When I told the king I was going out disguised as a petty freeman to scour the country and familiarize myself with the humbler life of the people, he was all afire with the novelty of the thing in a minute, and was bound to take a chance in the adventure himself—nothing should stop him—he would drop everything and go along—it was the prettiest idea he had run across for many a day. He wanted to glide out the back way and start at once; but I showed him that that wouldn’t answer. You see, he was billed for the king’s-evil—to touch for it, I mean—and it wouldn’t be right to disappoint the house and it wouldn’t make a delay worth considering, anyway, it was only a one-night stand. And I thought he ought to tell the queen he was going away. He clouded up at that and looked sad. I was sorry I had spoken, especially when he said mournfully:
“Thou forgettest that Launcelot is here; and where Launcelot is, she noteth not the going forth of the king, nor what day he returneth.”
Of course, I changed the Subject. Yes, Guenever was beautiful, it is true, but take her all around she was pretty slack. I never meddled in these matters, they weren’t my affair, but I did hate to see the way things were going on, and I don’t mind saying that much. Many’s the time she had asked me, “Sir Boss, hast seen Sir Launcelot about?” but if ever she went fretting around for the king I didn’t happen to be around at the time.
There was a very good lay-out for the king’s-evil business—very tidy and creditable. The king sat under a canopy of state; about him were clustered a large body of the clergy in full canonicals. Conspicuous, both for location and personal outfit, stood Marinel, a hermit of the quack-doctor species, to introduce the sick. All abroad over the spacious floor, and clear down to the doors, in a thick jumble, lay or sat the scrofulous, under a strong light. It was as good as a tableau; in fact, it had all the look of being gotten up for that, though it wasn’t. There were eight hundred sick people present. The work was slow; it lacked the interest of novelty for me, because I had seen the ceremonies before; the thing soon became tedious, but the proprieties required me to stick it out. The doctor was there for the reason that in all such crowds there were many people who only imagined something was the matter with them, and many who were consciously sound but wanted the immortal honor of fleshly contact with a king, and yet others who pretended to illness in order to get the piece of coin that went with the touch. Up to this time this coin had been a wee little gold piece worth about a third of a dollar. When you consider how much that amount of money would buy, in that age and country, and how usual it was to be scrofulous, when not dead, you would understand that the annual king’s-evil appropriation was just the River and Harbor bill of that government for the grip it took on the treasury and the chance it afforded for skinning the surplus. So I had privately concluded to touch the treasury itself for the king’s-evil. I covered six-sevenths of the appropriation into the treasury a week before starting from Camelot on my adventures, and ordered that the other seventh be inflated into five-cent nickels and delivered into the hands of the head clerk of the King’s Evil Department; a nickel to take the place of each gold coin, you see, and do its work for it. It might strain the nickel some, but I judged it could stand it. As a rule, I do not approve of watering stock, but I considered it square enough in this case, for it was just a gift, anyway. Of course, you can water a gift as much as you want to; and I generally do. The old gold and silver coins of the country were of ancient and origin, as a rule, but some of them were Roman; they were ill-shapen, and seldom rounder than a moon that is a week past the full; they were hammered, not minted, and they were so worn with use that the devices upon them were as illegible as blisters, and looked like them. I judged that a sharp, bright new nickel, with a first-rate likeness of the king on one side of it and Guenever on the other, and a blooming pious motto, would take the tuck out of scrofula as handy as a nobler coin and please the scrofulous fancy more; and I was right. This batch was the first it was tried on, and it worked to a charm. The saving in expense was a notable economy. You will see that by these figures: We touched a trifle over 700 of the 800 patients; at former rates, this would have cost the government about $240; at the new rate we pulled through for about $35, thus saving upward of $200 at one swoop. To appreciate the full magnitude of this stroke, consider these other figures: the annual expenses of a national government amount to the equivalent of a contribution of three days’ average wages of every individual of the population, counting every individual as if he were a man. If you take a nation of 60,000,000, where average wages are $2 per day, three days’ wages taken from each individual will provide $360,000,000 and pay the government’s expenses. In my day, in my own country, this money was collected from imposts, and the citizen imagined that the foreign importer paid it, and it made him comfortable to think so; whereas, in fact, it was paid by the American people, and was so equally and exactly distributed among them that the annual cost to the 100-millionaire and the annual cost to the sucking child of the day-laborer was precisely the same—each paid $6. Nothing could be equaler than that, I reckon. Well, Scotland and Ireland were tributary to Arthur, and the united populations of the British Islands amounted to something less than 1,000,000. A mechanic’s average wage was 3 cents a day, when he paid his own keep. By this rule the national government’s expenses were $90,000 a year, or about $250 a day. Thus, by the substitution of nickels for gold on a king’s-evil day, I not only injured no one, dissatisfied no one, but pleased all concerned and saved four-fifths of that day’s national expense into the bargain—a saving which would have been the equivalent of $800,000 in my day in America. In making this substitution I had drawn upon the wisdom of a very remote source—the wisdom of my boyhood—for the true statesman does not despise any wisdom, howsoever lowly may be its origin: in my boyhood I had always saved my pennies and contributed buttons to the foreign missionary cause. The buttons would answer the ignorant savage as well as the coin, the coin would answer me better than the buttons; all hands were happy and nobody hurt.
Marinel took the patients as they came. He examined the candidate; if he couldn’t qualify he was warned off; if he could he was passed along to the king. A priest pronounced the words, “They shall lay their hands on the sick, and they shall recover.” Then the king stroked the ulcers, while the reading continued; finally, the patient graduated and got his nickel—the king hanging it around his neck himself—and was dismissed. Would you think that that would cure? It certainly did. Any mummery will cure if the patient’s faith is strong in it. Up by Astolat there was a chapel where the Virgin had once appeared to a girl who used to herd geese around there—the girl said so herself—and they built the chapel upon that spot and hung a picture in it representing the occurrence—a picture which you would think it dangerous for a sick person to approach; whereas, on the contrary, thousands of the lame and the sick came and prayed before it every year and went away whole and sound; and even the well could look upon it and live. Of course, when I was told these things I did not believe them; but when I went there and saw them I had to succumb. I saw the cures effected myself; and they were real cures and not questionable. I saw cripples whom I had seen around Camelot for years on crutches, arrive and pray before that picture, and put down their crutches and walk off without a limp. There were piles of crutches there which had been left by such people as a testimony.
In other places people operated on a patient’s mind, without saying a word to him, and cured him. In others, experts assembled patients in a room and prayed over them, and appealed to their faith, and those patients went away cured. Wherever you find a king who can’t cure the king’s-evil you can be sure that the most valuable superstition that supports his throne—the subject’s belief in the divine appointment of his sovereign—has passed away. In my youth the monarchs of England had ceased to touch for the evil, but there was no occasion for this diffidence: they could have cured it forty-nine times in fifty.
Well, when the priest had been droning for three hours, and the good king polishing the evidences, and the sick were still pressing forward as plenty as ever, I got to feeling intolerably bored. I was sitting by an open window not far from the canopy of state. For the five hundredth time a patient stood forward to have his repulsivenesses stroked; again those words were being droned out: “they shall lay their hands on the sick”—when outside there rang clear as a clarion a note that enchanted my soul and tumbled thirteen worthless centuries about my ears: “Camelot Weekly Hosannah and Literary Volcano! —latest irruption—only two cents —all about the big miracle in the Valley of Holiness!” One greater than kings had arrived—the newsboy. But I was the only person in all that throng who knew the meaning of this mighty birth, and what this imperial magician was come into the world to do.
I dropped a nickel out of the window and got my paper; the Adam-newsboy of the world went around the corner to get my change; is around the corner yet. It was delicious to see a newspaper again, yet I was conscious of a secret shock when my eye fell upon the first batch of display head-lines. I had lived in a clammy atmosphere of reverence, respect, deference, so long that they sent a quivery little cold wave through me:
—and so on, and so on. Yes, it was too loud. Once I could have enjoyed it and seen nothing out of the way about it, but now its note was discordant. It was good Arkansas journalism, but this was not Arkansas. Moreover, the next to the last line was calculated to give offense to the hermits, and perhaps lose us their advertising. Indeed, there was too lightsome a tone of flippancy all through the paper. It was plain I had undergone a considerable change without noticing it. I found myself unpleasantly affected by pert little irreverencies which would have seemed but proper and airy graces of speech at an earlier period of my life. There was an abundance of the following breed of items, and they discomforted me:
Of course it was good enough journalism for a beginning; I knew that quite well, and yet it was somehow disappointing. The “Court Circular” pleased me better; indeed, its simple and dignified respectfulness was a distinct refreshment to me after all those disgraceful familiarities. But even it could have been improved. Do what one may, there is no getting an air of variety into a court circular, I acknowledge that. There is a profound monotonousness about its facts that baffles and defeats one’s sincerest efforts to make them sparkle and enthuse. The best way to manage—in fact, the only sensible way—is to disguise repetitiousness of fact under variety of form: skin your fact each time and lay on a new cuticle of words. It deceives the eye; you think it is a new fact; it gives you the idea that the court is carrying on like everything; this excites you, and you drain the whole column, with a good appetite, and perhaps never notice that it’s a barrel of soup made out of a single bean. Clarence’s way was good, it was simple, it was dignified, it was direct and business-like; all I say is, it was not the best way:
COURT CIRCULAR.
On Monday, the king rode in the park. “ Tuesday, “ “ “ “ Wendesday “ “ “ “ Thursday “ “ “ “ Friday, “ “ “ “ Saturday “ “ “ “ Sunday, “ “ “ However, take the paper by and large, I was vastly pleased with it. Little crudities of a mechanical sort were observable here and there, but there were not enough of them to amount to anything, and it was good enough Arkansas proof-reading, anyhow, and better than was needed in Arthur’s day and realm. As a rule, the grammar was leaky and the construction more or less lame; but I did not much mind these things. They are common defects of my own, and one mustn’t criticise other people on grounds where he can’t stand perpendicular himself.
I was hungry enough for literature to want to take down the whole paper at this one meal, but I got only a few bites, and then had to postpone, because the monks around me besieged me so with eager questions: What is this curious thing? What is it for? Is it a handkerchief?—saddle blanket?—part of a shirt? What is it made of? How thin it is, and how dainty and frail; and how it rattles. Will it wear, do you think, and won’t the rain injure it? Is it writing that appears on it, or is it only ornamentation? They suspected it was writing, because those among them who knew how to read Latin and had a smattering of Greek, recognized some of the letters, but they could make nothing out of the result as a whole. I put my information in the simplest form I could:
“It is a public journal; I will explain what that is, another time. It is not cloth, it is made of paper; some time I will explain what paper is. The lines on it are reading matter; and not written by hand, but printed; by and by I will explain what printing is. A thousand of these sheets have been made, all exactly like this, in every minute detail—they can’t be told apart.” Then they all broke out with exclamations of surprise and admiration:
“A thousand! Verily a mighty work—a year’s work for many men.”
“No—merely a day’s work for a man and a boy.”
They crossed themselves, and whiffed out a protective prayer or two.
“Ah-h—a miracle, a wonder! Dark work of enchantment.”
I let it go at that. Then I read in a low voice, to as many as could crowd their shaven heads within hearing distance, part of the account of the miracle of the restoration of the well, and was accompanied by astonished and reverent ejaculations all through: “Ah-h-h!” “How true!” “Amazing, amazing!” “These be the very haps as they happened, in marvelous exactness!” And might they take this strange thing in their hands, and feel of it and examine it?—they would be very careful. Yes. So they took it, handling it as cautiously and devoutly as if it had been some holy thing come from some supernatural region; and gently felt of its texture, caressed its pleasant smooth surface with lingering touch, and scanned the mysterious characters with fascinated eyes. These grouped bent heads, these charmed faces, these speaking eyes —how beautiful to me! For was not this my darling, and was not all this mute wonder and interest and homage a most eloquent tribute and unforced compliment to it? I knew, then, how a mother feels when women, whether strangers or friends, take her new baby, and close themselves about it with one eager impulse, and bend their heads over it in a tranced adoration that makes all the rest of the universe vanish out of their consciousness and be as if it were not, for that time. I knew how she feels, and that there is no other satisfied ambition, whether of king, conqueror, or poet, that ever reaches half-way to that serene far summit or yields half so divine a contentment.
During all the rest of the seance my paper traveled from group to group all up and down and about that huge hall, and my happy eye was upon it always, and I sat motionless, steeped in satisfaction, drunk with enjoyment. Yes, this was heaven; I was tasting it once, if I might never taste it more.
Hintergrund und Einführung des Autors
Dieser Abschnitt stammt aus "The King’s Evil", einer Geschichte von Mark Twain, einem gefeierten amerikanischen Autor, der für seinen scharfen Witz und seine aufschlussreichen Sozialkommentare bekannt ist. Twain nutzte oft Humor und Satire, um die menschliche Natur und die Fehler der Gesellschaft zu erforschen. Diese Geschichte spielt am legendären Hofe von König Artus und kombiniert historische Fantasie mit Twains einzigartiger Perspektive auf Politik, Aberglauben und menschliches Verhalten.
Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) lebte im 19. Jahrhundert und ist berühmt für Klassiker wie Die Abenteuer von Tom Sawyer und Abenteuer von Huckleberry Finn. Seine Werke reflektieren oft über Moral, Gesellschaft und die menschliche Verfassung, was sie für Leser jeden Alters wertvoll macht.
Detaillierte Interpretation und Bedeutung
Die Geschichte kritisiert humorvoll die Praxis des "Königsübels" – ein historischer Glaube, dass Könige Skrofulose (eine Form der Tuberkulose) heilen konnten, indem sie die Betroffenen berührten. Twain nutzt diese Kulisse, um Themen wie Macht, Glaube und die Beziehung zwischen Herrschern und ihren Untertanen zu erforschen. Die Bereitschaft des Königs, am Abenteuer als einfacher Bürger teilzunehmen, zeigt seine Neugier und seinen Wunsch, sich mit seinem Volk zu verbinden, aber das Ritual des Berührens für das Königsübel offenbart die Mischung aus Aberglauben und Politik, die seine Autorität aufrechterhält.
Twains Einführung des Nickels, der die Goldmünze ersetzt, symbolisiert praktische Innovation und Wirtschaftsreform und zeigt, wie kleine Veränderungen erhebliche Auswirkungen haben können. Die Geschichte hebt auch hervor, wie Glaube und Überzeugung wahre Heilung bewirken können, selbst wenn die Heilung selbst symbolisch oder psychologisch ist.
Die Ankunft der Zeitung repräsentiert den Beginn moderner Information und Kommunikation und steht im Gegensatz zu den alten Wegen der Ehrfurcht und des Geheimnisses. Twains Reflexion darüber, wie die Mönche auf die Zeitung reagieren, zeigt den Zusammenstoß zwischen Tradition und Fortschritt.
Lektionen und Erkenntnisse für Schüler
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Kritisches Denken und Hinterfragen der Tradition: Die Geschichte ermutigt die Leser, über Bräuche und Überzeugungen kritisch nachzudenken. Während der Glaube mächtig sein kann, ist es wichtig, die Gründe für Traditionen zu verstehen und offen für Veränderungen und Innovationen zu sein.
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Die Macht des Glaubens und der Hoffnung: Twain zeigt, dass der Glaube selbst heilend sein kann. Dies lehrt die Schüler die Stärke des positiven Denkens und der Hoffnung bei der Überwindung von Schwierigkeiten.
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Führung und Empathie: Der Wunsch des Königs, das Leben seines Volkes zu verstehen, erinnert die Schüler daran, dass Führungskräfte einfühlsam sein und sich mit denjenigen verbinden sollten, denen sie dienen.
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Wert der Innovation: Der Ersatz von Nickeln für Goldmünzen veranschaulicht, wie kreative Lösungen die Gesellschaft verbessern und Ressourcen sparen können – eine Lektion in Problemlösung und Einfallsreichtum.
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Die Bedeutung der Kommunikation: Die Einführung der Zeitung unterstreicht, wie der Zugang zu Informationen Gesellschaften verändern kann, und betont den Wert des Lernens, der Alphabetisierung und des Informiertbleibens.
Anwendung dieser Lektionen im täglichen Leben
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Im Lernen: Die Schüler können kritisches Denken anwenden, indem sie hinterfragen, was sie lesen und hören, nach Beweisen suchen und offen für neue Ideen sind.
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In sozialen Situationen: Empathie und das Verständnis der Perspektiven anderer, wie der Ansatz des Königs, helfen beim Aufbau stärkerer Freundschaften und Gemeinschaften.
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Im persönlichen Wachstum: Das Aufrechterhalten von Hoffnung und Glauben während Herausforderungen kann die mentale Widerstandsfähigkeit und Motivation verbessern.
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In der Kreativität: Das Suchen nach innovativen Wegen zur Lösung von Problemen, auch kleinen, kann zu sinnvollen Verbesserungen führen.
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Im bürgerschaftlichen Engagement: Informiert bleiben durch Lesen und Kommunikation befähigt die Schüler, aktiv und verantwortungsbewusst in der Gesellschaft teilzunehmen.
Positive Werte aus der Geschichte kultivieren
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Neugier: Seien Sie wie der König neugierig auf die Welt jenseits Ihrer unmittelbaren Erfahrung.
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Respekt vor Tradition und Fortschritt: Schätzen Sie den Wert von Geschichte und Kultur, aber nehmen Sie auch Fortschritt und neue Ideen an.
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Großzügigkeit und Dienst: Die Rolle des Königs bei der Heilung zeigt, wie wichtig es ist, anderen mit Freundlichkeit zu dienen.
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Glaube an sich selbst und andere: Glauben Sie an Ihr Potenzial und unterstützen Sie andere auf ihren Wegen.
Diese Geschichte ist eine reiche Mischung aus Geschichte, Fantasie und Sozialkommentaren, die jungen Lesern wertvolle Einblicke in die menschliche Natur, Führung und die Macht des Glaubens bietet. Indem sie über ihre Themen nachdenken, können Schüler kritisches Denken, Empathie und Kreativität entwickeln, allesamt unerlässlich für ihr Wachstum als nachdenkliche und engagierte Individuen.
