The innocent abroad

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Book cover of an American edition from 1884

The Innocents Abroad ( The Innocents Abroad, or The New Pilgrims' Progress ) is a travel diary of the American author Mark Twain , published in 1869. This journey has taken place in 1867 on the decommissioned warship "USS Quaker City". The highlight was the excursion to the Holy Land .

Illustration (1855): Mount Tabor “stands alone ... [in a] silent plain ... a desolation ... we never saw any human being on the entire stage ... extremely rarely a tree or bush anywhere. Even the olive tree or the cactus, those friends of poor soil, seemed to have almost completely left the land [Galilee]. ”~ Mark Twain

The voyage led by New York over the Azores and was frequently interrupted by short-term country stays in the coastal cities of the Mediterranean ( Gibraltar , Tangier , Athens , Smyrna , Beirut ), a train trip from Marseille to Paris for the Paris World Exposition in 1867 and a railway journey through Italy with Genoa , Milan , Venice , Florence , Pisa , Rome and Naples , as well as an extra tour through the Black Sea to Odessa and a detour to the Egyptian pyramids towards the end of the trip.

The book, which was written a good ten years before the first wave of immigration of political Zionism ( First Aliyah ), achieved particular fame for its description of Palestine, even the now extremely fertile Jezreel plain in Galilee as a treeless desertification with partly fertile but uncultivated soil , quilted , deserted , boggy, deserted, shabby and poor. Time and again, Twain expresses his disdain for the Ottoman Empire , which he describes as dirt and poverty. To this he joins, as a counter-image, a modern, successful, blossoming America.

This book was Twain's most successful work during his lifetime and one of the most widely read travelogues ever. It initially appeared on a daily basis in some American newspapers - while the trip was still in progress - and was only later compiled into a book.

At first glance it seems to be one of the travel stories customary at the time. But Twain used the opportunity to give his very personal views on the country and people, culture and religion of the respective cities, sometimes in very drastic language. He often complained about the descriptions of other travel writers who allegedly had rated many places and customs clearly too positive.

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ "Tabor stands solitary .. [in a] silent plain .. a desolation .. we never saw a human being on the whole route .. hardly a tree or shrub anywhere. Even the olive tree and the cactus, those fast friends of a worthless soil, had almost deserted the country "~ Mark Twain , 1867 Lawrence Teacher; Kurt Vonnegut: The unabridged Mark Twain: Volume 2 , Unabridged. Edition, Courage Books, Philadelphia, Pa 1997, ISBN 978-0762401819 , pp. 283-284, 304, 430 (Retrieved February 16, 2015).
  2. ↑ Twain Mark, Tsel Harim (ed.): The Innocents Abroad . Machon Helkat Hasadeh Elon Moreh, Israel. Archived from the original on May 23, 2002. Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Retrieved February 16, 2015. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.shechem.org
  3. ↑ "At the beginning of the 19th century Palestine had reached its absolute low, its population was ... that it had at the beginning of the Turkish rule [<300,000] .. in the second half of the 19th century a slow rise began ... through the occupation of Palestine and Syria by Egypt (1832-1840) .. as a reaction [demanded] the European powers .. a strengthening of their political influence .. after 500 years churches could be built again for the first time in Palestine and schools and hospitals were built. At the same time the organization of pilgrimages began, which annually brought many thousands of visitors to the country. Another development factor was the opening of the Suez Canal (1869) .. first scientific mapping of Israel .. in the years 1871-78 .. According to this estimate, the population of Palestine was .. 450,000 inhabitants .. Geographically speaking, the plains and a large part of the coast were still almost uninhabited and swampy , 600 of the 700 settlements were in the mountains ... “ Yehuda Karmon : Israel: a geographic study of the country , 2nd, revised. and updated edition. Edition, Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, Darmstadt 1983, ISBN 3534086759 , p. 52ff. (Accessed February 16, 2015).
  4. ↑ See Chapters 47, 49, 52; in the two-volume edition, see Volume II, Chapters 20, 22, 25.

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