Rasselas (Johnson: II)
May. 7th, 2016 01:40 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
anghraineContinuation of study hall this post.
I began the last post with Austen's allusion to Samuel Johnson in Mansfield Park. In context, the reference comes from Fanny's time at Portsmouth, when she compares Portsmouth vs Mansfield to Johnson's take on marriage vs celibacy—that is, that while marriage has some pains, celibacy can have no pleasures. (Portsmouth = celibacy and Mansfield = marriage in this analogy. Analyze away!) His line comes not from his poetry, but from Rasselas, a "prose fable."
I would ... not call it a fable, though I'm not sure what I would call it. My professor talked of it as a proto-novel: it has relatively distinctive characters, episodic adventures tied into something approximating an over-arching plot (though without appearing interested in an actual dénouement—it doesn't so much conclude as stop), more or less characteristic dialogue, and a major theme. The theme, of course, is Johnson's favourite topic (and/or pet peeve): the proper way to pursue happiness.
However, the characters are very, very thinly drawn, serving more as vehicles for the discussion and reflection than anything like credible human beings. The prof says we don't really get that level of sophistication and psychological realism until Austen, though I think we do see it in drama from the Renaissance onwards. But prose, yeah, iffy, though there are still some compelling characters.
Like! FANTOMINA, GUYS. She has maybe three personality traits, but they are all amazing. It's about a woman who would be a genius superspy in another time, but in her own, wastes her talents on this douchebag that she's completely obsessed with. We've got to assume he's really good in bed, as 1) his name is Beauplaisir and 2) he shows no attractive personality traits, and the actively repellent one of discarding every woman he gets entangled with as he quickly bores of them.
Spoiler: every single one of those women is Fantomina. It's not her real name. She's a lady who keeps disguising herself as different women to catch his interest, without ever being caught. This happens over and over again because, well, her superspy talents are wasted on this asshole. She would have just kept on going, with every indication that she would have succeeded indefinitely, if she hadn't gotten pregnant. Boo. There's a pretty great scene when Fantomina is finally pressured into revealing the identity of her lover, and when Beauplaisir is like "umm I'm pretty sure I would know if I'd dishonoured a lady," Fantomina's like "welllllll as it happens I seduced him under multiple disguises and he never realized he was fucking the same woman. My bad!" And then they're like, um, it seems weird to punish this guy for being stalked by a superspy ~of lust.~
Anyway, back to the less entertaining but more thoughtful fable thing. Not a real novel—or short story/novella—but inching closer. (I still miss the richness of Renaissance drama, though. Now THOSE are characters. Sometimes. *squints at Volpone*)
RIGHT. JOHNSON. Okay, Rasselas begins in Abyssinia, which I gather is really in Ethiopia, but in the tale is just sort of this fairyland North African-y place. (Yes, this is very Orientalist. The "oriental tale" was a major genre in the eighteenth century after the English translation of Arabian Nights got published in 1706.) It purports to be an account of an oral story passed down by Abyssinian monarchs—hey there, ye olde framing device.
Rasselas is the fourth son of the Emperor of Abyssinia, who—following custom—has confined all the royal heirs to a private palace in a place called the Happy Valley, which he visits once a year. This place is every bit as Stepford-creepy as it sounds. Johnson describes its Edenic beauty at some length, his descriptions rather lovely. The main deal is that it's surrounded by mountains on all sides with only one hidden passage out. Streams descend into a lake filled with All the Fishes, animals wander around peacefully, there are lovely fragrant gardens, and the princes and princesses are constantly fêted by every luxury and pleasure imaginable, with musicians and dancers and poets and philosophers and everything nice. People compete to be one of the luxury-providers for the imperial princes and princesses, but are never let out of "this blissful captivity" (not ominous at all!) once hired. Neither are the princes and princesses either, obviously. The palace is a labyrinthine marvel of architecture, "as if suspicion alone had dictated the plan." Treasures hidden in the pillars, records locked away and only able to be accessed by the emperor and his heir, all that sort of thing.
From this, you'd think it was a very different story than it is.
Anyway, one of the methods for keeping the princes and princesses happy is for the sages etc to constantly tell them about how terrible the outside world is and how great the Happy Valley is. NOT CREEPY.
Nevertheless, fourth son Rasselas starts to feel discontented at the advanced age of 26. Having been isolated and brainwashed from infancy, he pretty much has the faculties of a bright child, and his stalkery attendants overhear him delivering a speech to himself about how humans compare to animals. They have the same needs, the same hunger, but when an animal stops being hungry, it's content, where when he eats, he's just... not hungry. In fact, he looks forward to being hungry just to have something to pay attention to. Some part of the human psyche can't be contented with ceaseless pleasure. He doesn't envy the animals, because they only have Animal Happiness and not Human Happiness. He concludes, "Surely the equity of Providence has balanced peculiar sufferings with peculiar enjoyments." Johnson remarks that he honestly kind of enjoys this rant, because it makes him feel that he's so perceptive! his feelings are so refined! he monologues so eloquently!
Mkay, Rasselas. (But a fun character note! This is the sort of thing that makes it a transitional piece.)
His old teacher comes to talk to him, and Rasselas is bored and superior (though in all fairness, the teacher is going on about how Everyone Is Happy!!!). Rasselas clarifies the problem with ceaseless pleasure as happiness; if he lacked something, "I should have a certain wish; that wish would excite endeavour." As it is, all he can is endure the tedium of living from one day to another. The teacher blathers on about how he'd appreciate what he had if he'd seen the misery of the world, and he's like, great idea! Obviously I need to see misery to appreciate my happiness and then I'll be fine.
So Rasselas cheerfully goes off to think of how he'll deal with the real world, and the happiness he can bestow on the poor outsiders (...), and so on, and just imagining it occupies him for the next year and a half. But eventually he realizes that, uh, he's not actually doing anything. This is one of Johnson's main peeves—the human obsession with what they can imagine rather than what is actually happening in the real world, what should be in an ideal world vs what can be in this one. Of course that's at the root of the fixation on perfect happiness.
This actually reminds me of Machiavelli in the chapters I assigned this week—iirc, "he who abandons what is done for what ought to be done sooner effects his ruin than his preservation." Different context, but I think a similar frustration. I sympathize a lot with it, tbh—it's one of the reasons I'm so perpetually pissed off at the progressive rhetoric around politics, despite being emphatically progressive myself. It's not that no criticism should ever be made, but there's such a total refusal to engage with how things are and what can be done and how do we make things better and, God forbid, sacrifice and compromise. It's there with regard to happiness, too. I remember a person who posted about how it's easy to get sucked into SJ 24/7, and that's unhealthy—people need to get away from it, give themselves space to decompress, look at cat pictures or whatever. And people were completely outraged and going on about how she must be ~privileged~ to think you can just stop being oppressed, which of course was not at all what she meant—but this idea that you need to try to find some small, imperfect contentment in the world as it is, sometimes, was just intolerable in the current atmosphere of perfection or gtfo.
Anyway, Rasselas realizes he's wasted twenty months on nothing. Consequently, "he passed four months in resolving to lose no more time in idle resolves." Then a maid drops a cup and philosophically remarks to herself that there's no point guilting herself over it, since nothing can be done now. And Rasselas is like OMG. SO TRUE. So then he "for a few hours regretted his regret."
Heh.
At this point, at least, he sets out to get out of this place. And fails! He spends ten months trying to figure out some route, which at least keeps him happy at trying to do something, as long as he has hope of actually accomplishing it. As his hope fades, though, he remains determined to seize any opportunity that comes his way.
And by "any," it really is "any."
Specifically, he finds an artistic guy who is convinced that human flight is possible. Rasselas goes on about how air is the element of birds while earth is the element of humans and beasts, but the artist isn't having any of this old school bullshit:
We are only to proportion our power of resistance to the different density of the matter through which we are to pass. [...]As we mount higher, the earth's attraction, and the body's gravity, will be gradually diminished
Hm. Sounds legit.
However, his proposed solution? Obviously they just need to make a set of wings. Specifically, BAT WINGS. Like the unholy cross of Falcon and Batman. So the artist spends his time building the bat wings, and takes off!
...and lands in a lake, where at least his wings keep him afloat.
ngl, I laughed.
I began the last post with Austen's allusion to Samuel Johnson in Mansfield Park. In context, the reference comes from Fanny's time at Portsmouth, when she compares Portsmouth vs Mansfield to Johnson's take on marriage vs celibacy—that is, that while marriage has some pains, celibacy can have no pleasures. (Portsmouth = celibacy and Mansfield = marriage in this analogy. Analyze away!) His line comes not from his poetry, but from Rasselas, a "prose fable."
I would ... not call it a fable, though I'm not sure what I would call it. My professor talked of it as a proto-novel: it has relatively distinctive characters, episodic adventures tied into something approximating an over-arching plot (though without appearing interested in an actual dénouement—it doesn't so much conclude as stop), more or less characteristic dialogue, and a major theme. The theme, of course, is Johnson's favourite topic (and/or pet peeve): the proper way to pursue happiness.
However, the characters are very, very thinly drawn, serving more as vehicles for the discussion and reflection than anything like credible human beings. The prof says we don't really get that level of sophistication and psychological realism until Austen, though I think we do see it in drama from the Renaissance onwards. But prose, yeah, iffy, though there are still some compelling characters.
Like! FANTOMINA, GUYS. She has maybe three personality traits, but they are all amazing. It's about a woman who would be a genius superspy in another time, but in her own, wastes her talents on this douchebag that she's completely obsessed with. We've got to assume he's really good in bed, as 1) his name is Beauplaisir and 2) he shows no attractive personality traits, and the actively repellent one of discarding every woman he gets entangled with as he quickly bores of them.
Spoiler: every single one of those women is Fantomina. It's not her real name. She's a lady who keeps disguising herself as different women to catch his interest, without ever being caught. This happens over and over again because, well, her superspy talents are wasted on this asshole. She would have just kept on going, with every indication that she would have succeeded indefinitely, if she hadn't gotten pregnant. Boo. There's a pretty great scene when Fantomina is finally pressured into revealing the identity of her lover, and when Beauplaisir is like "umm I'm pretty sure I would know if I'd dishonoured a lady," Fantomina's like "welllllll as it happens I seduced him under multiple disguises and he never realized he was fucking the same woman. My bad!" And then they're like, um, it seems weird to punish this guy for being stalked by a superspy ~of lust.~
Anyway, back to the less entertaining but more thoughtful fable thing. Not a real novel—or short story/novella—but inching closer. (I still miss the richness of Renaissance drama, though. Now THOSE are characters. Sometimes. *squints at Volpone*)
RIGHT. JOHNSON. Okay, Rasselas begins in Abyssinia, which I gather is really in Ethiopia, but in the tale is just sort of this fairyland North African-y place. (Yes, this is very Orientalist. The "oriental tale" was a major genre in the eighteenth century after the English translation of Arabian Nights got published in 1706.) It purports to be an account of an oral story passed down by Abyssinian monarchs—hey there, ye olde framing device.
Rasselas is the fourth son of the Emperor of Abyssinia, who—following custom—has confined all the royal heirs to a private palace in a place called the Happy Valley, which he visits once a year. This place is every bit as Stepford-creepy as it sounds. Johnson describes its Edenic beauty at some length, his descriptions rather lovely. The main deal is that it's surrounded by mountains on all sides with only one hidden passage out. Streams descend into a lake filled with All the Fishes, animals wander around peacefully, there are lovely fragrant gardens, and the princes and princesses are constantly fêted by every luxury and pleasure imaginable, with musicians and dancers and poets and philosophers and everything nice. People compete to be one of the luxury-providers for the imperial princes and princesses, but are never let out of "this blissful captivity" (not ominous at all!) once hired. Neither are the princes and princesses either, obviously. The palace is a labyrinthine marvel of architecture, "as if suspicion alone had dictated the plan." Treasures hidden in the pillars, records locked away and only able to be accessed by the emperor and his heir, all that sort of thing.
From this, you'd think it was a very different story than it is.
Anyway, one of the methods for keeping the princes and princesses happy is for the sages etc to constantly tell them about how terrible the outside world is and how great the Happy Valley is. NOT CREEPY.
Nevertheless, fourth son Rasselas starts to feel discontented at the advanced age of 26. Having been isolated and brainwashed from infancy, he pretty much has the faculties of a bright child, and his stalkery attendants overhear him delivering a speech to himself about how humans compare to animals. They have the same needs, the same hunger, but when an animal stops being hungry, it's content, where when he eats, he's just... not hungry. In fact, he looks forward to being hungry just to have something to pay attention to. Some part of the human psyche can't be contented with ceaseless pleasure. He doesn't envy the animals, because they only have Animal Happiness and not Human Happiness. He concludes, "Surely the equity of Providence has balanced peculiar sufferings with peculiar enjoyments." Johnson remarks that he honestly kind of enjoys this rant, because it makes him feel that he's so perceptive! his feelings are so refined! he monologues so eloquently!
Mkay, Rasselas. (But a fun character note! This is the sort of thing that makes it a transitional piece.)
His old teacher comes to talk to him, and Rasselas is bored and superior (though in all fairness, the teacher is going on about how Everyone Is Happy!!!). Rasselas clarifies the problem with ceaseless pleasure as happiness; if he lacked something, "I should have a certain wish; that wish would excite endeavour." As it is, all he can is endure the tedium of living from one day to another. The teacher blathers on about how he'd appreciate what he had if he'd seen the misery of the world, and he's like, great idea! Obviously I need to see misery to appreciate my happiness and then I'll be fine.
So Rasselas cheerfully goes off to think of how he'll deal with the real world, and the happiness he can bestow on the poor outsiders (...), and so on, and just imagining it occupies him for the next year and a half. But eventually he realizes that, uh, he's not actually doing anything. This is one of Johnson's main peeves—the human obsession with what they can imagine rather than what is actually happening in the real world, what should be in an ideal world vs what can be in this one. Of course that's at the root of the fixation on perfect happiness.
This actually reminds me of Machiavelli in the chapters I assigned this week—iirc, "he who abandons what is done for what ought to be done sooner effects his ruin than his preservation." Different context, but I think a similar frustration. I sympathize a lot with it, tbh—it's one of the reasons I'm so perpetually pissed off at the progressive rhetoric around politics, despite being emphatically progressive myself. It's not that no criticism should ever be made, but there's such a total refusal to engage with how things are and what can be done and how do we make things better and, God forbid, sacrifice and compromise. It's there with regard to happiness, too. I remember a person who posted about how it's easy to get sucked into SJ 24/7, and that's unhealthy—people need to get away from it, give themselves space to decompress, look at cat pictures or whatever. And people were completely outraged and going on about how she must be ~privileged~ to think you can just stop being oppressed, which of course was not at all what she meant—but this idea that you need to try to find some small, imperfect contentment in the world as it is, sometimes, was just intolerable in the current atmosphere of perfection or gtfo.
Anyway, Rasselas realizes he's wasted twenty months on nothing. Consequently, "he passed four months in resolving to lose no more time in idle resolves." Then a maid drops a cup and philosophically remarks to herself that there's no point guilting herself over it, since nothing can be done now. And Rasselas is like OMG. SO TRUE. So then he "for a few hours regretted his regret."
Heh.
At this point, at least, he sets out to get out of this place. And fails! He spends ten months trying to figure out some route, which at least keeps him happy at trying to do something, as long as he has hope of actually accomplishing it. As his hope fades, though, he remains determined to seize any opportunity that comes his way.
And by "any," it really is "any."
Specifically, he finds an artistic guy who is convinced that human flight is possible. Rasselas goes on about how air is the element of birds while earth is the element of humans and beasts, but the artist isn't having any of this old school bullshit:
We are only to proportion our power of resistance to the different density of the matter through which we are to pass. [...]As we mount higher, the earth's attraction, and the body's gravity, will be gradually diminished
Hm. Sounds legit.
However, his proposed solution? Obviously they just need to make a set of wings. Specifically, BAT WINGS. Like the unholy cross of Falcon and Batman. So the artist spends his time building the bat wings, and takes off!
...and lands in a lake, where at least his wings keep him afloat.
ngl, I laughed.
