Twain - The trouble begins
Hey Folks,
I’ve been re-reading Mark Twain’s A Connecticut Yankee In King Arthur’s Court and sharing pieces of Twain’s political commentary with you here (this is the 20th entry) .His insights remain pertinent to this day. We haven’t changed much from Twain’s day – or from King Arthur’s, for that matter.
Chapter 39 – The trouble begins. This novel has been called “the longest sustained invective in the English language.” To this point Twain has been savagely critical of innumerable human traits, most often as demonstrated by those benighted folks around the Yankee, but also as demonstrated now and then by the Yankee himself.
If you’ve been reading along with this continuing saga of excerpts, you may remember from the #8 posting:
“I rather wished I had gone some other road. This was not the sort of experience for a statesman to encounter who was planning a peaceful revolution in his mind. For it could not help bringing up the ungetaroundable fact that, all gentle cant and philosophizing to the contrary notwithstanding, no people in this world ever did achieve their freedom by goody-goody talk and moral suasion: it being immutable law that all revolutions that will succeed, must BEGIN in blood, whatever may answer afterward. If history teaches anything, it teaches that. What this folk needed, then, was a Reign of Terror and a guillotine, and I was the wrong man for them.”
The Yankee wanted a bloodless revolution. Throughout the story he had taken steps to bring down the nobility and knight-errantry via subtle ridicule and debasement – having some wear sandwich boards advertising mundane things like tooth brushes, having others riding about selling stove polish (before stoves even existed), selling soap, and having others sell top-hats – which they wore instead of helmets. The idea was to gradually work them away from all the class, superstitious, and prejudicial aspects that oppressed the vast mass of people which actually WAS the nation.
In the Yankee’s confrontation with Sir Sagramour Le Deserious, the Yankee’s intentions are made perfectly clear and the stakes are raised as well:
“Up to the day set, there was no talk in all Britain of anything but this combat. All other topics sank into insignificance and passed out of men’s thoughts and interest. . . there was abundant reason for the extraordinary interest which this coming fight was creating. It was born of the fact that all the nation knew that this was not to be a duel between mere men, so to speak, but a duel between two mighty magicians; a duel not of muscle but of mind, not of human skill but of super human art and craft; a final struggle for supremacy between the two master enchanters of the age. . . Yes, all the world knew it was going to be in reality a duel between Merlin and me, a measuring of his magic powers against mine. . . Merlin had been busy whole days and nights together, imbuing Sir Sagramour’s arms and armor with supernatural powers of offence and defense. . .
So the world thought there was a vast matter at stake here, and the world was right; but it was not the one they had in their minds. No, a far vaster one was upon the cast of the die: THE LIFE OF KNIGHT-ERRANTRY. I was a champion, it was true, but not the champion of the frivolous black arts, I was champion of hard, unsentimental, common-sense and reason. I was entering the lists to either destroy knight-errantry or be its victim.”
I’ve been re-reading Mark Twain’s A Connecticut Yankee In King Arthur’s Court and sharing pieces of Twain’s political commentary with you here (this is the 20th entry) .His insights remain pertinent to this day. We haven’t changed much from Twain’s day – or from King Arthur’s, for that matter.
Chapter 39 – The trouble begins. This novel has been called “the longest sustained invective in the English language.” To this point Twain has been savagely critical of innumerable human traits, most often as demonstrated by those benighted folks around the Yankee, but also as demonstrated now and then by the Yankee himself.
If you’ve been reading along with this continuing saga of excerpts, you may remember from the #8 posting:
“I rather wished I had gone some other road. This was not the sort of experience for a statesman to encounter who was planning a peaceful revolution in his mind. For it could not help bringing up the ungetaroundable fact that, all gentle cant and philosophizing to the contrary notwithstanding, no people in this world ever did achieve their freedom by goody-goody talk and moral suasion: it being immutable law that all revolutions that will succeed, must BEGIN in blood, whatever may answer afterward. If history teaches anything, it teaches that. What this folk needed, then, was a Reign of Terror and a guillotine, and I was the wrong man for them.”
The Yankee wanted a bloodless revolution. Throughout the story he had taken steps to bring down the nobility and knight-errantry via subtle ridicule and debasement – having some wear sandwich boards advertising mundane things like tooth brushes, having others riding about selling stove polish (before stoves even existed), selling soap, and having others sell top-hats – which they wore instead of helmets. The idea was to gradually work them away from all the class, superstitious, and prejudicial aspects that oppressed the vast mass of people which actually WAS the nation.
In the Yankee’s confrontation with Sir Sagramour Le Deserious, the Yankee’s intentions are made perfectly clear and the stakes are raised as well:
“Up to the day set, there was no talk in all Britain of anything but this combat. All other topics sank into insignificance and passed out of men’s thoughts and interest. . . there was abundant reason for the extraordinary interest which this coming fight was creating. It was born of the fact that all the nation knew that this was not to be a duel between mere men, so to speak, but a duel between two mighty magicians; a duel not of muscle but of mind, not of human skill but of super human art and craft; a final struggle for supremacy between the two master enchanters of the age. . . Yes, all the world knew it was going to be in reality a duel between Merlin and me, a measuring of his magic powers against mine. . . Merlin had been busy whole days and nights together, imbuing Sir Sagramour’s arms and armor with supernatural powers of offence and defense. . .
So the world thought there was a vast matter at stake here, and the world was right; but it was not the one they had in their minds. No, a far vaster one was upon the cast of the die: THE LIFE OF KNIGHT-ERRANTRY. I was a champion, it was true, but not the champion of the frivolous black arts, I was champion of hard, unsentimental, common-sense and reason. I was entering the lists to either destroy knight-errantry or be its victim.”
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