''The Mysterious Stranger'' is a novel attempted by the American author
Mark Twain
Samuel Langhorne Clemens (November 30, 1835 – April 21, 1910), known by his pen name Mark Twain, was an American writer, humorist, entrepreneur, publisher, and lecturer. He was praised as the "greatest humorist the United States has p ...
. He worked on it intermittently from 1897 through 1908. Twain wrote multiple versions of the story; each involves a supernatural character called "Satan" or "No. 44". All the versions remained unfinished (with the debatable exception of the last one, ''No. 44, the Mysterious Stranger'').
Versions
The three stories differ in length: ''The Chronicle of Young Satan'' has about 55,000 words, ''Schoolhouse Hill'' 15,300 words and ''No. 44, the Mysterious Stranger'' 65,000 words.
"St. Petersburg Fragment"
Mark Twain wrote the "St. Petersburg Fragment" in September 1897. It was set in the fictional town of St. Petersburg, a name Twain often used for
Hannibal, Missouri
Hannibal is a city along the Mississippi River in Marion and Ralls counties in the U.S. state of Missouri. According to the 2020 U.S. Census, the population was 17,312, making it the largest city in Marion County. The bulk of the city is in Mar ...
.
Twain then revised this version, removing references to St. Petersburg, and used the text for ''The Chronicle of Young Satan''.
''The Chronicle of Young Satan''
The first substantial version is entitled ''The Chronicle of Young Satan'' (also referred to as "Eseldorf" version) and relates the adventures of Satan, the sinless nephew of the biblical
Satan
Satan,, ; grc, ὁ σατανᾶς or , ; ar, شيطانالخَنَّاس , also known as Devil in Christianity, the Devil, and sometimes also called Lucifer in Christianity, is an non-physical entity, entity in the Abrahamic religions ...
, in Eseldorf, an
Austria
Austria, , bar, Östareich officially the Republic of Austria, is a country in the southern part of Central Europe, lying in the Eastern Alps. It is a federation of nine states, one of which is the capital, Vienna, the most populous ...
n village in the year 1702. Twain wrote this version between November 1897 and September 1900. "Eseldorf" is German for "
Assville" or "Donkeytown".
''Schoolhouse Hill''
The second substantial text Twain attempted to write is known as ''Schoolhouse Hill'' (or "Hannibal") version. It is set in the US and involves the familiar characters
Huckleberry Finn
Huckleberry "Huck" Finn is a fictional character created by Mark Twain who first appeared in the book ''The Adventures of Tom Sawyer'' (1876) and is the protagonist and narrator of its sequel, ''Adventures of Huckleberry Finn'' (1884). He is 12 ...
and
Tom Sawyer
Thomas Sawyer () is the titular character of the Mark Twain novel ''The Adventures of Tom Sawyer'' (1876). He appears in three other novels by Twain: '' Adventures of Huckleberry Finn'' (1884), '' Tom Sawyer Abroad'' (1894), and '' Tom Sawyer, ...
and their adventures with Satan, referred to in this version as "No. 44, New Series 864962". Twain began writing it in November 1898 and, like the "St. Petersburg Fragment", set it in the fictional town of St. Petersburg.
''No. 44, the Mysterious Stranger''
The third text, called ''No. 44, the Mysterious Stranger: Being an Ancient Tale Found in a Jug and Freely Translated from the Jug'', also known as the "Print Shop" version, returns to Austria, this time in the year 1490, not long after the invention of printing.
It tells of No. 44's mysterious appearance at the door of a print shop and his use of heavenly powers to expose the futility of mankind's existence. This version also introduces an idea Twain was toying with at the end of his life involving a duality of the "self", composed of the "Waking Self" and the "Dream Self". Twain explores these ideas through the use of "Duplicates", copies of the print shop workers made by No. 44.
This version contains an actual ending; however, the text still has many flaws and it is debatable whether it can be considered finished.
Twain wrote this version between 1902 and 1908.
Paine-Duneka text of 1916
The edition published in 1916 (in seven parts in Harper's Magazine, and separately as a book published by Harpers) is composed mainly of a heavily edited ''Chronicle of Young Satan'', with a slightly altered version of the ending from ''No. 44'' tacked on.
Albert Bigelow Paine
Albert Bigelow Paine (July 10, 1861 – April 9, 1937) was an American author and biographer best known for his work with Mark Twain. Paine was a member of the Pulitzer Prize, Pulitzer Prize Committee and wrote in several genres, including fictio ...
, who had sole possession of Twain's unfinished works after Twain's death and kept them private, claimed that he had searched through Twain's manuscripts and had found the proper intended ending for ''The Mysterious Stranger''. After Paine's death in 1937,
Bernard DeVoto
Bernard Augustine DeVoto (January 11, 1897 – November 13, 1955) was an American historian, conservationist, essayist, columnist, teacher, editor, and reviewer. He was the author of a series of Pulitzer-Prize-winning popular histories of the Ame ...
became the possessor of Twain's manuscripts and released them to the public. In the 1960s, critics studied the original copies of the story and found that the ending Paine chose for ''The Mysterious Stranger'' referred to the characters from different versions of the story (such as No. 44 instead of Satan) and the original names had been crossed out and written over in Paine's handwriting.
In 1963, scholars led by researcher John S. Tuckey carefully examined Twain's papers and manuscripts and discovered that Paine had not only tampered with and patched together three previously unfinished manuscripts but also had with assistance from Frederick Duneka added passages not written by Twain in order to complete ''The Mysterious Stranger''.
The book version that was published nonetheless maintains Twain's criticisms of what he believed to be the hypocrisy of conventional
religion
Religion is usually defined as a social- cultural system of designated behaviors and practices, morals, beliefs, worldviews, texts, sanctified places, prophecies, ethics, or organizations, that generally relates humanity to supernatural, ...
.
According to editor W. M. Gibson, Paine's volume was a literary fraud that went undetected for more than 40 years. Nevertheless, Gibson also admits that "the cut, cobbled-together, partially falsified text has the power to move and to satisfy esthetically despite its flaws."
Summary
In 1590, three boys, Theodor, Seppi, and Nikolaus, live relatively happy simple lives in a remote
Austria
Austria, , bar, Östareich officially the Republic of Austria, is a country in the southern part of Central Europe, lying in the Eastern Alps. It is a federation of nine states, one of which is the capital, Vienna, the most populous ...
n village called Eseldorf (German for "
Assville" or "Donkeytown"). The story is narrated by Theodor, the village organist's son. Other local characters include Father Peter, his niece Marget, and the astrologer.
One day, a handsome teenage boy named Satan appears in the village. He explains that he is an
angel
In various theistic religious traditions an angel is a supernatural spiritual being who serves God.
Abrahamic religions often depict angels as benevolent celestial intermediaries between God (or Heaven) and humanity. Other roles include ...
and the nephew of the fallen angel whose name he shares. Young Satan performs several
magical feats. He claims to be able to foresee the future and informs the group of unfortunate events that will soon befall those they care about. The boys do not believe Satan's claims until one of his predictions comes true. Satan proceeds to describe further tragedies that will befall their friends. The boys beg Satan to intercede. Satan agrees but operates under the technical definition of mercy. For instance, instead of a lingering death due to illness, Satan simply causes one of Theodor's friends to die immediately.
In the village and in other places around the world where Satan transports them magically, the boys witness religious
fanaticism
Fanaticism (from the Latin adverb ''fānāticē'' ren-''fānāticus''; enthusiastic, ecstatic; raging, fanatical, furious is a belief or behavior involving uncritical zeal or an obsessive enthusiasm.
Definitions
Philosopher George Santayan ...
,
witch trials
A witch-hunt, or a witch purge, is a search for people who have been labeled witches or a search for evidence of witchcraft. The Witch trials in the early modern period, classical period of witch-hunts in Early Modern Europe and European Colon ...
,
burnings,
hanging
Hanging is the suspension of a person by a noose or ligature around the neck.Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd ed. Hanging as method of execution is unknown, as method of suicide from 1325. The ''Oxford English Dictionary'' states that hanging i ...
s, deaths and
mass hysteria
Mass psychogenic illness (MPI), also called mass sociogenic illness, mass psychogenic disorder, epidemic hysteria, or mass hysteria, involves the spread of illness symptoms through a population where there is no infectious agent responsible for c ...
. Finally, Satan vanishes with a brief explanation: "
ere is
no God, no universe, no human race, no earthly life, no heaven, no hell. It is all a dream – a grotesque and foolish dream.
Nothing exists but you. And you are but a thought – a vagrant thought, a useless thought, a homeless thought, wandering forlorn among the empty eternities!".
University of California Press editions
In 1969, the
University of California Press
The University of California Press, otherwise known as UC Press, is a publishing house associated with the University of California that engages in academic publishing. It was founded in 1893 to publish scholarly and scientific works by faculty ...
published, as part of The Mark Twain Papers Series, a scholarly edition of all three unaltered manuscripts, edited by William M. Gibson and titled ''Mark Twain's Mysterious Stranger Manuscripts''; it was republished in 2005. The University of California Press also released a final version of ''No. 44, The Mysterious Stranger'' in a popular edition in 1982.
Adaptations
Film versions
In 1982, a film version of ''No. 44, The Mysterious Stranger'' was shot by The
Great Amwell Company and shown in the United States on
PBS
The Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) is an American public broadcasting, public broadcaster and Non-commercial activity, non-commercial, Terrestrial television, free-to-air television network based in Arlington, Virginia. PBS is a publicly fu ...
, and later on
HBO
Home Box Office (HBO) is an American premium television network, which is the flagship property of namesake parent subsidiary Home Box Office, Inc., itself a unit owned by Warner Bros. Discovery. The overall Home Box Office business unit is ba ...
and was directed by
Peter H. Hunt. The role of 44 was played by
Lance Kerwin
Lance Kerwin (born November 6, 1960) is an American actor, known primarily for roles in television and film during his childhood and teen years in the 1970s. He played lead roles in the TV series '' James at 15'', and the made-for-TV films ''T ...
, and August was played by
Chris Makepeace
Christopher Makepeace (born April 22, 1964) is a Canadian former actor, known for his starring roles in the coming-of-age film ''My Bodyguard'' (1980) and comedy horror ''Vamp'' (1986), and supporting roles in the screwball comedy '' Meatballs'' ...
.
A scene from ''The Chronicle of Young Satan'' was adapted in the 1985
claymation
Clay animation or claymation, sometimes plasticine animation, is one of many forms of stop-motion animation. Each animated piece, either character or background, is "deformable"—made of a malleable substance, usually plasticine clay.
Tra ...
film ''
The Adventures of Mark Twain'', wherein Satan invites
Tom Sawyer
Thomas Sawyer () is the titular character of the Mark Twain novel ''The Adventures of Tom Sawyer'' (1876). He appears in three other novels by Twain: '' Adventures of Huckleberry Finn'' (1884), '' Tom Sawyer Abroad'' (1894), and '' Tom Sawyer, ...
,
Huck Finn
Huck may refer to:
Characters
* Huckleberry Finn, a character in four novels by Mark Twain
* Huckleberry Hound, a cartoon character created by animation studio Hanna-Barbera
* Huck, a character on ''Scandal (TV series), Scandal''
* Huck, a charac ...
, and
Becky Thatcher
Mark Twain's series of books featuring the fictional characters Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn include:
#'' The Adventures of Tom Sawyer'' (1876)
#''Adventures of Huckleberry Finn'' (1884)
#''Tom Sawyer Abroad'' (1894)
#'' Tom Sawyer, Detective ...
to his company, displaying his powers to manifest things at will. He invites them to construct small clay people, which he brings to life and places in a small kingdom. Satan expresses
curiosity
Curiosity (from Latin '' cūriōsitās'', from ''cūriōsus'' "careful, diligent, curious", akin to ''cura'' "care") is a quality related to inquisitive thinking such as exploration, investigation, and learning, evident by observation in humans ...
and eventually
spite toward their creations when the clay people display
infighting and inflict
cruelty
Cruelty is the pleasure in inflicting suffering or inaction towards another's suffering when a clear remedy is readily available. Sadism can also be related to this form of action or concept. Cruel ways of inflicting suffering may involve ...
on one another. He causes
plagues and
natural disaster
A natural disaster is "the negative impact following an actual occurrence of natural hazard in the event that it significantly harms a community". A natural disaster can cause loss of life or damage property, and typically leaves some econ ...
s to destroy the small community, buries the ruins with an earthquake, and causes wild vegetation to engulf the spot where the clay people once lived, demonstrating the futility and
insignificance of mankind—much to the horror of the children, with Huck Finn uttering "You murdered them!" Satan advises them that "people are of no value" and that more could be made "if we need them". The scene also quotes Satan's last line from the book. In this version, Satan appears playful and friendly when he constructs the small kingdom, slowly revealing himself as cruel and hateful as he destroys it (although he claims he "can do no wrong" since he does not understand the word's meaning). He appears as a robed, headless figure with a
mask
A mask is an object normally worn on the face, typically for protection, disguise, performance, or entertainment and often they have been employed for rituals and rights. Masks have been used since antiquity for both ceremonial and practic ...
where his head would be. As his true nature is revealed, the mask gradually changes from a pleasant appearance to a demonic visage and finally a grinning
skull
The skull is a bone protective cavity for the brain. The skull is composed of four types of bone i.e., cranial bones, facial bones, ear ossicles and hyoid bone. However two parts are more prominent: the cranium and the mandible. In humans, the ...
. The film also gives a paraphrased line from ''No. 44, The Mysterious Stranger'' to Mark Twain as his parting remark to the children: ''The human race in all its poverty has only one truly effective weapon: Laughter. Against the assault of laughter nothing can stand.''
In 1989, a film adaptation of this book was shot in the
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen national ...
by
Igor Maslennikov
Igor Fyodorovich Maslennikov (russian: Игорь Фёдорович Масленников; 26 October 1931 – 17 September 2022)
and released under the title ''Filipp Traum'' (Philipp Traum is the name Satan comes to use amongst humans, ''Traum'' being the German word for "dream").
The 2020
acid western
Acid Western is a subgenre of the Western film that emerged in the 1960s and 1970s that combines the metaphorical ambitions of critically acclaimed Westerns, such as ''Shane'' and ''The Searchers'', with the excesses of the Spaghetti Westerns and ...
movie ''
Day of the Stranger'' is a loose adaptation of the story in a western setting.
Opera
Kevin Malone
Kevin Malone is a fictional character in the American television series ''The Office''. He is portrayed by Brian Baumgartner. Kevin's counterpart in the UK TV series is Keith Bishop, who shares Kevin's lack of communication skills, musical int ...
's opera ''Mysterious 44'' is inspired by the work. The première, performed by Manchester Opera Project with a narrated introduction and conclusion by evolutionary biologist
Richard Dawkins, was at the residence of the Hallé Orchestra at St Peter's Church,
Ancoats, Manchester, on 24 May 2014.
Pop culture
In the ''
Fallout
Nuclear fallout is the residual radioactive material propelled into the upper atmosphere following a nuclear blast, so called because it "falls out" of the sky after the explosion and the shock wave has passed. It commonly refers to the radioac ...
'' video game series there is a character known as the "Mysterious Stranger". In the entries ''
Fallout 3
''Fallout 3'' is a 2008 action role-playing game developed by Bethesda Game Studios and published by Bethesda Softworks. The third major installment in the ''Fallout'' series, it is the first game to be developed by Bethesda after acquiring ...
'' and ''
Fallout: New Vegas'' he is referred to as a "Guardian Angel", and in ''Fallout 3'', ''Fallout: New Vegas'' and ''
Fallout 4
''Fallout 4'' is a 2015 action role-playing game developed by Bethesda Game Studios and published by Bethesda Softworks. It is the fourth main game in the ''Fallout'' series and was released worldwide on November 10, 2015, for PlayStation 4, ...
'' he uses a .44 Magnum.
Artist
Ted Richards
Ted Richards (born 11 January 1983) is a former professional Australian rules footballer who played for the Essendon Football Club and the Sydney Swans in the Australian Football League (AFL).
AFL career
Richards was recruited from Xavier Col ...
drew a comic-strip adaptation of "The Mysterious Stranger" for his "Dopin' Dan" character in "Rip-Off Comix No. 1" (Rip-Off Press, San Francisco, 1977).
The
DC Comics
DC Comics, Inc. (doing business as DC) is an American comic book publisher and the flagship unit of DC Entertainment, a subsidiary of Warner Bros. Discovery.
DC Comics is one of the largest and oldest American comic book companies, with thei ...
character
Phantom Stranger
The Phantom Stranger is a superhero appearing in American comic books published by DC Comics, of unspecified paranormal origins, who battles mysterious and occult forces, sometimes under their Vertigo imprint. The character first appeared in an ...
has many similarities to the Mysterious Stranger. Both characters have vague origin stories which allow the possibility that they are exiled angels.
See also
*
Mark Twain bibliography
Samuel Langhorne Clemens (November 30, 1835 – April 21, 1910), well known by his pen name Mark Twain, was an American author and humorist. Twain is noted for his novels ''Adventures of Huckleberry Finn'' (1884), which has been called the " ...
References
External links
Paine-Duneka text
*
*
*
No. 44, ''The Mysterious Stranger''
* (Not free)
''The Mysterious Stranger'' Manuscripts
* (Google books version; gives access to full text of the book)
* (Not free)
* (Google books version)
Secondary sources
*
No. 44, ''The Mysterious Stranger''at Encyclopedia.com
{{DEFAULTSORT:Mysterious Stranger, The
1916 American novels
1916 fantasy novels
American fantasy novels
Novels by Mark Twain
Fiction about invisibility
Unfinished novels
Novels published posthumously
Novels set in Austria
Novels set in Missouri
Fiction about shapeshifting
Fiction about the Devil
Novels about dreams
Novels about telepathy
University of California Press books
Harper & Brothers books
American novels adapted into films
Novels adapted into operas