Without his signature no one would
possibly
have thought of
attributing them to him.
attributing them to him.
Gargantua and Pantagruel by François Rabelais
More probably he was an
apothecary, which would fit in with the medical profession adopted by his
son in after years. Rabelais had brothers, all older than himself.
Perhaps because he was the youngest, his father destined him for the
Church.
The time he spent while a child with the Benedictine monks at Seuille is
uncertain. There he might have made the acquaintance of the prototype of
his Friar John, a brother of the name of Buinart, afterwards Prior of
Sermaize. He was longer at the Abbey of the Cordeliers at La Baumette,
half a mile from Angers, where he became a novice. As the brothers Du
Bellay, who were later his Maecenases, were then studying at the University
of Angers, where it is certain he was not a student, it is doubtless from
this youthful period that his acquaintance and alliance with them should
date. Voluntarily, or induced by his family, Rabelais now embraced the
ecclesiastical profession, and entered the monastery of the Franciscan
Cordeliers at Fontenay-le-Comte, in Lower Poitou, which was honoured by his
long sojourn at the vital period of his life when his powers were ripening.
There it was he began to study and to think, and there also began his
troubles.
In spite of the wide-spread ignorance among the monks of that age, the
encyclopaedic movement of the Renaissance was attracting all the lofty
minds. Rabelais threw himself into it with enthusiasm, and Latin antiquity
was not enough for him. Greek, a study discountenanced by the Church,
which looked on it as dangerous and tending to freethought and heresy, took
possession of him. To it he owed the warm friendship of Pierre Amy and of
the celebrated Guillaume Bude. In fact, the Greek letters of the latter
are the best source of information concerning this period of Rabelais'
life. It was at Fontenay-le-Comte also that he became acquainted with the
Brissons and the great jurist Andre Tiraqueau, whom he never mentions but
with admiration and deep affection. Tiraqueau's treatise, De legibus
connubialibus, published for the first time in 1513, has an important
bearing on the life of Rabelais. There we learn that, dissatisfied with
the incomplete translation of Herodotus by Laurent Valla, Rabelais had
retranslated into Latin the first book of the History. That translation
unfortunately is lost, as so many other of his scattered works. It is
probably in this direction that the hazard of fortune has most discoveries
and surprises in store for the lucky searcher. Moreover, as in this law
treatise Tiraqueau attacked women in a merciless fashion, President Amaury
Bouchard published in 1522 a book in their defence, and Rabelais, who was a
friend of both the antagonists, took the side of Tiraqueau. It should be
observed also in passing, that there are several pages of such audacious
plain-speaking, that Rabelais, though he did not copy these in his Marriage
of Panurge, has there been, in his own fashion, as out spoken as Tiraqueau.
If such freedom of language could be permitted in a grave treatise of law,
similar liberties were certainly, in the same century, more natural in a
book which was meant to amuse.
The great reproach always brought against Rabelais is not the want of
reserve of his language merely, but his occasional studied coarseness,
which is enough to spoil his whole work, and which lowers its value. La
Bruyere, in the chapter Des ouvrages de l'esprit, not in the first edition
of the Caracteres, but in the fifth, that is to say in 1690, at the end of
the great century, gives us on this subject his own opinion and that of his
age:
'Marot and Rabelais are inexcusable in their habit of scattering filth
about their writings. Both of them had genius enough and wit enough to do
without any such expedient, even for the amusement of those persons who
look more to the laugh to be got out of a book than to what is admirable in
it. Rabelais especially is incomprehensible. His book is an enigma,--one
may say inexplicable. It is a Chimera; it is like the face of a lovely
woman with the feet and the tail of a reptile, or of some creature still
more loathsome. It is a monstrous confusion of fine and rare morality with
filthy corruption. Where it is bad, it goes beyond the worst; it is the
delight of the basest of men. Where it is good, it reaches the exquisite,
the very best; it ministers to the most delicate tastes. '
Putting aside the rather slight connection established between two men of
whom one is of very little importance compared with the other, this is
otherwise very admirably said, and the judgment is a very just one, except
with regard to one point--the misunderstanding of the atmosphere in which
the book was created, and the ignoring of the examples of a similar
tendency furnished by literature as well as by the popular taste. Was it
not the Ancients that began it? Aristophanes, Catullus, Petronius,
Martial, flew in the face of decency in their ideas as well as in the words
they used, and they dragged after them in this direction not a few of the
Latin poets of the Renaissance, who believed themselves bound to imitate
them. Is Italy without fault in this respect? Her story-tellers in prose
lie open to easy accusation. Her Capitoli in verse go to incredible
lengths; and the astonishing success of Aretino must not be forgotten, nor
the licence of the whole Italian comic theatre of the sixteenth century.
The Calandra of Bibbiena, who was afterwards a Cardinal, and the Mandragola
of Machiavelli, are evidence enough, and these were played before Popes,
who were not a whit embarrassed. Even in England the drama went very far
for a time, and the comic authors of the reign of Charles II. , evidently
from a reaction, and to shake off the excess and the wearisomeness of
Puritan prudery and affectation, which sent them to the opposite extreme,
are not exactly noted for their reserve. But we need not go beyond France.
Slight indications, very easily verified, are all that may be set down
here; a formal and detailed proof would be altogether too dangerous.
Thus, for instance, the old Fabliaux--the Farces of the fifteenth century,
the story-tellers of the sixteenth--reveal one of the sides, one of the
veins, so to speak, of our literature. The art that addresses itself to
the eye had likewise its share of this coarseness. Think of the sculptures
on the capitals and the modillions of churches, and the crude frankness of
certain painted windows of the fifteenth century. Queen Anne was, without
any doubt, one of the most virtuous women in the world. Yet she used to go
up the staircase of her chateau at Blois, and her eyes were not offended at
seeing at the foot of a bracket a not very decent carving of a monk and a
nun. Neither did she tear out of her book of Hours the large miniature of
the winter month, in which, careless of her neighbours' eyes, the mistress
of the house, sitting before her great fireplace, warms herself in a
fashion which it is not advisable that dames of our age should imitate.
The statue of Cybele by the Tribolo, executed for Francis I. , and placed,
not against a wall, but in the middle of Queen Claude's chamber at
Fontainebleau, has behind it an attribute which would have been more in
place on a statue of Priapus, and which was the symbol of generativeness.
The tone of the conversations was ordinarily of a surprising coarseness,
and the Precieuses, in spite of their absurdities, did a very good work in
setting themselves in opposition to it. The worthy Chevalier de
La-Tour-Landry, in his Instructions to his own daughters, without a thought
of harm, gives examples which are singular indeed, and in Caxton's
translation these are not omitted. The Adevineaux Amoureux, printed at
Bruges by Colard Mansion, are astonishing indeed when one considers that
they were the little society diversions of the Duchesses of Burgundy and of
the great ladies of a court more luxurious and more refined than the French
court, which revelled in the Cent Nouvelles of good King Louis XI.
Rabelais' pleasantry about the woman folle a la messe is exactly in the
style of the Adevineaux.
A later work than any of his, the Novelle of Bandello, should be kept in
mind--for the writer was Bishop of Agen, and his work was translated into
French--as also the Dames Galantes of Brantome. Read the Journal of
Heroard, that honest doctor, who day by day wrote down the details
concerning the health of Louis XIII. from his birth, and you will
understand the tone of the conversation of Henry IV. The jokes at a
country wedding are trifles compared with this royal coarseness. Le Moyen
de Parvenir is nothing but a tissue and a mass of filth, and the too
celebrated Cabinet Satyrique proves what, under Louis XIII. , could be
written, printed, and read. The collection of songs formed by Clairambault
shows that the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries were no purer than the
sixteenth. Some of the most ribald songs are actually the work of
Princesses of the royal House.
It is, therefore, altogether unjust to make Rabelais the scapegoat, to
charge him alone with the sins of everybody else. He spoke as those of his
time used to speak; when amusing them he used their language to make
himself understood, and to slip in his asides, which without this sauce
would never have been accepted, would have found neither eyes nor ears.
Let us blame not him, therefore, but the manners of his time.
Besides, his gaiety, however coarse it may appear to us--and how rare a
thing is gaiety! --has, after all, nothing unwholesome about it; and this is
too often overlooked. Where does he tempt one to stray from duty? Where,
even indirectly, does he give pernicious advice? Whom has he led to evil
ways? Does he ever inspire feelings that breed misconduct and vice, or is
he ever the apologist of these? Many poets and romance writers, under
cover of a fastidious style, without one coarse expression, have been
really and actively hurtful; and of that it is impossible to accuse
Rabelais. Women in particular quickly revolt from him, and turn away
repulsed at once by the archaic form of the language and by the
outspokenness of the words. But if he be read aloud to them, omitting the
rougher parts and modernizing the pronunciation, it will be seen that they
too are impressed by his lively wit as by the loftiness of his thought. It
would be possible, too, to extract, for young persons, without
modification, admirable passages of incomparable force. But those who have
brought out expurgated editions of him, or who have thought to improve him
by trying to rewrite him in modern French, have been fools for their pains,
and their insulting attempts have had, and always will have, the success
they deserve.
His dedications prove to what extent his whole work was accepted. Not to
speak of his epistolary relations with Bude, with the Cardinal d'Armagnac
and with Pellissier, the ambassador of Francis I. and Bishop of Maguelonne,
or of his dedication to Tiraqueau of his Lyons edition of the Epistolae
Medicinales of Giovanni Manardi of Ferrara, of the one addressed to the
President Amaury Bouchard of the two legal texts which he believed antique,
there is still the evidence of his other and more important dedications.
In 1532 he dedicated his Hippocrates and his Galen to Geoffroy d'Estissac,
Bishop of Maillezais, to whom in 1535 and 1536 he addressed from Rome the
three news letters, which alone have been preserved; and in 1534 he
dedicated from Lyons his edition of the Latin book of Marliani on the
topography of Rome to Jean du Bellay (at that time Bishop of Paris) who was
raised to the Cardinalate in 1535. Beside these dedications we must set
the privilege of Francis I. of September, 1545, and the new privilege
granted by Henry II. on August 6th, 1550, Cardinal de Chatillon present,
for the third book, which was dedicated, in an eight-lined stanza, to the
Spirit of the Queen of Navarre. These privileges, from the praises and
eulogies they express in terms very personal and very exceptional, are as
important in Rabelais' life as were, in connection with other matters, the
Apostolic Pastorals in his favour. Of course, in these the popes had not
to introduce his books of diversions, which, nevertheless, would have
seemed in their eyes but very venial sins. The Sciomachie of 1549, an
account of the festivities arranged at Rome by Cardinal du Bellay in honour
of the birth of the second son of Henry II. , was addressed to Cardinal de
Guise, and in 1552 the fourth book was dedicated, in a new prologue, to
Cardinal de Chatillon, the brother of Admiral de Coligny.
These are no unknown or insignificant personages, but the greatest lords
and princes of the Church. They loved and admired and protected Rabelais,
and put no restrictions in his way. Why should we be more fastidious and
severe than they were? Their high contemporary appreciation gives much
food for thought.
There are few translations of Rabelais in foreign tongues; and certainly
the task is no light one, and demands more than a familiarity with ordinary
French. It would have been easier in Italy than anywhere else. Italian,
from its flexibility and its analogy to French, would have lent itself
admirably to the purpose; the instrument was ready, but the hand was not
forthcoming. Neither is there any Spanish translation, a fact which can be
more easily understood. The Inquisition would have been a far more serious
opponent than the Paris' Sorbonne, and no one ventured on the experiment.
Yet Rabelais forces comparison with Cervantes, whose precursor he was in
reality, though the two books and the two minds are very different. They
have only one point in common, their attack and ridicule of the romances of
chivalry and of the wildly improbable adventures of knight-errants. But in
Don Quixote there is not a single detail which would suggest that Cervantes
knew Rabelais' book or owed anything to it whatsoever, even the
starting-point of his subject. Perhaps it was better he should not have
been influenced by him, in however slight a degree; his originality is the
more intact and the more genial.
On the other hand, Rabelais has been several times translated into German.
In the present century Regis published at Leipsic, from 1831 to 1841, with
copious notes, a close and faithful translation. The first one cannot be
so described, that of Johann Fischart, a native of Mainz or Strasburg, who
died in 1614. He was a Protestant controversialist, and a satirist of
fantastic and abundant imagination. In 1575 appeared his translation of
Rabelais' first book, and in 1590 he published the comic catalogue of the
library of Saint Victor, borrowed from the second book. It is not a
translation, but a recast in the boldest style, full of alterations and of
exaggerations, both as regards the coarse expressions which he took upon
himself to develop and to add to, and in the attacks on the Roman Catholic
Church. According to Jean Paul Richter, Fischart is much superior to
Rabelais in style and in the fruitfulness of his ideas, and his equal in
erudition and in the invention of new expressions after the manner of
Aristophanes. He is sure that his work was successful, because it was
often reprinted during his lifetime; but this enthusiasm of Jean Paul would
hardly carry conviction in France. Who treads in another's footprints must
follow in the rear. Instead of a creator, he is but an imitator. Those
who take the ideas of others to modify them, and make of them creations of
their own, like Shakespeare in England, Moliere and La Fontaine in France,
may be superior to those who have served them with suggestions; but then
the new works must be altogether different, must exist by themselves.
Shakespeare and the others, when they imitated, may be said always to have
destroyed their models. These copyists, if we call them so, created such
works of genius that the only pity is they are so rare. This is not the
case with Fischart, but it would be none the less curious were some one
thoroughly familiar with German to translate Fischart for us, or at least,
by long extracts from him, give an idea of the vagaries of German taste
when it thought it could do better than Rabelais. It is dangerous to
tamper with so great a work, and he who does so runs a great risk of
burning his fingers.
England has been less daring, and her modesty and discretion have brought
her success. But, before speaking of Urquhart's translation, it is but
right to mention the English-French Dictionary of Randle Cotgrave, the
first edition of which dates from 1611. It is in every way exceedingly
valuable, and superior to that of Nicot, because instead of keeping to the
plane of classic and Latin French, it showed an acquaintance with and
mastery of the popular tongue as well as of the written and learned
language. As a foreigner, Cotgrave is a little behind in his information.
He is not aware of all the changes and novelties of the passing fashion.
The Pleiad School he evidently knew nothing of, but kept to the writers of
the fifteenth and the first half of the sixteenth century. Thus words out
of Rabelais, which he always translates with admirable skill, are frequent,
and he attaches to them their author's name. So Rabelais had already
crossed the Channel, and was read in his own tongue. Somewhat later,
during the full sway of the Commonwealth--and Maitre Alcofribas Nasier must
have been a surprising apparition in the midst of Puritan severity--Captain
Urquhart undertook to translate him and to naturalize him completely in
England.
Thomas Urquhart belonged to a very old family of good standing in the North
of Scotland. After studying in Aberdeen he travelled in France, Spain, and
Italy, where his sword was as active as that intelligent curiosity of his
which is evidenced by his familiarity with three languages and the large
library which he brought back, according to his own account, from sixteen
countries he had visited.
On his return to England he entered the service of Charles I. , who knighted
him in 1641. Next year, after the death of his father, he went to Scotland
to set his family affairs in order, and to redeem his house in Cromarty.
But, in spite of another sojourn in foreign lands, his efforts to free
himself from pecuniary embarrassments were unavailing. At the king's death
his Scottish loyalty caused him to side with those who opposed the
Parliament. Formally proscribed in 1649, taken prisoner at the defeat of
Worcester in 1651, stripped of all his belongings, he was brought to
London, but was released on parole at Cromwell's recommendation. After
receiving permission to spend five months in Scotland to try once more to
settle his affairs, he came back to London to escape from his creditors.
And there he must have died, though the date of his death is unknown. It
probably took place after 1653, the date of the publication of the two
first books, and after having written the translation of the third, which
was not printed from his manuscript till the end of the seventeenth
century.
His life was therefore not without its troubles, and literary activity must
have been almost his only consolation. His writings reveal him as the
strangest character, fantastic, and full of a naive vanity, which, even at
the time he was translating the genealogy of Gargantua--surely well
calculated to cure any pondering on his own--caused him to trace his
unbroken descent from Adam, and to state that his family name was derived
from his ancestor Esormon, Prince of Achaia, 2139 B. C. , who was surnamed
Ourochartos, that is to say the Fortunate and the Well-beloved. A Gascon
could not have surpassed this.
Gifted as he was, learned in many directions, an enthusiastic
mathematician, master of several languages, occasionally full of wit and
humour, and even good sense, yet he gave his books the strangest titles,
and his ideas were no less whimsical. His style is mystic, fastidious, and
too often of a wearisome length and obscurity; his verses rhyme anyhow, or
not at all; but vivacity, force and heat are never lacking, and the
Maitland Club did well in reprinting, in 1834, his various works, which are
very rare. Yet, in spite of their curious interest, he owes his real
distinction and the survival of his name to his translation of Rabelais.
The first two books appeared in 1653. The original edition, exceedingly
scarce, was carefully reprinted in 1838, only a hundred copies being
issued, by an English bibliophile T(heodore) M(artin), whose interesting
preface I regret to sum up so cursorily. At the end of the seventeenth
century, in 1693, a French refugee, Peter Antony Motteux, whose English
verses and whose plays are not without value, published in a little octavo
volume a reprint, very incorrect as to the text, of the first two books, to
which he added the third, from the manuscript found amongst Urquhart's
papers. The success which attended this venture suggested to Motteux the
idea of completing the work, and a second edition, in two volumes, appeared
in 1708, with the translation of the fourth and fifth books, and notes.
Nineteen years after his death, John Ozell, translator on a large scale of
French, Italian, and Spanish authors, revised Motteux's edition, which he
published in five volumes in 1737, adding Le Duchat's notes; and this
version has often been reprinted since.
The continuation by Motteux, who was also the translator of Don Quixote,
has merits of its own. It is precise, elegant, and very faithful.
Urquhart's, without taking liberties with Rabelais like Fischart, is not
always so closely literal and exact. Nevertheless, it is much superior to
Motteux's. If Urquhart does not constantly adhere to the form of the
expression, if he makes a few slight additions, not only has he an
understanding of the original, but he feels it, and renders the sense with
a force and a vivacity full of warmth and brilliancy. His own learning
made the comprehension of the work easy to him, and his anglicization of
words fabricated by Rabelais is particularly successful. The necessity of
keeping to his text prevented his indulgence in the convolutions and
divagations dictated by his exuberant fancy when writing on his own
account. His style, always full of life and vigour, is here balanced,
lucid, and picturesque. Never elsewhere did he write so well. And thus
the translation reproduces the very accent of the original, besides
possessing a very remarkable character of its own. Such a literary tone
and such literary qualities are rarely found in a translation. Urquhart's,
very useful for the interpretation of obscure passages, may, and indeed
should be read as a whole, both for Rabelais and for its own merits.
Holland, too, possesses a translation of Rabelais. They knew French in
that country in the seventeenth century better than they do to-day, and
there Rabelais' works were reprinted when no editions were appearing in
France. This Dutch translation was published at Amsterdam in 1682, by J.
Tenhoorn. The name attached to it, Claudio Gallitalo (Claudius
French-Italian) must certainly be a pseudonym. Only a Dutch scholar could
identify the translator, and state the value to be assigned to his work.
Rabelais' style has many different sources. Besides its force and
brilliancy, its gaiety, wit, and dignity, its abundant richness is no less
remarkable. It would be impossible and useless to compile a glossary of
Voltaire's words. No French writer has used so few, and all of them are of
the simplest. There is not one of them that is not part of the common
speech, or which demands a note or an explanation. Rabelais' vocabulary,
on the other hand, is of an astonishing variety. Where does it all come
from? As a fact, he had at his command something like three languages,
which he used in turn, or which he mixed according to the effect he wished
to produce.
First of all, of course, he had ready to his hand the whole speech of his
time, which had no secrets for him. Provincials have been too eager to
appropriate him, to make of him a local author, the pride of some village,
in order that their district might have the merit of being one of the
causes, one of the factors of his genius. Every neighbourhood where he
ever lived has declared that his distinction was due to his knowledge of
its popular speech. But these dialect-patriots have fallen out among
themselves. To which dialect was he indebted? Was it that of Touraine, or
Berri, or Poitou, or Paris? It is too often forgotten, in regard to French
patois--leaving out of count the languages of the South--that the words or
expressions that are no longer in use to-day are but a survival, a still
living trace of the tongue and the pronunciation of other days. Rabelais,
more than any other writer, took advantage of the happy chances and the
richness of the popular speech, but he wrote in French, and nothing but
French. That is why he remains so forcible, so lucid, and so living, more
living even--speaking only of his style out of charity to the others--than
any of his contemporaries.
It has been said that great French prose is solely the work of the
seventeenth century. There were nevertheless, before that, two men,
certainly very different and even hostile, who were its initiators and its
masters, Calvin on the one hand, on the other Rabelais.
Rabelais had a wonderful knowledge of the prose and the verse of the
fifteenth century: he was familiar with Villon, Pathelin, the Quinze Joies
de Mariage, the Cent Nouvelles, the chronicles and the romances, and even
earlier works, too, such as the Roman de la Rose. Their words, their turns
of expression came naturally to his pen, and added a piquancy and, as it
were, a kind of gloss of antique novelty to his work. He fabricated words,
too, on Greek and Latin models, with great ease, sometimes audaciously and
with needless frequency. These were for him so many means, so many
elements of variety. Sometimes he did this in mockery, as in the humorous
discourse of the Limousin scholar, for which he is not a little indebted to
Geoffroy Tory in the Champfleury; sometimes, on the contrary, seriously,
from a habit acquired in dealing with classical tongues.
Again, another reason of the richness of his vocabulary was that he
invented and forged words for himself. Following the example of
Aristophanes, he coined an enormous number of interminable words, droll
expressions, sudden and surprising constructions. What had made Greece and
the Athenians laugh was worth transporting to Paris.
With an instrument so rich, resources so endless, and the skill to use
them, it is no wonder that he could give voice to anything, be as humorous
as he could be serious, as comic as he could be grave, that he could
express himself and everybody else, from the lowest to the highest. He had
every colour on his palette, and such skill was in his fingers that he
could depict every variety of light and shade.
We have evidence that Rabelais did not always write in the same fashion.
The Chronique Gargantuaine is uniform in style and quite simple, but cannot
with certainty be attributed to him. His letters are bombastic and thin;
his few attempts at verse are heavy, lumbering, and obscure, altogether
lacking in harmony, and quite as bad as those of his friend, Jean Bouchet.
He had no gift of poetic form, as indeed is evident even from his prose.
And his letters from Rome to the Bishop of Maillezais, interesting as they
are in regard to the matter, are as dull, bare, flat, and dry in style as
possible.
Without his signature no one would possibly have thought of
attributing them to him. He is only a literary artist when he wishes to be
such; and in his romance he changes the style completely every other
moment: it has no constant character or uniform manner, and therefore
unity is almost entirely wanting in his work, while his endeavours after
contrast are unceasing. There is throughout the whole the evidence of
careful and conscious elaboration.
Hence, however lucid and free be the style of his romance, and though its
flexibility and ease seem at first sight to have cost no trouble at all,
yet its merit lies precisely in the fact that it succeeds in concealing the
toil, in hiding the seams. He could not have reached this perfection at a
first attempt. He must have worked long at the task, revised it again and
again, corrected much, and added rather than cut away. The aptness of form
and expression has been arrived at by deliberate means, and owes nothing to
chance. Apart from the toning down of certain bold passages, to soften
their effect, and appease the storm--for these were not literary
alterations, but were imposed on him by prudence--one can see how numerous
are the variations in his text, how necessary it is to take account of
them, and to collect them. A good edition, of course, would make no
attempt at amalgamating these. That would give a false impression and end
in confusion; but it should note them all, and show them all, not combined,
but simply as variations.
After Le Duchat, all the editions, in their care that nothing should be
lost, made the mistake of collecting and placing side by side things which
had no connection with each other, which had even been substituted for each
other. The result was a fabricated text, full of contradictions naturally.
But since the edition issued by M. Jannet, the well-known publisher of the
Bibliotheque Elzevirienne, who was the first to get rid of this patchwork,
this mosaic, Rabelais' latest text has been given, accompanied by all the
earlier variations, to show the changes he made, as well as his
suppressions and additions. It would also be possible to reverse the
method. It would be interesting to take his first text as the basis,
noting the later modifications. This would be quite as instructive and
really worth doing. Perhaps one might then see more clearly with what care
he made his revisions, after what fashion he corrected, and especially what
were the additions he made.
No more striking instance can be quoted than the admirable chapter about
the shipwreck. It was not always so long as Rabelais made it in the end:
it was much shorter at first. As a rule, when an author recasts some
passage that he wishes to revise, he does so by rewriting the whole, or at
least by interpolating passages at one stroke, so to speak. Nothing of the
kind is seen here. Rabelais suppressed nothing, modified nothing; he did
not change his plan at all. What he did was to make insertions, to slip in
between two clauses a new one. He expressed his meaning in a lengthier
way, and the former clause is found in its integrity along with the
additional one, of which it forms, as it were, the warp. It was by this
method of touching up the smallest details, by making here and there such
little noticeable additions, that he succeeded in heightening the effect
without either change or loss. In the end it looks as if he had altered
nothing, added nothing new, as if it had always been so from the first, and
had never been meddled with.
The comparison is most instructive, showing us to what an extent Rabelais'
admirable style was due to conscious effort, care, and elaboration, a fact
which is generally too much overlooked, and how instead of leaving any
trace which would reveal toil and study, it has on the contrary a
marvellous cohesion, precision, and brilliancy. It was modelled and
remodelled, repaired, touched up, and yet it has all the appearance of
having been created at a single stroke, or of having been run like molten
wax into its final form.
Something should be said here of the sources from which Rabelais borrowed.
He was not the first in France to satirize the romances of chivalry. The
romance in verse by Baudouin de Sebourc, printed in recent years, was a
parody of the Chansons de Geste. In the Moniage Guillaume, and especially
in the Moniage Rainouart, in which there is a kind of giant, and
occasionally a comic giant, there are situations and scenes which remind us
of Rabelais. The kind of Fabliaux in mono-rhyme quatrains of the old
Aubery anticipate his coarse and popular jests. But all that is beside the
question; Rabelais did not know these. Nothing is of direct interest save
what was known to him, what fell under his eyes, what lay to his hand--as
the Facetiae of Poggio, and the last sermonnaires. In the course of one's
reading one may often enough come across the origin of some of Rabelais'
witticisms; here and there we may discover how he has developed a
situation. While gathering his materials wherever he could find them, he
was nevertheless profoundly original.
On this point much research and investigation might be employed. But there
is no need why these researches should be extended to the region of fancy.
Gargantua has been proved by some to be of Celtic origin. Very often he is
a solar myth, and the statement that Rabelais only collected popular
traditions and gave new life to ancient legends is said to be proved by the
large number of megalithic monuments to which is attached the name of
Gargantua. It was, of course, quite right to make a list of these, to draw
up, as it were, a chart of them, but the conclusion is not justified. The
name, instead of being earlier, is really later, and is a witness, not to
the origin, but to the success and rapid popularity of his novel. No one
has ever yet produced a written passage or any ancient testimony to prove
the existence of the name before Rabelais. To place such a tradition on a
sure basis, positive traces must be forthcoming; and they cannot be adduced
even for the most celebrated of these monuments, since he mentions himself
the great menhir near Poitiers, which he christened by the name of
Passelourdin. That there is something in the theory is possible. Perrault
found the subjects of his stories in the tales told by mothers and nurses.
He fixed them finally by writing them down. Floating about vaguely as they
were, he seized them, worked them up, gave them shape, and yet of scarcely
any of them is there to be found before his time a single trace. So we
must resign ourselves to know just as little of what Gargantua and
Pantagruel were before the sixteenth century.
In a book of a contemporary of Rabelais, the Legende de Pierre Faifeu by
the Angevin, Charles de Bourdigne, the first edition of which dates from
1526 and the second 1531--both so rare and so forgotten that the work is
only known since the eighteenth century by the reprint of Custelier--in the
introductory ballad which recommends this book to readers, occur these
lines in the list of popular books which Faifeu would desire to replace:
'Laissez ester Caillette le folastre,
Les quatre filz Aymon vestuz de bleu,
Gargantua qui a cheveux de plastre. '
He has not 'cheveux de plastre' in Rabelais. If the rhyme had not
suggested the phrase--and the exigencies of the strict form of the ballade
and its forced repetitions often imposed an idea which had its whole origin
in the rhyme--we might here see a dramatic trace found nowhere else. The
name of Pantagruel is mentioned too, incidentally, in a Mystery of the
fifteenth century. These are the only references to the names which up
till now have been discovered, and they are, as one sees, of but little
account.
On the other hand, the influence of Aristophanes and of Lucian, his
intimate acquaintance with nearly all the writers of antiquity, Greek as
well as Latin, with whom Rabelais is more permeated even than Montaigne,
were a mine of inspiration. The proof of it is everywhere. Pliny
especially was his encyclopaedia, his constant companion. All he says of
the Pantagruelian herb, though he amply developed it for himself, is taken
from Pliny's chapter on flax. And there is a great deal more of this kind
to be discovered, for Rabelais does not always give it as quotation. On
the other hand, when he writes, 'Such an one says,' it would be difficult
enough to find who is meant, for the 'such an one' is a fictitious writer.
The method is amusing, but it is curious to account of it.
The question of the Chronique Gargantuaine is still undecided. Is it by
Rabelais or by someone else? Both theories are defensible, and can be
supported by good reasons. In the Chronique everything is heavy,
occasionally meaningless, and nearly always insipid. Can the same man have
written the Chronique and Gargantua, replaced a book really commonplace by
a masterpiece, changed the facts and incidents, transformed a heavy icy
pleasantry into a work glowing with wit and life, made it no longer a mass
of laborious trifling and cold-blooded exaggerations but a satire on human
life of the highest genius? Still there are points common to the two.
Besides, Rabelais wrote other things; and it is only in his romance that he
shows literary skill. The conception of it would have entered his mind
first only in a bare and summary fashion. It would have been taken up
again, expanded, developed, metamorphosed. That is possible, and, for my
part, I am of those who, like Brunet and Nodier, are inclined to think that
the Chronique, in spite of its inferiority, is really a first attempt,
condemned as soon as the idea was conceived in another form. As its
earlier date is incontestable, we must conclude that if the Chronique is
not by him, his Gargantua and its continuation would not have existed
without it. This would be a great obligation to stand under to some
unknown author, and in that case it is astonishing that his enemies did not
reproach him during his lifetime with being merely an imitator and a
plagiarist. So there are reasons for and against his authorship of it, and
it would be dangerous to make too bold an assertion.
One fact which is absolutely certain and beyond all controversy, is that
Rabelais owed much to one of his contemporaries, an Italian, to the
Histoire Macaronique of Merlin Coccaie. Its author, Theophilus Folengo,
who was also a monk, was born in 1491, and died only a short time before
Rabelais, in 1544. But his burlesque poem was published in 1517. It was
in Latin verse, written in an elaborately fabricated style. It is not dog
Latin, but Latin ingeniously italianized, or rather Italian, even Mantuan,
latinized. The contrast between the modern form of the word and its Roman
garb produces the most amusing effect. In the original it is sometimes
difficult to read, for Folengo has no objection to using the most
colloquial words and phrases.
The subject is quite different. It is the adventures of Baldo, son of Guy
de Montauban, the very lively history of his youth, his trial, imprisonment
and deliverance, his journey in search of his father, during which he
visits the Planets and Hell. The narration is constantly interrupted by
incidental adventures. Occasionally they are what would be called to-day
very naturalistic, and sometimes they are madly extravagant.
But Fracasso, Baldo's friend, is a giant; another friend, Cingar, who
delivers him, is Panurge exactly, and quite as much given to practical
joking. The women in the senile amour of the old Tognazzo, the judges, and
the poor sergeants, are no more gently dealt with by Folengo than by the
monk of the Iles d'Hyeres. If Dindenaut's name does not occur, there are
the sheep. The tempest is there, and the invocation to all the saints.
Rabelais improves all he borrows, but it is from Folengo he starts. He
does not reproduce the words, but, like the Italian, he revels in drinking
scenes, junkettings, gormandizing, battles, scuffles, wounds and corpses,
magic, witches, speeches, repeated enumerations, lengthiness, and a
solemnly minute precision of impossible dates and numbers. The atmosphere,
the tone, the methods are the same, and to know Rabelais well, you must
know Folengo well too.
Detailed proof of this would be too lengthy a matter; one would have to
quote too many passages, but on this question of sources nothing is more
interesting than a perusal of the Opus Macaronicorum. It was translated
into French only in 1606--Paris, Gilley Robinot. This translation of
course cannot reproduce all the many amusing forms of words, but it is
useful, nevertheless, in showing more clearly the points of resemblance
between the two works,--how far in form, ideas, details, and phrases
Rabelais was permeated by Folengo. The anonymous translator saw this quite
well, and said so in his title, 'Histoire macaronique de Merlin Coccaie,
prototype of Rabelais. ' It is nothing but the truth, and Rabelais, who
does not hide it from himself, on more than one occasion mentions the name
of Merlin Coccaie.
Besides, Rabelais was fed on the Italians of his time as on the Greeks and
Romans. Panurge, who owes much to Cingar, is also not free from
obligations to the miscreant Margutte in the Morgante Maggiore of Pulci.
Had Rabelais in his mind the tale from the Florentine Chronicles, how in
the Savonarola riots, when the Piagnoni and the Arrabiati came to blows in
the church of the Dominican convent of San-Marco, Fra Pietro in the scuffle
broke the heads of the assailants with the bronze crucifix he had taken
from the altar? A well-handled cross could so readily be used as a weapon,
that probably it has served as such more than once, and other and even
quite modern instances might be quoted.
But other Italian sources are absolutely certain. There are few more
wonderful chapters in Rabelais than the one about the drinkers. It is not
a dialogue: those short exclamations exploding from every side, all
referring to the same thing, never repeating themselves, and yet always
varying the same theme. At the end of the Novelle of Gentile Sermini of
Siena, there is a chapter called Il Giuoco della pugna, the Game of Battle.
Here are the first lines of it: 'Apre, apre, apre. Chi gioca, chi gioca
--uh, uh! --A Porrione, a Porrione. --Viela, viela; date a ognuno. --Alle
mantella, alle mantella. --Oltre di corsa; non vi fermate. --Voltate qui;
ecco costoro; fate veli innanzi. --Viela, viela; date costi. --Chi la fa?
Io--Ed io. --Dagli; ah, ah, buona fu. --Or cosi; alla mascella, al fianco.
--Dagli basso; di punta, di punta. --Ah, ah, buon gioco, buon gioco. '
And thus it goes on with fire and animation for pages. Rabelais probably
translated or directly imitated it. He changed the scene; there was no
giuooco della pugna in France. He transferred to a drinking-bout this
clatter of exclamations which go off by themselves, which cross each other
and get no answer. He made a wonderful thing of it. But though he did not
copy Sermini, yet Sermini's work provided him with the form of the subject,
and was the theme for Rabelais' marvellous variations.
Who does not remember the fantastic quarrel of the cook with the poor devil
who had flavoured his dry bread with the smoke of the roast, and the
judgment of Seyny John, truly worthy of Solomon? It comes from the Cento
Novelle Antiche, rewritten from tales older than Boccaccio, and moreover of
an extreme brevity and dryness. They are only the framework, the notes,
the skeleton of tales. The subject is often wonderful, but nothing is made
of it: it is left unshaped. Rabelais wrote a version of one, the ninth.
The scene takes place, not at Paris, but at Alexandria in Egypt among the
Saracens, and the cook is called Fabrac. But the surprise at the end, the
sagacious judgment by which the sound of a piece of money was made the
price of the smoke, is the same. Now the first dated edition of the Cento
Novelle (which were frequently reprinted) appeared at Bologna in 1525, and
it is certain that Rabelais had read the tales. And there would be much
else of the same kind to learn if we knew Rabelais' library.
A still stranger fact of this sort may be given to show how nothing came
amiss to him. He must have known, and even copied the Latin Chronicle of
the Counts of Anjou. It is accepted, and rightly so, as an historical
document, but that is no reason for thinking that the truth may not have
been manipulated and adorned. The Counts of Anjou were not saints. They
were proud, quarrelsome, violent, rapacious, and extravagant, as greedy as
they were charitable to the Church, treacherous and cruel. Yet their
anonymous panegyrist has made them patterns of all the virtues. In reality
it is both a history and in some sort a romance; especially is it a
collection of examples worthy of being followed, in the style of the
Cyropaedia, our Juvenal of the fifteenth century, and a little like
Fenelon's Telemaque. Now in it there occurs the address of one of the
counts to those who rebelled against him and who were at his mercy.
Rabelais must have known it, for he has copied it, or rather, literally
translated whole lines of it in the wonderful speech of Gargantua to the
vanquished. His contemporaries, who approved of his borrowing from
antiquity, could not detect this one, because the book was not printed till
much later. But Rabelais lived in Maine. In Anjou, which often figures
among the localities he names, he must have met with and read the
Chronicles of the Counts in manuscript, probably in some monastery library,
whether at Fontenay-le-Comte or elsewhere it matters little. There is not
only a likeness in the ideas and tone, but in the words too, which cannot
be a mere matter of chance. He must have known the Chronicles of the
Counts of Anjou, and they inspired one of his finest pages. One sees,
therefore, how varied were the sources whence he drew, and how many of them
must probably always escape us.
When, as has been done for Moliere, a critical bibliography of the works
relating to Rabelais is drawn up--which, by the bye, will entail a very
great amount of labour--the easiest part will certainly be the bibliography
of the old editions. That is the section that has been most satisfactorily
and most completely worked out. M. Brunet said the last word on the
subject in his Researches in 1852, and in the important article in the
fifth edition of his Manuel du Libraire (iv. , 1863, pp. 1037-1071).
The facts about the fifth book cannot be summed up briefly. It was printed
as a whole at first, without the name of the place, in 1564, and next year
at Lyons by Jean Martin. It has given, and even still gives rise to two
contradictory opinions. Is it Rabelais' or not?
First of all, if he had left it complete, would sixteen years have gone by
before it was printed? Then, does it bear evident marks of his
workmanship? Is the hand of the master visible throughout? Antoine Du
Verdier in the 1605 edition of his Prosopographie writes: '(Rabelais')
misfortune has been that everybody has wished to "pantagruelize! " and
several books have appeared under his name, and have been added to his
works, which are not by him, as, for instance, l'Ile Sonnante, written by a
certain scholar of Valence and others. '
The scholar of Valence might be Guillaume des Autels, to whom with more
certainty can be ascribed the authorship of a dull imitation of Rabelais,
the History of Fanfreluche and Gaudichon, published in 1578, which, to say
the least of it, is very much inferior to the fifth book.
Louis Guyon, in his Diverses Lecons, is still more positive: 'As to the
last book which has been included in his works, entitled l'Ile Sonnante,
the object of which seems to be to find fault with and laugh at the members
and the authorities of the Catholic Church, I protest that he did not
compose it, for it was written long after his death. I was at Paris when
it was written, and I know quite well who was its author; he was not a
doctor. ' That is very emphatic, and it is impossible to ignore it.
Yet everyone must recognize that there is a great deal of Rabelais in the
fifth book. He must have planned it and begun it. Remembering that in
1548 he had published, not as an experiment, but rather as a bait and as an
announcement, the first eleven chapters of the fourth book, we may conclude
that the first sixteen chapters of the fifth book published by themselves
nine years after his death, in 1562, represent the remainder of his
definitely finished work. This is the more certain because these first
chapters, which contain the Apologue of the Horse and the Ass and the
terrible Furred Law-cats, are markedly better than what follows them. They
are not the only ones where the master's hand may be traced, but they are
the only ones where no other hand could possibly have interfered.
In the remainder the sentiment is distinctly Protestant. Rabelais was much
struck by the vices of the clergy and did not spare them. Whether we are
unable to forgive his criticisms because they were conceived in a spirit of
raillery, or whether, on the other hand, we feel admiration for him on this
point, yet Rabelais was not in the least a sectary. If he strongly desired
a moral reform, indirectly pointing out the need of it in his mocking
fashion, he was not favourable to a political reform. Those who would make
of him a Protestant altogether forget that the Protestants of his time were
not for him, but against him. Henri Estienne, for instance, Ramus,
Theodore de Beze, and especially Calvin, should know how he was to be
regarded. Rabelais belonged to what may be called the early reformation,
to that band of honest men in the beginning of the sixteenth century,
precursors of the later one perhaps, but, like Erasmus, between the two
extremes. He was neither Lutheran nor Calvinist, neither German nor
Genevese, and it is quite natural that his work was not reprinted in
Switzerland, which would certainly have happened had the Protestants looked
on him as one of themselves.
That Rabelais collected the materials for the fifth book, had begun it, and
got on some way, there can be no doubt: the excellence of a large number
of passages prove it, but--taken as a whole--the fifth book has not the
value, the verve, and the variety of the others. The style is quite
different, less rich, briefer, less elaborate, drier, in parts even
wearisome. In the first four books Rabelais seldom repeats himself. The
fifth book contains from the point of view of the vocabulary really the
least novelty. On the contrary, it is full of words and expressions
already met with, which is very natural in an imitation, in a copy, forced
to keep to a similar tone, and to show by such reminders and likenesses
that it is really by the same pen. A very striking point is the profound
difference in the use of anatomical terms. In the other books they are
most frequently used in a humorous sense, and nonsensically, with a quite
other meaning than their own; in the fifth they are applied correctly. It
was necessary to include such terms to keep up the practice, but the writer
has not thought of using them to add to the comic effect: one cannot
always think of everything. Trouble has been taken, of course, to include
enumerations, but there are much fewer fabricated and fantastic words. In
short, the hand of the maker is far from showing the same suppleness and
strength.
A eulogistic quatrain is signed Nature quite, which, it is generally
agreed, is an anagram of Jean Turquet. Did the adapter of the fifth book
sign his work in this indirect fashion? He might be of the Genevese family
to whom Louis Turquet and his son Theodore belonged, both well-known, and
both strong Protestants. The obscurity relating to this matter is far from
being cleared up, and perhaps never will be.
It fell to my lot--here, unfortunately, I am forced to speak of a personal
matter--to print for the first time the manuscript of the fifth book. At
first it was hoped it might be in Rabelais' own hand; afterwards that it
might be at least a copy of his unfinished work. The task was a difficult
one, for the writing, extremely flowing and rapid, is execrable, and most
difficult to decipher and to transcribe accurately. Besides, it often
happens in the sixteenth and the end of the fifteenth century, that
manuscripts are much less correct than the printed versions, even when they
have not been copied by clumsy and ignorant hands.
apothecary, which would fit in with the medical profession adopted by his
son in after years. Rabelais had brothers, all older than himself.
Perhaps because he was the youngest, his father destined him for the
Church.
The time he spent while a child with the Benedictine monks at Seuille is
uncertain. There he might have made the acquaintance of the prototype of
his Friar John, a brother of the name of Buinart, afterwards Prior of
Sermaize. He was longer at the Abbey of the Cordeliers at La Baumette,
half a mile from Angers, where he became a novice. As the brothers Du
Bellay, who were later his Maecenases, were then studying at the University
of Angers, where it is certain he was not a student, it is doubtless from
this youthful period that his acquaintance and alliance with them should
date. Voluntarily, or induced by his family, Rabelais now embraced the
ecclesiastical profession, and entered the monastery of the Franciscan
Cordeliers at Fontenay-le-Comte, in Lower Poitou, which was honoured by his
long sojourn at the vital period of his life when his powers were ripening.
There it was he began to study and to think, and there also began his
troubles.
In spite of the wide-spread ignorance among the monks of that age, the
encyclopaedic movement of the Renaissance was attracting all the lofty
minds. Rabelais threw himself into it with enthusiasm, and Latin antiquity
was not enough for him. Greek, a study discountenanced by the Church,
which looked on it as dangerous and tending to freethought and heresy, took
possession of him. To it he owed the warm friendship of Pierre Amy and of
the celebrated Guillaume Bude. In fact, the Greek letters of the latter
are the best source of information concerning this period of Rabelais'
life. It was at Fontenay-le-Comte also that he became acquainted with the
Brissons and the great jurist Andre Tiraqueau, whom he never mentions but
with admiration and deep affection. Tiraqueau's treatise, De legibus
connubialibus, published for the first time in 1513, has an important
bearing on the life of Rabelais. There we learn that, dissatisfied with
the incomplete translation of Herodotus by Laurent Valla, Rabelais had
retranslated into Latin the first book of the History. That translation
unfortunately is lost, as so many other of his scattered works. It is
probably in this direction that the hazard of fortune has most discoveries
and surprises in store for the lucky searcher. Moreover, as in this law
treatise Tiraqueau attacked women in a merciless fashion, President Amaury
Bouchard published in 1522 a book in their defence, and Rabelais, who was a
friend of both the antagonists, took the side of Tiraqueau. It should be
observed also in passing, that there are several pages of such audacious
plain-speaking, that Rabelais, though he did not copy these in his Marriage
of Panurge, has there been, in his own fashion, as out spoken as Tiraqueau.
If such freedom of language could be permitted in a grave treatise of law,
similar liberties were certainly, in the same century, more natural in a
book which was meant to amuse.
The great reproach always brought against Rabelais is not the want of
reserve of his language merely, but his occasional studied coarseness,
which is enough to spoil his whole work, and which lowers its value. La
Bruyere, in the chapter Des ouvrages de l'esprit, not in the first edition
of the Caracteres, but in the fifth, that is to say in 1690, at the end of
the great century, gives us on this subject his own opinion and that of his
age:
'Marot and Rabelais are inexcusable in their habit of scattering filth
about their writings. Both of them had genius enough and wit enough to do
without any such expedient, even for the amusement of those persons who
look more to the laugh to be got out of a book than to what is admirable in
it. Rabelais especially is incomprehensible. His book is an enigma,--one
may say inexplicable. It is a Chimera; it is like the face of a lovely
woman with the feet and the tail of a reptile, or of some creature still
more loathsome. It is a monstrous confusion of fine and rare morality with
filthy corruption. Where it is bad, it goes beyond the worst; it is the
delight of the basest of men. Where it is good, it reaches the exquisite,
the very best; it ministers to the most delicate tastes. '
Putting aside the rather slight connection established between two men of
whom one is of very little importance compared with the other, this is
otherwise very admirably said, and the judgment is a very just one, except
with regard to one point--the misunderstanding of the atmosphere in which
the book was created, and the ignoring of the examples of a similar
tendency furnished by literature as well as by the popular taste. Was it
not the Ancients that began it? Aristophanes, Catullus, Petronius,
Martial, flew in the face of decency in their ideas as well as in the words
they used, and they dragged after them in this direction not a few of the
Latin poets of the Renaissance, who believed themselves bound to imitate
them. Is Italy without fault in this respect? Her story-tellers in prose
lie open to easy accusation. Her Capitoli in verse go to incredible
lengths; and the astonishing success of Aretino must not be forgotten, nor
the licence of the whole Italian comic theatre of the sixteenth century.
The Calandra of Bibbiena, who was afterwards a Cardinal, and the Mandragola
of Machiavelli, are evidence enough, and these were played before Popes,
who were not a whit embarrassed. Even in England the drama went very far
for a time, and the comic authors of the reign of Charles II. , evidently
from a reaction, and to shake off the excess and the wearisomeness of
Puritan prudery and affectation, which sent them to the opposite extreme,
are not exactly noted for their reserve. But we need not go beyond France.
Slight indications, very easily verified, are all that may be set down
here; a formal and detailed proof would be altogether too dangerous.
Thus, for instance, the old Fabliaux--the Farces of the fifteenth century,
the story-tellers of the sixteenth--reveal one of the sides, one of the
veins, so to speak, of our literature. The art that addresses itself to
the eye had likewise its share of this coarseness. Think of the sculptures
on the capitals and the modillions of churches, and the crude frankness of
certain painted windows of the fifteenth century. Queen Anne was, without
any doubt, one of the most virtuous women in the world. Yet she used to go
up the staircase of her chateau at Blois, and her eyes were not offended at
seeing at the foot of a bracket a not very decent carving of a monk and a
nun. Neither did she tear out of her book of Hours the large miniature of
the winter month, in which, careless of her neighbours' eyes, the mistress
of the house, sitting before her great fireplace, warms herself in a
fashion which it is not advisable that dames of our age should imitate.
The statue of Cybele by the Tribolo, executed for Francis I. , and placed,
not against a wall, but in the middle of Queen Claude's chamber at
Fontainebleau, has behind it an attribute which would have been more in
place on a statue of Priapus, and which was the symbol of generativeness.
The tone of the conversations was ordinarily of a surprising coarseness,
and the Precieuses, in spite of their absurdities, did a very good work in
setting themselves in opposition to it. The worthy Chevalier de
La-Tour-Landry, in his Instructions to his own daughters, without a thought
of harm, gives examples which are singular indeed, and in Caxton's
translation these are not omitted. The Adevineaux Amoureux, printed at
Bruges by Colard Mansion, are astonishing indeed when one considers that
they were the little society diversions of the Duchesses of Burgundy and of
the great ladies of a court more luxurious and more refined than the French
court, which revelled in the Cent Nouvelles of good King Louis XI.
Rabelais' pleasantry about the woman folle a la messe is exactly in the
style of the Adevineaux.
A later work than any of his, the Novelle of Bandello, should be kept in
mind--for the writer was Bishop of Agen, and his work was translated into
French--as also the Dames Galantes of Brantome. Read the Journal of
Heroard, that honest doctor, who day by day wrote down the details
concerning the health of Louis XIII. from his birth, and you will
understand the tone of the conversation of Henry IV. The jokes at a
country wedding are trifles compared with this royal coarseness. Le Moyen
de Parvenir is nothing but a tissue and a mass of filth, and the too
celebrated Cabinet Satyrique proves what, under Louis XIII. , could be
written, printed, and read. The collection of songs formed by Clairambault
shows that the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries were no purer than the
sixteenth. Some of the most ribald songs are actually the work of
Princesses of the royal House.
It is, therefore, altogether unjust to make Rabelais the scapegoat, to
charge him alone with the sins of everybody else. He spoke as those of his
time used to speak; when amusing them he used their language to make
himself understood, and to slip in his asides, which without this sauce
would never have been accepted, would have found neither eyes nor ears.
Let us blame not him, therefore, but the manners of his time.
Besides, his gaiety, however coarse it may appear to us--and how rare a
thing is gaiety! --has, after all, nothing unwholesome about it; and this is
too often overlooked. Where does he tempt one to stray from duty? Where,
even indirectly, does he give pernicious advice? Whom has he led to evil
ways? Does he ever inspire feelings that breed misconduct and vice, or is
he ever the apologist of these? Many poets and romance writers, under
cover of a fastidious style, without one coarse expression, have been
really and actively hurtful; and of that it is impossible to accuse
Rabelais. Women in particular quickly revolt from him, and turn away
repulsed at once by the archaic form of the language and by the
outspokenness of the words. But if he be read aloud to them, omitting the
rougher parts and modernizing the pronunciation, it will be seen that they
too are impressed by his lively wit as by the loftiness of his thought. It
would be possible, too, to extract, for young persons, without
modification, admirable passages of incomparable force. But those who have
brought out expurgated editions of him, or who have thought to improve him
by trying to rewrite him in modern French, have been fools for their pains,
and their insulting attempts have had, and always will have, the success
they deserve.
His dedications prove to what extent his whole work was accepted. Not to
speak of his epistolary relations with Bude, with the Cardinal d'Armagnac
and with Pellissier, the ambassador of Francis I. and Bishop of Maguelonne,
or of his dedication to Tiraqueau of his Lyons edition of the Epistolae
Medicinales of Giovanni Manardi of Ferrara, of the one addressed to the
President Amaury Bouchard of the two legal texts which he believed antique,
there is still the evidence of his other and more important dedications.
In 1532 he dedicated his Hippocrates and his Galen to Geoffroy d'Estissac,
Bishop of Maillezais, to whom in 1535 and 1536 he addressed from Rome the
three news letters, which alone have been preserved; and in 1534 he
dedicated from Lyons his edition of the Latin book of Marliani on the
topography of Rome to Jean du Bellay (at that time Bishop of Paris) who was
raised to the Cardinalate in 1535. Beside these dedications we must set
the privilege of Francis I. of September, 1545, and the new privilege
granted by Henry II. on August 6th, 1550, Cardinal de Chatillon present,
for the third book, which was dedicated, in an eight-lined stanza, to the
Spirit of the Queen of Navarre. These privileges, from the praises and
eulogies they express in terms very personal and very exceptional, are as
important in Rabelais' life as were, in connection with other matters, the
Apostolic Pastorals in his favour. Of course, in these the popes had not
to introduce his books of diversions, which, nevertheless, would have
seemed in their eyes but very venial sins. The Sciomachie of 1549, an
account of the festivities arranged at Rome by Cardinal du Bellay in honour
of the birth of the second son of Henry II. , was addressed to Cardinal de
Guise, and in 1552 the fourth book was dedicated, in a new prologue, to
Cardinal de Chatillon, the brother of Admiral de Coligny.
These are no unknown or insignificant personages, but the greatest lords
and princes of the Church. They loved and admired and protected Rabelais,
and put no restrictions in his way. Why should we be more fastidious and
severe than they were? Their high contemporary appreciation gives much
food for thought.
There are few translations of Rabelais in foreign tongues; and certainly
the task is no light one, and demands more than a familiarity with ordinary
French. It would have been easier in Italy than anywhere else. Italian,
from its flexibility and its analogy to French, would have lent itself
admirably to the purpose; the instrument was ready, but the hand was not
forthcoming. Neither is there any Spanish translation, a fact which can be
more easily understood. The Inquisition would have been a far more serious
opponent than the Paris' Sorbonne, and no one ventured on the experiment.
Yet Rabelais forces comparison with Cervantes, whose precursor he was in
reality, though the two books and the two minds are very different. They
have only one point in common, their attack and ridicule of the romances of
chivalry and of the wildly improbable adventures of knight-errants. But in
Don Quixote there is not a single detail which would suggest that Cervantes
knew Rabelais' book or owed anything to it whatsoever, even the
starting-point of his subject. Perhaps it was better he should not have
been influenced by him, in however slight a degree; his originality is the
more intact and the more genial.
On the other hand, Rabelais has been several times translated into German.
In the present century Regis published at Leipsic, from 1831 to 1841, with
copious notes, a close and faithful translation. The first one cannot be
so described, that of Johann Fischart, a native of Mainz or Strasburg, who
died in 1614. He was a Protestant controversialist, and a satirist of
fantastic and abundant imagination. In 1575 appeared his translation of
Rabelais' first book, and in 1590 he published the comic catalogue of the
library of Saint Victor, borrowed from the second book. It is not a
translation, but a recast in the boldest style, full of alterations and of
exaggerations, both as regards the coarse expressions which he took upon
himself to develop and to add to, and in the attacks on the Roman Catholic
Church. According to Jean Paul Richter, Fischart is much superior to
Rabelais in style and in the fruitfulness of his ideas, and his equal in
erudition and in the invention of new expressions after the manner of
Aristophanes. He is sure that his work was successful, because it was
often reprinted during his lifetime; but this enthusiasm of Jean Paul would
hardly carry conviction in France. Who treads in another's footprints must
follow in the rear. Instead of a creator, he is but an imitator. Those
who take the ideas of others to modify them, and make of them creations of
their own, like Shakespeare in England, Moliere and La Fontaine in France,
may be superior to those who have served them with suggestions; but then
the new works must be altogether different, must exist by themselves.
Shakespeare and the others, when they imitated, may be said always to have
destroyed their models. These copyists, if we call them so, created such
works of genius that the only pity is they are so rare. This is not the
case with Fischart, but it would be none the less curious were some one
thoroughly familiar with German to translate Fischart for us, or at least,
by long extracts from him, give an idea of the vagaries of German taste
when it thought it could do better than Rabelais. It is dangerous to
tamper with so great a work, and he who does so runs a great risk of
burning his fingers.
England has been less daring, and her modesty and discretion have brought
her success. But, before speaking of Urquhart's translation, it is but
right to mention the English-French Dictionary of Randle Cotgrave, the
first edition of which dates from 1611. It is in every way exceedingly
valuable, and superior to that of Nicot, because instead of keeping to the
plane of classic and Latin French, it showed an acquaintance with and
mastery of the popular tongue as well as of the written and learned
language. As a foreigner, Cotgrave is a little behind in his information.
He is not aware of all the changes and novelties of the passing fashion.
The Pleiad School he evidently knew nothing of, but kept to the writers of
the fifteenth and the first half of the sixteenth century. Thus words out
of Rabelais, which he always translates with admirable skill, are frequent,
and he attaches to them their author's name. So Rabelais had already
crossed the Channel, and was read in his own tongue. Somewhat later,
during the full sway of the Commonwealth--and Maitre Alcofribas Nasier must
have been a surprising apparition in the midst of Puritan severity--Captain
Urquhart undertook to translate him and to naturalize him completely in
England.
Thomas Urquhart belonged to a very old family of good standing in the North
of Scotland. After studying in Aberdeen he travelled in France, Spain, and
Italy, where his sword was as active as that intelligent curiosity of his
which is evidenced by his familiarity with three languages and the large
library which he brought back, according to his own account, from sixteen
countries he had visited.
On his return to England he entered the service of Charles I. , who knighted
him in 1641. Next year, after the death of his father, he went to Scotland
to set his family affairs in order, and to redeem his house in Cromarty.
But, in spite of another sojourn in foreign lands, his efforts to free
himself from pecuniary embarrassments were unavailing. At the king's death
his Scottish loyalty caused him to side with those who opposed the
Parliament. Formally proscribed in 1649, taken prisoner at the defeat of
Worcester in 1651, stripped of all his belongings, he was brought to
London, but was released on parole at Cromwell's recommendation. After
receiving permission to spend five months in Scotland to try once more to
settle his affairs, he came back to London to escape from his creditors.
And there he must have died, though the date of his death is unknown. It
probably took place after 1653, the date of the publication of the two
first books, and after having written the translation of the third, which
was not printed from his manuscript till the end of the seventeenth
century.
His life was therefore not without its troubles, and literary activity must
have been almost his only consolation. His writings reveal him as the
strangest character, fantastic, and full of a naive vanity, which, even at
the time he was translating the genealogy of Gargantua--surely well
calculated to cure any pondering on his own--caused him to trace his
unbroken descent from Adam, and to state that his family name was derived
from his ancestor Esormon, Prince of Achaia, 2139 B. C. , who was surnamed
Ourochartos, that is to say the Fortunate and the Well-beloved. A Gascon
could not have surpassed this.
Gifted as he was, learned in many directions, an enthusiastic
mathematician, master of several languages, occasionally full of wit and
humour, and even good sense, yet he gave his books the strangest titles,
and his ideas were no less whimsical. His style is mystic, fastidious, and
too often of a wearisome length and obscurity; his verses rhyme anyhow, or
not at all; but vivacity, force and heat are never lacking, and the
Maitland Club did well in reprinting, in 1834, his various works, which are
very rare. Yet, in spite of their curious interest, he owes his real
distinction and the survival of his name to his translation of Rabelais.
The first two books appeared in 1653. The original edition, exceedingly
scarce, was carefully reprinted in 1838, only a hundred copies being
issued, by an English bibliophile T(heodore) M(artin), whose interesting
preface I regret to sum up so cursorily. At the end of the seventeenth
century, in 1693, a French refugee, Peter Antony Motteux, whose English
verses and whose plays are not without value, published in a little octavo
volume a reprint, very incorrect as to the text, of the first two books, to
which he added the third, from the manuscript found amongst Urquhart's
papers. The success which attended this venture suggested to Motteux the
idea of completing the work, and a second edition, in two volumes, appeared
in 1708, with the translation of the fourth and fifth books, and notes.
Nineteen years after his death, John Ozell, translator on a large scale of
French, Italian, and Spanish authors, revised Motteux's edition, which he
published in five volumes in 1737, adding Le Duchat's notes; and this
version has often been reprinted since.
The continuation by Motteux, who was also the translator of Don Quixote,
has merits of its own. It is precise, elegant, and very faithful.
Urquhart's, without taking liberties with Rabelais like Fischart, is not
always so closely literal and exact. Nevertheless, it is much superior to
Motteux's. If Urquhart does not constantly adhere to the form of the
expression, if he makes a few slight additions, not only has he an
understanding of the original, but he feels it, and renders the sense with
a force and a vivacity full of warmth and brilliancy. His own learning
made the comprehension of the work easy to him, and his anglicization of
words fabricated by Rabelais is particularly successful. The necessity of
keeping to his text prevented his indulgence in the convolutions and
divagations dictated by his exuberant fancy when writing on his own
account. His style, always full of life and vigour, is here balanced,
lucid, and picturesque. Never elsewhere did he write so well. And thus
the translation reproduces the very accent of the original, besides
possessing a very remarkable character of its own. Such a literary tone
and such literary qualities are rarely found in a translation. Urquhart's,
very useful for the interpretation of obscure passages, may, and indeed
should be read as a whole, both for Rabelais and for its own merits.
Holland, too, possesses a translation of Rabelais. They knew French in
that country in the seventeenth century better than they do to-day, and
there Rabelais' works were reprinted when no editions were appearing in
France. This Dutch translation was published at Amsterdam in 1682, by J.
Tenhoorn. The name attached to it, Claudio Gallitalo (Claudius
French-Italian) must certainly be a pseudonym. Only a Dutch scholar could
identify the translator, and state the value to be assigned to his work.
Rabelais' style has many different sources. Besides its force and
brilliancy, its gaiety, wit, and dignity, its abundant richness is no less
remarkable. It would be impossible and useless to compile a glossary of
Voltaire's words. No French writer has used so few, and all of them are of
the simplest. There is not one of them that is not part of the common
speech, or which demands a note or an explanation. Rabelais' vocabulary,
on the other hand, is of an astonishing variety. Where does it all come
from? As a fact, he had at his command something like three languages,
which he used in turn, or which he mixed according to the effect he wished
to produce.
First of all, of course, he had ready to his hand the whole speech of his
time, which had no secrets for him. Provincials have been too eager to
appropriate him, to make of him a local author, the pride of some village,
in order that their district might have the merit of being one of the
causes, one of the factors of his genius. Every neighbourhood where he
ever lived has declared that his distinction was due to his knowledge of
its popular speech. But these dialect-patriots have fallen out among
themselves. To which dialect was he indebted? Was it that of Touraine, or
Berri, or Poitou, or Paris? It is too often forgotten, in regard to French
patois--leaving out of count the languages of the South--that the words or
expressions that are no longer in use to-day are but a survival, a still
living trace of the tongue and the pronunciation of other days. Rabelais,
more than any other writer, took advantage of the happy chances and the
richness of the popular speech, but he wrote in French, and nothing but
French. That is why he remains so forcible, so lucid, and so living, more
living even--speaking only of his style out of charity to the others--than
any of his contemporaries.
It has been said that great French prose is solely the work of the
seventeenth century. There were nevertheless, before that, two men,
certainly very different and even hostile, who were its initiators and its
masters, Calvin on the one hand, on the other Rabelais.
Rabelais had a wonderful knowledge of the prose and the verse of the
fifteenth century: he was familiar with Villon, Pathelin, the Quinze Joies
de Mariage, the Cent Nouvelles, the chronicles and the romances, and even
earlier works, too, such as the Roman de la Rose. Their words, their turns
of expression came naturally to his pen, and added a piquancy and, as it
were, a kind of gloss of antique novelty to his work. He fabricated words,
too, on Greek and Latin models, with great ease, sometimes audaciously and
with needless frequency. These were for him so many means, so many
elements of variety. Sometimes he did this in mockery, as in the humorous
discourse of the Limousin scholar, for which he is not a little indebted to
Geoffroy Tory in the Champfleury; sometimes, on the contrary, seriously,
from a habit acquired in dealing with classical tongues.
Again, another reason of the richness of his vocabulary was that he
invented and forged words for himself. Following the example of
Aristophanes, he coined an enormous number of interminable words, droll
expressions, sudden and surprising constructions. What had made Greece and
the Athenians laugh was worth transporting to Paris.
With an instrument so rich, resources so endless, and the skill to use
them, it is no wonder that he could give voice to anything, be as humorous
as he could be serious, as comic as he could be grave, that he could
express himself and everybody else, from the lowest to the highest. He had
every colour on his palette, and such skill was in his fingers that he
could depict every variety of light and shade.
We have evidence that Rabelais did not always write in the same fashion.
The Chronique Gargantuaine is uniform in style and quite simple, but cannot
with certainty be attributed to him. His letters are bombastic and thin;
his few attempts at verse are heavy, lumbering, and obscure, altogether
lacking in harmony, and quite as bad as those of his friend, Jean Bouchet.
He had no gift of poetic form, as indeed is evident even from his prose.
And his letters from Rome to the Bishop of Maillezais, interesting as they
are in regard to the matter, are as dull, bare, flat, and dry in style as
possible.
Without his signature no one would possibly have thought of
attributing them to him. He is only a literary artist when he wishes to be
such; and in his romance he changes the style completely every other
moment: it has no constant character or uniform manner, and therefore
unity is almost entirely wanting in his work, while his endeavours after
contrast are unceasing. There is throughout the whole the evidence of
careful and conscious elaboration.
Hence, however lucid and free be the style of his romance, and though its
flexibility and ease seem at first sight to have cost no trouble at all,
yet its merit lies precisely in the fact that it succeeds in concealing the
toil, in hiding the seams. He could not have reached this perfection at a
first attempt. He must have worked long at the task, revised it again and
again, corrected much, and added rather than cut away. The aptness of form
and expression has been arrived at by deliberate means, and owes nothing to
chance. Apart from the toning down of certain bold passages, to soften
their effect, and appease the storm--for these were not literary
alterations, but were imposed on him by prudence--one can see how numerous
are the variations in his text, how necessary it is to take account of
them, and to collect them. A good edition, of course, would make no
attempt at amalgamating these. That would give a false impression and end
in confusion; but it should note them all, and show them all, not combined,
but simply as variations.
After Le Duchat, all the editions, in their care that nothing should be
lost, made the mistake of collecting and placing side by side things which
had no connection with each other, which had even been substituted for each
other. The result was a fabricated text, full of contradictions naturally.
But since the edition issued by M. Jannet, the well-known publisher of the
Bibliotheque Elzevirienne, who was the first to get rid of this patchwork,
this mosaic, Rabelais' latest text has been given, accompanied by all the
earlier variations, to show the changes he made, as well as his
suppressions and additions. It would also be possible to reverse the
method. It would be interesting to take his first text as the basis,
noting the later modifications. This would be quite as instructive and
really worth doing. Perhaps one might then see more clearly with what care
he made his revisions, after what fashion he corrected, and especially what
were the additions he made.
No more striking instance can be quoted than the admirable chapter about
the shipwreck. It was not always so long as Rabelais made it in the end:
it was much shorter at first. As a rule, when an author recasts some
passage that he wishes to revise, he does so by rewriting the whole, or at
least by interpolating passages at one stroke, so to speak. Nothing of the
kind is seen here. Rabelais suppressed nothing, modified nothing; he did
not change his plan at all. What he did was to make insertions, to slip in
between two clauses a new one. He expressed his meaning in a lengthier
way, and the former clause is found in its integrity along with the
additional one, of which it forms, as it were, the warp. It was by this
method of touching up the smallest details, by making here and there such
little noticeable additions, that he succeeded in heightening the effect
without either change or loss. In the end it looks as if he had altered
nothing, added nothing new, as if it had always been so from the first, and
had never been meddled with.
The comparison is most instructive, showing us to what an extent Rabelais'
admirable style was due to conscious effort, care, and elaboration, a fact
which is generally too much overlooked, and how instead of leaving any
trace which would reveal toil and study, it has on the contrary a
marvellous cohesion, precision, and brilliancy. It was modelled and
remodelled, repaired, touched up, and yet it has all the appearance of
having been created at a single stroke, or of having been run like molten
wax into its final form.
Something should be said here of the sources from which Rabelais borrowed.
He was not the first in France to satirize the romances of chivalry. The
romance in verse by Baudouin de Sebourc, printed in recent years, was a
parody of the Chansons de Geste. In the Moniage Guillaume, and especially
in the Moniage Rainouart, in which there is a kind of giant, and
occasionally a comic giant, there are situations and scenes which remind us
of Rabelais. The kind of Fabliaux in mono-rhyme quatrains of the old
Aubery anticipate his coarse and popular jests. But all that is beside the
question; Rabelais did not know these. Nothing is of direct interest save
what was known to him, what fell under his eyes, what lay to his hand--as
the Facetiae of Poggio, and the last sermonnaires. In the course of one's
reading one may often enough come across the origin of some of Rabelais'
witticisms; here and there we may discover how he has developed a
situation. While gathering his materials wherever he could find them, he
was nevertheless profoundly original.
On this point much research and investigation might be employed. But there
is no need why these researches should be extended to the region of fancy.
Gargantua has been proved by some to be of Celtic origin. Very often he is
a solar myth, and the statement that Rabelais only collected popular
traditions and gave new life to ancient legends is said to be proved by the
large number of megalithic monuments to which is attached the name of
Gargantua. It was, of course, quite right to make a list of these, to draw
up, as it were, a chart of them, but the conclusion is not justified. The
name, instead of being earlier, is really later, and is a witness, not to
the origin, but to the success and rapid popularity of his novel. No one
has ever yet produced a written passage or any ancient testimony to prove
the existence of the name before Rabelais. To place such a tradition on a
sure basis, positive traces must be forthcoming; and they cannot be adduced
even for the most celebrated of these monuments, since he mentions himself
the great menhir near Poitiers, which he christened by the name of
Passelourdin. That there is something in the theory is possible. Perrault
found the subjects of his stories in the tales told by mothers and nurses.
He fixed them finally by writing them down. Floating about vaguely as they
were, he seized them, worked them up, gave them shape, and yet of scarcely
any of them is there to be found before his time a single trace. So we
must resign ourselves to know just as little of what Gargantua and
Pantagruel were before the sixteenth century.
In a book of a contemporary of Rabelais, the Legende de Pierre Faifeu by
the Angevin, Charles de Bourdigne, the first edition of which dates from
1526 and the second 1531--both so rare and so forgotten that the work is
only known since the eighteenth century by the reprint of Custelier--in the
introductory ballad which recommends this book to readers, occur these
lines in the list of popular books which Faifeu would desire to replace:
'Laissez ester Caillette le folastre,
Les quatre filz Aymon vestuz de bleu,
Gargantua qui a cheveux de plastre. '
He has not 'cheveux de plastre' in Rabelais. If the rhyme had not
suggested the phrase--and the exigencies of the strict form of the ballade
and its forced repetitions often imposed an idea which had its whole origin
in the rhyme--we might here see a dramatic trace found nowhere else. The
name of Pantagruel is mentioned too, incidentally, in a Mystery of the
fifteenth century. These are the only references to the names which up
till now have been discovered, and they are, as one sees, of but little
account.
On the other hand, the influence of Aristophanes and of Lucian, his
intimate acquaintance with nearly all the writers of antiquity, Greek as
well as Latin, with whom Rabelais is more permeated even than Montaigne,
were a mine of inspiration. The proof of it is everywhere. Pliny
especially was his encyclopaedia, his constant companion. All he says of
the Pantagruelian herb, though he amply developed it for himself, is taken
from Pliny's chapter on flax. And there is a great deal more of this kind
to be discovered, for Rabelais does not always give it as quotation. On
the other hand, when he writes, 'Such an one says,' it would be difficult
enough to find who is meant, for the 'such an one' is a fictitious writer.
The method is amusing, but it is curious to account of it.
The question of the Chronique Gargantuaine is still undecided. Is it by
Rabelais or by someone else? Both theories are defensible, and can be
supported by good reasons. In the Chronique everything is heavy,
occasionally meaningless, and nearly always insipid. Can the same man have
written the Chronique and Gargantua, replaced a book really commonplace by
a masterpiece, changed the facts and incidents, transformed a heavy icy
pleasantry into a work glowing with wit and life, made it no longer a mass
of laborious trifling and cold-blooded exaggerations but a satire on human
life of the highest genius? Still there are points common to the two.
Besides, Rabelais wrote other things; and it is only in his romance that he
shows literary skill. The conception of it would have entered his mind
first only in a bare and summary fashion. It would have been taken up
again, expanded, developed, metamorphosed. That is possible, and, for my
part, I am of those who, like Brunet and Nodier, are inclined to think that
the Chronique, in spite of its inferiority, is really a first attempt,
condemned as soon as the idea was conceived in another form. As its
earlier date is incontestable, we must conclude that if the Chronique is
not by him, his Gargantua and its continuation would not have existed
without it. This would be a great obligation to stand under to some
unknown author, and in that case it is astonishing that his enemies did not
reproach him during his lifetime with being merely an imitator and a
plagiarist. So there are reasons for and against his authorship of it, and
it would be dangerous to make too bold an assertion.
One fact which is absolutely certain and beyond all controversy, is that
Rabelais owed much to one of his contemporaries, an Italian, to the
Histoire Macaronique of Merlin Coccaie. Its author, Theophilus Folengo,
who was also a monk, was born in 1491, and died only a short time before
Rabelais, in 1544. But his burlesque poem was published in 1517. It was
in Latin verse, written in an elaborately fabricated style. It is not dog
Latin, but Latin ingeniously italianized, or rather Italian, even Mantuan,
latinized. The contrast between the modern form of the word and its Roman
garb produces the most amusing effect. In the original it is sometimes
difficult to read, for Folengo has no objection to using the most
colloquial words and phrases.
The subject is quite different. It is the adventures of Baldo, son of Guy
de Montauban, the very lively history of his youth, his trial, imprisonment
and deliverance, his journey in search of his father, during which he
visits the Planets and Hell. The narration is constantly interrupted by
incidental adventures. Occasionally they are what would be called to-day
very naturalistic, and sometimes they are madly extravagant.
But Fracasso, Baldo's friend, is a giant; another friend, Cingar, who
delivers him, is Panurge exactly, and quite as much given to practical
joking. The women in the senile amour of the old Tognazzo, the judges, and
the poor sergeants, are no more gently dealt with by Folengo than by the
monk of the Iles d'Hyeres. If Dindenaut's name does not occur, there are
the sheep. The tempest is there, and the invocation to all the saints.
Rabelais improves all he borrows, but it is from Folengo he starts. He
does not reproduce the words, but, like the Italian, he revels in drinking
scenes, junkettings, gormandizing, battles, scuffles, wounds and corpses,
magic, witches, speeches, repeated enumerations, lengthiness, and a
solemnly minute precision of impossible dates and numbers. The atmosphere,
the tone, the methods are the same, and to know Rabelais well, you must
know Folengo well too.
Detailed proof of this would be too lengthy a matter; one would have to
quote too many passages, but on this question of sources nothing is more
interesting than a perusal of the Opus Macaronicorum. It was translated
into French only in 1606--Paris, Gilley Robinot. This translation of
course cannot reproduce all the many amusing forms of words, but it is
useful, nevertheless, in showing more clearly the points of resemblance
between the two works,--how far in form, ideas, details, and phrases
Rabelais was permeated by Folengo. The anonymous translator saw this quite
well, and said so in his title, 'Histoire macaronique de Merlin Coccaie,
prototype of Rabelais. ' It is nothing but the truth, and Rabelais, who
does not hide it from himself, on more than one occasion mentions the name
of Merlin Coccaie.
Besides, Rabelais was fed on the Italians of his time as on the Greeks and
Romans. Panurge, who owes much to Cingar, is also not free from
obligations to the miscreant Margutte in the Morgante Maggiore of Pulci.
Had Rabelais in his mind the tale from the Florentine Chronicles, how in
the Savonarola riots, when the Piagnoni and the Arrabiati came to blows in
the church of the Dominican convent of San-Marco, Fra Pietro in the scuffle
broke the heads of the assailants with the bronze crucifix he had taken
from the altar? A well-handled cross could so readily be used as a weapon,
that probably it has served as such more than once, and other and even
quite modern instances might be quoted.
But other Italian sources are absolutely certain. There are few more
wonderful chapters in Rabelais than the one about the drinkers. It is not
a dialogue: those short exclamations exploding from every side, all
referring to the same thing, never repeating themselves, and yet always
varying the same theme. At the end of the Novelle of Gentile Sermini of
Siena, there is a chapter called Il Giuoco della pugna, the Game of Battle.
Here are the first lines of it: 'Apre, apre, apre. Chi gioca, chi gioca
--uh, uh! --A Porrione, a Porrione. --Viela, viela; date a ognuno. --Alle
mantella, alle mantella. --Oltre di corsa; non vi fermate. --Voltate qui;
ecco costoro; fate veli innanzi. --Viela, viela; date costi. --Chi la fa?
Io--Ed io. --Dagli; ah, ah, buona fu. --Or cosi; alla mascella, al fianco.
--Dagli basso; di punta, di punta. --Ah, ah, buon gioco, buon gioco. '
And thus it goes on with fire and animation for pages. Rabelais probably
translated or directly imitated it. He changed the scene; there was no
giuooco della pugna in France. He transferred to a drinking-bout this
clatter of exclamations which go off by themselves, which cross each other
and get no answer. He made a wonderful thing of it. But though he did not
copy Sermini, yet Sermini's work provided him with the form of the subject,
and was the theme for Rabelais' marvellous variations.
Who does not remember the fantastic quarrel of the cook with the poor devil
who had flavoured his dry bread with the smoke of the roast, and the
judgment of Seyny John, truly worthy of Solomon? It comes from the Cento
Novelle Antiche, rewritten from tales older than Boccaccio, and moreover of
an extreme brevity and dryness. They are only the framework, the notes,
the skeleton of tales. The subject is often wonderful, but nothing is made
of it: it is left unshaped. Rabelais wrote a version of one, the ninth.
The scene takes place, not at Paris, but at Alexandria in Egypt among the
Saracens, and the cook is called Fabrac. But the surprise at the end, the
sagacious judgment by which the sound of a piece of money was made the
price of the smoke, is the same. Now the first dated edition of the Cento
Novelle (which were frequently reprinted) appeared at Bologna in 1525, and
it is certain that Rabelais had read the tales. And there would be much
else of the same kind to learn if we knew Rabelais' library.
A still stranger fact of this sort may be given to show how nothing came
amiss to him. He must have known, and even copied the Latin Chronicle of
the Counts of Anjou. It is accepted, and rightly so, as an historical
document, but that is no reason for thinking that the truth may not have
been manipulated and adorned. The Counts of Anjou were not saints. They
were proud, quarrelsome, violent, rapacious, and extravagant, as greedy as
they were charitable to the Church, treacherous and cruel. Yet their
anonymous panegyrist has made them patterns of all the virtues. In reality
it is both a history and in some sort a romance; especially is it a
collection of examples worthy of being followed, in the style of the
Cyropaedia, our Juvenal of the fifteenth century, and a little like
Fenelon's Telemaque. Now in it there occurs the address of one of the
counts to those who rebelled against him and who were at his mercy.
Rabelais must have known it, for he has copied it, or rather, literally
translated whole lines of it in the wonderful speech of Gargantua to the
vanquished. His contemporaries, who approved of his borrowing from
antiquity, could not detect this one, because the book was not printed till
much later. But Rabelais lived in Maine. In Anjou, which often figures
among the localities he names, he must have met with and read the
Chronicles of the Counts in manuscript, probably in some monastery library,
whether at Fontenay-le-Comte or elsewhere it matters little. There is not
only a likeness in the ideas and tone, but in the words too, which cannot
be a mere matter of chance. He must have known the Chronicles of the
Counts of Anjou, and they inspired one of his finest pages. One sees,
therefore, how varied were the sources whence he drew, and how many of them
must probably always escape us.
When, as has been done for Moliere, a critical bibliography of the works
relating to Rabelais is drawn up--which, by the bye, will entail a very
great amount of labour--the easiest part will certainly be the bibliography
of the old editions. That is the section that has been most satisfactorily
and most completely worked out. M. Brunet said the last word on the
subject in his Researches in 1852, and in the important article in the
fifth edition of his Manuel du Libraire (iv. , 1863, pp. 1037-1071).
The facts about the fifth book cannot be summed up briefly. It was printed
as a whole at first, without the name of the place, in 1564, and next year
at Lyons by Jean Martin. It has given, and even still gives rise to two
contradictory opinions. Is it Rabelais' or not?
First of all, if he had left it complete, would sixteen years have gone by
before it was printed? Then, does it bear evident marks of his
workmanship? Is the hand of the master visible throughout? Antoine Du
Verdier in the 1605 edition of his Prosopographie writes: '(Rabelais')
misfortune has been that everybody has wished to "pantagruelize! " and
several books have appeared under his name, and have been added to his
works, which are not by him, as, for instance, l'Ile Sonnante, written by a
certain scholar of Valence and others. '
The scholar of Valence might be Guillaume des Autels, to whom with more
certainty can be ascribed the authorship of a dull imitation of Rabelais,
the History of Fanfreluche and Gaudichon, published in 1578, which, to say
the least of it, is very much inferior to the fifth book.
Louis Guyon, in his Diverses Lecons, is still more positive: 'As to the
last book which has been included in his works, entitled l'Ile Sonnante,
the object of which seems to be to find fault with and laugh at the members
and the authorities of the Catholic Church, I protest that he did not
compose it, for it was written long after his death. I was at Paris when
it was written, and I know quite well who was its author; he was not a
doctor. ' That is very emphatic, and it is impossible to ignore it.
Yet everyone must recognize that there is a great deal of Rabelais in the
fifth book. He must have planned it and begun it. Remembering that in
1548 he had published, not as an experiment, but rather as a bait and as an
announcement, the first eleven chapters of the fourth book, we may conclude
that the first sixteen chapters of the fifth book published by themselves
nine years after his death, in 1562, represent the remainder of his
definitely finished work. This is the more certain because these first
chapters, which contain the Apologue of the Horse and the Ass and the
terrible Furred Law-cats, are markedly better than what follows them. They
are not the only ones where the master's hand may be traced, but they are
the only ones where no other hand could possibly have interfered.
In the remainder the sentiment is distinctly Protestant. Rabelais was much
struck by the vices of the clergy and did not spare them. Whether we are
unable to forgive his criticisms because they were conceived in a spirit of
raillery, or whether, on the other hand, we feel admiration for him on this
point, yet Rabelais was not in the least a sectary. If he strongly desired
a moral reform, indirectly pointing out the need of it in his mocking
fashion, he was not favourable to a political reform. Those who would make
of him a Protestant altogether forget that the Protestants of his time were
not for him, but against him. Henri Estienne, for instance, Ramus,
Theodore de Beze, and especially Calvin, should know how he was to be
regarded. Rabelais belonged to what may be called the early reformation,
to that band of honest men in the beginning of the sixteenth century,
precursors of the later one perhaps, but, like Erasmus, between the two
extremes. He was neither Lutheran nor Calvinist, neither German nor
Genevese, and it is quite natural that his work was not reprinted in
Switzerland, which would certainly have happened had the Protestants looked
on him as one of themselves.
That Rabelais collected the materials for the fifth book, had begun it, and
got on some way, there can be no doubt: the excellence of a large number
of passages prove it, but--taken as a whole--the fifth book has not the
value, the verve, and the variety of the others. The style is quite
different, less rich, briefer, less elaborate, drier, in parts even
wearisome. In the first four books Rabelais seldom repeats himself. The
fifth book contains from the point of view of the vocabulary really the
least novelty. On the contrary, it is full of words and expressions
already met with, which is very natural in an imitation, in a copy, forced
to keep to a similar tone, and to show by such reminders and likenesses
that it is really by the same pen. A very striking point is the profound
difference in the use of anatomical terms. In the other books they are
most frequently used in a humorous sense, and nonsensically, with a quite
other meaning than their own; in the fifth they are applied correctly. It
was necessary to include such terms to keep up the practice, but the writer
has not thought of using them to add to the comic effect: one cannot
always think of everything. Trouble has been taken, of course, to include
enumerations, but there are much fewer fabricated and fantastic words. In
short, the hand of the maker is far from showing the same suppleness and
strength.
A eulogistic quatrain is signed Nature quite, which, it is generally
agreed, is an anagram of Jean Turquet. Did the adapter of the fifth book
sign his work in this indirect fashion? He might be of the Genevese family
to whom Louis Turquet and his son Theodore belonged, both well-known, and
both strong Protestants. The obscurity relating to this matter is far from
being cleared up, and perhaps never will be.
It fell to my lot--here, unfortunately, I am forced to speak of a personal
matter--to print for the first time the manuscript of the fifth book. At
first it was hoped it might be in Rabelais' own hand; afterwards that it
might be at least a copy of his unfinished work. The task was a difficult
one, for the writing, extremely flowing and rapid, is execrable, and most
difficult to decipher and to transcribe accurately. Besides, it often
happens in the sixteenth and the end of the fifteenth century, that
manuscripts are much less correct than the printed versions, even when they
have not been copied by clumsy and ignorant hands.
