Mark Twain's Italy - The Innocents Abroad (1869)

Mark Twain, considered one of the best American writers if not the greatest one of them all was actually born Samuel Langhorne Clemens, on November 30, 1835, in Missouri. Soon after, his family moved to the Mississippi River, where he grew up “fishing, picnicking, and swimming”(Quirk, Mark Twain”), as well as admiring all of the buzz of the area, the raftsmen and the travelers which stimulated his imagination and influenced his writing later on in life. He came from a financially unstable family and lived in a period where slavery and racial discrimination were part of daily life, as well as death and sickness which marked his early years. In 1848 he began to collaborate with local newspapers and by 1853 he started to live an itinerary life, traveling all around the country, gaining “a broader perspective than that offered by his rural background” (Quirk, “Mark Twain”). In 1867 he joined a group excursion to Europe and the Holy Land, and his account of the trip was published as The Innocents Abroad in 1869. The book had great success, with his detailed descriptions of a changing European world and recently unified Italy, giving the first-ever American tourist perspective of the “Old Continent” in travel writing.

Through chapters 18, 19, and 23 of his 1869 publication, we are able to explore Milan, Venice, and his take on Italians from an American point of view. It is possible to get to know Twain as a traveler and as a person and to notice a different writing style, focus, and way of experimenting Europe from his fellow author predecessors, with some things in common as well. His descriptions contribute to a fresh look into this world, with touches of humor, critique, irony, and even brutal honesty at times. They allow us to get an outsider's view and reflect on different topics than the ones discussed before by Goethe, Stendhal, and Byron, to name a few.

To begin with, Twain is different from our previous authors for his reasons to travel. He made this trip because he liked to travel and move around, but also because he saw a financial opportunity in touring and then writing about it. That is why he had a different focus. He was just touristing around, not staying for years, only for a few months, and his goal was not for this tobe a rite of passage. He also traveled differently, in a group, with a guide, and had to undergo a long journey by crossing the entire North Atlantic Ocean to get to the Old Continent.

In his trip he is not as introspective or has a transformative experience like the others, he doesn't go through a rebirth like Goethe in Rome, or almost faints in front of a big masterpiece like Stendhal, but here are certain things, and places that he seems to be really appreciative of. For instance, Milan’s Duomo. He had to have previous knowledge about it, as he saw it and “needed no one to point it out” (121). He further describes the building as “solemn, so vast” (121), and we can even perceive a romantic, ‘Stendhal style’ writing in his narrative: “A very world of solid weight, and yet it seems in the soft moonlight only a fairy delusion of frost-work that might vanish with a breath!” (121).

Nevertheless, Mark Twain strikes me as a person who has very strong opinions and commentary to add to everything. He can admire the Duomo but also be very skeptical about other things. He addresses the majority of art pieces with a more critical approach, like The Last Supper. He describes this renowned masterpiece by Leonardo da Vinci, and he basically tears it down: “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.” (136). By the attitudes, he refers to those of the people that with “catchy ejaculations of rapture” (136), praise the painting as something marvelous, outstanding, and sublime. He mocks their veneration because he just can’t seem to view the fascination around it. He even implies that there should be some kind of fake admiration: “There is not one man in seventy-five hundred that can tell what a pictured face is intended to express”. (137). Neither of our past authors has ever expressed themselves like this when writing about a work of art, especially not one by Da Vinci. Still, this critique towards people that overpraise something has been explored before by Goethe and the so-called art connoisseurs, which he also accuses of pretended admiration. He also discusses and points out how many of the paintings he sees are not even accurate in the ethnographic representation of people,“ The ancient painters have never succeeded in denationalizing themselves” (138). He critiques how the characters are not depicted as they should if they would follow the ethnicity of the place they are in theory originally from.

All of this proves he had a different upbringing, and that leads him to react very differently to European and Italian art, and also religion as we will explore later. He didn’t grow up in a house where art was cherished and classical figures were part of the furniture of his home. He was not surrounded by people who praised the Apollo Belvedere or the Sleeping Ariadne, he didn’t go strolling around in Piazza Della Signoria and got to see all this political discourse in the form of Renaissance sculptures. He even admits: “I did not know what in the mischief the Rennaissance was”(172). We would have never, ever, have Goethe, Stendhal, Hamilton, or Byron admitting to this. Twain for sure has some back knowledge about the places he is in, he sometimes provides a kind of cultural context to his readers, but not growing up in Europe makes him have very different conceptions and taste in art.

He points out how he is not as fascinated by all the art as the guide tells them to be. “We were growing accustomed to encomiums of wonders that too often proved no wonders at all” (139). He got tired, for him, things ended up looking just the same. However, he does recognize his lack of appreciation: “Now it does give me real pain to speak in this almost unappreciative way of the old masters and their martyrs” (171). He at least is honest about it, but also he reveals he takes pride in the things he does end up learning. It is not like Goethe whose main focus was to educate his mind, but he takes pride in the things he now knows: “Our researches among the painted monks and martyrs have not been wholly in vain. We have striven hard to learn. We have had some success… to us they give pleasure, and we take as much pride in our little acquirements as others…” (170).

At least personally, this honesty makes him more relatable to me than the past travelers. Maybe because I also didn’t grow up in a European context, although a history of classical art was always present in my educational curriculum. But I do feel the same as him sometimes, like when I went to Palazzo Piti, after a dozen different rooms it gets hard to focus on or admire one painting. I definitely identify myself with the line: “we have seen thousands of paintings until our eyes become tired of them“ (169). It can be overwhelming after a while, they all start looking like the same biblical characters in a dark background, placed in dashing gold frames, repeated over and over. Sometimes, I have also been absorbed by great masterpieces, just like Twain was amazed by the Duomo. I remember in particular the Chiesa del Gesù ceiling in Rome, I really felt like I was being taken to the heavens by those angels that seem to leave the frame, accompanied by the celestial-like music they were so accurately playing in the church, but sometimes I also take more a critical point of view towards it. For instance, every time I enter a room so lavishly decored, with so many intricate details, or see a big stone cathedral, with columns high as three-store buildings, I am amazed that man is able to do that, but also, I cannot help of thinking how many actual men did it take to build that… There is always the name of the genius architect behind these masterpieces, but how many slaves were exploited to build this? How many hours of harsh labor were they put into it? Where did all the money to build this come from… This critical eye towards these constructions is one he also takes when visiting St. Charles Borroméo, Milan Bishop's tomb. “The furniture of the narrow chamber of death we had just visited, weighted six million francs in ounces and carats alone, without a pay thrown into the account for the costly workman” (126). There, he also reflects on how trivial all of the richness seemed in the face of death, he almost mocks the way these characters are buried. He even describes the place as “an Aladdin’s Palace” (126) because of all the wealth and gold.

Moving on, the style of writing Mark Twain is defined by Brittanica as “distinctive humorist, and irascible moralist” (Quirk), and I could totally get that from the readings, mostly because of the word choice he uses to describe people, referring to Italians as “The natives” (131), when they are in the café playing pool, or saying “I give it as a specimen of guide-English” (129) while mocking his guide’s accent. He also makes fun of the Americans that are acting now like French people and finds them amusing. “This entertaining idiot, whose name was Gordon, allowed himself to be hailed three times in the street before he paid any attention, and then begged a thousand pardons and said he had grown so accustomed to hearing himself addressed as ‘M'sieu Gor-r-dong’, with a roll to the r, that he had forgotten the legitimate sound of his name!" (167). Also funny to me, is how he admits that even he sometimes copies the European customs so to show off with his friends back home: ”I shall always delight to meet an ass after my own heart when I shall have finished my travels” (166)

Furthermore, Twain had a critical view of places and art pieces but he seemed to be captured by the people and their manners more. When they arrived at the “tumble down, old rookery called Palazzo Simonetti” (139), he dismisses the palace and manages to enjoy more the presence of the girls, who are a relief from all his sight-seeing. In Venice, this is an ongoing theme and response of him as well: “I am afraid I study the gondolier’s marvelous skills more than I do the sculptured places we ride along”(163). He is even able to draw some similarities with his culture in his observations, “Human nature is very much the same all over the world; and it is so like my dear native home to see a Venetian lady go into a store and buy ten cents' worth of blue ribbon”(165). He makes a connection between women going casually shopping in the States and doing the same in Italy.

Moreover, Twain also highlights the difference between American and European lifestyles. He describes his own as being a fast-paced one, in comparison to the “main charm of life in Europe - comfort” (131). He goes on to describe how he envies it in a way, he sees value in having a more appreciative, cheerful, unworried life, and as Goethe did in Naples, he slowly succumbs into this dolce vita: “Day by day we lose some of our restlessness, and we absorb some of the spirit of quietude and ease… We begin to comprehend what life is for” (132).

Lastly, they are worth noting references to his culture that assure us that he is from the United States. We can tell of his acquaintance with race issues and slavery when he talks about one particular guide from South Carolina, “Negroes are deemed as good white people, in Venice, and so this man feels no desire to go back to his native land. His judgment is correct”. (172). Thus, saying that he knows all the hardships a black person faces in the US.

When talking about religion, he is also skeptical of the relics, he just casually describes what he sees but poses no adoration to St. Paul’s fingers, the Judas Iscariot bone, the stones from the Holy Sepulture, or the Crown of Thorns. And this lets us know that he is Protestant and opposed to the Catholic tradition that is in Italy, so for him, “the veneration of relics has not been accepted in Protestantism." (Britannica) and is viewed generally negatively.

When going into detail talking about the costs of the marvelous Milan Cathedral, he also gives us a hint about his origin, “each which cost a hundred thousand dollars” (127). By the use of this currency instead of francs or Italian liras, saying dollars immediately tell us he is clearly American.

To conclude, reading Twain's take on Italy and Europe, is important because travel writing in general, reveals more of oneself than of the places and the people described. Thus, through him, we can get a general sense of the Americans of that time, their interests, remarks, behaviors, and how they perceived and reacted to Europe, Italy, and its people. Historically it is important, as we explore the beginning of mass travel from places further away, and the different it can be as opposed to one that has an educational purpose instead of a leisure one. Furthermore, Twain brings to light new observations about things like the cost of the art pieces and structures, the incredible amount of artworks, the adoration of martyrs and relics, even the custom of bathing without soap, among others, all point of interest that we had not seen before.

It is in general, a different understanding of the arts and lifestyle, and this ultimately also helps a reader to obtain broader points of view and a more open mind towards everything and everyone.

Works Cited

Twain, Mark.The Innocents Abroad, Penguin Classics, 2003

Quirk, Thomas V. "Mark Twain". Encyclopedia Britannica, 24 Aug. 2022, https://www.britannica.com/biography/Mark-Twain. Accessed 15 November 2022.

Britannica, The Editors of Encyclopedia. "relic". Encyclopedia Britannica, 13 Feb. 2022, https://www.britannica.com/topic/relic. Accessed 19 November 2022.

Reading response produced for

LIT350 - Italian Grand Tour class

Prof. Lucia Soldi

Lorenzo di' Medici, Florence, Italy

23 November 2022

Mark Twain’s Italy