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MAPK TBEHEast and West Meet in Twain

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Elmira Star-Gazette

From the last home of Mark Twaincomes an idea too good to get lost in

the shuffle of politics...

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Opening/Background

Short overview of what we will bespeaking about. Background of our

relationship/projects and why it is ofinterest that our efforts to promote

Twain in 2008, 2009 & 2010 mimic the

efforts of Brad Kellys in 1958, 1959 &1960.

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Opening/Background

First, we would like to thank Alex and theBoston University Editorial Institute for

the opportunity to be with you here thisafternoon. It truly is an honor.

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Opening/Background

Heather and I have been working togethersince 2007 when I stopped over at MTL to

have a look at their photo archives for acalendar project.

In 2008 we celebrated the 100thAnniversary ofTwains arrival in Redding, his final residence,as well as the 100thAnniversary of theLibrarys founding.

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Opening/Background

I have been a Mark Twain Library patronsince childhood, but 2007 was the first

time I had seen the archives.

And as it turns out one of the items that

caught my eye was an article aboutBradley Kellys quest to unite the USA &USSR via Mark Twain.

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Bradley Kellys Project

I am hopeful, that the down to earthAmerican humor and satire of this great

writer will help pierce the Iron Curtain.At least, its worth a try.

-Bradley Kelly

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Opening/Background

Without this symposium, this information wouldlikely remain unknown.

Heather and I were a tad Twained out afterApril 21stBut seeing Alexs post about theTwain/Tolstoy Symposium reminded me ofKellys project at the 50thAnniversary & theparallels between his efforts and ours wereunbelievable.

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Opening/Background

This presentationat this symposiumatthis timetruly was meant to be.

That said, Ill get started.

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Kellys idea was to celebrate the 50thAnniversary of Mark Twains passing by

using him as an Ambassador of GoodWill to the Soviet Union.

Here is a unique chance to show thatthere is some common ground betweentwo ostensible enemies.

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Kelly circulated Mark Twain themed issuesof Reddings local newspaper, the

Redding Times, all over the World.

The first newspaper sent was the June

19, 1958 issue which celebrated the50thAnniversary of Twains arrival inRedding, Connecticut (06/18/1908)

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Yugoslavia was the first country torespond with a thank you note, but it

was the letter that arrived from Russiathat confirmed all he had previously

believed about the Russians interest in

Mark Twain- and added to his beliefs.

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I fully agree with you that culturalcommunications between people of different

countries is one of the surest mediums ofmaintaining peaceTwain is immensely

popular among Soviet people. His works havebeen published & republished here in large

editions

-A. KuznetsovVice Chairman, Committee for Cultural

Relations with Foreign Countries

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The Kellys Travel Overseas

Correspondence between Kelly and Kuznetsovcontinued throughout 1959 & led to a special

European trip for Kelly & his wife. Theytraveled to Ireland, Denmark, Norway,

Sweden, Finland, & the Soviet Union. Theywere interviewed in every country they

visited.

All over Europe, all over Scandinavia, I found a lovefor Mark Twain as promoter of the little man.

Bradley Kelly

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The Kellys Travel Overseas

The Kellys found that Mark Twain was by farthe Russians favorite author, easy toppingHemingway, Faulkner, and Jack London.

Russian scholars informed them that there

was hardly a schoolboy that had not read:The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, TheAdventures of Huckleberry Finn or A

Connecticut Yankee in King Arthurs Court.

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Twain First Published in 1872

Mark Twains story, The Celebrated JumpingFrog of Calaveras County was translated into

the Russian language in 1872 and TheGilded Age was published immediately afterits release in America. The first collection ofMark Twains productions was published in

1890 (11 volumes). The second edition wasprinted in 1910 and a complete collection was

released in 1911 (28 volumes).

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Moscows Lenin State Library

The highlight of the Kellys trip was anafternoon in Moscows Lenin Library where

they found the catalog files on Mark Twainsworks to 8 inches thick

At that time, books, pamphlets & articles onTwain covered hundreds of titles and over 11

million copiesof his books had beentranslated into 25 Russian languages.

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Moscows Lenin State Library

Kelly was amazed by the librarys size and thenumber of visitors:

The library had close to 20 million books, isopen 7 days a week from 9am to 11pm and

on average sees 7,000 visitors a day.

While they were there an exchange of Englishvolumes and Russian volumes was made.

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America Amazed Russians

Love Mark Twain Too

The findings of Kelly were a big surprise here

in America. It was the first time an Americanwriter had been printed completely in twolanguages.

Even more surprising was the fact that thenumber of Russian printings exceeded

England and Americas totals combined!

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America Amazed Russians

Love Mark Twain Too

It isnt merely government policy that makes

Twain a favorite in Russia, more than anyother American writer, Twain hits the chordsof the Russian people. The response to him is

remarkable

Russians consider Mark Twaina voice of the little man.

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Twains Satire & Commentary

Twains works are filled with satire and socialcommentary which became increasingly more

acidic in his later years and yet it is/was thisside of the great American author that is/wasmost endearing to the Russian people. Theybelieved that Twains jibes at the American

society of his day apply to the United Statesof America in the 1960s.

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Twains Satire & Commentary

His social commentary still applies today

Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose youwere a member of Congress. But I repeat

myself.

-Mark Twain, a Biography

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The Cold War

Now that Statesmanship and Brinkmanship

seem to be failing, it is time to tryTwainmanship to ease the tensions of the

Cold War.

-Bradley Kelly

The next two slides show Kelly was right

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The Book Exchanges

The Book Exchange idea was well received, andwas embraced by all the Mark TwainMemorials in the U.S. By December 1961books had been exchanged between:

Redding, Connecticut

Hartford, Connecticut Elmira, New York

Hannibal, Missouri

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People to People

Initially the Kellys paid their own expenses asthe unofficial ambassadors of Twain.

In 1961, former President Dwight D.Eisenhowers organization People to Peopleappointed them as members and made their

expenses tax deductible.

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The Legacy

Bradley Kelly died in 1968 but his project didnot. In fact, here today Heather and I are

completing the circle he beganand I can not

put into words how rewarding that is.

Book exchanges continued between the U.S.A.

and Russia into the 1980s. All-in-all thesebook exchanges had an impact, morphinginto a grassroots effort to peaceful

understanding between the two countries.

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The Collection

8 titles in Russian and 2 in Ukrainian.Russian :The Adventures of Tom Sawyer &the Adventures of Huckleberry

Finn (2 different copies); The Prince and thePauper; A Connecticut Yankee;Mark Twain (Life of Famous People series - 2copies, 1958, 1964); Letters

from the Earth; & Mark Twain (fictionalliterature).Ukrainian:Mark Twain (bio); & The

Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.

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The Legacy

Whats truly amazing with this project is thatthis year, the 100thanniversary of Twains

passing, Heather and her staff have

cataloged this very special Russian collectionand made it available to the General Public.

Kelly had hoped that the book exchange wouldcontinue and grow and here today at thissymposium we are attempting to make more

people aware of their existence.

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The Legacy

To follow up on my story and give you somebackground on the Mark Twain Library, the

Russian Book Collection, Twains Time inRedding and the interesting Russianconnection Twains daughter Clara had Iexit the spotlight and yield to my fellow

Twainiac Heather Morgan.

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Mark Twains Library

When I became Director of the Mark Twain Library in2002, it had only recently re-opened after an

extensive renovation. The old Cape-style building,

paid for through the generosity of Mark Twain, hisdaughter Jean Clemens, his friend Andrew Carnegie,and the townsfolk of Redding, remains an integral

part of the building today, and is now used for

programs, and to store our Mark Twain collectionthe books he gave to set up the first town library inRedding; the books that contain his penciled

marginalia that still delights us today.

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The Mystery of the

Russian BooksWhen prowling around my new library building, I

discovered many boxes still waiting to be unpackedmost of them stored in the musty basement of the

original old building. I realized some had been therefor many years, and one of my discoveries was a

small collection of books, by and about Mark Twain,that had been translated into Russian. I looked them

over, intrigued, but with much else to do, I placedthem in a cupboard, and almost forgot them.

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The Newspaper Clippings

About a year later, I came across a file ofyellowing press cuttings that told the

delightful story of local resident, Bradley

Kelly, and his travels that had led to a gift ofbooks, in Russian, to the Mark Twain Library.On one of his visits to Moscow Mr. Kelly tooka message from the Mark Twain Library in

Redding to the Director of the Leningradlibrary. It was simply, Lets exchangetranslations of Mark Twains works.

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Bradley Kelly

He believed that he could use Mark Twain as anambassador of good will to the Soviet Union, LetAmerican and Russian libraries trade Mark Twain

material" he said, No matter how much we maydiffer in other areas, at least we can show the

Russians we agree with them on one subjectMarkTwain. It was appropriate that the proposal should

come from a resident of the small Connecticut townwhere Mark Twain spent his last years.

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The Russian Books

Now I had the answer to the mystery of the hiddenbooks. I brought them out of hiding, dusted them

down, catalogued them, and finally they were

returned to the library shelves. The cataloging was achallenge as I know nothing of the Russian language,

but with the help of a Russian friend, and someexcellent work by a cataloger at our system

headquarters, we managed very well. The onlinecatalogue of the Mark Twain Library may be viewedby anyone and everyone who visits our website, at

www.marktwainlibrary.org
http://www.marktwainlibrary.org/http://www.marktwainlibrary.org/

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Redding & Mark Twain

It is little known that Mark Twain lived his lastyears, from 1908 to 1910, in the little sleepy

town of Redding, Connecticut. He built asplendid, Italian-style house on a hilltopoverlooking the Saugatuck River, wanting,and needing, the peace of a country life,

declaring, How beautiful it all is upon hisarrival.

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Stormfield- Mark Twains final residence. Redding CT

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But he felt a little lonely; he missed hisfriends, and the gaiety of life in New

York City. He was still grieving the lossof his dear wife, Livy, who had died in1904, he still missed his favorite

daughter, Susy, and he greatly missed

the happy days of being a father tothree adoring daughters when they

lived together in Hartford.

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But he loved his new home, which he namedStormfield, and he set about making friends

among the farmers in Redding, and became aregular sight walking the footpaths around hiscountry estate, or trotting along the roads inhis carriage, greeting friends and neighbors.

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He invited many guests to his new home, fromhis old life and from his new. He was theperfect host, and described himself as the

perfect man a border ruffian from thestate of Missouri, and a Connecticut Yankee

by adoption. In me, you have Missourimorals, Connecticut culture; this, gentlemen,

is the perfect combination which makes theperfect man.

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Helen Keller

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He took a keen interest in the community intowhich he had moved, and decided it neededa library. He wanted it to be a library for the

people, with no town governmentinterference, a place organized and

administered by people in the town. It

remains as such to this day. He convincedresidents to help him fundraise for a building,which they whole-heartedly did.

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Mark Twains biggest, and most successfulfundraiser, was a concert held at his house,

where he played the part of master of

ceremonies, with singer, David Bispham, andOssip Gabrilowitsch playing the piano. Clara,

Mark Twains daughter, also sang thatevening, and later Ossip, who had know Clara

almost ten years, proposed marriage, andwas accepted. They were married at

Stormfield on October 6th1909.

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Claras Russian Connections

Gabrilowitsch was born in St. Petersburg inFebruary 1878. He was a piano prodigy as achild, and studied under Rimsky-Korsakoff atthe St. Petersburg Conservatory. It was when

he was studying in Vienna in 1898 that hefirst met Clara and the Clemens family.

Mark Twain admired his son-in-law, and washappy to welcome him into his family.

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In 1918 Gabrilowitsch became Director of thenew Symphony Orchestra in Detroit, where

he and Clara remained for the rest of his life.He died in September 1936, and is buried at

the foot of Mark Twain in WoodlawnCemetery in Elmira, New York.

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In May of 1944, Clara married again, to anotherRussian musician, Jacques Samassoud, who,unfortunately, spent her inheritance from herfather freely, which finally resulted in the saleof many of Mark Twains manuscripts to pay

off debts.

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In 1962, Clara wrote to Mr. Bradley Kelly inRedding that she thought it a superb idea to

harmonize the Russians and Americansthrough their authors or any other possible

means, and offered her heartfelt sympathywith his great plan.

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Reddings Role in the

50th

& 100th

AnniversaryIt is interesting that 50 years after Mark Twains

death, because a Redding resident had adream to help build a cultural exchange

between the United Statesand Russia,that Mark Twains library was able to play a

major role. And that now, 100 years after hisdeath, we are gathered together to once

again celebrate the life of this greatAmericanauthor, and that of a great

Russianauthor, Leo Tolstoy.

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This presentation is over for now, I

thank you all for watching!!

Someone please have a whiskey &

a smoke for me.

Mapk-Tbeh

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