PBS show 'History Detectives'. It was about the Chinese internement camp on Angel Island, off the coast of San Francisco, and the poets who passed through:

Angel Island Poets

The internees wrote thousands of poems on the walls of the internment camp, but they did so anonymously, and without "context provided" (ie, spelling it out for the benefit of the literally minded and metaphorically challenged).

Chat forums on the internet are nothing more than cyber graffitti walls.

Subject: RE: BS: 'The Mysterious Stranger' - Twain
From: alanabit
Date: 29 Jul 03 - 02:16 PM

This one isn't. People have been sending me music from all over the world and I have made a lot of new friends.
While I found the quote from the book resonant at the current time, I was wondering whether it did not really belong on all those other threads about the Iraq war. (Incidentally, I found the war vile, dirty and inexcusable - as is on record). The difference between our postings is that when I made that assertion, my name was on it and I am on record. Politically I suspect that we are on the same side. It is just that I would have been annoyed at any right winger who lobbed a bomb and stepped back into anonymity - and quite frankly - I am just as annoyed at you.

Subject: RE: BS: 'The Mysterious Stranger' - Twain
From: Joe_F
Date: 29 Jul 03 - 06:22 PM

Here's another piece of it:

    It was wonderful, the mastery Satan had over time and distance. For him they did not exist. He called them human inventions, and said they were artificialities. We often went to the most distant parts of the globe with him, and stayed weeks and months, and yet were gone only a fraction of a second, as a rule. You could prove it by the clock. One day when our people were in such awful distress because the witch commission were afraid to proceed against the astrologer and Father Peter's household, or against any, indeed, but the poor and the friendless, they lost patience and took to witch-hunting on their own score, and began to chase a born lady who was known to have the habit of curing people by devilish arts, such as bathing them, washing them, and nourishing them instead of bleeding them and purging them through the ministrations of a barber-surgeon in the proper way. She came flying down, with the howling and cursing mob after her, and tried to take refuge in houses, but the doors were shut in her face. They chased her more than half an hour, we following to see it, and at last she was exhausted and fell, and they caught her. They dragged her to a tree and threw a rope over the limb, and began to make a noose in it, some holding her, meantime, and she crying and begging, and her young daughter looking on and weeping, but afraid to say or do anything.

    They hanged the lady, and I threw a stone at her, although in my heart I was sorry for her; but all were throwing stones and each was watching his neighbor, and if I had not done as the others did it would have been noticed and spoken of. Satan burst out laughing.

    All that were near by turned upon him, astonished and not pleased. It was an ill time to laugh, for his free and scoffing ways and his supernatural music had brought him under suspicion all over the town and turned many privately against him. The big blacksmith called attention to him now, raising his voice so that all should hear, and said:

    "What are you laughing at? Answer! Moreover, please explain to the company why you threw no stone."

    "Are you sure I did not throw a stone?"

    "Yes. You needn't try to get out of it; I had my eye on you."

    "And I -- I noticed you!" shouted two others.

    "Three witnesses," said Satan: "Mueller, the blacksmith; Klein, the butcher's man; Pfeiffer, the weaver's journeyman. Three very ordinary liars. Are there any more?"

    "Never mind whether there are others or not, and never mind about what you consider us -- three's enough to settle your matter for you. You'll prove that you threw a stone, or it shall go hard with you."

    "That's so!" shouted the crowd, and surged up as closely as they could to the center of interest.

    "And first you will answer that other question," cried the blacksmith, pleased with himself for being mouthpiece to the public and hero of the occasion. "What are you laughing at?"

    Satan smiled and answered, pleasantly: "To see three cowards stoning a dying lady when they were so near death themselves."

    You could see the superstitious crowd shrink and catch their breath, under the sudden shock. The blacksmith, with a show of bravado, said:

    "Pooh! What do you know about it?"

    "I? Everything. By profession I am a fortune-teller, and I read the hands of you three -- and some others -- when you lifted them to stone the woman. One of you will die to-morrow week; another of you will die to-night; the third has but five minutes to live -- and yonder is the clock!"

    It made a sensation. The faces of the crowd blanched, and turned mechanically toward the clock. The butcher and the weaver seemed smitten with an illness, but the blacksmith braced up and said, with spirit:

    "It is not long to wait for prediction number one. If it fails, young master, you will not live a whole minute after, I promise you that."

    No one said anything; all watched the clock in a deep stillness which was impressive. When four and a half minutes were gone the blacksmith gave a sudden gasp and clapped his hands upon his heart, saying, "Give me breath! Give me room!" and began to sink down. The crowd surged back, no one offering to support him, and he fell lumbering to the ground and was dead. The people stared at him, then at Satan, then at one another; and their lips moved, but no words came. Then Satan said:

    "Three saw that I threw no stone. Perhaps there are others; let them speak."

    It struck a kind of panic into them, and, although no one answered him, many began to violently accuse one another, saying, "You said he didn't throw," and getting for reply, "It is a lie, and I will make you eat it!" And so in a moment they were in a raging and noisy turmoil, and beating and banging one another; and in the midst was the only indifferent one -- the dead lady hanging from her rope, her troubles forgotten, her spirit at peace.

Subject: RE: BS: 'The Mysterious Stranger' - Twain
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 30 Jul 03 - 02:19 PM

Take a look at John Steinbeck's "The Vigilante" in The Long Valley for an equally stirring account of the phalanx--a headless mob.

SRS