Samuel Langhorn Clemens, better known around the world as Mark Twain, famous public figure and journalist, was born in 1835 in Missouri. He spent his childhood and adolescence in the small town of Hannibal, and they made up such a significant baggage of memories and impressions that they were enough for the writer for life. His famous Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn live in exactly the same town, and the inhabitants are written off from Samuel's neighbors.
The deceased father of the Clemens family left behind large debts, and Sam had to help his older brother from 12. He took up publishing the newspaper and the younger brother began his journalistic career by writing articles in the family newspaper. Then he travels around the country in search of work. He was interested in his work as a pilot, but destroyed the private shipping company, and Sam again remained out of work.
In 1861, he went west to Nevada to become a prospector in the silver mines, but luck stubbornly avoided him, and he again turned to the profession of a journalist. It was at this time that he chose the pseudonym Mark Twain. Since 1864, Twain has lived in San Francisco and has already worked for several publications.
He made his first experience as a writer in 1865, writing a humorous story "The Famous Jumping Frog from Calaveras". The story is based on folklore motifs and all of America was read to them. It received the title of best humorous story.
Mark Twain makes several trips to Palestine and Europe. The result of these trips is the book "Simples Abroad". Many Americans still associate the name of Mark Twain with this book.
After his marriage to Olivia Langdon, he was able to get to know industrialists, bankers, who represented big business. Economic growth was expressed in the violation of democratic principles. In the first place is the thirst for enrichment. Corruption flourishes, the power of the chistogan and the “golden calf”
Mark Twain expressed his attitude to this period of American history very accurately and witty - the “Gilded Age”.
In 1876, the most famous and famous book of the writer was published, which brought him worldwide fame, "". The success was simply stunning and after some period Mark Twain writes a sequel to The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.
After the publication of the sequel, the writer is no longer perceived only as a note wit, a master of a sharp word, a joker, a hoaxer. With these works, he opens the reader to a completely different America. There is racism and injustice in this America. Cruelty and violence.
Decades later, another famous American writer E. Hemingway will write that all modern American literature came out of this one book.
The end of the 19th century was a very difficult period for Mark Twain. In 1894, the writer's publishing house went bankrupt and, as in his youth, he had to look for sources of financing. Most likely, it was at this time that one of his famous aphorisms “Rumors of my death are greatly exaggerated” appeared.
In order to improve his finances, he travels and speaks to readers. He had to spend a whole year on a trip around the world, during which he read his works and gave public lectures. The result of this journey was the writing of a number of pamphlets and journalistic works, in which Mark Twain acts as a passionate denunciator of the colonial policy of the United States, its imperial ambitions. With a light hand, or rather the apt word of the writer in relation to the United States, the expression "navel of the earth" appeared.
During this period, the story The Mysterious Stranger was written, which was published after his death in 1916. In this work, pessimism, bitterness, sarcasm shine through, and almost nothing is left of the comedian. From the pages, a bilious satirist talks to you in the manner of presentation familiar to Mark Twain: short, concise, clear and biting.
Death caught this restless man on the road. He died on April 21, 1910 in Redding, Connecticut.
Mark Twain (real name - Samuel Langhorne Clemens) was born on November 30, 1835 in a large family of John Marshal and Jane. Until the age of four, he lived in a small town in Florida, Missouri. Then, together with his family, he moved to another small town in Missouri - Hannibal. It was him that Twain later immortalized on the pages of his works.
When the future writer was 12 years old, his father died. He left a large amount of debt to his family. Twain had to get a job. He was hired as an apprentice compositor for the Missouri Courier. Soon, Mark Twain's older brother, Orion, began publishing his own newspaper. It was originally called Western Union. Then it was renamed "Hannibal Journal". Mark Twain tried to help his brother, acting as a typesetter and occasionally as an author.
From 1853 to 1857 Twain traveled throughout the United States. Among the places he managed to visit are Washington, Cincinnati, New York. In 1857, Twain was going to go to South America, but instead he was apprenticed to a pilot. Two years later he was issued a pilot's certificate. Twain admitted that he could devote his whole life to this profession. His plans were intervened by the civil war that began in 1861 and put an end to the private shipping industry.
For two weeks, Twain fought on the side of the southerners. From 1861 to 1864 he lived in the territory of Nevada, where, among other things, he worked for several months in the silver mines. In 1865 he again decided to try his luck as a prospector. Only this time he started looking for gold in California. In 1867, Twain's debut collection, The Famous Jumping Frog and Other Essays, was published. From June to October, the writer traveled to European cities, including visiting Russia. In addition, he visited Palestine. The impressions received formed the basis of the book "Simples Abroad", published in 1869 and enjoyed great success.
In 1873, Twain traveled to England, where he took part in public readings held in London. He managed to get acquainted with many eminent writers. Among them is the outstanding Russian writer I. S. Turgenev. In 1876, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer was first published, which later became one of Twain's most popular works. The book tells about the adventures of an orphan boy who lives in the fictional town of St. Petersburg and is raised by his aunt. In 1879, Twain traveled with his family to European cities. During the trip, he met with I. S. Turgenev, the English naturalist and traveler Charles Darwin.
In the 1880s, the novels The Prince and the Pauper, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, The Rape of the White Elephant and Other Stories were published. Twain's own publishing house, Charles Webster and Company, opened in 1884. In the late 1880s and early 1890s, the writer's financial situation got worse and worse. The publishing house went bankrupt - Twain spent a significant amount on the purchase of a new model of the printing press. As a result, it was never put into production. An important role in Twain's life was played by his acquaintance in 1893 with the oil tycoon Henry Rogers. Rogers helped the writer escape from financial ruin. At the same time, friendship with Twain had a significant impact on the character of the magnate - from a miser who was not very worried about the problems of outsiders, he turned into a person who was actively involved in charity work.
In 1906, Twain met in the United States with the writer Maxim Gorky, after which he publicly called for support for the Russian revolution. Mark Twain died on April 21, 1910 from angina pectoris. The writer was buried at Woodlawn Cemetery, located in Elmira, New York.
Brief analysis of creativity
Twain's writing activity began after the Civil War, which ended in 1865 and had a huge impact on both public and literary life in the United States. He was a representative of the democratic direction of American literature. In his works, realism was combined with romanticism. Twain was the heir to the American romantic writers of the 19th century and at the same time their ardent opponent. In particular, already at the very beginning of his career, he composed poisonous parodies in verse of Longfellow, the author of The Song of Hiawatha.
Twain's early works, among them - "Simples Abroad", which ridicules old Europe, and "Light", which tells about the New World, are filled with humor, cheerful fun. Twain's creative path is the path from humor to bitter irony. At the very beginning, the writer created unpretentious humorous couplets. His later works are essays on human morals filled with subtle irony, sharp satire criticizing American society and politicians, and philosophical reflections on the fate of civilization. Twain's most important novel is The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. The book was published in 1884. Hemingway called it the most significant work of Mark Twain and all previous US literature.
If Henry James deepened the national consciousness, at the same time opening it to the world outside the United States, and enriched American literature with stylistic virtuosity, then Mark Twain (1835-1910) gave it an inimitable freedom of expression. He became the voice of doubt and contradiction, nostalgia for the past and hope for the future of post-war America. "The Lincoln of our literature," Howells said of him.
Twain's popularity during his lifetime was great - it did not fade after. As for his recognition by literary criticism, here he was much less fortunate. His contemporaries in the USA praised him as "an incomparable entertainer of the public", "an unsurpassed master of jester's bells". The reputation of "joker" and "amusing" gave Twain many bitter moments, especially in the last decades of his life. In the first half of the 20th century, the opposite view of the writer as "an ardent exposer of the vices of the capitalist system" developed. Meanwhile, this approach is also not quite correct.
Herself Biography of Mark Twain serves as the clearest illustration of the realization of the "American dream", proof of the dizzying opportunities that open up in America to any talented and active person, regardless of his social background. Samuel Langhorne Clemens, who wrote under the pseudonym Mark Twain (in pilot jargon: "measure two", that is, a safe depth of two fathoms for navigation - a kind of creative credo of the writer), was a native of the American Southwest.
His parents, poor but good southern Virginians, moved west with the whole country and first settled in the frontier village of Florida, Missouri, where Samuel Clemens was born, and four years later moved to the town of Hannibal on the banks of the Mississippi. Twain's father, a justice of the peace, died when his son was eleven years old, and he had to leave school to earn a living. The main population of the region was then pastoralists and farmers. Their life was difficult and not too refined, and humor, the ability to laugh at the situation and at oneself, served as a great help in the harsh frontier life. Twain, left to himself from childhood, grew up among the bearers of the folklore tradition of the frontier and deeply perceived the tales, anecdotes and practical jokes characteristic of it. This was the fresh source that then fed his work.
As a true descendant of the pioneers, Twain was not inclined to philosophize slyly and always wrote only about what he knew well. And he knew a lot: his life experience at the beginning of his writing career turned out to be very extensive. He managed to work as a typographical compositor, sail for two years as a pilot's mate, and then as a pilot on the Mississippi, fight as a militia in the Confederate army in the Civil, until, as he explained, he "became ashamed to fight for the preservation of slavery." After that, he moved to Nevada and California, contributing to newspapers, publishing humorous stories and sketches about the West, which were then included in the collection The Famous Jumping Frog of Calaveras (1867).
Already early stories and two books of comic travel essays, Simpletons Abroad (1869) and Light (1872), reveal the specifics of Twain's humor - its inextricable connection with frontier folklore, which will also distinguish the best mature works of the writer. Twain's favorite form of narration in the first person, a kind of "simpleton's mask" that the narrator often wears, a tendency to exaggerate - all these are features of the frontiersmen's oral story. Finally, Twain's individual creative method is based on the main principle of American folk humor - the comic play on ridiculous, and sometimes tragic situations. American folklore determined the very spirit of Twain's works - humanism, respect for the working man, for his reason and common sense, victorious optimism.
Making fun of such qualities of his compatriots as arrogance, arrogance, religious hypocrisy and ignorance, Twain acted primarily as a patriot of his great country: he resorted to laughter as a powerful weapon of moral influence.
"Simps Abroad" strengthened the author's financial position, and he bought a daily newspaper in Buffalo, New York, became its editor and married the beautiful Olivia Langdon, the daughter and heiress of a coalminer. The marriage proved exceptionally happy; family well-being was an important part of Twain's life success and his public reputation. In 1871 he acquired his own home in Hartford, a city that occupied, both geographically and intellectually, an intermediate position between the two literary capitals of New York and Boston. A certain writing environment has already developed here: G. Beecher Stowe, C.D. Warner and others.
The mansion at 351 Farmington Avenue, now the Mark Twain Museum, was one of the landmarks of Hartford - massive, built of stone and brick, it resembled a steamboat, a medieval fortress and a cuckoo's house in a clock. Twain went overseas for the second time - no longer as a correspondent sent by a New York magazine and obliged to send travel reports, as for the first time, but as a wealthy tourist and an American celebrity, to take a break from the mustiness of the "Gilded Age" (such was the name novel, co-authored with C. D. Warner in 1873) and "breathe the free air of Europe."
The result, however, as in the first case, was a book of travel prose "Walking in Europe" (1880), as well as a historical novel in English material "The Prince and the Pauper" (1881). By this time, Twain's individual style had already fully developed, and one after another his best works came out: "Old Times on the Mississippi" (1875), "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer" (1876), "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" (1885), "A Yankee from Connecticut in the Court of King Arthur" (1889).
By the mid-1880s, Twain seemed to have achieved everything, both personally and creatively, that a boy from a frontier village and a small town on the banks of a large river could only dream of: he had money, family happiness, a strong position in society and in literary circles (thanks to a long friendship with W. D. Howells, editor-in-chief of the influential New York magazine Atlantic Mansley), all-American and international literary fame. The minion of fate, the living embodiment of the "American dream" that came true - this is how Mark Twain appears at the zenith of his career.
He, however, did not at all intend to rest on his laurels; tireless pioneer spirit, overflowing creative energy forced him to look for new ways in literature. Turning off the road already beaten by him as a recognized realist, Twain entered an area that was very little (only in the course of some of his and his predecessors' "partisan attacks") mastered by national literature. He created not a humorous story or a sketch, but a full-length novel in a southwestern dialect, which is told from the point of view of an illiterate boy at the very bottom of the social ladder. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn took eight years to complete, but it was a masterpiece, not immediately, but unanimously recognized in the end.
In the last two decades of Twain's life, fate seemed to turn its back on him. His literary fame, however, remained unchanged, but already an aging and always very successful person, one after another, personal misfortunes began to comprehend. The enterprise, in which Twain had invested large sums, burst, and in order to improve the financial situation of the family, Twain had to go on a public speaking tour of Australia, New Zealand, India and South Africa - an experience he described in the book of travel essays "On the Equator" (1897). While working on this book in London, Twain received a cable about the death of his beloved daughter from meningitis. He really barely recovered from the shock, so that in the famous Twain joke, sent by him from London in 1897: "The rumors about my death are greatly exaggerated" - there was a fair amount of truth.
One way or another, he survived and, having improved his financial situation, returned to the United States in 1900. The roar of welcoming voices that met him did not stop until the writer's death: "The hero of our literature," the newspaper headlines screamed, "the most famous person on the planet!" He was the idol of New York society and the most quoted writer of his time. With bitter stoicism, Twain met the news of the incurable illness of his youngest daughter, and then the death of his beloved wife, with whom he had been happy for 35 years.
A showman of genius, and not just a writer, he invariably appeared in a white suit, proudly carrying his head with a mop of gray curls and a halo of tobacco smoke: he explained that his rule was “never smoke in your sleep and never abstain from it while you are awake.” ". Meanwhile, Twain's work demonstrated profound changes in his worldview. First of all, his style has changed: the former sparkling and joyful unpredictability have been replaced by impeccable logical clarity.
In later works, notes of despair sound, and they become more and more gloomy and hopeless. Modern American life practically leaves Twain's own artistic works and becomes exclusively the topic of his journalism. In the 1900s, Twain's pamphlets were published one after another, such as "A War Prayer", "To a Man Walking in Darkness", "We are Anglo-Saxons", "The United Lynching States" and, finally, "What is a Man?", the meaning of which is extremely sharply expressed in the titles.
These pamphlets increasingly denounce power politics, imperialism, racism, financial abuse, hypocrisy in morality and religion, and other manifestations of what our critics have long called "the vices of the capitalist system" and Twain called "the damned human race." As for the major works of the late Twain, the last of them devoted to American life was the novel "Coot Wilson" (1894). The skeptical epigraphs prefixed to the chapters testified to the author's growing pessimism: "If you pick up a dog that is dying of hunger and feed it, it will not bite you. This is the fundamental difference between a dog and a man."
Further notable books of the writer, except, of course, "Autobiography", removed from American reality in time and space. She, however, now and then declares herself in them in the form of attacks on mercantilism and stupid cruelty, allegedly inherent only in past eras ("Personal Memoirs of Joan of Arc", 1896). Reality makes itself felt in the general gloomy tone of the works, in that position of stoic despair that the author occupies. Such is Eve's Diary (1905), a kind of epitaph to a recently deceased wife, which concludes with the words of Adam: "Where she was, there was Paradise."
Such is "The Mysterious Stranger", a story on which the writer has been working since 1898, and which was published only after his death, in 1916, a kind of spiritual testament of Twain. The mysterious stranger who appears to the three boys and strikes them with miracles is Satan himself. It exists "beyond good and evil" and its final statement sheds light on the author's state of mind: "Everything I'm telling you now is the truth. There is no God, there is no universe, there is no human race, there is no life, there is no Paradise, no hell. It's all just a dream, an intricate, stupid dream. There's nothing but you. And you're just a thought, a wandering thought, an aimless thought, a homeless thought, lost in eternal space."
Towards the end of his life, Twain was inclined to deny his role as America's greatest comic genius and in vain expected to be listened to seriously. The audience continued to laugh at the "Famous Jumping Frog", while he wrote: "Everything human is sad. The secret source of humor is not joy, but sorrow. There is no humor in heaven." Twain died in Stormfield, his last home, built in the style of an Italian villa and located on a hilltop in Redding, Connecticut.
Mark Twain (pen name of Samuel Langhorne Clemens) is an outstanding American writer, journalist, public figure. His homeland was the state of Missouri, a small village of Florida, where he was born on November 30, 1835 in the family of a judge. Their family moved to the city of Hannibal when the boy was 4 years old. The childhood years spent there left such a huge baggage of impressions that it was enough for all subsequent work. In particular, in the famous "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer" Mark Twain described this particular town and its inhabitants.
After the death of their father in 1847, the Clemens family was left with heavy debts. Sam's career began at the age of 12. At first, he helped his older brother, who began to publish his own newspaper, and it was there that his very first articles appeared from time to time. After spending several years wandering around the country, Samuel gets a job as a pilot, sails along the Mississippi. After the destruction of the private shipping company by the Civil War, Clemens was forced to leave the profession to which he was ready to devote his life.
In 1861, he followed his older brother to the west of the country, to Nevada. The desire to get rich led Twain to the silver mines, to the ranks of prospectors. However, luck did not accompany him, and he began to work in the newspaper. It was at this time that for the first time in his biography the pseudonym "Mark Twain" sounded. In 1864, San Francisco became his new place of residence, and in this city he collaborated with a number of periodicals.
The first literary success comes to Mark Twain in 1865 thanks to the humorous story "The Famous Jumping Frog from Calaveras", written on folklore motives. This work was read in all parts of the country, and it was awarded the title of the best American work of the humorous genre at that time. The story was written during a long journey: Twain sailed on a steamer to Europe and Palestine. There will be many more such trips throughout the life of the writer.
The book “Simples Abroad” (1769) consolidated the success in the literary field, the popularity of which was simply incredible. For many Americans, it was with this collection of travel essays that the name of Mark Twain was associated all his life. In 1870, the writer arrives in Buffalo (from there to Hartford) after marrying Olivia Langdon. Marriage allowed him to get to know industrialists, representatives of big business. His attitude to the era of economic growth with its trampling of democracy, corruption, the power of the Chistogan was expressed in the apt definition that the writer gave her with his characteristic wit - the "Gilded Age".
In 1876, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, which had a resounding success, came out, and in 1885 their sequel, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, came out. At one time, E. Hemingway said that from this one book "the whole of modern American literature came out." The writer was no longer perceived only as the author of brilliant humorous works, a wit and a joker. In this work, he discovers another America, where one can face cruelty, violence, injustice, racism. A number of Twain's acute social works were not published both during his lifetime and for many years after his death.
Early 90s opens the most difficult period in the biography of the writer. In 1894, Mark Twain's publishing company went bankrupt, forcing him to urgently look for other sources of income. He had to make extremely tiring trips, during which he actively spoke to readers. For the same reason, he spent a whole year traveling around the world, arranging public lectures and reading his works. Having once again seen the world, Mark Twain becomes a passionate exposer of imperial ambitions, the colonial policy of the United States, which manifested itself in a series of pamphlets written during these years. The work of this period, in particular, the story "The Mysterious Stranger" (published in 1916), bears the imprint of pessimism, bitterness, sarcasm, and misanthropic moods. Death found Mark Twain in the state of Connecticut, Redding on April 21, 1910; buried the writer in Elmira.
The famous American writer Mark Twain (Samuel Lenghorne Clemens), who lived later than Whitman, had the opportunity to see with even greater clarity how far his homeland was from the ideal of genuine democracy. Despite this, Twain in most of his works remained a cheerful writer, a wonderful humorist.
Most of Twain's works are connected with the traditions of American folk humor, which gives his numerous stories a special charm, a bright national coloring. In the most insignificant phenomena, Twain notices the funny and talks about the most ordinary things inventively and witty. It shows the mercantile spirit of the bourgeoisie, the thirst for profit and the unscrupulousness of politicians. In the short story "How I Was Chosen for Governor" he ridicules the election campaign, which has turned into a competition of slanderers. In the story "Journalism in Tennessee" depicts the rude morals of the American press, the pursuit of sensation, the unprincipled struggle of competing newspapers. In such world-famous stories as “A Conversation with an Interviewer”, “My Watch”, “How I Edited an Agricultural Newspaper”, etc., the ingenuity of the author attracts, who creates situations that are unusually funny in their unexpectedness and absurdity.
Twain is a very observant writer, an excellent connoisseur of the psychology and life of ordinary people in America, the bourgeois and petty-bourgeois environment. On his life path he met people of various professions. The son of a provincial judge, he began working at the age of 12: as an apprentice in a printing house, as a typesetter, as a pilot on a steamboat, and, finally, as a journalist. From the memories of the steamer on which he sailed along the Mississippi, the writer's pseudonym arose: "Mark Twain" - a term used to measure the depth of the river.
Twain's childhood memories provided the material for two world-famous favorite children's books, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876) and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884). Tom and his friends are looking for romantic adventures and freedom away from the bourgeois provincial town, from the boredom of religious Sunday schools, from the tedious instructions of school teachers. With observation and subtle humor characteristic of Twain, the customs of the American provinces of the first half of the 19th century are outlined. And Tom's childhood experiences are revealed by the writer with touching love and penetration into the psychology of a teenager.
Tom Sawyer is one of the most charming characters in children's literature. Although in his inventions and pranks he sometimes does not know the measure, but in serious, and sometimes dangerous alterations, Tom remains a faithful and courageous friend. Speaking at the trial as a witness, Tom was not afraid to take the old man accused of murder under protection and tell the truth about the real killer - the terrible and vengeful Indian Joe. He is by no means always truthful, but we believe much more in his affection for Aunt Polly, who replaces his mother, than in the love for her of Tom's "exemplary", but selfish, sometimes treacherous and prudent brother Sid.
When Mark Twain wrote the books about Tom and Huck, slavery had already been abolished in America. But the oppression of the Negroes and racial inequality remained, as they continue to exist today. Twain could not be indifferent to this shameful phenomenon of American life.
In the story about a little tramp, freedom-loving Huck Finn, his friend, a black slave, a runaway Negro Jim, is constantly next to him. They travel on a raft along the Mississippi River: Huck escaped from a rich widow who sheltered him, but tortured him with her annoying instructions, and Jim seeks to get to free states where there is no slavery.
Twain is not only a cheerful humorist, but also a brilliant satirist. His book A Yankee in King Arthur's Court (1889) exposes the feudal-monarchical survivals that still survive in some of the bourgeois countries of Europe. The writer, just like his hero, comes to the conclusion that only a revolution can give freedom to an oppressed person. And when the Russian revolution of 1905 took place, it met with warm sympathy from Twain.
Almost all children in our country know the most interesting story written by M. Twain - "The Prince and the Pauper" (1882). It tells about the fate of the little ragamuffin Tom Canty and the English Prince Edward. The action takes place in the 16th century. By pure chance, Tom becomes the heir to the throne for a while, and Prince Edward, instead of Tom, finds himself among the beggars. Then the little prince will learn the truth about the bitter fate of his people, about the cruel arbitrariness of kings, their ministers and officials. Gradually, the views and attitude to life of a child who was previously spoiled and did not know human grief are changing. And, returning again to his palace, Edward becomes a kind king who cares about the welfare of his people. And Tom Canty, although sometimes he got into ridiculous situations, not knowing court life, delights the reader: a beggar boy from the people, without realizing it, was often much wiser than all important and experienced ministers.
Many of Twain's works were not published in his homeland until recently. His statements about American "democracy" and colonial policy are too harsh.
Only recently did Twain's letters and diaries, his unfinished autobiography, pamphlets, etc., see the light of day. They tell that an honest artist, who passionately loved his people, experienced excruciating disappointments, seeing how democratic ideals were trampled in his country.
