Samuel Clemens (aka Mark Twain, 1835–1910) and Seymour Chwast (pronounced Kwast, b. 1931) have more in common than their initials. They share a profound antipathy for war, and each has employed his talents for acerbic commentary in waging war on war—Twain through his writing and stagecraft, Chwast through his illustration, drawing and painting. Now, these two maestros of wit and satire come together for the first time in the book Mark Twain: The War Prayer (Fantagraphics), illustrated and designed by Chwast.
As massive numbers of people are killed, maimed and displaced in too many strife-torn regions of this already fragile planet, The War Prayer, Twain’s tour de coeur, is more resonant than ever. This prose poem—written in 1905, rejected by his publisher and unpublished until many years after his death—is as relevant as ever. Chwast’s startling imagery shares the same human poignancy of this mocking, though heartfelt, prayer.
In 1898, Twain was despairing over the hypocrisy of the manufactured Spanish-American War, which was started by the U.S. to wrest valuable territories (and notably the Philippines) from Spain. Using gunboat diplomacy, under the pretext of helping Filipinos win their independence from Spain, the U.S. forced the Spanish crown to sell the Pacific islands to the American victors. Once accomplished, the U.S. turned against and bitterly fought Filipino insurgents who resumed their fight for independence. Twain believed that U.S. war policy abridged American principles and decried this expansion of “manifest destiny” (a precursor of American exceptionalism) as bald-faced imperialism. During the bloody counter-insurgency, Twain joined the Anti-Imperialist league.
Twain was incensed when American soldiers slaughtered a group of 600 Filipino men, women and children who had taken refuge and were trapped in a volcano. In his autobiography, he wrote scathingly of the hypocrisy and brutality of America’s actions. From this evolved his anti-war stance and his only means of retaliation: the caustic solemnity and wit of The War Prayer.
Chwast’s take on the poem adds another dimension to this timely work. He has introduced varied styles to telegraph Twain’s uncompromising commentary targeting one war as emblematic of the horror of all war.
In “The Lowest Animal,” a separate essay used as a foreword to contextualize this new edition, Twain writes, “I have been scientifically studying the traits and disposition of the ‘lower animals’ (so-called) and contrasting them with the traits and dispositions of man. I find the result profoundly humiliating to me. For it obliges me to renounce my allegiance to the Darwinian theory of the Ascent of Man from the Lower Animals; since it now seems plain to me that the theory ought to be vacated in favor of a new and truer one … one to be named the Descent of Man from Higher Animals.”
More than half a century before the Vietnam War and the anti-war movement it spawned—a movement that Chwast marched in and made protest art for—Mark Twain protested American aggression overseas. The Philippines was America’s first step toward an international policy of controlling foreign lands. The Philippine-American War was an affront to Twain’s American beliefs, just as Vietnam was to Chwast’s.
The spreads below comprise the first part of The War Prayer, where Twain exposes the “holy fire of patriotism” to ignite firestorm in the American people for the “great and exalting excitement” of the nation up in arms. A rousing newspaper headline style, typical of the era, is Chwast’s leitmotif.
Chwast will be reading a passage from The War Prayer and talking about the book with me on Aug. 14 at the Society of Illustrators, New York. Please join us.
