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Littéraire,
saying—in our opinion, entirely to the point—that Nefastes, quite aside from what
The Robinsonad
propounds, is not qualified as a psychiatrist (following which there is a long argument on the lack of any connection between solipsism and schizophrenia, but we, considering the question to be wholly immaterial to the book, refer the reader to
The New Criticism
in this regard). Fauche sets forth the philosophy of the novel thus: the work shows that the act of creation is
asymmetrical,
for in fact anything may be created in thought, but not everything (almost nothing) may then be erased. This is rendered impossible by the memory of the one creating, and memory is not subject to the will. According to Fauche the novel has nothing in common with a clinical case history (of a particular form of insanity on a desert island) but, rather, exemplifies the principle of aberrance in creation. Robinson’s actions (in the second volume) are senseless only in that he personally gains nothing by them, but psychologically they are quite easily explained. Such flailing about is characteristic of a man who has got himself into a situation he only partially anticipated; the situation, taking on solidity in accordance with laws of its own, holds him captive. From real situations—emphasizes Fauche—one may in reality escape; from those imagined, however, there is no exit. Thus
The Robinsonad
shows only that for a man the true world is indispensable (“the true external world is the true internal world”). Monsieur Coscat’s Robinson was not in the least mad; it was only that his scheme to build himself a synthetic universe on the uninhabited island was, in its very inception, doomed to failure.
    On the strength of these conclusions Fauche goes on to deny
The Robinsonad
any underlying value, for, thus interpreted, the work indeed appears to offer little. In the opinion of this reviewer, both critics here cited went wide of the mark; they failed to read the book’s contents properly.
    The author has, in our opinion, set forth an idea far less banal than, on the one hand, the history of a madness on a desert island, or, on the other, a polemic against the thesis of the creative omnipotence of solipsism. (A polemic of the latter type would in any case be an absurdity, since in formal philosophy no one has ever promulgated the notion that solipsism grants creative omnipotence; each to his own, but in philosophy there is no percentage in tilting at windmills.)
    To our mind, what Robinson does when he “goes mad” is no derangement—and neither is it some sort of polemical foolishness. The original intention of the novel’s hero is sane and rational. He knows that the limitation of every man is Others; the idea, too hastily drawn from this, which says that the elimination of Others provides the self with unlimited freedom, is psychologically false, corresponding to the physical falsehood which would have us believe that since shape is given to water by the shape of the vessel that contains it, the breaking of all vessels provides that water with “absolute freedom.” Whereas, just as water, when deprived of a vessel, will spread out into a puddle, so, too, will a totally isolated man explode, that explosion taking the form of a complete deculturalization. If there is no God and if, moreover, there are neither Others nor the hope of their return, one must save oneself through the construction of a system of some faith, a system that, with respect to the one creating it,
must
be external. The Robinson of Monsieur Coscat understood this simple precept.
    And further: for the common man the beings who are the most desired, and at the same time entirely real, are beings
beyond reach.
Everyone knows of the Queen of England, of her sister the Princess, of the former wife of the President of the United States, of the famous movie stars; that is to say, no one who is normal doubts for a