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From:
Leslie MYRICK <[log in to unmask]>
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Date:
Sun, 18 Oct 2020 12:00:47 -0400
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The Fischer anecdote is pretty entertaining; here is a wikisource
transcription from the book (to be taken with the usual grain of salt).
https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Abroad_with_Mark_Twain_and_Eugene_Field/Mark%27s_Glimpse_of_Schopenhauer

On Sun, Oct 18, 2020 at 11:40 AM Barbara Schmidt <[log in to unmask]>
wrote:

> Alan Gribben in MARK TWAIN'S LIBRARY: A RECONSTRUCTION records a volume by
> Schopenhauer ESSAYS OF ARTHUR SCHOPENHAUER -- a translation published in
> 1892 that was sold in the 1951 sale of Clemens's library. It is listed as
> belonging to Jean and Clara. In addition, Gribben also records that
> journalist Henry Fisher  also commented on Twain's interest in
> Schopenhauer's writings. Whether the volume from the Clemens library has
> ever been recovered or examined for marginalia is not documented.
>
> Barb
>
> On Sun, Oct 18, 2020 at 10:08 AM Dave Davis <[log in to unmask]>
> wrote:
>
> > This one sentence from Arthur Schopenhauer intrigues me:
> >
> > *Our hesitation before such a colossal thought will perhaps be diminished
> > by the recollection... that the ultimate dreamer of the vast life-dream
> is
> > finally, in a certain sense, but one, namely the Will to Live, and that
> the
> > multiplicity of appearances follows from the conditioning effects of time
> > and space [the morphogenetic field whereby the Will to Live assumes
> forms].
> > It is one great dream dreamed by a single Being, but in such a way that
> all
> > the dream characters dream too.  *
> > --Arthur Schopenhauer, "Transcendental Speculation on Apparent Design in
> > the Fate of the Individual,” "  (1851)
> >
> > (More about that:
> > https://harpers.org/2012/02/schopenhauer-causality-and-synchronicity/ )
> >
> >  It reminds me of the great conclusion of #44, The Mysterious Stranger
> > which we all know:
> >
> > "... "It is true, that which I have revealed to you; there 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!"
> >
> > (Actually, the whole of that last, concluding Chapter)
> >
> >
> > I recall that SLC told a correspondent he had never read Nietzsche; but
> we
> > also know that he could get by, reading German, and was in Germany quite
> a
> > bit in the 1890's, when such ideas were in the air there.
> >
> > Any thoughts? Maybe they both got it from Shakespeare. Ideas float
> around,
> > expression is everything.
> >
> > DDD
> >
>

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