ENGL 2020 Themes in Literature and Culture: The Grotesque

Mark Twain (Samuel Langhorne Clemens) (1835-1910) Mark Twain ENGL 2020 Themes in Literature and Culture: The Grotesque

1869 The Books of Mark Twain Mark Twain ENGL 2020 Themes in Literature and Culture: The Grotesque

1872 The Books of Mark Twain ENGL 2020 Themes in Literature and Culture: The Grotesque Mark Twain

1876 Mark Twain The Books of Mark Twain ENGL 2020 Themes in Literature and Culture: The Grotesque

Mark Twain The Books of Mark Twain ENGL 2020 Themes in Literature and Culture: The Grotesque

“Emerson, Longfellow, Lowell, Holmes -- I knew them all and all the rest of our sages, poets, seers, critics, humorists; they were like one another and like other literary men; but Clemens was sole, incomparable, the Lincoln of our literature.” --William Dean Howells at the funeral of Samuel Langhorne Clemens (1910) Mark Twain ENGL 2020 Themes in Literature and Culture: The Grotesque

The Funeral of Samuel Langhorne Clemens Mark Twain ENGL 2020 Themes in Literature and Culture: The Grotesque

Clemens/Twain Jekyll/Hyde Mark Twain ENGL 2020 Themes in Literature and Culture: The Grotesque

Watch on The Grotesque Blog Watch on The Grotesque Blog ENGL 2020 Themes in Literature and Culture: The Grotesque Mark Twain

The Comic Mark Twain (Samuel Langhorne Clemens) ENGL 2020 Themes in Literature and Culture: The Grotesque Mark Twain

The Comic Adam was but human—this explains it all. He did not want the apple for the apple's sake; he wanted it only because it was forbidden. The mistake was in not forbidding the serpent; then he would have eaten the serpent. Mark Twain ENGL 2020 Themes in Literature and Culture: The Grotesque

The Comic I cannot see how a man of any large degree of humorous perception can ever be religious--except he purposely shut the eyes of his mind & keep them shut by force. Mark Twain ENGL 2020 Themes in Literature and Culture: The Grotesque

The Comic We should be careful to get out of an experience only the wisdom that is in it - and stop there; lest we be like the cat that sits down on a hot stove-lid. She will never sit down on a hot stove-lid again - and that is well; but also she will never sit down on a cold one anymore. Mark Twain ENGL 2020 Themes in Literature and Culture: The Grotesque

The Comic It could probably be shown by facts and figures that there is no distinctly native American criminal class except Congress.Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself. Mark Twain ENGL 2020 Themes in Literature and Culture: The Grotesque

The Comic OCTOBER 12, THE DISCOVERY. It was wonderful to find America, but it would have been more wonderful to miss it. Mark Twain ENGL 2020 Themes in Literature and Culture: The Grotesque

The Comic Why is it that we rejoice at a birth and grieve at a funeral? It is because we are not the person involved. Mark Twain ENGL 2020 Themes in Literature and Culture: The Grotesque

The Comic I have never let my schooling interfere with my education. Mark Twain ENGL 2020 Themes in Literature and Culture: The Grotesque

The Comic Go to Heaven for the climate, Hell for the company. Mark Twain ENGL 2020 Themes in Literature and Culture: The Grotesque

The Comic In the first place, God made idiots. That was for practice. Then he made school boards. Mark Twain ENGL 2020 Themes in Literature and Culture: The Grotesque

The Comic Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence on society. Mark Twain ENGL 2020 Themes in Literature and Culture: The Grotesque

The Comic Man is the only animal that blushes. Or needs to. Mark Twain ENGL 2020 Themes in Literature and Culture: The Grotesque

The Comic I believe I have no prejudices whatsoever. All I need to know is that a man is a member of the human race. That's bad enough for me. Mark Twain ENGL 2020 Themes in Literature and Culture: The Grotesque

The Comic Everyone is a moon, and has a dark side which he never shows to anybody. Mark Twain ENGL 2020 Themes in Literature and Culture: The Grotesque

The Comic When I reflect upon the number of disagreeable people who I know have gone to a better world, I am moved to lead a different life. Mark Twain ENGL 2020 Themes in Literature and Culture: The Grotesque

The Comic One of the most striking differences between a cat and a lie is that a cat has only nine lives. Mark Twain ENGL 2020 Themes in Literature and Culture: The Grotesque

The Comic Training is everything. The peach was once a bitter almond; cauliflower is nothing but cabbage with a college education. Mark Twain ENGL 2020 Themes in Literature and Culture: The Grotesque

The Comic The Comic Whoever has lived long enough to find out what life is, knows how deep a debt of gratitude we owe to Adam, the first great benefactor of our race. He brought death into the world. Mark Twain ENGL 2020 Themes in Literature and Culture: The Grotesque

Mark Twain Little Bessie Would Assist Providence Mark Twain LITTLE BESSIE was nearly three years old. She was a good child, and not shallow, not frivolous, but meditative and thoughtful, and much given to thinking out the reasons of things and trying to make them harmonise with results. One day she said— Bessie: ''Mamma, why is there so much pain and sorrow and suffering. What is it all for?” It was an easy question, and mamma had no difficulty in answering it: Mamma: “It is for our good, my child. In His wisdom and mercy the Lord sends us these afflictions to discipline us and make us better.” Bessie: ''Is it He that sends them?” Mamma: “Yes.” ENGL 2020 Themes in Literature and Culture: The Grotesque “Little Bessie”

Little Bessie Would Assist Providence (continued) Bessie: “Does He send all of them, mamma?” Mamma: “Yes, dear, all of them, None of them comes by accident; He alone sends them, and always out of love for us, and to make us better.” Bessie: “Isn't it strange?” Mamma: “Strange? Why, no, I have never thought of it in that way. I have not heard any one call it strange before. It has always seemed natural and right to me, and wise and most kindly and merciful.” Bessie: “Who first thought of it like that, mamma? Was it you?” Mamma: “Oh, no, child, I was taught it.” Bessie: “Who taught you so, mamma?” Mark Twain ENGL 2020 Themes in Literature and Culture: The Grotesque “Little Bessie”

Little Bessie Would Assist Providence (continued) Mamma: “Why, really, I don't know—I can't remember. My mother, I suppose; or the preacher. But it's a thing that everybody knows.” Bessie: “Well, anyway, it does seem strange. Did He give Billy Norris the typhus?” Mamma: “Yes.” Bessie: “What for?” Mamma: “Why, to discipline him and make him good.” Bessie: “But he died, mamma, and so it couldn't make him good.” Mamma: “Well, then, I suppose it was for some other reason. We know it was a good reason, whatever it was.” Bessie: “What do you think it was, mamma?” Mark Twain ENGL 2020 Themes in Literature and Culture: The Grotesque “Little Bessie”

Little Bessie Would Assist Providence (continued) Mamma: “Oh, you ask so many questions! I think it was to discipline his parents.” Bessie: “Well, then, it wasn't fair, mamma. Why should his life be taken away for their sake, when he wasn't doing anything?” Mamma: “Oh, I don't know! I only know it was for a good and wise and merciful reason.” Bessie: “What reason, mamma?” Mamma: “I think—I think—well, it was a judgment; it was to punish them for some sin they had committed.” Bessie: “But he was the one that was punished, mamma. Was that right?” Mark Twain ENGL 2020 Themes in Literature and Culture: The Grotesque “Little Bessie”

Little Bessie Would Assist Providence (continued) Mamma: “Certainly, certainly. He does nothing that isn't right and wise and merciful. You can't understand these things now, dear, but when you are grown up you will understand them, and then you will see that they are just and wise.” After a pause: Bessie: “Did He make the roof fall in on the stranger that was trying to save the crippled old woman from the fire, mamma?” Mamma: “Yes, my child. Wait! Don't ask me why, because I don't know. I only know it was to discipline some one, or be a judgment upon somebody, or to show His power.” Bessie: “That drunken man that stuck a pitchfork into Mrs. Welch's baby when—” Mamma: “Never mind about it, you needn't go into particulars; it was to discipline the child—that much is certain, anyway.” Mark Twain ENGL 2020 Themes in Literature and Culture: The Grotesque “Little Bessie”

Little Bessie Would Assist Providence (continued) Bessie: “Mamma, Mr. Burgess said in his sermon that billions of little creatures are sent into us to give us cholera, and typhoid, and lockjaw, and more than a thousand other sicknesses and—mamma, does He send them?” Mamma: “Oh, certainly, child, certainly. Of course.” Bessie: “What for?” Mamma: “Oh, to discipline us! Haven't I told you so, over and over again?” Bessie: “It's awful cruel, mamma? And silly and if I—” Mamma: “Hush, oh hush! do you want to bring the lightning?” Bessie: “You know the lightning did come last week, mamma, and struck the new church, and burnt it down. Was it to discipline the church?” Mark Twain ENGL 2020 Themes in Literature and Culture: The Grotesque “Little Bessie”

Little Bessie Would Assist Providence (continued) Mamma: (Wearily). “Oh, I suppose so.” Bessie: “But it killed a hog that wasn't doing anything. Was it to discipline the hog, mamma?” Mamma: “Dear child, don't you want to run out and play awhile? If you would like to—” Bessie: “Mamma, only think! Mr. Hollister says there isn't a bird or fish or reptile or any other animal that hasn't got an enemy that Providence has sent to bite it and chase it and pester it, and kill it, and suck its blood and discipline it and make it good and religious. Is that true, mother—because if it is true, why did Mr. Hollister laugh at it?” Mamma: “That Hollister is a scandalous person, and I don't want you to listen to anything he says.” Mark Twain ENGL 2020 Themes in Literature and Culture: The Grotesque “Little Bessie”

Little Bessie Would Assist Providence (continued) Bessie: “Why, mamma, he is very interesting, and I think he tries to be good. He says the wasps catch spiders and cram them down into their nests in the ground—alive, mamma!—and there they live and suffer days and days and days, and the hungry little wasps chewing their legs and gnawing into their bellies all the time, to make them good and religious and praise God for His infinite mercies. I think Mr. Hollister is just lovely, and ever so kind; for when I asked him if he would treat a spider like that, he said he hoped to be damned if he would; and then he—” Mamma: “My child! oh, do for goodness' sake—” Bessie: “And mamma, he says the spider is appointed to catch the fly, and drive her fangs into his bowels, and suck and suck and suck his blood, to discipline him and make him a Christian; and whenever the fly buzzes his wings with the pain and misery of it, you can see by the spider's grateful eye that she is thanking the Giver of All Good for—well, she's saying grace, as he says; and also, he—” Mark Twain ENGL 2020 Themes in Literature and Culture: The Grotesque “Little Bessie”

Mark Twain Little Bessie Would Assist Providence (continued) Mamma: “Oh, aren't you ever going to get tired chattering! If you want to go out and play—” Bessie: “Mamma, he says himself that all troubles and pains and miseries and rotten diseases and horrors and villainies are sent to us in mercy and kindness to discipline us; and he says it is the duty of every father and mother to help Providence, every way they can; and says they can't do it by just scolding end whipping, for that won't answer, it is weak and no good—Providence's way is best, and it is every parent's duty and every person's duty to help discipline everybody, and cripple them and kill them, and starve them, and freeze them, and rot them with diseases, and lead them into murder and theft and dishonor and disgrace; and he says Providence's invention for disciplining us and the animals is the very brightest idea that ever was, and not even an idiot could get up anything shinier. Mamma, brother Eddie needs disciplining, right away; and I know where you can get the smallpox for him, and the itch, and the diphtheria, and bone-rot, and heart disease, and consumption, and—Dear mamma, have you fainted? I will run and bring help! Now this comes of staying in town this hot weather.” ENGL 2020 Themes in Literature and Culture: The Grotesque “Little Bessie”

"Strange! that you should not have suspected years ago - centuries, ages, eons, ago! - for you have existed, companionless, through all the eternities. Strange, indeed, that you should not have suspected that your universe and its contents were only dreams, visions, fiction! Strange, because they are so frankly and hysterically insane - like all dreams: a God who could make good children as easily as bad, yet preferred to make bad ones; who could have made every one of them happy, yet never made a single happy one; who made them prize their bitter life, yet stingily cut it short; who gave his angels eternal happiness unearned, yet required his other children to earn it; who gave his angels painless lives, yet cursed his other children with biting miseries and maladies of mind and body; who mouths justice and invented hell - Mark Twain The Books of Mark Twain ENGL 2020 Themes in Literature and Culture: The Grotesque

mouths mercy and invented hell - mouths Golden Rules, and forgiveness multiplied by seventy times seven, and invented hell; who mouths morals to other people and has none himself; who frowns upon crimes, yet commits them all; who created man without invitation, then tries to shuffle the responsibility for man's acts upon man, instead of honorably placing it where it belongs, upon himself; and finally, with altogether divine obtuseness, invites this poor, abused slave to worship him! . . . "You perceive, now, that these things are all impossible except in a dream. You perceive that they are pure and puerile insanities, the silly creations of an imagination that is not conscious of its freaks - in a word, that they are a dream, and you the maker of it. The dream-marks are all present; you should have recognized them earlier. Mark Twain The Books of Mark Twain ENGL 2020 Themes in Literature and Culture: The Grotesque

"It is true, that which I have revealed to you; there is no God, no universe, no human race, no earthly life, no heaven, no hell. It is all a dream - a grotesque and foolish dream. Nothing exists but you. And you are but a thought - a vagrant thought, a useless thought, a homeless thought, wandering forlorn among the empty eternities!“ He vanished, and left me appalled; for I knew, and realized, that all he had said was true. Mark Twain The Books of Mark Twain ENGL 2020 Themes in Literature and Culture: The Grotesque

1601 Mark Twain Conversation, as it was by the Social Fireside, in the Time of the Tudors. [Date, 1601.] [MEM.—The following is supposed to be an extract from the diary of the Pepys of that day, the same being Queen Elizabeth's cup-bearer. It is supposed that he is of ancient and noble lineage; that he despises these literary canaille; that his soul consumes with wrath to see the queen stooping to talk with such; and that the old man feels that his nobility is defiled by contact with Shakespeare, etc., and yet he has got to stay there till her Majesty chooses to dismiss him. Mark Twain ENGL 2020 Themes in Literature and Culture: The Grotesque “1601”

1601 (continued) Yesternight toke her maisty ye queene a fantasie such as she sometimes hath, and had to her closet certain that doe write playes, bokes, and such like, these being my lord Bacon, his worship Sir Walter Ralegh, Mr. Ben Jonson, and ye child Francis Beaumont, which being but sixteen, hath yet turned his hand to ye doing of ye Lattin masters into our English tong, with grete discretion and much applaus. Also came with these ye famous Shaxpur. A righte straunge mixing truly of mighty blode with mean, ye more in especial since ye queenes grace was present, as likewise these following, to wit: Ye Duchess of Bilgewater, twenty-two yeres of age; ye Countesse of Granby, twenty-six; her doter, ye Lady Helen, fifteen; as also these two maides of honor, to-wit, ye Lady Margery Boothy, sixty-five, and ye Lady Alice Dilberry, turned seventy, she being two yeres ye queenes graces elder. I, being her maites cup-bearer, had no choice but to remaine and beholde rank forgot, and ye high holde converse wh ye low as uppon equal termes, a grete scandal did ye world heare thereof. In ye heat of ye talk it befel yt one did breake wind, yielding an exceding mightie and distresfull stink, whereat all did laugh full sore, and then— Mark Twain ENGL 2020 Themes in Literature and Culture: The Grotesque “1601”

1601 (continued) Ye Queene.—Verily in mine eight and sixty years have I not heard the fellow to this fart. Meseemeth, by ye grete sound and clamour of it, it was male; yet ye belly it did lurk behinde shoulde now fall lean and flat against ye spine of him yt hath bene delivered of so stately and so vaste a bulk, where as ye guts of them yt doe quiff-splitters bear, stand comely still and rounde. Prithee let ye author confess ye off spring. Will my Lady Alice testify? Lady Alice.—Good your grace, an' I had room for such a thundergust within mine ancient bowels, 'tis not in reason I coulde discharge ye same and live to thank God for yt He did choose handmaid so humble whereby to shew his power. Nay, 'tis not I yt have broughte forth this rich o'ermastering fog, this fragrant gloom, so pray you seeke ye further. Ye Queene.—Mayhap ye Lady Margery hath done ye companie this favor? Mark Twain ENGL 2020 Themes in Literature and Culture: The Grotesque “1601”

1601 (continued) Lady Margery.—So please you madam, my limbs are feeble wh ye weighte and drouth of five and sixty winters, and it behoveth yt I be tender unto them. In ye good providence of God, an' I had contained this wonder, forsoothe wolde I have gi'en ye whole evening of my sinking life to ye dribbling of it forth, with trembling and uneasy soul, not launched it sudden in its matchless might, taking mine own life with violence, rending my weak frame like rotten rags. It was not I, your maisty. Ye Queene.—O' God's name, who hath favored us? Hath it come to pass yt a fart shall fart itself? Not such a one as this, I trow. Young Master Beaumont—but no; It would have wafted him to heaven like down of goose's boddy. 'Twas not ye little Lady Helen—nay, ne'er blush, my child; thoul't tickle thy tender maidenhedde with many a mousie-squeak before thou learnest to blow a harricane like this. Wasn't you, my learned and ingenious Jonson? Jonson.—So fell a blast hath ne'er mine ears saluted, nor yet a stench so all-pervading and immortal.'Twas not a novice did it, good your maisty, but one of veteran experience—else hadde he failed of confidence. In sooth it was not I. Mark Twain ENGL 2020 Themes in Literature and Culture: The Grotesque “1601”

1601 (continued) Ye Queene.—My Lord Bacon? Lord Bacon.—Not from my leane entrailes hath this prodigy burst forth, so please your grace. Naught doth so befit ye grete as grete performance; and haply shall ye finde yt 'tis not from mediocrity this miracle hath issued. [Tho' ye subjoct be but a fart, yet will this tedious sink of learning pondrously phillosophize. Meantime did the foul and deadly stink pervade all places to that degree yt never smelt I ye like, yet dare I not to leave ye presence, albeit I was like to suffocate.] Ye Queene.—What saith ye Master Shaxpur? Shaxpur.—In the great hand of God I stand and so proclaim mine inocence. Though ye sinless hosts of heaven had foretold ye coming of this most desolating breath, proclaiming it a work of uninspired man, its quaking thunders, its firmament-clogging rottenness his own achievement in due course of nature, yet Mark Twain ENGL 2020 Themes in Literature and Culture: The Grotesque “1601”

ENGL 2020 Themes in Literature and Culture: The Grotesque