Rasselas (Johnson: IV)
May. 7th, 2016 05:28 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
anghraineI didn't order a side of RAGING IMPERIALISM with my fable, Johnson.
Continued from this.
So Imlac went through Syria to Palestine, where of course people from all over congregate, including...
[DUNDUNDUN]
...Europeans! Northwest Europeans, specifically, "the nations which are now in possession of all power and all knowledge, whose armies are irresistible, and whose fleets command the remotest parts of the globe." It gets worse from here.
For instance:
- They seem "another order of beings" compared with Abyssinians
- NW Europeans can have anything they want, they have arts that Abyssinians have never heard of to make them happy, and trade bringing everything they can't grow or develop on their own
- They're more powerful because they're wiser: "knowledge will always predominate over ignorance, as man governs other animals"
- ....yep
- Why? It must be God
- They have better medical care (lol, eighteenth century Britain? pls)
- They can deal with weather somehow (?)
- They have mechanized industry rather than everything requiring human labour
- They have an unimaginably great postal system
- They can just carve through anything that happens to get in their way
- They also have bigger, safer houses
Rasselas is chiefly impressed by the postal service.
There's also a discussion of the worth of pilgrimage, because some Europeans oppose pilgrimage. Rasselas is like... honestly, I have never gone anywhere, so how about you just cut the chase and tell me what you found out?
I kinda like Rasselas.
Imlac says that, yes, it's absurd superstition to think that God listens to people more in some places than in others. However, just as visiting the site of a historical event can make that event more memorable, visiting the site of a religion can deepen commitment that already exists. I rather like the line "that some places may operate upon our own minds in an uncommon manner is an opinion which hourly experience will justify." It's psychological rather than divine, but the effect is still real. Which, yeah. But I'd like it more if it weren't surrounded by unrelenting awfulness.
Rasselas: These are European distinctions. I will consider them another time.
Good on you, Rasselas.
Imlac goes on about how knowledge is a path to pleasure because increasing knowledge and information and ideas is fundamental to the human psyche, whereas ignorance is a form of suffering that leads the soul into apathy, which is why we're happy when we manage to learn something and so unhappy when we forget. He concludes that Europeans are less unhappy than Abyssinians because of all of the above, "but they are not happy. Human life is everywhere a state in which much is to be endured, and little to be enjoyed."
Johnson is a nutshell there.
My prof, incidentally, tried to argue that the horrible horrible imperialist racism is actually satirical. I see no evidence of that. Rasselas remarks in the next chapter that everything "may be done without the help of European refinements, which appear by their effects to be rather specious than useful," but it's still ... nah, sis.
Moving on:
Rasselas goes on about how, omg no, it's just a matter of making the right choices in life, and then everything will go well. Tell Princess Leia that, Rasselas. They get back to Imlac's backstory, and he talks about how he travelled through various places in Asia, then finally began to feel homesick, and imagined how nice it would be to come home and tell all his stories to everyone and show his father what a respected and learned man he'd become, if not a fabulously wealthy one. He couldn't help stopping in Cairo, however, and couldn't help gawking for ten months and indulging in his favourite pasttime of people-watching. Finally he left and headed home, twenty years after he'd originally departed.
In a shocking twist, all those nice imaginings didn't come true. His father died six years after he went off and left everything to his brothers, probably thinking him dead. His brothers had all moved away. Most of his old friends were dead. Of the surviving ones, they either didn't remember him or were repelled by his ~foreign manners~. The nobles dismissed him. He tried to open a school and was forbidden to teach. He proposed to a lady, but she rejected him because he was the son of a merchant.
At that point, he was like... seriously, fuck this. So he joined the queue of people auditioning to be part of the 24/7 entertainment in the Happy Valley and got accepted, and here he is.
Rasselas is like, well, then you're happy now, right?
Imlac: ...
...
...Literally nobody here is happy. Everyone regrets coming. They're constantly involved in miserable popularity struggles and backbite each other out of "the natural malignity of hopeless misery." They're tired of everything, would give everything to get out, and are so bitter they'd like everyone to be as imprisoned as they are.
Rasselas is encouraged by this and confides that he, too, is unhappy and trying to figure out an escape. Imlac warns him that it will be difficult, but most things can be managed with work and skill.
Next chapter, Rasselas has the comfort of a quasi-friend whom he can actually talk to about things. Though he continues to address inanimate objects, like the gate keeping them in, asking why "thou art so strong, and ...man so weak?" Imlac promptly smacks him down by telling him that brains are better than brawn; he could totally get rid of the gate. The problem is that he can't do it secretly. They end of following some rabbits and blah blah this part is boring, they figure out how to drill their way out.
Then, dun dun dun, it turns out they've been followed! By...
Nekayah, Rasselas' favourite sister. He fumbles for something to say, and she tells him not to bother, that she didn't know what was going on, but now that she does, it's a relief, since she's miserable there too. She calls it "tasteless tranquillity, which will yet grow more loathsome when you have left me."
<3
She flatly says that he can forbid her from coming, but she'll just follow anyway. Rasselas, however, is thrilled about her coming, and just sorry that he didn't have a chance to tell her all about it of his own will, and show how much he trusts her. So they set her to watching while they drill through the fissure they found, nothing bad happens, and they prepare to leave.
Continued from this.
So Imlac went through Syria to Palestine, where of course people from all over congregate, including...
[DUNDUNDUN]
...Europeans! Northwest Europeans, specifically, "the nations which are now in possession of all power and all knowledge, whose armies are irresistible, and whose fleets command the remotest parts of the globe." It gets worse from here.
For instance:
- They seem "another order of beings" compared with Abyssinians
- NW Europeans can have anything they want, they have arts that Abyssinians have never heard of to make them happy, and trade bringing everything they can't grow or develop on their own
- They're more powerful because they're wiser: "knowledge will always predominate over ignorance, as man governs other animals"
- ....yep
- Why? It must be God
- They have better medical care (lol, eighteenth century Britain? pls)
- They can deal with weather somehow (?)
- They have mechanized industry rather than everything requiring human labour
- They have an unimaginably great postal system
- They can just carve through anything that happens to get in their way
- They also have bigger, safer houses
Rasselas is chiefly impressed by the postal service.
There's also a discussion of the worth of pilgrimage, because some Europeans oppose pilgrimage. Rasselas is like... honestly, I have never gone anywhere, so how about you just cut the chase and tell me what you found out?
I kinda like Rasselas.
Imlac says that, yes, it's absurd superstition to think that God listens to people more in some places than in others. However, just as visiting the site of a historical event can make that event more memorable, visiting the site of a religion can deepen commitment that already exists. I rather like the line "that some places may operate upon our own minds in an uncommon manner is an opinion which hourly experience will justify." It's psychological rather than divine, but the effect is still real. Which, yeah. But I'd like it more if it weren't surrounded by unrelenting awfulness.
Rasselas: These are European distinctions. I will consider them another time.
Good on you, Rasselas.
Imlac goes on about how knowledge is a path to pleasure because increasing knowledge and information and ideas is fundamental to the human psyche, whereas ignorance is a form of suffering that leads the soul into apathy, which is why we're happy when we manage to learn something and so unhappy when we forget. He concludes that Europeans are less unhappy than Abyssinians because of all of the above, "but they are not happy. Human life is everywhere a state in which much is to be endured, and little to be enjoyed."
Johnson is a nutshell there.
My prof, incidentally, tried to argue that the horrible horrible imperialist racism is actually satirical. I see no evidence of that. Rasselas remarks in the next chapter that everything "may be done without the help of European refinements, which appear by their effects to be rather specious than useful," but it's still ... nah, sis.
Moving on:
Rasselas goes on about how, omg no, it's just a matter of making the right choices in life, and then everything will go well. Tell Princess Leia that, Rasselas. They get back to Imlac's backstory, and he talks about how he travelled through various places in Asia, then finally began to feel homesick, and imagined how nice it would be to come home and tell all his stories to everyone and show his father what a respected and learned man he'd become, if not a fabulously wealthy one. He couldn't help stopping in Cairo, however, and couldn't help gawking for ten months and indulging in his favourite pasttime of people-watching. Finally he left and headed home, twenty years after he'd originally departed.
In a shocking twist, all those nice imaginings didn't come true. His father died six years after he went off and left everything to his brothers, probably thinking him dead. His brothers had all moved away. Most of his old friends were dead. Of the surviving ones, they either didn't remember him or were repelled by his ~foreign manners~. The nobles dismissed him. He tried to open a school and was forbidden to teach. He proposed to a lady, but she rejected him because he was the son of a merchant.
At that point, he was like... seriously, fuck this. So he joined the queue of people auditioning to be part of the 24/7 entertainment in the Happy Valley and got accepted, and here he is.
Rasselas is like, well, then you're happy now, right?
Imlac: ...
...
...Literally nobody here is happy. Everyone regrets coming. They're constantly involved in miserable popularity struggles and backbite each other out of "the natural malignity of hopeless misery." They're tired of everything, would give everything to get out, and are so bitter they'd like everyone to be as imprisoned as they are.
Rasselas is encouraged by this and confides that he, too, is unhappy and trying to figure out an escape. Imlac warns him that it will be difficult, but most things can be managed with work and skill.
Next chapter, Rasselas has the comfort of a quasi-friend whom he can actually talk to about things. Though he continues to address inanimate objects, like the gate keeping them in, asking why "thou art so strong, and ...man so weak?" Imlac promptly smacks him down by telling him that brains are better than brawn; he could totally get rid of the gate. The problem is that he can't do it secretly. They end of following some rabbits and blah blah this part is boring, they figure out how to drill their way out.
Then, dun dun dun, it turns out they've been followed! By...
Nekayah, Rasselas' favourite sister. He fumbles for something to say, and she tells him not to bother, that she didn't know what was going on, but now that she does, it's a relief, since she's miserable there too. She calls it "tasteless tranquillity, which will yet grow more loathsome when you have left me."
<3
She flatly says that he can forbid her from coming, but she'll just follow anyway. Rasselas, however, is thrilled about her coming, and just sorry that he didn't have a chance to tell her all about it of his own will, and show how much he trusts her. So they set her to watching while they drill through the fissure they found, nothing bad happens, and they prepare to leave.
