I found another book I couldn’t put down this week, one I’ll
admit I purchased primarily because of its size.
While out on a thrifty adventure I stumbled upon The Diaries of Adam & Eve, a 63 page book by the characteristically witty, concise Mark Twain.
Having never read Twain before I figured I was overdue. And knowing him to be a lauded humorist I figured I’d appreciate his amusing take on one of the most discussed events in all of human history: The Fall of Man.
The book begins with Adam’s take on life in, and after, the Garden of Eden. In his first entry he comments on the new long-haired creature that has been placed there with him.
“It is always hanging around and following me about. I don’t
like this;
I am not used to company. I wish it would stay with the other
animals…
We? Where did I get that word…
I remember now-the new creature
uses it.”
Throughout the book it is Adam's commentary on Eve that proves the funniest (at least to me). But maybe that's because Eve’s diary hit much closer to home.
Even in paradise, Eve begins life with a desire for companionship, both with the other animals and especially with Adam.
From the start she is bent towards discontent.
She is mesmerized by the flowers, stars and waterfalls, but she longs to call them her own.
She needs closeness, and it pains her when Adam avoids her attempts at friendship.
As time progresses both Adam and Eve’s takes on each other change.
In this progression the “diaries” become an acute look at the differences of the sexes that make life both difficult and rich. The entire book is about love, as much as it is about life, the beginning or The Garden.
Eve puts it this way:
“When I look back the Garden is a
dream to me.
It was beautiful, surpassingly beautiful, enchantingly beautiful,
and now it is lost, and I shall not see it anymore
The Garden is lost, but I have found him, and am content…”
I found it really interesting, this look at what drives us at our deepest cores. It made me wonder if I would have longed for the same things I want now, the same things Eve longed for (at least in Twain’s mind) even if I had existed before “the fall.”
The close of the book is what speaks the most about the human existence, though, and how it is always changed by love.
As time passes Adam’s take on the once new creature changes drastically, until his heart has softened to her so that his final words, the ones he speaks over Eve’s grave, are these:
Is that not beautiful?
That line pretty much melted my heart.
And it definitely made me a fan of Mr. Twain.
The foreword for the book is written by Columbia English professor, J.V. Ridgely, who says Twain began writing the book while his own wife was sick. He actually finished Eve’s entries after her death.
Knowing that, these fictional diaries become an even sweeter look at the meaning that love brings into our lives, poignant confirmation that we were made for relationship, whether we realize it or not.
And I think that’s a particularly powerful confirmation coming from a man known for observing the darkness in life as much as, or more than, the light.
In another of Twain’s books, he claims that humanity’s only defense against the darkness is laughter.
But Ridgely believes this book is proof there’s one other. He closes his forward by saying,
“… these dairies of Adam and Eve make poignantly explicit,
there was one other weapon.
It was, of course, the endurance of human love.”
Good stuff, this one.
Really good stuff.
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