"Ye who listen with credulity to the whispers of fancy, and pursue with eagerness the phantoms of hope; who expect that age will perform the promises of youth, and that the deficiencies of the present day will be supplied by the morrow, attend to the history of Rasselas, Prince of Abissinia."
So begins The History of Rasselas, Prince of Abissinia, a short philosophical novel written by Samuel Johnson in 1759. Dr. Johnson is perhaps best known today for being the subject of the lengthy classic biography The Life of Samuel Johnson, written by the devoted Boswell. He was, in fact. an eminent man of letters, having written poetry, plays, essays, sermons, biographies, a travel book about the western islands of Scotland, and a Dictionary of the English Language. His reputation loomed large over the field of English letters for decades, and allusions to him in literature abound. Even if still known by reputation, readers of his work seem to have diminished. Truthfully, I'm not sure if Rasselas would have been on my radar had it not been mentioned by Charlotte Mason, and in turn found its way onto the booklists of Ambleside Online. I've known about Johnson for many years; I haven't read Johnson until now.
Attempting to approach reading Rasselas as one would a conventional novel is likely going to lead to confusion and possibly disappointment. Sometimes referred to as a moral fable or philosophical romance, Rasselas may be best considered as an apologue: "a short fable or allegorical story, meant to serve as a pleasant vehicle for some moral doctrine or to convey some useful lesson." In an apologue, the narrative details and characters are subordinate to the moral truth the author wants to convey. Some scholars don't like to call Rasselas a "novel" at all. Once we understand all this, we're in a better position to appreciate Rasselas and what Dr. Johnson was trying to do with this book.
How should we live? What mode of life will foster happiness? These are the fundamental human questions at the heart of Rasselas' quest. Rasselas' story begins when he is a young man, a wealthy Prince of Abyssinia, living a sequestered life in Happy Valley, where "all the diversities of the world were brought together, the blessings of nature were collected, and its evils extracted and excluded." Life is devoted to pleasure and amusement, delicacies and comforts. "Every art was practised to make them pleased with their own condition." Happy Valley is surrounded by a mountain fastness, and communication with the outside world is barred by an iron gate, only to be opened once a year for an eight-day festival. "Thus every year produced new scenes of delight, and new competitors for imprisonment." This is not the only time Happy Valley is likened to a prison. This Pleasure Garden is a False Eden, a bubble of artificial happiness which depends on shutting out the miseries of the world and keeping its residents in ignorance. Ignorance is bliss - or is it?
Rasselas feels a sense of discontent, a longing for more, and a curiosity about the wider world. "Man surely has some latent sense for which this place affords no gratification; or he has some desire distinct from sense, which must be satisfied before he can be happy," he muses. He befriends Imlac, a poet and engineer who has come to Happy Valley from the outside world during one of the festivals. The two plot their escape, and tunnel their way upwards and outwards, accompanied by Rasseslas' sister Nekayah and her maid Pekuah.
The quest begins, and adventures follow, with each short chapter encapsulating some mode or station in life to be evaluated. Rasselas has told us: "I am resolved to judge with mine own eyes of the various conditions of men, and then to make deliberately my choice of life.” The choice of life is a phrase which recurs throughout the book. We meet Epicureans, Stoics, the wealthy, the poor. We muse about the life lived according to nature, and the life pastoral. We discuss the merits of marriage and the life of solitude. Does youth afford the greatest happiness? Is old age free from vexation?
The final destination of their travels is the catacombs near Cairo. They descend and wander in labyrinthine subterraneous passages, discoursing on the nature of the soul. Confronted with mortality, their thoughts turn to the shortness of their present state. Is this endless searching after the choice of life really profitable? “To me,” said the Princess, “the choice of life is become less important; I hope hereafter to think only on the choice of eternity.” In the end, they determine to return home to Abyssinia. Perhaps the most important sentence in the book was spoken by our poet-engineer: “It seems to me,” said Imlac, “that while you are making the choice of life you neglect to live."
Since some refer to Rasselas as a "philosophical romance," I wanted to consider the romance elements of the story, so I turned to The Secular Scripture: A Study of the Structure of Romance by Northrop Frye. Frye tells us that ascent and descent are the primary narrative movements in literature. In the beginning of Rasselas, we have an ascent from a lower world when Rasselas & co. tunnel upwards out of the prison of Happy Valley. Frye points out that "the lower world is sometimes a world of cruelty and imprisonment; sometimes an oracular cave." In Rasselas we do have this prison imagery, and a sense of an enclosed space that must be tunneled out of. Frye says, "We found that in descent narratives the central image is that of metamorphosis, the freezing of something human and conscious into an animal or plant or inanimate object. Ascent themes introduce us to the opposite kind of metamorphosis, the growing of identity through the casting off of whatever conceals or frustrates it. The simplest form of such ascending metamorphosis is the removal of enchantment, in which an animal disguise or something parallel is replaced by the original human form." The inhabitants of Happy Valley are under a sort of enchantment. Rasselas makes several comparisons of his own state to those of the beasts there, and while he sees certain similarities, he ultimately concludes that he is something more than they are. He goes on an identity quest. For when he seeks to make his choice of life, when he wonders how man should live, the true underlying question is not only Who am I? but What is man? When the group visits the catacombs, this is a descent into the underworld. Like the shades in Classical Hades, the bones of the dead in the catacombs impart their own wisdom: Man is a mortal creature whose earthly time is limited. His physical body will decay, but his immortal soul is eternal. The group return to their homeland, their quest complete.
