fulfilling the eminently ‘practical function’ of securing ‘the individual more effectively into his society because they give him pleasure’.78
The accomplishment of Genussmittel, writes Wolfgang Schivelbusch, ‘sounds like a paradox’: Arbeit-im-Genuss, reads his definition: work, mixed with pleasure. It’s the same paradox as that of comfort, and for the same reason: during the seventeenth and eighteenth century, two equally powerful but completely contradictory sets of values came simultaneously into being: the ascetic imperative of modern production—and the desire for enjoyment of a rising social group. Comfort and Genussmittel managed to forge a compromise between these opposite forces. A compromise, not a true solution: the initial contrast was too sharp for that. So, Mandeville was right about the ambiguity of ‘comfort’; what he missed, was that ambiguity was precisely the point of the term. At times, that is the best that language can do.
6. PROSE I: ‘THE RHYTHM OF CONTINUITY’
By foreshadowing Robinson’s actions before they occur, I wrote a few pages ago, final clauses structure the relationship between present and future—I do this, in order to do that—through the lenses of ‘instrumental reason’. Nor is this limited to Robinson’s deliberate planning. Here he is, immediately after the shipwreck: the most calamitous and unexpected moment of his entire life. And yet, he walks
about a furlong from the shore, to see if I could find any fresh water to drink, which I did, to my great joy; and having drank, and put a little tobacco in my mouth to prevent hunger, I went to the tree, and getting up into it, endeavored to place myself so as that if I should sleep I might not fall; and having cut me a short stick, like a truncheon, for my defense, I took up my lodging.79
He goes ‘to see’ if there is water ‘to drink’; then he chews tobacco ‘to prevent hunger’, places himself ‘so as’ not to fall, and cuts a stick ‘for [his] defense’. Short-term teleology everywhere, as if it were a second nature. And then, alongside this forward-leaning grammar of final clauses, a second choice makes its appearance, inclining in the opposite temporal direction: an extremely rare verb form—the past gerund: ‘and having drank . . . and having put . . . and having cut . . .’—which becomes in Robinson Crusoe both more frequent and more significant than elsewhere.80 Here are a few examples from the novel:
Having fitted my mast and sail, and tried the boat, I found she would sail very well . . .
Having secured my boat, I took my gun and went on shore . . .
. . . the wind having abated overnight, the sea was calm, and I ventured . . .
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