Mark Twain's biography

“ALL modern American literature comes from one book by Mark Twain called ‘Huckleberry Finn’.” So wrote Ernest Hemingway, no slouch himself in the field of modern American literature. Published in 1885, when American letters were dominated by the starchy, pious and insipid group known as the Schoolroom Poets, “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” was everything they were not: vital, irreverent, meandering and funny. “Lives of great men all remind us/We can make our lives sublime!” preached that arch-schoolroomer, Henry Longfellow. Introducing Huck Finn, Twain did not agree. He gave warning: “Persons attempting to find a motive in this narrative will be prosecuted; persons attempting to find a moral in it will be banished; persons attempting to find a plot in it will be shot.”

欧内斯特·海明威这样写道：“美国现代文学的开端，始于马克·吐温的一本书——《哈克贝利·费恩历险记》。”当然海明威本人也是现代文学代杰出代表。《哈》一书在1885年出版，当时的美国文坛主导是绅士派诗人，他们的语言既古板贫乏又循规蹈矩。《哈》的出现完全颠覆了传统的文学风格：充满生命力的文字，大胆不羁，滑稽有趣的语言。绅士派诗人的巨擘亨利·朗费罗高亢吟咏：“伟人的生平向我们指出，我们此生必能超群脱俗。”而在《哈》的前言中，吐温一反前人窠臼，警告说：“凡是在本书中寻找动机的人必受控诉；凡是在本书中寻找道德的人必受驱逐；凡是在本书中寻找传奇的人自寻死路。”

Of course, the book has its morals, just not hortatory ones. Twain’s were more basic and homespun: Huck risks jail and death to free his friend, Jim, a runaway slave; not until J.D. Salinger invented a deerstalker-clad prep-school dropout would American literature see as prodigious a deflator of phoneyness. As for plot, it is an American picaresque. Twain knew instinctively how well the form suits a restless, dynamic country.

这本书里当然有描写道德，但不是用来说教的那种。吐温笔下的道德更符合人的本性，更发乎心灵。比如哈克冒着牢狱之灾和生命危险救出他的朋友，逃走的奴隶吉姆。至于吐温对道学文章的讽刺，如果不是J·D·塞林格塑造了一个戴着鸭舌帽，被中学开除的主人公，哈克也许是美国文学中最具批判性的形象。这本书更是一部传奇性的的美国历险记。吐温凭直觉感到，只有冒险故事才贴近这个躁动不安，生机勃勃的国家。

He knew it because his life was also restless and dynamic. The real pleasure in reading Jerome Loving’s excellent biography is less the literary criticism than the jaunts—first across young America with a young Twain, and then overseas as he grows more established. Samuel Clemens left Hannibal, Missouri, at 18, working for newspapers in St Louis, New York, Cincinnati, Keokuk and Virginia City, Nevada. He also mined for silver and learned to pilot a riverboat, from which he took his pseudonym—the cry “mark twain” was used to warn pilots that they were veering into dangerously shallow water.

他理应知道这点，因为他的人生也是波澜起伏，片刻不得安歇。阅读吉罗姆·拉芬写的马克·吐温传是一种纯粹的乐趣，与其说这是一本文学评论，它更像一段旅程：我们跟随年轻的吐温穿越年轻的美国，随着他的声名鹊起，我们的视野又随他漂洋过海。吐温本名塞缪尔·克莱门斯，18岁时离开了故乡——密苏里州的汉尼巴尔。他曾在圣路易斯、纽约、辛辛那提、考库克和内华达州的维吉尼亚市干过报社工作；他也曾在银矿做过矿工；后来他学会了领航，这也是马克·吐温这个笔名的出处——每当测水员喊出“马克·吐温”这个词，就是提醒领航员：水深两浔，船舶正驶入恰能通过的浅水域。

Like many writers, he gradually discovered he didn’t really have a knack for much else. He was a great storyteller—indeed, much of his income came from barnstorming lecture tours—but a terrible businessman, an unsuccessful miner and an erratic riverboat pilot. He would travel anywhere for a story. American literature may have been safely ensconced in Boston, but Twain, already in demand as a travel writer at 32, sailed to Europe and the Middle East. With the mother continent he was unimpressed. Van Wyck Brooks, a 20th-century critic, called Twain an artist who hated art. This is not quite fair, even though after visiting Rome he wrote: “I never felt so fervently thankful, so soothed, so tranquil, so filled with a blessed peace as I did yesterday when I learned that Michelangelo was dead.”

和其他作家一样，阅历渐长的吐温认识到自己并非全才，讲故事才是他最擅长的领域。的确，各地巡回演讲成了他收入的大部分来源。除此以外，他经历过经商失败，靠银矿发财的梦想破灭，做领航员又漂泊无定的不幸境遇。不过，他愿意到任何地方，只为追随一个故事。在他32岁时，美国文学高踞在波士顿的殿堂之上，身为作家的吐温却为汲取创作灵感远赴欧洲和中东，只因本土文学无法打动他的心。20世纪文学评论家范威克·布鲁克斯嘲讽他“不过将文艺当作作家身份的包装”。这样的评价显然有失公允，尽管吐温曾在游览罗马后写下这样的文字：“我从未怀着如此的感恩之心，感到如此愉悦宁静，身心充满了幸福，因为就在昨天，我得知米开朗琪罗早已不在世间。”

It would be more accurate to say not that Twain hated art, but that he never let it—or anything else—stand in the way of a good joke. He often complained that he was dismissed by the literati as merely a “phunny phellow”, but like all good humorists his work was fundamentally serious, poking fun as it did at a universe in which, as Mr Loving writes, “the relationship of God to man is no more than that of a town drunk to one of his microbes.” And his reputation was hardly as slight as he liked to pretend. In London he and Charles Darwin were both abashed when introduced to each other as “great men”.

他并不是憎恶艺术，准确的说，他讨厌任何不能拿来开玩笑的东西。吐温常常发牢骚说，文人学士只把他看成个有南方口音的逗笑角色，事实上，他完全有资格归入杰出的幽默大师行列。他们的作品同样有着严肃的本质，深刻地嘲讽了世间万象。拉芬在书中诠释道：“因为人类之于上帝，不过像醉汉身上的一个虱子一样无足轻重。”吐温是声名卓著的，虽然他本人极力淡化这一事实。他曾在伦敦有过一则趣事：有人介绍他和查尔斯·狄更斯相识，介绍人将他们两人誉为“伟人”，弄得两人尴尬不已。

At a literary supper in Boston to celebrate John Greenleaf Whittier’s 70th birthday, Twain mocked Longfellow, Oliver Wendell Holmes and Ralph Waldo Emerson, all of whom were in attendance. William Dean Howells, then the dean of American letters, accused him of having “trifled” with the reputations of distinguished men. But as objects of Twain’s humour, these men were in good company—the company of the world.

另一则关于吐温的轶闻是：为庆祝诗人惠特勒的七十大寿，当时的文学界在波士顿举行了一次晚宴。朗费罗，奥利弗·霍姆斯，爱默生等人均有列席，结果吐温当场拿三人打趣。时任美国文学艺术学会主席的豪威尔斯对马克·吐温大加斥责，说他竟敢戏谑名人，毫不尊重名声。其实，这些人不过是吐温拿来幽默的对象，正如全世界都是他幽默感的来源。