One whose character even that old curmudgeon Twain judged to be “ flawless.” Joan deserves to be remembered for who she really was. Excerpt from Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc, Vol. Twain created a reverent portrayal of Joan of Arc, a subject over which he had obsessed for forty years, studied for a dozen years and spent two years writing. No, not a “misfit.” An amazing individual. And with her little hand that child of seventeen struck him down and yonder he lies stretched on the field of Patay, and will not get up any more while this old world lasts.” It was an ogre, that war, an ogre that went about for near a hundred years, crunching men and dripping blood from its jaws. At Orleans she struck it a staggering blow on the field of Patay she broke its back. . . In seven weeks she hopelessly crippled that gigantic war that was ninety-one years old. Then began the briefest and most amazing campaign that is recorded in history. Now came the ignorant country maid out of her remote village and confronted this hoary war, this all-consuming conflagration that had swept the land for three generations. Take the words of Mark Twain, whose last completed novel (what he called a labor of love) was “ Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc.” Twain summed up Joan’s impact as only he could: “France was a wreck, a ruin, a desolation.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |