Preface

of Michel BARIDON (extracted)

Robinson Crusoé is a book like there is little of it. It is traditional, translated in almost all the languages including the copte and the eskimo, and very traditional that it is, it is read by pleasure. The children very quickly discover it in shortened version and the adults, undoubtedly because of the memory that they kept some, associate it with the joys of the full air. Paris has its«Robinson», formerly go rowers in the valley of Chevreuse. In a style bucolique, the academics glosent on this history of man alone and make him a place among the philosopher's stones. But Robinson Crusoé is not let insert in the past. One century and half after its first publication, Offenbach in drew an opera and Marx the substantive robinsonnade, passed for a long time in the vocabulary of the arts persons and the economists. And here that of our time the African South Coetzee makes a reading third party-mondiste of it, and that Michel Tournier promotes with the row of principal character Friday, the brilliance second which deserved better. Really, it is not easy to find success more total and more alive reputation.

However, one finds in this book neither great passions, neither crimes, neither tears, nor bursts of laughter. We are here very far from Tolstoï, Balzac or Dickens. Defoe tells us the history of a modest, needy, only by need , virtuous man by inclination, readily preacher, and who would have all the chances to be tedious if it had not had adventures, quite curious adventures. At least, it is what says the bond: Life and Adventures strange and surprising of Robinson Crusoé, native sailor of York, which lived twenty-eight years all alone on a deserted island of the coast of America close to the mouth of the Orénoque river, after being thrown to the coast during a shipwreck of which he was the only survivor and what occurred to him when he was mysteriously delivered by hackers. Low, barring the page between two horizontal features, one can read the Écrit mention by itself.

Attention should be paid for this reason - program for he explains many things. It announces with its of horn a true story, that of a sailor who tells all : its shipwreck, its life on a deserted island, and which drew it. This simple man seems not to be able to lie since he says where he was born, where it arrived, for how long, and since its adventure surprises it itself. All is inevitably true. However nothing is veracious. Robinson Crusoé never existed. The true author it is Defoe, born in London. He does not have anything the wolf of sea and all the man of letters. Its hero leaves for the tropics and remains alone in front of the ocean during twenty-eight years. He starts from a fact various and remains alone in front of its encrier but just time to throw on paper a history which he wants to sell. This bond is thus an advertising tape which seeks to attract the curiosity of the passer by to force its pocket. Benefitting from this initial opening, Defoe will make of the customer a reader. It earlier did not take its money, than it parasitizes its imagination.

For that purpose, it uses an episode of lived collar

lectif a history about which one had spoken in the press, and it makes of it the adventure of each one by a small turn of its way: it manufactures a mask of sailor, it gives him his voting right, which it disguises, and of input of play, it tells on line the history of a shipwrecked man who reinvented civilization with him only. Strange and surprising ventures, in truth. One could even shout with the galéjade for little that one has one ounce of critical direction. But critical direction or not, the reader is taken. It listens to this voting right which triumphs over all, which infiltrates in all the mediums and all the languages with the wire of the generations. This wonder, the critic must explain it, and the only way which it can borrow is that of success why this book knew as of its output of the presses of William Taylor«to the ensign of the Ship in Row Bucket elevator ». It is then to rise above the historical circumstances of its composition to follow its rise, its strange and surprising rise, towards the zenith where it joined traditional world inheritance. Robinson Crusoé is at the same time a deliver-witness and a deliver-myth.

A BOOK - WITNESS

Born from the meeting of a man and one time, of a creator and a public, Robinson Crusoé expresses the ideas, the aspirations and fears of the readers who discovered it. To understand the reasons of its success, it is necessary to reconstitute its ecology, to return life to the problems and the dreams of the anonymous crowd which recognized itself there. It is necessary to show at the same time how Defoe grew, lived, in this mass moving, collecting the rumour of ideas and words which went with it, and giving him form by the account of one man at the same time close to his similar and far from them. If it disguised its voting right, it is to adjust it with the listening of a public of which it had a presentiment of the reactions. Its own history explains why it arrived so well there.

Daniel Foe, for such is its true name, was born in a family from tradesmen from the City from London, into 1660. It seemed intended to also find him behind a counter or with becoming Pasteur, but when the political events go quickly, the family traditions do not weigh heavy for men of its kind. It comes in the world the year even where Charles II returns in his capital after a nine years exile. The puritan party is overcome and Foe are hardly delighted any . Their sympathies go to the presbytériens which constituted the moderate wing of the puritanism a long time. To be presbytérien, that meant that one was against the capacity of the established Church, the Church Anglican, which one reproached his ceremonies, its hierarchy close to the catholic Church and its compromising with the royal capacity considered as corrompu. That also meant that one scanned the text of the Writings and that one managed oneself under the behaviour of« elder»or«old»by forming small communities where one was built the ones the others (Friday will know something of it). That finally meant that one was resolutely hostile in Spain and France, championnes of a monolithic Catholicism and rivals of always on the Atlantic.

These religious problems had a direct political repercussion. To be caught some with the Church Anglican, it was to question all the structure of land the England old woman. That England, the trade managed to enter there only while buying fields to give itself respectability. Its force came besides, by sea especially, since the Reform, by affirming the independence of England with respect to Papacy and the Mediterranean world, had made of it the advanced citadel of the protesting block which had been formed around the Baltic and of the North Sea. London occupied a strategic place, with the outlet of Pas-de-Calais where all the German ships passed, Swedish or Dutch who left to seek fortune on the Atlantic. Perhaps Defoe gives birth to its hero in York, but its dreams with him, the Londoner, are those of a child who followed the to and from of the ships and heard stories of galions and of lost islands.

For the period of the Restoration (1660-1688) which was that of its youth, the merchant fleet develops and the capacity of the trade increases, creating new tensions between the king and the Parliament. These tensions, it saw them intensely. Very quickly, he knows the weight of a hostile capacity to his ideas. Not question for him of entering one of the two universities ; they are reserved to the Anglicans. He will thus attend - and he there will lose nothing - the Morton academy, where dissidents teach since such is the new name of the ex-puritans. Morton, which will become one of the founders of Harvard, centers teaching on navigation, book-keeping, the geography and sciences of nature. Defoe is well armed for the career with merchant whom it begins then. He Marie in 1684.

However, in 1685, it gives up a very traced way and is thrown in the armed struggle to prevent the arrival of the catholic Jacques II on the throne. It escapes the terrible repression which follows the defeat of Sedgemoor but there trembled for its life and will remain marked by the fear. Three years later, it has its revenge. Jacques II must flee in France and Guillaume d' Orange, Dutch and calvinist, make his input in London. Defoe forms part of its procession.

This«glorious revolution»operates great transformations. New king, Guillaume III, accepts the control of the Parliament. The crown gives up some of its monopolies, the colonial companies are democratized, the dissidents receive the freedom of the worship. With the lifting of the censure, the trade of the books becomes as flourishing as in Holland, and the press develops by being directly made the echo of the fight between the two parties which divide the political community: tories, isolationists in policy, related to conservatism Anglican, and whigs, in favour of the expansion overseas and favorable to the compromise with the dissidents.

Defoe exploits all the possibilities which are offered. It tries its chance in the businesses and, to defend the king against Louis XIV it fights about it makes journalism. It succeeds there well and one reads it in the mediums of the trade favorable to the whigs. That is worth to him to thread in the be of the capacity, but passing by the small gate, for it does not form part of the traditional elites. This small gate will be closed again on him in rather mysterious circumstances. Ruined by unhappy speculations in the maritime insurances, he is threatened of the prison for debts and condemned here to write, write without slackening and to put his feather at the service of people in place. Moreover, it loses its great man when Guillaume III dies of a fall of horse in 1702.

The Anne queen who succeeds to him is favorable to the tories. A crisis occurs when the latter are caught some to the dissidents again. Defoe launches a provocation: in a lampoon, How to finish some with the dissidents, it proposes the final solution, the general massacre. It hopes to create a shock in the opinion but it badly calculated its blow and is found with the pilori, punished like a robber, exposed to the cabbage cores and even to the stones of the first passer by. Fortunately, and it is a personal triumph, it comes out of there without evil, but is to enter in Newgate, the prison about which it speaks in Moll Flanders. Released, it is found in a semi-clandestinity, acceptor to serve Harley, a last ex-whig with the tories but of which it feels near because they have a puritan education in common. We find it in Glasgow, in secret agent which watches for the local reactions to the treaty of union with Scotland. It lives under a false name, listens to the conversations and mystifies people for better the épier. That will be useful to him in its novels where it handles with brilliance the indiscreet camera. While waiting, it tries to go back to flood after its financial shipwreck; it only fights, refunds part of its debts and launches a newspaper, The Review, which it orchestrates during nine years, learning how art to put under influence an important public.

Soon, it is again the fear. The queen, patient, do not have a heir and the choice of its successor makes assemble the tension. Defoe is given in prison but died Anne, it is again a prince protesting, German this time and come from Hanover, which is installed on the throne (1714) under the name of George Ier. Then begin the last period of the life of Defoe. Its political role is clearer, the political pressure from now on less significant. It does not have any more that its creditors for enemies and it holds them in respect by the feather.

It is indeed a new phenomenon in England which that of a man of letters who lives of what he sells. Until there, when it N did not ëavait average personnel, the writer sought a patron. He could also write for the theatre or enter the Church Anglican and live as an officialized intellectual. None of these ways was opened in Defoe : it was too independent, too hostile with the theatre by family tradition, and as for the Church Anglican... It thus will try its chance on the large market of the book and the newspaper which was created since the capacity liberalized the circulation of the ideas. One sees it tightening the topicality in lampoons like Considérations of the state present of Great Britain (1717) or Miserere Clerici or the Factions of the Church (1718), etc; it also writes on economic questions ( a gold mine open to the profit of the Dutchmen, 1718) or made compilation by writing a History of the wars of Charles XII (1715). Very of a blow, it adds to this very diverse production its first long work of fiction, Robinson Crusoé (1719), which marks a turning in its career.

It struck a great blow. Its book is sold quickly and well: four editions as of the first year, and soon of the translations in French, German, Dutch. But the author's copyright is not yet really protected and it is necessary to put up with courtées or pirated editions. Defoe protests but it does not have the choice. It thus continues to exploit the seams of the moment : politico-economic topicality, the mirage of the colonial horizon, treaties of practical morals: The Great Law of subordination or the Insolence of the servants (1724), Perfect Trading English (1725), the New Adviser of the family (1727), Projects for the English trade (1728). And here that again, it adds to this literature which always nourished it, a series of works of fiction which make of him the founder of the modern novel. Appear successively : Fortunes and Misfortunes of famous Moll Flanders according to its own memories and the History and the remarkable Life of the really honourable Collar. Jacque, known under the name of Collar. Jack (1722),the fortunate Mistress or History of the life animated Miss de Beleau, become countess of Wintelsheim, in Germany, known in addition under the name of Roxana lady, at the time of Charles II (1724). Defoe completes this brilliant series whereas it has soixante-quatre years, a great age for the time. It will live seven more years, always busy to still write, write, until A what death surprises it in a home of loan where it fled its creditors. Did it ever suspect that it would be one day famous thanks to these strange stories and surprising men and women of the commun run? No one does not know it. A thing appears certain : with the success of Robinson Crusoé, it felt that it held an appreciated formula of the public : it had written as well to advise the others as it felt able into growing old to also give them the dream until they waited.

In 1719, in England, this dream often had the colors of the hot seas. For a relatively small nation (five million and half of inhabitants against more than twenty in France), it was a great victory which the treaty of Utrecht imposed to Louis XIV. It gained the right there to make the trade of the slaves between Africa and South America, inserting a corner in the old colonial empires. Defoe of it was very conscious. Even if rivers took shape in the hastily built building of the Company of the South Seas, the idea of empire were in the air. One spoke about it in the coffee-houses and the clubs. One discussed it by reading the newspapers and more one felt shared between the fear of the unknown and the call of the adventure.

It is in this context that Defoe seems the right man for the job . He feels that the fiction needs a decoration and he knows that the public appreciates over all a beautiful moral conflict. The decoration, it holds it; the conflict, it lived it in its youth at the time where his/her father wanted to maintain it in the small trade or to make Pasteur of it. It dreamed, him, of another thing: large businesses, emergent industry and, later, of fortunes made on the seas. This conflict was badly lived in the mediums where it had grown. One was very critical there luxury of monarchy and rich person (see Roxana) but at the same time one hoped to reach the world of the ship-owners, these traders At sea that Gregory King locates very high in the social ladder. It is what Bayle saw very well when he says that Holland calvinist was torn between the religion and the trade and that the money always carried it because« the goods attract very with it ». The religion of the dissidents did not forbid to them to earn money, it allowed them even the loan interest, but it feared for the morals of those which went too quickly in work : they were likely to be let go to temptations that fortune gives birth to. Defoe said in The Review (June 11, 1713) that the trade was«a bitchy girl»who had made him lose the head. It is to tell how much could weigh on him the judgement of its elder bus in any community which discusses its securities morals openly, most adventurous are always made chapitrer.

All that, it remembered it of as much better than it arrived at the age where the memories of youth take a throbbing intensity. It was perhaps not stressed enough that Robinson Crusoé is generation of the father of Defoe: it leaves its family into 1651 and re-enters to England definitively in 1705. Moll Flanders, it, writes its confession into 1683 while Roxana known as to have lived« at the time of Charles II »(1660-1685). Moreover, the Newspaper of the year of the plague, written in 1722, is presented like a lived testimony of the great epidemic of 1665. In its old age, once more, Defoe thus carried out a double life : very attentive with the political topicality of which it nourished its lampoons, its treaties of practical morals and its lives of famous hackers, it returned to its youth to build the world of its fiction.

We thus do not astonish that the figure of the father appears with the threshold ofRobinson Crusoé. Defoe had to see it more than one once drawing up itself in front of him, dumb and pressing like the Tables of the Law, especially during its resounding bankruptcy, of its imprisonments or when it flattered the tastes of the public for the scandal or these stories of outlaw or women whom one says of loose living but which have it finally rather good. All that it is the attraction of the forbidden fruit , always powerful in a gifted puritan of a sharp and even violent imagination. Defoe cherishes it just enough to cause this turbid feeling which we test when we see someone else yielding to it without anything to risk ourselves. It is in that that he is the large ancestor of the modern fiction. He discovered that the novelist is the manufacturer of a plausible world where its reader follows it to become another, but for a time only. Giving, giving. Against money, it sells to the reader a few hours voyeurism sells by auction and softness to offer an adventure without risk by the misfortune of others.

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