Mark Twain Annual, #5 (2007), p. 109-122 (slightly revised)
For most, Mark Twain's essay "The Awful German Language" has become the de facto representation of Twain's stance towards German. The title has become an oft-repeated catchphrase; virtually all references to Twain's relationship with German use it. In 1953, John T. Krumpelmann collected together the most thorough listing of Twain's various experiences with and attempts at German in the essay "Mark Twain and the German Language". Unfortunately, most of Krumpelmann's sources for Twain's works, letters and notebook entries were edited by Twain's "official" biographer Albert Bigelow Paine, who, through his various "corrections", attempted to uphold at all costs the classic "Mark Twain"-persona Samuel Clemens had created - the humorous, uneducated Tramp from Hannibal who wrote for the unliterary Average-Joe. Was Sam Clemens's German as problematic as Mark Twain's? Was the German language really so "awful" to him? In an attempt to answer these questions I will trace Twain's various encounters with and uses of the German language, from word-play to criticisms of language pedagogy.
Our tramp begins in 1878, as the Clemens family and their German nursemaid Rosa sailed to Germany on the Holsatia. Twain's notebook entries suggest that he tackled German during the two-week voyage using both A First German Course, which employs a grammatical approach similar to common Latin-learning pedagogy; and Ollendorff's book1, a more conversational method similar to the Meisterschaft system Twain would later attempt. He also had conversation practice with other German-speaking passengers such as Bayard Taylor, the new US-Minister to Germany, and his family. During the trip, Twain began recording anecdotes and incidents in his notebook, depicting humorous situations caused by language misunderstandings, a subject which supplies a steady source of jokes in A Tramp Abroad. For example, Twain noted an incident that occurred when one of Taylor's servants was the victim of miscommunication:
3rd day out, Bayard Taylor's colored man, being constipated, applied
Twain's early attempts at understanding and using the spoken language were also strained: "Im Rauchzimmer verstehe ich nur genug von dem Unterhaltung zu mich puzzle [sic]" (Anderson 67).2 [In the smoking room I only understand enough of the conversation to be puzzled.] In a letter to his friend William D. Howells, Twain commented: "How charmed I am when I overhear a German word which I understand!" (Clemens, Letter 189). Such conversational road bumps may have been frustrating to Twain, as Howells imagined it would be: "Really, however, I could imagine the German going harder with you, for you always seemed to me a man who liked to be understood with the least possible personal inconvenience" (Howells Letter 191). Twain knew, however, that though being forced to communicate in a foreign tongue can quickly reduce the non-native speaker to a child, it can also prove quite funny. He was quick, for example, to pick up on the possibilities that certain German words, which sounded similar to completely unrelated English ones, could provide, supported by personal incidents such as this one recorded in his notebook: "Wanted slippers - called for Kartoffeln [potatoes] instead of pantoffeln [slippers]" (Anderson 72). Twain was also aware of the comical situations that an American could easily fall into due to the many false cognates and other similar-sounding words between the two languages. He wrote to Charles Dudley Warner about an incident involving his wife Livy and such a misunderstanding: "The thing that distresses Livy is that the more she learns of the language the less she understands of it when spoken; but the other morning as we sat at table, waiting for our breakfast & admiring the fine display of fruits and flowers on another table; an old German gentleman & lady stepped in & the former hauled down the window curtain at the same moment that his wife threw up her hands in presence of the fruits & flowers & ejaculated 'Wunderschön!' [Beautiful!] Livy said, gratefully, 'There - Gott sei dank, I understood THAT, any way - window-shade!'" (qtd. in Anderson 99n105).
Upon their arrival in Hamburg, Twain instructed the nursemaid Rosa to speak only in German to the children, in order to facilitate their language acquisition. This was not immediately well-received. Twain wrote to Howells about Susie's resistance in a letter dated May 4th: "Poor Susie! From the day we reached German soil, we have required Rosa to speak German to the children - which they hate with all their souls. The other morning, in Hanover, Susie came to me (from Rosa, in the nursery,) & said, in halting syllables, 'Papa, wie viel uhr ist es?' - then turned, with pathos in her big eyes, & said, 'Mama, I wish Rosa was made in English'" (Clemens, Letter 189).3 Similarly, he wrote in a subsequent letter that Clara rejected the language, though Susie was now speaking in "the devilish tongue without difficulty": "But the Bay [Clara] scorns the language. The nurse & the governess blandish around her in vain. She maintains the calm & persistent attitude of not caring a damn for German. There is a good deal of character in the Bay - such as it is" (Clemens, Letter 192). Despite their early reluctance, the children quickly adapted and the Clemens household became essentially bilingual. Certain German phrases remained with them, even when they returned to the States, such as the superstitious word "Unberufen!" [Unbidden!] Twain first recorded the word in his notebook during the voyage to Germany: "Unberufen! & knock under the table or other wood 3 times - the superstition being that the evil spirits hear you say 'What fine weather it is!' They will immediately change it unless you ward it off the [sic] invocation 'Unberufen!'" (Anderson 66). It was still in use when the family moved back to Hartford; Twain used it in a letter to Howells in 1880: "Our other spring (just below the conservatory) was long ago destroyed by the plumbers in repairing a neighbor's drain. May this one abide! (Unberufen!)" (Clemens, Letter 231).
Even at the beginning of his German acquisition, Clemens was quick to downplay his proficiency in the language and he remained "unusually modest" about it (Dolmetsch 40), in order to accentuate the hilarity that ensues when Twain the character either witnesses or drives an incident involving miscommunication or grammatical errors. David R. Sewell also supports this idea in his book Mark Twain's Languages, applying it to other foreign languages as well as German: "But Twain's linguistic errors did not long remain mere lapses. He would discover that the intractability of the alien idiom, inherently funny, could be useful to a professional humorist. Gravity, the 'enemy' responsible for the pratfalls of the slapstick comedian, is actually the ally that produces the humor; similarly the foreign language, when it baffles the 'Mark Twain' who encounters it in The Innocents Abroad and A Tramp Abroad, is the agent of laughter" (Sewell 54). This habit of feigning ignorance did not end after his travel books were completed. It would remain in use throughout Twain's other German travels and it provided him ample cover for another favorite activity - eavesdropping. In 1898, outside Vienna, Twain purposefully pretended not to speak German around one of the maids, whom he nicknamed "Wuthering Heights". He did not want to be disturbed by her, yet gleefully eavesdropped on her constant fights with his wife Livy (Dolmetsch 220).
Another example of Twain's "slapstick" relationship to German is the speech he gave to the student Anglo-American Club in Heidelberg on July 4, 1878. Twain had first considered presenting such a speech at Taylor's farewell banquet before the voyage to Germany, but ultimately decided against it.4 In a letter written to Howells from Heidelberg, Twain laments his decision: "It occurs to me that I made a great mistake in not thinking to deliver a very bad German speech (every other sentence pieced out with English,) at the Bayard Taylor banquet in New York; I think I could have made it one of the features of the occasion" (Clemens, Letter 190). Twain was, however, able to use this speech idea during the Fourth of July celebration in Heidelberg. The text of the speech was printed at the end of "The Awful German Language," but the details of the speech's delivery were eventually removed from A Tramp Abroad. They provide a wonderful example of what happens when a slapstick routine fails:
I had written a little seven-minute speech, chiefly in execrable German, three days before, & had put in a great deal of hard but successful work in getting it by heart. The difficulty had not been to memorize the words, but the pauses, the pretended embarrassments, the hesitations, the taking compulsory refuge in English occasionally, - in a word, the various & sundry tricks of manner & utterances which give to a set speech the struggling, diffident, & confused look of a lame impromptu performance.
I had expected to have a charming good time out of my oration, but the absurdity of it soon began to try me severely & before I got to the middle I laughed. It was a strange accident, for when one is talking nonsense to an audience he usually feels serious almost to sadness, & has no impulse toward the opposite direction.
I sat down, of course. It would have been useless to try to keep up the pretense of being in deep & sincere trouble after having laughed. (Smith 231-2n5)
"The Awful German Language" is the best-known example of Twain's satire of German. The final text of A Tramp Abroad contains, however, other small, oft-overlooked and non-criticizing excerpts of German. For example, Twain erupts into a discussion of the German habit of applying diminutives, like –chen and -lein, in the middle of a chapter on German opera singers: “Their language is full of endearing diminutives; nothing that they love escapes the application of a petting diminutive, - neither the house nor the dog, nor the horse, nor the grandmother, nor any other creature, animate or inanimate” (Tramp 93). The "Legend of the
'Spectacular Ruin'", a story completely fabricated by Twain to complete a long running joke in Tramp, also uses German, this time to name the hero: "At last Sir Wissenschaft [Sir Science], a poor and obscure knight, out of a far country, arrived to do battle with the monster. […] But this tramp only asked, - 'Were any of these heroes men of science?'. This raised a laugh of course, for science was despised in those days" (151). Sir Wissenschaft easily defeats the dragon using a fire extinguisher and as a reward he requests sole manufacturing rights for spectacles, which Twain had stated earlier as being worn by nearly every German he had seen. Hence the rather unimpressive ruins of Sir Wissenschaft's castle are called the "Spectacular Ruin".
In addition to his invented tale of "The Spectacular Ruin", Twain reprints other, more authentic folktales in his travelogue. Krumpelmann infers that Twain prints the Rhine legends in A Tramp Abroad using the English translations by L. W. Garnham simply because Twain did not have the capability to translate the stories himself: "At this time his mastery of the grammar was not masterly, his vocabulary was small, his 'Sprachgefühl' [feeling for the language] only incipient. It was still a task to translate even simple German. In the first chapter of the Tramp he introduces several Rhine legends copied directly from an English translation" (4). This "English translation", if it can truly be called that, is reprinted not because of any deficiency of Mark Twain, but instead to ridicule ungrammatical, foreign-produced English, a favorite subject for Twain according to Leo von Hibler: "Am häufigsten aber sündigt der Deutsche nach Mark Twain gegen die englische Idiomatik, und die mit dem Lexikon durchgeführte 'wortgetreue' übersetzung der deutschen Vorlage ins Englische - und der dabei herauskommende Unsinn - geben ihm reichlich Anlaß zu Spott und Gelächter" (208-209). [According to Mark Twain, however, the German language most often sins against English idiom. Therefore the translation of the German template into English, completed verbatim with a dictionary, and the nonsense that resulted gave him a wealth of opportunities for mockery and laughter.] In Heidelberg, Twain writes, "I had the luck to stumble upon a book which has charmed me nearly to death" - The Legends of the Rhine from Basle to Rotterdam by F. J. Kiefer and translated by L. W. Garnham, B. A. (Tramp 19) The book was so "charming" precisely because Mr. Garnham, "Bachelor of Arts" (a title Twain constantly reminds us of) wrote a word-for-word, unidiomatic translation, much like a free online translation engine would produce today. Prefacing "The Knave of Bergen," Twain writes that he "shall not mar Garnham's translation by meddling with its English, for the most toothsome thing about it is its quaint fashion of building English sentences on the German plan, - and punctuating them according to no plan at all." For example, the mysterious Black Knight in "The Knave" is introduced in a sentence which unidiomatically mixes English and German syntax: "All seemed pleasure, joy and roguish gayety, only one of the numerous guests had a gloomy exterior, but exactly the black armor in which he walked about excited general attention, and his tall figure, as well as the noble propriety of his movements, attracted, especially the regards of the ladies. Who the Knight was?" (19).
Mr. Garnham's "translations" do not, of course, restrict themselves to the realm of prose; Twain points out the work of the "wildly gifted Garnham, Bachelor of Arts" again in his presentation of the Lorelei myth. First Twain presents the background story, as a courtesy to his readers. He paraphrases mostly, but is always sure to throw in snippets of original Garnham when it would add comedic effect. For example, Twain quotes Garnham's line "The old count saw with affliction this changement in his son," which adds fuel to a Twain-line further down: "The Lorelei did not 'call his name in unutterable sweet Whispers' this time. No, that song naturally worked an instant and thorough 'changement' in her; and not only that, but it stirred the bowels of the whole afflicted region round there..." (Tramp 141-142).
Twain then introduces Heinrich Heine's poem "The Lorelei," complete with the sheet music for the song version of it which had been popular for over 30 years when Twain first heard it. Following the original German are two very different English translations of Heine's verse: one by Twain and the other by Mr. Garnham, Bachelor of Arts. Twain's rendition attempts to reproduce, quite successfully, the rhythm of the song: "to give the un-German girl a jingle of words to hang the tune on" (146). Twain's version departs from Heine's poem slightly, but always keeps true to the original Lorelei legend. For example, Twain completely misses Heine's original addition of an unreliable narrator, brought into question by the phrase "Ich glaube" [I believe] in the last stanza.
Garnham's translation cannot be sung to, at least not, as Twain puts it, "without damaging the singer" (148). Much like the other Garnham passages, the poem awkwardly maintains German phrasing, adding or subtracting words only when absolutely necessary to maintain Heine's rhyme scheme. Twain jokingly praises this lack of deviance as a "high merit" -- "It is as succinct as an invoice" (147-148). For an example of the stark contrast between the Twain and Garnham translations, here are the third and fourth stanzas of "The Lorelei":
(Heine)
Die schönste Jungfrau sitzet
dort oben wunderbar,
ihr goldenes Geschmeide blitzet,
sie kämmt ihr goldnes Haar.
Sie kämmt es mit goldenem Kamme,
und singt ein Lied dabei;
das hat eine wundersame
gewaltige Melodei.
(144-145. Literal Translation: The most beautiful maiden sits wonderfully up there. Her golden jewelry sparkles. She combs her golden hair. She combs it with a golden comb, and sings a song while doing so; it has a wondrously powerful daunting melody.)
(Twain)
The loveliest maiden is sitting
High-throned in yon blue air,
Her golden jewels are shining,
She combs her golden hair;
She combs with a comb that is golden,
And sings a weird refrain
That steeps in a deadly enchantment
The list'ner's ravished brain: (146)
(Garnham)
The most beautiful Maiden entrances
Above wonderfully there,
Her beautiful golden attire glances,
She combs her golden hair.
With golden comb so lustrous,
And thereby a song sings,
It has a tone so wondrous,
That powerful melody rings. (147)
Twain's comedic attitude towards Garnham's English is reinforced by the closing section of the Lorelei chapter: Twain reprints various poorly-rendered English descriptions from a pamphlet describing the paintings in Munich's Old Pinacotek (Alte Pinakothek), to show that "even Garnham has a rival" (148). The pamphlet opens with a copyright warning: "It is not permitted to make use of the work in question to a publication of the same contents as well as to the pirated edition of it." It then includes descriptions like the following: "St. Bartholomew and the Executioner with the knife to fulfill the martyr" (148).
Despite his criticism of mixing the syntaxes and idioms of the two languages in this way, Twain was himself guilty of a "Germanism": long, compounded words. The compilers of A Mark Twain Lexicon noted that a large selection of the words included were compounds: "When Mark Twain wrote in the Appendix to his A TRAMP ABROAD: 'In our newspapers the compounding-disease lingers a little to the present day,' he was perhaps unconsciously satirizing himself; for if ever there was a writer who had the 'compounding-disease' it was Mark Twain." The introduction continues by stating that included in the lexicon are 1,414 different compounds used by Mark Twain and not recorded in any other dictionary (Ramsay lxvii). The lexicon lists multiple categories of compounds; of note are Twain's "multiple compounds" and "compounds made on German models". It is worthy to note that almost every time the Lexicon quotes Twain in this section, it contains, perhaps purposefully, at least one compounded word. The multiple compounds seem mostly to be orientated for use in humor: "Such grotesque collocations as those in the following list, which must have been in his mind when he spoke of words like 'a
seventeen-jointed vestibuled railroad-train,' or of 'a clatter of syllables as long as a string of sluice-boxes,' made an irresistible appeal to his sense of the ridiculous" (lxxviii). Included in this category are words like "Annual-Veteran-who-has-Voted-for-Every-President-from-Washington-down-and-Walked-to-the-Polls-Yesterday-with-as-Bright-an-Eye-and-as-firm-a-Step-as-Ever", "Without-a-Shadow-of-Doubter", and "Young-Man-Afraid-of-his-Shadow" (lxxviii-lxxix).
The "compounds based on German modals" are similar in construction, but have inverted word order, such as "word-of-honor-breaker" (lxxix). The compilers of the Lexicon note that Twain's "compounding-disease" probably caused or is caused by Twain's love for the German language: "Perhaps the clue to Mark Twain's fondness for compound words is to be found in the following list. At least it may be said that with his particular predilection for them, he was predestined to fall in love wit the German language, as he did, just as soon as he made its acquaintance" (lxxix). Mark Twain scatters tokens of this love throughout his works; pseudo-German-compounds, for example, are used by Hank Morgan for effect in the restoration of the Holy Fountain in A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court. Hank, much like Sir Wissenschaft, uses science to solve a "magical" medieval conundrum, and so requires "effect" – here fireworks and German compounds – to impress the simple peasantry and trump Merlin. Twain composed the four monstrous words himself, and it is unknown if the orthographic errors are intentional or not - they have nonetheless been left the way he spelled them since the first edition. The words were printed in the first edition in a Germanic-looking font (similar to Fraktur) and they gradually increased in font-size, adding to the 'effect' (291-2). The four words Hank Morgan unleashes upon his audience, although incredibly impressive in sound, have rather unimpressive definitions. "Constantinopolitanischerdudelsackspfeifenmachersgesellschafft!" means "the Constantinople society of those who make bagpipe skirls"; "Nihilistendynamittheaterkaestchenssprengungsattentaetsversuchungen!" are the "temptations [or attempts - see note] of Nihilists to assassinate using the explosion of a small box in a theater using dynamite"; "Transvaaltruppentropentransporttrampelthiertreibertrauungsthraenentragoedie!" is "the tearful tragedy of the marriage of a driver of Bactrian camels in the tropical transport of the Transvaal military forces"; and "Mekkamuselmannenmassenmenschenmoerdermohrenmuttermarmormonumentenmacher!" is "the creator of marble monuments of the Moorish mother of the murderer of masses of Muslim people at Mecca."5
Twain's inspiration for these words came straight from his collection of German compounds. From 1878 onwards, Twain recorded in his notebooks all of the long multisyllabic constructions he encountered in both speech and reading. He began his collection with Freundschaftsbezeigungen [displays of friendship] and quickly assembled even greater specimens. Twain himself even refers to his growing list as a collection in "The Awful German Language," jokingly claiming that he bought some of them "at an auction sale of the effects of a bankrupt bric-a-brac hunter" (Tramp 612). In Vienna Twain discovered his largest authentic German compounds yet: Hottentotenstrottelmutterattentäterlattengitterwetterkotterbeutelratte6 (70 characters, Dolmetsch 226) and the monstrous Personaleinkommensteuerschätzungskommissionsmitgliedreisekostenrechnungsergänzungsrevisionsfund, which is 95 characters long – beating Hank's longest spell by 24. After discovering it in a telegram, Twain stated: "If I could get a similar word engraved upon my tombstone I should sleep beneath it in peace" (Krumpelmann 16).
Twain's relationship with German would not end with the publication of A Tramp Abroad. He would incorporate German into many of his writings afterwards, as well as attempt original German composition. He translated a section of Mississippi-Fahrten, a travelogue, for use in Life on the Mississippi.7 During a particularly depressing winter in Berlin, 1891, Twain began translating Dr. Heinrich Hoffmann's Struwwelpeter as a Christmas gift for his daughters. In the forward to the posthumous publication of the poems, Clara described that Christmas morning:
Among the gayly packed parcels placed there, one stands forth above all others in my memory after these many years. Father had completed his translation of Struwwelpeter. He had wrapped it up carefully, twining a huge red ribbon around it as an ornament. He seated himself near the tree and rad the verses aloud in his inimitable, dramatic manner. He was a good actor! He knew the verses by heart and required only the uncertain light of the candles to prevent his getting off the rhythmical path. (Hoffmann 4-5)
Much like with his "Lorelei"-translation, Twain's goal here was to reproduce the sound and rhythms of Hoffmann's poems. His short note preceding the work explains this: "It was Dr. Hoffmann's opinion that the charm of the book lay not in the subjects or the pictures, but wholly in the jingle. That may be true, for rhymes that jingle felicitously are very dear to a child's ear. In this translation I have done my best to fetch the jingle along" (Hoffmann 9). Most criticisms of Twain's translation, especially by German critics such as Helmut Winter in the latest bilingual edition of Twain's Slovenly Peter, complain that he added to the narrative of the poems and attempted to outshine the original in hilarity – though many of the lines that are picked on would necessitate such changes in order to maintain the rhyme. Winter also suggests that Twain used the pictures more than the poetry: "An anderen Stellen scheint er eher die Illustrationen, nicht so sehr den Text zu übersetzen" (Winter 129). [In other points in the text he seems to translate the pictures more than the text...]. Twain's use of false cognates, however, renders the illustration-argument mute; whether he did so intentionally or not, for example, Twain translated "Mappe" as "atlas" instead of "schoolbag" in "The History of Hans Stare-in-the-Air", even though the picture clearly shows a schoolbag in Hans's hands (Twain, Awful 114).
In the 1892 publication Merry Tales (Twain had no say in the despised title of the collection), two of the pieces can only be fully understood by a bilingual reader. The humor in "Mrs. McWilliams and the Lightning" centers around the McWilliams couple completely misunderstanding the protective instructions of a German book on thunderstorms. Mrs. McWilliams, who has the shades down in her house, hears booming and immediately locks herself in the closet. Fearing for her husband's life, she reads to him from the book and together they completely mix up the instructions:
"Mortimer, it says, 'Während eines Gewitters entferne man Metalle, wie z.B., Ringe, Uhren, Schlüssel, etc.; von sich und halte auch nicht an solchen Stellen auf, wo viele Metalle bei einander liegen, oder mit andern Körpern verbunden sind, wie an Herden, Oefen, Eisengittern u. dgl.' What does that mean, Mortimer? Does it mean that you must keep metals about you, or keep them away from you?"
"Well, I hardly know. It appears to be a little mixed. All German advice is more or less mixed. However, I think that that sentence is mostly in the dative case, with a little genitive and accusative sifted in, here and there, for luck; so I reckon it means that you must keep some metals about you."8 (Merry Tales 154-5)
German is not made the butt of the joke in this story, but is simply a tool to highlight Mrs. McWilliams's foolishness. After ordering her husband to don metal armor worthy of Don Quixote and ring a bell for protection as per her understanding of the instruction-book, the couple finds out, through a visit by Mark Twain, that there is no lightning – only cannons celebrating the election of Garfield.
The other piece containing German is the bilingual play Meisterschaft9 [Mastery], which mocks the language learning system of the same name. The Meisterschaft system involved memorizing short conversations in the language, and delivered its program in a series of 15 pamphlets by mail: for $5 the subscriber received the set and was entitled to ask questions of the author Dr. Rosenthal by post. In Twain's play, two sisters are forced to learn German by their father at a commune using both the Meisterschaft system and Ollendorff's text. They are only allowed to converse with people in German – a ruse developed by their father to keep them away from their suitors. The girls' boyfriends thus decide to also learn German via Meisterschaft, and the lovers spend many hours together conversing in decidedly inapplicable Meisterschaft dialogues. In an explanatory note, Twain states that the beauty of this play is that the German parts can be switched with any of the other Meisterschaft languages. This is not completely true, however, as the servant Gretchen, who speaks only in German, delivers monologues which do not come from the Meisterschaft pamphlets, but rather comment on how crazy the lovers sound – their out-of-context Meisterschaft conversations make no sense to the native speaker (Merry Tales 190).
Twain's tramp through the German language reached its climax during his stay in Vienna. By this time he was thoroughly fluent in the language, listening to Austrian parliament sessions (see his "Stirring Times in Austria") and reading German newspapers and books without trouble. Twain was the second foreigner ever to deliver a speech to the very exclusive Concordia club; though he had his notes to the German speech in his hand, it was reported in the papers that "er las aber nicht!" (But he didn't read!) and spoke "rather good," though accented, German (Dolmetsch 44).10 Twain also attempted a joint effort with the Austrian writer Siegmund Schlesinger to write two plays, which would appear simultaneously in German and English. At the same time, he began translating three separate dramas into English. It is unknown whether the Schlesinger collaborations were finished, as the manuscripts have not survived. The three dramas, however, were finished, and Twain circulated them unsuccessfully around New York in search of a producer (Dolmetsch 121-129). Their whereabouts are currently unknown, though Dolmetsch suggests in Our Famous Guest that "if they still exist they may be in some dusty boxes of the Erlanger organization's files in a forgotten New York warehouse" (130).
Twain was not only quite proficient in German; he also complained about "educated" men who used smatterings of his beloved German, often incorrectly, in an attempt to appear smart, as well as about those Americans who came to German-speaking countries without any knowledge of the language. The first of these complaints was aimed at Bret Harte. In A Tramp Abroad, Twain's fictional traveling companion Harris tries his hand at composition and laces his narrative with words from a multitude of obscure languages. Twain questions Harris:
"But we were again overtaken by bad hogglebumgullup? What does hogglebumgullup mean?"
"That is Chinese for 'weather.'"
"Is hogglebumgullup better than the English word? Is it any more descriptive?"
"No, it means just the same." (320)
Harris proceeds to justify himself, claiming that he had to use something, since he did not know any French or Latin, and "everybody that writes elegantly" decorates their pages in this manner. Twain then launches into a very long, biting reprimand:
When really learned men write books for other learned men to read, they are justified in using as many learned words as they please – their audience will understand them; but a man who writes a book for the general public to read is not justified in disfiguring his pages with untranslated foreign expressions. It is an insolence toward the majority of the purchasers, for it is a very frank and imprudent way of saying, 'Get the translations made yourself if you want them, this book is not written for the ignorant classes.' […] there is another set of men who are like you: they know a word here and there, of a foreign language, or a few beggarly little three-word phrases, filched from the back of the Dictionary, and these they are continually peppering into their literature, with a pretense of knowing that language, - what excuse can they offer? The foreign words and phrases which they use to have their exact equivalents in a nobler language, - English; yet they think they "adorn their page" when they say Strasse for street and Bahnhof for railway station, and so on, - flaunting these fluttering rags of poverty in the reader's face and imagining he will be ass enough to take them for the sign of untold riches held in reserve. (321-322)
The roots of this long soliloquy can be found in a letter to Howells written in April 1879, where Twain complains about Harte's latest book of sketches. The exact same German examples used in the monologue above are found here: "O, my God! He rings in Strasse when street would answer every purpose, and Bahnhof when it carries no sharper significance to the reader
The second of the complaints came much later, when the Clemens household lived in Vienna. A new U.S. Minister to Vienna, Mr. Addison Harris, had just been installed and Twain was not pleased with this appointment. In his article "American Representation in Austria," Twain listed various prerequisites he believed a minister to the country should meet, among them "familiarity with the French and German languages" (qtd. in Dolmetsch 319), and found that Harris did not meet a single requirement. He also wrote about a conversation he held with Harris, in which Harris stated that he had just hired a German teacher, after having been in Austria for a couple of months:
Then there was another change: The Minister had hired a teacher and was going to learn German. There were three possible replies:
1. It is the custom. Our representatives usually take infant-class courses in the rudiments of their trade after they have assumed its responsibilities.
2. Why in Halifax didn't you learn it before you came?
3. God bless, you, sir, it is a noble idea and does you infinite credit.
I used a chastened form of Reply No. 3. (321)
If a man like Twain, who mostly educated himself, could attempt to learn German, then there was no excuse for someone like Mr. Addison Harris, with his fine college education, not to have at least a very basic knowledge of the language.
Twain truly loved the German language, as evidenced by the above examples of his criticism of those who abused it, as well as by the very fact that he made fun of it so consistently throughout his works. These jests are not just found in his travelogue A Tramp Abroad. He continued his study of the language after that book was published, progressing far from the German he used in an early letter to Bayard Taylor requesting a visa:
Man sagt Ich muss ein Pass (in der English, Passport,) haben to decken accidents. Däfur gefelligt Ihnen furnish me one. Meine Beschreibung ist vollenden: Geborn 1835; 5 Fuss 8 1/2 inches hoch; weight doch aber about 145 pfund, sometimes ein wenig unter, sometimes ein wenig oben; dunkel braun Haar und rhotes Moustache, full
Ich habe das Deutsche Sprache gelernt und bin ein sehr glücklicher kind, you bet. (qtd. in Kumpelmann 3)
[It's said I have to have a Visa (in the English, Passport,) to cover accidents. Therefore please furnish me one. My description is complete: Born 1835; 5 feet 8 ½ inches high; weight but really about 145 pounds, sometimes a little under, sometimes a little above; dark brown hair and red mustache, full face, with really high ears and light grey powerfully bright eyes and a damn good moral character. Occupation, author of books
I have learned the German language and I'm a very happy kid, you bet.]
This error-filled description pales to the German Twain used in the Merry Tales selections. With his increasing fluency, Clemens sprinkled more jabs to the beloved language into his works, such as in A Connecticut Yankee, where Sandy is declared to be the "Mother of the German Language": "She had exactly the German way; whatever was in her mind to be delivered, whether a mere remark, or a sermon, or a cyclopedia, or the history of a war, she would get it into a single sentence or die. Whenever the literary German dives into a sentence, that is the last you are going to see of him till he emerges on the other side of his Atlantic with his verb in his mouth" (279-280)11 Twain's love and respect for the German language may perhaps be best shown, however, by the fact that he chose a German epitaph for his wife's grave: "Gott sei dir gnaden, O meine Wonne" (Dolmetsch 313). [God be gracious to you, O my heart's delight.]
Anderson, Frederick, Lin Salamo, and Bernard L. Stein, eds. "Notebook 14 (November 1877 – July 1878)." Mark Twain's Notebooks & Journals. Volume II (1877 – 1883). Mark Twain Papers. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1975.
Clemens, Samuel L. "Clemens to Howells." 4 May 1878. Letter 189. Smith and Gibson 228.
---. "Clemens to Howells." 26 May 1878. Letter 190. Smith and Gibson 231.
---. "Clemens to Howells." 27 June 1878. Letter 192. Smith and Gibson 233.
---. "Clemens to Howells." 15 April 1878. Letter 199. Smith and Gibson 261.
---. "Clemens to Howells." 29 April 1880. Letter 231. Smith and Gibson 304.
Dolmetsch, Carl. "Our Famous Guest": Mark Twain in Vienna. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1992.
Hibler, Leo von. "Mark Twain und die deutsche Sprache." Anglia: Zeitschrift für englische Philologie. 65.1-3 (1940): 206-213
Hoffmann, Dr. Heinrich. Slovenly Peter [Struwwelpeter]. Trans. Mark Twain. New York: Limited Editions Club, Marchbanks Press, 1935.
Howells, William D. "Howells to Clemens." 2 June 1878. Letter 191. Smith and Gibson 233.
Krumpelmann, John T. Mark Twain and the German Language. Baton Rouge: Lousiana State University Press, 1953.
Ramsay, Robert L. and Frances Guthrie Emberson. A Mark Twain Lexicon. Spec. issue of University of Missouri Studies. 13.1. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1938.
Sewell, David R. Mark Twain's Languages. Discourse, Dialogue, and Linguistic Variety. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987.
Smith, Henry Nash and William M. Gibson, eds. Mark Twain - Howells Letters: The Correspondence of Samuel L. Clemens and Willaim D. Howells 1872-1910. Vol. 1. Cambridge: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1960.
Twain, Mark. The Awful German Language/Die schreckliche deutsche Sprache/Slovenly Peter/Nachdichtung von Hoffmanns "Struwwelpeter." Waltrop, Leipzig: Manuscriptum Verlagsbuchhandlung, 1999.
---. A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court. Ed. Shelley Fischer Fishkin. Oxford Mark Twain. New York: Oxford University Press, 1996.
---. Merry Tales. Ed. Shelley Fischer Fishkin. Oxford Mark Twain. New York: Oxford University Press, 1996.
---. A Tramp Abroad. Ed. Shelley Fisher Fishkin. Oxford Mark Twain. New York: Oxford University Press, 1996.
Winter, Helmut. Afterward. Twain, Awful German Language 123-130.
Notes
1. These two books are "German Principia" A First German Course, containing Grammar, Delectus, and Exercise-Book with vocabularies. On the Plan of Dr. William Smith's "Principia Latina" New York, Harper. 1875 and A New Method of Learning to Read, Write, and Speak a Language in Six Months, adapted to the German, H. G. Ollendorff, Ph. Dr. London, Whittaker and Co. 1846.
2. Twain has a couple of errors here. "Puzzle" is not a verb in German, but a word like "verwirren" would convey Twain's meaning. A grammatically correct sentence (changes in italics) would read: "Im Rauchzimmer verstehe ich nur genug von der Unterhaltung, um mich zu verwirren."
3. Krumpelmann quotes Susie's question as "Papa vie viel uhr ist es?" (2), following Paine's edit of Twain's notebooks and letters, which introduced a multitude of German grammatical errors - in addition to ones Twain had already committed.
4. Instead of a funny German-American speech, Twain prepared a more controversial speech on evolution for the banquet. He decided not give this speech either, instead delivering a short excuse for not having a speech. See pages 116-119 in Paul Fatout's Mark Twain Speaking. University of Iowa Press, 1976.
5. I have translated these myself, disagreeing with the Mark Twain Lexicon's definitions. They, for example, make the camel a dromedary, when a Trampeltier has to have two humps by definition, and they leave out the harsh "pfeifen", or "shrill" of the bagpipe – which adds to the humor of the word. Twain's small spelling errors in compiling his compounds also lead to confusion; it is unknown whether he meant "temptations" (which he has spelt here) or "attempts" [versuchen]. To provide alternatives, however, for those who wish them, here are the Lexicon's definitions: "The Bagpipe Manufacturers Company of Constantinople", "Outrageous attempts by Nihilists to blow up the strong-box of a theater with dynamite", "The lamentable tragedy of the marriage of a dromedary drover in the tropical transport service of the army of the Transvaal" and "A manufacturer of marble monuments commemorating the Moorish mother of the assassins who perpetrated the general massacre of Mohammedans at Mecca." Mark Twain Lexicon, p. 72
6. Dolmetsch translates this as an "assassin of a Hottentot's mother of stuttering children confined in a kangaroo cage." It is mentioned by Krumpelmann (15) as well, though he does not provide a translation.
7. This can be found in Chapter XXIX (“A Few Specimen Bricks”) of Life on the Mississippi.
8. Mrs. Mortimer's instruction-book reads "During a thunderstorm keep away all metals such as, for example, rings, watches, keys, etc. and also don't remain at places where lots of metal things lie next to each other, or are bound onto other bodies, such as next to ovens, stoves, iron fences, and similar objects." I am unsure why Körpern is spelled with the umlaut while Öfen is rendered as Oefen.
9. Meisterschaft was first published in 1888 in Century.
10. Paine published a garbled version of the speech as "Die Schrecken der deutschen Sprache" (see Mark Twain's Speeches. Vol. 24 of The Complete Works of Mark Twain, Authorized Edition. New York: Harper and Brothers, 1923. 168-175); a translated version of the original can be found as an appendix in Dolmetsch's book.
11. It is also notable that German isn't the only language which Twain makes such comments about. French's sentences are similarly commented on, for example, in Twain's "The Jumping Frog." Sketches New and Old. New York: Harper and Collins, 1917. p. 15