So, relatively early in
Mark Twain’s career he traveled around the world having various adventures in
various countries and learning important lessons. For instance: German opera is
fine apart from the singing, the barbers in Paris are impostors, and the Italians
would give Michelangelo credit for the Leaning Tower of Piza if not for its tenuous
relationship with 90 degree angles.
Twain wrote two major travel
volumes: Innocents Abroad and A Tramp Abroad; the above lessons come
from the latter work, which approached the world and travel writing from a
different perspective from his former travel writing. The brilliance and humor
of A Tramp Abroad stems from his
approach as an egotistical American visiting all the longed for places in the
world and not being impressed. However, his volume, Innocents Abroad took a much more contemplative look at the foreign
countries he visited.
His journey to Egypt
stuck out for me; specifically his contemplation of the Sphinx, which he
describes as an ancient God-like observer that watches time unfold before it. “It
was gazing out over the ocean of Time—over line of century waves which,…
blended at last into one unbroken tide, away toward the horizon of remote
antiquity” (147). The Sphinx looks out over time as an unstoppable force of
nature. It saw the rise, progression, and fall of empires and noted the events without
judgment or concern. “It was MEMORY—RETROSPECTION—wrought into visible tangible
form” (148). Twain’s descriptions depict a being that knows all, sees all, and
catalogues all of it. His lifespan means nothing to this quietly watching
being.
What Mark Twain is
experiencing, while he gazes upon this, seemingly, eternal observer, is the
sublime, which is hard to describe so look to picture on the right. Staring up
at the stars an realizing that you are only a tiny speck in a wide, expansive
universe. Or to give another recent example: The Mars rover, Opportunity, sent back
pictures that someone arranged into a panorama.
You are looking at the
landscape of another world. This image always fills me with awe. Much in the
same way that Percy Shelley stared up at Mont Blanc and pondered the scale of
the beings that would consider the mountain its toy. The Mountain, the Sphinx,
and the surface of Mars are all vast reminders of how small we are in the scale
of time and space.
Mark Twain’s experience
with the Sphinx is compelling and universal because the sublime fills us all
with a cognitive dissonance, wherein we feel a simultaneous sense of awe and
fear. The sublime is endlessly intriguing and difficult to discuss because
describing experiences that affect me on the deepest possible emotional and spiritual
level are a bit difficult to contain with words.
Twain, one of the
greatest writers and observers that ever came out of the United States could
only find enough words for a paragraph, that was filled with hyphens to
indicate that he was experiencing some trouble forming the words to describe
his confrontation with only a manmade timeless creation.
As a species we have
forever and likely will forever looks up at something greater than ourselves
and wonder about our own place in existence, as we try to find the answer to a
question that we are not even sure we understand yet.
But don’t worry if the
contemplations of life and fears of insignificance get you down here’s a
picture of my cat helping me fill out my grad school application to cheer you
up.
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