Professor Borges - A Course on English Literature

a higher position. So he sought reclusion, and for many years he has lived alone, dedicated to meditation. And the prince—this story is a parable, a fable about a man who seeks happiness—asks him if he is happy. The philosopher answers that solitude has not allowed him to let go of the images of the city, its sins and its pleasures. That before, when he had all those pleasures within reach, he could gratify himself and then think about other things. But now, living in solitude, the only thing he does is think about the city and the pleasures he has renounced. He tells them that it is fortunate that they arrived that night, because he had made up his mind to return the following day to Cairo. And he abandons his solitude. The prince tells him that he thinks he is wrong. The other tells him that naturally, for him solitude is a novelty, but now that he has been alone for fourteen or fifteen years, he is sick of it; so they say goodbye, and the prince goes to visit a great pyramid. Johnson says that the pyramids are the greatest works of mankind. The pyramids and the Great Wall of China. He says that there is an explanation for the wall: on one side we have a fearful, peaceful, very civilized people, and on the other, hordes of barbarian horsemen who could be stopped by a wall. It is understandable why the wall was built. As for the pyramids, we know they are tombs, but such an enormous structure is not needed to preserve that man.
    Then the prince, the princess, Imlac, and Pekuah reach the entrance to the pyramid. The princess is terrified—fear is her only feeling portrayed in the novel—and she says she doesn’t want to enter, that inside there might be the specters of the dead. Imlac tells her there is no reason whatsoever to think that specters would like cadavers, and that he has already been there. He asks her to enter. He, in any case, goes in first. The princess agrees to follow. Then they reach a large chamber, and there they talk about the founder of the pyramids. And they say: “Here we have a man with unlimited power over an enormous empire, a man who clearly had at his fingertips the satisfaction of all his desires. And even so, where did that get him? To boredom. To the useless task of forcing thousands of men to pile one stone upon another until they had built a useless pyramid.” Here we might recall Sir ThomasBrowne, a good writer from the seventeenth century, author of the phrase you know, “the ghost of a rose.” 8 (That phrase, I think, was invented by Sir Thomas Browne.) And wise Imlac, when talking about the pyramids, asks, “Who wouldn’t take pity on the builders of the pyramids?” Then the prince says, “Who believes that power, luxury, and omnipotence can make a man happy? I will tell that man to look at these pyramids and admit his folly.” 9
    Then they visit a monastery, and in the monastery they converse with the monks, and the monks tell them that they are accustomed to a harsh life, that they know that their lives will be harsh, but they have no certainty that it will be happy. They also speak about love, about the vicissitudes of the anxious and uncertain happiness created by love. And having known the world and seen men and their cities, the Prince, Imlac, the Princess, and Pekuah (the princess’s maid) decide to return to Happy Valley, where they won’t be happy, but they will be no more miserable than outside the valley.
    In other words, the whole story of
Rasselas
is really a rejection of man’s happiness and has been compared to Voltaire’s
Candide
. Now, if we compare Voltaire’s
Candide
and Johnson’s
Rasselas
line by line, page by page, we will immediately see that
Candide
is a much more brilliant book than
Rasselas
, but that Voltaire’s brilliance itself refutes his own thesis.Leibniz, a contemporary of Voltaire, put forth the theory that we live in the best of all possible worlds, and this was derisively called “optimism.” 10 The word “optimism” that we now use to mean “good humor” was a word invented to be used against Leibniz. He believed that we live in the best of all possible worlds, and he has a parable in which he imagines a pyramid. That pyramid has an apex, but it does not have a base. Each of the floors of the pyramid corresponds to a world, the world of each floor is better than the one below it, and so on, infinitely—the pyramid has no base so it is strictly infinite. And then Leibniz has his hero live an entire life in each of