In Priboj, there is a bridge over the river that leads to the city center. If it is bypassed, you are also in the center, you will only reach it a few minutes later.As a child, I always crossed the bridge and then came back the same way, in the belief that if I changed the path, maybe something different would happen.At the time, I was reading Mark Twain's book ,,The Mysterious Stranger."
Mark Twain, real name Samuel Langhorne Clemens was born in the small town of Florida, Missouri, as the sixth child of Judges John Marshall Clemens and Jane Lampton Clemens. He dropped out of school at the age of twelve due to his father's death, and began working as a printing scientist. At the age of eighteen (1853) he left Hannibal and after several migrations and a multitude of jobs decided to become a shipowner on Mississippi. His experiences from the river and from river life have forever been recorded in his novels, and even in his name: “Mark Twain” was the exclamation of a man checking the depth of a river, meaning a depth of just over three and a half meters, or other in words, deep enough water to navigate.
In 1890, after the collapse of his publishing house, Twain fell into financial trouble. To recover from bankruptcy, he begins a world tour of lectures during which his pet, daughter Susy, dies of meningitis. After the tour he published the satirical historical novels "The Yankees of Connecticut at King Arthur's Court" (1889) and "Stupid Wilson" (1894).
Another terrible event clouded the fame and success of the great writer, when in 1904 his wife and second (out of three) daughter died in Florence. After that, heavy despair and pessimism are irrevocably drawn into Twain's works.
Twain was also remembered as a good friend of Nikola Tesla. The famous scientist was among those who were conquered by Twain's works as a child. As a high school student, he read them in the hospital. Many years before they met, Twain was fascinated by Tesla's ideas. Their acquaintance was marked as one of the most intriguing friendships of recent times.
Twain's book "The Mysterious Stranger" was published for the first time six years after the writer's death, and according to some sources, it was created as a result of a complex relationship between two geniuses.
When Nikola Tesla arrived in America in 1884, Twain was already a respected author. The two geniuses met in 1889 in a New York club for gentlemen who both visited.
According to some sources today, their friendship began after Tesla used his oscillator to help Twain on a rather intimate issue.
Namely, the writer had problems with digestion for a long time, and Nikola Tesla thought that he could help him.We don't know if this Tesla's somewhat unconventional method of treatment helped Twain, but after this, their friendship flourished.
Tesla described Twain as the first person who inspired him upon his arrival in America and really understood him. The Serbian scientist was invited to the wedding of Twain's daughter Clara in the fall of 1909, and the writer was a welcome guest in Nikola Tesla's laboratory.
Mark Twain died on April 21, 1910, while Nikola Tesla outlived him by more than three decades. Six years after the death of the famous writer, his last novel "Mysterious Stranger" was published. In it, Twain described an angel descending from heaven to a small Austrian village to teach a group of boys the secrets of the world.
In this character and the discoveries he talks about, many still recognize Nikola Tesla and his village. Smiljan.
It is Mark Twain's last book. Contrary to previous books, this one is philosophical, dark, and full of metaphor. One of the stories is The Mysterious Stranger. It is about three boys who meet a magician in the forest, with whom they make friends and later discover that Satan is personal. He explained to them that he was not evil, but only God's messenger for death. The boys then ask him to change the life of their best friend, because he is poor. Satan snaps his fingers and the wish is fulfilled.
When the boys want to know the fate of their friend, he answers them as follows:
"Thanks to you, your friend will die in 2 weeks. He slept by the open window every night. When I snapped my fingers, he got up, closed the window and his destiny changed. If I hadn't changed his destiny, he would have lived until he was eighty."
The story explains the order of life. Everything has its reason, sometimes someone's death is the best possible option, considering what kind of life someone would live. Do we influence our destiny, our path? Can any steps we take really change the sequence? Does destiny exist?
