Contents: introduction. 3 Chapter. I. Mark twain‘s impact on literature

Conclusion

To conclude our course paper is important to say that Mark Twain was a solitary performer working in dusty, drafty, dimly lit halls, sans audio equipment; he knew every trick to keep his audiences. His delivery, emotion, intelligence and humor would bring crowds to their feet. The power was in his voice and that doesn‘t imply high volume, but his expressed genius. Mark Twain is one of the most famous American writers in our country. His books are being read in our country for more than one hundred years already, and interest to his creative activity is still not decreased. Opposite, we can boldly say that with each new generation, who opens for themselves Twain's books, the attention of the reader to Twain becomes broader and deeper.
The personality of a writer constantly causes sympathy and respect because of unrestrained gaiety of the early Twain and, anger and bitterness of the late Twain. During his known trip to USA in 1906 A.M. Gorky had got acquaintance with Twain. The former characterized the outstanding humorist as following: "Beside on his large skull there were splendid hair, - somewhat like wild stripes of white, cool fire.‖ - enchanted by the old writer, Gorky wrote.‖ From beneath heavy, always half-lowered ages, there is vividly seen a clever and sharp, brilliance, sculpture eye, but, when they are taken a look straight in your face, you feel that all wrinkles on him are measured and will remain forever in memories of this person.‖¹⁰With the help of the Twain's books, tales, journeys, we get acquainted with the American folk, American history, their customs, and the beauty of the American nature. The Great Russian poet Nicolay Aseev wrote: ―I am very fond of Mark Twain. He, with the only one wave of his hand, instantly carries me to the bank of the majesticMississippi river. And I see in the silver depths the life of the people of the Mississippi.
He did practically everything that was expected of a man of letters in his age, and he generally acquitted himself well in every department. He gave his countrymen pride in themselves, their humor, their literature. And he elevated the station of his calling: among Twain's achievements, one of his grandest was his success in making literary humor seem like a respectable profession. His wealth, his Nook Farm home, his fraternal relations with the influential and the lionized-these and other signs of status laid a benediction on his career so lasting that all subsequent authors of comic sketches, stories, and novels owe him a large debt. He rescued the funnyman from the smudged-print pages of Billings, Phoenix, and Nasby and restored him to the honored tradition of Benjamin Franklin, Oliver Wendell Holmes, and James Russell Lowell. Moreover, Twain mixed seriousness and comedy so subtly in works like A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court that he himself did not always understand his initial intentions, and he thus educated publishers and reviewers and readers about the deeper possibilities of humor, preparing American audiences for John Cheever, Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., Thomas Berger, John Barth, and others. American literature would have flourished without Mark Twain's contributions. Yet it would be stuffier, less redolent of the river and the West, less alluring. He has given us, along with rich impressions of life on rafts, steamboats, stage coaches, railroad cars, and ocean ships, a reassurance that we are not travelling into some black hole of the future, that we have a renewable and accessible past that guarantees a sane and attainable future. By finding amusement in the writings and speeches of one American figure of the nineteenth century, we assuage disturbing anxieties about our historical and cultural isolation when we contemplate with misgivings the dawning age of computer technology, biological engineering, and galactic transportation. If we can palpably touch the steamboat pilot's wheel with Mark Twain, then our grip on the spaceship controls of the twenty-first century feels surer as we extend our capacity to shuttle a supply of humor into the farther reaches of human history.