Withoutthegate

In order to appreciate this book it is necessary to suspend your disbelief. Consider the possibility that there might be sprites that do frequent your children’s dreams and meddle in the affairs of men. Consider that there may be angels who watch over God’s elect. Consider that there might be fearsome giants and legendary warriors willing to enthusiastically follow a child into battle. But also consider warily the possibility of selfish despots who lust for wealth, power and station and would stop at nothing to enhance their position-- even if it meant to destroy the innocent.

Now consider Joan, an ignorant peasant girl--not more than 12 years old--the pride of her medieval community. She was wise for someone her age, but this is not unusual for there were many wise and foolish children in the world. Now consider this same girl five years later becoming the commander of the great armies of France and delivering her nation out of the bondage of the English enemy. How could this happen?

This, we shall soon discover.

There are many who cannot and will not understand. They say, “She is a fairy tale and nothing more.” But then they are the foolish ones. The history of Joan of Arc’s victories are well documented and archives of her military service and subsequent trial for witchcraft and heresy are readily available to read. Hence, there can be no denial of her existence, her testimonies or her miraculous deeds.

Though she was martyred at the hands of the pious religious authorities (they were in collusion with her political enemies and not representative of any heavenly will), that conviction was later nullified and Joan was made into a Saint. This travesty of events is reminiscent of Jesus’s words concerning the orthodoxy of his day, “Woe unto you! For ye build the sepulchers of the prophets, and your fathers killed them.”

Mark Twain believed in Joan of Arc. You will tell this by his devotion toward her in this book. You will feel the many tears that he must have shed in considering her precious life—a life that was so contrary to the evil world surrounding her. As he wrote about the historical facts concerning her rise to glory, he also filled in the spaces with fictional and not so fictional characters along with conjecture concerning her psychology, sentiments and affections.

Twain’s characterization of Joan as a holy child was rejected sharply by the secular socialist George Bernard Shaw as being only the sentimental ramblings of an infatuated old man; but scholarly research of the manuscripts from Joan’s trial proves that the atheist Shaw was the one who was in error. The truth concerning Joan’s integrity lay with the sympathetic Mark Twain.

Of all of Twain’s writings (most being humorous, many cynical and some downright vulgar and sacrilegious) he treasured Personal Recollections best of all, as he quoted:

“I like Joan of Arc best of all my books; and it is the best; I know it perfectly well. And besides, it furnished me seven times the pleasure afforded me by any of the others; twelve years of preparation, and two years of writing. The others need no preparation and got none.”
In the December 1904 edition of Harper’s Monthly Magazine he wrote:

“Taking into account, as I have suggested before, all the circumstances—her origin, youth, sex, illiteracy, early environment, and the obstructing conditions under which she exploited her high gifts and made her conquests in the field and before the courts that tried her for her life,--she is easily and by far the most extraordinary person the human race has ever produced.”

Pete Lounsbury

This edition of Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc is offered in the spirit of the original Harper's magazine publications of 1895 and subsequent book editions.To promote the original publication of this book, the authorship was given as The Sieur Louis De Conte, Joan's personal page and secretary. This was done to cause buzz amongst historians and textual critics and to make introduction to the real author Twain. In most editions, Conte's name still stands as the author (and Jean Francois Alden as the fictional translater) even though it is commonly known that Mark Twain is the actual author.

This work stands out apart from Twain's other writings which are comical, satirical and profane. It, on the other hand is reverent and well-researched. Twain held little respect for persons that inhabited this world, including himself. He poked fun cynically at all persons and institutions but when it came to Joan--the world became real and serious. He saw, in her, the beauty and perfection springing forth impossibly as it were from the dung-heap of humanity.

Available from Barnes and Noble and Amazon.com as well as other sources List price $16.99.Contact Pete Lounsbury at lounsburyus@comcast.net for quantity discounts.