Sunday, August 4, 2013

Mark Twain and the Beautiful Joan of Arc


I just started reading Joan of Arc written by Mark Twain, which is available as a free ebook, when a passage really struck me to the core:

"When we reflect that her century was the brutalest, the wickedest, the rottenest in history since the darkest ages, we are lost in wonder at the miracle of such a product from such a soil. The contrast between her and her century is the contrast between day and night. She was truthful when lying was the common speech of men; she was honest when honesty was become a lost virtue; she was a keeper of promises when the keeping of a promise was expected of no one; she gave her great mind to great thoughts and great purposes when other great minds wasted themselves upon pretty fancies or upon poor ambitions; she was modest, and fine, and delicate when to be loud and coarse might be said to be universal; she was full of pity when a merciless cruelty was the rule; she was steadfast when stability was unknown, and honorable in an age which had forgotten what honor was; she was a rock of convictions in a time when men believed in nothing and scoffed at all things; she was unfailingly true to an age that was false to the core; she maintained her personal dignity unimpaired in an age of fawnings and servilities; she was of a dauntless courage when hope and courage had perished in the hearts of her nation; she was spotlessly pure in mind and body when society in the highest places was foul in both—she was all these things in an age when crime was the common business of lords and princes, and when the highest personages in Christendom were able to astonish even that infamous era and make it stand aghast at the spectacle of their atrocious lives black with unimaginable treacheries, butcheries, and beastialities." ~ Joan of Arc, Mark Twain

 Shouldn't we all aspire to this?

I wonder how many people even know about this book.  I was surprised when I first came upon it, and still it's taken me years to finally get started.  Mark Twain isn't just one of my most favorite American authors, he's one of my favorite authors of all time.  This work was a labor of love for him, and was his favorite book of all those he's written.  I read somewhere that it took him 12 years of study, even going to France, and two years in writing.  “I have never done any work before that cost so much thinking and weighing and measuring and planning and cramming … on this last third I have constantly used five French sources and five English ones, and I think no telling historical nugget in any of them has escaped me."

I think it says a lot about Twain to know, out of all the amazing historical examples we've been blessed with, that he loved Joan of Arc most of all.

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