RABELAIS

There are certain great writers who make their critics feel even as

children, who picking up stray wreckage and broken shells from the

edge of the sea waves, return home to show their companions "what

the sea is like."

The huge suggestiveness of this tremendous spirit is not easy to

communicate in the space of a little essay.

But something can be done, if it only take the form of modest

"advice to the reader."

Is it a pity, one asks oneself, or is it a profound advantage, that

enjoyment of Rabelais should be so limited? At least there are no

false versions to demolish here--no idealizations to unmask.

The reading of Rabelais is not easy to everyone, and perhaps to

those for whom it is least easy, he would be most medicinal. What in

this mad world, do we lack, my dear friends? Is it possibly

_courage?_ Well, Rabelais is, of all writers, the one best able to give

us that courage. If only we had courage, how the great tides of

existence might sweep us along--and we not whine or wince at all!

To read Rabelais is to gather, as if from the earth-gods, spirit to

endure anything. Naturally he uses wine, and every kind of wanton

liquor, to serve as symbols of the intoxication he would produce. For

we must be "rendered drunk" to swallow Life at this rate--to

swallow it as the gods swallow it. We must be drunk but not mad.

For in the spiritual drunkenness that Rabelais produces there is not

the remotest touch of insanity. He is the sanest of all the great

writers; perhaps the only sane one. What he has the power of

communicating to us is a renewal of that _physiological energy,_

which alone makes it possible to enjoy this monstrous world. Other

writers interpret things, or warn us against things. Rabelais takes us

by the hand, shows us the cup of life, deep as eternity, and bids us

drink and be satisfied. What else could he use, if not _wine,_ as a

symbol for such quenching of such thirst. And after wine, sex. There

is no other who treats sex as Rabelais does; who treats it so

completely as it _ought_ to be treated!

Walt Whitman is too obsessed by it; too grave over it--Rabelais

enjoys it, fools with it, plunges into it, wallows in it; and then, with

multitudinous laughter, shakes himself free, and bids it go to the

Devil!

The world will have to come to this, sooner or later--to the

confusion of the vicious--and the virtuous!

The virtuous and the vicious play indeed into each others hands; and

neither of them love laughter. Sexual dalliance is either too serious a

matter to be mocked by satyr-laughter; or it is too sad and

deplorable to be laughed at at all. In a few hundred years, surely, the

human race will recognize its absolute right to make mock at the

grotesque elements in the sex comedy, and such laughter will clear

the air of much "virtue" and much "vice."

Wine is his first symbol of the large, sane, generous mood he

bequeaths to us--the focusing of the poetry of life, and the glow and

daring of it, and its eternal youthfulness.

But it is more than a symbol--it is a sacrament and an initiation. It is

the sap that rises in the world's recurrent spring. It is the ichor, the

quintessence of the creative mystery. It is the blood of the sons of

the morning. It is the dew upon the paradisic fields. It is the red-rose

light, upon the feet of those who dance upon graves. Wine is a sign

to us how there is required a certain generous and sane intoxication,

a certain large and equable friendliness in dealing with people and

things and ideas. It is a sign that the earth calls aloud for the

passionate dreamer. It is a sign that the truth of truth is not in labor

and sorrow, but in joy and happiness. It is a sign that gods and men

have a right to satisfy their hearts desire, with joy and pleasure and

splendid freedom. And just as he uses wine, so he uses meat. Bread

that strengthened man's heart (and bologna-sausages, gammons of

bacon, or what you will, else) this also is a symbol and a sacrament.

And it is indeed more, for one must remember that Rabelais was a

great doctor of medicine, as well as of Utopian Theology--and the

stomach, with the wise indulgence thereof, is the final master of all

arts! Let it be understood that in Rabelais sex is treated with the

same reverence, and the same humor, as meat and wine. Why not? Is

not the body of man the temple of the Holy Ghost? Is it not

sacrosanct and holy within and without; and yet, at the same time, is

it not a huge and palpable absurdity?

Those who suffer most from Rabelais' manner of treating sex are the

incurably vicious. The really evil libidinous people, that is to say the

spiteful, the mean, the base and inhuman, fly from his presence, and

for the obvious reason that he makes sex-pleasure so generous, so

gay, so natural, so legitimate, that their dark morbid perverted

natures can get no more joy out of it. Their lust, their lechery, is a

cold dead Saurian thing, a thing with the gravity of a slow-worm--and

when this great laughing and generous sage comes forth into

the sunshine with his noble companies of amorous and happy

people, these Shadow-lovers, these Leut-lovers, these Fleshly

Sentimentalists, writhe in shame, and seek refuge in a deeper

darkness. How strained and inhuman, too; and one might add, how

mad and irrelevant--that high, cold, disdainful translunar scorn with

which the "moral-immoralism" of Nietzsche scourges our poor flesh

and blood. One turns with relief to Zarathustra after associating with

pious people. But, after Rabelais, even that terrific psychologist

seems contorted and _thin._

For after all it is generosity that we cry out for. Courage without

generosity hugs its knees in Hell.

From the noble pleasures of meat and drink and sex, thus generously

treated; we must turn to another aspect of Rabelais' work--his

predilection for excrement. This also, though few would admit it, is

a symbolic secret. This also is a path of initiation. In this peculiarity

Rabelais is completely alone among the writers of the earth. Others

have, for various reasons, dabbled in this sort of thing--but none

have ever piled it up--manure-heap upon manure-heap, until the

animal refuse of the whole earth seems to reek to the stars! There is

not the slightest reason to regret this thing or to expurgate it.

Rabelais is not Rabelais, just as life is not life, without it.

It is indeed the way of "salvation" for certain neurotic natures. Has

that been properly understood? There are people who suffer

frightfully--and they are often rare natures, too, though they are

sometimes very vicious--from their loathing of the excremental side

of life. Swift was one of these. The "disgusting" in his writing is a

pathological form, not at all unusual, of such a loathing. But

Rabelais is no Dean Swift--nor is there the remotest resemblance

between them. Rabelais may really save us from our loathing by the

huge all-embracing friendliness of his sense of humor.

There are certain people, no doubt, who would prefer the grave

enthusiasm of Whitman in regard to this matter to the freer

Rabelaisian touch. I cannot say that my personal experience agrees

with this view.

I have found both great men invaluable; but I think as far as dealing

with the Cloaca Maxima side of things is concerned, Rabelais has

been the braver in inspiration. In these little matters one can only say,

"some are born Rabelaisian, and some require to have Rabelais

thrust upon them!"

Surely it is wisdom, in us terrestrial mortals, to make what

imaginative use we can of _every phase_ of our earthly condition?

Imagination has a right to play with everything that exists; and

humor has a right to laugh at everything that exists. Everything in

life is sacred and everything is a huge jest.

It is the association of this excremental aspect of life, with those

high sacraments of meat and drink and sex, which some find so hard

to endure. Be not afraid my little ones! The great and humorous

gods have arranged for this also; and have seen to it that no brave,

generous, amorous "sunburnt" emotion shall ever be hurt by such

associations! If a person _is_ hurt by them, that is only an indication

that they are in grievous need of the wholesome purgative medicine

of the great doctor! When one comes to speak of the actual contents

of these books criticism itself must borrow Gargantua's mouth.

What characters! The three great royal giants, Graugousier,

Gargantua and Pantagruel--have there ever been such kings? And

the noble servants of such noble masters! The whole atmosphere is

so large, so genial, so courteous, so sweet-tempered, so entirely

what the life of man upon earth should be.

Even the military exploits of Friar John, even the knavish tricks of

Panurge, cannot spoil our tenderness for these dear bully-boys, these

mellow and magnanimous rogues! Certain paragraphs in Rabelais

recur to one's mind daily. That laudation of Socrates at the

beginning, and the description of the "little boxes called _Silent"_

that outside have so grotesque an adornment, but within are full of

ambergris and myrrh and all manner of precious odours.

And the picture of the banquet "when they fell to the chat of the

afternoon's collation and began great goblets to ring, great bowls to

ting, great gammons to trot; pour me out the fair Greek wine, the

extravagant wine, the good wine, Lacrima Christi, supernaculum!"

And, above all, the most holy Abbey of Thelema, over the gate of

which was written the words that are never far from the hearts of

wise Utopian Christians, the profound words, the philosophical

words, the most shrewd Cabalistic words, and the words that

"lovers" alone can understand--"Fay que ce Vouldray!" Do as Thou

Wilt!

Little they know of Rabelais who call him a lewd buffoon--the

profanest of mountebanks. He was one of those rare spirits that

redeem humanity. To open his book--though the steam of the

grossness of it rises to Heaven--is to touch the divine fingers--the

fingers that heal the world.

How that "style" of his, that great oceanic avalanche of learning and

piety and obscenity and gigantic merriment, smells of the honest

earth!

How, with all his huge scholarship, he loves to depend for his

richest, most human effects, upon his own peasant-people of

Touraine! The proverbs of the country-side, the wisdom of tavern-wit,

the shrewdness and fantasy of old wives tales, the sly earthly

humors of farmers and vine-tenders and goat-herds and goose-girls--these

are things out of which he distils his vision, his oracles, his courage.

There is also--who could help observing it?--a certain large and

patriarchal homeliness--a kind of royal domesticity--about much that

he writes. Those touches, as when Gargantua, his little dog in

advance, enters the dining hall, when they are discussing Panurge's

marriage, and they all rise to do him honor; as when Gargantua bids

Pantagruel farewell and gives him a benediction so wise and tender;

remain in the mind like certain passages in the Bible. These are the

things that aesthetic fools "with varnished faces" easily overlook and

misunderstand; but good simple fellows--"honest cods" as Rabelais

would say--are struck to the heart by them. How proud the man

might be, who in the turmoil of this troublesome world and beneath

the mystery of "le grand Peut-être" could answer to the ultimate

question, "I am a Christian of the faith of Rabelais!"

Such a one, under the spell of such a master, might indeed be able to

comfort the sick and sorry, and to whisper in their ears that cosmic

secret--"Bon Espoir y gist au fond!" "Good Hope lies at the

Bottom!" "Good Hope" for all; for the best and the worst--for the

whole miserable welter of this chaotic farce!

Therefore, "with angels and archangels" let us bow our heads and

hold our tongues. Those who fancy Rabelais to be lacking in the

kind of religious feeling that great souls respect, let them read that

passage in the voyage of Pantagruel that speaks of the Death of Pan.

Various accounts are given; various explanations made; of the great

cry, that the sailors, "coming from Paloda," heard over land and sea.

At the last Pantagruel himself speaks; and he tells them that to him it

refers to nothing less than the death of Him whom the Scribes and

Pharisees and Priests of Jerusalem slew. "And well is He called Pan,

which in the Greek means 'All'; for in Him is all we are or have or

hope." And having said this he fell into silence, and "tears large as

ostrich-eggs rolled down his cheeks."

To all who read Rabelais and love him, one can offer no better wish

than that the mystic wine of his Holy Bottle may fulfil their heart's

desire. Happy, indeed, those who are not "unwillingly drawn" by the

"Fate" we all must follow! "Go now, my friends," says the strange

Priestess, "and may that Circle whose Centre is everywhere and its

Circumference nowhere, keep you in His Almighty protection!"