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Loading... The Innocents Abroad (1869)| Recently added by | jimbo435, Crommie9, pmayer, blacklabmacie, thomasjahl, Joe_Beck, johnhealey, JeffersonBallard, 1redflower | | Legacy Libraries | George Orwell, Robert Gordon Menzies, USS California (Armored Cruiser No. 6), George Washington Mordecai |
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| Epigraph |
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| Dedication |
To
My Most Patient Reader
and
Most Charitable Critic,
MY AGED MOTHER,
This Volume is Affectionately
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For months the great Pleasure Excursion to Europe and Holy Land was chatted about in the newspapers everywhere in America, and discussed at countless firesides. | |
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The guides deceive and defraud every American who goes to Paris for the first time and sees its sights alone or in company with others as little experienced as himself. I shall visit Paris again some day, and then let the guides beware! I shall go in my war-paint - I shall carry my tomahawk along.
They showed us a portrait of the Madonna which was painted by St Luke, and it did not look half as old and smoky as some of the pictures by Rubens. We could not help admiring the Apostle's modesty in never once mentioning in his writings that he could paint. But perhaps the most poetical thing Pompeii has yielded to modern research, was that grand figure of a Roman soldier, clad in complete armor; who, true to his duty, true to his proud name of a soldier of Rome, and full of the stern courage which had given to the name its glory, stood to his post by the city gate, erect and unflinching, till the hell that raged around him burned out the dauntless spirit it could not conquer.
if you hire a man to sneeze for you, here (Nazareth), and another man chooses to help him, you have got to pay both. They do nothing whatever without pay. How it must have surprised these people to hear the way of salvation offered to them 'without money and without price'.
The citizens of Endor objected to our going in there, They do not mind dirt; they do not mind rags; they do not mind vermin; they do not mind barbarous ignorance and savagery; they do not mind a reasonable degree of starvation, but they do like to be pure and holy before their god, whoever he may be, and therefore they shudder and grow almost pale at the idea of Christian lips polluting a spring whose waters must descend into their sanctified gullets.
It is a singular circumstance that right under the roof of this same great church, and not far away from the illustrious column, Adam himself, the father of the human race, lies buried. There is no question that he is actually buried in the grave which is pointed out as his - there can be none - because it has never yet been proven that that is not the grave in which he is buried.
The tomb of Adam! How touching it was, here in the land of strangers, far away from home, and friends, and all who cared for me, thus to discover the grave of a blood relation, True, a distant one, but still a relation. The unerring instinct of nature thrilled its recognition. The fountain of my filial affection was stirred to its profoundest depths, and I gave way to tumultuous emotion. I leaned upon a pillar and burst into tears. I deem it no shame to have wept over the grave of my poor dead relative. Let him who would sneer at my emotion close this volume here, for he will find little to his taste in my journeyings through the Holy Land. Noble old man - he did not live to see his child. And I - I - alas did not live to see him. Weighed down by sorrow and disappointment, he died before I was born - six thousand brief summers before I was born. But let us try to bear it with fortitude.
The sights are too many, The swarm about you at every step; no single foot of ground in all Jerusalem or within its neighborhood seems to be without a stirring and important history of its own. It is a very relief to steal a walk of a hundred yards without a guide along to talk unceasingly about every stone you step upon and drag you back ages and ages to the very day when it achieved celebrity.
Travel and experience mar the grandest pictures and rob us of the most cherished traditions.
The Sphynx is grand in its loneliness; it is imposing in its magnitude; it is impressive in the mystery that hangs over its story. And there is that in the overshadowing majesty of this eternal figure of stone, with its accusing memory of the deeds of all ages, which reveals to one something of what he shall feel when he shall stand at last in the awful presence of God. A frowsy, bearded brigand sprang into the road with a shout, and flourished a musket in the light of the moon! We sidled toward the Pireaus - not running you understand, but only advancing with celerity. Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime. | |
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We shall remember Constantinople and the Bosporus--the colossal
magnificence of Baalbec--the Pyramids of Egypt--the prodigious form, the
benignant countenance of the Sphynx--Oriental Smyrna--sacred Jerusalem
--Damascus, the "Pearl of the East," the pride of Syria, the fabled Garden
of Eden, the home of princes and genii of the Arabian Nights, the oldest
metropolis on earth, the one city in all the world that has kept its name
and held its place and looked serenely on while the Kingdoms and Empires
of four thousand years have risen to life, enjoyed their little season of
pride and pomp, and then vanished and been forgotten!
(Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.) | |
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▾References References to this work on external resources.  Wikipedia in English (5)
▾LibraryThing members' description ▾Book descriptions Amazon.com Product Description (ISBN 0451525027, Paperback)
Based on a series of letters Mark Twain wrote from Europe to newspapers in San Francisco and New York as a roving correspondent, The Innocents Abroad (1869) is a burlesque of the sentimental travel books popular in the mid-nineteenth century. Twain's fresh and humorous perspective on hallowed European landmarks lacked reverence for the past-the ancient statues of saints on the Cathedral of Notre Dame are "battered and broken-nosed old fellows" and tour guides "interrupt every dream, every pleasant train of thought, with their tiresome cackling." Equally irreverent about American manners (including his own) as he is about European attitudes, Twain ultimately concludes that, for better or worse, "human nature is very much the same all over the world." (retrieved from Amazon Thu, 28 Oct 2010 11:05:57 -0400) (see all 5 descriptions) ▾Library descriptions "The Innocents Abroad is one of the most prominent and influential travel books ever written about Europe and the Holy Land. In it, the collision of the American "New Barbarians" and the European "Old World" provides much comic fodder for Mark Twain - and a remarkably perceptive lens on the human condition. Gleefully skewering the ethos of American tourism in Europe, Twain's lively satire ultimately reveals just what it is that defines cultural identity. As Twain himself points out. "Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime.""--BOOK JACKET.… (more) » see all 3 descriptions |
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(3.87)
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Penguin Australia
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I enjoy Twain's use of language and dry humor, but had not yet read his travelogues. Since they predate his famous novels, it's interesting to see his early style, which is less assured than it would become but still confident.
I'd characterize this narrative as less racist than xenophobic, though Twain is clearly sometimes truly unhappy and at other times exaggerating for comedic effect. Sometimes the object he's aiming for is to poke fun at the American tourist's narrowness of thought and ethnocentrism.
In the context of the first real pleasure cruise (a side-wheel steamboat, if memory serves), Twain and companions were remarkably adventurous, defying quarantine, for example, and scrambling for hours at night over crumbly Greek hills and through dog-patrolled vineyards in order to see the Parthenon.
Having visited many of Twain's destinations (and many of that number by ship), I thoroughly enjoyed his observations, whether or not I agreed about places, peoples, or cultural quirks. (