How to prove that Robinson Crusoe is a man. Analysis of the coverage of the problem of artistic space in works devoted to the novel by D. Defoe "Robinson Crusoe"
How many generations of people have read this book, written almost 300 years ago!
Why does it attract readers so much? Of course, an adventure story that you can’t tear yourself away from. But not only.
Readers are attracted by the behavior and character traits of the main character, Robinson Crusoe. To live alone on a desert island for almost 30 years and at the same time remain human, retain all the best human qualities in yourself, not go wild, not harden your soul, not lose hope for the best - this is amazing! And this is only accessible to a strong-willed person. 
No, this is not some kind of superman, this is an ordinary person, a romantic who has dreamed of sea voyages since childhood. It was very difficult for him on the desert island; more than once he was overcome by dark thoughts and feelings, but he did not allow himself to relax and lose his peace of mind, so as not to go wild and lose his mind. As a result, he emerged victorious in the struggle against circumstances, the vicissitudes of fate, and also with himself. “In moments of doubt, when a person hesitates, when he, so to speak, stands at a crossroads, not knowing which road to take, and even when he has chosen the road and is ready to take it, some mysterious voice holds him back . It would seem that everything - natural inclinations, sympathies, common sense, even a clearly realized definite goal - is calling him to this road, and yet his soul cannot shake off the inexplicable influence of an unknown force coming from somewhere unknown, preventing him from going where he was determined to go. And then it always turns out that if he had followed the path that he chose at first and which, in his own consciousness, he should have chosen, it would have led him to death... In moments of hesitation, boldly follow the suggestion of your inner voice, if you hear “At least, apart from this voice, nothing encouraged you to do as he advised you,” said D. Defoe.
The history of the novel
About the novel
Readers first meet Robinson when he is 18 years old. Passionately dreaming of sea voyages, he leaves his parents' home and sets off on an adventure. Robinson did not immediately find himself on a desert island - this was preceded by numerous adventures and misadventures: storms, captivity... Then new adventures in the form of a profitable plantation in Brazil. But the main part of the novel is the story of the hero himself about life on a desert island.
He was able to survive because he carefully thought through his life and his possibilities: he had a clear daily routine, constant activities that helped him organize his life so that it would be useful, he did not allow himself to panic and become morally weakened. From sunken ships he took everything that could be useful to him on the island. So the Bible fell into his hands, it helped him to realize himself and gradually come to terms with his fate, and later even learn to consider himself happy - after all, he was given life, while all his comrades died. D. Defoe himself said this about this: “In every situation you will find something comforting if you look hard enough.”
In the last years of his stay on the island, Robinson was no longer alone: he freed Friday from the cannibals and “tamed” him, then a Spaniard and an Englishman were freed: Christians, a Catholic and a pagan (and also a cannibal) gathered on the island, but there were no conflicts it didn’t happen for them on religious grounds, because... They were united by a common goal - to get out of here. They worked together, and everything else was secondary to them. Interfaith misunderstanding and hostility is not a natural circumstance, but a circumstance created by people themselves.
Robinson Crusoe image
Robinson's image is realistic. His romanticism remains with him even into adulthood - he did not stop his sea voyages. But when certain circumstances arise, his practical mind takes over, he tries to think through every little detail in detail, to anticipate every danger, of which there are so many on the desert island.
He was the youngest beloved and pampered son, but on the island he showed all his practicality in order to earn a living. He persistently visits the sunken ship and stocks up with necessary things, learns to make household items, various devices, sews clothes...
Of course, Robinson cannot be called an ideal person, if only because he goes on a trip, leaving his elderly parents who asked him not to do it. And his other actions cannot always be called correct. But this is precisely the realism of this image - this is an ordinary person, with the shortcomings and positive qualities inherent in each of us.
Image of Friday
Robinson saves a young hostage (also, by the way, a cannibal, but from a different tribe) from cannibal savages, calling him Friday after the day on which they met. In a very short time, this wild man, completely far from civilization, makes great progress: with the help of Robinson, he masters the English language, learns to shoot a gun, becomes a Christian, abandons his cannibalistic habits, etc. By nature, Friday is endowed with wonderful human qualities: loyalty, kindness, inquisitiveness, intelligence, prudence. He loves his father very much.
Robinsonades
D. Defoe's novel, written in 1719, gave rise to many imitations. R. Ballantyne in “Coral Island”, J. Verne in “The Mysterious Island”, H. Wells in “The Island of Doctor Moreau”, W. Golding in “Lord of the Flies”, W. Eco wrote about the survival of one or more people on a desert island. in "The Island the Day Before".
About the author of the novel
Daniel Defoe (Daniel Faw, c. 1660-1731) – English writer and publicist. Thanks to his works, the novel genre became very popular in Great Britain.
At the age of 59, in 1719, Daniel Defoe published his best novel, Robinson Crusoe.
He wrote more than 500 books, pamphlets and articles on various topics, including the novels The Joys and Sorrows of Mole Flanders (1722), The Happy Courtesan, or Roxana (1724), and The Life, Adventures and Pirate Exploits of the Illustrious Captain Singleton. (1720). He was the founder of economic journalism. In his journalistic works he promoted bourgeois sanity and defended religious tolerance and freedom of speech.
In our time, he is known mainly as the author of the novel Robinson Crusoe.
The writer was born in London in the family of a meat merchant, received a spiritual education and trained to become a pastor, but then abandoned his church career. He was engaged in commercial activities and wrote poetry, mainly on religious themes.
He graduated from Newington Academy, where he studied Greek and Latin and classical literature. Working as a clerk for a merchant, he often visited Europe and improved his language skills. Subsequently, he was engaged in various activities, including commercial ones. He was an active politician of his time, a talented publicist, pamphleteer and publisher.
He wrote his first literary work in 1697. In 1701, his satirical work “The Thoroughbred Englishman,” ridiculing xenophobia, was published. For the pamphlet “The Shortest Way to Deal with Dissenters” (Protestants) in 1703 he was sentenced to pillory and imprisonment. There he wrote “Hymn to the Pillory.” That same year he was released on the condition that he would become a spy.
Daniel Defoe died in April 1731 in London.
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Ministry of Education of the Republic of Belarus
"Mogilev State University named after A.A. Kuleshov"
Department of English, General and Slavic Linguistics
Course work
on the topic: "The concept of "natural man" in Daniel Defoe's novel "Robinson Crusoe""
Performer: 2nd year student of group "AF-24"
Faculty of Foreign Languages
Kazakova Kristina Viktorovna
Head: senior lecturer
Mityukova Elena Anatolyevna
Mogilev - 2013
Introduction
On April 25, 1719, the book "Robinson Crusoe" was published in London. The full title of which is: “The life, extraordinary and amazing adventures of Robinson Crusoe, a sailor from York, who lived twenty-eight years all alone on a desert island, off the coast of America, near the mouth of the great Orinoco river, where he was thrown by a shipwreck, during which the entire crew of the ship, except him, died, with an account of his unexpected liberation by pirates told by himself." The book immediately won the hearts of readers. Everyone read it - both educated people and those who could barely read and write. The book has outlived its author and its first readers for centuries. It is read now with no less interest than in the years when it appeared, read not only in England, but throughout the world. This determines the relevance of the chosen topic of the course work.
Book by Papsuev V.V. “Three great novelists of the Enlightenment: Defoe, Swift, Fielding. From the history of European literature of the 17th-18th centuries” emphasizes that “the main work, thanks to which Defoe remained in the memory not only of researchers of his work, but also of all mankind, was one novel, which in the long list of books written by the writer is listed at number 412. This is “The Life and Extraordinary and Amazing Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, Sailor from York.”
Purpose of the study- determining the role of Daniel Defoe’s novel “Robinson Crusoe” in introducing the world community to a creative man, a man of labor.
Research objectives:
1) Trace the current historical situation in England, against the background of which Defoe’s literary activity developed.
2) Determine how the concept of “natural” man manifested itself during the Enlightenment.
Object of study- the work of Daniel Defoe, and in particular his novel "Robinson Crusoe".
Subject of study- the concept of a “natural” person in D. Defoe’s novel “Robinson Crusoe”.
Research methods- descriptive, comparative and textual analysis.
Structure and scope of the study: This course work consists of an introduction, two chapters (“Historical background and biographical information” and “Natural man in D. Defoe’s novel “Robinson Crusoe””), a conclusion and a list of sources used.
Chapter 1. Historical background and biographical information
1.1 Vitaland the creative path of Daniel Defoe
Daniel Defoe - English writer, journalist, businessman. Born in 1660 or 1661 in London. At that time, the writer’s path was by no means strewn with roses. "Daniel Defoe... lived precisely in such a turbulent time, when very strict punitive measures were applied to guilty writers. He had to experience prison, pillory, and ruin; but, despite persecution, poverty and all sorts of disasters, this strong-willed and unusually an energetic man never betrayed his convictions and until the very end continued to fight with pen in hand for those ideas that later entered life and became one of the most precious assets of his people,” writes A.V. Kamensky in the biographical sketch "Daniel Defoe. His life and literary activity".
From the end of the 17th to the middle of the 18th century, a time of troubles began for England. "During this period of general debauchery, the personality of Daniel Defoe stands out for its high moral qualities. He was an impeccably honest man, a tireless literary worker and a good family man; but he suffered a bitter lot, and almost his entire long life, especially his last years, seems to be one almost a continuous series of all kinds of adversity and persecution."
So, the recognized classic of world literature, Daniel Defoe, was born in 1660 in the family of a merchant. It is known that, although Daniel Defoe was completely indifferent to his origins and rarely mentioned his parents, he was a descendant of native English landowners: his grandfather owned a small farm in Norhamptonshire. "In terms of social status, Alice Foe (Daniel's mother) stood above her husband and was a native Englishwoman. It was her father, Defoe's grandfather, who had a fairly extensive farm, and therefore was not in favor of parliamentary reforms and, as a result, suffered during the revolution and civil war , apparently, significant losses, otherwise how else can you explain your daughter’s marriage to some merchant?” - argues D. Urnov. This is all information about the ancestors of Daniel Defoe, and no other information about his mother, brothers and other members of his family has been preserved.
When Defoe was twelve years old, he was sent to school, where he stayed until he was sixteen. His father tried to give his only son an education so that he could become a priest. Daniel was educated at a private educational institution called Newington Academy. It was something like a seminary, where they taught not only theology, but also a fairly wide range of subjects - geography, astronomy, history, foreign languages. It was there that the boy's abilities were noticed. Daniel not only immediately became the first in foreign languages, but also turned out to be a very talented polemicist. In his youth, Defoe wanted to become a priest, but life decreed otherwise.
Before giving his son independent business, his father placed Daniel to study accounting and trading practice in the office of a wholesale hosiery firm located in the City of London and trading abroad. natural man robinson concept
In his free time, Defoe communicated with young dissenters who held the same ardent views on politics as himself. From then on, Defoe took the side of the people in the upcoming political-religious struggle, and “his outstanding talent and energy immediately distinguished him among his peers as a champion of civil and religious freedom.” At the age of nineteen, Daniel Defoe graduated from school and, following his father’s advice, decided to go into business.
From about the 1680s. he starts doing business. Defoe's trading business expanded and forced him to establish trade relations with Spain and Portugal. So he visited Spain, where he lived for some time and learned the language.
“Defoe was not at all a suitable person for trading activities. Although he was always distinguished by the most strict and modest way of life, but, instead of sitting on his business and on the account books in the office, he was too keen on politics and the society of educated people and writers... main The reason for his subsequent trading failures was his own inattention to his business and his tendency to speculate."
At the age of twenty, Daniel Defoe joined the army of the Duke of Monmouth, who rebelled against his uncle, James Stuart, who pursued a pro-French policy during his reign. Jacob suppressed the uprising and dealt harshly with the rebels, and Daniel Defoe had to hide from persecution.
It is known that on the way between Harwich and Holland he was captured by Algerian pirates, but escaped. In 1684 Defoe married Mary Tuffley, who bore him eight children. His wife brought a dowry of £3,700, and for some time he could be considered a relatively wealthy man, but in 1692, both his wife’s dowry and his own savings were swallowed up by bankruptcy, which claimed £17,000. Defoe became bankrupt after the sinking of his chartered ship. The case ended with another escape from the inevitable debtor's prison and wanderings in the Mint quarter - a haven for London criminals. Defoe lived secretly in Bristol under an assumed name, fearing officials who arrested debtors. Bankrupt Defoe could go out only on Sundays - on these days arrests were prohibited by law. The longer he plunged into the whirlpool of life, risking his fortune, social position, and sometimes life itself - the ordinary bourgeois Daniel Foe, the more the writer Defoe extracted from life facts, characters, situations, problems that were thought-provoking.
D. Defoe courageously overcame life's adversities and failures. A successful merchant, the father of a large family, the head of a church community, a public speaker involved in political struggle, and sometimes a secret adviser to high-ranking officials in the state, he travels extensively throughout Europe.
In six years, before 1702, up to thirty works by Defoe appeared, among which his book “An Essay on Projects”, published in 1697, is outstanding. “In the preface to the Essay, Defoe correctly calls his time the “age of projects.” There was no end to all sorts of lotteries, various fraudulent scams and enterprises, newspaper traps, etc.! In his projects, Defoe is guided exclusively by the public good, without any thought about for his own benefit. In the events and institutions he proposes, he is at least a hundred years ahead of his century, since many of them were implemented in recent times and entered modern life."
In 1702, Queen Anne, the last of the Stuarts, ascended the English throne. Defoe wrote his famous satirical pamphlet "The surest way to get rid of dissenters." Protestant sectarians in England called themselves dissenters. At first, parliament did not understand the true meaning of the satire and were glad that Daniel Defoe directed his pen against the sectarians. Then someone figured out the real meaning of the satire.
And Defoe was sentenced to seven years in prison, a fine and three times being pilloried.
This medieval method of punishment was especially painful, since it gave the right to street onlookers and voluntary lackeys of the clergy and aristocracy to mock the convicted person. But Defoe was showered with flowers. On the day of standing in the pillory, Defoe, who was in prison, managed to print “Hymn to the Pillory.” Here he attacked the aristocracy and explained why he was put to shame. The crowd sang this pamphlet in the streets and squares while Defoe's sentence was carried out.
Two years later, Defoe was released from prison. His reputation suffered and the thriving tile production business fell into complete disarray during the time the owner was in prison. Defoe was threatened with poverty and possibly exile. To avoid this, Defoe agreed to the prime minister's dubious offer to become a secret agent of the Conservative government and only outwardly remain an "independent" journalist. Thus began the double life of the writer. Defoe's role in the behind-the-scenes intrigues of his time is not entirely clear.
Defoe was sent to Scotland on a diplomatic mission to prepare the way for the union of Scotland with England. He turned out to be a talented diplomat and brilliantly completed the task assigned to him. To do this, Defoe even had to write a book on economics, in which he substantiated the economic benefits of the future unification.
After ascending the English throne of the House of Hanover, Daniel Defoe wrote another poisonous article, for which Parliament awarded him a huge fine and imprisonment. This punishment forced him to leave political activity forever and devote himself exclusively to fiction.
For more than three decades, Daniel Defoe, under his own name, as well as anonymously and under various pseudonyms, continuously published pamphlets, philosophical and legal treatises, economic works, as well as a guide for merchants, instructions for those entering into marriage, a poem about painting, a universal the history of crafts, a number of novels, among which, naturally, Robinson Crusoe stood out.
1.1.1 The history of the novel
This book will be the first one my Emil reads [ son]. For a long time it will constitute his entire library and forever will take pride of place in it... What kind of magic book is this? Aristotle? Pliny? Buffon? No: this is" Robinson Crusoe" ! J.J. Rousseau
The first edition of Robinson Crusoe was published in London on April 25, 1719, without the name of the author. Defoe passed off this work as a manuscript left by the hero of the story himself. The writer did this more out of necessity than out of calculation. The book promised good sales, and Defoe was, of course, interested in its material success. However, he understood that his name as a journalist who writes sharp journalistic articles and pamphlets would more likely harm the success of the book than attract attention to it. That’s why he initially hid his authorship, waiting until the book gained unprecedented fame.
In his novel, Defoe reflected a concept that was shared by many of his contemporaries. He showed that the main quality of any personality is intelligent activity in natural conditions. And only she can preserve the humanity in a person. It was Robinson’s strength of spirit that attracted the younger generation.
The popularity of the novel was so great that the writer published a continuation of the story of his hero, and a year later he added to it a story about Robinson’s journey to Russia. The works about Robinson were followed by other novels - “The Adventures of Captain Singleton”, “Moll Flanders”, “Notes of the Plague Year”, “Colonel Jacques” and “Roxana”. Currently, his numerous works are known only to a narrow circle of specialists, but Robinson Crusoe, read both in major European centers and in the most remote corners of the globe, continues to be reprinted in a huge number of copies. Occasionally, Captain Singleton is also republished in England.
"Robinson Crusoe" is the brightest example of the so-called adventurous sea genre, the first manifestations of which can be found in English literature of the 16th century. The development of this genre, which reached its maturity in the 18th century, was determined by the development of English merchant capitalism.
The documentary travel genre, even before the appearance of Robinson Crusoe, showed a tendency to move into the artistic genre. In "Robinson Crusoe" this process of changing the genre through the accumulation of elements of fiction was completed. Defoe used the style of the Travels, and their features, which had a certain practical significance, became a literary device in Robinson Crusoe: Defoe's language was also simple, precise and protocol. The specific techniques of artistic writing, the so-called poetic figures and tropes, were completely alien to him.
The basis for writing the novel was memoirs, diaries, notes, fictitious and documentary publications. Such literature, especially fashionable in those days, was certainly associated with sea voyages and adventures, the adventures of filibusters ("gentlemen of fortune").
The sources that served as the plot basis for the novel can be divided into factual and literary. The first includes a stream of authors of travel essays and notes of the late 17th and early 18th centuries, among which K. Atarova identifies two:
1) Admiral William Dampier, who published the books: “A New Voyage Around the World,” 1697; Travels and Descriptions", 1699; "Travel to New Holland", 1703;
2) Woods Rogers, who wrote travel diaries of his Pacific travels, which describe the story of Alexander Selkirk (1712), as well as the brochure “The Vicissitudes of Fate, or The Amazing Adventures of A. Selkirk, Written by Himself.”
Still, the greatest influence on the creation of the novel was the incident that happened to Alexander Selkirik, a sailor who lived on a desert island for more than four years completely alone.
But as A. Chameev rightly notes, “no matter how diverse and numerous the sources of Robinson Crusoe were, both in form and content the novel was a deeply innovative phenomenon. Having creatively assimilated the experience of his predecessors, relying on his own journalistic experience, Defoe created an original a work of art that organically combined an adventurous beginning with imaginary documentation, the traditions of the memoir genre with the features of a philosophical parable."
Defoe studied literally mountains of literature about travel across the seas and oceans, on the basis of which he later even wrote “The General History of Piracy.” By the beginning of 1719, Defoe had written a novel. His plan was hatched for years. Defoe named his hero after his school friend Timothy Crusoe, and passed off the book as Robinson's manuscript. The book was published without indicating the author. Thus, Defoe turned out to be one of the first invisible writers. When published, the novel immediately gained wide popularity and extraordinary success. Daniel Defoe, rejoicing at this success, hastened to write a sequel to his novel. August 20, 1719 The Further Adventures of Robinson Crusoe is published. A year later, a third book was published, entitled “Serious Thoughts During the Lifetime and Amazing Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, Including His Vision of the Angelic World.” In the third part, a folding map of Robinson Island was placed on the flyleaf. But this book was no longer a serious success.
As one of the biographers D. Defoe notes, “... if Crusoe, volume one, was read by millions, about Crusoe, volume two - thousands, then only a few heard about the existence of Crusoe, volume three.”
1.2 A Brief Overview of the Age of Enlightenment
The 18th century in Europe is called the “age of reason.” The very concept of reason was interpreted in different ways, and the process of overcoming the traditions of medieval thinking continued in heated debates.
European enlighteners, in their understanding of man, proceeded from a certain norm (whether it was reason or nature), and the literature of that time was characterized by a unique unity of affirmation of this norm and the denial of all aspects of life, ideas and human behavior that did not correspond to it. This unity of negation and affirmation unites enlightenment artists of different artistic movements (including classicism and sentimentalism).
The educational, society-transforming tasks that the enlighteners set for themselves determined the direction of their aesthetic searches, the originality of their artistic method, and determined the active position of the artist.
The literature of the Enlightenment is distinguished by its conceptual nature; it is dominated by works whose structure serves to reveal a certain philosophical or ethical conflict. On the basis of the educational concept, outstanding artistic discoveries were made, a special, educational stage in the history of the artistic exploration of reality emerged, and a new type of hero emerged - active, self-confident. This was a new man from the era of the collapse of feudal society, depicted in a generalized philosophical way, for example, such as Robinson Crusoe.
In European countries for literature of the 18th century. It was characterized by historical optimism, an ineradicable faith in the victory of reason over unreason and prejudice. Enlightenment is a necessary step in the cultural development of any country that is parting with the feudal way of life. Education is fundamentally democratic; it is a culture for the people. It sees its main task in upbringing and education, in introducing knowledge to everyone. Like any significant cultural and historical era, the Enlightenment formed its ideal and sought to compare it with reality, to implement it as quickly as possible and as fully as possible in practice. The 18th century loudly declares itself, putting forward a new understanding of the main dominants of human existence: the attitude towards God, society, the state, other people and, ultimately, a new understanding of Man himself.
The main character, the central link in the philosophy of the Enlightenment, was man. For the first time since the Renaissance, such importance is attached to it and for the first time in the history of culture, a person is considered so comprehensively. Diderot considers man to be the only center of the Universe, without whom everything on earth would lose its meaning.
In the article "Answer to the Question: What is Enlightenment?" I. Kant wrote: “Enlightenment is a person’s exit from the state of his minority, in which he is due to his own fault. Minority is the inability to use one’s reason without guidance from someone else. Minority through one’s own fault is one whose cause lies not in a lack of reason, but in a lack of determination and courage to use it."
1.2.1 Age of Enlightenment in England and France
The Age of Enlightenment is one of the brightest in the development of philosophy and spiritual culture in Europe. England, France and Germany are the main active countries of European culture; they own the main achievements of the Enlightenment, but their contribution to culture is different in both significance and depth. They experienced real social upheavals and emerged from these upheavals with different results.
The special role of England in the history of the European Enlightenment lay, first of all, in the fact that it was its homeland and in many respects a pioneer. England is one of the main centers of the Enlightenment. In 1689, the year of the last revolution in England, the Age of Enlightenment began. The remnants of feudalism were eroding more and more, bourgeois relations, finally established after the Great French Revolution, were making themselves known more and more loudly.
The main outlines of the political program of the English Enlightenment were formulated by the philosopher John Locke (1632-1704). His main work, “An Essay on Human Understanding” (1690), contained a positive program that was accepted not only by English but also by French educators.
TO inalienable human rights , According to Locke, there are three fundamental rights: life, liberty and property. For Locke, the right to property is closely related to the high value of human labor. He was convinced that the property of every person is the result of his labor. Legal equality of individuals - the necessary result of the adoption of three inalienable rights. Like most enlighteners, Locke proceeds from the idea of the inalienable rights of isolated individuals and their private interests. The rule of law must ensure that everyone can benefit, but in such a way that the freedom and private interests of everyone else are also respected.
Locke emphasized: “We are born into the world with such abilities and forces that contain the possibility of mastering almost any thing and which, in any case, can lead us further than we can imagine, but only the exercise of these forces can give us the ability and art in something and lead us to perfection."
Emphasizing the importance of the personal creative effort of each person, his knowledge and experience, the English educators perfectly understood the needs of the society of the 18th century, which was making an unprecedented turn in the development of productive forces and production relations. The Enlightenment contributed to the consolidation in the character of the British of such traits as enterprise, ingenuity, and practicality.
In turn, the French Enlightenment did not represent a completely homogeneous ideological movement: there were considerable differences between its representatives.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau occupies a special place among French thinkers of the 18th century. Since childhood, he worked hard, experienced poverty, humiliation, and changed many professions. Rousseau's teaching boiled down to the demand to lead society out of the state of general depravity of morals. He saw the way out not only in proper education, material and political equality, but also in the direct dependence of morality and politics, morality and the social system. In contrast to philosophers who considered selfishness and egoism compatible with the public good, he demanded the subordination of the individual to the good of society.
Rousseau wrote: Every person is virtuous when his private will corresponds in everything to the general will. Rousseau was one of those who spiritually prepared the French Revolution. He had a huge influence on the modern spiritual history of Europe from the point of view of state law, education and cultural criticism.
1.2.2 Natural man according to Zh.Zh. Rousseau
Rousseau loved nature all his life, his attraction to it was limitless. His restless and rebellious soul found calm and harmony in nature. Consequently, Rousseau considers external nature both as a source of external impressions and as a source of aesthetic pleasure and moral calm for improvement, and as a means of harmonious (natural, free) development of personality.
The concept of nature appears in Rousseau on another plane. He often uses this concept as a tool of polemics. for the praise of the “savage”, leading a happy life among nature, among forests and mountains. Rousseau's defense of nature and everything connected with nature merged with the denial of everything unnatural, divorced from nature with its simplicity and spontaneity. Rousseau’s “cult of nature” is nothing more than aversion to artificiality, falsehood, thirst for everything natural, simplicity, spontaneity, modesty, lack of desires other than those caused by the need to maintain physical strength.
Education by nature is a spontaneous, spontaneous process, determined by the activity of the soul itself and the natural growth of the body.
What conditions are required, according to Rousseau, in order not to interfere with nature, not to distort its natural course, but to subtly help it, following its development? Such conditions primarily include the natural state of man.
"Natural man" - this concept occupies a central place in Rousseau's sociology. In the natural state, human nature is perfect - this is Rousseau’s main thesis, which sheds light on all his discussions about education, which should be natural, i.e. correspond to human nature, and not contradict it, as was the case under feudal education.
A natural man, according to Rousseau, is, first of all, a man created by nature with his natural physical and moral needs and desires. This natural man with his immediate feelings is contrasted by Rousseau with a civilized man, corrupted by the mores of “civil” society.
A natural person is distinguished by natural kindness, responsiveness, compassion for others, and integrity of character. This, one might say, is, in a certain sense, a single, harmonious person, devoid of passions and unquenchable desires. Such an “ideal” person was, of course, devoid of concrete historical content in Rousseau and was used by him rather again as a tool of polemics, a tool for contrasting “nature” with “civilization,” everything natural and artificial.
In Rousseau’s imagination, such a person was depicted either in the image of a “savage” of the prehistoric era, or became a symbol of the common people with their spiritual purity.
That is why in “The Social Contract” Rousseau, in contrast to his first two treatises, writes the following: “Although in a social state man is deprived of many of the advantages that he possesses in a state of nature, he acquires much greater advantages - his abilities are exercised and develop, his thoughts expand, his feelings are ennobled and his whole soul is elevated to such a degree that, if the abuses of new conditions of life did not often reduce him to a lower state, he would have to constantly bless the happy moment that snatched him forever from his previous state and turning him from a stupid and limited animal into a thinking being, into a man."
1. Daniel Defoe - famous English novelist and publicist. He courageously overcame life's adversities and failures. A successful merchant, the father of a large family, the head of a church community, a public speaker involved in political struggle, and sometimes a secret adviser to high-ranking officials in the state. His world fame is based primarily on one novel - “The Adventures of Robinson Crusoe.” Even on the writer’s tombstone he is designated as “the author of Robinson Crusoe.” However, Defoe’s work as a whole is more diverse: he was a talented publicist, the author of poignant pamphlets - in verse and prose, historical works, travel books, and wrote seven novels.
2. In European countries for literature of the 18th century. It was characterized by historical optimism, an ineradicable faith in the victory of reason over unreason and prejudice.
The main character, the central link in the philosophy of the Enlightenment, was man. This was a new man from the era of the collapse of feudal society - a “natural” man. Information about the socio-cultural situation in England indicates the contradictions between the ideal of a “natural” person and the reality of a “bourgeois individual”, masterfully shown by D. Defoe in “Robinson Crusoe”.
3. The concept of “natural” man first appears in the French Enlightenment, namely in the works of Jean-Jacques Rousseau. A natural man, according to Rousseau, is, first of all, a man created by nature with his natural physical and moral needs and desires. He believes that morality as a natural principle (inherent in a person already by birth) can be improved in a person through education, and he considers nature to be the most suitable place for this, as opposed to the urban way of life, which is artificial and distorts any morality.
Chapter 2.Natural man in D. Defoe's novel "Robinson Crusoe"
2.1 " natural" man through labor
For Defoe, as the embodiment of the ideas of the early Enlightenment, the role of labor in the development of nature by man is inseparable from the spiritual improvement of the hero, from the knowledge of nature through reason. Focusing on J. Locke, the founder of English deism, Defoe shows how through experience, with the help of the work of his hands and mind, Robinson, a former Puritan mystic, comes to an integral deistic concept of the universe. The hero's confession showed that after this the conquest of nature by the intelligent Robinson became possible, which the author portrays not as the physical exploration of the island, but as the knowledge by reason of the laws of nature.
The most prosaic fact - making a table and chair or firing pottery - is perceived as a new heroic step for Robinson in the struggle to create human living conditions. Robinson's productive activity distinguishes him from the Scottish sailor Alexander Selkirk, who gradually forgot all the skills of a civilized man and fell into a semi-savage state.
As a hero, Defoe chose the most ordinary man, who conquered life in the same masterful way as Defoe himself, like many others, also ordinary people of that time. Such a hero appeared in literature for the first time, and for the first time everyday work activity was described.
As a “natural” person, Robinson Crusoe did not “go wild” on a desert island, did not succumb to despair, but created completely normal conditions for his life.
At the very beginning of the novel, he is not a very likeable person, he is a slacker and a slacker. He shows his complete inability and unwillingness to engage in any normal human activity. He has only one wind in his head. And we see how later, mastering this living space, learning to wield different tools and perform different actions, he becomes different, because he finds both the meaning and the value of human life. This is the first plot that you should pay attention to - the real contact of a person with the objective world, how bread, clothing, housing, and so on are obtained. When he baked bread for the first time, and this happened many years after he settled on the island, he said that we had no idea how many different labor-intensive procedures needed to be performed in order to get an ordinary loaf of bread.
Robinson is a great organizer and host. He knows how to use chance and experience, knows how to calculate and foresee. Having taken up farming, he accurately calculates what kind of harvest he can get from the barley and rice seeds he has sown, when and what part of the harvest he can eat, put aside, and sow. He studies the soil and climatic conditions and finds out where he needs to sow during the rainy season and where during the dry season.
"The purely human pathos of conquering nature, - writes A. Elistratova, “in the first and most important part of Robinson Crusoe the pathos of commercial adventures replaces, making even the most prosaic details of Robinson’s “works and days” unusually fascinating, which capture the imagination, for this is the story of free, all-conquering labor.” .
Defoe gives Robinson his thoughts, putting educational views into his mouth. Robinson expresses ideas of religious tolerance, he is freedom-loving and humane, he hates wars, and condemns the cruelty of the extermination of natives living on lands captured by white colonialists. He is enthusiastic about his work.
In describing labor processes, the author of Robinson Crusoe shows, among other things, considerable ingenuity. For him, work is not a routine, but an exciting experiment in mastering the world. There is nothing incredible or far from reality in what his hero undertakes on the island. On the contrary, the author strives to portray the evolution of labor skills as consistently and even emotionally as possible, appealing to facts. In the novel we see that after two months of tireless work, when Robinson finally found clay, he dug it up, brought it home and began to work, but he only got two large, ugly clay vessels.
By the way, as researchers note, at first Defoe’s hero did not succeed only in those things, the manufacturing process of which the author himself knew well from his own experience and, therefore, could reliably describe all the “torments of creativity.” This fully applies to clay firing, since at the end of the 17th century. Defoe was a co-owner of a brick factory. It took Robinson almost a year of effort so that “instead of clumsy, rough products”, “neat things of the correct shape” came out from under his hands.
But the main thing in the presentation of work for Daniel Defoe is not even the result itself, but the emotional impression - that feeling of delight and satisfaction from creating with one’s own hands, from overcoming obstacles that the hero experiences: “But never, it seems, have I been so happy and proud of my wit “like the day I managed to make a pipe,” Robinson reports. He experiences the same feeling of delight and enjoyment of the “fruits of his labors” upon completion of the construction of the hut.
From the point of view of understanding the impact of work on the individual and, in turn, the impact of a person’s labor efforts on the surrounding reality, the first part of the novel “Robinson Crusoe” is the most interesting. In the first part of the novel, the hero alone explores the primordial world. Gradually, Robinson masters the art of sculpting and firing dishes, catching and taming goats, from primitive types of work he rises to the most complex, based on experience and knowledge of the laws of nature. But at the same time, the hero begins to rethink life values, educate his soul, and humble everyday worries and passions. Researchers of D. Defoe's work believe, for example, that Robinson's long process of mastering pottery symbolizes the process of the hero curbing his sinful inclinations and improving his own nature. And, if the hero’s initial spiritual state is hopelessness, then work, overcoming, reading the Bible and reflection turn him into an optimist, always able to find a reason to “thank Providence.”
Throughout the entire novel, D. Defoe ironically notes that his hero is characterized by pride and an exaggerated idea of his capabilities. This was most clearly manifested in the episode about the construction of a grandiose boat, when Robinson “amused himself with his idea, not giving himself the trouble to calculate whether he had the strength to cope with it.” But the same megalomania is evident in the original intention of building a goat pen two miles in circumference; The raft built by Robinson on one of his trips to the ship turns out to be excessively large and overloaded; the cave overexpanded by him becomes accessible to predators and less safe; etc. Despite the irony present, the reader nevertheless understands that the author has great sympathy for a person who takes the trouble to do a lot and even complains about the constant lack of time.
This fact - at first glance absurd in the conditions of a desert island - in itself is, firstly, another proof of the “social nature of man”, and secondly, glorifies work as the most effective cure for despondency and despair.
In all the adventures of Robinson Crusoe, the author's educational experiment takes place, consisting of two stages - the education and testing of a natural person. In a narrower sense, it is an experiment in the upbringing and self-education of a natural person through work and a test of spiritual maturity and moral strength of the individual through work. Defoe depicted the complex process of formation and development of personality and the role of labor activity in it.
The evolution of the consciousness of the natural man Robinson Crusoe, presented by Defoe, confirms the correctness of the basic enlightenment concepts of the natural man: firstly, man, even in natural conditions, remains a “social animal”; secondly, loneliness is unnatural.
The whole life of the hero on the island is the process of returning a person, who, by the will of fate, was placed in natural conditions, in a social state. Thus, Defoe contrasts earlier concepts of social order with an educational program for the improvement of man and society. Thus, work in the work of Daniel Defoe is an element of self-education and self-improvement of the hero’s personality.
Defoe depicts the story of life on a desert island in such a way that it becomes obvious: the continuous process of learning about the world and tireless work is the natural state of man, allowing him to find true freedom and happiness, delivering “minutes of inexpressible inner joy.” Thus, Daniel Defoe, who was once preparing for a spiritual career and a man who is undoubtedly a sincere believer, and Defoe - the exponent of the most progressive views of his time - proves that the entire history of civilizations is nothing more than the education of man by human labor.
The concept of the primary role of labor in the process of improving man and society in Daniel Defoe's novel "Robinson Crusoe" reflected the most progressive, democratic ideas of the early Enlightenment. Taking advantage, like J. Locke in his work on government, of the theme of an island out of contact with society, Defoe, using the example of Robinson’s life, proves the enduring value of labor in social development and the creation of the material and spiritual basis of society. The majestic hymn to labor and creative activity of the mind, for the first time in the history of world literature, sounded from the pages of a work of art, became a sharp, uncompromising criticism of both the feudal past and the bourgeois present of England at the beginning of the 18th century. It is the work and creative activity of the mind that, according to Defoe’s deep conviction, is capable of radically changing the world. Thanks to labor, a kind of mini-civilization arises on a desert island, the creator of which is an intelligent “natural” person.
Defoe's hero became the living embodiment of the Enlightenment's ideas about contemporary man as a "natural" man, not historically arose, but given by nature itself.
2.2 Manifestation of the concept in the novel "Robinson Crusoe"" natural" person through religion
D. Defoe's first novel can be considered as a literary manifesto of the Enlightenment writer, which is based on the concept of the world and man characteristic of the early stage of the Enlightenment. The worldview of a person of that time cannot be considered without the influence of religious and ethical principles on his consciousness, and the novel “The Adventures of Robinson Crusoe” is unconditional proof of this. Numerous researchers of Defoe's work not only find direct illusions with biblical texts in the text of the novel, but also draw an analogy between the main storyline of "The Adventures of Robinson Crusoe" and some Old Testament stories.
The solution to the question of the origins of the preaching of work in this context is more than simple: “You will earn your bread through hard work until you return to the ground from which you were taken,” God said to Adam, expelling him from paradise. Hard work is one of the beatitudes of the Christian faith. Robinson has to realize all this and accept it with gratitude on a desert island.
Among domestic literary scholars, it was not previously customary to pay attention to the fact that among all the types of activities carried out by Robinson on the island, Daniel Defoe assigns the most important role to spiritual work. In the foreground he had religious duties and the reading of the Holy Scriptures, to which he invariably devoted a certain time three times a day. Robinson's second daily task was hunting, which took him about three hours every morning when it wasn't raining. The third task was sorting, drying and cooking killed or caught game.
Reflections and reading the Bible open Robinson Crusoe's eyes to the universe and allow him to come to a religious perception of life. From a certain moment on the island, he begins to perceive everything that happens to him as the Providence of God. It can be assumed that Robinson Crusoe improved his life, not only because he strived for comfort, but also because - and for Defoe the preacher this is apparently the most important - that “having learned the truth”, he stopped blindly striving for liberation from imprisonment, beginning to perceive with full responsibility everything that the Lord sent down. Robinson believes that for a person who has comprehended the truth, deliverance from sin brings more happiness than deliverance from suffering. He no longer prayed for deliverance; Robinson did not think about it. Deliverance began to seem like a trifle to him. This is the essence of the changes that have occurred in the hero’s mind.
Like a true bourgeois, Robinson firmly adheres to the Puritan religion. The debate between Robinson and Friday about religion is interesting, in which the “natural man” Friday easily refutes the theological arguments of Robinson, who undertook to convert him to Christianity, and questions the existence of the devil. Thus Defoe criticizes one of the main doctrines of Puritanism about the existence of evil.
It should be noted that almost the entire novel by Daniel Defoe "Robinson Crusoe" is based on the book of Genesis. Only a few chapters, particularly the last ones, are different. In addition, they differ in content, but the biblical events took place much earlier than Defoe decided to write his novel. Times have changed, and so have values.
Therefore, one of the factors that pushed him to create this novel was reading religious literature. Apparently, Daniel Defoe more than once throughout his turbulent life regretted the calm and soul-saving existence of a parish pastor that he had rejected. He conveyed this calm, almost unclouded existence in his novel. A long period on the island without constant wars, major events, away from the bustle of people - that’s what Daniel needed.
The novel can be read as an allegorical parable about the spiritual fall and rebirth of man - in other words, as K. Atarova writes, “a story about the wanderings of a lost soul, burdened with original sin and through turning to God, finding the path to salvation.” .
“It was not for nothing that Defoe insisted in the 3rd part of the novel on its allegorical meaning , - notes A. Elistratova. - The reverent seriousness with which Robinson Crusoe ponders his life experience, wanting to comprehend its hidden meaning, the stern scrupulousness with which he analyzes his spiritual impulses - all this goes back to that democratic Puritan literary tradition of the 17th century, which was completed in " The Pilgrim's Path" by J. Bunyan. Robinson sees the manifestation of divine providence in every incident of his life; prophetic dreams overshadow him... shipwreck, loneliness, an uninhabited island, an invasion of savages - everything seems to him to be divine punishments."
Robinson interprets any trifling incident as “God’s providence,” and a random set of tragic circumstances as fair punishment and atonement for sins. Even coincidences of dates seem meaningful and symbolic to the hero (“a sinful life and a solitary life,” Crusoe calculates, “began for me on the same day.” , September 30th). According to J. Starr, Robinson appears in a dual role - both as a sinner and as God's chosen one.
Of course, the psychology of Robinson's image in his development of a "natural" man is revealed in his relationship with God. Analyzing his life before and on the island, trying to find out. to create allegorical higher parallels and a certain metaphysical meaning, Robinson writes: “Alas! My soul did not know God: the good instructions of my father were erased from memory during 8 years of continuous wanderings across the seas and constant communication with wicked people like myself, to the last degree indifferent to faith. I don’t remember that during all this time my thought even once soared to God... I was in a kind of moral dullness: the desire for good and the consciousness of evil were equally alien to me... I did not have the slightest idea of either. the fear of God in danger, nor the feeling of gratitude to the Creator for deliverance from it... ".
“I felt neither God nor God’s judgment over me; I saw just as little of the punishing right hand in the disasters that befell me as if I were the happiest person in the world.” .
However, having made such an atheistic confession, Robinson immediately retreats, admitting that only now, having fallen ill, he felt the awakening of his conscience and “realized that by his sinful behavior he had incurred God’s wrath and that the unprecedented blows of fate were only my fair retribution.”
Words about the Lord's Punishment, Providence, and God's mercy haunt Robinson and appear quite often in the text, although in practice he is guided by everyday meaning. Thoughts about God usually visit him in misfortunes.
Thoughts about Providence, a miracle, leading him into initial ecstasy, until the mind finds reasonable explanations for what happened, are further proof of such qualities of the hero, which are unrestrained by anything on a deserted island, such as spontaneity, openness, impressionability - that is, the qualities of a “natural” person.
And, on the contrary, the intervention of reason, rationally explaining the reason for this or that “miracle,” is a deterrent. Being materially creative, the mind at the same time performs the function of a psychological limiter. The entire narrative is built on the collision of these two functions, on a hidden dialogue between faith and rationalistic unbelief, childish, simple-minded enthusiasm and prudence. Two points of view, merged in one hero, endlessly argue with each other. Places related to the first ("God's") or second (healthy) moments also differ in stylistic design. The former are dominated by rhetorical questions, exclamatory sentences, high pathos, complex phrases, an abundance of church words, quotes from the Bible, and sentimental epithets; secondly, laconic, simple, understated speech.
An example is Robinson's description of his feelings about the discovery of barley grains:
“It is impossible to convey into what confusion this discovery plunged me! Until then, I had never been guided by religious thoughts... But when I saw this barley, grown in an unusual climate, and most importantly, unknown how it got here, I began to believe, that it was God who miraculously grew it without seeds just to feed me on this wild, joyless island. This thought touched me a little and brought tears to my eyes; I was happy with the knowledge that such a miracle had happened for my sake.”
When Robinson remembered about the shaken out bag, “the miracle disappeared, and along with the discovery that everything happened in the most natural way, I must confess that my ardent gratitude to Providence cooled significantly.” .
It is interesting how Robinson plays out in this place the rationalistic discovery made in the providential plan.
“Meanwhile, what happened to me was almost as unexpected as a miracle, and, in any case, deserved no less gratitude. Indeed, wasn’t the finger of Providence visible in the fact that out of many thousands... an ounce of barley grains spoiled by rats, 10 or 12 grains survived and, therefore, it was as if they had fallen from the sky. And I had to shake out the bag on the lawn, where the shadow of the rock fell and where the seeds could immediately sprout! I should throw them a little further, and they would be burned by the sun."
Having gone to the pantry for tobacco, Robinson writes: “Undoubtedly, Providence guided my actions, for, having opened the chest, I found in it medicine not only for the body, but also for the soul: firstly, the tobacco that I was looking for, and secondly - Bible" But the conversation with God, as well as the constant mention of His name, repeated appeals and hopes for God's mercy disappear as soon as Robinson returns to society and his former life is restored. With the acquisition of external dialogues, the need for internal dialogue disappears. The words “God”, “God”, “punishment” and their various derivatives disappear from the text. It can be considered that D. Defoe's novel is not a novel about adventure at all, but a novel about the spiritual development of man. This book is about how a meeting occurs between a person who finds himself in silence, in silence, in complete, absolute solitude with the Lord God, his Creator and Creator. This is the main plot of Robinson Crusoe. The Christian theme in the novel sounds very clearly and is one of the central themes in it. The novel traces the so-called “natural religion” that Jean-Jacques Rousseau adhered to. He tried to derive all moral and ontological truths simply from the natural, natural development of man himself.
1. "Robinson Crusoe" is an experiment in the upbringing and self-education of a natural person through work and testing the spiritual maturity and moral strength of the individual through work. Defoe depicted the complex process of formation and development of personality and the role of labor activity in it.
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Goal: To prove that the novel about Robinson Crusoe is a hymn to Man.
To be or not to be?
- realistic novel
- psychological novel
- adventure genre
- prototype
1. Teacher's introduction . (Audio recording “Voice of the Sea” is played)
You hear the voice of the elements. Voice of the sea. It is harsh and does not forgive weakness. It, like life, sends trials, and not everyone can withstand them. It will be so. That's it. This was the case during the time of Defoe, when England began to explore the sea and brave madmen challenged fate.
The topic of our lesson is “Daniel Defoe. The Life and Extraordinary Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, Sailor from York"
The purpose of our conversation about the book is to understand: is it true that the novel “Robinson Crusoe,” as researchers claim, is a hymn to Man?
Our focus today is on a novel that turns 286 years old. You said that you read the book with great interest. And we will try to understand what attracts the novel, which is separated from our days by almost three centuries.
We will talk about the artistic features of the book and about the main character, trying to understand the main thing: what is Man? Is it possible to remain human, being cut off from the society of your own kind?
2. D. Defoe: writer and his era
3. Creation of a novel
We have repeatedly talked to you about life-likeness and fiction in literature. Defoe's novel may well add to our knowledge - the book has a rich backstory.
The novel reflects Defoe's contemporary era of increasing colonial expansion of England, the era of geographical discoveries, when there were many “blank spots” on the world map, when many sailors spent years traveling.
This realistic novel, related to adventurous jean ru, very popular in England at that time.
Let's listen to the message about the creation of the novel, its life basis.
Student's message about the creation of the novel and the prototypes of the hero*
Teacher's word.
So, the prototype of Robinson’s image was the English sailor Selkirk. But Robinson has another prototype - Defoe himself.
Robinson is almost 30 years older than Defoe. When the no longer young Robinson, with significant means, experience and extensive business plans, lands on his native shore, 28-year-old Defoe, an educated merchant, the breadwinner of a large family, a free citizen of the city of London, the head of a small church community, a public speaker who takes risks, is already active in London. in political games, and at horse races and cockfights..
You already know something about Daniel Defoe. What do you think are the features of his personality that allow us to say that the writer is one of the prototypes of his hero?
(Love of life and perseverance in overcoming obstacles)
Real facts formed the basis of the novel; the hero of the book has real prototypes. But Defoe was a writer. That is, he creatively comprehended the facts that struck him:
If Selkirk spent 4 years and 5 months on the island, then Robinson spent 28. The author deliberately placed his hero in the most difficult conditions. Moreover, his hero, after all the trials, remained a civilized person.
Defoe moved the scene from the Pacific Ocean to the Atlantic, at the mouth of the Orinoco River. The coordinates of the island named by the writer coincide with the coordinates of the island of Tobago. Defoe chose this area because it was described in sufficient detail in the literature of that time. The writer himself has never been here. He drew information from the books “The Discovery of Guiana” by Walter Releigh, “Travels Around the World” and “The Diary” of William Dampier and others. Thanks to these sources, Defoe’s book is very reliable. After all, almost everything described in the novel is limited by space. And complete accuracy of details was necessary: climate, flora and fauna, topography of the island.
The novel was written quickly and with pleasure. During Defoe's lifetime, the book went through 17 editions and began to win the hearts of readers all over the world.
The book was published on April 25, 1719. The success was unprecedented! In the same year, new 4 editions appeared! Publisher Taylor pocketed £1,000 - a huge sum. During Defoe's lifetime, the novel went through 17 editions. Books were sold for 5 shillings - a lot of money. But the novel sold out quickly.
The writer’s skill won: people, reading the book, sincerely believed in “ the amazing adventures of Robinson Crusoe, a sailor from York, who lived for 28 years all alone on an uninhabited island off the coast of America, near the mouth of the Orinoco River, where he was thrown by a shipwreck, during which the entire crew of the ship, except for him, died, with an account of his unexpected release pirates, written by himself."
4. The reasons for the enormous success of the novel.
The novel “Robinson Crusoe” was extremely popular. Try to explain its popularity. What do you see as its reasons?
Contemporaries believed in the authenticity of what was described, because the story is told in 1st person
The plot is extremely fascinating, it is based on an adventure
For the first time in English literature, the hero became an ordinary English bourgeois - enterprising, brave, energetic. And at the same time - a completely ordinary, ordinary person.
5. Translator's work
- In 1764, the first Russian translation of the novel appeared. How does a translator work? Is his bread difficult?
What does a translator need to know and be able to do?
The guys who translated fragments of the novel from English into Russian will be able to answer these questions.
What difficulties did you encounter? / The English language has undergone significant changes since the novel was written.
-Read the text you received.
Presentation by a group of translators.
6. The hero of the novel and his fate. /Conversation using the text of the novel/.
(Audio recording sounds: storm at sea)
You hear again what Robinson heard. Imagine: one person in the whole world, torn out of his usual life, so small and weak compared to the sea...
How did he feel when he realized his situation? /At first - despair, melancholy/
- What did he call his island?/Island of Despair/.
What did he do when he realized his situation? /Set up on the island/.
Robinson Crusoe was incredibly lucky. What? /His ship washed up on the island/.
What was the first thing taken from the ship?
- “Unnecessary trash! Why do I need you now?” -What is Robinson talking about? And why? /Money whose value turns out to be conditional/.
- Prove this person's tenacity with examples.
How has Robinson changed over 28 years of solitude? What did he learn?
/He learned how to make and maintain fire, make candles from goat fat, cheese and butter from goat milk, clay dishes, furniture and a house, process hides, weave baskets, bake bread, cultivate the land, etc.. And most importantly, he I learned not to grumble at fate, but to take everything for granted, to live and not to exist, not to give in to despondency/.
Can you name the main quality of Robinson, in your opinion, that helped him not only survive, but also remain human, even become better than before? /Industriousness/.
7. Psychologism of the novel
“The Life and Extraordinary Adventures of Robinson Crusoe can be called one of the first psychological novels. Sadness, despair, melancholy, despondency - Robinson experienced everything. And if he had succumbed to these feelings, there would have been no return.. But he wanted to live so badly that he managed to pull himself together. He worked and worked, and in the evenings, until the ink ran out, he made notes.
- The plot of the novel is complicated by the pages of Robinson's diary. What is the purpose of keeping this diary?
/Robinson learned to analyze his mood and actions. The diary helped him be more resilient. The diary became his interlocutor/.
Particular attention is drawn to the poem he composed about Good and Evil. What is the role of these lines?
/Even when you are in a critical situation, you must be able to find the positive, the good in what is happening to you. We must try not to give in to despondency, but to act, understanding that it could have been worse, that life goes on.
Student Performance: Self-Esteem and Introspection in the Diaries of Robinson Crusoe.
After all, D. Defoe is not just the founder of the European novel. He is the ancestor psychological novel.
How do you understand the expression “psychological novel”? Prove with examples from the text that Robinson constantly reflects on his actions, thoughts, and desires.
Many researchers of Defoe's work argue that Robinson is a contradictory nature: he mixed a variety of traits, both good and bad. After thinking, I decided to agree with this statement. What do you think? Are there any contradictions in Robinson's character?
Filling out the table:
Negative in Robinson:
The story of Xuri. Robinson does not yet know how to think about others, does not know how to empathize and bear responsibility for the life of another.
The first word Friday learned was Mister /not friend, not comrade/
“I am the king and owner of this land. My rights to her are indisputable.”
Positive about the hero:
“I was destined to be the cause of all my misfortunes”
“However, it was useless to sit back and dream of something that could not be obtained.”
-What qualities are combined in the hero of the novel?
/Friendliness – and snobbery; kindness - and arrogance; a penchant for power - and a penchant for repentance, thriftiness - and merchant prudence: he scrupulously counts the number of killed savages /
What kind of person is this, Mr. Robinson? If we talk about the book, is the hero positive or negative?
(A positive hero is a hero who has a strong moral principle, a hero who is able to set an example of high morality and teach us, the readers, lessons of goodness).
Students express their opinions
There is a person among us who knows Robinson much better than us. This is his faithful servant Friday.
Friday's dramatized first-person account
Tell me, Friday: is your master a good man?
Now let's listen to Mr. Robinson himself.
Robinson's dramatized first-person account
- Years pass, full of work, incredible efforts - and Robinson becomes wiser, understands many things differently.
What exactly?
- He began to believe in God
- “I have learned to look more at the bright side than the dark side of my situation.”
- “I was full, my needs were satisfied - why did I need everything else?” Those. A person doesn’t need that much to be happy.
8. Plot and composition of the novel
How is the novel structured? What do you consider the most important links in the storyline that reveal the character of the hero?
- Can you identify the most important plot elements such as beginning, climax and resolution?
- Why don’t we talk about artistic and expressive means: epithets, metaphors, comparisons? /We read the novel in translation/
- Why don’t I ask you about the role of landscape in a novel, in revealing the image of the hero? (He is a merchant, a pragmatist, he only uses nature)
While reading the book, I noticed the words: “You can find good in every evil, you just have to think that something worse could happen.”
- What did you pay attention to?
/Reading the lines that aroused interest/
How do you understand the famous Shakespearean phrase chosen as an epigraph?
9. Summing up
You said that you liked this novel. And why? Did Robinson's example teach you anything?
Is this book modern?
Are those researchers right who consider the novel “Robinson Crusoe” to be a hymn to Man? Justify your point of view.
10. Final word from the teacher.
The hero of the novel by D. Defoe, as we have seen, combines both positive and negative qualities. That's why he's interesting to us. And it is even more important that it was an ordinary person like us who managed to survive, survive, and remain Human.
Our life is rich in surprises and often tests people's strength - we learn about this every day from the News. And although Robinson lived almost three hundred years ago, he can teach us a lot. He can help us remain human - no matter what happens to us.
Homework: Write an essay “What does the novel “Robinson Crusoe” teach us or a Letter to Mr. Robinson Crusoe.
Documentaryism and Documentaryism and the diary form of the novel by Defoe Robinson
Plan:
Introduction
1. Historical background
2 Problems of the theory of genre in literary criticism..
3. The history of the creation of the novel.
4. Philosophy of freedom. The concept of freedom in literature.
5. The desire for freedom or flight from it?
6. Test of Loneliness.
7. Victory over yourself.
Conclusion
G.N. Pospelov concludes that a genre is not a type of any separate genus, genre and generic properties lie in different planes of the content of works and works can only be divided into genera and genres “crosswise.” Pospelov’s genre typology has some fundamental points of contact with Bakhtin’s theory of the novel and novelized genres. Despite the different understandings of the novel, both concepts are methodologically similar in their recognition of the leading importance of the substantive beginning of genres and the desire to build a functional poetics of genre groups. The principle of cross-classification also brings them together: the lines of division into genre groups do not coincide with the generic differentiation of the work. This principle is recognized by scientists as the most promising.
The problem of genres belongs to the least developed area of literary criticism. In the history of studying this problem, two extremes can be traced. One is the limitation of the very concept of genres to formal features, considering their development as isolated, outside the living literary process. The other is the dissolution of the problem in the general movement of literature. Meanwhile, the most fruitful way is to study the uniqueness of genres as a manifestation of general, “historically determined patterns of literary evolution.” In this case, one should take into account such a contradictory feature of genres as their constant interaction and, at the same time, the tendency to preserve the specificity of each of them.
The complex process of interaction of genres within an artistic whole still remains one of the most interesting and promising for theoretical understanding. Traditionally, it comes down to the synthetic nature of the work, understood as the dominance of one genre principle, which acquires the function of genre formation. The system resists such genre monologue; genres combine and interact without being influenced by the dominant genre principle, without losing their genre essence.
From our point of view, it would be more correct to consider it from the perspective of a synthesis of genres, rather than the dominance of any one of them.
The form in which the paintings in Robinson Crusoe are presented is expressed through travel. Therefore, we can talk about the use of such a literary genre as travel. The travel genre is based on the description by the traveler (eyewitness) of reliable information about some little-known countries or lands in the form of notes, diaries, and essays. A special type of literary travel is a narrative about fictional, imaginary wanderings, which we deal with in Robinson Crusoe (Dafoe sometimes names geographical objects incorrectly). The formation and development of the travel genre is distinguished by a complex interaction of documentary, artistic and folklore forms, united by the image of the traveler (storyteller), which is already characteristic of ancient travel. The defining position of such a hero is that of an observer of someone else’s world, and “...the opposition of “one’s own” world, space to “alien” is a formative factor in the travel genre. All this is clearly presented in Robinson, which allows us to talk about the presence of this genre in the work.
From this form of storytelling (through travel), all other genre modifications follow. Defoe sought to evoke in his reader's imagination the folk psychology of his day.
The form of the narrative itself, and not just the content, speaks in favor of the genre of diary entries.
“Robinson” is an inter-genre formation that includes the genres of document, diary, autobiography and travel. The transitional nature of the era, new themes and plots required new genres, with the help of which the writer could more accurately and completely convey his thoughts to the public.
Regarding Defoe's novel, it is impossible to say definitely what genre his novel “Robinson Crusoe” can be classified into. Everything here is controversial. Everything is multifaceted. The genre of the hero’s autobiography, diary and document are intertwined here. It is enough to recall the history of writing the novel. The prototype of Robinson is considered to be the navigator Alexander Selkirk, who at the beginning of the 18th century with his crew fled from a ship on which riots began. History claims that he allegedly remained of his own free will on the island of Mas a Tierra, off the coast of Chile. Only four and a half years later it was discovered by a semi-pirate flotilla that came to the island for fresh water.
For the first time, the story of the mutiny on the ship, from which Selkirk, among many, escaped, was heard in a report written upon his return by one of the participants in the unsuccessful journey. Some time later, Captain Woods Rogers, on whose ship he sailed from Selkirk Island, wrote about this in his travel notes. The same story was described by Captain Cook, who sailed with Rogers. Compared to the initial report, the event that forced different people to take up the pen was overgrown with more and more new details. Moreover, each of them looked at the fate of the unfortunate navigator from different points of view. Finding himself in the crosshairs of publicist Richard Steele, Selkirk, who returned to the mainland, turned into a real hero who survived a unique ordeal. The result was an essay by the famous writer R. Style, recorded from the words of Alexander Selkirk himself.
But this fact, which became widely known, was brought to perfection by D. Defoe. He changed the name of the hero, extended his stay to 28 years, moved the action from the Pacific Ocean to the Atlantic, and moved the time of the event by fifty years. As a result of these seemingly simple actions, we have the greatest literary work, ageless, not covered with dust for hundreds of years. The novel still shines with new facets in the 21st century, it is read with enthusiasm by adults in translations or the original and by children in K. Chukovsky’s retellings.
The novel by the English writer Daniel Defoe /1660 * 1731/ “The Life, Extraordinary and Amazing Adventures of Robinson Crusoe...” is one of the most widely read works of world literature. Interest in him does not dry up both on the part of readers and on the part of researchers of the English novel of the Enlightenment, who highly appreciate the writer’s contribution to the development of the national traditions of the genre and all Western European fiction. Daniel Defoe was one of those enlightening authors whose work laid the foundations for many types, genre varieties and forms of the novel of the 19th and 20th centuries.
There are at present only three other heroes in English literature who occupy the same place as Robinson in the minds and speeches of the common man in the street. Any coal delivery man, any cleaning lady will understand what is meant when they say about someone that he is “a real Romeo”, “the spitting image of Shylock”, “damn Robinson Crusoe” or “damned Sherlock Holmes”. Other heroes, such as Don Quixote, Bill Sikes, Mrs. Grundy, Micawber, Hamlet, Mrs. Hemp, and so on, are known to educated and semi-educated people, but these four are known to more than ninety percent of the population, millions who have never read a line from the works in which they appear. The reason for this is that each of them is a symbolic figure representing the eternal passion of human character. Romeo means love, Shylock means stinginess, Crusoe means love of adventure, Holmes means sport.
Dickens's opinion of Defoe is well known. He considered Defoe to be an “unemotional” writer, that is, unable to depict feelings and evoke them in the reader. Defoe's novels, according to Dickens, aroused only curiosity: what will happen next? A. Green, on the contrary, read Defoe’s novels. The father wanted his son to get an education and start working. But Sasha was not like other children, he was attracted to unknown, exotic countries, forests, the sea, which he learned about from the books of F. Cooper, E. Poe, D. Defoe, J. Verne. At sixteen, young Sasha Grinevsky leaves home to pursue his dream. Isn't it true, than Robinson? As a result, we got a magnificent morenaist writer, a storyteller who turned real life into a miracle. Of course, D. Defoe also deserves credit for this.
In fact, the sea is not just a backdrop for the actions of the romantic hero; It contributed to the development of will and strong character of a person. The image of the sea is found in the works of W. Scott “The Pirate”, D. Defoe “The Life and Amazing Adventures of the Sailor Robinson Crusoe”, D. Swift “Gulliver’s Travels.
The secret of the unprecedented success of the novel about the adventures of Robinson Crusoe lies, of course, in the choice of topic: the hero’s passion for travel is a striking sign of the times when there were still “blank spots” on the map. However, not only the theme, but also - and above all - the way it is revealed still attracts readers to this book. “Robinson Crusoe on his island - alone, deprived of help and all kinds of tools, providing himself, however, with food and self-preservation and even achieving some well-being - this is a subject ... that can be made entertaining in a thousand ways ...”, wrote French philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau in his pedagogical treatise "Emile, or Education".
D. Defoe - poeticized the reality surrounding his hero on the island, Robinson Crusoe's attitude to everything that he experiences. Poetics is an element of the author’s literary and aesthetic views, characteristic of the first novelists of the Enlightenment. The connection between Defoe's work and the literary traditions and philosophical and ethical views of the Enlightenment is inextricable.
Daniel Defoe expanded the boundaries of aesthetic perception of reality for posterity, finding his own sphere of the strange and surprising, which largely predetermined the success of his work. “It’s amazing that almost no one has thought about how many small jobs need to be done to grow, preserve, collect, cook and bake an ordinary piece of bread,” reflects Robinson Crusoe.
What exactly was Robinson doing on a desert island? First of all, without a doubt, he made every effort to survive. But the author presents his necessary efforts as adventures associated with the most ordinary things: making furniture, firing pots, arranging housing, growing bread, taming goats. Thus, heavy rains, which did not stop for almost two weeks, force the hero to devote two to three hours every day to excavation work and expand his cave. The search for a secluded place for a new batch of goats results in the discovery of places of cannibal feasts. But the main thing is that the hero begins to rethink life values, educate his soul, and humble everyday worries and passions. Researchers of D. Defoe's work believe, for example, that Robinson's long process of mastering pottery symbolizes the process of the hero curbing his sinful inclinations and improving his own nature. And, if the hero’s initial spiritual state is hopelessness, then overcoming numerous difficulties, reading the Bible and thinking turn him into an optimist.
Partially rejecting the traditions of literary play, which in the writer’s time was an immutable law of literary prose, Defoe nevertheless suggests: even if the reader sees fiction as a game, then it should not be rejected if it is truthful and contains “good morals.”
Defoe, as the embodiment of the ideas of the early Enlightenment, depicts how Robinson, a former Puritan mystic, comes to an integral concept of the universe. The hero's confession showed that after this the conquest of nature by the intelligent Robinson became possible, which the author depicts not as the physical exploration of the island, but as the knowledge by reason of the laws of nature and existence. As a result, instead of chasing luck, which the young Robinson, prompted by the spirit of the times, wanted to do, the Robinson who finds himself on the Island of Despair achieves everything by strength of spirit and returns home as a businessman - an entrepreneur.
The evolution of Robinson Crusoe's consciousness, presented by Defoe, confirms the correctness of the basic enlightenment concepts of man: firstly, man, even under natural conditions, remains a “social animal”; secondly, loneliness is unnatural. The whole life of the hero on the island is the process of returning a person, who, by the will of fate, was placed in natural conditions, in a social state. Thus, Defoe contrasts earlier concepts of social order with an educational program for the improvement of man and society.
Throughout the entire novel, D. Defoe ironically notes that his hero is characterized by pride and an exaggerated idea of his capabilities. This was most clearly manifested in the episode about the construction of a grandiose boat, when Robinson “amused himself with his idea, not giving himself the trouble to calculate whether he had the strength to cope with it.” But the same megalomania is evident in the original intention of building a goat pen two miles in circumference; The raft built by Robinson on one of his trips to the ship turns out to be excessively large and overloaded; the cave overexpanded by him becomes accessible to predators and less safe; etc. Despite the irony present, the reader nevertheless understands that the author has great sympathy for a person who takes the trouble to do a lot and even complains about the constant lack of time.
Thus, in all the adventures of Robinson Crusoe, the author’s educational experience takes place, consisting of two stages - the education and testing of Man. In a narrower sense, it is an experiment in the upbringing and self-education of a person, testing the spiritual maturity and moral strength of the individual. Defoe depicted the complex process of formation and development of personality.
The novel is based on the concept of the world and man, characteristic of the early stage of the Enlightenment. The worldview of a person of that time cannot be considered without the influence of religious and ethical principles on his consciousness, and the novel “The Adventures of Robinson Crusoe” is unconditional proof of this. Numerous researchers of Defoe's work not only find direct illusions with biblical texts in the text of the novel, but also draw an analogy between the main storyline of "The Adventures of Robinson Crusoe" and some Old Testament stories.
The solution to the question of the origins of the preaching of work in this context is more than simple: “With hard work you will earn your bread until you return to the ground from which you were taken,” God said to Adam, expelling him from paradise. Hard work is one of the beatitudes of the Christian faith. Robinson has to realize all this.
Reflections and reading the Bible open Robinson Crusoe's eyes to the universe and allow him to come to a religious perception of life. From a certain moment on the island, he begins to perceive everything that happens to him as the Providence of God. It can be assumed that Robinson Crusoe improved his life, not only because he strived for comfort, but also because - and for Defoe the preacher this is apparently the most important - that “having learned the truth”, he stopped blindly striving for liberation from imprisonment, beginning to perceive with full responsibility everything that the Lord sent down. “... To a person who has comprehended the truth, deliverance from sin brings more happiness than deliverance from suffering. For deliverance... I no longer prayed, I didn’t even think about it: it began to seem like such a trifle to me...” - here the essence of the changes that occurred in the hero’s consciousness.
In this regard, the hero’s stay on the Island of Despair is compared to the desert through which the Old Testament Moses led his people for forty years and which became a symbol of liberation not so much physical as spiritual. Among all the types of activities carried out by Robinson on the island, Daniel Defoe assigns the most important role to spiritual work: “Religious duties and the reading of the Holy Scriptures were in the foreground,” says Robinson, “I invariably allocated a certain time to them three times a day. The second of the daily My business was hunting, which took me about three hours every morning, when there was no rain. The third task was sorting, drying and preparing killed or caught game..."
In endless spiritual and physical labors, Robinson gets rid of the main vices of a civilized society: greed, laziness, gluttony, hypocrisy. Defoe portrays the story of life on a desert island in such a way that it becomes obvious: the continuous process of learning about the world and tireless work is the natural state of a person, allowing him to find true freedom and happiness, delivering “minutes of inexpressible inner joy.”
Daniel Defoe's novel "Robinson Crusoe" reflected the most progressive, democratic ideas of the early Enlightenment. Using the theme of an island out of contact with society, Defoe, using the example of Robinson’s life, proves the enduring value of internal freedom in social development and the creation of the material and spiritual basis of society. The novel became a sharp, uncompromising critique of both the feudal past and the bourgeois present of England at the beginning of the 18th century.
Philosophy of freedom. The concept of freedom in literature.
D. Defoe's novel "Robinson Crusoe" is rightfully considered the first classic English novel. The image of a man who, by the will of fate, finds himself on a desert island, depicted by Defoe, sometimes evokes directly opposite associations in different people. Many are plunged into panic by the possibility of being in the place of Defoe's hero. Others, on the contrary, in their dreams wish to be on a desert island. Lovers are especially guilty of this. But what is it? The desire for freedom or flight from it? And what is the subtext of the writer himself? To this day, researchers of his work have not come to a final conclusion. And will they come?
There is a different psychology behind different texts. The reader has the right to his own interpretation of the meaning of a literary text. This interpretation depends not only on the text, but also on the psychological characteristics of the reader himself. The reader interprets texts created on the basis of psychological structures close to him as an individual as adequately as possible.
The problem of freedom is one of the important and complex problems; it has worried many thinkers throughout the centuries-old history of mankind. We can say that this is a global human problem, a kind of riddle that many generations of people have been trying to solve from century to century. The very concept of freedom sometimes contains the most unexpected content; this concept is very multifaceted, capacious, historically changeable and contradictory.
Evidence of the semantic “mobility” and “non-specificity” of the concept is the fact that it arises in different oppositions. In philosophy, “freedom”, as a rule, is opposed to “necessity”, in ethics – to “responsibility”, in politics – to “order”. And the meaningful interpretation of the word itself contains various shades: it can be associated with complete self-will, it can be identified with a conscious decision, and with the subtlest motivation of human actions, and with conscious necessity.
In each era, the problem of freedom is posed and solved differently, often in opposite senses, depending on the nature of social relations, on the level of development of the productive forces, on needs and historical tasks. The philosophy of human freedom has been the subject of research by various directions: Kant and Hegel, Schopenhauer and Nietzsche, Sartre and Jaspers, Berdyaev and Solovyov
Schopenhauer was right in pointing out that for modern philosophy, as well as for the previous tradition, freedom is the main problem. Schopenhauer presents the problem of the concept of freedom as negative, i.e. It is possible to identify the content of FREEDOM as a concept only by pointing out certain obstacles that prevent a person from realizing himself. That is, freedom is spoken of as overcoming difficulties: the obstacle disappeared - freedom was born. It always arises as a denial of something. It is impossible to define freedom through oneself, so you need to point out completely different, extraneous factors, and through them go straight to the concept of FREEDOM. ON THE. Berdyaev, in contrast to the German philosopher, emphasizes that freedom is positive and meaningful: “Freedom is not the kingdom of arbitrariness and chance”
Freedom is one of the indisputable universal values. However, even the most radical minds of the past, who spoke in defense of this shrine, believed that freedom is not absolute. The individual has strong instincts of self-will, selfishness, and destructiveness. Freedom is good as long as a person moderates his impulses. Human freedom has its contradictions. In practical activities, some people often, overestimating their strengths and capabilities, set themselves HIGH (Beckett) goals. When a person, expecting to accomplish many things, relies only on himself, he concentrates his attention on himself and neglects his dependence on God; he breaks his connection with God and inevitably falls into sin. Human freedom can increase any desire for both good and evil, and this unique freedom becomes the source of both destructive and creative forces of the individual.
In the case of Robinson, it can be considered that in the extreme conditions of the island his creative powers were activated. Initially calling the island the island of Despair, its spirit still prevailed over the real state of affairs and, in order to survive, the hero calls it the island of Hope. Apparently, spiritual food - the Bible, which he, along with the most necessary things, grabbed from the ship, played an important role in this spiritual transformation. Moreover, as the author testifies, in triplicate. Not a small fact in order to understand the inner world of the hero. Without Faith, without Hope, he would not have survived. But in those conditions, Robinson had to learn to live again. He did not lose heart, did not break, the hardest inner work was happening in his soul. Thanks to this, he survived. Particularly moving is the fact that he began to record the events of his life. Why did I create two columns: Evil and Good? As one wise man said (unfortunately, I didn’t remember his name), and this phrase was engraved in my memory almost from school, “Life is not as it is, but as we imagine it.” And Robinson’s salvation was that he knew how to find positive aspects in negative situations. Moments of his physical work on the island sometimes take up entire chapters, and oddly enough, it is interesting to read about it, be it firing a clay pot, growing rice and barley, or building a ship. It’s not for nothing that they say that “a person never gets tired of looking at three things: fire, water and how someone works.” In general, re-reading the novel, I once again enjoyed it. But this is a lyrical digression; let’s return to a more serious topic.
In Soviet times, special emphasis was placed on the supposed glorification of labor in the novel. Nothing special! The man on the island quite naturally worked to survive! In fact, before all the ups and downs, he was a normal young slacker, which he himself admitted without embarrassment: “... I had money in my wallet, I was wearing a decent dress, and I usually appeared on the ship in the guise of a gentleman, That’s why I didn’t do anything there and didn’t learn anything.” True, his subsequent life made him regret it, because he still had to learn everything, but in a tougher form. Alone and without teachers. Life forced me! Where can you get away from her...
Does a person desire freedom? Is it so? Nietzsche and Kierkegaard drew attention to the fact that many people are simply not capable of personal action. They prefer to be guided by standards. Man's reluctance to follow freedom is undoubtedly one of the most amazing philosophical discoveries. It turns out that freedom is the lot of the few. And here is the paradox: a person agrees to voluntary enslavement. Even before Nietzsche, Schopenhauer formulated in his published work the thesis that man does not have a perfect and established nature. It's not finished yet. Therefore, he is equally free and unfree. We often find ourselves slaves to other people's opinions and moods. Robinson did not escape this either. He had the idea of returning to his parents' house after the first failures. But, “I imagined how the neighbors would laugh at me and how ashamed I would be to look not only at my father and mother, but also at all our friends.” And one more important phrase put into Robinson’s mouth: “... people are not ashamed of sin, but are ashamed of repentance, are not ashamed of actions for which they should rightly be called mad, but are ashamed to come to their senses and live a respectable and reasonable life.” Later, existentialists will pay attention to this formal dependence of man on sociality. Be that as it may, Goethe wrote: “Freedom is a strange thing. Everyone can easily find it if only he knows how to limit himself and find himself.
Is it possible to talk about a conscious choice on the part of the individual if supporters of psychoanalysis prove that human behavior is “programmed” by childhood impressions, suppressed desires. It turns out that any action, the most secret or completely spontaneous, can be predicted in advance and its inevitability can be proven.
American philosopher Erich Fromm identified and described a special phenomenon of human consciousness and behavior - flight from freedom. This is the name of his book, which was published in 1941. The main idea of the book is that freedom, although it brought independence to man and gave meaning to his existence, but at the same time isolated him, awakened in him a feeling of powerlessness and anxiety. The consequence of such isolation was LONELINESS. The unbearable moral loneliness of a person and the attempt to avoid it are described by Balzac in “The Sorrows of the Inventor” (III part of the novel “Morning Illusions”): “So remember, imprint in your so receptive brain: a person is afraid of loneliness... If an individual has achieved some freedom in the world , he begins to understand that freedom has turned into boundless loneliness. Having eliminated all forms of dependence, the individual is ultimately left with his individual self. In Brazil, Robinson began to think more and more often about loneliness in the ocean of people - “I used to constantly repeat that I lived as if on a desert island, and complained that there was not a single human soul around.” Although, it would seem, he only recently escaped from slavery. But, bodily slavery, and having received freedom, he acutely feels Loneliness. A few lines below he will say, “How rightly fate punished me when, subsequently, it really threw me onto a desert island, and how useful it would be for each of us, comparing our present situation with another, even worse one, to remember that Providence in can make an exchange at any moment and show us through experience how happy we were before! Yes, I repeat, fate punished me according to what I deserved when it doomed me to that truly lonely life on a joyless island...” In Dostoevsky’s “The Brothers Karamazov” there is an ideal phrase to describe this state - “A person is free - this means he is lonely.”
The philosophy of the 20th century has shown that freedom can become a burden that is unbearable for a person, something that he tries to get rid of.
Let's consider the concept of “a person migrating” as a sign of a search for change. The desire for freedom or “escape” from it. The phenomenon that makes up the concept of “migration” is the experience of distinguishing between dynamic and static, settled and migratory. Western people are more sedentary people, they value their present, they are afraid of infinity, chaos, and therefore they are afraid of freedom. Therefore, Robinson was not understood in his home environment. For an Eastern person, the theme of movement is not typical at all. The path for him is a circle, the connected fingers of the Buddha, i.e. isolation. There is nowhere to go when everything is in you. Therefore, Japanese culture is a culture of inner words, thoughts, and not actions.
The human picture of the world in its origins reveals similarities with a geographical map. The purpose of the map is to provide orientation in space. The geographical map itself is a secondary concept, since the need and problematic nature of orientation arises only in a changing world. A settled existence does not need a map. It's just a journey that requires it. But who managed to draw a map before traveling into the unknown? A person “walks” many, many distances to come or go, does a person strive for freedom, to feel, desire, or directly possess?
But in general, the map of the path is a tabula rasa: “you will go there, you don’t know where...” Such instructions provide not so much geographical as emotional orientation.
The traveler has to walk almost blindfolded, and at best he is led by a magic ball or thread of Ariadne. The hero's readiness for freedom is confirmed in this way. Will he dare to travel, understand the risk, with an abstract goal as a guide? The travel map turned out to be not so much a prerequisite for the journey as its consequence. She expanded the world coming from the center - home. If the traveler had a detailed map of the area, then the element of travel would be reduced to nothing. Freedom of geography would “dumb down” the PATH, making it simply a matter of moving from one place to another. The pleasure of the preceding is determined by geographical lack of freedom, but by the desire for internal freedom. The search for that untested “satori”. Because of this, understanding the path is a spatial movement, like an abstraction. Laying roads from one space to another, changing human life by changing spaces. The landscape of the human world changes under the influence of locality. Philosophers of the 19th century divided heroes into two socio-psychological types: “wanderers” and “homebodies”
They are good and sweet because they are protected from the external aggression of the world not by the shell of their own character, but by the shell of the objective world created by them. This classification is created through the influence of the city ON CONSCIOUSNESS. The city as a type of consciousness is a long-standing topic. There is no need to say that each city has its own face. It is also known that each city has its own special spirit. Perhaps it is this spirit that gives birth to people, history, and relationships in the image and likeness of the city's Face.
Conclusion: creativity is the only form of moral insurance and freedom in exile. The structural dimension of the path consists of establishing tempo and rhythm: ascent, descent, frequency of stops. Thus, it gives the right to consider on the scale of movement: departure, search for a road, return, wandering, wandering. Time and distance are the coordinates of the path with knowledge, moral purification, enrichment. Overcoming the path is the most common form in modern computer games. The symbol of the road and path is the oldest symbol of perfection /characterized by the male phallic image of an arrow/.
Many philosophers have wondered what preceded the journey. Only when a person felt crowded among his own kind, and he felt like a stranger, an outcast, did he leave/i.e. the outcome is always justified/. Moreover, a migrating person is a person who is superior in strength to his fellow tribesmen, the most fit. The path for him is additional experience, the search for greater freedom. Not everyone would have been able to escape in Robinson's place. It turned out to be precisely the selected grain that had strong roots to hold on to life. For Hope, after all. He, as it were, creates, practices with his migration experience, connects worlds and spaces, without being captive of any of them.
The locality expands the taboos imposed by society, the boundaries of the locality separate the outer space from the internal, the locality serves as the basis for the narrative of “us and others.” Home and hearth are feminine symbols. Wandering – male... Travel lengthens space and slows down time. Only the difficulties of travel can lengthen the time.
The house provides the body with a form suitable for survival. The interior plays the role of a shell, a shell, a snail's house, to which the body grows, otherwise the hostile environment would simply destroy it. The geography of the world itself suggests itself as a prototype and analogue of the structure of the text. Geography arises as a consequence of travel and its subsequent interpretation. The text is the experience of migration.
Defoe gives his hero the opportunity to expand his living space and, along the “steps” of ellipses, leads him beyond the text to another level of EXISTENCE / into metatextual life/. Great literary humanism created a hero who was initially free to move. The horizons of “another life” beckon him to travel. Neither his father's prohibitions nor his mother's pleas can stop him. As Robinson’s father said, “They leave their homeland in pursuit of adventure, he said, either by those who have nothing to lose, or by ambitious people eager to achieve even more.” But he dreamed of sea voyages, and did not want to hear about anything else. After all, only by making the Great Journey is a person able to master the world, and therefore become free.
Coming from home is a distinctive feature of human nature. Heroes go either on long journeys or very long ones. Even without a hint from the fairy-tale Alice, you can guess that if you walk somewhere for a long time, you will definitely end up somewhere. Only in fairy tales there is an alternative choice. Initially, your route is conditioned and natural. Despite the initial irreversibility of your path, no matter where you go, you will still arrive where you should.
As you know, things can tell a lot about their owner. They can take it and prove that the “master” is not free, he is drawn to the past and is connected to his past by chains of things. The symbol of freedom is a lonely traveling man. But traveling light. Seeking to equalize the freedom of life with the freedom of death: when Alexander the Great was dying, he asked for two holes to be made in the lid of the coffin for his hands to show the world that he had not taken anything.
Robinson's Bible is an exponent of an emotional attitude towards the world. The author acts at the level of rethinking: thing-person /Gogolian tradition/, thing-symbol /symbolism/, person-symbol /tradition of postmodernism.
Travel acts as a way to study the universe and the soul of the hero. Having received freedom of movement from the author, after the disasters that befell him (a terrible storm, illness, slavery) and finding himself free, the hero dreams of static life. Robinson increasingly recalls his father’s words that he would not be happy without his parents’ blessing. And the hero himself is inclined to conclude that in his parents’ home he could do the same things that he had to do in a foreign land. The initial ardor with which he set off on his first sea voyage has definitely cooled down. Travel is not only a way of moving the body, but also a flight of the soul: that is, travel is an excuse to talk about a person, to recognize his essence, travel is a test of survival and adaptability to the World.
So, a person’s lack of freedom is determined by the degree of his attachment to the objective world, to a specific time and space. And this lack of freedom does not contradict the desires of the hero. After all, man is a social creature. And there is no escape from this, no matter what islands you have to escape to. You will still return to people. Whether this is good or bad is not for us to decide.
List of used literature:
1. Daniel Defoe “Robinson Crusoe”. – Minsk: Publishing House “Mastatskaya Literature”, 1987.
2. Papsuev V.V. Daniel Defoe - novelist. On the problem of the genesis of the modern novel in English literature of the eighteenth century. - M., 1983.
3. Bely A. Symbolism as a worldview. – M.: Publishing house “Respublika”, 1994. – 528 p.
4. History of modern foreign philosophy. – St. Petersburg: Publishing house “Lan”, 1997. 480 p.
5. History of philosophy in brief. – M.: Publishing house “Mysl”, 1997. – 590 p.
6. Camus A. Creativity and freedom. – M.: Publishing house “Raduga”, 1990. – 602 p.
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LYUBOV ROMANCHUK
"Features of narrative structure
in Defoe's Robinson Crusoe
http://www.roman-chuk.narod.ru/1/Defoe_2.htm
1. Introduction
In the scientific literature, numerous books, monographs, articles, essays, etc. are devoted to the work of Defoe. However, with all the abundance of works published about Defoe, there was no consensus on the peculiarities of the structure of the novel, its allegorical meaning, the degree of allegory, or stylistic design. Most of the works were devoted to the problems of the novel, characterizing the system of its images and analyzing the philosophical and social basis.
Meanwhile, the novel is of considerable interest in the aspect of structural and verbal design of the material as a transitional form from the narrative structure of classicism to the sentimental novel and the novel of romanticism with its open, free formative structure.
Defoe's novel stands at the junction of many genres, naturally incorporating their features and forming a new form through such synthesis, which is of particular interest. A. Elistratova noted that in “Robinson Crusoe” “there was something that later turned out to be beyond the capabilities of literature.” And so it is. Critics are still arguing about Defoe's novel. For, as K. Atarova rightly notes, “the novel can be read in very different ways. Some are upset by the “insensitivity” and “impassion” of Defoe’s style, others are struck by his deep psychologism; some are delighted by the authenticity of the descriptions, others reproach the author for absurdities, others consider him a skilled liar."
The significance of the novel is also given by the fact that as the hero, Defoe for the first time chose the most ordinary, but endowed with a master's streak of conquering life. Such a hero appeared in literature for the first time, just as everyday work activity was described for the first time.
An extensive bibliography is devoted to Defoe's work. However, the novel “Robinson Crusoe” itself was more interesting to researchers from the point of view of problematics (in particular, the social orientation of the hymn to labor sung by Defoe, allegorical parallels, the reality of the main image, the degree of reliability, philosophical and religious richness, etc.) than from the point of view organization of the narrative structure itself.
In Russian literary criticism, among the serious works on Defoe, the following should be highlighted:
1) A. A. Anikst’s book “Daniel Defoe: An Essay on Life and Work” (1957)
2) book by Nersesova M.A. “Daniel Defoe” (1960)
3) A. A. Elistratova’s book “The English Novel of the Enlightenment” (1966), in which Defoe’s novel “Robinson Crusoe” is studied mainly in terms of its problematics and the characteristics of the main image;
4) the book by M. G. Sokolyansky “The Western European Novel of the Enlightenment: Problems of Typology” (1983), in which Defoe’s novel is analyzed in comparative terms with other works; Sokolyansky M. G. considers the issue of the genre specificity of the novel, giving preference to the adventurous side, analyzes the allegorical meaning of the novel and images, and also devotes several pages to analyzing the correlation between the memoir and diary forms of narration;
5) the article by M. and D. Urnov “Modern Writer” in the book “Daniel Defoe. Robinson Crusoe. The Story of Colonel Jack” (1988), which traces the essence of the so-called “insensitivity” of Defoe’s style, which lies in the position of an impartial chronicler chosen by the writer;
6) chapter about Defoe Elistratova A.A. in “History of World Literature, vol. 5 /Ed. Turaev S.V.” (1988), which shows the continuity of the novel with previous English literature, defines its features and differences (both in the ideological interpretation of philosophical and religious ideas, and artistic methodology), the specifics of the main image, philosophical basis and primary sources, and also touches on the problem of internal drama and the novel's characteristic charm; this article by A. Elistratova indicates the place of Defoe’s novel in the system of the educational novel, its role in the development of the realistic method and the features of the novel’s realism;
7) Urnov D.'s book "Defoe" (1990), dedicated to the biographical data of the writer, one chapter in this book is devoted to the novel "Robinson Crusoe", the actual literary analysis of which (namely the phenomenon of simplicity of style) is devoted to two pages;
8) article by Atarova K.N. “Secrets of Simplicity” in the book. "D. Defoe. Robinson Crusoe" (1990), in which Atarova K. N. explores the question of the genre of the novel, the essence of its simplicity, allegorical parallels, verification techniques, the psychological aspect of the novel, the problems of images and their primary sources;
9) article in the book. Mirimsky I. “Articles on the classics” (1966), in which the plot, plot, composition, images, manner of narration and other aspects are examined in detail;
10) Urnov’s book D.M. “Robinson and Gulliver: The Fate of Two Literary Heroes” (1973), the title of which speaks for itself;
11) article by Shalata O. “Robinson Crusoe” by Defoe in the world of biblical topics (1997).
However, the authors of the listed works and books paid very little attention to both Defoe’s own artistic method and style, and the specifics of his narrative structure in various aspects (from the general formative layout of the material to particular details relating to the disclosure of the psychology of the image and its hidden meaning, internal dialogicity, etc. .d.).
In foreign literary criticism, Defoe's novel was most often analyzed for its:
Allegory (J. Starr, Carl Frederick, E. Zimmerman);
Documentary, in which English critics saw a lack of Defoe's narrative style (as, for example, Charles Dickens, D. Nigel);
The authenticity of what is depicted. The latter was disputed by critics such as Watt, West and others;
Problems of the novel and the system of its images;
Social interpretation of the ideas of the novel and its images.
The book by E. Zimmerman (1975) is devoted to a detailed analysis of the narrative structure of the work, which analyzes the relationship between the diary and memoir parts of the book, their meaning, verification techniques and other aspects. Leo Brady (1973) explores the question of the relationship between monologue and dialogism in a novel. The question of the genetic connection between Defoe’s novel and “spiritual autobiography” is covered in the books of J. Starr (1965), J. Gunter (1966), M. G. Sokolyansky (1983), etc.
II. Analytical part
II. 1. Sources of "Robinson Crusoe" (1719]
The sources that served as the plot basis for the novel can be divided into factual and literary. The first includes a stream of authors of travel essays and notes of the late 17th and early 18th centuries, among which K. Atarova identifies two:
1) Admiral William Dampier, who published the books:
"New trip around the world", 1697; "Travel and Descriptions", 1699; "Journey to New Holland", 1703;
2) Woods Rogers, who wrote travel diaries of his Pacific travels, which describe the story of Alexander Selkirk (1712), as well as the brochure “The Vicissitudes of Fate, or The Amazing Adventures of A. Selkirk, Written by Himself.”
A. Elistratova also highlights Francis Drake, Walter Raleigh and Richard Hakluyt.
Among possible purely literary sources, later researchers highlighted:
1) Henry Neuville's novel "The Isle of Pines, or the Fourth Island near the unknown Australian continent, recently discovered by Heinrich Cornelius von Slotten", 1668;
2) a novel by an Arab writer of the 12th century. Ibn Tufayl's "Living, Son of the Wakeful One", published in Oxford in Latin in 1671, and then reprinted three times in English until 1711.
3) Aphra Behn's novel "Orunoko, or the Royal Slave", 1688, which influenced the image of Friday;
4) John Bunyan's allegorical novel "The Pilgrim's Progress" (1678);
5) allegorical stories and parables, dating back to the Puritan democratic literature of the 17th century, where, in the words of A. Elistratova, “the spiritual development of man was conveyed with the help of extremely simple, everyday concrete details, full of hidden, deeply significant moral meaning.”
Defoe's book, appearing among other very numerous literature about travel that swept England at that time: true and fictitious reports on circumnavigation of the world, memoirs, diaries, travel notes of merchants and sailors, immediately took a leading position in it, consolidating many of its achievements and literary devices. And therefore, as A. Chameev rightly notes, “no matter how diverse and numerous the sources of Robinson Crusoe were, both in form and content, the novel was a deeply innovative phenomenon. Having creatively assimilated the experience of his predecessors, relying on his own journalistic experience, Defoe created an original work of art that organically combined an adventurous beginning with imaginary documentation, the traditions of the memoir genre with the features of a philosophical parable."
II. 2. Novel genre
The plot of the novel "Robinson Crusoe" falls into two parts: one describes events related to the hero's social life and stay in his homeland; the second part is hermit life on the island. The narration is told in the first person, enhancing the effect of verisimilitude; the author is completely removed from the text. However, although the genre of the novel was close to the descriptive genre of a real incident (maritime chronicle), the plot cannot be called purely chronicle. Robinson's numerous arguments, his relationship with God, repetitions, descriptions of the feelings that possess him, loading the narrative with emotional and symbolic components, expand the scope of the genre definition of the novel.
It is not without reason that many genre definitions were applied to the novel “Robinson Crusoe”: adventure educational novel (V. Dibelius); adventure novel (M. Sokolyansky); novel of education, treatise on natural education (Jean-Jacques Rousseau); spiritual autobiography (M. Sokolyansky, J. Gunter); island utopia, allegorical parable, “classical idyll of free enterprise,” “fictional adaptation of Locke’s theory of the social contract” (A. Elistratova).
According to M. Bakhtin, the novel "Robinson Crusoe" can be called novelized memoirs, with sufficient "aesthetic structure" and "aesthetic intentionality" (according to L. Ginzburg -).
As A. Elistratova notes:
"Robinson Crusoe" by Defoe, the prototype of the educational realistic novel in its still unisolated, undivided form, combines many different literary genres.
All these definitions contain a grain of truth.
Thus, “the emblem of adventurism,” writes M. Sokolyansky, “is often the presence of the word “adventure” (adventure) already in the title of the work.” The title of the novel just says: “Life and amazing adventures...”. Further, an adventure is a type of event, but an extraordinary event. And the very plot of the novel “Robinson Crusoe” represents an extraordinary event. Defoe carried out a kind of educational experiment on Robinson Crusoe, throwing him onto a desert island. In other words, Defoe temporarily “switched off” him from real social relations, and Robinson’s practical activity appeared in the universal form of labor. This element constitutes the fantastic core of the novel and at the same time the secret of its special appeal.
The signs of spiritual autobiography in the novel are the very form of narration characteristic of this genre: memoir-diary.
Elements of the novel of education are contained in Robinson's reasoning and his opposition to loneliness and nature.
As K. Atarova writes: “If we consider the novel as a whole, this action-packed work breaks down into a number of episodes characteristic of a fictionalized journey (the so-called imaginaire), popular in the 17th-18th centuries. At the same time, the central place in the novel is occupied by the theme of the hero’s maturation and spiritual formation."
A. Elistratova notes that: “Defoe in “Robinson Crusoe” is already in close proximity to the educational “novel of education.”
The novel can also be read as an allegorical parable about the spiritual fall and rebirth of man - in other words, as K. Atarova writes, “a story about the wanderings of a lost soul, burdened with original sin and through turning to God, finding the path to salvation.”
“It was not for nothing that Defoe insisted in the 3rd part of the novel on its allegorical meaning,” notes A. Elistratova. “The reverent seriousness with which Robinson Crusoe ponders his life experience, wanting to comprehend its hidden meaning, the stern scrupulousness with which he analyzes his spiritual motives - all this goes back to that democratic Puritan literary tradition of the 17th century, which was completed in J. Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress. Robinson sees the manifestation of divine providence in every incident of his life; prophetic dreams overshadow him... shipwreck, loneliness, an uninhabited island, an invasion of savages - everything seems to him like divine punishments."
Robinson interprets any trifling incident as “God’s providence,” and a random coincidence of tragic circumstances as fair punishment and atonement for sins. Even coincidences of dates seem meaningful and symbolic to the hero (“a sinful life and a solitary life,” Crusoe calculates, “began for me on the same day,” September 30). According to J. Starr, Robinson appears in a dual hypostasis - and how a sinner, and as God's chosen one.
“The interpretation of the novel, as a variation of the biblical story about the prodigal son, is consistent with such an understanding of the book,” notes K. Atarova: Robinson, who despised the advice of his father, left his father’s house, gradually, having gone through the most severe trials, comes to unity with God, his spiritual father, who, as if as a reward for repentance, will ultimately grant him salvation and prosperity."
M. Sokolyansky, citing the opinion of Western researchers on this issue, disputes their interpretation of “Robinson Crusoe” as a modified myth about the prophet Jonah.
“In Western literary criticism,” notes M. Sokolyansky, “especially in the latest works, the plot of “Robinson Crusoe” is often interpreted as a modification of the myth of the prophet Jonah. At the same time, the active life principle inherent in Defoe’s hero is ignored... The difference is noticeable in a purely plot level. In “The Book of the Prophet Jonah” the biblical hero appears precisely as a prophet...; Defoe’s hero does not act at all as a predictor...".
This is not entirely true. Many of Robinson's intuitive insights, as well as his prophetic dreams, may well pass for predictions inspired from above. But further:
“Jonah’s life activity is completely controlled by the Almighty... Robinson, no matter how much he prays, is active in his activities, and this truly creative activity, initiative, ingenuity does not in any way allow him to be perceived as a modification of the Old Testament Jonah.” Modern researcher E. Meletinsky considers Defoe’s novel with its “orientation towards everyday realism” to be “a serious milestone on the path of demythologizing literature.”
Meanwhile, if we draw parallels between Defoe’s novel and the Bible, then a comparison with the book “Genesis” rather suggests itself. Robinson essentially creates his own world, different from the island world, but also different from the bourgeois world he left behind - a world of pure entrepreneurial creation. If the heroes of previous and subsequent "Robinsonades" find themselves in ready-made worlds already created before them (real or fantastic - for example, Gulliver), then Robinson Crusoe builds this world step by step like God. The entire book is devoted to a thorough description of the creation of objectivity, its multiplication and material growth. The act of this creation, divided into many separate moments, is so exciting because it is based not only on the history of mankind, but also on the history of the entire world. What is striking about Robinson is his godlikeness, stated not in the form of Scripture, but in the form of an everyday diary. It also contains the rest of the arsenal characteristic of Scripture: covenants (numerous advice and instructions from Robinson on various occasions, given as parting words), allegorical parables, obligatory disciples (Friday), instructive stories, Kabbalistic formulas (coincidences of calendar dates), time breakdown (day first, etc.), maintaining biblical genealogies (whose place in Robinson’s genealogies is occupied by plants, animals, crops, pots, etc.). The Bible in "Robinson Crusoe" seems to be retold at an understated, everyday, third-class level. And just as the Holy Scripture is simple and accessible in presentation, but capacious and complex in interpretation, “Robinson” is also externally and stylistically simple, but at the same time plot-wise and ideologically capacious.
Defoe himself assured in print that all the misadventures of his Robinson were nothing more than an allegorical reproduction of the dramatic vicissitudes in his own life.
Many details bring the novel closer to a future psychological novel.
“Some researchers,” writes M. Sokolyansky, “not without reason, emphasize the importance of the work of Defoe the novelist for the formation of the European (and primarily English) psychological novel. The author of Robinson Crusoe, depicting life in the forms of life itself, focused attention not only on the external world surrounding the hero, but also in the internal world of a thinking religious person." And according to the witty remark of E. Zimmerman, “Dafoe in some respects connects Bunyan with Richardson. For Defoe’s heroes... the physical world is a faintly discernible sign of a more important reality...”.
II. 3. Reliability of the narrative (verification techniques)
The narrative structure of Defoe's novel "Robinson Crusoe" is made in the form of a self-narration, designed as a combination of memoirs and diary. The point of view of the character and the author are identical, or, more precisely, the point of view of the character is the only one, since the author is completely abstracted from the text. In spatio-temporal terms, the narrative combines chronicle and retrospective aspects.
The main goal of the author was the most successful verification, that is, giving his works maximum reliability. Therefore, even in the “editor's preface,” Defoe argued that “this narrative is only a strict statement of facts, there is not a shadow of fiction in it.”
“Defoe,” as M. and D. Urnov write, “was in that country and at that time and in front of that audience where fiction was not recognized in principle. Therefore, starting with the readers the same game as Cervantes... Defoe I didn’t dare to announce it directly."
One of the main features of Defoe’s narrative style is precisely authenticity and verisimilitude. In this he was not original. An interest in fact rather than fiction was a characteristic tendency of the era in which Defoe lived. Closure within the framework of the authentic was the defining characteristic of adventure and psychological novels.
“Even in Robinson Crusoe,” as M. Sokolyansky emphasized, “where the role of hyperbolization is very large, everything extraordinary is dressed in clothes of authenticity and possibility.” There is nothing supernatural about it. Fiction itself is “made up to look like reality, and the incredible is depicted with realistic authenticity.”
“To invent more authentically than the truth,” was Defoe’s principle, formulated in his own way the law of creative typification.
“The author of “Robinson Crusoe,” note M. and D. Urnov, “was a master of plausible fiction. He knew how to observe what in later times began to be called the “logic of action” - the convincing behavior of heroes in fictitious or supposed circumstances.”
Scholars' opinions differ greatly on how to achieve the compelling illusion of verisimilitude in Defoe's novel. These methods included:
1) reference to memoir and diary form;
3) the introduction of “documentary” evidence of the story - inventories, registers, etc.;
4) detailed detail;
5) complete lack of literature (simplicity);
6) “aesthetic intentionality”;
7) the ability to capture the entire appearance of an object and convey it in a few words;
8) the ability to lie and lie convincingly.
The entire narration in the novel "Robinson Crusoe" is told in the first person, through the eyes of the hero himself, through his inner world. The author is completely removed from the novel. This technique not only increases the illusion of verisimilitude, giving the novel the appearance of similarity to an eyewitness document, but also serves as a purely psychological means of self-disclosure of the character.
If Cervantes, whom Defoe was guided by, builds his “Don Quixote” in the form of a game with the reader, in which the misadventures of the unfortunate knight are described through the eyes of an outside researcher who learned about them from the book of another researcher, who, in turn, heard about them from. .. etc., then Defoe builds the game according to different rules: the rules of authenticity. He does not refer to anyone, does not quote anyone, the eyewitness describes everything that happened himself.
It is this type of narration that allows and justifies the appearance of many clerical errors and errors in the text. An eyewitness is unable to retain everything in memory and follow the logic of everything. The unpolished nature of the plot in this case serves as further evidence of the truth of what is being described.
“The very monotony and efficiency of these enumerations,” writes K. Atarova, “creates the illusion of authenticity - it seems, why make it so boring? However, the detail of dry and meager descriptions has its own charm, its own poetry and its own artistic novelty.”
Even numerous errors in the detailed description do not violate the verisimilitude (for example: “Having undressed, I went into the water...”, and, having boarded the ship, “... filled my pockets with crackers and ate them as I went”; or when the diary form itself is kept inconsistently, and the narrator often enters into the diary information that he could only learn about later: for example, in an entry dated June 27, he writes: “Even later, when, after due reflection, I realized my situation...” etc. .d.).
As M. and D. Urnov write: “Authenticity”, creatively created, turns out to be indestructible. Defoe most likely made even mistakes in maritime affairs and geography, even inconsistencies in the narrative deliberately, for the sake of the same verisimilitude, for the most truthful storyteller is mistaken about something."
The verisimilitude of the novel is more reliable than the truth itself. Later critics, applying the standards of modernist aesthetics to Defoe's work, reproached him for excessive optimism, which seemed to them quite implausible. Thus, Watt wrote that from the point of view of modern psychology, Robinson should either go crazy, or run wild, or die.
However, the verisimilitude of the novel that Defoe so sought is not limited to the naturalistic achievement of identity with reality in all its details; it is not so much external as internal, reflecting Defoe’s Enlightenment faith in man as a worker and creator. M. Gorky wrote well about this:
“Zola, Goncourt, our Pisemsky are plausible, that’s true, but Defoe - “Robinson Crusoe” and Cervantes - “Don Quixote” are closer to the truth about man than “naturalists”, photographers.
It cannot be discounted that the image of Robinson is “ideally defined” and to a certain extent symbolic, which determines his very special place in the literature of the English Enlightenment. “For all the good concreteness,” writes A. Elistratova, “of the factual material from which Defoe molds him, this is an image that is less attached to everyday real life, much more collective and generalized in its internal content than the later characters of Richardson, Fielding, Smollett and others. In world literature, he rises somewhere between Prospero, the great and lonely magician-humanist of Shakespeare's "The Tempest", and Goethe's Faust. In this sense, “the moral feat of Robinson, described by Defoe, who retained his spiritual human appearance and even learned a lot during his island life, is completely implausible - he could have gone wild or even gone mad. However, behind the external implausibility of the island Robinsonade hid the highest truth of Enlightenment humanism... Robinson's feat proved the strength of the human spirit and will to live and convinced of the inexhaustible possibilities of human labor, ingenuity and perseverance in the fight against adversity and obstacles."
Robinson's island life is a model of bourgeois production and capital creation, poeticized due to the absence of relations of purchase and sale and any kind of exploitation. A kind of utopia of work.
II. 4. Simplicity
The artistic means of achieving authenticity was simplicity. As K. Atarova writes:
“Crystal clear, understandable, it would seem, to any child, the book stubbornly resists analytical separation, without revealing the secret of its unfading charm. The phenomenon of simplicity is much more difficult to critically comprehend than complexity, encryptedness, hermeticism.”
“Despite the abundance of details,” she continues, “Defoe’s prose gives the impression of simplicity, laconicism, crystal clarity. We have before us only a statement of facts, and reasoning, explanations, descriptions of mental movements are reduced to a minimum. There is no pathos at all.”
Of course, Defoe was not the first to decide to write simply. “But,” as D. Urnov notes, “it was Defoe who was the first wealthy, that is, consistent to the end creator of simplicity. He realized that “simplicity” is the same subject of depiction as any other, like a facial feature or character, perhaps the most difficult subject to depict..."
“If I were asked,” Defoe once remarked, “what I consider the perfect style or language, I would answer that I consider such a language to be one in which one addresses five hundred people of average and varied abilities (excluding idiots and madmen) the person would be understood by them all, and... in the very sense in which he wanted to be understood."
However, the eyewitness leading the story was a former merchant, slave trader, and sailor, and could not write in any other language. The simplicity of the style was as much proof of the truth of what was described as other techniques. This simplicity was also explained by the pragmatism characteristic of the hero in all cases. Robinson looked at the world through the eyes of a businessman, entrepreneur, and accountant. The text is literally replete with various kinds of calculations and sums; its documentation is of an accounting type. Robinson counts everything: how many grains of barley, how many sheep, gunpowder, arrows, he keeps track of everything: from the number of days to the amount of good and evil that happened in his life. The pragmatist even interferes in his relationship with God. Digital counting prevails over the descriptive side of objects and phenomena. For Robinson, counting is more important than describing. In enumeration, counting, designation, recording, not only the bourgeois habit of hoarding and accounting is manifested, but also the function of creation. To give a designation, to catalog it, to count it means to create it. Such creative accounting is characteristic of Holy Scripture: “And man gave names to all the cattle and to the birds of the air and to all the beasts of the field” [Gen. 2:20].
Defoe called his simple and clear style “homey.” And, according to D. Urnov, he built his relationship with readers on the Shakespearean scene of the roll call of spirits in The Tempest, when, calling around and showing all sorts of plausible tricks, they lead travelers with them deep into the island.
Whatever Defoe describes, he, according to D. Urnov, “first of all, simply conveys simple actions and thanks to this convinces of the incredible, in fact, of anything - some kind of spring from within pushes word after word: “Today it rained, invigorated me and refreshed the earth. However, it was accompanied by monstrous thunder and lightning, and this frightened me terribly, I was worried about my gunpowder": It's just rain, really simple, that wouldn't have held our attention, but here everything is "simple" only in appearance, in reality - a conscious pumping up of details, details that ultimately “catch” the reader’s attention - rain, thunder, lightning, gunpowder... In Shakespeare: “Howl, whirlwind, with might and main!” Burn, lightning! Come, rain!" - a cosmic shock in the world and in the soul. Defoe has an ordinary psychological justification for worrying “for one’s gunpowder”: the beginning of that realism that we find in every modern book... The most incredible things are told through ordinary details" .
As an example, we can cite Robinson's reasoning regarding possible projects for getting rid of savages:
“It occurred to me to dig a hole in the place where they were making a fire, and put five or six pounds of gunpowder in it. When they lit their fire, the gunpowder would ignite and explode everything that was nearby. But, first of all, I thought I feel sorry for the gunpowder, of which I had no more than a barrel left, and secondly, I could not be sure that the explosion would occur exactly when they gathered around the fire."
The spectacle of a massacre, an explosion, a planned dangerous adventure that has arisen in the imagination is combined in the hero with an accurate accounting calculation and a completely sober analysis of the situation, associated, among other things, with the purely bourgeois pity of destroying a product, which reveals such features of Robinson’s consciousness as pragmatism, a utilitarian approach to nature, a sense of ownership and puritanism. This combination of eccentricity, unusualness, mystery with the everyday, prosaic and scrupulous, seemingly meaningless calculation creates not only an unusually capacious image of the hero, but also a purely stylistic fascination with the text itself.
The adventures themselves boil down for the most part to a description of the production of things, the growth of matter, creation in its pure, primordial form. The act of creation, divided into parts, is described with meticulous detail of individual functions - and constitutes a bewitching grandeur. By introducing ordinary things to the sphere of art, Defoe, in the words of K. Atarova, endlessly “expands the boundaries of aesthetic perception of reality for posterity.” Exactly that effect of “defamiliarization” occurs, which V. Shklovsky wrote about, when the most ordinary thing and the most ordinary action, becoming an object of art, acquire a new dimension—an aesthetic one.
The English critic Wat wrote that "Robinson Crusoe" is, of course, the first novel in the sense that it is the first fictional narrative in which the main artistic emphasis is placed on the everyday activities of an ordinary person.
However, it would be wrong to reduce all of Defoe's realism to a simple statement of facts. The pathos that Defoe denies to K. Atarov lies in the very content of the book, and, moreover, in the hero’s direct, simple-minded reactions to this or that tragic event and in his appeals to the Almighty. According to West: “Defoe’s realism does not simply state facts; it makes us feel the creative power of man. By making us feel this power, he thereby convinces us of the reality of facts... The whole book is built on this.”
“The purely human pathos of conquering nature,” writes A. Elistratova, “replaces in the first and most important part of “Robinson Crusoe” the pathos of commercial adventures, making even the most prosaic details of Robinson’s “works and days” unusually fascinating, which capture the imagination, for this is the story of a free , all-conquering labor."
Defoe, according to A. Elistratova, learned the ability to see significant ethical meaning in the prosaic details of everyday life from Banyan, as well as the simplicity and expressiveness of the language, which retains close proximity to living folk speech.
II. 5. Narrative form. Composition
The composition of Defoe's novel "Robinson Crusoe" according to the concept of V. Shklovsky combines the composition of direct time and the principle of naturalness. The linearity of the narrative does not carry a strict predetermined development of action, characteristic of classic literature, but is subordinated to the subjective perception of time by the hero. Describing in detail some days and even hours of his stay on the island, in other places he easily skips over several years, mentioning them in two lines:
“Two years later there was already a young grove in front of my home”;
“The twenty-seventh year of my captivity has come”;
"... the horror and disgust instilled in me by these wild monsters plunged me into a gloomy mood, and for about two years I sat in that part of the island where my lands were located...".
The principle of naturalness allows the hero to often return to what has already been said or to run much ahead, introducing numerous repetitions and advances into the text, with which Defoe, as it were, additionally certifies the authenticity of the hero’s memories, like any memories prone to jumps, returns, repetitions and the very violation of the sequence of the story, inaccuracies, errors and illogicalities introduced into the text creating a natural and extremely reliable fabric of the narrative.
In the pre-island part of the narrative there are features of reverse time composition, retrospection, and narration from the end.
In his novel, Defoe combined two narrative techniques characteristic of travel literature, travel notes and reports, i.e. e. literature of fact instead of literature of fiction: this is a diary and memoirs. In his diary, Robinson states facts, and in his memoirs he evaluates them.
The memoir form itself is not homogeneous. In the initial part of the novel, the structure of the narrative is maintained in a manner characteristic of the biography genre. The year, place of birth of the hero, his name, family, education, years of life are accurately indicated. We are fully acquainted with the biography of the hero, which does not differ in any way from other biographies.
“I was born in 1632 in the city of York into a respectable family, although not of native origin: my father came from Bremen and first settled in Hull. Having made a good fortune by trade, he left business and moved to York. Here he married my mother, who belonged to an old family that bore the surname Robinson. They gave me the name Robinson, but the British, in their custom of distorting foreign words, changed my father’s surname into Crusoe.”
All biographies began in this way. It should be noted that when creating his first novel, Defoe was guided by the work of Shakespeare and Cervantes' Don Quixote, sometimes directly imitating the latter (cf. the beginnings of two novels, executed in the same style and according to the same plan).
Next we learn that the father intended his son to become a lawyer, but Robinson became interested in the sea despite the pleas of his mother and friends. As he admits, “there was something fatal in this natural attraction that pushed me to the misadventures that befell me.” From this moment on, the adventurous laws of the formation of the narrative structure come into force; the adventure is initially based on love for the sea, which gives impetus to events. There is a conversation with his father (as Robinson admitted, prophetic), an escape from his parents on a ship, a storm, advice from a friend to return home and his prophecies, a new journey, engaging in trade with Guinea as a merchant, being captured by the Moors, serving his master as a slave. , escaping on a longboat with the boy Xuri, traveling and hunting along the native coast, meeting with a Portuguese ship and arriving in Brazil, working on a sugar cane plantation for 4 years, becoming a planter, trading blacks, outfitting a ship to Guinea for secret transportation blacks, storm, ship running aground, rescue on a boat, death of a boat, landing on an island. All this is contained in 40 pages of chronologically compressed text.
Starting with the landing on the island, the narrative structure again changes from an adventurous style to a memoir-diary style. The style of narration also changes, moving from a quick, concise message made in broad strokes to a scrupulously detailed, descriptive plan. The very adventurous beginning in the second part of the novel is of a different kind. If in the first part the hero himself was driven by the adventure, admitting that he “was destined to be the culprit of all misfortunes himself,” then in the second part of the novel he no longer becomes the culprit of the adventure, but the object of their action. Robinson's active adventure boils down mainly to restoring the world he had lost.
The direction of the story also changes. If in the pre-island part the narrative unfolds linearly, then in the island part its linearity is disrupted: by inserts of a diary; Robinson's thoughts and memories; his appeals to God; repetition and repeated empathy about the events that happened (for example, about the footprint he saw; the hero’s feeling of fear about the savages; returning thoughts to the methods of salvation, to the actions and buildings he performed, etc.). Although Defoe’s novel cannot be classified as a psychological genre, however, in such returns and repetitions, creating a stereoscopic effect of reproducing reality (both material and mental), hidden psychologism is manifested, constituting that “aesthetic intentionality” that L. Ginzburg mentioned.
The leitmotif of the pre-island part of the novel was the theme of evil fate and disaster. Robinson is repeatedly prophesied about her by his friends, his father, and himself. Several times he repeats almost verbatim the idea that “some secret command of omnipotent fate encourages us to be the instrument of our own destruction.” This theme, which breaks the linearity of the adventurous narrative of the first part and introduces into it the memoir beginning of subsequent memories (a device of syntactic tautology), is the connecting allegorical thread between the first (sinful) and second (repentant) parts of the novel. Robinson constantly returns to this theme, only in its reverse reflection, on the island, which appears to him in the image of God's punishment.
Robinson's favorite expression on the island is the phrase about the intervention of Providence. “Throughout the entire island Robinsonade,” writes A. Elistratova, “the same situation varies many times in different ways: it seems to Robinson that before him is a “miracle, an act of direct intervention in his life, either of heavenly providence, or of satanic "But, on reflection, he comes to the conclusion that everything that struck him so much can be explained by the most natural, earthly reasons. The internal struggle between Puritan superstition and rationalistic sanity is waged throughout the entire Robinsonade with varying success."
According to Yu. Kagarlitsky, “Dafoe’s novels are devoid of a developed plot and are built around the biography of the hero, as a list of his successes and failures.”
The genre of memoirs presupposes the apparent lack of development of the plot, which, thus, helps to strengthen the illusion of verisimilitude. The diary has an even more such illusion.
However, Defoe's novel cannot be called undeveloped in terms of plot. On the contrary, every gun he shoots, and it describes exactly what the hero needs and nothing more. Laconicism combined with accounting thoroughness, reflecting the same practical mindset of the hero, testifies to such a close penetration into the psychology of the hero, fusion with him, that as a subject of research it eludes attention. Robinson is so clear and visible to us, so transparent, that it seems there is nothing to think about. But it is clear to us thanks to Defoe and his entire system of narrative techniques. But how clearly Robinson (directly in his reasoning) and Defoe (through the sequence of events) substantiate the allegorical-metaphysical interpretation of events! Even the appearance of Friday fits into the biblical allegory. “And the man gave names to all the livestock, and to the birds of the air, and to every beast of the field; but for man there was not found a helper like him” [Gen. 2:20]. And then fate creates an assistant for Robinson. On the fifth day God created life and a living soul. The native appears to Robinson precisely on Friday.
The narrative structure itself, in its open, broken form, in contrast to the structure of classicism closed within the strict framework of rules and plot lines, is closer to the structure of the sentimental novel and the novel of romanticism with its attention to exceptional circumstances. The novel, in a certain sense, represents a synthesis of various narrative structures and artistic techniques: an adventure novel, a sentimental novel, a utopian novel, a biography novel, a chronicle novel, memoirs, parables, a philosophical novel, etc.
Speaking about the relationship between the memoir and diary parts of the novel, let us ask ourselves the question: did Defoe need to introduce a diary just to enhance the illusion of authenticity, or did the latter also play some other function?
M. Sokolyansky writes:
“The question of the role of the diary and memoir principles in the artistic system of the novel “Robinson Crusoe” is of considerable interest. The relatively small introductory part of the novel is written in the form of memoirs. “I was born in 1632 in York, in a good family...”, - Robinson Crusoe's story begins in a typically memoir form, and this form dominates for about a fifth of the book, until the moment when the hero, having survived a shipwreck, wakes up one morning on a desert island. From this moment, most of the novel begins, with an interim title. - "Diary" (Journal]. The appeal of Defoe's hero to keeping a diary in such unusual and even tragic circumstances for him may seem to the unprepared reader to be a completely unnatural phenomenon. Meanwhile, the appeal to this form of narration in Defoe's book was historically justified. In the 17th century in the Puritan In the family in which the hero's personality developed, there was a very common tendency to write a kind of spiritual autobiography and diary."
The question of the genetic connection between Defoe's novel and "spiritual autobiography" is covered in the book by J. Starr. In the first days of his stay on the island, not having a sufficient balance of spiritual strength and stability of mental state, the hero-narrator gives preference to a diary (as a confessional form) over a “spiritual autobiography.”
“The diary,” as modern researcher E. Zimmerman writes about the novel “Robinson Crusoe,” begins quite usually as a list of what happened day after day, but soon Crusoe begins to interpret events from a later point of view. The departure from the diary form often goes unnoticed: however, when this becomes obvious, variations of the formula: “but I will return to my diary” are used to return the narrative back to its previous structure.
It should be noted that such a flow of one form into another and vice versa leads to a number of errors when in the diary form there are hints of subsequent events or even mention of them, which is characteristic of the memoir genre, and not the diary, in which the time of writing and the time of what is being described coincide. M. Sokolyansky also points out the various types of errors that arise in this genre interweaving.
“Although the word “Diary” is highlighted as an intermediate heading,” he notes, “the days of the week and numbers (the formal sign of a diary) are indicated on only a few pages. Certain signs of the diary style of narration appear in various episodes up to the story of Robinson’s departure from the island. In general, the novel is characterized not only by coexistence, but also by the integration of diary and memoir forms."
Speaking about the diary nature of Robinson Crusoe, we must not forget that this is an artistic hoax, a fictional diary. Just like the memoir form is fictional. A number of researchers, ignoring this, make the mistake of classifying the novel as a documentary genre. For example, Dennis Nigel argues that Robinson Crusoe "is a work of journalism, essentially what we would call a 'non-fiction book,' or a rough, raw statement of simple facts...".
True, the novel was originally published anonymously, and Defoe, putting on the mask of a publisher, in the “Editor's Preface” assured the reader of the authenticity of the text written by Robinson Crusoe himself. At the beginning of the 19th century. Walter Scott proved the groundlessness of this version. In addition, the “aesthetic intentionality” of Robinson Crusoe’s memoirs and diary, which was pointed out by L. Ginzburg and M. Bakhtin, was obvious. Therefore, in our time, judging Defoe’s novel according to the laws of diary literature, which the writer’s contemporaries did, seems incompetent. First of all, the “aesthetic intentionality” or mystifying nature of the diary is revealed by the frequent appeal to the reader:
“The reader can imagine how carefully I collected the ears of corn when they were ripe” (entry dated January 3);
“for those who have already listened to this part of my story, it is not difficult to believe...” (entry dated June 27);
“the events described in it are in many ways already known to the reader” (introduction to the diary), etc.
Further, many of the descriptions are given by Robinson twice - in memoir form and in diary form, and the memoir description precedes the diary one, which creates a kind of split effect of the hero: the one who lives on the island and the one who describes this life. For example, the digging of a cave is described twice - in memoirs and in a diary; construction of a fence - in memoirs and in a diary; The days from the landing on the island on September 30, 1659 to the germination of the seeds are described twice - in memoirs and in a diary.
“The form of a memoir and diary narrative,” sums up M. Sokolyansky, “gave this novel a certain originality, focusing the reader’s attention not on the hero’s environment—in Robinson, in a significant part of the novel, the human environment is simply absent—but on his actions and thoughts in their interrelation. visible monologue was sometimes underestimated not only by readers, but also by writers..."
II. 6. Drama and dialogue
Nevertheless, the novel “Robinson Crusoe” is also largely characterized by dialogism, despite the memoir-diary form of the narrative, but this dialogism is internal, consisting in the fact that in the novel, according to the observation of Leo Brady, two voices are constantly heard: the public person and the incarnation a separate individual.
The dialogical nature of the novel also lies in the dispute that Robinson Crusoe wages with himself, trying to explain everything that happened to him in two ways (in a rational and irrational way]. His interlocutor is God himself. For example, once again losing faith and concluding that “so Thus, fear drove out from my soul all hope in God, all my hope in him, which was based on such a wonderful proof of his goodness to me,” Robinson, in the paragraph below, reinterprets his thought:
“Then I thought that God is not only just, but also all-good: he punished me cruelly, but he can also release me from punishment; if he does not do this, then it is my duty to submit to his will, and on the other hand, to hope and pray to him, and also tirelessly see if he will send me a sign expressing his will." (This aspect will be discussed in more detail in paragraph II. 8).
The mystery of the bewitching effect of the narrative lies in the richness of the plot with various kinds of collisions (conflicts): between Robinson and nature, between Robinson and God, between him and the savages, between society and naturalness, between fate and action, rationalism and mysticism, reason and intuition, fear and curiosity, pleasure from loneliness and thirst for communication, work and distribution, etc. The book, which did not make anyone, in the words of Charles Dickens, either laugh or cry, is nevertheless deeply dramatic.
“The drama of Defoe’s Robinsonade,” notes A. Elistratova, “first of all naturally follows from the exceptional circumstances in which his hero found himself, thrown after a shipwreck onto the shores of an unknown island lost in the ocean. The very process of gradual discovery and exploration of this new world is also dramatic. Unexpected encounters, discoveries, and strange incidents are also dramatic, which subsequently receive a natural explanation. And the works of Robinson Crusoe are no less dramatic in Defoe’s portrayal... In addition to the drama of the struggle for existence, there is another drama in Defoe’s Robinsonade, determined by internal conflicts in the mind of the hero himself.” .
Open dialogue, in addition to fragmentary remarks in the pre-island part of the work, appears in its entirety only at the end of the island part, with the appearance of Friday. The latter’s speech is conveyed by deliberately distorted stylistic constructions designed to further characterize the appearance of a simple-minded savage:
“But since God is more powerful and can do more, why doesn’t he kill the devil so that there is no evil?” .
II. 7. Emotionality and psychologism
Charles Dickens, who for a long time searched for clues to the apparent contradiction between Defoe’s restrained, dry narrative style and its impressive, captivating power, and was surprised at how Defoe’s book, which “has never caused anyone to laugh or cry,” nevertheless enjoys “enormous popularity”, came to the conclusion that the artistic charm of “Robinson Crusoe” serves as “a remarkable proof of the power of pure truth.”
In a letter to Walter Savage Lander dated July 5, 1856, he wrote of “what a wonderful proof of the power of pure truth is the fact that one of the most popular books in the world has not made anyone laugh or cry. In thinking, I will not be mistaken , having said that there is not a single place in Robinson Crusoe that would cause laughter or tears. In particular, I believe that nothing more insensitive (in the truest sense of the word) has ever been written than the scene of Friday’s death. I often reread this book. and the more I think about the fact mentioned, the more I am surprised that “Robinson” makes such a strong impression on me and everyone and delights us so much.”
Let's see how Defoe combines laconicism (simplicity) and emotionality in conveying the hero's emotional movements using the example of the description of the death of Friday, about which Charles Dickens wrote that “we do not have time to survive it,” blaming Defoe for his inability to portray and evoke in readers feelings, with the exception of one thing - curiosity.
“I undertake to assert,” wrote Charles Dickens in a letter to John Forster in 1856, “that in all world literature there is no more striking example of the complete absence of even a hint of feeling than the description of the death of Friday. The heartlessness is the same as in “Gilles Blas,” but of a different order and much more terrible..." .
Friday actually dies somehow unexpectedly and hastily, in two lines. His death is described laconically and simply. The only word that stands out from the everyday vocabulary and carries an emotional charge is “indescribable” grief. And Defoe even accompanies this description with an inventory: about 300 arrows were fired, 3 arrows hit Friday and 3 more near him. Devoid of sentimental expressiveness, the painting appears in its pure, extremely naked form.
“True,” as the Urnovs write, “this happens already in the second, unsuccessful volume, but even in the first book the most famous episodes fit in a few lines, in a few words. The lion hunt, the dream in the tree and, finally, the moment when Robinson sees the footprint of a human foot on an untrodden path - everything is very brief. Sometimes Defoe tries to talk about feelings, but we somehow don’t remember these feelings of his. But Robinson’s fear when, having seen a footprint on the path, he hurries home, or joy. , when he hears the call of a tame parrot, is memorable and, most importantly, seems to be depicted in detail. At least the reader learns everything he needs to know about it, everything to make it interesting. Thus, Defoe’s “insensibility” is like Hamlet’s “madness.” methodical. Like the “authenticity” of Robinson’s “Adventures”, this “insensibility” is sustained from beginning to end, consciously created... Another name for the same “insensibility”... is impartiality...”
A similar manner of depiction was professed by the Russian writer A. Platonov at the beginning of the twentieth century, who, in order to achieve the greatest impact, advised to match the degree of cruelty of the depicted picture with the degree of dispassion and laconicism of the language describing it. According to A. Platonov, the most terrible scenes should be described in the most dry, extremely capacious language. Defoe also uses the same manner of depiction. He can allow himself to burst into a hail of exclamations and reflections about an insignificant event, but the more terrible the object of the story, the more severe and stingy the style becomes. For example, here is how Defoe describes Robinson's discovery of a cannibal feast:
“This discovery had a depressing effect on me, especially when, going down to the shore, I saw the remains of the terrible feast that had just been celebrated there: blood, bones and pieces of human meat, which these animals devoured with a light heart, dancing and having fun.”
The same revelation of facts is present in Robinson's “moral accounting”, in which he keeps a strict account of good and evil.
“However, laconicism in the depiction of emotions,” as K. Atarova writes, “does not mean that Defoe did not convey the hero’s state of mind. But he conveyed it sparingly and simply, not through abstract pathetic reasoning, but rather through the physical reactions of a person.”
Virginia Woolf noted that Defoe describes first of all “the effect of emotions on the body: how the hands clenched, the teeth clenched...”. Quite often, Defoe uses a purely physiological description of the hero’s reactions: extreme disgust, terrible nausea, profuse vomiting, poor sleep, terrible dreams, trembling of the limbs of the body, insomnia, etc. At the same time, the author adds: “Let the naturalist explain these phenomena and their causes: All I can do is describe the bare facts."
This approach allowed some researchers (for example, I. Watu) to argue that Defoe’s simplicity is not a conscious artistic attitude, but the result of an ingenuous, conscientious and accurate recording of facts. A different point of view is shared by D. Urnov.
The prevalence of the physiological components of the hero’s sensory spectrum expresses the activity of his position. Any experience, event, meeting, failure, loss evokes action in Robinson: fear - building a corral and fortress, cold - searching for a cave, hunger - establishing agricultural and cattle breeding work, melancholy - building a boat, etc. Activity is manifested in the most direct response body to any mental movement. Even Robinson's dreams work on his activity. The passive, contemplative side of Robinson’s nature is manifested only in his relations with God, in which, according to A. Elistratova, a dispute occurs “between the Puritan-mystical interpretation of the event and the voice of reason.”
The text itself has a similar activity. Each word, clinging to other words, moves the plot, being a semantically active and independent component of the narrative. The semantic movement in the novel is identical to the semantic movement and has spatial capacity. Each sentence contains an image of a planned or accomplished spatial movement, deed, action and fascinates with internal and external activity. It acts as a rope with which Defoe directly moves his hero and the plot, not allowing both to remain inactive for a minute. The entire text is full of movement. The semantic activity of the text is expressed:
1) in the predominance of dynamic descriptions - small-scale descriptions that are included in an event and do not suspend actions - over static descriptions, which are reduced mainly to a subject listing. Of the purely static descriptions, only two or three are present:
“Beautiful savannas, or meadows, stretched along its banks, flat, smooth, covered with grass, and further, where the lowlands gradually turned into hills... I discovered an abundance of tobacco with tall and thick stems. There were other plants like I I have never seen it before; it is quite possible that if I knew their properties, I could benefit from them for myself."
“Before sunset, the sky cleared, the wind stopped, and a quiet, charming evening came; the sun set without clouds and rose just as clear the next day, and the surface of the sea, with complete or almost complete calm, all bathed in its radiance, presented a delightful picture of how I I've never seen it before."
Dynamic descriptions are conveyed in expressive, short sentences:
“The storm continued to rage with such force that, according to the sailors, they had never seen anything like it.”
“Suddenly, rain poured out of a large torrential cloud. Then lightning flashed and a terrible clap of thunder was heard”;
2) in the verbs that predominate in it, denoting all kinds of movement (here, for example, in one paragraph: ran away, captured, climbed, descended, ran, rushed -);
3) in the way of linking sentences (there are practically no sentences with a complex syntactic structure, the most common is coordinating connection); sentences flow so smoothly into one another that we cease to notice their divisions: what Pushkin called the “disappearance of style” occurs. Style disappears, revealing to us the very field of what is being described as a directly tangible entity:
“He pointed to the dead man and with signs asked permission to go and look at him. I allowed him, and he immediately ran there. He stopped over the corpse in complete bewilderment: he looked at it, turned it on one side, then on the other, examined the wound. Bullet hit right in the chest, and there was little blood, but, apparently, there was an internal hemorrhage, because death occurred instantly. Having removed his bow and quiver of arrows from the dead man, my savage returned to me. Then I turned and walked, inviting him. follow me..."
“Without wasting time, I ran down the stairs to the foot of the mountain, grabbed the guns I had left at the bottom, then with the same haste I climbed up the mountain again, went down the other side and ran across the running savages.”
4) depending on the intensity and speed of action on the length and speed of change of sentences: the more intense the action, the shorter and simpler the phrase, and vice versa;
For example, in a state of thought, a phrase not restrained by any restrictions flows freely over 7 lines:
“In those days I was in the most bloodthirsty mood and all my free time (which, by the way, I could have used much more usefully) was busy thinking up how I could attack the savages by surprise on their next visit , especially if they are again divided into two groups, as was the last time."
In the state of action, the phrase shrinks, turning into a finely sharpened blade:
“I cannot express what an alarming time these fifteen months were for me. I slept poorly, had terrible dreams every night and often jumped up, waking up in fright. Sometimes I dreamed that I was killing savages and coming up with excuses for the reprisal. knew not a moment of peace."
5) in the absence of unnecessary descriptions of the subject. The text is not overloaded with epithets, comparisons and similar rhetorical embellishments precisely because of its semantic activity. Since semantics becomes synonymous with effective space, the extra word and characteristic automatically move into the plane of additional physical obstacles. And as much as Robinson has enough of such obstacles on the island, he tries to get rid of them in word creation, with simplicity of presentation (in other words, reflection), disowning the complexities of real life - a kind of verbal magic:
“Before setting up the tent, I drew a semicircle in front of the depression, with a radius of ten yards, therefore twenty yards in diameter. Then, along the entire semicircle, I filled two rows of strong stakes, firmly, like piles, hammering them into the ground. I sharpened the tops of the stakes My stockade was about five and a half inches high: between the two rows of stakes I left no more than six inches of free space between the stakes I filled all the way to the top with scraps of rope taken from the ship, folding them in rows one after another, and from the inside. strengthened the fence with supports, for which he prepared thicker and shorter stakes (about two and a half feet long)."
What a light and transparent style describes the most painstaking and physically difficult work!
According to M. Bakhtin, an event is a transition across the semantic boundary of a text.
Beginning with the landing on the island, Robinson Crusoe is full of such transitions. And if before the island the narrative is conducted smoothly, with purely commercial thoroughness, then on the island the descriptive thoroughness becomes akin to eventfulness, moving to the rank of a real creation. The biblical formula “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God” [John. 1:1] finds an almost perfect match in Robinson Crusoe. Robinson creates the world not only with his hands, he creates it with words, with semantic space itself, which acquires the status of material space. “And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us” [John. 1:14]. Robinson's word is identical in its semantic meaning to the object it denotes, and the text is identical to the event itself.
The fascinating external simplicity of the narrative, upon closer examination, does not seem so simple.
“For all its apparent simplicity,” notes K. Atarova, “this book is surprisingly multifaceted. Modern lovers of English literature are not even aware of some of its aspects.”
A. Elistratova, trying to find the origins of this versatility, notes that:
“For all the simplicity and artlessness of Defoe’s narrative style, his emotional palette is not as poor as it might seem at first glance. If Defoe, as Charles Dickens notes, does not make his readers cry or laugh, then he at least knows how to to inspire them with sympathy, pity, vague forebodings, fear, despair, hope and joy, and most importantly, to make them marvel at the inexhaustible wonders of real earthly human life."
True, in another place she stipulates that “from the point of view of the later psychological realism of the 19th-20th centuries, the artistic means with which Defoe depicts the inner world of his hero seem meager, and the scope of their application is limited.”
The opposite opinion is held by K. Atarova, who considers such an approach to be illegal in principle, because “no matter what “meager” means Defoe used, he remains a subtle psychologist for any time.” Evidence of the subtle psychological nature of the novel's narrative style are: numerous "errors" when the hero expresses the dream of permanently staying on the island and at the same time takes the opposite measures - builds a boat, gets to the Spanish ship, asks Friday about the tribes, etc. The apparent inconsistency of the hero is a manifestation of psychological depth and persuasiveness, which made it possible, according to K. Atarova, “to create a capacious, multifaceted image, including an abstract image of a person in general, and a biblical allegory, and specific biographical features of its creator, and the plasticity of a realistic portrait.”
The hidden psychological motive is quite strong in the text. With particular force, Defoe delves into the nuances of a person’s psychological state caused by constant fear. “The theme of fear,” writes K. Atarova, “closes with the theme of irrational premonitions, prophetic dreams, unaccountable impulses.”
Robinson is afraid of everything: footprints in the sand, savages, bad weather, God's punishment, the devil, loneliness. The words “fear”, “horror”, “unaccountable anxiety” dominate in Robinson’s vocabulary when describing his state of mind. However, this psychologism is static, it does not lead to changes within the hero himself, and Robinson at the end of his stay on the island is the same as when he landed on it. After a 30-year absence, he returns to society the same merchant, bourgeois, pragmatist as he left it. This static character of Robinson was pointed out by Charles Dickens when in 1856 he wrote in a letter to John Forster:
“The second part is no good at all... it doesn’t deserve a single kind word, if only because it portrays a person whose character has not changed one iota during 30 years of being on a desert island - it’s hard to think of a more glaring flaw.”
However, we have already said that Robinson Crusoe is not a character, but a symbol, and it is in this capacity that he must be perceived. Robinson is not exactly static psychologically - far from it, his return to his original psychological state is associated with a return to the original conditions of bourgeois life, which sets the rhythm, pulse of life and the type of man-businessman himself. The return of the hero to his original path, albeit after 30 years, marks in Defoe the all-crushing, all-sufficient power of the bourgeois way of life, which distributes role functions in its own way, and quite rigidly. In this regard, the resulting static nature of the mental world of the hero of the novel is completely justified. In the island part of his life, free from external role-playing violence imposed by society, the hero’s mental movements are direct and multifaceted.
M. and D. Urnov give a slightly different explanation for the static nature of the hero: analyzing the further development of the “Robinsonade” genre in comparison with Defoe’s “Robinsonade” and coming to the conclusion that every other “Robinsonade” set as its goal to change or at least correct a person, they As a distinctive feature of Defoe’s novel, they note that: “Robinson’s confession told about how, despite everything, a man did not betray himself, he remained himself.”
Nevertheless, such an interpretation does not seem entirely convincing. Rather, we are talking about a return, an inevitable return to oneself of the former, imposed by society, and not about staticity. As rightly noted by A. Elistratova:
“Dafoe’s heroes belong entirely to bourgeois society. And no matter how they sin against property and the law, no matter where fate throws them, ultimately the logic of the plot leads each of these homeless vagabonds to a kind of “reintegration”, to a return to the bosom of bourgeois society in as its completely respectable citizens."
Robinson's apparent static character has its origin in the motif of reincarnation.
II. 8. Religious aspect
The most obvious psychology of Robinson's image in its development is revealed in his relationship with God. Analyzing his life before and on the island, trying to find allegorical higher parallels and some metaphysical meaning, Robinson writes:
“Alas! My soul did not know God: the good instructions of my father were erased from memory during 8 years of continuous wanderings across the seas and constant communication with wicked people like myself, indifferent to the faith to the last degree. I don’t remember that for all this time, my thought at least once soared to God... I was in a kind of moral dullness: the desire for good and the consciousness of evil were equally alien to me... I had not the slightest idea about the fear of God in danger, nor about the feeling of gratitude to the Creator for getting rid of her..."
“I felt neither God nor God’s judgment over me; I saw just as little of the punishing right hand in the disasters that befell me, as if I were the happiest person in the world.”
However, having made such an atheistic confession, Robinson immediately retreats, admitting that only now, having fallen ill, he felt the awakening of his conscience and “realized that by his sinful behavior he had incurred God’s wrath and that the unprecedented blows of fate were only my fair retribution.”
Words about the Lord's Punishment, Providence, and God's mercy haunt Robinson and appear quite often in the text, although in practice he is guided by everyday meaning. Thoughts about God usually visit him in misfortunes. As A. Elistratova writes:
“In theory, Defoe’s hero does not break with his Puritan piety until the end of his life; in the first years of his life on the island, he even experiences painful mental storms, accompanied by passionate repentance and an appeal to God. But in practice, he is still guided by common sense and has little basis regret it" .
Robinson himself admits this. Thoughts about Providence, a miracle, leading him into initial ecstasy, until the mind finds reasonable explanations for what happened, are further proof of such qualities of the hero, which are unrestrained by anything on a deserted island, such as spontaneity, openness, and impressionability. And, on the contrary, the intervention of reason, rationally explaining the reason for this or that “miracle,” is a deterrent. Being materially creative, the mind at the same time performs the function of a psychological limiter. The entire narrative is built on the collision of these two functions, on a hidden dialogue between faith and rationalistic unbelief, childish, simple-minded enthusiasm and prudence. Two points of view, merged in one hero, endlessly argue with each other. Places related to the first ("God's") or second (healthy) moments also differ in stylistic design. The former are dominated by rhetorical questions, exclamatory sentences, high pathos, complex phrases, an abundance of church words, quotes from the Bible, and sentimental epithets; secondly, laconic, simple, understated speech.
An example is Robinson's description of his feelings about the discovery of barley grains:
“It is impossible to convey into what confusion this discovery plunged me! Until then, I had never been guided by religious thoughts... But when I saw this barley, grown... in a climate unusual for it, and most importantly, it was unknown how it got here, I became to believe that it was God who miraculously grew it without seeds just to feed me on this wild, joyless island. This thought touched me a little and brought tears to my eyes; I was happy with the knowledge that such a miracle had happened for my sake.”
When Robinson remembered about the shaken-out bag, “the miracle disappeared, and along with the discovery that everything happened in the most natural way, I must confess that my ardent gratitude to Providence cooled significantly.”
It is interesting how Robinson in this place plays out the rationalistic discovery he made in a providential sense.
“Meanwhile, what happened to me was almost as unexpected as a miracle, and, in any case, deserved no less gratitude. Indeed: wasn’t the finger of Providence visible in the fact that out of many thousands of barley of grains spoiled by rats, 10 or 12 grains survived and, therefore, it was as if they had fallen from the sky. And I had to shake out the bag on the lawn, where the shadow of the rock fell and where the seeds could immediately sprout! them a little further away, and they would have been burned by the sun."
Elsewhere, Robinson, having gone to the pantry for tobacco, writes:
“Undoubtedly, Providence guided my actions, for, having opened the chest, I found in it medicine not only for the body, but also for the soul: firstly, the tobacco that I was looking for, and secondly, the Bible.”
From this place begins Robinson’s allegorical understanding of the incidents and vicissitudes that befell him, which can be called a “practical interpretation of the Bible”; this interpretation is completed by Friday’s “simple-minded” questions, throwing Robinson back to his original position - the hero’s movement in this case turns out to be imaginary, this movement in a circle, with the appearance of development and resulting staticity. Robinson's alternate trust in God, giving way to disappointment, is also a movement in a circle. These transitions cancel each other out without leading to any significant figure.
“Thus, fear drove out from my soul all hope in God, all my hope in him, which was based on such a wonderful proof of his goodness to me.”
And then: “Then I thought that God is not only fair, but also all-good: he punished me cruelly, but he can also release me from punishment; if he does not do this, then it is my duty to submit to his will, and on the other hand hand, hope and pray to him, and also tirelessly see if he will send me a sign expressing his will."
But he doesn’t stop there either, but continues to take measures himself. Etc. Robinson’s reasoning carries a philosophical load, classifying the novel as a philosophical parable, however, they are devoid of any abstraction, and by constant connection with event specifics, they create the organic unity of the text, without breaking the series of events, but only enriching it with psychological and philosophical components and thereby expanding its meaning. Each analyzed event seems to swell, gaining all sorts of, sometimes ambiguous, meaning and meaning, creating a stereoscopic vision through repetitions and returns.
It is characteristic that Robinson mentions the devil much less often than God, and this is of no use: if God himself acts in a punitive function, the devil is unnecessary.
Conversation with God, as well as the constant mention of His name, repeated appeals and hopes for God's mercy disappear as soon as Robinson returns to society and his former life is restored. With the acquisition of external dialogues, the need for internal dialogue disappears. The words “God”, “God”, “punishment” and their various derivatives disappear from the text. The originality and lively spontaneity of Robinson's religious views served as a reason for reproaches of the writer for attacks on religion and, apparently, this was the reason for him writing the third volume - "Serious reflections of Robinson Crusoe throughout his life and amazing adventures: with the addition of his visions of the angelic world" (1720 ). According to critics (A. Elistratova and others), this volume was “designed to prove the religious orthodoxy of both the author himself and his hero, which was questioned by some critics of the first volume.”
II. 9. Stylistic and lexical space
Yu. Kagarlitsky wrote:
"Dafoe's novels grew out of his activities as a journalist. All of them are devoid of literary embellishment, written in the first person in the living colloquial language of the time, simple, precise and clear."
However, this living spoken language is completely devoid of any rudeness and roughness, but, on the contrary, is aesthetically smoothed. Defoe's speech flows unusually smoothly and easily. The stylization of folk speech is akin to the principle of verisimilitude he applied. It is in fact not at all folk and not so simple in design, but it has a complete resemblance to folk speech. This effect is achieved using a variety of techniques:
1) frequent repetitions and threefold refrains, going back to the fairy-tale style of narration: thus, Robinson is warned three times by fate before being thrown onto the island (first - a storm on the ship on which he sails away from home; then - being captured, escaping on a schooner with the boy Xuri and their brief robinsonade; and, finally, sailing from Australia with the aim of acquiring live goods for the slave trade, shipwreck and ending up on a desert island); the same triplicity - when meeting Friday (first - the trail, then - the remains of the cannibal feast of the savages, and, finally, the savages themselves pursuing Friday); finally, three dreams;
2) listing simple actions
3) a detailed description of work activities and subjects
4) the absence of complicated structures, pompous phrases, rhetorical figures
5) the absence of gallant, ambiguous and conventionally abstract phrases characteristic of business speech and accepted etiquette, with which Defoe’s last novel “Roxana” will subsequently be saturated (to bow, pay a visit, be honored, deign to take, etc.]. In " "Robinzo Crusoe" words are used in their literal sense, and the language exactly matches the action described:
“Afraid of losing even a second of precious time, I took off, instantly placed the ladder on the ledge of the mountain and began to climb up.”
6) frequent mention of the word “God”. On the island, Robinson, deprived of society, as close as possible to nature, swears for any reason, and loses this habit when he returns to the world.
7) introducing as the main character an ordinary person with a simple, understandable philosophy, practical acumen and everyday sense
8) listing folk signs:
“I noticed that the rainy season alternates quite regularly with a period of no rain, and thus could prepare in advance for rain and drought.”
Based on observations, Robinson compiles a folk weather calendar.
9) Robinson’s immediate reaction to various vicissitudes of weather and circumstances: when he sees a footprint or savages, he experiences fear for a long time; having landed on an empty island, he gives in to despair; rejoices at the first harvest, things done; upset by failures.
The “aesthetic intentionality” of the text is expressed in the coherence of Robinson’s speech, in the proportionality of the various parts of the novel, in the very allegorical nature of events and the semantic coherence of the narrative. Drawing into the narrative is carried out using circling techniques, spiral repetitions that increase drama: the trail - a cannibal feast - the arrival of savages - Friday. Or, regarding the motive of return being played out: building a boat, finding a wrecked ship, finding out the surrounding places from Friday, pirates, returning. Fate does not immediately claim its rights to Robinson, but seems to place warning signs on him. For example, Robinson's arrival on the island is surrounded by a whole series of warning, alarming and symbolic incidents (signs): escaping from home, a storm, being captured, escape, life in distant Australia, shipwreck. All these ups and downs are essentially just a continuation of Robinson's initial escape, his increasing distance from home. “The Prodigal Son” tries to outwit fate, to make adjustments to it, and he succeeds only at the cost of 30 years of loneliness.
Conclusion
The narrative structure of Defoe's novel "Robinson Crusoe" is based on a synthesis of various pre-existing genres: biography, memoirs, diary, chronicle, adventure novel, picaresque - and has a self-narrative form. The memoir dominant is more pronounced in the insular part of the narrative, while in the pre-insular part elements of autobiography prevail. Using various compositional techniques, which include: memoirs, diary, inventories and registers, prayers, dreams that play the role of a story within a story, adventurism, dialogism, elements of retrospectiveness, repetitions, dynamic descriptions, the use of various twists and turns as structure-forming components of the plot, etc. D. Defoe created a talented imitation of a plausible life story written by an eyewitness. Nevertheless, the novel is far from this kind of biography, having a certain “aesthetic intentionality” of the text both in stylistic and structural terms, and, in addition, having many levels of reading: from the external series of events to their allegorical interpretations, partially undertaken by the hero himself , and partially hidden in various kinds of symbols. The reason for the popularity and entertainment of the novel lies not only in the unusualness of the plot used by Defoe and the captivating simplicity of the language, but also in the semantically emotional internal richness of the text, which researchers often pass by, accusing Defoe of the dryness and primitiveness of the language, as well as of being exceptional, but natural and not deliberate drama, conflict. The novel owes its popularity to the charm of the main character, Robinson, to that positive determination that pays off any of his actions. Robinson's positive premise lies in the very positive premise of the novel as a kind of utopia about pure entrepreneurial labor. In his novel, Defoe combined elements of opposite, even incompatible in terms of methods of composition and stylistic features of narratives: fairy tales and chronicles, creating in this way, and precisely in this way, an epic of labor. It is this meaningful aspect, the ease of its apparent implementation, that fascinates readers.
The image of the main character itself is not as clear-cut as it might seem at first reading, captivated by the simplicity of his presentation of the adventures that befell him. If on the island Robinson acts as a creator, creator, worker, restless in search of harmony, a person who started a conversation with God himself, then in the pre-island part of the novel he is shown, on the one hand, as a typical rogue, embarking on risky activities in order to enrich himself, and, on the other hand, as a man of adventure, looking for adventure and fortune. The hero's transformation on the island is of a fabulous nature, which is confirmed by his return to his original state upon returning to civilized society. The spell disappears, and the hero remains as he was, striking other researchers who do not take this fabulousness into account with his static nature.
In his subsequent novels, Defoe would strengthen the picaresque nature of his characters and his storytelling style. As A. Elistratova writes: “Robinson Crusoe” opens the history of the educational novel. The rich possibilities of the genre he discovered are gradually, with increasing rapidity, mastered by the writer in his later narrative works...” Defoe himself, apparently, was not aware of the significance of the literary discovery he had made. It was not for nothing that he released the second volume, “The Further Adventures of Robinson Crusoe" (1719), dedicated to the description of the colony created by Robinson on the island, did not have such success. Apparently, the secret was that the style of narration chosen by Defoe had poetic charm only in the context of the experiment he chose, and lost it outside this context.
Rousseau called “Robinson Crusoe” a “magic book”, “a most successful treatise on natural education”, and M. Gorky, naming Robinson among the characters that he considers “completely completed types”, wrote:
“For me this is already monumental creativity, as probably for everyone who more or less feels perfect harmony...” .
“The artistic originality of the novel,” Z. Grazhdanskaya emphasized, “lies in its exceptional verisimilitude, apparent documentary quality, and amazing simplicity and clarity of language.”
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