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"Features of Narrative Structurein Robinson Crusoe Defoe
1. Introduction
Numerous books, monographs, articles, essays, etc. are devoted to Defoe's work in scientific literature. However, with all the abundance of works published about Defoe, there was no consensus on the features of the structure of the novel, its allegorical meaning, the degree of allegoricalness, and stylistic design. Most of the works were devoted to the problems of the novel, the characteristics of the system of its images and the analysis of the philosophical and social basis. Meanwhile, the novel is of considerable interest in terms of the 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 form-building structure. Defoe's novel stands at the junction of many genres, naturally including their features and forming a new form with a similar synthesis, which is of particular interest. A. Elistratova noted that in "Robinson Crusoe" "there was something that later turned out to be beyond the scope of literature" . And it is. Critics still argue 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" passionlessness "of Defoe's style, others are struck by his deep psychologism; some admire the accuracy of the descriptions, others reproach the author for absurdities, others consider him a skillful liar" . The significance of the novel is also given by the fact that for the first time Defoe chose the most ordinary hero, endowed with a master's streak of conquering life. Such a hero appeared in literature for the first time, just as everyday work was first described. 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 problems (in particular, the social orientation of the labor anthem sung by Defoe, allegorical parallels, the reality of the main image, the degree of reliability, philosophical and religious richness, etc.), rather than from the point of view of organization of the narrative structure itself. In domestic literary criticism, among serious works about Defoe, the following should be singled out: 1) the book by Anikst A.A. "Daniel Defoe: Essay on life and work" (1957) 2) book by Nersesova M.A. "Daniel Defoe" (1960) 3) a book by Elistratova A.A. "The English Novel of the Age of Enlightenment" (1966), in which Defoe's novel "Robinson Crusoe" is examined mainly in terms of its problems and characterization of the main image; 4) the book of Sokolyansky M.G. "Western European novel of the Enlightenment: Problems of typology" (1983), in which Defoe's novel is analyzed in comparative characteristics with other works; Sokolyansky M.G. considers the issue of genre specificity of the novel, giving preference to the adventurous side, analyzes allegorical meaning novel and images, and also devotes several pages to the analysis of the correlation between memoir and diary forms of narration; 5) the article by M. and D. Urnov "A 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) the chapter on Defoe Elistratova A.A. in "History of World Literature, v.5 / Edited by 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 in artistic methodology), the specifics of the main image, the philosophical basis and primary sources, and also touches upon the problem of internal drama and charm inherent in the novel; this article by A. Elistratova indicates the place of Defoe's novel in the system of the enlightenment novel, its role in the development of the realistic method and the peculiarities of the novel's realism; 7) Urnov D.'s book "Defoe" (1990), devoted to the biographical data of the writer, one chapter in this book is devoted to the novel "Robinson Crusoe", two pages are devoted to the actual literary analysis of which (namely, the phenomenon of simplicity of style); 8) article by Atarova K.N. "Secrets of Simplicity" in the book. "D. Defoe. Robinson Crusoe" (1990), in which Atarova K.N. explores the issue 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) an article in the book. Mirimsky I. "Articles about the classics" (1966), which examines in detail the plot, plot, composition, images, manner of narration, and other aspects; 10) the book of Urnov D.M. Robinson and Gulliver: The Fate of Two literary heroes” (1973), whose title speaks for itself; 11) an article by Shalaty O. “Robinson Crusoe” by Defoe in the biblical theme (1997). However, the authors of the listed works and books paid very little attention both to Defoe's own artistic method and style, and to the specifics of his narrative structure in various aspects (from the general formative layout of the material to particular details regarding the disclosure of the psychology of the image and its hidden meaning, internal dialogism, etc.). .d.). In foreign literary criticism, Defoe's novel was most often analyzed for its: - allegorical nature (J. Starr, Carl Frederick, E. Zimmerman); - documentary, in which English critics saw a lack of Defoe's narrative manner (as, for example, Ch. Dickens, D. Nigel); - the reliability of the depicted. The latter has been challenged 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. A detailed analysis of the narrative structure of the work is devoted to the book by E. Zimmerman (1975), 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 relationship between monologue and dialogue in the novel. Question about genetic connection between Defoe's novel and "spiritual autobiography" is covered in the books: J. Starr (1965), J. Gunther (1966), M. G. Sokolyansky (1983) and others.
II. Analytical part
II.1. Sources of "Robinson Crusoe" (1719] The sources that served as the plot basis of the novel can be divided into factual and literary. The first includes the flow of authors of travel essays and notes of the late 17th-early 18th centuries, among which K. Atarova singles out two: 1) Admiral William Dampier, who published the books: "A New Round-the-World Journey", 1697; "Travel and Description", 1699; "Journey to New Holland", 1703; 2) Woodes Rogers, who wrote travel diaries of 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 singles out Francis Drake, Walter Roley cheese and Richard Hakluyt. Among the possible purely literary sources, later researchers distinguished: 1) Henry Neuville's novel "Isle of Pines, or the Fourth Island near the unknown Australian mainland, recently discovered by Heinrich Cornelius von Slotten", 1668; 2) a novel by an Arab writer of the 12th century. Ibn-Tufayl's "Alive, son of the Waking One", published in Oxford in Latin in 1671, and then reprinted three times in English until 1711. 3) Afra Ben'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, according to A. Elistratova, "the spiritual development of a person was transmitted with the help of extremely simple, everyday specific details, full at the same time of a hidden, deeply significant moral meaning" . Defoe's book, which appeared among other very numerous travel literature that swept England at that time: genuine and fictional reports of circumnavigations, memoirs, diaries, travel notes of merchants and sailors, immediately took the leading position in it, consolidating many of its achievements and literary methods. And therefore, as A. Chameev rightly notes, “No matter how diverse and numerous the sources of Robinson Crusoe are, both in form and content, the novel was a deeply innovative phenomenon. the beginning with imaginary documentary, the traditions of the memoir genre with the features of a philosophical parable" .II.2. Genre of the novel The plot of the novel "Robinson Crusoe" is divided into two parts: one describes the events associated with the social life of the hero, stay at home; the second part is hermit life on the island. The narration is conducted in the first person, enhancing the effect of plausibility, 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 (marine chronicle), the plot cannot be called purely chronicle. Robinson's numerous reasonings, his relationship with God, repetitions, descriptions of his feelings, loading the narrative with emotional and symbolic components, expand the scope of the genre definition of the novel. Not without reason, many genre definitions were applied to the novel "Robinson Crusoe": an educational adventure novel (V. Dibelius); adventure novel (M. Sokolyansky); a novel of education, a treatise on natural education (Jean Jacques Rousseau); spiritual autobiography (M. Sokolyansky, J. Günther); 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 romanized 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 unseparated, undivided form, combines many different literary genres" . All these definitions contain a grain of truth. So, "emblem of adventurousness, - writes M. Sokolyansky, - often the presence of the word "adventure" (adventure) is already in the title of the work" . The title of the novel just stands: "Life and amazing adventures ...". Further, an adventure is a kind of event, but an extraordinary event. And the very plot of the novel "Robinson Crusoe" is an extraordinary event. Over Robinson Crusoe Defoe made a kind of educational experiment, throwing him on a desert island. In other words, Defoe temporarily "turned 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 a parenting novel 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 up into a series 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 maturation and the spiritual development of the hero. . 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 a person - in other words, as K. Atarova writes, "a story about the wanderings of a lost soul, weighed down by original sin and finding the way to salvation through turning to God" ."It was not for nothing that Defoe insisted in the third part of the novel on its allegorical meaning,- notes A. Elistratova. - The reverent seriousness with which Robinson Crusoe ponders his life experience, wishing to comprehend its hidden meaning, the severe scrupulousness with which he analyzes his spiritual impulses - all this goes back to that democratic puritanical literary tradition XVII century, which was completed in "The Pilgrim's Way" by J. Bunyan. Robinson sees the manifestation of divine providence in every incident of his life; he is overshadowed by prophetic dreams ... shipwreck, loneliness, a desert island, the invasion of savages - everything seems to him divine punishments " . Robinson interprets any trifling incident as "God's providence", and an accidental combination of tragic circumstances as a fair punishment and atonement for sins. Even coincidences of dates seem meaningful and symbolic to the hero ( "sinful life and solitary life", - calculates Crusoe, - started for me on the same day" , September 30th). According to J. Starr, Robinson acts in a twofold hypostasis - both as a sinner and as God's chosen one. "Merges with such a comprehension of the book, - notes K. Atarova, and the interpretation of the novel as a variation of the biblical story about the prodigal son: Robinson, who disdained 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 in 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 literature, - 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 the hero of Defoe is ignored ... The difference is palpable in a purely plot plane. In the "Book of the Prophet Jonah" the biblical hero appears precisely as a prophet...; Defoe's hero does not act as a predictor at all ... " . 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 next: "The life of Jonah is completely controlled by the Almighty ... Robinson, however much he prays, is active in his activities, and this truly creative activity, initiative, ingenuity does not allow us to perceive him as a modification of the Old Testament Jonah" . The modern researcher E. Meletinsky considers Defoe's novel with his "setting on everyday realism" "a serious milestone on the way to the demythologization of literature" . Meanwhile, if we are to draw parallels between Defoe's novel and the Bible, then it is more likely to be compared with the book Genesis. 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 the previous and subsequent "Robinsonades" fall into 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 whole 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 whole world. In Robinson, his god-likeness, declared not in the form of Scripture, but in the form of an everyday diary, is striking. The rest of the arsenal inherent in Scripture is also present in it: testaments (numerous advice and instructions from Robinson on various occasions, given as parting words), allegorical parables, obligatory students (Friday), instructive stories, Kabbalistic formulas (coincidence of calendar dates), time breakdown (day the 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 underestimated, commonplace, third-class level. And just as the Holy Scripture is simple and accessible in presentation, but capacious and difficult to interpret, Robinson is just as outwardly and stylistically simple, but at the same time plot 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 ups and downs in his own life. Many details bring the novel closer to the future psychological novel. "Some researchers - writes M. Sokolyansky, - Not without reason, they emphasize the importance of the work of Defoe the novelist for the development of the European (and, above all, the English) psychological novel. The author of "Robinson Crusoe", depicting life in the forms of life itself, focused not only on the external world surrounding the hero, but also on the inner world of a thinking religious person. . And according to the witty remark of E. Zimmerman, "Defoe connects Bunyan with Richardson in some respects. For Defoe's characters... the physical world is a faint 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 a diary. The points of view of the character and the author are identical, or rather, 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 very "editor's preface" Defoe stated 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 readers the same game as Cervantes ... Defoe did not dare to announce it directly" . One of the main features of Defoe's narrative style is precisely reliability, plausibility. In this he was not original. Interest in fact, not in fiction, manifested a characteristic trend of the era in which Defoe lived. Closing within the framework of the authentic was a defining characteristic of adventurous and psychological novels. "Even in Robinson Crusoe, - as M. Sokolyansky emphasized, - where the role of hyperbolization is very great, everything extraordinary is dressed in clothes of reliability and possibility" . There is nothing supernatural in it. Fiction itself "made up for reality, and the incredible is depicted with realistic authenticity" . "To invent more reliably than the truth" - such was Defoe's principle, formulated in his own way the law of creative typification. "Author of Robinson Crusoe"- note M. and D. Urnov, - was a master of plausible fiction. He knew how to observe what already in later times began to be called the "logic of action" - the persuasiveness of the behavior of the characters in fictional or assumed circumstances. . Researchers' opinions on how to achieve the irresistible illusion of plausibility in Defoe's novel differ greatly. These methods included: 1) appeal to the memoir and diary form; 2) method of self-elimination of the author; 3) the introduction of "documentary" evidence of the story - descriptions, registers, etc.; 4) the most detailed specification; 5) the complete absence of literature (simplicity); 6) "aesthetic intentionality"; 7) the ability to grasp the appearance of the object as a whole and convey it in a few words; 8) the ability to lie and lie convincingly. The entire narrative in the novel "Robinson Crusoe" is conducted in the first person, through the eyes of the hero himself, through his inner world. The author has been completely removed from the novel. This technique not only increases the illusion of credibility, giving the novel the appearance of resemblance 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 misfortunes 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 other rules: the rules of realness. 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 in the text of many slips and errors. The eyewitness is not able to keep everything in memory and observe the logic of following in everything. The inconsistency of the plot this case serves as further proof of the truth of what is described. "The very monotony and efficiency of these enumerations,- writes K. Atarova, - creates the illusion of authenticity - like, why is it so boring to invent? However, the detail of dry and stingy descriptions has its own charm, its own poetry and its own artistic novelty. . Even numerous errors in the detailed description do not violate the plausibility (for example: "Undressing, I entered the water...", and, having boarded the ship, "... filled his pockets with crackers and ate them on the go" ; or when the diary form itself is inconsistent, and the narrator often enters into the diary information that he could learn about only later: for example, in an entry dated June 27, he writes: "Even later, when, after due reflection, I realized my position..." etc.). As M. and D. Urnov write: "Authenticity", creatively created, is invincible. Even mistakes in maritime affairs and geography, even inconsistencies in the narrative, Defoe most likely made deliberately, for the sake of the same plausibility, for the most truthful narrator is mistaken in something " . The plausibility 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 would either have to go crazy, or run wild, or die. However, the plausibility of the novel, which Defoe sought so much, 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 enlightening faith in a man-worker and creator. M. Gorky wrote well about this: "Zola, Goncourts, our Pisemsky are plausible, it is true, but Defoe - "Robinson Crusoe" and Cervantes - "Don Quixote" are closer to the truth about a person than "naturalists", photographers " . It cannot be discounted that the image of Robinson is "perfectly set" and to a certain extent symbolic, which is the reason for his very special place in the literature of the English Enlightenment. "With all good concreteness, - writes A. Elistratova, - of the factual material from which Defoe sculpts it is an image that is less attached to everyday real life, much more collective and generalized in its inner content than the later characters of Richardson, Fielding, Smolett, etc. In world literature, he rises somewhere between Prospero, the great and lonely humanist magician 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 go wild or even go crazy. However, behind the outward improbability of the island Robinsonade, the highest truth of enlightenment humanism was hidden ... Robinson's feat proved the strength of the human spirit and the 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 sales and purchase relations and any kind of exploitation. A kind of utopia of labor. 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 understanding, without revealing the secret of its unfading charm. The phenomenon of simplicity is much more difficult to critically comprehend than complexity, encryption, hermeticism" ."Despite the abundance of details, she continues, Defoe's prose gives the impression of simplicity, conciseness, and crystal clearness. Before us is only a statement of facts, and reasoning, explanations, descriptions of spiritual 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, i.e. consistent to the end creator of simplicity. He realized that "simplicity" is the same subject of the image, like any other, like a feature of the face or character, perhaps the most difficult subject to depict ... " ."If they asked me - Defoe once remarked, - what I consider a perfect style or language, I would answer that I consider such a language to be one in which, speaking to five hundred people of average and various abilities (excluding idiots and madmen), a person would be understood by all of them, and ... in that very the sense in which he wanted to be understood." However, the eyewitness leading the narration, in the past a merchant, a slave trader, a sailor, could not write in a different language. The simplicity of style was just as much proof of the truth of what was being described as were other techniques. This simplicity was also explained by the pragmatism inherent in the hero in all cases. Robinson looked at the world through the eyes of a businessman, an entrepreneur, an accountant. The text is literally replete with all sorts of calculations and sums, its documentation is of the accounting type. Robinson counts everything: how many grains of barley, how many sheep, gunpowder, arrows, he keeps a record of everything: from the number of days to the amount of good and evil that happened in his life. The pragmatist interferes even in the relationship with God. Digital counting prevails over the descriptive side of objects and phenomena. For Robinson, it is more important to calculate than to describe. In enumeration, counting, designation, fixation, not only the bourgeois habit of hoarding, accounting, but also the function of creation is manifested. To give a designation, to catalog, to count, means to create. Such creative bookkeeping is characteristic of Holy Scripture: "And the man gave names to all the cattle and the birds of the air and to all the beasts of the field" [Gen.2:20]. Defoe called his simple and clear style "home". 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, haunting and showing all sorts of plausible tricks, they lead travelers deep into the island. Whatever Defoe describes, he, according to D. Urnov, "First of all, simply conveys simple steps and thanks to this, it convinces of the incredible, in fact, of anything - some kind of spring from the inside pushes word by word: “Today it rained, invigorating me and refreshing the earth. However, it was accompanied by a monstrous thunder and lightning, and this scared me terribly, I was worried about his gunpowder": Just rain, really simple, would not hold our attention, but here everything is "simple" only in appearance, in fact - a conscious injection of details, details, with which, in the end, the reader "clings" attention - rain, thunder, lightning, gunpowder ... Shakespeare: "Howl, whirlwind, with might and main! Burn, lightning! Flow, downpour!" - a cosmic upheaval in the world and in the soul. Defoe has the usual psychological justification for worrying "for one's gunpowder": the beginning of that realism that we find in every modern book ... It tells about the most incredible things through ordinary details" . As an example, Robinson's reasoning about possible projects to get rid of savages can be cited: “It occurred to me to dig a hole in the place where they made a fire, and put five or six pounds of gunpowder into it. When they light their fire, the gunpowder will ignite and blow up everything that is nearby. I feel sorry for the gunpowder, of which I had no more than a barrel, and secondly, I could not be sure that the explosion would happen exactly when they gathered around the fire " . The spectacle of massacre, an explosion, a planned dangerous adventure that arose 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 a purely bourgeois pity to destroy the 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 ordinary, 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 come down for the most part to the description of the production of things, the accumulation of matter, creation in its pure original form. The act of creation, taken apart in 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 for posterity the boundaries of the aesthetic perception of reality." It is precisely the effect of "estrangement" that V. Shklovsky wrote about, when the most ordinary thing and the most ordinary action, becoming an object of art, acquire, as it were, a new dimension - aesthetic. 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. Pathetics, which Defoe refuses to K. Atarova, lies in the very content of the book, and, moreover, in the hero's directly ingenuous reactions to this or that tragic event and in his appeals to the Almighty. According to West: "Defoe's realism does not simply state the facts; it makes us feel the creative power of man. By making us feel this power, he convinces us thereby of the reality of the facts... The whole book is built on this" ."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" extraordinarily fascinating, which capture the imagination, because this is the story of free, all-conquering labor" . The ability to see significant ethical meaning in the prosaic details of everyday life Defoe, according to A. Elistratova, learned from Bunyan, as well as the simplicity and expressiveness of the language, which remains close 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 assignment action development characteristic of classic literature, but is subject to the hero's subjective perception of time. 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 dwelling";"The twenty-seventh year of my captivity has come" ;"... the horror and disgust inspired 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, mistakes and alogisms made in the text that create a natural and extremely reliable fabric of the narrative. In the pre-island part of the narrative, there are features of the composition of reverse time, retrospection, and narration from the end. In his novel, Defoe combined two narrative techniques typical of travel literature, travel notes and reports, i.e. literature of fact instead of literature of fiction: it is a diary and memoirs. In his diary, Robinson states the 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 sustained in a manner characteristic of the genre of biography. The year, place of birth of the hero, his name, family, training, years of life are precisely indicated. We are fully acquainted with the biography of the hero, which does not differ 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 settled at first in Hull. Having made a good fortune by trade, he left business and moved to York. Here he married my mother, which belonged to an old family that bore the surname Robinson. They gave me the name Robinson, while the British, according to their custom to distort foreign words, changed my paternal 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 (compare the beginnings of the two novels, made in the same style and according to the same plan]. Further, we learn that the father intended his son to be a lawyer, but Robinson became interested in the sea despite the entreaties of his mother and friends.As he admits, "there was something fatal in this natural attraction, pushing 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 love of the sea, which gives impetus to events, is initially put at the heart of the adventure. There is a conversation with his father (as Robinson admitted, prophetic), an escape from his parents on a ship, a storm, a friend’s advice to return home and his prophecies, a new journey, trading with Guinea as a merchant, being captured by the Moors, serving the master as a slave , escape on a longboat with the Xuri boy, travel and hunt along the native coast, meet a Portuguese ship and arrive in Brazil, work on a sugarcane plantation for 4 years, become a planter, trade in blacks, outfit a ship to Guinea for a secret transportation blacks, storm, ship aground, rescue on a boat, death of a boat, landing on an island. All this is on 40 pages of text compressed by chronological frames. Starting from the landing on the island, the narrative structure changes again from an adventurous-adventure style to a memoir-diary one. The style of narration is also changing, 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 adventure was driven by the hero himself, admitting that he "it was destined to be the culprit of all misfortunes" , then in the second part of the novel he no longer becomes the culprit of the adventure, but the object of their action. The active adventure of Robinson himself boils down mainly to restoring the world he had lost. The direction of the story is also changing. If in the pre-island part the narration unfolds linearly, then in the insular part its linearity is broken: by diary inserts; Robinson's reasoning and reminiscences; his appeals to God; repetition and repeated empathy about the events that have happened (for example, about the imprint of a trace seen; the feeling of fear experienced by the hero about the savages; the return of thoughts to the methods of salvation, to the actions and buildings he committed, etc.). Although Defoe's novel cannot be attributed to the psychological genre, however, in such returns, repetitions, creating a stereoscopic effect of reproducing reality (both material and spiritual), hidden psychologism is manifested, which constitutes that "aesthetic intentionality" mentioned by L. Ginzburg. 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 her friends, her father, and himself. Several times he repeats almost verbatim the idea that "some secret decree of omnipotent fate prompts 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 a connecting allegorical thread between the first (sinful) and second (repentant) parts of the novel. To this theme, only in its reverse image, Robinson incessantly returns to the island, which appears to him in the form of God's punishment. Robinson's favorite expression on the island is the phrase about the intervention of Providence. "Throughout the island robinsonade, - writes A. Elistratova, - many times the same situation varies in different ways: it seems to Robinson that before him is "a miracle, an act of direct interference in his life either by heavenly providence, or by satanic forces." But, on reflection, he comes to the conclusion that everything that struck him so much is explained by the most natural, earthly causes. The internal struggle between puritanical superstition and rationalistic sanity is waged throughout the Robinsonade with varying success. . According to Yu.Kagarlitsky, "Defoe's novels are devoid of a developed plot and are built around the hero's biography, as a list of his successes and failures" . The genre of memoirs presupposes the apparent underdevelopment of the plot, which, thus, contributes to the strengthening of the illusion of plausibility. Even more such an illusion has a diary. However, Defoe's novel cannot be called plot undeveloped. On the contrary, each of his guns shoots, and it describes exactly what the hero needs and nothing more. Conciseness, 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 escapes attention. Robinson is so understandable and visible to us, so transparent that it seems that there is nothing to think about. But it is clear to us thanks to Defoe, the whole system of his narrative techniques. But how clearly Robinson (directly in reasoning) and Defoe (through a sequence of events) substantiates the allegorical-metaphysical interpretation of events! Even the appearance of Friday fits into the biblical allegory. "And the man gave names to all the cattle, 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 now 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, torn form, in contrast to the structure of classicism closed into strict frames of rules and storylines, is closer to the structure of a sentimental novel and a romantic novel with its attention to exceptional circumstances. The novel is in a certain sense a synthesis of various narrative structures and artistic techniques: adventure novel, sentimental novel, utopian novel, biography novel, chronicle novel, memoir, parable, 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 strengthen 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 beginnings in the artistic system of the novel" Robinson Crusoe "is of considerable interest. A 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 ...", - the story of Robinson Crusoe begins in typical 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 begins most of the novel, which has an intermediate title - "Diary" (Journal]. The appeal of the hero Defoe to keeping a diary in such unusual and even tragic circumstances for him may seem to an 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 the family in which the personality of the hero developed was a very common tendency I write a kind of spiritual autobiography and diaries". 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 forces and stability of state of mind, the hero-narrator prefers a diary (as a confessional form) over a "spiritual autobiography". "Diary", - as the modern researcher E. Zimmerman writes about the novel "Robinson Crusoe", - begins quite normally 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 it becomes apparent, variations of the formula "but I will return to my diary" are used to bring the narrative back to its former 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 a mention of them, which is typical of the memoir genre, and not the diary, in which the time of writing and the time of the described coincide. M. Sokolyansky also points out various types of errors arising in this genre interweaving. "Although the word "Diary" is highlighted as an intermediate heading, he notes, days of the week and dates (a formal sign of a diary) are indicated on only a few pages. Separate signs of the diary manner 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 we have before us an artistic hoax, a fictional diary. Just like the memoir form is fictional. A number of researchers, ignoring this, make the mistake of referring the novel to the documentary genre. For example, Dennis Nigel claims that "Robinson Crusoe" - "it is a piece of journalism, essentially what we would call a 'documentary book', or a crude, raw presentation of simple facts..." . True, the novel was originally published anonymously, and Defoe, wearing 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 early XIX in. Walter Scott proved the groundlessness of this version. In addition, the "aesthetic intentionality" of the memoirs and diary of Robinson Crusoe was obvious, which was pointed out by L. Ginzburg and M. Bakhtin. Therefore, to judge Defoe's novel according to the laws of diary literature, which the writer's contemporaries did, in our time seems to be unauthorized. First of all, the "aesthetic intentionality" or mystified nature of the diary is betrayed by the frequent appeal to the reader: "The reader can imagine how carefully I gathered the ears when they were ripe" (record dated January 3); "For those who have already listened to this part of my story, it is not difficult to believe..." (record dated June 27); "the events described in it are largely already known to the reader"(introduction to the diary), etc. Further, many 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 effect of the hero's bifurcation: into the one who lives on the island and the one who describes this life. For example, digging a cave is described twice - in memoirs and in a diary; the construction of the fence - in memoirs and in a diary; the days from landing on the island on September 30, 1659 to the emergence of seeds are described twice - in memoirs and in a diary. "Form of memoir and diary narrative, - sums up M. Sokolyansky, - gave this novel a certain originality, focusing the reader's attention not on the environment of the hero - Robinson simply does not have a human environment in a significant part of the novel - but on his actions and thoughts in their interconnection. Such a 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 dialogic, despite the memoir-diary form of narration, but this dialogic is internal, consisting in the fact that, according to Leo Brady, two voices constantly sound in the novel: a social person and incarnations separate individual. The dialogue of the novel also lies in the dispute that Robinson Crusoe leads 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 "in this way Thus, fear drove out of 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 reverses his thought: “Then I thought that God is not only just, but also all-good: he severely punished me, but he can also release me from punishment; if he does not do this, then my duty is to submit to his will, and on the other hand, to hope and to pray to him, and also to look tirelessly to see if he sends me a sign expressing his will" . (More on this aspect will be discussed in section II.8). The mystery of the fascinating impact of the narrative lies in the saturation of the plot with various kinds of collisions (conflicts): between Robinson and nature, between Robinson and God, between him and the savages, between the public and naturalness, between fate and actions, rationalism and mysticism, reason and intuition, fear and curiosity, enjoyment of loneliness and thirst for communication, labor and distribution, etc. The book, which did not make anyone, in the words of Charles Dickens, neither laugh nor cry, is nevertheless deeply dramatic. "The drama of Defoe's Robinsonade, - notes A. Elistratova, - first of all, it naturally follows from the exceptional circumstances in which his hero found himself, thrown out after a shipwreck on 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. Dramatic and unexpected meetings, finds, strange incidents, subsequently receiving 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" . The 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 insular part, with the appearance of Friday. The speech of the latter is conveyed by deliberately distorted stylistic constructions, designed to additionally characterize the appearance of an ingenuous 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 C. Dickens, who had long 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 "I haven't made anyone laugh or cry yet" nevertheless enjoys "huge popularity" , came to the conclusion that the artistic charm of "Robinson Crusoe" serves "a remarkable proof of the power of pure truth" . In a letter to Walter Savage Lander dated July 5, 1856, he wrote that "what a wonderful proof of the power of pure truth is the fact that one of the most popular books in the world did not make anyone laugh or cry. Thinking I will not be mistaken in saying that there is not a single place in Robinson Crusoe that would cause laughter or tears. In particular, I believe that nothing has ever been written more insensitive (in the truest sense of the word) Friday's death scene. I often re-read this book, and the more I think about the mentioned fact, the more it surprises me that "Robinson "makes such a strong impression on me and on everyone and so delights us" . Let's see how Defoe combines laconism (simplicity) and emotionality in conveying the spiritual movements of the hero on the example of describing the death of Friday, about which Ch. Dickens wrote that "we do not have time to survive it", blaming Defoe for the inability to depict and evoke feelings, with the exception of one - curiosity. "I dare say - wrote C. 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. Heartlessness is the same as in Gilles Blas, but of a different order and much more terrible ... " . Friday dies really somehow unexpectedly and hastily, in two lines. His death is described concisely and simply. The only word that stands out from the everyday lexicon and carries an emotional charge is "indescribable" chagrin. And even this description Defoe accompanies with an inventory: about 300 arrows were fired, on Friday 3 arrows hit and 3 more near him. Deprived of sentimental expressiveness, the picture appears in its pure, extremely naked form. "Truth, - 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. Hunting for lions, sleeping on a tree, and, finally, the moment when Robinson on an untrodden path sees the trace of a human foot - all very briefly. Sometimes Defoe tries to talk about feelings, but somehow we don’t remember these feelings of his. On the other hand, 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 remembered and, most importantly, seems to be depicted in detail. At least the reader will learn everything there is to know about it, everything to be interesting. Thus, Defoe's "insensitivity" is like Hamlet's "madness", methodical. Like the "authenticity" of Robinson's "Adventures", this "insensitivity" from beginning to end sustained, consciously created ... Another name for the same "insensitivity" ... is impartiality ... " . A similar manner of depiction was professed by the Russian writer A. Platonov at the beginning of the 20th century, in order to achieve the greatest effect of influence, he advised to match the measure of cruelty of the depicted picture with the measure of impassivity and conciseness 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 afford to scatter in a hail of exclamations and reflections about an insignificant event, but the more terrible the object of the narration, the style becomes stricter and more stingy. 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 a terrible feast that had just been celebrated there: blood, bones and pieces of human meat, which these animals ate with a light heart, dancing and having fun" . The same baring 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 state of mind of the hero. 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 primarily describes "the impact of emotions on the body: how hands clenched, 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. Wat) to argue that Defoe's simplicity is not a conscious artistic attitude, but the result of an ingenuous, conscientious and accurate fixation of facts. Another point of view is shared by D. Urnov. In the prevalence of the physiological components of the hero's sensory spectrum, the activity of his position is expressed. Any experience, event, meeting, failure, loss causes an action in Robinson: fear - the construction of a corral and a fortress, cold - the search for a cave, hunger - the establishment of agricultural and pastoral work, longing - the construction of a boat, etc. Activity is manifested in the most direct response of the body to any spiritual movement. Even Robinson's dreams work for 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 takes place. "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 a spatial capacity. Each sentence contains an image of a planned or ongoing spatial movement, deed, action and fascinates with internal and external activity. It acts as a rope, with the help of which Defoe directly moves his hero and plot, not allowing both to remain inactive for a single minute. All text is full of movement. The semantic activity of the text is expressed: 1) in the predominance of dynamic descriptions - small descriptions that are included in the event and do not suspend actions - over static descriptions, which are reduced mainly to subject enumeration. Of the purely static descriptions, there are only two or three: “Along its banks stretched beautiful savannahs, or meadows, even, smooth, covered with grass, and further, where the lowland gradually turned into a hill ... I found an abundance of tobacco with tall and thick stems. There were other plants, which I I have never seen before; it is quite possible that, if I knew their properties, I could benefit from them for myself. .“Before sunset, the sky cleared up, the wind stopped, and a quiet, charming evening set in; 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 what I never seen before" . Dynamic descriptions are conveyed in expressive, short sentences: "The storm continued to rage with such force that, according to the sailors, they never happened to see such a thing" "Suddenly, rain poured from a large torrential cloud. Then lightning flashed and a terrible roll of thunder was heard" ; 2) in the verbs prevailing in it, denoting any kind of movement (here, for example, in one paragraph: fled, captured, climbed, descended, ran, rushed -); 3) in the method of linking sentences (there are practically no sentences with a complex syntactic structure, the most common is a coordinative link); sentences so smoothly pass one into another that we stop noticing their divisions: what happens is what Pushkin called "the disappearance of style." Style disappears, revealing to us the very field of the 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 him, turned him on one side, then on the other, examined the wound. Bullet hit right in the chest, and there was not much blood, but, apparently, there was an internal hemorrhage, because death came instantly. Having removed from the dead man his bow and quiver of arrows, my savage returned to me. Then I turned and went, inviting him follow me..." .Wasting no time, I ran down the stairs to the foot of the mountain, grabbed the guns I left below, then with the same haste climbed the mountain again, descended from its other side and ran across the running savages. . 4) depending on the tension 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 contemplation, the phrase, not restrained by any delimiters, spreads 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 with much greater benefit) was busy thinking about how I could attack the savages by surprise on their next visit. , especially if they split into two groups again, as they did the last time" . In the state of action, the phrase shrinks, turning into a finely honed blade: “I can’t express what an anxious time these fifteen months were for me. I didn’t sleep well, 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 reprisals. 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 superfluous word and characteristic automatically pass into the plane of additional physical obstacles. And as far as Robinson lacks such obstacles on the island, he tries to get rid of them in word creation, by the simplicity of presentation (in other words, reflection) disavowing the complexities of real life - a kind of verbal magic: "Before pitching the tent, I drew a semicircle in front of the recess, with a radius of ten yards, therefore, twenty yards in diameter. Then around the entire semicircle I stuffed strong stakes in two rows, firmly, like piles, driving them into the ground. I sharpened the tops of the stakes My stockade was about five and a half feet high: between two rows of stakes I left no more than six inches of free space.All this gap between the stakes I filled up to the very top with scraps of ropes taken from the ship, laying them in rows one after another, and from the inside strengthened the fence with props, for which he prepared stakes thicker and shorter (about two and a half feet long) " . What a light and transparent style describes the most painstaking and physically hard work! According to M. Bakhtin, an event is a passage through the semantic boundary of a text. Since landing on the island, "Robinson Crusoe" is full of such transitions. And if before the island the narration is conducted smoothly, with purely commercial thoroughness, then on the island the descriptive thoroughness becomes akin to eventfulness, passing into 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" [Jn. 1:1] finds an almost perfect match in Robinson Crusoe. Robinson creates the world not only with his hands, he creates it with a word, with the semantic space itself, acquiring the status of a 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 subject it denotes, and the text is identical to the event itself. The bewitching external simplicity of the narration, upon closer examination, does not seem so simple. "For all its seeming simplicity, - notes K.Atarova, - This book is amazingly versatile. Some of its aspects are not suspected by modern lovers of English literature.. A. Elistratova, trying to find the origins of this versatility, notes that: "For all the simplicity and artlessness of Defoe's narrative manner, his emotional palette is not so poor as it might seem at first glance. If Defoe, as Ch. Dickens notes, does not make his readers either cry or laugh, then in any case he knows how inspire them with sympathy, pity, vague forebodings, fear, despair, hope and joy, and most importantly, make them marvel at the inexhaustible miracles 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 by which Defoe depicts the inner world of his hero seem scarce, and their scope is limited" . The opposite opinion is shared by K. Atarova, who considers such an approach to be unlawful in principle, because, "no matter how "meager" means Defoe uses, he remains a subtle psychologist for any time" . Evidence of the subtle psychological nature of the narrative manner of the novel are: numerous "errors", when the hero expresses a dream to permanently stay 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 allowed, according to K. Atarova, "create a capacious, multifaceted image, including an abstract image of a person in general, and biblical allegory, and specific biographical features of his creator, and the plasticity of a realistic portrait" . The hidden psychological motive is quite strong in the text. With special force, Defoe delves into the nuances of the psychological state of a person caused by constant fear. "The theme of fear, - writes K. Atarova, - merges with the theme of irrational premonitions, prophetic dreams, unconscious impulses" . Robinson is afraid of everything: a footprint in the sand, savages, bad weather, God's punishment, the devil, loneliness. The words "fear", "horror", "unaccountable anxiety" dominate 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 as the same merchant, bourgeois, pragmatist that he left it. Ch. Dickens pointed out this static character of Robinson when in 1856 he wrote in a letter to John Forster: "The second part is no good at all ... it does not deserve a single kind word, if only because it displays a person whose character has not changed one iota over 30 years of being on a desert island - it is difficult to imagine a more egregious flaw" . However, we have already said that Robinson Crusoe is not a character, but a symbol, and it is in this capacity that he should be perceived. Robinson is not exactly psychologically static, not at all, his return to his original psychological state is associated with a return to the initial conditions of bourgeois life, which sets the rhythm, pulse of life and the type of the businessman himself. The return of the hero to the original path, albeit after 30 years, marks in Defoe the all-crushing, all-powerful power of the bourgeois way of life, distributing role functions in its own way, and rather harshly. In this regard, the resulting static nature of the mental world of the hero of the novel is fully justified. In the insular part of his life, free from external role violence imposed by society, the hero's spiritual 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 genre of "robinsonade" in comparison with Defoe's "Robinsonade" and coming to the conclusion that any other "robinsonade" aimed 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, in spite of everything, a person did not change himself, remained himself" . However, this interpretation is not entirely convincing. Rather, it is all the same about the return, the inevitable return of the former, imposed by society, and not about static. As rightly noted by A. Elistratova: "Defoe's heroes belong entirely to bourgeois society. And no matter how they sin against property and the law, wherever fate throws them, in the end, the logic of the plot leads each of these homeless vagrants to a kind of "reintegration", to a return to the bosom of bourgeois society in as its fully respectable citizens" . The apparent static character of Robinson has its source in the motif of reincarnation. II.8. Religious aspect The psychology of Robinson's image in its development is revealed most obviously in his relationship with God. Analyzing his life before and on the island, trying to find allegorical higher parallels and some metaphysical meaning to it, Robinson writes: "Alas! My soul did not know God: the good instructions of my father were erased from my memory over 8 years of continuous wanderings on the seas and constant communication with the same wicked people like myself, who were indifferent to faith to the last degree. I don’t remember that for all this for a while my thought at least once soared to God ... I was in a kind of moral stupor: the desire for good and the consciousness of evil were equally alien to me ... I had not the slightest idea either about the fear of God in danger, or about the feeling of gratitude to the Creator to get rid of her..." ."I did not feel either God or God's judgment on myself; I saw just as little a punishing right hand in the disasters that befell me, as if I were the happiest person in the world" . However, making such an atheistic confession, Robinson immediately retreats, admitting that only now, having fallen ill, did he feel the awakening of conscience and "I realized that by my sinful behavior I had incurred God's wrath and that the unparalleled blows of fate were only a just retribution for me" . Words about the Lord's punishment, Providence, God's mercy haunt Robinson and are quite often found in the text, although in practice he is guided by worldly meaning. Thoughts about God usually visit him in misfortunes. As A. Elistratova writes: “In theory, Defoe’s hero does not break with his puritanical 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 turning to God. But in practice, he is still guided common sense and has little reason to regret it" . Robinson himself admits this. Thoughts about Providence, a miracle, leading him into initial ecstasy, until the mind finds a reasonable explanation for what happened, are another proof of such qualities of the hero, unrestrained on a deserted island, as spontaneity, openness, impressionability. And, on the contrary, the intervention of the mind, rationalistically 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 whole narrative is built on the clash of these two functions, on a hidden dialogue between faith and rationalistic unbelief, childlike ingenuous enthusiasm and prudence. Two points of view, merged in one hero, endlessly argue among themselves. Places related to the first ("God's") or second (common) moments also differ in stylistic design. The former are dominated by rhetorical questions, exclamatory sentences, high pathos, complex subordination of phrases, an abundance of church words, quotations from the Bible, sentimental epithets; secondly, laconic, simple, understated speech in figurative rows. An example is Robinson's description of his feelings about finding barleycorns: “It is impossible to convey how confused this discovery plunged me! Until then, I had never been guided by religious thoughts ... But when I saw this barley growing ... in an unusual climate, and most importantly, it is not known 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, desolate island. This thought touched me a little and caused tears; I was happy knowing that such a miracle was performed for my sake " . When Robinson remembered the shaken-out bag, "the miracle has disappeared, and along with the discovery that everything happened in the most natural way, I must confess that my ardent gratitude to Providence has also cooled down significantly" . It is interesting how Robinson in this place beats the rationalistic discovery made in a providential way. "And between so that What happened to me was almost as unforeseen as a miracle, and, in any case, deserved no less gratitude. In fact: was it not the finger of Providence that was visible in the fact that out of many thousands of barley grains spoiled by rats, 10 or 12 grains survived and, therefore, it was like falling from the sky to me? And I should have shaken out the bag on the lawn, where the shadow of the rock fell and where the seeds could immediately sprout! After all, if I threw them a little farther away, they would be burned by the sun" . Elsewhere Robinson, after going to the pantry for tobacco, writes: "Undoubtedly, Providence guided my actions, for, having opened the chest, I found in it a 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, Robinson's allegorical understanding of the incidents and vicissitudes that fell to his lot begins, which can be called a "practical interpretation of the Bible", this interpretation is completed by Friday's "innocent" questions, throwing Robinson back to the starting position - the movement of the hero and in this case turns out to be imaginary, this movement in a circle, having the appearance of development and resulting static. Robinson's alternating hope in God, which is replaced by disappointment, is also a movement in a circle. These transitions cancel each other out without leading to any significant figure. "Thus, fear drove out of 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 right there: “Then I thought that God is not only just, but also all-good: he severely punished me, but he can also release me from punishment; if he does not do this, then my duty is to submit to his will, and on the other hand, to hope and to pray to him, and also to look tirelessly to see if he sends me a sign expressing his will" . But he does not stop there, but continues to take action 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 coupling with event specifics create an organic unity of the text, without breaking the series of events, but only enriching it with psychological and philosophical components and thereby expanding it. meaning. Each analyzed event seems to swell, gaining all sorts of, sometimes ambiguous meanings and meanings, creating stereoscopic vision through repetitions and returns. It is characteristic that Robinson mentions the devil much less often than God, and this is useless: if God himself acts in a punitive function, the devil is superfluous. 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 the 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 was the reason for the writer's reproaches for attacks on religion and, apparently, this was the reason for 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 has been questioned by some critics of the first volume" .II.9. Stylistic and lexical space Yu.Kagarlitsky wrote: "Defoe's novels grew out of his activities as a journalist. All of them are devoid of literary embellishments, 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, easily. The stylization of folk speech is akin to the principle of likelihood applied by him. In fact, it is not at all folk and not so simple in design, but it has a complete semblance of folk speech. This effect is achieved by using a variety of techniques: 1) frequent repetitions and triple refrains, ascending to a fairy tale style of narration: for example, fate warns Robinson three times before being thrown onto the island (in the beginning - a storm on the ship on which he sails away from home; then - being captured, escaping on a schooner with the Xuri boy and their brief robinsonade; and, finally, sailing from Australia in order to acquire live goods for the slave trade, shipwrecked and ended up on a desert island); the same three times - when meeting with Friday (at first - a trace, then - the remains of a cannibal feast of savages, and, finally, the savages themselves, pursuing Friday); finally, three dreams; 2) a list of simple actions 3) a detailed description of work activity and objects 4) the absence of complicated constructions, lush turns, rhetorical figures 5) the absence of gallant, ambiguous and conditionally abstract turns characteristic of business speech and accepted etiquette, which will subsequently be saturated with Defoe's last novel "Roxanne" (to bow, pay a visit, be honored, deign to take, etc.]. In "Robinzo Crusoe" words are used in their direct sense, and the language exactly corresponds to the described action: "Afraid of losing at least a second of precious time, I took off, instantly put 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 with a return to the world. 7) the introduction of an ordinary person as the main character, who has a simple, understandable philosophy, practical acumen and worldly meaning 8) an enumeration of folk signs: "I noticed that the rainy season quite correctly alternated with the rainless period, and thus I could prepare in advance for rains and droughts" . Robinson draws up a folk weather calendar based on observations. 9) Robinson's direct response to various ups and downs of weather and circumstances: when he sees a footprint or savages, he experiences fear for a long time; having landed on an empty island, indulges in despair; rejoices at the first harvest, at things done; upset by failure. 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 the events and the semantic coherence of the narrative. Dragging into the narrative is carried out by the methods of whirling, spiraling repetitions, increasing the drama: a trace - a cannibal feast - the arrival of savages - Friday. Or, about the motif of the return being played: building a boat, finding a wrecked ship, finding out the surrounding places at Friday, pirates, returning. Fate does not immediately claim its rights to Robinson, but as if placing warning marks on him. For example, Robinson's arrival on the island is bordered by a whole series of warning, disturbing and symbolic incidents (signs): escape from home, storm, capture, flight, life in distant Australia, shipwreck. All these vicissitudes are, in fact, only a continuation of Robinson's initial escape, his growing distance from home. The "prodigal son" is trying to outwit fate, 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 genres that existed before that: 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 autobiographical elements predominate in the pre-string part. Using various compositional techniques, including: memoirs, a diary, inventories and registers, prayers, dreams that play the role of a story within a story, adventurousness, dialogism, retrospective elements, repetitions, dynamic descriptions, the use of various ups and downs as structure-forming components of the plot, etc. .d. -Defoe created a talented imitation of a plausible biography written by an eyewitness. Nevertheless, the novel is far from this kind of biography, possessing the well-known "aesthetic intentionality" of the text, both in style and in 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 symbols. The reason for the popularity and entertaining nature 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 inner richness of the text, which researchers often pass by, accusing Defoe of the dryness and primitiveness of the language, as well as exceptional, but natural and not deliberate drama, conflict. The novel owes its popularity to the charm of the main image - Robinson, to that positive predestination of him, which pays for any of his actions. The positive premise of Robinson 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 composition and stylistic features of narratives: fairy tales and chronicles, creating in this way, and in this way, the epic of labor. It is this substantive aspect, the ease of its seeming implementation that fascinates readers. The very image of the main character is not as unambiguous as it might seem at first reading, bribed by the simplicity of his presentation of the adventures that fell to his lot. If on the island Robinson acts as a creator, creator, worker, restless in search of harmony of a person who has 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 events in order to enrich himself, but, on the other, as a man of adventure, seeking adventure, fortune. The transformation of the hero on the island is of a fabulous nature, which is confirmed by his return to his original state when he returns to a civilized society. The spell disappears, and the hero remains as he was, striking other researchers who do not take into account this fabulousness, with his static character. In his subsequent novels, Defoe will strengthen the picaresque beginning of his characters and the manner of narration. As A. Elistratova writes: "Robinson Crusoe" opens the history of the enlightenment novel. The rich possibilities of the genre he found are gradually, with increasing swiftness, mastered by the writer in his later narrative works ... " . Defoe himself, apparently, did not realize what the significance of his literary discovery was. No wonder he released the second volume of "The Further Adventures of Robinson Crusoe" (1719), dedicated to the description of the colony created by Robinson on the island, was not such a success. Apparently, the secret was that the manner of narration chosen by Defoe had poetic charm only in the context of the experiment he had chosen, and lost it outside this context. Rousseau called "Robinson Crusoe" a "magic book", "the most successful treatise on natural education", and M. Gorky, naming Robinson among the images that he considers "completely finished types", wrote: "This is already a monumental work for me, as probably for everyone, more or less feeling perfect harmony ..." ."Artistic originality of the novel, - emphasized Z. Grazhdanskaya, - in its exceptional plausibility, seeming documentary, and in the amazing simplicity and clarity of the language".
Literature
1. Atarova K.N. Secrets of Simplicity // Daniel Defoe. Robinson Crusoe. - M., 1990 2. Bakhtin M.M. Questions of literature and aesthetics. - M., 1975 3. Ginzburg L.Ya. On the psychology of prose. - L., 1971 4. A. Elistratova. English novel of the Enlightenment. - M., 1966 5. Sokolyansky M.G. Western European novel of the Enlightenment: Problems of typology. - Kyiv; Odessa, 1983 6. Starr J.A. Defoe and Spiritual Autobiography. - Princenton, 1965 7. Karl Frederick R. A Reader's Guide to the Development of the English Novel in the 18th Century. - L., 1975 8. Meletinsky E.M. Poetics of myth. - M., 1976 9. Zimmerman Everett. Defoe and the Novel. - Berkeley; Los Angeles; London, 1975 10. Dennis Nigel. Swift and Defoe. - In.: Swift J. Gulliver's Travels. An Authoritative Text. - N.Y., 1970 11. Braudy Leo. Daniel Defoe and the Anxieties of Autobiography. - Genre, 1973, vol.6, No 1 12. Urnov D. Defoe. - M., 1990 13. Shklovsky V. Artistic prose. - M., 1960 14. Shklovsky V. Theory of prose. - M., 1960 15. Watt I. The RR of the Novel. - L., 19 16. West A. Mountain in the sunlight // "In defense of the world", 1960, No. 9, p.50- 17. Dickens Ch. Sobr. op. in 30 vols., v.30. - M., 1963 18. Hunter J.P. The Reluctant Pilgrom. - Baltimore, 1966 19. Scott Walter. The Miscellaneous Prose Works. - L., 1834, vol.4 20. History of foreign literature of the XVIII century / Ed. Plavskina Z.I. - M., 1991 21. History of world literature, v.5 / Ed. Turaeva S.V. - M., 1988 22. Brief literary encyclopedia / Ed. Surkova A.A. - M., v.2, 1964 23. Urnov D.M. Modern Writer//Daniel Defoe. Robinson Crusoe. The story of Colonel Jack. - M., 1988 24. Mirimsky I. Defoe Realism / / Realism of the XVIII century. in the West. Sat. Art., M., 1936 25. History of English Literature, v.1, v.2. - M. -L., 1945 26. Gorky M. Collected works. in 30 vols., v.29. - M., 19 27. Nersesova M.A. Daniel Defoe. - M., 1960 28. Anikst A.A. Daniel Defoe: Essay on life and work. - M., 1957 29. Daniel Defoe. Robinson Crusoe (translated by M. Shishmareva). - M., 1992 30. Uspensky B.A. Poetics of composition. - M., 1970 31. Literary encyclopedic dictionary / Ed. V. Kozhevnikov, P. Nikolaev. - M., 1987 32. Lessing G.E. Laocoön, or On the Limits of Painting and Poetry. M., 1957 33. Literary encyclopedia, ed. V. Lunacharsky. 12 vols. - M., 1929, v.3, p.226-
When an almost sixty-year-old well-known journalist and publicist Daniel Defoe(1660-1731) wrote in 1719 "Robinson Crusoe", he least of all thought that an innovative work was coming out from under his pen, the first novel in the literature of the Enlightenment. He did not expect that it was this text that descendants would prefer out of 375 works already published under his signature and earned him the honorary name of "the father of English journalism." Literary historians believe that in fact he wrote much more, only to identify his works, published under different pseudonyms, in a wide stream of the English press at the turn of the 17th-18th centuries is not easy. Behind Defoe at the time of the creation of the novel was a huge life experience: he comes from a lower class, in his youth he was a participant in the rebellion of the Duke of Monmouth, escaped execution, traveled around Europe and spoke six languages, knew the smiles and betrayals of Fortune. His values - wealth, prosperity, personal responsibility of a person before God and himself - are typically puritanical, bourgeois values, and Defoe's biography is a colorful, eventful biography of the bourgeois of the era of primitive accumulation. He started various enterprises all his life and said about himself: "Thirteen times I became rich and again poor." Political and literary activity led him to a civil execution at pillory. For one of the magazines, Defoe wrote a fake autobiography of Robinson Crusoe, the authenticity of which his readers had to believe (and believed).
The plot of the novel is based on a true story told by Captain Woods Rogers in an account of his journey, which Defoe could have read in the press. Captain Rogers told how his sailors removed a man from a desert island in the Atlantic Ocean who had spent four years and five months alone there. Alexander Selkirk, a violent mate on an English ship, quarreled with his captain and was put on the island with a gun, gunpowder, a supply of tobacco, and a Bible. When Rogers' sailors found him, he was dressed in goatskins and "looked wilder than the horned original owners of this attire." He forgot how to speak, on the way to England he hid crackers in the secluded places of the ship, and it took time for him to return to a civilized state.
Unlike the real prototype, Defoe's Crusoe has not lost his humanity in twenty-eight years on a desert island. The story of the affairs and days of Robinson is permeated with enthusiasm and optimism, the book exudes an unfading charm. Today, "Robinson Crusoe" is read primarily by children and adolescents as a fascinating adventure story, but the novel poses problems that should be discussed in terms of the history of culture and literature.
The protagonist of the novel, Robinson, an exemplary English businessman who embodies the ideology of the emerging bourgeoisie, grows in the novel to a monumental depiction of the creative, creative abilities of a person, and at the same time his portrait is historically completely concrete.
Robinson, the son of a merchant from York, dreams of the sea from a young age. On the one hand, there is nothing exceptional in this - England at that time was the leading maritime power in the world, English sailors plied all the oceans, the profession of a sailor was the most common, considered honorable. On the other hand, Robinson is drawn to the sea not by the romance of sea voyages; he does not even try to enter the ship as a sailor and study maritime affairs, but in all his voyages he prefers the role of a passenger paying the fare; Robinson trusts the traveller's unfaithful fate for a more prosaic reason: he is drawn to "the rash venture to make a fortune by scouring the world." Indeed, outside of Europe it was easy to get rich quick with some luck, and Robinson runs away from home, defying his father's admonitions. Father Robinson's speech at the beginning of the novel is a hymn to bourgeois virtues, to the "average condition":
Those who leave their homeland in pursuit of adventure, he said, are either those who have nothing to lose, or the ambitious who yearn for the highest position; embarking on enterprises that go beyond the framework of everyday life, they strive to improve their affairs and cover their name with glory; but such things are either beyond my powers, or humiliating for me; my place is the middle, that is, what can be called the highest stage of a modest existence, which, as he was convinced by many years of experience, is for us the best in the world, the most suitable for human happiness, freed from need and deprivation, physical labor and suffering falling to the lot of the lower classes, and from luxury, ambition, arrogance and envy of the upper classes. How pleasant such a life is, he said, I can already judge by the fact that all those placed in other conditions envy him: even kings often complain about the bitter fate of people born for great deeds, and regret that fate did not put them between two extremes - insignificance and greatness, and the sage speaks in favor of the middle as a measure of true happiness, when he prays heaven not to send him either poverty or wealth.
However, young Robinson does not heed the voice of prudence, goes to sea, and his first merchant enterprise - an expedition to Guinea - brings him three hundred pounds (it is characteristic how accurately he always names sums of money in the narrative); this luck turns his head and completes his "death". Therefore, everything that happens to him in the future, Robinson considers as a punishment for filial disobedience, for not obeying "sober arguments of the best part of his being" - reason. And on an uninhabited island at the mouth of the Orinoco, he falls, succumbing to the temptation to "get rich sooner than circumstances allowed": he undertakes to deliver slaves from Africa for Brazilian plantations, which will increase his fortune to three or four thousand pounds sterling. During this voyage, he ends up on a desert island after a shipwreck.
And then the central part of the novel begins, an unprecedented experiment begins, which the author puts on his hero. Robinson is a small atom of the bourgeois world, who does not think of himself outside this world and regards everything in the world as a means to achieve his goal, having already traveled three continents, purposefully following his path to wealth.
He is artificially torn out of society, placed in solitude, placed face to face with nature. In the "laboratory" conditions of a tropical uninhabited island, an experiment is being carried out on a person: how will a person torn from civilization behave, individually faced with the eternal, core problem of mankind - how to survive, how to interact with nature? And Crusoe repeats the path of humanity as a whole: he begins to work, so that work becomes the main theme of the novel.
The Enlightenment novel, for the first time in the history of literature, pays tribute to labor. In the history of civilization, work was usually perceived as a punishment, as an evil: according to the Bible, God placed the need to work on all the descendants of Adam and Eve as a punishment for original sin. In Defoe, labor appears not only as the real main content of human life, not only as a means of obtaining the necessary. Even Puritan moralists were the first to talk about labor as a worthy, great occupation, and labor is not poeticized in Defoe's novel. When Robinson finds himself on a desert island, he does not really know how to do anything, and only little by little, through failure, he learns to grow bread, weave baskets, make his own tools, clay pots, clothes, an umbrella, a boat, breed goats, etc. It has long been noted that it is more difficult for Robinson to give those crafts with which his creator was well acquainted: for example, Defoe at one time owned a tile factory, so Robinson's attempts to mold and burn pots are described in detail. Robinson himself is aware of the saving role of labor:
"Even when I realized all the horror of my situation - all the hopelessness of my loneliness, my complete isolation from people, without a glimmer of hope for deliverance - even then, as soon as the opportunity opened up to stay alive, not to die of hunger, all my grief was like a hand took off: I calmed down, began to work to satisfy my urgent needs and to save my life, and if I lamented about my fate, then least of all I saw heavenly punishment in it ... "
However, in the conditions of the experiment started by the author on the survival of a person, there is one concession: Robinson quickly "opens up the opportunity not to starve to death, to stay alive." It cannot be said that all his ties with civilization have been completely cut. First, civilization operates in his habits, in his memory, in his life position; secondly, from the plot point of view, civilization sends its fruits to Robinson surprisingly timely. He would hardly have survived if he had not immediately evacuated all food supplies and tools from the wrecked ship (guns and gunpowder, knives, axes, nails and a screwdriver, sharpener, crowbar), ropes and sails, bed and dress. However, at the same time, civilization is represented on the Isle of Despair only by its technical achievements, and social contradictions do not exist for an isolated, lonely hero. It is from loneliness that he suffers the most, and the appearance of the savage Friday on the island becomes a relief.
As already mentioned, Robinson embodies the psychology of the bourgeois: it seems quite natural for him to appropriate everything and everyone for which there is no legal property right for any of the Europeans. Robinson's favorite pronoun is "my", and he immediately makes Friday his servant: "I taught him to pronounce the word" master "and made it clear that this is my name." Robinson does not question whether he has the right to appropriate Friday for himself, to sell his friend in captivity, the boy Xuri, to trade in slaves. Other people are of interest to Robinson insofar as they are partners or the subject of his transactions, trading operations, and Robinson does not expect a different attitude towards himself. In Defoe's novel, the world of people, depicted in the story of Robinson's life before his ill-fated expedition, is in a state of Brownian motion, and the stronger its contrast with the bright, transparent world of an uninhabited island.
So, Robinson Crusoe is a new image in the gallery of great individualists, and he differs from his Renaissance predecessors by the absence of extremes, by the fact that he completely belongs to the real world. No one will call Crusoe a dreamer, like Don Quixote, or an intellectual, a philosopher, like Hamlet. His sphere is practical action, management, trade, that is, he is engaged in the same thing as the majority of mankind. His egoism is natural and natural, he is aimed at a typically bourgeois ideal - wealth. The secret of the charm of this image is in the very exceptional conditions of the educational experiment that the author made on him. For Defoe and his first readers, the interest of the novel lay precisely in the exclusivity of the hero's situation, and a detailed description of his everyday life, his daily work was justified only by a thousand miles distance from England.
Robinson's psychology is fully consistent with the simple and artless style of the novel. Its main property is credibility, complete persuasiveness. The illusion of the authenticity of what is happening is achieved by Defoe using so many small details that no one seems to have undertaken to invent. Taking an initially improbable situation, Defoe then develops it, strictly observing the limits of likelihood.
The success of "Robinson Crusoe" with the reader was such that four months later Defoe wrote "The Further Adventures of Robinson Crusoe", and in 1720 he published the third part of the novel - "Serious reflections during a life and amazing adventures of Robinson Crusoe". Over the course of the 18th century, about fifty more "new Robinsons" saw the light in various literatures, in which Defoe's idea gradually turned out to be completely inverted. In Defoe, the hero strives not to become savage, not to be simple himself, to tear the savage out of "simplicity" and nature - his followers have new Robinsons, who, under the influence of the ideas of the late Enlightenment, live one life with nature and are happy to break with an emphatically vicious society. This meaning was put into Defoe's novel by the first passionate exposer of the vices of civilization, Jean Jacques Rousseau; for Defoe, separation from society was a return to the past of mankind - for Rousseau it becomes an abstract example of the formation of man, the ideal of the future.
Romance and hero
Robinsons have been around since the dawn of mankind. But in order for them to get their name, in 1660 a boy, Daniel Fo, had to be born in London. And in 1719, having experienced many ups and downs, he had to sit down at his desk and write on a blank sheet of paper: "The Life and Extraordinary Amazing Adventures of Robinson Crusoe..."
Daniel De Foe (Defoe) himself was a very original person. A politician, a journalist, a failed businessman, but, in essence, an adventurer, forever entangled in debts, at the age of sixty he miraculously preserved and transferred his overflowing vital energy to the literary offspring.
So, once on a desert island, Robinson Crusoe creates a real utopia, that is, a world in which money turns out to be "unnecessary trash." Robinson conquers nature precisely because for an Englishman life outside of civilization is impossible. “For hours - whole days, one might say - I imagined in the most vivid colors what I would do if I could not save anything from the ship. My only food would be fish and turtles. And since it took a long time before I found the turtles, I would just starve to death. And if he had not died, he would have lived like a savage.” Robinson is trying with all his might to wrest himself from the so-called "simplicity" and "nature." However, this story has an "undercurrent" - it was discovered by Jean-Jacques Rousseau - the hero is terribly afraid of breaking away from civilization, becoming a savage, but at the same time, he is getting closer and closer to nature.
Robinson, after all, grew up in a wealthy family and had no idea how they do simple work: sewing clothes, carpentry, burning pots, sowing and baking bread, milking goats, churning butter and making cheese. Therefore, he is constantly forced to "reinvent the wheel." A rather careless young man turns into a true creator. Moreover, he not only creates the material world around him, but also acquires his own inner world. In the original novel, Robinson goes from disbelief to faith, and in the Russian retelling of Korney Chukovsky, he becomes a wise man, though far from being as religious as in Defoe's text. One way or another, in the hands of both an adult and a young reader, not just “reading matter”, but "the most successful treatise on natural education"(Jean-Jacques Rousseau). If we speak modern language, before us is a book about self-education, about how a person “makes himself”.
And, as Dmitry Urnov, a researcher of Daniel Defoe's work, noted, we are dealing with an "anti-adventure". There is no love affair in the book, no chases, no battles, no treasure hunts, even almost no dialogues (except for conversations with a parrot and Friday). What kind of magic must a writer have in order to force the reader to keep an eye on how the hero "expelled from Paradise" independently learns various crafts and agriculture, for a whole year he drives stakes into the ground to protect himself from enemies, and then for two years he makes a boat. He does the most mundane things that, reading another book, we would not pay any attention. Literary critics have long called this the "phenomenon of simplicity." Indeed, the secret of the charm of the novel and its protagonist is difficult to explain.
Maybe the fact is that each of us in childhood, sometimes without knowing it, played Robinson. It doesn't matter what his name was: Robinson, Chingachgook, Leatherstocking, Hardhand, or even more intricate. The main thing is that somewhere in a secluded corner of the garden there should be a hut and a feeling of loneliness. That is, there would be a place where you can hide from adults, listen to the chirping of grasshoppers and the rustle of rain, look at the clouds running across the sky - in a word, be alone with nature and your own thoughts, not even understanding, but feeling that this is real happiness. Maybe here we should look for the "roots" of our Robinson?
By the way, not only boys were and are fond of Robinson. Tatyana Lugovskaya in the book "I Remember" writes about her doll named Robinson Crusoe. I wonder if the toy had a tiny fur umbrella?
How similar is Robinson Crusoe to Daniel Defoe? Some researchers try to draw parallels between the events in the life of the hero and the author. Robinson, for example, runs away from his home, and Defoe refuses to take the priesthood. A shipwreck means bankruptcy, a deserted island symbolizes England, and so on and so forth. This idea was prompted by literary critics Defoe himself, if, of course, his confession is to be believed. “There is not a single circumstance in an imaginary history that would not be a hint of real event and would not have responded, step by step, in the inimitable Robinson Crusoe.
But, most likely, we have before us not an allegorical, but a spiritual biography of Defoe, but a desert island - the very loneliness in which the writer found himself at the end of his life, because he took up his famous book at almost sixty years old.
The first version of "Robinson Crusoe" was found not so long ago - in the London Royal Library. In the rough drafts of the novel, Robinson spent eleven years alone - sowing barley and corn, raising goats, and once made a small canoe and went on a trip. It turned out, that all these years he lived on a peninsula connected by an isthmus to the coast of Guyana .
It is curious that after the publication of the novel, Daniel Defoe was seriously accused of plagiarism, that is, of using the brochure "The Vicissitudes of Fate, or The Amazing Adventures of Alexander Selkirk, written by his own hand." The problem was that this pamphlet was, in turn, reprinted (with the exception of a few lines) from the book of a certain Captain Rogers. Who should have sued!
Robinson Crusoe prototypes
Undoubtedly, Robinson had predecessors both in literature and in life. We can safely call the novel by Henry Neuville "The Isle of Pines, or the Fourth Island near the unknown Australian mainland, recently discovered by Heinrich Cornelius von Slotten" (1668). We can also talk about the history of the boatswain (or navigator) Alexander Selkirk. This absurd sailor quarreled with the captain and, of his own free will, was landed from the ship on an island located off the coast of Chile. Selkirk hoped that some ship would soon pick him up and come here to replenish water supplies. However, he miscalculated. He had to live on a desert island for four years and four months. There was no Friday and no meeting with the cannibals. In addition, it was not a pirate ship that saved the unfortunate, but the English ship "Duchess".
Returning to his homeland, Selkirk attracted general attention. Captain Rogers wrote about him, who himself removed the unfortunate person from the island in the Juan Fernandez archipelago. Then this story was told by another captain - Cook, and, after some time, by the essayist Richard Style in the magazine "The Englishman".
Has Selkirk read Robinson Crusoe? Unlikely.
The book cost five shillings, which was half the price of a thoroughbred horse. In addition, the legendary boatswain, who ended his maritime career as a captain, died two years after the publication of the famous novel. They say that almost all this time he was in swimming.
Alexander Selkirk's meeting with Daniel Defoe in a port tavern, as well as Selkirk's words about the author of "Robinson Crusoe": "Let him use it at the expense of a poor sailor" are just idle fiction. At least, Dmitry Urnov thinks so. Although the question: "Did Defoe see Selkirk?" - is still open.
Robinson Island
In essence, there are two heroes in Daniel Defoe's book. No, no, the second is not Friday at all, but the island on which Robinson Crusoe spent twenty-eight years of his life.
Many literary scholars believe that Robinson's Island could exist only in the rich imagination of the author, and it is pointless to look for this piece of land on maps. To some extent this is true, but...
Boatswain Selkirk, who quarreled with the captain, was decommissioned off the coast of Chile on the uninhabited island of Mas a Tierra (which means "closer to the coast" in Spanish). The island belongs to the Juan Fernandez archipelago, discovered in 1563 and named after the Spanish navigator. The area of the island is 144 square kilometers, the highest point is Mount Yunke (1000 meters above sea level). The average temperature of the coldest month is + 12 ° Celsius, the warmest - + 19 °. The land there is fertile, edible root crops, cereals, fruits grow, the offspring of those goats that Juan Fernandez left on the island live. But all this, including the description of flora and fauna, Daniel Defoe could not know.
In those days, when “not yet discovered places” appeared on the world maps in some places, it was not possible to find a detailed description of the island of Mas a Tierra. There was nothing to think about a real trip: even if there was some kind of adventurer-captain, the aging writer would need crazy money and remarkable health. In addition, Defoe suffered from seasickness since childhood.
What to do? Move Robinson. Send to a more or less familiar island. Where? AT Atlantic Ocean, at the mouth of the Orinoco River, to the ground, geographical coordinates which coincide with the island of Tobago. Of course, the writer himself was not there. But at hand, sometimes suitable books are very handy. For example, "The Discovery of Guiana" by Raleigh, "Travels around the World" and "Diary" by Dampier.
Now, however, the islands of Mas a Tierra and Tobago are contesting the honor of being Robinson's haven. Mas a Tierra was declared a National Park in 1935. And in the 1960s and 70s, the Chilean government renamed it Robinson Crusoe Island. The neighboring island of Mas a Fuera ("further from the coast") is named after Alexander Selkirk.
But Tobago is not giving up either. In any case, the Robinson Crusoe hotel and cave are sure to be shown to tourists in Tobago.
Robinsons of Robinson's Island
The island of Mas-a-Tierra was frankly lucky with the Robinsons.
The first of them, which we know about, was the same navigator Juan Fernandez, who lived here for several years. It was he who planted edible root crops, cereals and fruits, bred goats, which later became feral. By the way, their offspring are now hunted by local residents.
But a holy place is never empty. AT early XVII century on the island were Dutch sailors. Follow them for three years On Mas-a-Tierra, another Robinson lived - a black sailor who escaped from a merchant ship that sank nearby.
The next was an Indian from Central America, landed from the ship by English pirates. Then came the turn of nine sailors, who in 1687 were abandoned here by the captain for gambling at dice. These Robinsons were not at all upset, for lack of money they divided the island into parts and lost them to each other.
Fourteen years later, Mas-a-Tierra was again inhabited. Alexander Selkirk, already known to us, appeared on it. But he did not close achievement list» islands.
In 1719, there were deserters from an English frigate, and in 1720, the crew of a sunken English ship.
Now five hundred people live permanently on the island of Robinson Crusoe. As you might expect, many of them bear the names of Daniel, Robinson and Friday.
In winter, bad weather isolates the island from the world: ships and planes cannot enter here. And at other times of the year, tourists do not go in crowds here: getting to the island is too difficult and expensive.
Robinson Crusoe in person
Yes, Robinson Crusoe was a "jack of all trades". Among other things, he had to skillfully use such an instrument as a pen (and this is after twenty-eight years of living on an island where you could only talk with a parrot and a savage). After all, if you open the full text of the novel and read its title, then make sure that this immortal book allegedly belongs to Robinson: The life, extraordinary and amazing adventures of Robinson Crusoe, a sailor from York, who lived for 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 out by a shipwreck, during which the entire crew of the ship died, with recounting his unexpected release by pirates. Written by him."
Thanks to the book, we know exactly which shoulder Robinson carried the gun on, what his goatskin clothes, shoes, the notorious hat and umbrella looked like. So the portrait painters who inevitably appeared were faced with a task that was both simple and complex.
The canonical images of Robinson Crusoe can now be called the drawings of Jean Granville (1803-1847). 
He managed to show us not a “scarecrow” dressed in skins, but a person who is going through trials, but full of dignity. Jean Granville illustrated all the key episodes of the novel. Readers have become so accustomed to his drawings that it was already very difficult for them to imagine any other Robinson.
However, the Russian artist Nikolai Popov found an original way out. His illustrations - drawings on the margins of the diary - seem to have been made by Robinson himself. And the diary entries are full of mistakes: as if our hero was not strong in spelling!
But it's more of an adult game. And children, as you know, love elegant pictures with traced details.
This is what the artist Igor Ilyinsky took into account.
I wonder what portraits of the famous Robinson Crusoe will we see next?
The Further Adventures of Robinson Crusoe
How many readers know that the novel about the life of Robinson Crusoe on a desert island had two more unsuccessful sequels?
As usual, the readers themselves were to blame for their creation: they did not want to part with Robinson and demanded more and more new stories from Defoe.
Continuation one - "The Further Adventures of Robinson Crusoe...".
Here Defoe " became hurried", made Crusoe wander, even visit Russia, sent him on a round-the-world voyage, and “the novel thus stood in the row of many travel books, where even without Robinson it was crowded”(D. Urnov).
Second continuation - "Serious reflections during the life and amazing adventures of Robinson Crusoe, including his visions of the angelic world"- Essays on philosophical, social and religious topics. Few people can master such a book.
In Russian, the novel about Robinson Crusoe was first published in 1762-1764. It was published in St. Petersburg by the Academy of Sciences. It was translated from French (yes, that's right) by the famous translator Yakov Trusov. And only in 1842 the book was translated from the original by A. Korsakov.
Nowadays, most Russian readers, without even knowing it, read not a translation of the famous novel, but its free retelling. From full text Chukovsky's retelling differs, of course, in the number of pages: about half of them remained there. And Robinson himself has changed a lot. He diligently grows bread, breeds goats, builds a boat, tirelessly strengthens his possessions, and he has no time to think. The Bible and Divine Providence had nothing to do with it at all.
However, a summary of "Robinson" appeared in English as early as 1722. Copyright didn't exist back then. At first, the hero was forced to change his religion: from a Protestant, he turned into a Catholic. And then they went even further - they made the book thinner, that is, cheaper, so it sold out better. Simple short phrases are accessible to illiterate readers, of which there are many more than educated people. The publishers quickly realized all this and began to churn out “left Robinsons”. Of course, Defoe did not receive any fees and could not do anything about it. He was only trying to use his weapon of choice, the quill pen. In the preface to the second edition of the novel, Defoe wrote that he considers himself entitled to ask the publishers what difference exists between them and highway robbers. But, alas, words do not work on rogues, and talent and money rarely go hand in hand.
What does "robinson" mean?
The word "robinsonite" was coined by Jean-Jacques Rousseau and, by the way, he liked to repeat it. What exactly the author of "Emil" had in mind, where Defoe's novel is called a book for educating teenagers, there is no doubt. That's life "in the spirit of simplicity" closeness to nature, its beneficial effect on the individual. In a word, the concept of "robinsonite" clearly had a positive connotation here.
And in Russia, this clumsy word was at one time perceived with a minus sign. 
In Lermontov's "Hero of Our Time" we meet a lover of "robinson": a secular dandy, a player, but - trimmed "under the man" and "with a cane, like Robinson Crusoe". "Robinsonit" - "to forgive" externally or internally - was a fashionable style of behavior among the Russian nobility.
The first to rehabilitate Defoe's novel was, perhaps, Leo Tolstoy. Some literary scholars believe that Tolstoyism itself was largely subtracted from Robinson Crusoe. Lev Nikolaevich re-read this book more than once. On behalf of Tolstoy, one of the teachers of his school made an abridged summary of the novel. And Lev Nikolayevich himself and his favorite heroes constantly robinsonized: they plowed, mowed and generally loved "do a simple job".
(Based on Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe)
"Robinson Crusoe" is a book known throughout the world. It very quickly became popular with readers of all countries, was translated into almost all languages of the world. Many years have passed since Daniel Defoe wrote this work, but even now it is read with great interest and excites the imagination of readers. Thousands of people learn about the story of Robinson Crusoe for the first time, millions of readers re-read this book over and over again, and everyone finds something of their own in it, everyone sympathizes with the hero. Children play Robinson Crusoe, his name is used in Everyday life, no longer referring to the work itself. The story of Robinson Crusoe has ceased to be the story of a specific individual, it has become a symbol.
Robinson Crusoe was probably an ordinary person, with his joys and sorrows. He may not have had any special talents. This is what makes him so close to us, his actions are clear to everyone, and his thoughts and life principles cause sympathy and a good attitude towards the hero. Moreover, Robinson is in a difficult position, the future scares him. Isolation from civilization seems to him worse than death. He is overcome with despair. This is how the author portrays Robinson in the first days of his life on a deserted island.
However, over time, Robinson is forced to think about how to survive in the new conditions, and despair is replaced by hope. Only during the illness does the sadness return again, intensified by the fact that he feels very lonely.
When Robinson got to the island, he had only what was on it. The tools that were salvaged from the ship helped to survive, and hard work made it possible. Robinson builds a house for himself, grows bread from the grains he finds. The goats that lived on the island become his livestock and provide him with milk and cheese. It took several years of hard work to grow plenty of bread from a few grains. For Robinson, these grains meant not only the opportunity to eat bread. It was his victory over evil fate.
Improving his living conditions, Robinson decides to build a boat.
There are a lot of examples in the work of what a person can do with an unshakable will and determination. Not a single test could break the character of Robinson. He defied circumstances and conquered them.
The indestructible character of Robinson embodies the best features of all mankind. A person should not be afraid of difficulties. It is this thought that is the conclusion of the work "Robinson Crusoe". And that is why the story of an ordinary sailor, who, thanks to persistent work and indestructible character, managed to survive and rise above adverse circumstances, will excite the readers of this wonderful book for a long time to come. Since the example of Robinson is appropriate not only on a deserted island, but also in everyday life.
The characterization of Robinson Crusoe tells us that the hero was a courageous and strong man. Despite all the trials, he was able to maintain his human dignity and will. We will talk about a famous character in this article.
Why did the author choose this plot?
First of all, it is worth noting that Robinson had his own prototypes. In those centuries, England actively led the colonial conquest of new lands. Many ships left their native harbors for foreign countries, some of them got into shipwrecks in the stormy waters of the oceans. It so happened that some of the sailors survived and found themselves in perfect isolation on uninhabited islands scattered in the seas.
Thus, the cases described in the novel were not uncommon. However, the author used this plot to tell his readers a very instructive story, in which he devoted a lot of space to such a topic as the characterization of Robinson Crusoe, his personality and life destiny. What is this story? Let's try to briefly answer this question.
Protestant ethics and Defoe's novel
According to literary critics, Defoe's novel is thoroughly permeated with motives associated with Protestant ethics. According to this religious teaching, a person on earth must go through many trials in order to earn an entrance to the Kingdom of Heaven with his own labor. However, he should not grumble at God. After all, what the Almighty does is beneficial to him. Let's look at the plot of the novel. At the beginning of the story, we see a young man, very extravagant, stubborn. Against the wishes of his parents, he becomes a sailor and goes on a journey.
Moreover, God, as it were, warns him at first: the characterization of Robinson Crusoe begins with the fact that the author describes his first shipwreck and miraculous salvation. But the young man did not heed what fate teaches him. He sets sail again. The man again gets into a wreck and one of the whole team is saved. The hero gets to where he is forced to spend more than 28 years of his life.
Hero Transformation
A brief description of Robinson Crusoe will allow us to see the development of the personality of the protagonist in his dynamics. First, we have before us a very carefree and wayward young man. However, getting into trouble life situation, he did not give up, but began to do everything in order to survive. The author scrupulously describes the daily work of his hero: Robinson saves things from the ship, which help him survive, he takes animals with him, builds a home for himself. In addition, a man hunts wild goats, begins to tame them, then makes himself butter and cheese from the milk received. Robinson observes the nature around him, begins to keep a kind of diary of the change in the rainy season and the seasons of relative heat. The hero accidentally sows a few centimeters of wheat, then fights for the harvest, etc.
The characterization of Robinson Crusoe will be incomplete if we do not pay attention to one more feature. The most important thing in the novel is not just the work of the character, but his inner spiritual transformation. Far from people, the hero begins to think about why fate has thrown him onto a desert island. He reads the Bible, thinks about Divine Providence, resigns himself to his fate. And he does not grumble at the fact that he was left in perfect loneliness. As a result, the hero finds peace of mind. He learns to rely on his own strength and trust in the mercy of the Almighty.
Characteristics of Robinson Crusoe: what kind of person is he before and after the shipwreck
As a result, after 28 years, the character is completely transformed. He changes internally, acquires life experience. Robinson believes that everything that happened to him is just. Now the hero himself can act as a teacher. He begins to befriend a local aborigine whom he calls Friday. And he transfers to him all the knowledge that he owns. And only after all this, Europeans appear in the life of the former sailor, who accidentally stumbled upon the island. They take him to his distant and beloved Motherland.
The novel itself is built in confessional form. The author in the first person tells readers about what the character has experienced for long years loneliness and work. I experienced a lot for my Robinson Crusoe. The characterization of the hero, given by us in the article, fully confirms the fact that he returned home as a completely different person.