Unfortunately I don't know his work well enough to tell what his ethical views were regarding life, in particular its rightness or wrongness. Might've never crossed his mind for all I know.
Who wrote the line (I'm unable to recall) "This is no place where life should be," which must be a paraphrase but should get the point across just as well. May see if I can look him up online, Twain I mean.
If I remember correctly, Twain said no wise man would want to live another life on earth.
Twain said: "I do not fear death. I had been dead for billions and billions of years before I was born, and had not suffered the slightest inconvenience from it."
In "Letters from the Earth" and his autobiography, Twain expressed profound disillusionment with life and portrayed death as a release or escape.
They found Poe in Baltimore one morning draped over a barrel dead I think. Some sort of O.D. would be my guess, but there might've been intention behind it, a hope it might do him in. He wasn't very old as I recall--late 30s? early 40s? He was a heavy drinker as well as an addict to at least one other powerful drug. He was an unusually talented poet. I'm glad for him that he escaped relatively early. Joan Baez set Annabel Lee to music in her song by that title, which made a deep impression on my ear. She combined her crystalline voice with a musical score beautifully suited to the poem's mood and style.
Fortunately I'm unfamiliar with the Poe-dissers, perhaps they were less capable than Poe of suffering grief and thus couldn't imagine that emotion affecting anyone so deeply. It's impossible to identify with experience you haven't had, thus perhaps they suppose that expressions of deep sorrow must be unreal, or an exercise in melodrama. EB Browning has been charged with that, just following conventions of her era. But I think all the charge betrays is ignorance of the experience of deep feeling.
I think they just don't have it in them to express. And maybe, who knows, assume everyone must be like themselves, which it seems self-evident to me is not the case. I'm not sure they envy more profoundly feeling writers, who possibly just sound silly to them. They may prefer their own kind, and be content with their own somewhat different level of sensibility.
Yes, I think Twain had an extraordinarily acute wit. Even The Prince and The Pauper can be read as being about the interchangeability of things without anyone even noticing when someone's taken the place of another. My memory of it could be all wrong though. I think that story was one of my favorites in my early years. Maybe I'll get to reread it someday.
Best never to protect the guilty, tho I typically let them intermix unindicted. Too lost a cause I guess I must assume. Probably on quite solid grounds. Just talking to myself again, mea maxima culpa. Just a memory briefly recalled.
Unfortunately I don't know his work well enough to tell what his ethical views were regarding life, in particular its rightness or wrongness. Might've never crossed his mind for all I know.
Who wrote the line (I'm unable to recall) "This is no place where life should be," which must be a paraphrase but should get the point across just as well. May see if I can look him up online, Twain I mean.
If I remember correctly, Twain said no wise man would want to live another life on earth.
Twain said: "I do not fear death. I had been dead for billions and billions of years before I was born, and had not suffered the slightest inconvenience from it."
In "Letters from the Earth" and his autobiography, Twain expressed profound disillusionment with life and portrayed death as a release or escape.
They found Poe in Baltimore one morning draped over a barrel dead I think. Some sort of O.D. would be my guess, but there might've been intention behind it, a hope it might do him in. He wasn't very old as I recall--late 30s? early 40s? He was a heavy drinker as well as an addict to at least one other powerful drug. He was an unusually talented poet. I'm glad for him that he escaped relatively early. Joan Baez set Annabel Lee to music in her song by that title, which made a deep impression on my ear. She combined her crystalline voice with a musical score beautifully suited to the poem's mood and style.
Poe was 40 when he died.
"Annabel Lee" is my favorite Poe poem.
When the formalists dissed Poe, I would ask subconsciously, "Which of you ever wrote a poem as good as 'Annabel Lee'?"
Fortunately I'm unfamiliar with the Poe-dissers, perhaps they were less capable than Poe of suffering grief and thus couldn't imagine that emotion affecting anyone so deeply. It's impossible to identify with experience you haven't had, thus perhaps they suppose that expressions of deep sorrow must be unreal, or an exercise in melodrama. EB Browning has been charged with that, just following conventions of her era. But I think all the charge betrays is ignorance of the experience of deep feeling.
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I agree.
The best poets are deep thinkers and deep feelers.
The dissers lack the ability to communicate emotion and thus deride what they cannot do themselves.
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I think they just don't have it in them to express. And maybe, who knows, assume everyone must be like themselves, which it seems self-evident to me is not the case. I'm not sure they envy more profoundly feeling writers, who possibly just sound silly to them. They may prefer their own kind, and be content with their own somewhat different level of sensibility.
Yes, I think Twain had an extraordinarily acute wit. Even The Prince and The Pauper can be read as being about the interchangeability of things without anyone even noticing when someone's taken the place of another. My memory of it could be all wrong though. I think that story was one of my favorites in my early years. Maybe I'll get to reread it someday.
Twain is one of my favorite writers,
His sense of decency was greatly offended by the bible, which he ravaged in his writings.
Both William Faulkner and Ernest Hemingway called Huckleberry Finn the Great American Novel.
Twain was also the first stand-up comedian of note, and the model for Will Rogers and other homespun humorists.
Twain was arguably America's greatest novelist, humorist, travel writer and bible critic.
Best never to protect the guilty, tho I typically let them intermix unindicted. Too lost a cause I guess I must assume. Probably on quite solid grounds. Just talking to myself again, mea maxima culpa. Just a memory briefly recalled.
Mark Twain said (paraphrase), "Go to heaven for the climate, hell for the company."