Oliver Benjamin
they were confined for life.
After years of plotting, Rasselas finally figures out how to escape
from the valley. He takes his beloved sister Nekayah with him and
they embark on an adventure to find something meaningful to desire.
But they fail. By novel’s end they are trapped by the inundation of the
Nile and also the weathering of their will, concluding at last that
whatever great hopes and ideals they encountered on their journey
had been petty and inconsequential. There will always be
dissatisfaction in the world, they finally decide, and on the whole
they had it pretty good in the Happy Valley. They resolve to return
home, defeated, to their isolated emerald Eden.
Voltaire’s Candidefollowed virtually the same philosophical
course. Thus, two of the greatest thinkers of the enlightenment
peered deep into the tragic soul of man and prescribed gardening.
Now, on a highland plateau not far from Rasselas’ mythic home,
Roy came to an entirely different conclusion. The problem of life was
not lack of things to desire, but rather, too many. Lesser desires only
distracted us from the highest good, the singular, the perfect taste. In
Roy’s reckoning passion and desire had to be stoked like a massive
bonfire that reached straight up to the heavens. If the stoker was to
burn in the blaze, so be it. “All is burning” said the Buddha in the Fire
Sermon. He suggested blowing out the fire as a remedy—nirvana
literally meant “a snuffing out.” But Roy found this absurd as well.
Nietzsche said one must have chaos in oneself to give birth to a
dancing star. Coffee beans lacked their complex character when
green, released their spirit under the influence of heat. So did we. We
were designed to burn, and burn we must.
The day before his departure, the man who plucked him from the
river made it known through the Abba that he wanted Roy to stay and
marry his daughter. Roy was flattered but embarrassed. He
explained that he already had a woman waiting back home for him, a
woman whom he believed to be his destiny.
“Your daughter is very beautiful,” Roy told the Ethiopian, “She
will make another man very happy someday.”
He grumbled something in reply which the Abba reluctantly
translated.
“The happiness of some other man is not his concern.”
Roy placed a palm on the Ethiopian’s sinewy shoulder and
assured him that he would repay his kindness someday.
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