“HA–!HA! HA!”: THE POINT OF DOTS IN MARK TWAIN’S INNOCENTS ABROAD

FRÉDÉRIC DUMAS University of Grenoble

Abstract: This paper analyzes the iconic representation of a notebook in Twain’s Innocents Abroad to demonstrate that the mise en abyme, supposed to express the author’s experience of an echo, is actually part of a lowbrow aesthetic scheme that builds within the persona’s famed travelogues. Keywords: art, irony, persona, travel, Twain

1. Introduction The Innocents Abroad (1869), “the best-selling book of the century,” (Melton 2002: 1) is the first of Mark Twain’s five travel books. Its sales “reached 100,000 even before the second anniversary of its publication. [and] launched Mark Twain’s national career” (Obenzinger 1999: 164). All of Twain’s travelogues turned out to be great commercial successes and contributed to establishing their author at home and abroad as a leading travel writer: “half a million copies [of The Innocents Abroad] had been sold by Twain’s death in 1910” (Obenzinger 1999: 165); “Roughing It [1872] sold over 76,000 copies in its first two years and 96,000 by 1879, and A Tramp Abroad [1880] sold 62,000 in its first year” (Melton 2002: 1). His last two travel books were Life on the Mississippi (1883) and Following the Equator (1897).

2. The Innocents Abroad

The Innocents Abroad relates the adventures of the author’s peregrinations in Europe, the Holy Land and Egypt in 1867, as he had embarked on what is viewed as one of the very first transatlantic cruises. Still a journalist, his expenses were paid for by his major employer, the Alta California, which published the letters he sent from around the globe. The stories are told by his anti-intellectual persona, who must be distinguished from the empirical author and will thus be referred to in the present study as “Twain.” He fits the definition by Genette (1996: 256) of the metadiegetic character, who is simultaneously the hero, the narrator and the author. As a tourist, “Twain” visits the most picturesque places and the renowned landmarks of high art, providing his own comments. He particularly denounces the amateurs of classical painting who rave over the works they contemplate, though the latter have now become mere ruins. In Milan, crowds of such critics—or would be critics—shower praise over Da Vinci’s “Last Supper,” though “The colors are dimmed with age; the countenances are scaled and marred, and nearly all expression is gone from them; the hair is a dead blur upon the wall, and there is no life in the eyes. Only the attitudes are certain.” (Twain 2003:191-192) “Twain” mocks their seemingly spontaneous response to the encounter with the masterpiece, which they tend to express in pseudo- critical fashion:

They stand entranced before it with bated breath and parted lips, and when they speak, it is only in the catchy ejaculations of rapture: “O, wonderful!” “Such expression!” “Such grace of attitude!” […] “Such faultless drawing!” “Such matchless coloring!” […] “What delicacy of touch!” “What sublimity of conception!” (192)

Despite his own original enthusiasm at the prospect of discovering the European masterpieces, “Twain”’s candid innocence precludes any pretense. His disappointment at the decrepit state of the painting leads him to reflect upon the nature of the invariably stereotyped attitude that surrounds it:

I only envy these people; I envy them their honest admiration, if it be honest—their delight, if they feel delight. I harbor no animosity toward any of them. But at the same time the thought will intrude itself upon me, How can they see what is not visible? (192)

To him, the damage of time prevents any contemporary assessment of the painting and only critical discourse keeps the memory of The Last Supper’s former glory: “After reading so much about it, I am satisfied that the Last Supper was a very miracle of art once. But it was three hundred years ago.” (193) Laudatory discourse contributes to compensating the failings of a work of art which has virtually disappeared, and threatens to obliterate the object of its analysis. It is a mythologizing enterprise in which “Twain” refuses to participate. His aesthetic assessment is mostly of a creative nature; lampooning the critics prompts him to demonstrate an alternative attitude to representing the experience of the confrontation with the ineffable. The Last Supper is one of the masterpieces sought after by any self- respecting art lover on his Grand Tour. As such, “Twain”’s ruthless, sketchy description of the painting and ridiculing the travelers’ ecstatic response make up a provocative statement, which he carries further by relating his confrontation with another ineffable experience. Far from the cathedrals and palaces housing the productions of high art, “Twain” then visits a “tumble- down old rookery” (196), which boasts an exceptional echo. Seemingly following the example of the art admirers’ bent for substituting their preposterous ekphrasis for a totally faded work of art, “Twain” says he endeavored to represent a marvel that he could not see either, but that he was able to perceive by ear: the echo itself. His approach is minimalistic: he jotted down dots on a page of his notebook, each corresponding to a repetition of the original sound (“Ha!”) uttered by a local country girl (196). He states he managed fifty-two before giving up on his attempt, as the echo was still running its course. His evidence is the reproduction within his text of the page and its opposite:

(197)

The raw appearance of the sketch as well as the telegraphic, barely legible text that follows denote their immediacy, which proves to be revealingly problematic. To start with, although it is difficult to get the precise number of dots on the left-hand page the number approximates the double. Even if “Twain” wished to represent one distinct dot for each “distinct repetition,” the total number of clearly delineated specks reaches beyond the stated figure. The persona either lied about his count or the reproduction of his original production is blatantly unfaithful. Given “Twain”’s definite textual precision and the obvious approximation of the illustration, the point is that even vouched for by the author himself, a reproduction may not be faithful to the intended message. As for the text on the opposite page (supposed to follow the chronology of “Twain”’s trip and to be found, if not immediately after the echo anecdote, at least to follow it in its vicinity), it is not found in The Innocents Abroad at all. We are thus given access to notes that were discarded by the author but that still appear in the body of his text. As such, this text originally forbidden to the reader remains, but in the form of a picture which has lost its ideological value and has become a mere illustration. What matters here is the discourse on, not in the text. – In the end the echo transcribed by “Twain” makes up: “‘Ha!——— ha!——ha!—–ha!—ha!–ha! Ha! H-a-a-a-a-a!’” (196), which is both a meaningless sound made up of a most basic vocal utterance and the conventional expression of laughter. The humorous outcome of this meta- artistic experiment is carried further on the opposite page of the notebook, which may be interpreted as the caption of the sketch. Its opening phrase, “Picture by Titian in the Cathedral” presents “Twain”’s ultra minimalist drawing as if it were the copy of a painting by the Italian master. This makes the persona the equivalent of the droves of talented contemporary painters who successfully replicate the masters. He included the picture of the former a few pages previously: “Wherever you find a Raphael, a Rubens, a Michelangelo, a Carracci, or a Da Vinci […] you find artists copying them, and the copies are always the handsomest. Maybe the originals were handsome when they were new, but they are not now.” (191) Adorned with what looks like two columns of an indefinite classical order (a full one on the right hand side and a faded one on the left), the left- hand page of his notebook actually looks like a classical, monumental work of architectural art rendered illegible by time. The page, then, may be said to give an iconic representation of the cathedral mentioned in the text. Similarly, the right-hand column happens to overlap the two pages of the notebook and becomes the middle, main supporting pillar of “Twain”’s iconic work, sustained by three columns, the left-hand and the right-hand ones having virtually disappeared but still being detectable to a careful eye. The notebook reproduces the appearance of the book that the reader is holding at the same time: “Twain”’s mise en abyme is thus given the shape/appearance of a diptych, which bestows on it a most respected artistic aura reminiscent of that enjoyed by the old masterpieces displayed in the cathedrals and churches of Europe. At the same time it ridicules the pretention of the prevalent critical discourse that seeks to arouse admiration for a work bearing the same characteristics, regardless of any intrinsic aesthetic quality.

The text that follows (“subject forgotten /illegible/of a date — Priest said History of it was very curious It was painted in the dark—”) further illustrates “Twain”’s thesis, for the painting that “it” refers to is either by Titian or by some unnamed artist. The impossibility of determining the identity of the author relativizes the importance of the issue, since not only have most old paintings virtually disappeared because of the ravages of time, but also because even their original quality may be doubted. One may indeed only guess at the probability of painting a masterpiece in the dark… Given the promising hilarious start, the rest of the text proves frustrating, for it leaves the anecdote unfinished and skips to an anticlimactic allusion to a train departure. Given the textual analogy between “Twain”’s sketch and the unknown classical work alluded to by the monk, the latter’s comment might as well apply to the dotted page, which is the very type of result that one might get by fumbling with a pencil at night in a sketchbook. Just as all critical comments on any faded painting are written in a predictable style and become interchangeable, a doodle drawn by an amateur looks like any darkened masterpiece. The subsequent trivial allusion to the train contrasts with the flowery discourse of art criticism, which ends up absorbing the actual object of its study. It also reveals “Twain” as a down-to-earth dilettante, for whom the classics are merely one ingredient among others in his tourist trip. He appears as a consumer of artistic products aware of a damning lack of culture which prevents him from appreciating the fundamental qualities of a work whose subtleties will remain inaccessible. To him, such arcane knowledge is a privilege afforded to creators only:

I am willing to believe that the eye of the practiced artist can rest upon The Last Supper and renew a lustre where only a hint of it is left, supply a tint that has faded away, restore an expression that is gone […] But I can not work this miracle. (193)

“Twain,” then, does not consider himself as an artist, which is hardly surprising considering his hasty sketch, but which also indirectly raises the question of his status as the author of the present text. His flash of modesty (true or false) makes up yet another ironic jibe against critics, whom he puts in the same position of ignorance.

3. Later travel books

The Innocents Abroad was followed by the publication of other travel books, notably A Tramp Abroad, which relates “Twain”’s going back to the same places some twelve years later, having seemingly undergone an aesthetic sea change: “When I wrote about the Old Masters before, I said the copies were better than the originals. That was a mistake of large dimensions. The Old Masters were still unpleasing to me, but they were truly divine contrasted with the copies.” (Twain 2002: 268) Having taken painting lessons in Heidelberg, the traveler in A Tramp Abroad now pretends to claim artistic standing and lapses into the jargon of the critics he so vehemently used to criticize. His apparently earnest ekphrasis of a painting of a hair trunk in Venice turns out to compose a parody of empty critical discourse, alternating the lofty and the ridiculous:

The Trunk is bound or bordered with leather all around where the lid joins the main body. Many critics consider this leather too cold in tone; but I consider this its highest merit, since it was evidently made so to emphasize by contrast the impassioned fervor of the hasp. The highlights in this part of the work are cleverly managed, the motif is admirably subordinated to the ground tints, and the technique is very fine. […] The details are finely worked out; the repose proper to hair in a recumbent and inactive attitude is charmingly expressed. There is a feeling about this part of the work which lifts it to the highest altitudes of art; the sense of sordid realism vanishes away,—one recognizes that there is soul here. (272 -273)

Such jargon is ironically lent credence by the writer’s pretentious claim to artistry, given his supposedly successful pictorial training in Heidelberg, and sustained by the proud display of his own creation:

(270)

The unmistakably amateurish quality of “Twain”’s sketch of the original Lion of St Mark makes it blatantly inadequate, whether as a mimetic representation or the expression of pictorial genius. His pseudo-artistic achievements definitely disqualify him both as a painter and as the enlightened critic he pretends to be. His praise of the Old Masters, then, proves totally ironic and confirms his original negative judgment. It is easy to perceive the sarcasm at the persona’s expense when his hubris prompts him to put his pathetic pictorial creations on a par with those of the virtuosos of the past. Yet the irony becomes all the more biting when he convincingly points to stylistic analogies in the course of a discussion with an artist in Venice:

“I have been in the Doge’s Palace and I saw several acres of very bad drawing, very bad perspective, and very incorrect proportions. Paul Veronese’s dogs do not resemble dogs; all the horses look like bladders on legs; one man had a right leg on the left side of his body; […] there are three men in the foreground who are over thirty feet high, if one may judge by the size of a kneeling little boy in the centre of the foreground; and according to the same scale, the Pope is 7 feet high and the Doge is a shriveled dwarf of 4 feet.” The artist said, — “Yes, the Old Masters often drew badly; they did not care much for truth and exactness in minor details.” (269)

The flaws readily recognized in the masters (“bad drawing, bad perspective, bad proportions” [269]) obviously apply to “Twain” himself, thereby proleptically depriving beholders/readers of stable aesthetic guidelines to condemn his own creations. His clever discourse comically transforms him into a latter-day Veronese or Da Vinci, whom he equals in their technical imperfections.

4. Conclusion

By equating his sketch of the echo in The Innocents Abroad with a generic masterpiece and ironically demonstrating his (non)artistic abilities in A Tramp Abroad, “Twain” does not merely provide an entertaining illustration of his thesis. The combination of his pathetic pictorial creations and his subversive candid remarks contributes to the construction of a lowbrow aesthetic scheme that aims at underlying the vanity of ascribing any scientific value to critical discourse. In its humorous way, it also obliquely underlines the social implications of any approach to art, for the comic effect created and denoted by the end result of the echo (“‘Ha!———ha!——ha!—–ha!—ha!–ha! Ha! H-a-a- a-a-a!’” [Twain 2003:196]) is utterly devoid of sophistication—and seemingly groundless. Whether in real life or in the artistic realm, the original sound, uttered by an unsophisticated yet lovely country girl, becomes an expression of pure vitality. Free from any witticism or artifice, it is pitted against the ludicrousness of the refined society that will worship any faded “Old Master,” backed by empty jargon. “Twain”’s instinctive mistrust of high art and of a cultured approach to it is evocative of an American innocence which, while acknowledging the existence of history and its impact on the present, tends to minimize its contemporary relevance. Revealingly, it does so mostly by associating such claim to sophistication with a decaying Europe, typifying a relative denial of the past.

References Genette, G. 1996 (1972). Figures III. Paris: Seuil. Melton, J.A. 2002. Mark Twain, Travel Books, and Tourism: The Tide of a Great Popular Movement. Tuscaloosa and London: The University of Alabama Press. Obenzinger, H. 1999. American Palestine: Melville, Twain, and the Holy Land Mania. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Twain, M. 2003 (1869). The Innocents Abroad. New York: Dover Publications. Twain, M. 2002 (1880). A Tramp Abroad. New York: Dover Publications.

Notes on the author Frédéric Dumas is an assistant professor of American literature at Stendhal University-Grenoble, France. He has published a book on Nelson Algren (Paris: L’Harmattan, 2001) and many articles on American literature in French, Serbian, Slovenian, Indian and American scholarly publications. He is currently working on a monograph on Mark Twain’s aesthetics.