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Rasselas (Johnson: XII)
so close
Continued from this.
Ch 40:
They go back to Cairo and mostly just spend their time together. Rasselas decides he's going to retreat into solitude to be a scholar.
DUN DUN DUN
Imlac is like ... right, so you should meet this friend of mine. Well, this can only be terrible.
This guy turns out to be an astronomer who's dedicated forty years to studying the stars, all alone, and just comes out of it now and then to explain his discoveries to people. He's very highly regarded, and he and Imlac quickly formed a mutual admiration party—particularly on Imlac's side, but the astronomer definitely thinks the world of him. He'll interrupt anything he's doing to help people and let anyone in at any time.
Rasselas says, oh! A happy person! At last we find him!
However, Imlac has found the astronomer often distracted, occasionally sending for him urgently only to have nothing to say. It turns out....
Ch 41:
THE ASTRONOMER THINKS HE CAN CONTROL THE WEATHER.
Ch 42:
Imlac was naturally stunned. He asked how the astronomer came to this, uh, realization, and he said:
my daily observations of the changes of the sky led me to consider, whether, if I had the power of the seasons, I could confer greater plenty upon the inhabitants of the earth. This contemplation fastened on my mind, and I sat days and nights in imaginary dominion...
Eventually, the power became real!! Except not, because he's batshit insane. IMAGINATION. THIS IS WHAT LOSING YOURSELF IN IMAGINATION DOES.
I said we'd get back to this one. This is really the height of Johnson's fear of the dangers of solitude and fantasy.
Anyway, the astronomer is obviously under constant stress trying to properly control the weather, because as a scientist he actually knows all the ways it could go horribly wrong if he did have that power. He would make an A+ sorcerer in another setting, but as is, it's just sad. He's been worried about what's going to happen when he dies, considering that he's aging.
Ch 43:
Right, so Imlac is the astronomer's chosen one. More about the sciencey side of weather control. Imlac promised to use the power wisely, giving relief to this poor man's mind.
Rasselas is very somber about it all, but Nekayah and Pekuah burst out laughing. Women, amirite. Imlac gets one of his super-Johnsonian speeches:
To mock the heaviest of human afflictions is neither charitable nor wise. Few can attain this man's knowledge, and few practice his virtues; but all may suffer his calamity. Of the uncertainties of our present state, the most dreadful and alarming is the uncertain continuance of reason.
This hits home pretty sharply, can't lie. The times when I've seriously lost it were utterly terrifying.
Ch 44:
Rasselas asks if this kind of thing is common. Imlac goes on for awhile, but in short, says that everyone's prone to a certain amount of fancifulness, and everyone is at a certain amount of risk, but the trouble is when you have nothing to fill your mind but your own thoughts, and has to imagine being different (because everybody is subject to a certain self-loathing). Once you let yourself get carried away it's easy to lose grasp of reality.
Each of the other three admit to dwelling too much on their own fantasies: Pekuah that she's the Queen of Abyssinia, imagining everything she would do; Nekayah that she's a shepherdess (she even has a cosplay dress she puts on sometimes!); Rasselas, most dangerously of all, that he's emperor and ruling over a perfect government. His particular guilt is that it would require the death of his father and three older brother. They all agree to give them up.
Continued from this.
Ch 40:
They go back to Cairo and mostly just spend their time together. Rasselas decides he's going to retreat into solitude to be a scholar.
DUN DUN DUN
Imlac is like ... right, so you should meet this friend of mine. Well, this can only be terrible.
This guy turns out to be an astronomer who's dedicated forty years to studying the stars, all alone, and just comes out of it now and then to explain his discoveries to people. He's very highly regarded, and he and Imlac quickly formed a mutual admiration party—particularly on Imlac's side, but the astronomer definitely thinks the world of him. He'll interrupt anything he's doing to help people and let anyone in at any time.
Rasselas says, oh! A happy person! At last we find him!
However, Imlac has found the astronomer often distracted, occasionally sending for him urgently only to have nothing to say. It turns out....
Ch 41:
THE ASTRONOMER THINKS HE CAN CONTROL THE WEATHER.
Ch 42:
Imlac was naturally stunned. He asked how the astronomer came to this, uh, realization, and he said:
my daily observations of the changes of the sky led me to consider, whether, if I had the power of the seasons, I could confer greater plenty upon the inhabitants of the earth. This contemplation fastened on my mind, and I sat days and nights in imaginary dominion...
Eventually, the power became real!! Except not, because he's batshit insane. IMAGINATION. THIS IS WHAT LOSING YOURSELF IN IMAGINATION DOES.
I said we'd get back to this one. This is really the height of Johnson's fear of the dangers of solitude and fantasy.
Anyway, the astronomer is obviously under constant stress trying to properly control the weather, because as a scientist he actually knows all the ways it could go horribly wrong if he did have that power. He would make an A+ sorcerer in another setting, but as is, it's just sad. He's been worried about what's going to happen when he dies, considering that he's aging.
Ch 43:
Right, so Imlac is the astronomer's chosen one. More about the sciencey side of weather control. Imlac promised to use the power wisely, giving relief to this poor man's mind.
Rasselas is very somber about it all, but Nekayah and Pekuah burst out laughing. Women, amirite. Imlac gets one of his super-Johnsonian speeches:
To mock the heaviest of human afflictions is neither charitable nor wise. Few can attain this man's knowledge, and few practice his virtues; but all may suffer his calamity. Of the uncertainties of our present state, the most dreadful and alarming is the uncertain continuance of reason.
This hits home pretty sharply, can't lie. The times when I've seriously lost it were utterly terrifying.
Ch 44:
Rasselas asks if this kind of thing is common. Imlac goes on for awhile, but in short, says that everyone's prone to a certain amount of fancifulness, and everyone is at a certain amount of risk, but the trouble is when you have nothing to fill your mind but your own thoughts, and has to imagine being different (because everybody is subject to a certain self-loathing). Once you let yourself get carried away it's easy to lose grasp of reality.
Each of the other three admit to dwelling too much on their own fantasies: Pekuah that she's the Queen of Abyssinia, imagining everything she would do; Nekayah that she's a shepherdess (she even has a cosplay dress she puts on sometimes!); Rasselas, most dangerously of all, that he's emperor and ruling over a perfect government. His particular guilt is that it would require the death of his father and three older brother. They all agree to give them up.