(1870s)
In this satiric fable the Emperor-God displays toward the Unyumians the qualities Clemens had in the 1870s associated with the “God of the Bible.” At the same time, this deity also exhibits toward other peoples some of the attributes of the real God, as Clemens had envisioned him:
Its the Bible's God was strictly proportioned to its dimensions. His sole solicitude was about a handful of truculent nomads. He worried and fretted over them in a peculiarly and distractingly human way. One day he coaxed and petted them beyond their due, the next he harried and lashed them beyond their deserts. . . .
To trust the God of the Bible is to trust an irascible, vindictive, fierce and ever fickle and changeful master; to trust the true God is to trust a Being who has uttered no promises, but whose beneficent, exact, and changeless ordering of the machinery of his colossal universe is proof that he is at least steadfast to his purposes; whose unwritten laws, so far as they affect man, being equal and impartial, show that he is just and fair. . . .1
Much of what is here expressed remained Clemens' view throughout his life. In one important regard, however, he modified his outlook: he came to doubt the justice and fairness of the real God. In his Autobiographical Dictation of 23 June 1906 the actual God is seen to be as intolerable as the biblical one: he does not answer prayers or otherwise relieve human miseries. Instead, “He made it an unchanging law that that creature should [begin page 117] suffer wanton and unnecessary pains and miseries every day of its life—that by that law these pains and miseries could not be avoided. . . .”2 Clemens concluded:
the genuine God, the Maker of the mighty universe is just like all the other gods in the list. He proves every day that He takes no interest in man, nor in the other animals, further than to torture them, slay them and get out of this pastime such entertainment as it may afford—and do what He can not to get weary of the eternal and changeless monotony of it.3
In “The Emperor-God Satire” it may be seen that for Clemens the distinction between the God of the Bible and the real God was in the 1870s already becoming blurred—and that neither kind of deity was beyond the range of his satire.
“The Emperor-God Satire” is a descriptive title applied to the manuscript at the time Bernard DeVoto was the Editor of the Mark Twain Papers. The sketch is written on the same paper as that used for the essay “The Proportions of God,” which Paine indicates was written in the 1870s. This piece may be conjecturally assigned to the same period.
The Emperor is not merely honored by his subjects, but actually worshiped. His hair and beard are as white as snow, but his countenance is gloomy and forbidding. He is said to be more than a hundredⒶalteration in the MS years old, and certainly he looks it. He says—and the people believe—that he has always reigned there, and never died. When his spirit is tired of occupying one body, it enters into another, (always that of a priest,—a priest of the highest rank,)Ⓐalteration in the MS and the former is embalmed and placed with its innumerable predecessors in a vast and ancient mausoleum. This immortal Emperor visits the mausoleum, at long intervals, and contemplates himself in the twelveⒶalteration in the MS hundred and forty-six varyingⒶalteration in the MS forms which he has worn during elevenⒶalteration in the MS thousand years. The embalming has been perfectly done; a stranger could not tell the oldest mummies from the newestⒶalteration in the MS but by the dates marked upon them. The Emperor has had preferences among these forms. He will point to one and say, “I enjoyed that body, it had a youthful spring in its muscles; also the one in yonder alcove—in the five thousand years that have passed since I occupied it, my spirit has not been clothed in such comelyⒶalteration in the MS flesh.”
The great cities and civilized nations are all in the interior; none are close to the sea. The belt which borders the sea, all around, is occupied by savages entirely, and always has been. The Emperor lives in a remote little valley called Unyumi,Ⓐalteration in the MS whose half-score of meagre tribes are mere savages, and by nature childish, troublesome, and vicious. Nevertheless [begin page 119] they have been the object of the Emperor's sole solicitude, from the beginning. He is only the spiritual head of the rest of the land, a sort of Pope, and has never had anything to do with its civil government nor had any desiresⒶalteration in the MS in that direction. In all the lagging ages that have drifted over his head he has never once visited the civilized regions. The priests in the civilized regions sacrifice to him in their temples before congregations more or less devout, but made up mainly of women. The men show no great zeal except in time of soreⒶalteration in the MS private or public distress. Prayers, for help, temporal and spiritual—in the form of written petitionsⒶalteration in the MS,—are offered in the temples by the people, accompanied by more or less costly gifts. At stated intervals deputations of priests gather the prayers together and convey them across the plains and mountains and deposit them, with a small per centageⒶalteration in the MS of the gifts, in an empty temple situated just outside the limits of the Unyumi valley, and then return home. They have seen no one. Priests ofⒶalteration in the MS the Emperor remove the deposits by night. The gifts, coming as they do from so many communities, make a great revenue for the Emperor and his Unyumi temples. The prayers are laid before the throne with the unvarying formula, “The petitions read as always—will your Sacredness examine them?” The answer is always the same: “My laws are equable and permanent, I cannot interrupt their wide and beneficent ebb and flow to accommodate ephemeral caprice—burn the prayers.”
The Emperor's relations with his handful of ignorant and brutish Unyumi tribes is wholly different. His interest in them and fondness for them amount to infatuation.—While he will not trouble himself in the least degree with the governmental affairs of the island at large, he gives constant and tireless attention to the state affairs of the Unyumians. He sets up their petty tribal kings, he suspends them, chastises them, pulls them down, slaughters them, alters the succession, reinstates the former line—all according to his moods and caprices. So long as one of these shabby princes pleases him he heaps favors and benefits upon him with a frantic and spendthrift lavishness; but any petty offense willⒶalteration in the MS instantly turn the Emperor's love to hate and he will straightway launch death and desolation upon that prince and all his belongings.
The Emperor not only fills and empties the inconsequent thrones of Unyumi, heⒶalteration in the MS descends lower, and writes the tribal laws with his own [begin page 120] hand; lower still: he orders the details of priestly service in the temples, appoints this underling and that, for this and that office, and even tells how the sacrificial animal shall be baked,Ⓐalteration in the MS and which portions of it shall be eaten by the priest and which discarded; and yet lower: he concerns himself with the small domestic matters of the Unyumi families, even exposing in plain words and compactingⒶalteration in the MS into inflexible laws, things pertaining to the married relation which are consideredⒶalteration in the MS of too private a nature for such handling in other countries.
He looks at no prayer that comes from beyond the limits of Unyumi, nor interrupts the operation of any law in answer to such; but no prayer of an Unyumian, howsoever base his estate,Ⓐalteration in the MS goes unconsidered, even though it propose to arrest the movement of the most important of his edicts. Tradition says that some centuries ago the most enlightened and exalted of the great nations of the interior implored him to send rains upon their parched fields. This time his priests read the petition to him, because of its extreme importance, that nation being threatened with the horrors of famine;Ⓐalteration in the MS but he answered that the law of rains and drouths was general, and he would not alter it for the momentary benefit of a communityⒶalteration in the MS. Yet at the same time he interrupted a great general law, upon quite trifling grounds, in behalf of an Unyumi priest. He had sent this priest to command a neighboring tribe of pagans to retire into banishment and give up their lands to some families of Unyumians who needed them as a grazing ground for their flocks and herds. The pagans mocked at the priest and scouted his credentials, saying these were forged. So the priest petitioned the Emperor for a sign that would convince the insulters, and in answer the Emperor caused the moon to turn back upon its path in the sky and re-traverse the arch from horizon to horizon. This wonder wrought the purpose it was designed to work,—and much more beside; for it so disordered theⒶalteration in the MS tides that they did not recover their regular ebb and flow for many months, and during that interval the turbulent waters leaped their bounds andⒶalteration in the MS destroyed untold thousands of people in all the seacoasts of the island—yet these wereⒶalteration in the MS people who were remote from the scene of the eviction, were not connected with the stubborn and doubting tribe, nor evenⒶalteration in the MS aware of its existence, but imagined that they had brought these fatal invasions of the seas upon themselves through some unwitting neglect of theirs toward the Emperor.Ⓐalteration in the MS
The manuscript is copy-text. There are no textual notes, no emendations have been made, and no ambiguous compound is hyphenated at the end of a line in the manuscript.