Readers, friends, if you turn these pages
Put your prejudice aside,
For, really, there's nothing here that's outrageous,
Nothing sick, or bad — or contagious.
Not that I sit here glowing with pride
For my book: all you'll find is laughter:
That's all the glory my heart is after,
Seeing how sorrow eats you, defeats you.
I'd rather write about laughing than crying,
For laughter makes men human, and courageous.
I first encountered Francois Rabelais second-hand, more than twenty years ago, while going through a Robertson Davies phase. In The Rebel Angels, a young woman is researching Rabelais for her thesis and the stodgy old (male) professors around her wonder if it's appropriate material for a young lady. There were many innuendos about what ribald, perhaps even obscene, material this was, and being of about her age at the time, I filed it away as yet another reference I didn't understand and should look into some time. Over the years I've encountered his name, particularly in the adjective Rabelasian, and have seen him linked to the notions of the carnivalesque and the grotesque. Wanting to understand all of these terms more fully, I decided this was the summer I finally tackle the bawdy monk and his thousand pages of Gargantua and Pantagruel.
Rabelais was a monk, he studied law, and eventually studied medicine to the degree that he became a practising physician; a true Renaissance man. He was able to read Latin and Greek (even some Hebrew), translated many of the classics into French (often for the first time), and standardised spelling and written grammar (creating many new words for his native tongue, as Shakespeare did for English). It is argued that in the first book of Pantagruel, Rabelais essentially invented the novel, and being so incredibly well read, he used the narrative form to share, and debate, the philosophy and views of everyone from Plato and Aristotle to Plutarch and Pliny, while also borrowing heavily from the Adages of his contemporary, Erasmus, and Greek and Roman mythologies. I read the translation by M. A. Screech, a scholar who has been studying Rabelais' works for decades, and he skillfully guides the reader through the more obscure references and does his best to maintain the puns and other wordplay of the original. I would have been lost without Screech's guidance, but something was a bit diluted when all of the jokes were explained to me right before I read them.
And so the jokes: Yes, there were more poop and fart jokes than even my young nephews would laugh at, but these were mainly in the first two books, when the giant king, Gargantua, and his giant, scholarly son, Pantagruel, are introduced. I'm including the following long passage between Gargantua and his father, Grangousier, because of the poop and the way that it captures the general flavour of the book:
"I have," answered Gargantua, "by a long and curious experience, found out a means to wipe my bum, the most lordly, the most excellent, and the most convenient that ever was seen."
"What is that?" said Grangousier. "How is it?"
"I will tell you by-and-by," said Gargantua. "Once I did wipe me with a gentle-woman's velvet mask, and found it to be good; for the softness of the silk was very voluptuous and pleasant to my fundament. Another time with one of their hoods, and in like manner that was comfortable. At another time with a lady's neckerchief, and after that I wiped me with some ear-pieces of hers made of crimson satin, but there was such a number of golden spangles in them (turdy round things, a pox take them) that they fetched away all the skin of my tail with a vengeance. Now I wish St. Antony's fire burn the bum-gut of the goldsmith that made them, and of her that wore them! This hurt I cured by wiping myself with a page's cap, garnished with a feather after the Switzers' fashion.
"Afterwards, in dunging behind a bush, I found a March-cat, and with it I wiped my breech, but her claws were so sharp that they scratched and exulcerated all my perinee. Of this I recovered the next morning thereafter, by wiping myself with my mother's gloves, of a most excellent perfume and scent of the Arabian Benin. After that I wiped me with sage, with fennel, with anet, with marjoram, with roses, with gourd-leaves, with beets, with colewort, with leaves of the vine-tree, with mallows, wool-blade, which is a tail-scarlet, with lettuce, and with spinach leaves. All this did very great good to my leg. Then with mercury, with parsley, with nettles, with comfrey, but that gave me the bloody flux of Lombardy, which I healed by wiping me with my braguette.
"Then I wiped my tail in the sheets, in the coverlet, in the curtains, with a cushion, with arras hangings, with a green carpet, with a table-cloth, with a napkin, with a handkerchief, with a combing-cloth; in all which I found more pleasure than do the mangy dogs when you rub them."
"Yea, but," said Grangousier, "which torchecul did you find to be the best?"
"I was coming to it," said Gargantua, "and by-and-by shall you hear the tu autem, and know the whole mystery and knot of the matter. I wiped myself with hay, with straw, with thatch-rushes, with flax, with wool, with paper, but,
"Who his foul tail with paper wipes,
Shall at his ballocks leave some chips."
"What," said Grangousier, "my little rogue, hast thou been at the pot, that thou dost rhyme already?"
"Yes, yes, my lord the king," answered Gargantua, "I can rhyme gallantly, and rhyme till I become hoarse with rheum. Hark, what our privy says to the skiters:
"Shittard,
Squirtard,
Crackard,
Turdous,
Thy bung
Hath flung
Some dung
On us:
Filthard,
Cackard,
Stinkard,
St. Antony’s fire seize on thy toane (bone?),
If thy
Dirty
Dounby
Thou do not wipe, ere thou be gone.
Will you have any more of it?"
"Yes, yes," answered Grangousier.
"Then", said Gargantua, "A Roundelay.
"In shitting yes’day I did know
The sess I to my arse did owe:
The smell was such came from that slunk,
That I was with it all bestunk:
O had but then some brave Signor
Brought her to me I waited for,
In shitting!
I would have cleft her watergap,
And join’d it close to my flipflap,
Whilst she had with her fingers guarded
My foul nockandrow, all bemerded
In shitting.
"Now say that I can do nothing! By the Merdi, they are not of my making, but I heard them of this good old grandam, that you see here, and ever since have retained them in the budget of my memory."
"Let us return to our purpose," said Grangousier.
"What," said Gargantua, "to skite?"
"No," said Grangousier, "but to wipe our tail."
"But," said Gargantua, "will not you be content to pay a puncheon of Breton wine, if I do not blank and gravel you in this matter, and put you to a non-plus?"
"Yes, truly," said Grangousier.
"There is no need of wiping one’s tail," said Gargantua, "but when it is foul; foul it cannot be, unless one have been a-skiting; skite then we must before we wipe our tails."
"O my pretty little waggish boy," said Grangousier, "what an excellent wit thou hast? I will make thee very shortly proceed doctor in the jovial quirks of gay learning, and that, by G—, for thou hast more wit than age. Now, I prithee, go on in this torcheculative, or wipe-bummatory discourse, and by my beard I swear, for one puncheon, thou shalt have threescore pipes, I mean of the good Breton wine, not that which grows in Britain, but in the good country of Verron."
"Afterwards I wiped my bum," said Gargantua, "with a kerchief, with a pillow, with a pantoufle, with a pouch, with a pannier, but that was a wicked and unpleasant torchecul; then with a hat. Of hats, note that some are shorn, and others shaggy, some velveted, others covered with taffeties, and others with satin. The best of all these is the shaggy hat, for it makes a very neat abstersion of the fecal matter.
"Afterwards I wiped my tail with a hen, with a cock, with a pullet, with a calf’s skin, with a hare, with a pigeon, with a cormorant, with an attorney’s bag, with a montero, with a coif, with a falconer’s lure. But, to conclude, I say and maintain, that of all torcheculs, arsewisps, bumfodders, tail-napkins, bunghole cleansers, and wipe-breeches, there is none in the world comparable to the neck of a goose, that is well downed, if you hold her head betwixt your legs. And believe me therein upon mine honour, for you will thereby feel in your nockhole a most wonderful pleasure, both in regard of the softness of the said down and of the temporate heat of the goose, which is easily communicated to the bum-gut and the rest the inwards, in so far as to come even to the regions of the heart and brains. And think not that the felicity of the heroes and demigods in the Elysian fields consisteth either in their asphodel, ambrosia, or nectar, as our old women here used to say; but in this, according to my judgment, that they wipe their tails with the neck of a goose, holding her head betwixt their legs, and such is the opinion of Master John of Scotland, alias Scotus."
Even considering the coarseness of a lot of the humour, there was wicked satire to be found about the consequences of bad teachers in youth and the folly of ill planned wars. In the third book, I relished the lampooning of the practise of law (I loved Judge Bridoye and his gobbledygook legalese) but most especially enjoyed Panurge's dilemma: wanting to marry but dreading becoming a cuckold, he asks the advice of everyone he meets. From the dire warnings of fortune tellers, fools, professionals, and other methods of divination, he is able to twist their admonitions into the blessing he has been seeking. Although admittedly coarse, this story from Frere Jean was the funniest bit to me:
(Hans Carvel was a jealous husband and) during one of the many nights that he was lying beside her racked by such torments, he dreamt he was addressing the devil and telling him of his misery. The devil comforted him and placed a ring on his big finger saying: "This ring I give you: as long a it remains on your finger your wife will never be carnally known by another man without your knowledge and consent."
"Thank you kindly, Monsieur Devil," said Hans Carvel. "If ever anyone takes that ring off my finger I shall renounce Mahoun."
The devil vanished, and Hans Carvel awoke full of joy, finding himself with his finger up his wife's thingummy.
This is apparently kind of an old joke, albeit one I hadn't heard before, and all of the books of Gargantua and Pantagruel are laden with such stories and quips that would have been familiar to readers at the time they were written (and this translation by Screech ensures they aren't lost on the modern reader).
The next two volumes are very much like Gulliver's Travels or Candide (even though those books came later, and it's said, wouldn't have existed without Rabelais first paving the way) in that the group of friends go on a sea voyage, in search of the oracular Dive Bouteille, still trying to solve Panurge's dilemma, and meet strange creatures and societies at the islands they stop at along the way. As did Swift and Voltaire later, Rabelais uses satire to show the hypocrisy of everyone from the faux religious to the overzealous papists. Most bizarre island: Ile Farouche, where the heroes battle half-sausage people who are revived by a flying pig that squirts mustard down on them from the air. (!)
In the end, this was a difficult book to slog through, with archaic language and references, but it was worthwhile for me because it answered a question I've had for twenty plus years: What's the deal with Rabelais? I looked through a book I have, 13 Ways of Looking at the Novel by Jane Smiley, and she says of Gargantua and Pantagruel that it is "a piece of work so masculine and French that I find it unreadable". I certainly didn't find it unreadable -- no more so than Infinite Jest or The Tin Drum, beside which I will shelve G & P -- but I would concede that it's not for everyone. Having now read Gargantua and Pantagruel, I would say that the biggest lesson I've learned is how very very little I know about classical thought. I imagine the French in Rabelais' day reading the adventures of Pantagruel aloud to each other in their gilded parlours, snickering over the uncited jokes about Aristotle or Galen, understanding oblique references and gasping at the places where Rabelais has a character disagreeing with established thought. It saddens me, just a bit, to know that at this point I'm never going to acquire this arcane knowledge and wonder if it wouldn't be worthwhile to start teaching Latin in schools again-- if only to have students translating, and therefore being exposed to, the great thinkers upon whose philosophies we've founded western civilisation. As for me, I might just go back and reread some Robertson Davies, now that I'll get the jokes.
As the Dive Bouteille said, "Trinck!"
