Mark Twain the Romantic

“Wherever she was, THERE was Eden.”

I love to read.  Something that my parents instilled in me from the time I was young, and boy am I thankful for that.  I remember the first book I “learned” to read which was really just the story about a mom and baby bear who go to the beach and make sand cakes, but the only reason I could read it is because I memorized it (from my very wonderful, patient mother reading it to me over and over again!).

Well one of the blessings of marrying someone smarter than you are is all of the great literature that they can introduce to you.  I have not read much of mark twain, but Meagan loves his writing and is always trying to get me to take a look.  So, I decided to try out some of his short works and see if Samuel Langhorne Clemens lived up to the hype.  Twain was quite prolific and so there is not only a multitude of stories to choose from, but from Meagan’s point of view, there is a multitude of GREAT stories to dive into.

As a self proclaimed theologian I not so astonishingly chose the Diary of Adam and Eve.  I have to put in a little warning here, this story is great but I have not been affected by a piece of literature like this in some time.  Twain wrote this story in two parts.  He wrote the first half (Adam’s diary) while in his fifties and watching his beloved wife get sick and become frail.  The second half (Eve’s Diary) was written fifteen years later when Twain had hit his seventies, his  wife of 34 years had died, and he had outlived three of his four children.  This backing gives way to the melancholy tones of romance and love while also providing a nostalgic look at when the first boy met the first girl.

Twain writes the story in first person from the private journals of these two rather famous personas.  Adam, the inquisitve male can not figure out what in the world this new creature is and why it seems so fixated on following him, talking to him so much, and taking his job of naming things (without any sort of scientific experiment, much to his chagrin).  Eve, the loquacious counter part assumes that this creature (a he, she is sure of it) is not as bright as she, so she helps him out by naming everything for him and trying to show him the beauty in everything.

There is much more to the story, like Adam’s experiments on the creature that appears with Eve after he has been gone many months (he thinks it is a fish, but when he throws it in the lake Eve dives in to SAVE it!), but the underlying message shows how well crafted Twain’s stories are.  He literally develops these two characters brilliantly and then writes them to one another from the opposite ends of the spectrum.

I won’t ruin the whole story, but I finished the book the other night in bed, while Meagan slept beside me quietly.  Adam, in the last line of the book, is standing at Eve’s grave (knowing the back story here makes it that much more powerful) and he says, “Wherever she was, THERE was Eden.”  In that moment I looked over at my beautiful wife that I have been blessed with and I realized that she too would always be my Eden.

I realized in a rush of just those six words that Twain had said everything I would ever want to say about my wife.  Her perfection, beauty, understanding, kindness, gentleness, creativity, intellect, humor, even her intimacy is Eden.  It is the place in which I take refuge and find in it a relationship that knows true uncondintional love and one in which if I ever messed it up I would give ANYTHING to reconcile and bring that relationship back into righteous standing.

Mark Twain has captured me.  Not with his brash romance or his witty writing style, but by pinning me to the mat linguistically.  He has raised the standard to which I want to compare the works in which I write.  In six words he gave me a clearer picture of my love for my wife than I had ever had.  Now I am challneged to write that way, or at least think that way.

Call it what you will – sappy, syrupy, lovey dovey, weird – i don’t care, Mark Twain is fantastic and I look forward to many more years of reading him.

And many more years in Eden with my Eve.

current itunes track: Funny The Way It Is, DMB, Big Whiskey and the Groogrux King

currently watching: The beginning of summer movie season!  O Yeah, Star Trek last weekend and Terminator next!  YES!

currently reading:  Short Stories by Mark Twain and Short Stories by Flannery O’Connor (another southern American writer, but I love her for different reasons!)