Video: Mark Twain is an "American vandal" who skillfully combined writing and travel
2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55
While most people know Mark Twain primarily as the author of the famous novels about Huckleberry Finn and Tom Sawyer, at one time the author gained his fame thanks to completely different works - his outstanding and witty notes from numerous travels. “Travel is disastrous for prejudice, bigotry and narrow-mindedness, which is why many people need it so badly,” wrote Mark Twain. “You cannot come to broad, healthy and tolerant views on people and on things, vegetating all your life in one small corner of the earth.”
Early in his career, Mark Twain - then still living under his real name Samuel Clemens - worked as a pilot on a steamer. According to Twain himself, he liked this occupation so much that if it were his will, he would have been doing it all his life. But due to the civil war, the private shipping company fell into decay and Twain went in search of work.
At the same time, Twain set off on his first journey - for two weeks he rode along the prairie in a stagecoach with his brother to Nevada, where his brother was promised a good position. Five years later, when Mark Twain was already working for a local newspaper, he persuaded the management to send him on a business trip to Hawaii. He spent five months on the islands, all this time carefully documenting what was happening to him and around him and sending his observations to the editorial office of his newspaper.
Upon returning back to the mainland, Mark Twain was a resounding success - his letters were so loved by readers that he was instantly bombarded with various offers of performances and a new job. Twain has traveled throughout the state with lectures, and in addition found a sponsor for his trip to Europe and the Middle East.
His book "Simpletons Abroad, or the Path of New Pilgrims", which he wrote based on his impressions of this trip, became the best-selling book during the life of the author. In this book, Twain compared the Americans - themselves and other compatriots with whom they cruised - to the Vandals, the ancient Germanic people who sacked Rome in 455.
Twain called the Americans vandals because of his arrogance and incredible snobbery, which were inherent in his fellow countrymen during their travels abroad. The author ridiculed their firm belief that all the best in the world is exclusively American, and the rest of the world is inhabited by enemies and idiots.
The three subsequent travel books, The Hardened (1871), The Tramp Abroad (1980), and Following the Equator (1897), were not as popular as The Coots Abroad, but no less interesting. Twain himself often admitted that if it were not for travel, he would be a completely different person, and hardly better than he was at that time. "The pampered reader will never, ever realize what an unsurpassed ass he can become unless he travels abroad," Twain wrote.
Mark Twain traveled all over Europe, including Rome, Switzerland, France, Germany, also stopped in Yalta and Odessa, stayed in Sevastopol and visited the residence of the Russian emperor in Livadia. He traveled to Asia, Africa, and also reached Australia. In England, he gave his lectures for a long time, although in the end he always returned to his homeland - to America.
The most amazing thing about Mark Twain was that he not only changed himself during his travels, but also changed people around him. He often helped young writers to break through and publish their works, spent a lot of time with Tesla, for the first time using the time travel storyline in literature.
And in the last years of his life, he became very close friends with the oil tycoon Henry Rogers, whom, judging by the reviews and documents, he was able to "turn" from an incredible cheapskate into a benefactor and philanthropist. Under the influence of Mark Twain, Rogers began to actively support education and organize special programs for disadvantaged segments of the population (blacks and people with disabilities).
"Only two things will we regret on our deathbed, - wrote Mark Twain, - that we loved little and traveled little."
In our article "Around the World in 50 Years" we tell about a 78-year-old traveler who has visited all countries of the world.
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