Реферат: Mark Twain

His real name was Samuel LanghorneClemens, but he is I better known by his pen name, Mark Twain. One of theimportant figures in American literary history, Twain holds a unique positionin American literature. He was not only a great writer; he was also a famoushumorist, a spinner of yarns, a journalist who satirized the hypocrisy of manand society, and a novelist who used laughter to fight against the tyranniesthat seek to take away man's freedom.

Born in Florida, Missouri, November 30,1835, the son of a storekeeper-lawyer father, Samuel Clemens was raised inHannibal, Missouri, where his family had settled when he was four years old.Sam never finished elementary school but got his education chiefly in theschool of experience and from his keen observation of people and events commonto a sleepy frontier town located on the western bank of the Mississippi River.

Young Sam's favorite pastime was watchingthe mighty paddle wheel steamboats as they made their way up and down theriver. Nearly every time a steamboat docked at Hannibal, red-haired Sam Clemenswas there to greet it, to look, and to listen as fur trappers, Southerngentlemen, homesteaders, salesmen from the East, and ladies in fine clothescame down the gangplank. And he absorbed the talk of riches out West and of newlands to be conquered.

In 1847 the death of Sam's father broughtan end to his carefree days, and he had to go to work at the age of 12 as aprinter's apprentice. Completing his apprenticeship at the age of 15, he wentto work as a printer for his brother Orion, publisher of the HannibalJournal.

In the ensuing years, Sam worked for hisbrother as foreman, sub-editor, and feature writer and doubtlessly learned agood deal about writing. At about the age of 16, he began to publish some ofhis own writing in the Hannibal Journal -humorous poems, jokingcommentaries on the news, and satirical observations of fellow townspeople.

When he was 17, Sam left Hannibal and wanderedeastward as far as New York. Along the way he worked as a printer in severalcities and wrote often to Orion, who printed his letters in a special column inthe newspaper. After he returned to the West, Sam again went to work for Orion,who had moved to the state of Iowa.

But the lure of the Mississippi was toostrong, and at the age of 21, Sam returned to the river to realize an oldambition, that of being a Mississippi River steamboat pilot, In 1857, after 18months' apprenticeship

under Horace Bixby, pilot of the steamboat, Paul Jones,Samuel Langhorne Clemens earned his steamboat pilot's license. For the nextfour years he steamed up and down the Mississippi and got to know the name andposition of every feature of the river. He describes this experience in Lifeon the Mississippi, remarking at one point that «when I had learned toread the face of the water as one could cull the news from the morningpaper,… I judged that my education was complete; so I got to tilting my capto the side of my head, and wearing a toothpick in my mouth at the wheel.»

In 1861, the Civil War disruptedMississippi River traffic and ended Sam Clemens' career as a steamboat pilot.His career as Mark Twain, the writer, was about to begin. In that same year, heand Orion boarded an overland stagecoach for a 1,700-mile journey from St.Joseph, Missouri, to Carson City, Nevada. Orion had been appointed territorialsecretary for Nevada and had asked Sam to accompany him to his new job.

Sam quickly adjusted to the rugged life ofa frontier mining town but soon succumbed to silver mining fever. Although hespent a year prospecting for the elusive metal, he met only with failure. Allwas not lost, however. During the long months of his search for easy wealth,Sam heard and remembered many miner's yarns which he was later to utilize inhis writings. In Roughing It, an account of his life in mining country,he observes that he learned «that gold in its native state is but dull,unornamental stuff, and that only lowborn metals excite the admiration of the ignorantwith an ostentatious glitter. However, like the rest of the world, I still goon underrating men of gold and glorifying men of mica.»

Nevada's leading frontier newspaper, the VirginiaCity Territorial Enterprise, printed several of Sam's colorful andhumorous sketches of frontier life and finally offered him a job as an editor.Within two years he was known throughout the western frontier as the

«Wild Humorist of the Pacific Slope.»

In 1863, he assumed the name Mark Twain, aterm he remembered from his days on the steamboat, meaning «a depth of twofathoms — clear passage.» In becoming Mark Twain, Sam Clemens became a newpersonality.

By December of 1864, Mark Twain was forcedto leave Virginia City after he and a rival newspaper editor tried to settle adifference of opinion by fighting a duel! He went from Virginia City to SanFrancisco, a city still caught up in the excitement of gold fever. While there,he published a miner's yarn, «The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County.»The tale was an immediate success and made the name of Mark Twain famous allover the United States.

In 1865, after spending five months in theSandwich Islands — as Hawaii was then called — Twain returned to the continentand launched a public lecture tour about his experience. He was an overnightsuccess, and in 1867, with the money he had earned from lecturing, he was ableto go abroad for the first time, visiting France, Italy, Spain, and Palestine.Newspaper accounts of his trip were later revised and published as TheInnocents Abroad (1869), his first important book.

Shortly after he returned from his trip, Twain fell in love with OliviaLangdon, the only daughter of a wealthy Elmira, New York, businessman. Theywere married on February 2, 1870. In 1871, they moved to Hartford, Connecticut,where Twain had built a $100,000 mansion with the money brought to him by hisliterary successes. There he and Olivia lived for 20 years, entertainingfriends, making frequent trips to Europe, watching their daughters grow up, andenjoying a happy life together.

It was in Hartford, in the years between1871 and 1891, that Twain wrote his two masterpieces, The Adventures of TomSawyer (1876) and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884). Thesenovels, together with other Twain writings of the

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period, A Tramp Abroad (1880), ThePrince and the Pauper (1882), Life on the Mississippi(1883), and A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court (1889), are feltby many critics to mark the beginning of modern American literature.

Twain's greatest fame and his importance inAmerican letters rest largely on his two best-known novels, The Adventuresof Tom Sawyer and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Thelatter is generally considered to be his greatest novel. Like Twain'sjournalistic reports, Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn are filledwith concrete details which he had observed, remembered fully, and set down.Idyllic in nature, Huckleberry Finn presents a picture of the town ofHannibal in the days of Twain's boyhood, yet the story of Huck and Jim has darkovertones. The world that they see is not a hoped-for one of peace and beauty.It is a world of fear and cruelty and violence and injustice in which theinnocence of Huck and Jim provides a sharp contrast between what is good in thenatural boy or man, and what has gone wrong with adult society.

Twain tells the two stories as hereminisces about the old life, the old days, «the old faces (that) havelooked out of the mists of the past; old footsteps (that) have sounded in mylistening ears; old hands (that) have clasped mine; old voices (that) havegreeted me....» The result was a rich panorama of America during Twain'sboyhood and youth.

All of Twain's books are molded from theclay of his past; in most of them he is the hero. Roughing It and Lifeon the Mississippi are almost completely autobiographical; The InnocentsAbroad caricaturizes the gullible American tourist; The Princeand the Pauper expresses Twain's hatred of injustice and of the need for mercy.

As he grew older, Twain grew increasinglydepressed and disillusioned by what he called «the damned humanrace,» and his later works such as Pudd'nhead Wilson (1894) and TheMysterious Stranger (published posthumously in 1916) mirror his growing bitterness.The Mysterious Stranger, his last book, is an allegory that suggests that lifeis in reality only a dream.

Twain's success as an author, publicspeaker, husband and father, was not reflected in his choice of businessinvestments, and at the age of 55, he found himself on the verge of bankruptcy.In June 1891, with funds he had managed to scrape together, he left Hartfordand took his family to Europe where living was cheaper. A gypsy life followedas the family moved from city to city while Twain wrote ceaselessly and evengave lectures to earn enough money to overcome his financial losses. Hisefforts were fruitless, however, and in April 1894, he declared

bankruptcy with debts totalling $94,000. Nevertheless,by 1898, true to his midwest code of ethics, Twain had paid off all hisobligations, although during those four difficult intervening years he hadendured the added burden of ill health and the death of his daughter, Suzy.

At the height of his fame, Twain and his family returned to the UnitedStates after nine years of self-imposed exile. His popularity was so great thathe was deluged with honors and invitations to lecture, and by the turn of the20th century, he was one of the best-known public figures in the United States,and world-famous as well.

The joy of his success, however,

was dulled by two personal losses, the death of hiswife in 1904 and his youngest daughter, Jean, five years later. Inspite of his grief, Twain continued to amuse the American public with aseemingly inexhaustible store of wit and humor. For example, on reaching theage of 70, he said: «Seventy! I'm old. I recognize it, but I don't realizeit.»

On April 21,1910, while Halley's Comet,which had ushered in his birth 74 years earlier, flashed across the night sky,Samuel Langhorne Clemens died. Shortly before his death, he had remarked to afriend: «I came in with Halley's Comet in 1835. It

is comingagain next year, and I expect to go out with it."

Mark Twain left his mark upon Americanliterature. The stories he told still delight millions of people around theworld. What he wrote was full of the gusto of the West and the colorful life hehad known intimately and recorded as a student of human nature and the commonlife. What he left as an added legacy is the inspiration of a man who roseabove setbacks and tragedy to carry on, sustained by his indomitable spirit ofcreativity.

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