cercal hat geschrieben:
Mann sollte im Halbschlaf nicht mehr schreiben
. Ich meinte die Tom Sawyer und Huck Finn Romane (ätzend). ...
WAS????
Hier ist was über Mark Twain und Jane Austen (von ashton dennis):
Howell himself explained
"His prime abhorrence was my dear and honored prime favorite, Jane Austen. He once said to me...'You seem to think that woman could write,' and he forbore withering me with his scorn, apparently because we had been friends so long, and he pitied more than hated me for my bad taste." [B.C. Southam (Editor) Jane Austen: The Critical Heritage, 1870-1940 Volume 2 (1987)]
Here is Mark Twain quoted by A. B. Paine:
'When I take up one of Jane Austen's books,' he said, 'such as Pride and Prejudice, I feel like a barkeeper entering the kingdom of heaven. I know what his sensations would be and his private comments. He would not find the place to his taste, and he would probably say so.' (1909, on a train ride from Baltimore to Redding)
I don't know - that seems to me slightly different in tone. Southam may have said it best.
"[Mark Twain] enjoyed himself in the character of the arch anti-Austenite, the rough-neck American democrat in collision with the genteel English spinster."
There is a context for everything, even Mark Twain's mind cramp. Here is the context for Twain's remarks in
Following the Equator:
Is that it? Is that all there was? Is this all there is?
Of course, the main reason that I picked up
Following the Equator was to examine one of Mark Twain's caustic remarks about Jane Austen that appears there. I thought—I hoped I would find this remark to be an excerpt from a much larger passage that, when considered in its full extent, would show that Twain actually loved Jane Austen and his petulance would be explained away by my penetrating analysis of his true feelings and tastes. Alas, that unfortunate remark, that single paragraph, that I have reproduced elsewhere, is all there is. Jane Austen is mentioned nowhere else in FtE. (The only satisfaction that I have garnered from this otherwise disappointing exercise is that now I am making a direct reference to what before I had gained only from secondary sources.)
There is, however, a context for Twain's mind cramp that is mildly interesting and I will now set that before you. The offending remark was placed in Chapter 62, the chapter that begins with,
"There are no people who are quite so vulgar as the over-refined ones."
Twain was on board a ship making its way between India and Africa and thoroughly enjoying himself, wishing that this beautiful voyage would never end. (He really was a steamship denizen at heart.) He then began to reflect on the ship's library. His first object was a joke and his principle target was Goldsmith's
The Vicar of Wakefield (1766).
"... to be fair, there is another word of praise due to this ship's library: it contains no copy of the Vicar of Wakefield, that strange menagerie of complacent hypocrites and idiots, of theatrical cheap-john heroes and heroines, who are always showing off, of bad people who are not interesting, and good people who are fatiguing. A singular book. Not a sincere line in it, and not a character that invites respect; a book which is one long waste-pipe discharge of goody-goody puerilities and dreary moralities; a book which is full of pathos that revolts, and humor that grieves the heart. There are few things in literature that are more piteous, more pathetic, than the celebrated 'humorous' incident of Moses and the spectacles."
We will never know what Twain's thoughts were about that book. Perhaps he didn't like it. Then he ended the critique and, almost as an afterthought, he appended that single, isolated comment about Jane Austen — that remark that has condemned him to a long tenure in purgatory where the only readings allowed him are the Bronte novels and Microsoft help-screens — purgatory can seem like hell — he got what he deserved. If he works hard, he will be promoted to heaven and a complete library eventually, he will get what he deserves.
Darcy — I mean Jane Austen — had it right:
"The wisest and best of men, nay, the wisest and best of their actions, may be rendered ridiculous by a person whose first object in life is a joke."
Bruki
PS: Huckleberry Finn war mein erstes Buch, da lass ich nichts drauf kommen... und bei Tom Sawyer hab ich mich kringelig gelacht...