Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc, by the Sieur Louis de Conte (1896)

I was tiring of Mark Twain somewhat after diligently reading a fair portion of his work, mostly chronologically, I almost skipped this gem and its strangely reverent fictionalized treatment of the life of Joan of Arc. The narrator of the formal long title, Sieur Louis de Conte, is based on a real person who grew up with Joan. She is a historical figure I never learned much about, only what I know from the epic silent movie of 1928, The Passion of Joan of Arc, which is only about her trial and death. This novel tells the whole weird, glorious story—tells it well, too—of the illiterate country girl of 17 who restored France’s faith in itself and was burnt at the stake for her troubles two years later, at 19. She has “Visions” (Twain’s capitalization). Sure, here in the 21st century we may be more inclined to account for a lot of it as mental illness. As if to shore up her credibility, Twain includes anecdotes that seem to indicate supernatural powers. Not sure how true some of these stories are. It’s fair to call the Joan of Arc story, even in its simplest terms, amazing—and of course it gets better when you make up miracles to go along with it. But it seems unlikely to me that Twain made up the apparent miracles we see here. He did have long-honed journalistic instincts, after all, although he is also plainly smitten with Joan, so maybe gullible in his readings. The same story about seeing through a ruse to correctly identify the king of France on her first meeting with him, for example, also appears in the 1999 Luc Besson movie The Messenger, but it’s not corroborated in Wikipedia. Now I want to seek out a good biography. Anyway, I found it interesting that Twain considered this his best novel, which is saying something considering the high general regard in the 20th century for Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. But I’m inclined to agree. Huck Finn, the only other contender (or maybe The Mysterious Stranger?), has beautiful passages that cement it with American experience in unusually pure ways, but as a novel it is deeply flawed. Even its most ardent advocates tend to dismiss the last third wholesale. Twain spent much of his career mocking and excoriating Romantic literature, yet here he betrays certain affinities with it. At the same time, Twain has much latitude to exercise his misgivings and prejudices about organized religion, as the trials of Joan of Arc represent a low point (among many) for the Catholic Church. A lot of the most annoying yarn-spinning tics of Twain are restrained here, though they do appear. It is historical fiction and a swooning romantic story, but it’s easily the most competent novel Twain ever wrote. If it doesn’t hit the heights of some of those Huck Finn passages, the voice that made them work commands this whole novel.

In case the library is closed due to pandemic, which is over. (Library of America)