Parroting Solitude: The Alienated Voice in Julio Cortázar’s “Adíos Robinson”

• Published in: Digital Defoe Vol. 14; pp. 1 - 16
• Main Author: DeGabriele, Peter
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Illinois State University 01.01.2023
• Subjects: adíos robinson; daniel defoe; julio cortázar; parrots in literature; robinson crusoe; solitude
• ISSN: 1948-1802

This article argues that Argentine author Julio Cortázar’s Adios, Robinson, a radio play written in the late 1970s, takes up the theme of solitude from Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe by focusing on mechanical repetitions of the human voice. On Defoe’s island, the human voice was ‘recorded’ and repeated by Robinson’s parrot, and the parrot’s voice produced in Robinson a sense of alienation. Cortázar’s play narrates Robinson’s and Friday’s return to his now modernized island in the 20th century. Both the form of the radio play itself, and various modern apparatuses, such as loudspeakers, radios, and telephones detach the human voice from its point of origin and produce for Cortázar’s Robinson a sense of profound alienation, even in the middle of a modern city. This alienation, the article argues, is related in Cortázar’s play to the capitalist colonialism which Robinson represents. The play demonstrates that this world produces solitude and argues that Defoe’s novel Robinson Crusoe is the herald of this capitalist modernity. Robinson’s loneliness on his return to the island is contrasted with Friday’s profoundly social experience. Friday immediately makes a connection with the indigenous population on the island and enjoys the city without Robinson. Friday, however, does not return to nature, but instead is able to make the most of the culture of modernity without being absorbed by its alienating effects. When Friday quotes Defoe’s parrot at the end of the play, saying “Poor Robinson Crusoe,” he emphasizes that what Robinson hears from the other is always only his own voice repeated back to him. He is thus unable to exist in a future world in which the colonialist masters of “dirt and smoke” will find themselves lonely and powerless. Cortázar thus produces a Robinsonade that looks to a future without Robinsons.