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December 18, 2006

Did Mark Twain Really Say This?

You see it attributed to Mark Twain everywhere these days. Dawkins even refers to it in The God Delusion.

"I do not fear death, in view of the fact that I had been dead for billions and billions of years before I was born, and had not suffered the slightest inconvenience from it."

But is it really a Twain quote. I have yet to see it with a source reference to any Twain work, note, letter or early biography. Where did it come from? To make me even more suspicious, the sentiment of the alleged quotation often appears as a description of an interaction between Twain and some unknown person rather than as a direct quotation.

Mr. Clemens was once asked whether he feared death. He said that he did not, in view of the fact that he had been dead for billions and billions of years before he was born, and had not suffered the slightest inconvenience from it.

I can't find any source reference to this descriptive version either.

I found this "transitional" version quite telling,

[I] do not fear death. [I] had been dead for billions and billions of years before [I] was born, and had not suffered the slightest inconvenience from it.

It didn't have a source reference either. I think the tradition critic can see a transition to a direct quotation based on a paraphrase of a descriptive narrative that may or may not itself be apocryphal in the three versions I have cited. But I would like to know where the descriptive narrative came from anyway.

I like the quote and approve of the sentiment but I still wonder. Unless one of you knows if it is real, I plan to ask the good folks on the Mark Twain Forum about it and I'll let you know.

Posted by Duane Smith at December 18, 2006 9:30 PM | Read more on Mark Twain |

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