Professor Borges - A Course on English Literature

finally he found a cave through which the water from the rivers emptied into a lake. And, accompanied by Imlac, he explored it, and he saw that there was a spot, a kind of grotto, through which he could escape. Three years after making his decision, he, his sister, Imlac, and a woman from his court named Pekuah decide to leave Happy Valley. They knew that all they had to do was climb over the mountains to be free; nobody else knew about the path through the rocks. So they choose one night to escape, and after a few setbacks—not many, because Johnson was not writing an adventure novel, but rather rewriting his poem about the vanity of human hope—they find themselves to the north, on the other side of the mountains. Then they see a group of shepherds, and at first—this is a very human, very realistic fiction—the prince and princess are amazed that the shepherds do not fall to their knees in front of them. Even though they want to mingle with common people, even though they want to be like other men, they are naturally accustomed to the ceremony of the court. So they turn north, where everything surprises them, even people’s indifference toward them. They are secretly carrying jewels—because the treasures of the kings of Abyssinia are in the palace. There are also hollow columns in the palace full of jewels. There are also spies who watch the prince and princess, but they managed to escape. Then they reach a port on the Red Sea. They are amazed by the port and the ships. Months pass before they embark. The princess is terrified at first. But her brother and Imlac tell her she must carry through with her decision, and they set sail. Here one hopes the author will throw in a storm, just to entertain the reader. But Johnson is not thinking about such things. The fact that Johnson wrote this book in such a slow, musical style is quite remarkable, this book in which all the sentences are perfectly balanced. There is not a single sentence that ends abruptly, and we find a monotonous, but very agile, music, and this is what Johnson wrote while he was thinking about the death of his mother, whom he loved so much.
    Finally they reach Cairo. The reader understands that Cairo is a kind of metaphor, a reflection of London. The commercial activities in the city are described; the prince and princess feel lost in these crowds of people, who jostle them and push them aside. And Imlac sells some of the jewels they have brought; he buys a palace, and establishes himself there as a merchant, and meets the most important people in Egypt, that is, in England, because Johnson took all those trappings of the Orient from
The Arabian Nights
(which was translated at the beginning of the eighteenth century by the French OrientalistGalland). 6 There is very little Oriental color; that didn’t interest Johnson. Then he talks about the nations of Europe. Imlac says that compared to the nations of Europe, these people are barbarians. That the nations of Europe have ways of communicating among themselves. He talks about the letters that arrive quickly, the bridges, he talks again about the many ships. (They already sailed in one from Abyssinia to Cairo.) And the prince asks him if the Europeans are happier. Imlac answers that wisdom and science are preferable to ignorance, that barbarism and ignorance cannot be sources of happiness, that the Europeans are surely wiser than the Abyssinians; but he cannot assert, based on his interactions with the Europeans, that they are happier. Then we listen to several conversations between philosophers. One of them says that man can be happy if he lives according to the laws of nature, but he cannot explain what those laws are, and the prince understands that the more he converses with him, the less he will understand about the laws of nature. He politely says goodbye, then receives news of a hermit, a man who has been living in solitude in Thebaide for fourteen years. 7 He decides to visit him. After a few days—I think he travels by camel—he reaches the hermit’s cave, which has been divided into several rooms. The hermit offers him meat and wine. He himself is a frugal man and eats only vegetables and milk. The prince asks him to tell him his story, and the other says that he used to be a soldier, that he has known the tumult of battle, the shame of defeat, the joy of victory, that he became renowned and that he saw that because of a court intrigue, a less capable, less brave officer was given