sufficient to know. In early youth he joined the monastic order of the
Franciscans. That order hated letters; but Rabelais loved them. He, in
fact, conceived a voracious ambition of knowledge. He became immensely
learned. This fact, with what it implies of long labor patiently
achieved, is enough to show that Rabelais was not without seriousness of
character. But he was much more a merry-andrew than a pattern monk. He
made interest enough with influential friends to get himself transferred
from the Franciscans to the Benedictines, an order more favorable to
studious pursuits. But neither among the Benedictines was this
roistering spirit at ease. He left them irregularly, but managed to
escape punishment for his irregularity. At last, after various
vicissitudes of occupation, he settled down as curate of Meudon, where
(the place, however, is doubtful, as also the date) in 1553 he died. He
was past fifty years of age before he finished the work which has made
him famous.
This work is "The Life of Gargantua and Pantagruel," a grotesque and
nondescript production, founded, probably, on some prior romance or
traditionary tale of giants. The narrative of Rabelais is a tissue of
adventures shocking every idea of verisimilitude, and serving only as a
vehicle for the strange humor of the writer. The work is replete with
evidences of Rabelais's learning. It would be useless to attempt giving
any abstract or analysis of a book which is simply a wild chaos of
material jumbled together with little regard to logic, order, or method
of whatever sort. We shall better represent its character by giving a
few specimen extracts.
Rabelais begins his romance characteristically. According as you
understand him here, you judge the spirit of the whole work. Either he
now gives you a clew by which, amid the mazes of apparent sheer
frivolity on his part, you may follow till you win your way to some
veiled serious meaning that he had all the time, but never dared frankly
to avow; or else he is playfully misleading you on a false scent, which,
however long held to, will bring you out nowhere--in short, is quizzing
you. Let the reader judge for himself. Here is the opening passage,--the
"Author's Prologue," it is called in the English translation executed by
Sir Thomas Urquhart and Motteux; a version, by the way, which, with
whatever faults of too much freedom, is the work of minds and
consciences singularly sympathetic with the genius of the original; the
English student is perhaps hardly at all at disadvantage, in comparison
with the French, for the full appreciation of Rabelais:--
Most noble and illustrious drinkers, and you thrice precious
pockified blades (for to you, and none else, do I dedicate my
writings), Alcibiades, in that dialogue of Plato's which is
entitled, "The Banquet," whilst he was setting forth the praises of
his schoolmaster Socrates (without all question the prince of
philosophers), amongst other discourses to that purpose said that
he resembled the Sileni. Sileni of old were little boxes, like
those we now may see in the shops of apothecaries, painted on the
outside with wanton toyish figures, as harpies, satyrs, bridled
geese, horned hares, saddled ducks, flying goats, thiller harts,
and other such counterfeited pictures, at pleasure, to excite
people unto laughter, as Silenus himself, who was the foster-father
of good Bacchus, was wont to do; but within those capricious
caskets called Sileni, were carefully preserved and kept many rich
and fine drugs, such as balm, ambergreese, amomon, musk, civet,
with several kinds of precious stones, and other things of great
price. Just such another thing was Socrates; for to have eyed his
outside, and esteemed of him by his exterior appearance, you would
not have given the peel of an onion for him, so deformed he was in
body, and ridiculous in his gesture.... Opening this box, you would
have found within it a heavenly and inestimable drug, a more than
human understanding, an admirable virtue, matchless learning,
invincible courage, inimitable sobriety, certain contentment of
mind, perfect assurance, and an incredible disregard of all that
for which men commonly do so much watch, run, sail, fight, travel,
toil, and turmoil themselves.
Whereunto (in your opinion) doth this little flourish of a preamble
tend? For so much as you, my good disciples, and some other jolly
fools of ease and leisure,... are too ready to judge, that there is
nothing in them but jests, mockeries, lascivious discourse, and
recreative lies;... therefore is it, that you must open the book,
and seriously consider of the matter treated in it. Then shall you
find that it containeth things of far higher value than the box did
promise; that is to say, that the subject thereof is not so
foolish, as by the title at the first sight it would appear to be.
...Did you ever see a dog with a marrow-bone in his mouth?... Like
him, you must, by a sedulous lecture [reading], and frequent
meditation, break the bone, and suck out the marrow; that is, my
allegorical sense, or the things I to myself propose to be
signified by these Pythagorical symbols;... the most glorious
doctrines and dreadful mysteries, as well in what concerneth our
religion, as matters of the public state and life economical.
Up to this point, the candid reader has probably been conscious of a
growing persuasion that this author must be at bottom a serious if also
a humorous man,--a man, therefore, excusably intent not to be
misunderstood as a mere buffoon. But now let the candid reader proceed
with the following, and confess, upon his honor, if he is not
scandalized and perplexed. What shall be said of a writer who thus plays
with his reader?
Do you believe, upon your conscience, that Homer, whilst he was
couching his Iliad and Odyssey, had any thought upon those
allegories which Plutarch, Heraclides Ponticus, Eustathius,
Phornutus, squeezed out of him, and which Politian filched again
from them? If you trust it, with neither hand nor foot do you come
near to my opinion, which judgeth them to have been as little
dreamed of by Homer, as the gospel sacraments were by Ovid, in his
Metamorphoses; though a certain gulligut friar, and true
bacon-picker, would have undertaken to prove it, if, perhaps, he
had met with as very fools as himself, and, as the proverb says, "a
lid worthy of such a kettle."
If you give any credit thereto, why do not you the same to these
jovial new Chronicles of mine? Albeit, when I did dictate them, I
thought thereof no more than you, who possibly were drinking the
whilst, as I was. For, in the composing of this lordly book, I
never lost nor bestowed any more, nor any other time, than what was
appointed to serve me for taking of my bodily refection; that is,
whilst I was eating and drinking. And, indeed, that is the fittest
and most proper hour, wherein to write these high matters and deep
sentences; as Homer knew very well, the paragon of all philologues,
and Ennius, the father of the Latin poets, as Horace calls him,
although a certain sneaking jobbernol alleged that his verses
smelled more of the wine than oil.
Does this writer quiz his reader, or, in good faith, give him a needed
hint? Who shall decide?
We have let our first extract thus run on to some length, both for the
reason that the passage is as representative as any we could properly
offer of the quality of Rabelais, and also for the reason that the key
of interpretation is here placed in the hand of the reader, for
unlocking the enigma of this remarkable book. The extraordinary
horse-play of pleasantry, which makes Rabelais unreadable for the
general public of to-day, begins so promptly, affecting the very
prologue, that we could not present even that piece of writing entire in
our extract. We are informed that the circulation in England of the
works of Rabelais, in translation, has been interfered with by the
English government, on the ground of their indecency. We are bound to
admit, that, if any writings whatever were to be suppressed on that
ground, the writings of Rabelais are certainly entitled to be of the
number. It is safe to say that never, no, not even in the boundless
license of the comedy of Aristophanes, was more flagrant indecency, and
indecency proportionately more redundant in volume, perpetrated in
literature, than was done by Rabelais. Indecency, however, it is, rather
than strict lasciviousness. Rabelais sinned against manners, more than
he sinned against morals. But his obscenity is an ocean, without bottom
or shore. Literally, he sticks at nothing that is coarse. Nay, this is
absurdly short of expressing the fact. The genius of Rabelais teems with
invention of coarseness, beyond what any one could conceive as possible,
who had not taken his measure of possibility from Rabelais himself. And
his diction was as opulent as his invention.
Such is the character of Rabelais the author. What, then, was it, if not
fondness for paradox, that could prompt Coleridge to say, "I could write
a treatise in praise of the moral elevation of Rabelais' works, which
would make the church stare and the conventicle groan, and yet would be
truth, and nothing but the truth"? If any thing besides fondness for
paradox inspired Coleridge in saying this, it must, one would guess,
have been belief on his part in the allegorical sense hidden deep
underneath the monstrous mass of the Rabelaisian buffoonery. A more
judicial sentence is that of Hallam, the historian of the literature of
Europe: "He [Rabelais] is never serious in a single page, and seems to
have had little other aim, in his first two volumes, than to pour out
the exuberance of his animal gayety."
The supply of animal gayety in this man was something portentous. One
cannot, however, but feel that he forces it sometimes, as sometimes did
Dickens those exhaustless animal spirits of his. A very common trick of
the Rabelaisian humor is to multiply specifications, or alternative
expressions, one after another, almost without end. From the second book
of his romance,--an afterthought, probably, of continuation to his
unexpectedly successful first book,--we take the last paragraph of the
prologue, which shows this. The veracious historian makes obtestation of
the strict truth of his narrative, and imprecates all sorts of evil upon
such as do not believe it absolutely. We cleanse our extract a little:--
And, therefore, to make an end of this Prologue, even as I give
myself to an hundred thousand panniers-full of fair devils, body
and soul,... in case that I lie so much as one single word in this
whole history; after the like manner, St. Anthony's fire burn you,
Mahoom's disease whirl you, the squinance with a stitch in your
side, and the wolf in your stomach truss you, the bloody flux seize
upon you, the cursed sharp inflammations of wild fire, as slender
and thin as cow's hair strengthened with quicksilver, enter into
you,... and, like those of Sodom and Gomorrha, may you fall into
sulphur, fire, and bottomless pits, in case you do not firmly
believe all that I shall relate unto you in this present Chronicle.
So much for Rabelais's prologues. Our readers must now see something of
what, under pains and penalties denounced so dire, they are bound to
believe. We condense and defecate for this purpose the thirty-eighth
chapter of the first book, which is staggeringly entitled, "How
Gargantua did eat up Six Pilgrims in a Sallad":--
The story requireth that we relate that which happened unto six
pilgrims, who came from Sebastian near to Nantes; and who, for
shelter that night, being afraid of the enemy, had hid themselves
in the garden upon the chickling peas, among the cabbages and
lettuces. Gargantua, finding himself somewhat dry, asked whether
they could get any lettuce to make him a salad; and, hearing that
there were the greatest and fairest in the country,--for they were
as great as plum trees, or as walnut trees,--he would go thither
himself, and brought thence in his hand what he thought good, and
withal carried away the six pilgrims, who were in so great fear
that they did not dare to speak nor cough. Washing them, therefore,
first at the fountain, the pilgrims said one to another, softly,
"What shall we do? We are almost drowned here amongst these
lettuce: shall we speak? But, if we speak, he will kill us for
spies." And, as they were thus deliberating what to do, Gargantua
put them, with the lettuce, into a platter of the house, as large
as the huge tun of the White Friars of the Cistertian order; which
done, with oil, vinegar, and salt, he ate them up, to refresh
himself a little before supper, and had already swallowed up five
of the pilgrims, the sixth being in the platter, totally hid under
a lettuce, except his bourbon, or staff, that appeared, and nothing
else. Which Grangousier [Gargantua's father] seeing, said to
Gargantua, "I think that is the horn of a shell snail: do not eat
it."--"Why not?" said Gargantua; "they are good all this month:"
which he no sooner said, but, drawing up the staff, and therewith
taking up the pilgrim, he ate him very well, then drank a terrible
draught of excellent white wine. The pilgrims, thus devoured, made
shift to save themselves, as well as they could, by drawing their
bodies out of the reach of the grinders of his teeth, but could
not escape from thinking they had been put in the lowest dungeon of
a prison. And, when Gargantua whiffed the great draught, they
thought to have drowned in his mouth, and the flood of wine had
almost carried them away into the gulf of his stomach.
Nevertheless, skipping with their bourbons, as St. Michael's
palmers used to do, they sheltered themselves from the danger of
that inundation under the banks of his teeth. But one of them, by
chance, groping, or sounding the country with his staff, to try
whether they were in safety or no, struck hard against the cleft of
a hollow tooth, and hit the mandibulary sinew or nerve of the jaw,
which put Gargantua to very great pain, so that he began to cry for
the rage that he felt. To ease himself, therefore, of his smarting
ache, he called for his tooth-picker, and, rubbing towards a young
walnut-tree, where they lay skulking, unnestled you my gentlemen
pilgrims. For he caught one by the legs, another by the scrip,
another by the pocket, another by the scarf, another by the band of
the breeches; and the poor fellow that had hurt him with the
bourbon, him he hooked to him by [another part of his clothes]....
The pilgrims, thus dislodged, ran away.
Rabelais closes his story with jocose irreverent application of
Scripture,--a manner of his which gives some color to the tradition of a
biblical pun made by him on his death-bed.
The closest English analogue to Rabelais is undoubtedly Dean Swift. We
probably never should have had "Gulliver's Travels" from Swift, if we
had not first had Gargantua and Pantagruel from Rabelais. Swift,
however, differs from Rabelais as well as resembles him. Whereas
Rabelais is simply monstrous in invention, Swift in invention submits
himself loyally to law. Give Swift his world of Liliput and Brobdingnag
respectively, and all, after that, is quite natural and probable. The
reduction or the exaggeration is made upon a mathematically calculated
scale. For such verisimilitude Rabelais cares not a straw. His various
inventions are recklessly independent one of another. A characteristic
of Swift thus is scrupulous conformity to whimsical law. Rabelais is
remarkable for whimsical disregard of even his own whimseys. Voltaire
put the matter with his usual felicity,--Swift is Rabelais in his
senses.
One of the most celebrated--justly celebrated--of Rabelais's
imaginations is that of the Abbey of Theleme [Thelema]. This constitutes
a kind of Rabelaisian Utopia. It was proper of the released monk to give
his Utopian dream the form of an abbey, but an abbey in which the
opposite should obtain of all that he had so heartily hated in his own
monastic experience. A humorously impossible place and state was the
Abbey of Theleme,--a kind of sportive Brook Farm set far away in a world
unrealized. How those Thelemites enjoyed life, to be sure! It was like
endless plum pudding--for everybody to eat, and nobody to prepare:--
All their life was spent not in laws, statutes, or rules, but
according to their own free will and pleasure. They rose out of
their beds when they thought good; they did eat, drink, labor,
sleep, when they had a mind to it, and were disposed for it. None
did awake them, none did offer to constrain them to eat, drink, nor
to do any other thing; for so had Gargantua established it. In all
their rule, and strictest tie of their order, there was but this
one clause to be observed,--
DO WHAT THOU WILT.
...By this liberty they entered into a very laudable emulation, to
do all of them what they saw did please one. If any of the gallants
or ladies should say, Let us drink, they would all drink. If any
one of them said, Let us play, they all played. If one said, Let us
go a walking into the fields, they went all.... There was neither
he nor she amongst them, but could read, write, sing, play upon
several musical instruments, speak five or six several languages,
and compose in them all very quaintly, both in verse and prose.
Never were seen so valiant knights, so noble and worthy, so
dextrous and skilful both on foot and a horseback, more brisk and
lively, more nimble and quick, or better handling all manner of
weapons than were there. Never were seen ladies so proper and
handsome, so miniard and dainty, less forward, or more ready with
their hand, and with their needle, in every honest and free action
belonging to that sex, than were there. For this reason, when the
time came, that any man of the said abbey, either at the request of
his parents, or for some other cause, had a mind to go out of it,
he carried along with him one of the ladies, namely her who had
before that accepted him as her lover, and they were married
together.
The foregoing is one of the most purely sweet imaginative passages in
Rabelais's works. The representation, as a whole, sheathes, of course, a
keen satire on the religious houses. Real religion, Rabelais nowhere
attacks.
The same colossal Gargantua who had that eating adventure with the six
pilgrims, is made, in Rabelais's second book, to write his youthful son
Pantagruel--also a giant, but destined to be, when mature, a model of
all princely virtues--a letter on education, in which the most pious
paternal exhortation occurs. The whole letter reads like some learned
Puritan divine's composition. Here are a few specimen sentences:--
Fail not most carefully to peruse the books of the Greek, Arabian,
and Latin physicians, not despising the Talmudists and Cabalists;
and by frequent anatomies get thee the perfect knowledge of that
other world, called the microcosm, which is man. And at some of the
hours of the day apply thy mind to the study of the Holy
Scriptures: first, in Greek, the New Testament, with the Epistles
of the Apostles; and then the Old Testament in Hebrew. In brief,
let me see thee an abyss and bottomless pit of knowledge....
...It behoveth thee to serve, to love, to fear God, and on him to
cast all thy thoughts and all thy hope, and, by faith formed in
charity, to cleave unto him, so that thou mayst never be separated
from him by thy sins. Suspect the abuses of the world. Set not thy
heart upon vanity, for this life is transitory; but the Word of the
Lord endureth forever.
"Friar John" is a mighty man of valor, who figures equivocally in the
story of Gargantua and Pantagruel. The Abbey of Theleme is given him in
reward of his services. Some have identified this fighting monk with
Martin Luther. The representation is, on the whole, so conducted as to
leave the reader's sympathies at least half enlisted in favor of the
fellow, rough and roistering as he is.
Panurge is the hero of the romance of Pantagruel,--almost more than
Pantagruel himself. It would be unpardonable to dismiss Rabelais
without first making our readers know Panurge by, at least, a few traits
of his character and conduct. Panurge was a shifty but unscrupulous
adventurer, whom Pantagruel, pious prince as he was, coming upon him by
chance, took and kept under his patronage. Panurge was an arch-imp of
mischief,--mischief indulged in the form of obscene and malicious
practical jokes. Rabelais describes his accomplishments in a long strain
of discourse, from which we purge our selection to follow,--thereby
transforming Panurge into a comparatively proper and virtuous person:--
He had threescore and three tricks to come by it [money] at his
need, of which the most honorable and most ordinary was in manner
of thieving, secret purloining, and filching, for he was a wicked,
lewd rogue, a cozener, drinker, roysterer, rover, and a very
dissolute and debauched fellow, if there were any in Paris;
otherwise, and in all matters else, the best and most virtuous man
in the world; and he was still contriving some plot, and devising
mischief against the serjeants and the watch.
At one time he assembled three or four especial good hacksters and
roaring boys; made them in the evening drink like Templars,
afterwards led them till they came under St. Genevieve, or about
the college of Navarre, and, at the hour that the watch was coming
up that way,--which he knew by putting his sword upon the pavement,
and his ear by it, and, when he heard his sword shake, it was an
infallible sign that the watch was near at that instant,--then he
and his companions took a tumbrel or garbage-cart, and gave it the
brangle, hurling it with all their force down the hill, and then
ran away upon the other side; for in less than two days he knew all
the streets, lanes, and turnings in Paris, as well as his _Deus
det._
At another time he laid, in some fair place where the said watch
was to pass, a train of gunpowder, and, at the very instant that
they went along, set fire to it, and then made himself sport to see
what good grace they had in running away, thinking that St.
Anthony's fire had caught them by the legs.... In one of his
pockets he had a great many little horns full of fleas and lice,
which he borrowed from the beggars of St. Innocent, and cast them,
with small canes or quills to write with, into the necks of the
daintiest gentlewomen that he could find, yea, even in the church;
for he never seated himself above in the choir, but always in the
body of the church amongst the women, both at mass, at vespers, and
at sermon.
Coleridge, in his metaphysical way, keen at the moment on the scent of
illustrations for the philosophy of Kant, said, "Pantagruel is the
Reason; Panurge the Understanding." Rabelais himself, in the fourth book
of his romance, written in the last years of his life, defines the
spirit of the work. This fourth book, the English translator says, is
"justly thought his masterpiece." The same authority adds with
enthusiasm, "Being wrote with more spirit, salt, and flame than the
first part." Here, then, is Rabelais's own expression, sincere or
jocular, as you choose to take it, for what constitutes the essence of
his writing. We quote from the "Prologue":--
By the means of a little Pantagruelism (which, you know, is _a
certain jollity of mind, pickled in the scorn of fortune_), you see
me now ["at near seventy years of age," his translator says], hale
and cheery, as sound as a bell, and ready to drink, if you will.
It is impossible to exaggerate the mad, rollicking humor, sticking at
nothing, either in thought or in expression, with which especially this
last book of Rabelais's work is written. But we have no more space for
quotation.
Coleridge's theory of interpretation for Rabelais's writings is hinted
in his "Table Talk," as follows: "After any particularly deep thrust,...
Rabelais, as if to break the blow, and to appear unconscious of what he
has done, writes a chapter or two of pure buffoonery."