Some noteworthy maxims from the Doctor’s 1759 pilgrimage novel The History of Rasselas, The Prince of Abissinia:
Every man may, by examining his own mind, guess what passes in the minds of others.
Truth, such as is necessary to the regulation of life, is always found where it is honestly sought.
I have, said the princess, enabled myself to enter familiarly into many families, where there was the fairest show of prosperity and peace, and know not one house that is not haunted by some fury that destroys its quiet.
The truth is, that no mind is much employed upon the present: recollection and anticipation fill up almost all our moments.
No disease of the imagination, answered Imlac [Imlac’s is the voice of Samuel Johnson], is so difficult of cure, as that which is complicated with the dread of guilt. … If fancy presents images not moral or religious, the mind drives them away when they give it pain, but when melancholick [i.e., depressed] notions take the form of duty, they lay hold on the faculties without opposition.
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10 responses to “Samuel Johnson’s Rasselas”
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It's interesting that Johnson pumped this out in about a week. He was poor and his mother had just died, so he needed some cash to pay for her funeral.
That may explain in part why (apparently) the characters and/or narrator are devices for Johnson to relay his own maxims and ideas. Writing a novel, where you focus solely on the characters and the story in their own right, and not as a mouthpiece for your ideas, is never easy, and almost impossible to do in a week.
I am particularly struck by the line:
"The truth is, that no mind is much employed upon the present: recollection and anticipation fill up almost all our moments."
Hard to argue with that, unfortunately!
As Stampdawg has noted, this is a case in which personal poverty and tragedy produced a tragically poor novel. A collection of aphorisms does not a novel make 😉
But I do like the quote SZ points out: but this "life in recollection and anitcipation" is not necessarily a bad thing, and accounts for 90% of the joy of every true baseball fan. After all, in life, as in baseball, nothing much is usually happening in the present 🙂
As Stampdawg has noted, this is a case in which personal poverty and tragedy produced a tragically poor novel. A collection of aphorisms does not a novel make 😉
But I do like the quote SZ points out: but this "life in recollection and anitcipation" is not necessarily a bad thing, and accounts for 90% of the joy of every true baseball fan. After all, in life, as in baseball, nothing much is usually happening in the present 🙂
Yes, but if one is to read a novel that uses its characters as a mouthpiece for the author's ideas, I would take Johnson's crafted language over the clumsy dogma of "The Shack"- however helpful it has been for people.
Michael, please clarify: Which "such novels" should one not be reading? "Rasselas" (which, believe it or not, I was assigned in graduate school) or "The Shack"? Or both?
Whew, I'm relieved. I was feeling like an idiot, here. I haven't read Rasselas since I was a graduate student in English, back in the late 80s, but I remember my professor taking it quite seriously. I was wondering how it had gotten lumped in with The Shack. Not that there's anything WRONG with it 🙂
Margaret E– Yes, I too had to read Rasselas in an 18th Cent. lit.course, many moons ago. That may be my "issues" with it 🙂 I saw Paul's comment to which you are responding, which has been removed. My little opinions are just my personal taste in literature, nothing more. I just don't like philosophical fables, which is the genre I think most would assign to Rasselas, because they tend to be more two dimensional,argumentative, and less emotionally complex, in my view anyway, by their very nature. They are not meant to be otherwise. This would be somewhat similar to the difference between morality plays and Shakespeare. I realize that Rasselas is not a "novel" and I only used that term broadly, not technically, because of its use in the post. When I was much younger, Tom Jones was considered the first English novel, published around the same time, but what was the "first" novel, and what even qualifies as a "novel" is a much debated issue, as you know. Anyway, all that to say that my little ignorant comments reflect only my ignorant preferences, and of course I do not intend to cast my lilliputian spear at that giant of English letters, Samuel Johnson, or to issue some negative judgment, in the objective sense, on Rasselas, which is certainly a masterpiece of his genius. It's just not to my taste, but I am sure that is due to my lack of good taste and abject ignorance.
no harm mean from me! I blame stampdawg… 🙂 Although, I stand by my critique of the shack. The first 100 pages held me, but then the long dialogues felt like a badly written theology book.
Not to worry, Michael. I have no great devotion to Rasselas. I hardly even remember it! Just remember that it was "supposed to be" a serious work…
Todd, it's funny – I had the exact opposite experience of The Shack. I thought the first third of the book was trite and corny, but that it became rather interesting when our hero arrived at "the shack" and the dialogue began. Go figger 🙂