After reading Mr. God, This is Anna, and writing a blurb about it associating it with Joan of Arc, I decided to reread Mark Twain's Joan of Arc and I have been richly rewarded. Twain is dead serious in bringing all his skill as a writer into this narrative. He spent 12 years in research and two years in writing it. Reading descriptive accounts of the ever-cursing, war-torn general La Hire reveals poetry on par with Shakespeare:
"...Why, she has sent for Satan himself — that is to say, La Hire—that military hurricane, that godless swashbuckler, that lurid conflagration of blasphemy, that Vesuvius of profanity, forever in eruption."
Later, when that saint, Joan of Arc met La Hire and demanded that the prostitutes be ejected from his camp and that the men attend mass twice a day, La Hire — "...went on, pouring out a most pathetic stream of arguments and blaspemy, which broke Joan all up, and made her laugh as she had not laughed since she played in the Domremy pastures."
The love of base creatures and how they were transformed by Joan's graciousness, reminds me of the verse in scripture when Jesus says, "If I be lifted up, I will draw all manner of men to me." allow me to paraphrase, "If I be properly portrayed— my character adequately witnessed to, people will come to me naturally." And this is the crux of the book! Twain himself is La Hire. Twain is the man used to living on his own dogma. Twain the Protestant skeptic meets the Catholic Joan of Arc, and falls in love with the woman and the God she represents. A God who's purpose was to bring and end to a 100 years of demonic war, with the fewest amounts of casualties and with a woman child of 17 years of age — not unlike the fragile Christmas story of salvation by a mere baby.
France was a total mess at the time. Their uncrowned King had just enough money to skirt out of the country and was surrounded by cowardly advisors. This passage of Joan's confrontation with the King's prime minister, La Tremouille, sums up a lot:
La Tremouille: My judgement is to wait (and not strike the English before they are reinforced)
Joan: Wait for what?
La Tremouille: (after waiting...) Matters of state are not proper matters for public discussion.
Joan: I have to beg your pardon. My trespass came of ignorance. I did not know that matters connected with your department of the government were matters of state.
La Tremouille: I am the King's chief minister, and yet you had the impression that matters connected with my department are not matters of state: Pray how is that?
Joan: Because there is no state.
La Tremouille: No state!
Joan: No, sir, there is no state, and no use for a minister. France is shrunk to a couple of acres of ground: a sheriff's constable could take care of it; its affairs are not matters of state. The term is too large.
The long and short of it is this: There is hope for this world not because some great person will be lifted up to deliver us, but because there is an omipotent and omniscient God taking personal interest in the mess we make of things. And if tears don't stream down your face when you read of her courage and what was instilled in others, then I really feel sorry for you. I really do. I cannot recommend this book highly enough.
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