El autor que escribió esos relatos y reflexiones delegó la responsabilidad de los mismos en el personaje protagónico, quien los narra y anota en primera persona hasta que llega el momento de citar los dichos del aborigen Friday. Búsquedas eruditas llevaron a la conjetura de que la inspiración y la motivación para redactar el primer Crusoe obedecieron a acicates diferentes. Era público el comentario acerca del naufragio de Alexander Selkirk, quien había pertenecido a la tripulación del filibustero William Dampier y, tras una rencilla con éste, fuera abandonado en una de las islas del archipiélago de Juan Fernández. Permaneció cuatro años y 4 meses a solas en dicha isla, hasta ser rescatado el 2 de febrero de 1709. Su historia fue escrita por Richard Steele y publicada en una revista o periódico en 1713. No es inverosímil que Defoe haya conocido a Selkirk como parroquiano de un pub de Bristol. Ahí tendríamos identificado al inspirador de la novela de aventuras que deleitó a niños y jóvenes de muchas generaciones.
La narrativa que estos sucesos reales engendran no siempre se agota en informes científicos. Igual que los antiguos viajes por mar, propician el vuelo de las fantasías literarias y sus multiplicadas versiones cinematográficas y teatrales, algunas bien trágicas. Huis clos, el experimento dramático de J.P. Sartre que tantas presentaciones escénicas logró, expone una robinsonada existencialista que lectores de hoy pueden encontrar en la web http://www.rojosobreblanco.org/descargas/A%20puerta%20cerrada.pdf . Más interesante aún desde el punto de vista psicosociológico, sin desmedro de la calidad literaria, es la novela Lord of the Flies de William Golding, amarga e incitante robinsonada con adolescentes.
Muchos resúmenes, distorsiones e imitaciones ha sufrido el original Robinson Crusoe. No todos ellos son deleznables ni merecedores de rechazo. Quiero proponer uno interesantísimo, si bien fragmentado por respeto al espacio disponible. Donde de veras se pone interesante la novela de Defoe es cuando su náufrago, resueltas ya casi todas sus dificultades de supervivencia y adaptación el medio isleño, encuentra de repente la huella de un pie humano estampada en la arena de la playa. En el texto de 1719 la escena comienza así: "One day, about noon, going towards my boat, I was exceedingly surprised with the print of a man's naked foot on the shore, which was very plain to be seen on the sand." Un “fiel” aunque extravagante racconto de aquel episodio y sus secuelas ha sido reescrito así por Mary Godolphin:
“One day at noon, while on a stroll down to a part of the shore that was new to me, what should I see on the sand but the print of a man's foot! I felt as if I was bound by a spell, and could not stir from, the spot.
Bye-and-bye, I stole a look round me, but no one was in sight, What could this mean? I went three or four times to look at it. There it was—the print of a man's foot; toes, heel, and all the parts of a foot. How could it have come there?
My head swam with fear; and as I left the spot, I made two or three steps, and then took a look round me; then two steps more, and did the same thing. I took fright at the stump of an old tree, and ran to my house, as if for my life. How could aught in the shape of a man come to that shore and I not know it? Where was the ship that brought him? Then a vague dread took hold of my mind, that some man, or set of men, had found me out; and it might be, that they meant to kill me, or rob me of all I had.
How strange a thing is the life of man! One day we love that which the next day we hate. One day we seek what the next day we shun. One day we long for the thing which the next day we fear; and so we go on. Now, from the time that I was cast on this isle, my great source of grief was that I should be thus cut off from the rest of my race. Why, then, should the thought that a man might be near give me all this pain? Nay, why should the mere sight of the print of a man's foot, make me quake with fear? It seems most strange; yet not more strange than true.”
Cotéjese el texto original del Robinson Crusoe con el tramo transcrito: nada más correcto ni compendioso en cuanto al argumento y a la secuencia narrativa; mas obsérvese en qué residen sus “infidelidades”.
Una contrafactura ingeniosa
Puedo proponer, a quienes no estén ya componiendo su propia robinsonada, un ejercicio de escritura que vaya a contrapelo del Crusoe inicial; un intento diverso del de Coetzee aunque inspirado en su propia narración disidente. A semejanza del juego de alcanzar al payador un estribo de versos muy conocidos y cantados para que, haciendo pie en ellos, lance al galope su propia fantasía, ahora se trataría de “estribar” o calzar el pie literario en el fragmento de texto con el que se inicia la novela Foe y desde ahí, sin saber más sobre la trama de ésta, entretejer una nueva secuela argumental. Cada uno lo haría en el idioma que mejor domine, y habrá oportunidad de ulteriores cotejos con el relato producido por el genial escritor sudafricano. He aquí el pasaje copiado como disparador de la nueva escritura:
At last I could row no further. My hands were blistered, my back was burned, my body ached. With a sigh, making barely a splash, I slipped overboard. With slow strokes, my long hair floating about me, like a flower of the sea, like an anemone, like a jellyfish of the kind you see in the waters of Brazil, I swam towards the strange island, for a while swimming as I had rowed, against the current, then all at once free of its grip, carried by the waves into the bay and on to the beach.
There I lay sprawled on the hot sand, my head filled with the orange blaze of the sun, my petticoat (which was all I had escaped with) baking dry upon me, tired, grateful, like all the saved.
A dark shadow fell upon me, not of a cloud but of a man with a dazzling halo about him. “Castaway”, I said with my thick dry tongue.. “I am cast away. I am all alone”. And I held out my sore hands.
The man squatted down beside me. He was black: a Negro with a head of fuzzy wool, naked save for a pair of rough drawers. I lifted myself and studied the flat face, the small dull eyes, the broad nose, the thick lips, the skin not black but a dark grey, dry as if coated with dust. “Agua”, I said, trying Portuguese, and made a sign of drinking. He gave no reply, but regarded me as would a seal or a porpoise thrown up by the waves, that would shortly expire and might then be cut up for food. At his side he had a spear. I have come to an island of cannibals.
He reached out and with the back of his hand touched my arm. He is trying my flesh, I thought. But by and by my breathing slowed and I grew calmer. He smelled of fish, and of sheepswool on a hot day.’
El Foe de Coetzee puede ser entendido como una contraescritura de ese mito robinsoniano, tanto en lo concerniente a Robinson como a Defoe. Con ello incita a componer otros relatos igualmente transgresores, como lo sería el “ejercicio” propuesto unos párrafos antes. No hay recetas a ese fin, si bien vale examinar algunas observaciones de la crítica: la lucha del personaje femenino por sobrevivir en el ambiente hosco de la isla con un Cruso poco sociable y un Viernes privado de lenguaje, la insistencia de ella en imponer su propio relato al escritor masculino, autor-enemigo (foe) que depende de la narradora pero se aferra a su propio propósito compositivo y temático dictado por la experiencia profesional. Susan Barton es así la protagonista de la novela; interactúa con Foe en niveles de subordinación y superioridad, y además sufre las perplejidades de una mujer que había partido en busca de su hija y no logra reconocerla cuando alguien se presenta como tal. Los críticos ideológicos, políticos y psicosociológicos de la novela Foe la han desmenuzado y reinterpretado a sus anchas desde sus respectivas trincheras, incluida la lacaniana. En la Red pueden encontrarse algunos de sus engendros, que exceden la capacidad de quien esto escribe y de la presente página.
El náufrago y “su hombre”
...It seemed to him, coming from his island, where until Friday arrived he lived a silent life, that there was too much speech in the world. In bed beside his wife he felt as if a shower of pebbles were being poured upon his head, in an unending rustle and clatter, when all he desired was to sleep.
So when his old wife gave up the ghost he mourned but was not sorry. He buried her and after a decent while took this room in The Jolly Tar on the Bristol waterfront, leaving the direction of the estate in Huntingdon to his son, bringing with him only the parasol from the island that made him famous and the dead parrot fixed to its perch and a few necessaries, and has lived here alone ever since, strolling by day about the wharves and quays, staring out west over the sea, for his sight is still keen, smoking his pipes. As to his meals, he has these brought up to his room; for he finds no joy in society, having grown used to solitude on the island.
He does not read, he has lost the taste for it; but the writing of his adventures has put him in the habit of writing, it is a pleasant enough recreation. In the evening by candlelight he will take out his papers and sharpen his quills and write a page or two of his man, the man who sends report of the duckoys of Lincolnshire, and of the great engine of death in Halifax, that one can escape if before the awful blade can descend one can leap to one's feet and dash down the hill, and of numbers of other things. Every place he goes he sends report of that is his first business, this busy man of his [...].
Bibliografía
- Coetzee, J.M. (2005): Costas extrañas. Ensayos. (Trad. de Pedro Tena) – Bs. Aires, ed. Debate.
- Coetzee, J.M. (2005): Foe.- (Traducción de A. García Reyes) - Buenos Aires, ed. Mondadori.
- Defoe, Daniel (1963, 1974): Robinson Crusoe. – Barcelona, ed.Vosgos (sin datos del traductor; edición legible y completa, para lectores jóvenes. Dato curioso: el personaje Viernes aparece con el nombre de “Domingo”).
- Praz, Mario (1976): La Literatura inglesa (vol. 2).- Trad. de C. Coldaroli – Bs.Aires, ed. Losada.