donn@utah-gr.UUCP (Donn Seeley) (02/17/85)
I recently read MARK TWAIN'S MYSTERIOUS STRANGER MANUSCRIPTS, edited by William Gibson, and I was horrified at how the original story had been distorted by Alfred Bigelow Paine and Frederick Duneka, who published a version of it after the author's death under the title 'The Mysterious Stranger'. Paine and Duneka found three manuscripts, titled THE CHRONICLE OF YOUNG SATAN, SCHOOLHOUSE HILL, and NO. 44, THE MYSTERIOUS STRANGER (in order of the time they were written). The manuscripts are different treatments of the same basic story, involving an angel who has come to Earth and how he affects the ordinary human beings with whom he comes in contact. Only the last manuscript, NO. 44, was finished. Paine and Duneka decided to publish the first manuscript, YOUNG SATAN, appropriating part of the title of the last manuscript, and adopting its last chapter to provide a conclusion, changing the names of the characters. They also performed some editorial surgery to make the story less virulent in its treatment of orthodox Christianity. I was so offended by this bowdlerizing that I feel obligated to present an excerpt from the first chapter of STRANGER comparing it with the first chapter of SATAN, to show just how bad it was... If you find the subject of great writing destroyed by editorial malfeasance to be boring, stop reading here, because the excerpt I present is quite lengthy. (Once started, I couldn't stop! My apologies.) There are actually three texts involved here, since YOUNG SATAN's first chapter is used with certain small modifications in NO. 44. Where the difference with YOUNG SATAN may be attributed to a reading of the NO. 44 version, I have noted it. This is how to interpret the editorial markings: text of the Paine-Duneka version [omitted original text] [altered text/original text] [inserted text/] <my remarks> ------------------------------------------------------------------------ It was 1590 -- winter [1590 -- winter/1702 -- May <NO. 44 uses '1490 -- winter'>]. Austria was far away from the world, and asleep; it was still the Middle Ages in Austria, and promised to remain so forever. <Two and a half unaltered paragraphs omitted for brevity...> Eseldorf was a paradise for us boys. We were not overmuch pestered with schooling. Mainly we were trained to be good Christians [Christians/Catholics]; to revere the Virgin, the Church and the Saints above everything [; to hold the Monarch in awful reverence, speak of him with bated breath, uncover before his picture, regard him as the gracious provider of our daily bread and of all our earthly blessings, and ourselves as being sent into the world with only one mission, to labor for him, bleed for him, die for him, when necessary]. Beyond these matters we were not required to know much; and, in fact, not allowed to. [The priests said that] knowledge was not good for the common people, and could make them discontented with the lot which God had appointed for them, and God would not endure discomfiture with his plans. [This was true, for the priests got it of the Bishop.] We had two priests. One of them, Father Adolf, was a very zealous and strenuous priest, much considered. [We had ... much considered/<22 paragraphs deleted by Paine and Duneka, most of them rather defamatory of Father Adolf and the Church. The added text appears to be condensed from the following sentence:> He was a very loud and zealous and strenuous priest, and was always working to get more reputation, hoping to be a Bishop some day; and he was always spying around and keeping a sharp lookout on other people's flocks as well as his own; and he was dissolute and profane and malicious, but otherwise a good enough man, it was generally thought.] There may [may/] have been better priests, in some ways, than Father Adolf, [for he had his failings,] but there was never one in our commune who was held in more solemn and awful respect. This was because he had absolutely no fear of the Devil. He was the only Christian [Christian/person <NO. 44 uses 'Christian'>] I have ever known of whom that could be truly said. People stood in deep dread of him on that account; for they thought that there must be something supernatural about him, else he could not be so bold and so confident. All men speak in bitter disapproval of the Devil, but they do it reverently, not flippantly; but Father Adolf's way was very different; he called him by every [vile and putrid] name he could lay his tongue to, and it made everyone shudder that heard him; and often he would speak of him scornfully and scoffingly; then the people crossed themselves and went quickly out of his presence, fearing that something fearful might happen [; and this was natural, for after all is said and done Satan is a sacred character, being mentioned in the Bible, and it cannot be proper to utter lightly the sacred names, lest heaven itself should resent it]. Father Adolf had actually met Satan face to face more than once, and defied him. This was known to be so. Father Adolf said it himself. He never made any secret of it, but spoke it right out. And that he was speaking true there was proof in at least one instance, for on that occasion he quarreled with the enemy [enemy/Enemy], and intrepidly threw his bottle [bottle/inkstand <44 has 'bottle'>] at him; and there, upon the wall of his study, was the ruddy splotch where it struck and broke. [<The following is in SATAN but not 44 (removed because the date was moved back to 1490):> The same was claimed for Luther, but no one believed it, for he was a heretic and a liar. This was so, for the Pope himself had said that Luther had lied about it.] But it was Father Peter, the other priest, that we all loved best and were sorriest for [But ... for/The priest that we all loved best and were sorriest for, was Father Peter]. Some people charged him with [Some ... with/But the Bishop had suspended him for] talking around in conversation that God was all goodness and would find a way to save all [all/ALL] his poor human children. It was a horrible thing to say, but there was never any absolute proof that Father Peter said it; and it was out of character for him to say it, too, for he was always good and gentle and truthful [, and a good Catholic, and always teaching in the pulpit just what the Church required, and nothing else]. [But there it was, you see:] he wasn't charged with saying it in the pulpit, where all the congregation could hear and testify, but only outside, in talk; and it is easy for enemies to manufacture THAT. Father Peter had an enemy and a very powerful one, the astrologer who lived in a tumbled old tower up the valley, and put in his nights studying the stars. Everyone knew he could foretell wars and famines, though that was not so hard, for there was always a war and generally a famine somewhere. But he could also read any man's life through the stars in a big book he had, and find lost property, and everyone in the village except Father Peter stood in awe of him. Even Father Adolf, who had defied the Devil, had a wholesome respect for the astrologer when he came through our village wearing his tall, pointed hat and his long, flowing robe with stars on it, carrying his big book, and a staff which was known to have magic power. The bishop himself sometimes listened to the astrologer, it was said, for, besides studying the stars and prophesying, the astrologer made a great show of piety, which would impress the bishop, of course. [Father Peter had an enemy ... of course/<To my knowledge this text is a complete fabrication; there is no astrologer in SATAN. There is a magician in NO. 44, but he is described in a different way. The original text reads:> Father Peter denied it; but no matter, Father Adolf wanted his place, and he told the Bishop, and swore to it, that he overheard Father Peter say it; heard Father Peter say it to his niece, when Father Adolf was behind the door listening -- for he was suspicious of Father Peter's soundness, he said, and the interests of religion required that he be watched.] But Father Peter took no stock in the astrologer. He denounced him openly as a charlatan -- a fraud with no valuable knowledge of any kind, or powers beyond that of an ordinary and rather inferior human being, which naturally made the astrologer hate Father Peter and wish to ruin him. It was the astrologer, as we all believed, who originated the story about Father Peter's shocking remark and carried it to the bishop [But Father Peter ... the bishop/<More fabrication.>]. It was said that Father Peter had made the remark to his niece, Marget, though Marget denied it [It was ... denied it/The niece, Marget, denied it] and implored the bishop [bishop/Bishop] to believe her and spare her old uncle from poverty and disgrace [; but Father Adolf had been poisoning the Bishop against the old man a long time privately, and he wouldn't listen; for he had a deep admiration of Father Adolf's bravery toward the Devil, and an awe of him on account of his having met the Devil face to face; and so he was a slave to Father Adolf's influence]. But the bishop wouldn't listen [But ... listen/]. He suspended Father Peter[,] indefinitely, though he wouldn't go so far as to excommunicate him on the evidence of only one witness; and now Father Peter had been out a couple of years, and Father Adolf had his flock. <What a difference the changed text makes here!> ------------------------------------------------------------------------ To close, here are some remarks from Clemens about his editors which are passed on by William Gibson (pp. 492-3). Keep in mind that Clemens became quite irate when so much as his punctuation was altered: ------------------------------------------------------------------------ In his Autobiographical Dictation of 17 July 1906..., Mark Twain asserted that Duneka, a Roman Catholic, got the 'dry gripes' from any criticism of his church, and added: Last summer, Mr. Duneka wanted to look at one of these stories, a story whose scene is laid in the Middle Ages, and in it he found a drunken and profane Catholic priest -- a spectacle which was as common in Europe four hundred years ago as Dunekas are in hell to-day. Of course it made him shudder, and he wanted that priest reformed or left out. Mr. Duneka seems to do four-fifths of the editing of everything that comes to Harper & Brothers for publication, and he certainly has a good literary instinct and judgement as long as his religion does not get into his way. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ It would appear that Duneka got his revenge after Clemens died, Donn Seeley University of Utah CS Dept donn@utah-cs.arpa 40 46' 6"N 111 50' 34"W (801) 581-5668 decvax!utah-cs!donn