[Assam] Mark Twain: The Mysterious Stranger-India love, Maaya??

Wed Jun 21 18:22:33 PDT 2006

I think for me the mysterious stranger is my boss. I just finished reading the story and thought of discussing on Net -and lo --here was her email just in -inviting me to a farewell party for colleagues this weekend. Maybe she thinks I am the mysterious stranger - in a very close knit but affluent (really rich with houses having a mile long driveways) from faraway coming to teach by the river -on the River Road. I had been in the area only once before to check out a temple of ISKCON which I did not find the.

  Twain seems to be influenced by the concept of Maaya or illusion in Hinduism or Buddhism . Educators are enamored by Twain's Tom Sawyer --- and Prof. David Cohen defines "adventurous learning" for kids -in the manner of Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn (I bought an animation movie on the story recently from thrift store for $4).

  From the story :
  About the hero:
  "Then Seppi asked him what his own name was, and he said, tranquilly, "Satan," and held out a chip and caught a little woman on it who was falling from the scaffolding and put her back where she belonged, and said, "She is an idiot to step backward like that and not notice what she is about."

  It caught us suddenly, that name did, and our work dropped out of of our hands and broke to pieces - a cannon, a halberdier, and a horse. Satan laughed, and asked what was the matter. I said, "Nothing, only it seemed a strange name for an angel." He asked why.

  "Because it's - it's - well, it's his name, you know."

  "Yes - he is my uncle."

  He said it placidly, but it took our breath for a moment and made our hearts beat. He did not seem to notice that, but mended our halberdiers and things with a touch, handing them to us finished, and said, "Don't you remember? - he was an angel himself, once."

  "Yes - it's true," said Seppi; "I didn't think of that."

  "Before the Fall he was blameless."

  "Yes," said Nikolaus, "he was without sin."

  "It is a good family - ours," said Satan; "there is not a better. He is the only member of it that has ever sinned."

  Morals:

  Witch Hunting:

  One day when our people were in such awful distress because the witch commission were afraid to proceed against the astrologer and Father Peter's household, or against any, indeed, but the poor and the friendless, they lost patience and took to witch-hunting on their own score, and began to chase a born lady who was known to have the habit of curing people by devilish arts, such as bathing them, washing them, and nourishing them instead of bleeding them and purging them through the ministrations of a barber-surgeon in the proper way. She came flying down, with the howling and cursing mob after her, and tried to take refuge in houses, but the doors were shut in her face. They chased her more than half an hour, we following to see it, and at last she was exhausted and fell, and they caught her. They dragged her to a tree and threw a rope over the limb, and began to make a noose in it, some holding her, meantime, and she crying and begging, and her young daughter looking on
 and weeping, but afraid to say or do anything.

  They hanged the lady, and I threw a stone at her, although in my heart I was sorry for her; but all were throwing stones and each was watching his neighbor, and if I had not done as the others did it would have been noticed and spoken of. Satan burst out laughing.

  India and Portuguese:

  "Yes, and anywhere in Europe he would burn the man, too. But in India the people are civilized, and these things will not happen. The man will drive the priest away and take care of the tree."

  I reflected a little, then said, "Satan, you have given him a hard life, I think."

  "Comparatively. It must not be mistaken for a holiday."

  Maaya or dream or illusion

  Strange, indeed, that you should not have suspected that your universe and its contents were only dreams, visions, fiction! Strange, because they are so frankly and hysterically insane - like all dreams: a God who could make good children as easily as bad, yet preferred to make bad ones; who could have made every one of them happy, yet never made a single happy one; who made them prize their bitter life, yet stingily cut it short; who gave his angels eternal happiness unearned, yet required his other children to earn it; who gave his angels painless lives, yet cursed his other children with biting miseries and maladies of mind and body; who mouths justice and invented hell - mouths mercy and invented hell - mouths Golden Rules, and forgiveness multiplied by seventy times seven, and invented hell; who mouths morals to other people and has none himself; who frowns upon crimes, yet commits them all; who created man without invitation, then tries to shuffle the responsibility
 for man's acts upon man, instead of honorably placing it where it belongs, upon himself; and finally, with altogether divine obtuseness, invites this poor, abused slave to worship him! . . .

  "You perceive, now, that these things are all impossible except in a dream. You perceive that they are pure and puerile insanities, the silly creations of an imagination that is not conscious of its freaks - in a word, that they are a dream, and you the maker of it. The dream-marks are all present; you should have recognized them earlier.

  "It is true, that which I have revealed to you; there is no God, no universe, no human race, no earthly life, no heaven, no hell. It is all a dream - a grotesque and foolish dream. Nothing exists but you. And you are but a thought - a vagrant thought, a useless thought, a homeless thought, wandering forlorn among the empty eternities!"

  Umesh

umesh sharma <jaipurschool at yahoo.com> wrote:
    Though who are interested in knowing about God and the Devil in Middle Ages in Europe might lie to read http://www.shsu.edu/~eng_wpf/authors/Twain/Mysterious-Stranger.htm
  I am reading the book given to me by my future boss -she read that ageing book at high school --about the mysterious stranger called Satan -whose uncle was the Devil (called Satan).

  Umesh

  PS: the incidents mentioned therein about people being burnt at stake for witchcraft are poignant

Umesh Sharma
5121 Lackawanna ST
College Park, MD 20740

1-202-215-4328 [Cell Phone]

Ed.M. - International Education Policy
Harvard Graduate School of Education,
Harvard University,
Class of 2005

weblog: http://jaipurschool.bihu.in/    
---------------------------------
  Try the all-new Yahoo! Mail . "The New Version is radically easier to use"  The Wall Street Journal

Umesh Sharma
5121 Lackawanna ST
College Park, MD 20740

 1-202-215-4328 [Cell Phone]

Ed.M. - International Education Policy
Harvard Graduate School of Education,
Harvard University,
Class of 2005

weblog: http://jaipurschool.bihu.in/

---------------------------------
 Try the all-new Yahoo! Mail . "The New Version is radically easier to use"  The Wall Street Journal
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