Gargantua and Pantagruel
Page 20
But, ye gods and goddesses, what saw I there! If I lie, may Jupiter daze me with his three-forked lightning. There I wandered about as one does in Sancta Sofia in Constantinople, and I saw huge rock-formations like the mountains of Dent-mark – they were, I think, his teeth – and wide meadows, great forests, and cities strong and spacious, no less big than Lyons or Poitiers.
The first person I met there was a stout fellow planting cabbages. Quite taken aback, I asked him,
‘What are you doing here, my friend?’
‘Planting cabbages,’ he said.
‘Why?’ I said, ‘and wherefore?’
‘Well Monsieur,’ he said, ‘[we can’t all have bollocks weighing a ton:] we can’t all be rich. I’m earning me living; I take ‘em to market in the city back yonder.’
‘Jesus!’ I said, ‘so this is a new world!’
‘Well,’ he said, ‘it’s certainly not new. They do say, mind, that there’s some new-found earth outside, with a sun and a moon, and full of all sorts of fine things; but this one here’s older.’
‘Indeed!’ I said, ‘but tell me, my friend, what is the name of the town where you take your cabbages to sell?’
‘Aspharagos,’ he said. ‘They’re Christians. Good folk. They’ll give you good cheer.’
In short, I decided to go there. On the way I met a fellow who was setting nets to catch pigeons; so I asked him,
‘My friend, where do these pigeons here come from?’
‘They come from that other world, Cyre,’ he said.
I assumed then that when Pantagruel yawned great flocks of pigeons flew into his throat, taking it for a dove-cote.
After that I went into the town, which I found very beautiful, well fortified and of a fine aspect; but at the entrance the gate-keepers demanded my Bill of Good Health. I was astonished and asked them,
‘Is there a threat of the plague, gentlemen?’
‘Ah, my Lord,’ they said, ‘people near here are dying so fast that the death-carts go about the streets.’
‘Jesus!’116 I said, ‘where?’
They told me it was in Larynx and Pharynx (which are two towns as big as Rouen or Nantes, rich and full of merchandise) and that for some time now the plague was being caused by a stinking, noxious exhalation rising up from the depths: in the last week some twenty-two hundred [and sixty] thousand persons [plus sixteen] had died from it.
I then reflected and calculated, and worked out that it was a stinking breath which had come out of Pantagruel’s stomach after he had eaten (as we told you above) so much garlic sauce.
Leaving there, I passed between cliffs (which were Pantagruel’s teeth) and climbed up one, where I found some of the most beautiful places in the world: beautiful wide tennis-courts, beautiful colonnades, beautiful meadows, plenty of vines and countless summer-houses in the Italian style scattered over fields full of delights. I stayed there a good four months, and have never had better cheer.
Then I descended by the back teeth to reach the lips, but on my way I was robbed by brigands in a great forest situated towards the ears. Further down I came across a hamlet – I forget its name – where I found even better cheer and earned a little money to live on. And do you know how? By sleeping! For they hire journey-men to sleep for them: they earn five or six pence a day, though good snorers earn seven pence-halfpenny.
I told the senators how I had been robbed in that valley and they said it was a fact that the Transdental folk were evil-livers and born bandits. It was thus I learnt that, just as we have Cisalpine and Transalpine lands, they have Cisdental and Transdental ones; but it is far better in the Cisdental lands, and the air is better too.
I then began to think how true is the saying, ‘One half of the world has no idea how the other half lives,’ for nobody has ever written about those lands over yonder in which there are more than twenty-five inhabited kingdoms, not to mention deserts and a wide arm of sea. But I have compiled a thick book about them entitled A History of the Gorgeous – I have named them thus because they dwell in the gorge of Pantagruel my master.
In the end I wanted to get back and, passing through his beard, I leapt on to his shoulder, slid to the ground, tumbling down in front of him.
When he noticed me he asked me:
‘Where have you come from, Alcofrybas?’
And I replied,
‘From your gorge, my Lord.’
‘And how long have you been in there?’ he asked.
‘Since you set out against the Almyrodes,’ I said.
‘That was more than six months ago!’ he said. ‘How did you manage? What did you eat? What did you drink?’
‘My Lord,’ I replied, ‘the same as you. I exacted a toll on the most delicate morsels that passed through your lips.’
‘Indeed,’ he said, ‘but where did you shit?’
‘In your gorge, my Lord,’ I said.
‘Ha! ha!’ he said. ‘A noble comrade you are! With the help of God we have conquered the entire land of the Dipsodes: to you I grant the Châtelainie of Salmagundi.’
‘Many thanks, my Lord,’ I said. [‘You treat me better than I deserve.’]
How Pantagruel was taken ill, and the method by which he was cured
CHAPTER 23
[Becomes Chapter 33.
A comic explanation of the origin of hot springs – ‘hot-piss’ is a gonorrhoeal flux – with a dose of medical humour.]
Shortly afterwards our good giant Pantagruel was taken ill, seized with such stomach pains that he could neither eat not drink; and since a misfortune never comes alone he developed a hot-piss which tormented him more than you might think; but his doctors effectively treated him with a mass of [lenitive and] diuretic drugs, making him piss out his malady.
And his urine was so hot that, from that day to this, it has never yet grown cold: you can still take some of it in divers places in France as it chanced to flow: we call them spas, as at Cauterets, Limoux, Dax, Balaruc, Néris, Bourbon-Lancy and elsewhere; and some in Italy, at Monte Grotto, Abano, San Pietro di Padova, Santa Elena, Casa Nova, Santo Bartolemeo and in the county of Bologna at La Porretta and at hundreds of other places.
I am greatly astonished by a pile of lunatic philosophers and physicians who waste their time arguing about where the heat of the said waters comes from: whether it is from borax, sulphur, alum or saltpetre in the sources; for they are merely raving and would be better employed scratching their bums with a hundred-headed thistle than wasting their time like that, disputing over things whose origin they know nothing about. For the solution is easy and there is no need for further inquiries: the aforesaid baths are hot since they spring from a hot-piss of our good giant Pantagruel.
Now to tell you how he was cured of his principal malady, I will pass over how he took for a gentle laxative four hundred-weight of scammoniate from Colophon, six score and eighteen wagonloads of cassia and eleven thousand nine hundred pounds of rhubarb, apart from other ingredients.
Now you must understand that, on the advice of the physicians, it was decreed that what was giving him the stomach-ache should be removed. In fact there were made seventeen copper spheres (each bigger than the one atop Virgil’s Needle in Rome) so fashioned that they could be opened in the middle and closed by a spring.
Into one there entered a man of his, bearing a lantern and a flaming torch. And thus did Pantagruel swallow it like a little pill.
Into five others there entered some brawny fellows, each with a pick-axe over his shoulder.117
Into three others there entered three peasants, each with a shovel over his shoulder.
Into seven others went seven hodmen, each with a pannier slung from his neck.
And all were swallowed thus, like pills.
Once down in the stomach they all released their springs and sallied forth from their quarters. First came the man who bore the lantern; and thus they searched for the corrupt humours over half a league.118
Finally they discovered a small mountain of ordure
. The pioneers hacked away at it with their pick-axes to dislodge it, and the others shovelled it into their panniers and, once everything was cleared up, each man retired into his sphere.
At which Pantagruel forced himself to spew and easily brought them up: and they were no more trouble in his throat than a fart is in yours; and they all came joyfully out of those pills. I recalled the time when the Greeks came out of the Trojan horse – and by such a method was Pantagruel cured and restored to his original health.
One of those brass pills you now have in Orleans atop the bell-tower of the Church of the Holy Cross.
[Becomes: The Conclusion to this Present Book, with the Author’s apology. Chapter 34.]
You have now heard, gentlemen, a beginning of the Horrific History of my Lord and master Pantagruel. Here I will bring this first book to an end, since my head is troubling me a bit and I sense that the stops of my brain are somewhat befuddled by juice of September.
You will have the rest of this History at the Frankfurt Fair soon upon us. You will find there [how Panurge was wed, and cuckolded in the first month of his marriage;] how Pantagruel discovered the philosopher’s stone, [how to find it] and how to use it; how he crossed the Caspian mountains, sailed upon the Atlantic Ocean, defeated the Cannibals and took the Perlas Islands; how he married the daughter of the King of India called Prester John; how he fought against the devils and burnt down five of Hell’s chambers, [sacked the Great Black Chamber and cast Proserpine into the fire,] broke four of Lucifer’s teeth and a horn in his rump; how he visited the regions of the moon to learn whether the moon is in truth not whole since women have three of its quarters in their heads; and hundreds of other merry little matters, all true: they are beautiful evangelical texts in French.119
Good evening, Gentlemen. Pardon me.120 And think no more of my shortcomings than you do of your own.
Finis.
*
[Pantagruel originally ended here.
The expanded ending dates from 1534 and is a reaction against abortive attempts to censor Pantagruel and to draw up articles of accusation against it and its author. Those hypocritical censors pretend to live like the austere Curii of ancient Rome yet lead lives which are bacchanalian orgies. Rabelais cites a line from the Satires of Juvenal (2, 5, 3): ‘Et Curios simulant, sed bacchanalia vivunt’ (They feign to be Curii, yet live bacchanalia). He was guided by an Adage of Erasmus (I, VI, XLV, ‘In the manner of the Bacchantes’), where the line is cited.
The accusation that the censors ‘disguised themselves as masked revellers’ is a serious one: the Sorbonne is being accused of having acted as agents provocateurs, causing men secretly to put up posters in 1532 while disguised as revellers. The accusation is repeated in the Almanac for 1535 and in Chapter 17 of Gargantua.
‘Sarrabites’ were monks living irregularly: here and elsewhere Rabelais makes them bovine ones: ‘Sarrabovines’.
The devil’s name in Greek, Diabolos, means ‘Calumniator’.]
[Now, if you say to me, ‘Maitre, it would seem you were not very wise to write us such idle tales and amusing twaddle,’ I reply that you are scarcely wiser to waste time reading them. However, if as a merry pastime you read them, as I, to pass time, wrote them, you and I are more forgivable than a heap of sarrabovines, bigot-tails, slimy-snails, hypocrites, black-beetles, lecherous shavelings, booted monks and other such sects who disguised themselves as masked revellers to deceive the world. For whilst making common folk believe that they have no employment save meditation and worship, save fasting and macerating their sensuality (merely, in truth, sustaining and nourishing the meagre frailty of their human condition), they enjoy on the contrary good cheer: God knows how much!
They feign to be Curii, yet live bacchanalia.
You can read that from the great illuminated capitals of their red snouts and from their guts like crakow slippers, except when they fumigate themselves with sulphur.
As regards their study, it is entirely taken up by the reading of Pantagrueline books, not so much to pass time merrily but wickedly, so as to harm someone, namely by articulating, arse-ticulating, wry-arse-ticulating, bumculating, bollockulating, diaboliculating, that is, calumniating.121
By doing so they resemble those village scavengers who, when cherries or morellos are in season, poke about in the stools of children and spread them out with sticks, looking for stones to sell to the druggists to make up into oil of mahaleb. Flee them; abhor them and loathe them as much as I do, and, by my faith, you will find yourself the better for it. And if you desire to be good Pantagruelists (that is, to live in peace, joy and health, always enjoying good cheer) never trust folk who peer through a hole.]122
FINIS.123
PANTAGRUELINE PROGNOSTICATION FOR 1533
Introduction to Pantagrueline Prognostication for 1533
This is a genuine almanac, in that all its astronomical and astrological data do indeed apply to the year 1533, are factually correct and fully confirmed by such impressive scientific almanacs as Stoeffler’s in the early sixteenth century. Rabelais is allaying fears (perhaps royal fears) aroused by the appalling state of the heavens in the period 1533–6. With his scientific data Rabelais combines evangelical teachings and amused satire.
There are echoes of Lucian and direct borrowing from a Latin satire. From 1542 onwards Rabelais detached his Prognostication from a specific year and adapted his text so that it applied to any year (Pour l’an perpetuel).
The Pantagrueline Prognostication remained artistically close to Pantagruel, even after the publication of Gargantua. For example, identical names and metiers are found here and in the expanded account given by Epistemon of his descent into the Underworld in Pantagruel, Chapter 20; some identical titles also appear in, or are added to, this little work and to the Library of Saint-Victor (Pantagruel, Chapter 7). So too ‘sarabovines’ and other terms of reproach appear both here and in the addition to the end of Pantagruel.
The variants are given in the notes except for the four short chapters at the end, which are easily isolated. To read it as it first appeared in a real temporal and astrological context simply read the text and ignore the footnotes. The final version was so heavily expanded that the variants are many and intrusive.
The editions cited in the notes are as follows:
’33: no place or date (Lyons, François Juste); exists in two states, with slight variations of the text made during printing;
‘35: [Lyons], François Juste;
‘37: Lyons, François Juste;
‘38: no place (Lyons, Denis de Harsy, but sometimes attributed to Denis Janot);
‘42: Lyons, François Juste;
‘53: no place.
The texts and variants translated are those of my edition of the Pantagrueline prognostication pour l’an 1533 avec Les Almanachs pour les ans 1533, 1535 et 1541 in the Textes Littéraires Français (Geneva: Droz, 1974).
Pantagrueline Prognostication,
certain, true and infallible, for the year
one thousand five hundred and thirty-three,
newly composed for the profit and counsel
of natural blockheads and sluggards by
Master Alcofribas, Ruler of the Feast
of the said Pantagruel.
Of the Golden Number, nothing is said: no matter
what calculation I make I cannot find any at all
this year. Let us pass Beyond. Anyone who
has found one, may dump it on me; anyone who
has not, then let him look for it.1
Turn this leaf.
Contents
To the Kindly Reader: Greetings and Peace in Jesus Christ
1 On the Governor and Lord of this Year
2 On this year’s Eclipse
3 On this year’s maladies
4 Of Fruits and good things growing in the Soil
5 Of the state of various people
6 On the Condition of certain Countries
Appendix
To the Kindly R
eader: Greetings and Peace in Jesus Christ
Having considered the infinite deceptions perpetrated by means of a mass of Prognostications from Louvain – made in the shadow of a glass of vin – I have here calculated one for you which is the truest and surest that has ever been seen, as experience will prove to you. For – given that the Royal Prophet said to God (in Psalm 5), ‘Thou shalt destroy all them that speak falsehoods’ – it is undeniably no light sin to tell lies knowingly as they do and moreover to deceive poor folk curious to learn things new (such as the French of all periods, as Caesar noted in his Commentaries and Jehan de Gravot in his Gallic Mythologies).2
We can still see that all over France where, day in day out, the first words addressed to those just arrived are, ‘What’s the news?’ – ‘Do you know anything new?’ – ‘Who’s saying what?’ – ‘What’s being bruited abroad?’ – They are so keen that they often get angry with those who come from foreign parts without a budgetful of news, calling them calves and idiots. And therefore, since they are as prompt to ask for news as they are ready to believe what they are told, ought we not to place paid, trustworthy men at the entrances to the Kingdom employed exclusively in examining the news brought in to find out whether or not it be true?