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Politics : DON'T START THE WAR -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: epicure who wrote (21654)	3/17/2003 1:40:12 AM
From: Brumar89	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 25898

Oh Twain was lampooning Americans not French, you say. Yeah, now that's OK. But if he'd been lampooning French, why that would have been bigotry! And you'd be deeply, so very deeply insulted. He was using the stereotype of the corrupt European and the naive American (as seen in James) As seen in who? I'm sure it's not easy being a bigot- but it's pretty funny to see the lengths you will go to justify it. I'm sorry but it really is pretty easy. This is the internet age and this is no trouble at all. Now here's some info on Twain's attitudes toward things French - you might use it in your upcoming term paper> twainquotes.com >>>> In Paris they just simply opened their eyes and stared when we spoke to them in French! We never did succeed in making those idiots understand their own language. - Innocents Abroad The objects of which Paris folks are fond--literature, art, medicine and adultery. - The Corpse speech, 1879 France has neither winter nor summer nor morals--apart from these drawbacks it is a fine country. - Mark Twain's Notebook There is nothing lower than the human race except the French. - quoted by Carl Dolmetsch, Our Famous Guest It has always been a marvel to me--that French language; it has always been a puzzle to me. How beautiful that language is! How expressive it seems to be! How full of grace it is! And when it comes from lips like those [of Sarah Bernhardt], how eloquent and how limpid it is! And, oh, I am always deceived--I always think I am going to understand it. - Mark Twain, a Biography M. de Lamester's new French dictionary just issued in Paris defines virtue as: "A woman who has only one lover and don't steal." - quoted in A Bibliography of Mark Twain, Merle Johnson I like to look at a Russian or a German or an Italian--I even like to look at a Frenchman if I ever have the luck to catch him engaged in anything that ain't delicate. - Extract from Captain Stormfield's Visit to Heaven It is human to like to be praised; one can even notice it in the French. - "What Paul Bourget Thinks of Us" In certain public indecencies the difference between a dog & a Frenchman is not perceptible. - Notebook #17, October 1878 - February 1879 It appears that at last census that every man in France over 16 years of age & under 116, has at least 1 wife to whom he has never been married. French novels, talk, drama & newspaper bring daily & overwhelming proofs that the most of the married ladies have paramours. This makes a good deal of what we call crime, and the French call sociability. - Notebook #18, Feb.- Sept. 1879 France has usually been governed by prostitutes. - Notebook #18, Feb.- Sept. 1879 French are the connecting link between man & the monkey. - Notebook #18, Feb.- Sept. 1879 Trivial Americans go to Paris when they die. - Notebook #18, Feb.- Sept. 1879 It is the language for lying compliment, for illicit love & for the conveying of exquisitely nice shades of meaning in bright graceful & trivial conversations--the conveying, especially of double-meanings, a decent & indecent one so blended as--nudity thinly veiled, but gauzily & lovelily. - Notebook #18, Feb.- Sept. 1879 A Frenchman's home is where another man's wife is. - Notebook #18, Feb.- Sept. 1879 An isolated & helpless young girl is perfectly safe from insult by a Frenchman, if he is dead. - Notebook #20, Jan. 1882 - Feb. 1883 A dead Frenchman has many good qualities, many things to recommend him; many attractions--even innocencies. Why cannot we have more of these? - Notebook #20, Jan. 1882 - Feb. 1883 <<<<< >>>>> In Mark Twain A to Z (Oxford Univ. Press, 1996), R. Kent Rasmussen says that he began to write comments in his notebooks in the late 1870s "filled with invective about the French and their alleged predilections for adultery, prostitution, general immorality and artificiality." In the 1890s he was very critical of the French government's treatment of the Dreyfus case. In "Concerning the Jews," Twain wrote: I am quite sure that (bar one) I have no race prejudices, and I think I have no color prejudices nor caste prejudices nor creed prejudices. Indeed, I know it. I can stand any society. All that I care to know is that a man is a human being -- that is enough for me; he can't be any worse. I have no special regard for Satan; but, I can at least claim that I have no prejudice against him. It may even be that I lean a little his way, on account of his not having a fair show. All religions issue bibles against him, and say the most injurious things about him, but we never hear his side. We have none but the evidence for the prosecution, and yet we have rendered the verdict. To my mind, this is irregular. It is un-English; it is un-American; it is French. Without this precedent Dreyfus could not have been condemned. Despite his general anti-French feelings, he admired French novelist Emile Zola's heroic stand in Dreyfus's support. <<<<<< boondocksnet.com