{"id":1850,"date":"2019-11-01T14:23:57","date_gmt":"2019-11-01T20:23:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.hyperboreans.com\/heterodoxia\/?p=1850"},"modified":"2019-11-01T14:23:57","modified_gmt":"2019-11-01T20:23:57","slug":"mark-twain","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.hyperboreans.com\/heterodoxia\/?p=1850","title":{"rendered":"Mark Twain"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\"><figure class=\"aligncenter\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" width=\"563\" height=\"805\" src=\"http:\/\/www.hyperboreans.com\/heterodoxia\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/11\/Mark-Twain-caricature.jpg\" alt=\"Mark Twain caricature by Gohkan Bas\" class=\"wp-image-1851\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.hyperboreans.com\/heterodoxia\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/11\/Mark-Twain-caricature.jpg 563w, https:\/\/www.hyperboreans.com\/heterodoxia\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/11\/Mark-Twain-caricature-210x300.jpg 210w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 563px) 100vw, 563px\" \/><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n<p>During the final years of his life, Twain&#8217;s writings echoed a rancorous pessimism and a palpable misanthropy. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<!--more-->\n\n\n\n<p>These attitudes are conspicuous in such works as the sharply acerbic <em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.gutenberg.org\/files\/102\/102-h\/102-h.htm\">The Tragedy of Pudd&#8217;nhead Wilson<\/a><\/em>, <em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.gutenberg.org\/files\/1213\/1213-h\/1213-h.htm\">The Man that Corrupted Hadleyburg<\/a><\/em>, <em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.gutenberg.org\/files\/70\/70-h\/70-h.htm\">What is Man<\/a><\/em>, and the thoroughly dark <em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.gutenberg.org\/files\/3186\/3186-h\/3186-h.htm\">The Mysterious Stranger<\/a><\/em>, in which he claims that life is &#8220;all a dream &#8211; a grotesque and foolish dream&#8221; from which there is no escape.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>This final work is\nTwain&#8217;s most profoundly negative view of &#8220;the damned human\nrace.&#8221; By the end of his life, Twain was convinced that human\nbeings find endless pleasure in wreaking cruelty while masking it\ncleverly as a noble cause. Whether because of an deranged or detached\nCreator or a degenerate nature, the human species is doomed. In 1900,\nTwain wrote &#8220;the time is grave. The future is blacker than has\nbeen any future which any person now living has tried to peer into.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>During the final years of his life, Twain&#8217;s writings echoed a rancorous pessimism and a palpable misanthropy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_options":[]},"categories":[13,14],"tags":[412,76,29],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1Af2X-tQ","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hyperboreans.com\/heterodoxia\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1850"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hyperboreans.com\/heterodoxia\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hyperboreans.com\/heterodoxia\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hyperboreans.com\/heterodoxia\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hyperboreans.com\/heterodoxia\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1850"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.hyperboreans.com\/heterodoxia\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1850\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1852,"href":"https:\/\/www.hyperboreans.com\/heterodoxia\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1850\/revisions\/1852"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hyperboreans.com\/heterodoxia\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1850"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hyperboreans.com\/heterodoxia\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1850"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hyperboreans.com\/heterodoxia\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1850"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}