Gargantua and Pantagruel

by François Rabelais

  As a result of that mishap, the cotyledonary veins of the womb were released from above and the child sprang through them, entered the vena cava and clambering through the midriff (which is situated above the shoulders where the aforesaid vena divides into two) took the left path and emerged through her left ear.

  The moment he was born, he did not whimper mee, mee, mee as other babies do: he yelled at the top of his voice, ‘Come and drink, drink, drink!’ – inviting one and all, it would seem, to have a drink, [so well that he was heard throughout all the lands of Busse and Biberais].

  I doubt whether you assuredly believe that strange nativity. If you do not believe it, I really don’t care, but a proper man, a man of good sense, always believes what he is told and what he finds written down.

  Does not Solomon say (Proverbs I), ‘The simple believeth every word,’ and Saint Paul (I Corinthians 13), ‘Charity believeth all things.’ So why should you not believe it? Because you say there is no apparency. And I tell you that, for that reason alone you ought to believe it in perfect faith, for the Sorbonnists say that ‘faith is the evidence of things having no apparency’!3

  Is it against our religion or our faith? Is it against reason; against Holy Writ? I for my part can find nothing against it written in the Holy Bible.

  ‘But if thus were the will of God, would you say that he could not have done so?’ Ha! For grace’s sake do not mingle-mangle your minds with such vain thoughts. For I tell you that with God nothing is ever impossible and that – if he so wished – women from now on would have their children through the ear-hole.

  Was not:

  – Bacchus born from Jupiter’s thigh?

  – Rocquetaillade born from his mother’s heel?

  [– Croquemouche from his nurse’s slipper?]

  Was not Minerva born through the ear from the brain of Jupiter?

  [– Adonis from the bark of a myrtle-tree?

  – Castor and Pollux from the shell of an egg laid and hatched out by Leda?]

  But you would be even more amazed and thunder-struck if I were to expound to you here the whole chapter of Pliny in which he tells of strange and unnatural births. Yet I am not such a confident liar as he is. Read the third chapter of Book 7 of his Natural History and stop befuddling my mind.

  How his name was imposed on Gargantua, and how he slurped down the wine

  CHAPTER 6

  [Becomes Chapter 7.

  The first idea of giving a comic etymology to Gargantua’s name derives from the non-Rabelaisian Grandes et inestimables Croniques, where Gargantua is allegedly a Greek name meaning ‘What a beautiful son you have!’ Rabelais is thinking mainly of the imposing of the name of John on the future Baptist, a practice which he attributes to Hebrews generally.

  The ‘Scotist doctors’ are doctors of theology who follow Duns Scotus. Duns was so out of favour with humanists that they drew from his name our term dunce. The savour is however more one of joy than of theological contentiousness.

  The take-off of a condemnation by the Sorbonne (‘scandalous, offensive to pious ears and redolent of heresy’) uses one of their authentic formulas. Cf. Erasmus, Adages, II, V, XCVIII, ‘Esernius with Pacidianus’.]

  That good fellow Grandgousier was joking and drinking with the others when he heard the horrific yell which his son had given upon entering into the light of this world, when he roared out ‘Come drink, drink, drink.’ At which Grandgousier exclaimed ‘Que-grant-tu-as!’ (‘How great hast thou!’) (to which supply: a throat).

  On hearing which words, those who were there said that – in imitation of the example of the ancient Hebrews – he really must be called Gar-gant-tu-a, since that was the first word his father uttered at his nativity.4

  His father graciously consented and it greatly pleased his mother. To keep him quiet they gave him a longish drink; then they carried him to the font and, as is the custom among good Christians, had him baptized.

  For his daily feed there were allotted seventeen thousand nine hundred [and thirteen] cows from Pontille and Bréhémond, since it was impossible to find in all the land an adequate wet-nurse for him, given the huge amounts required to feed him, (even though certain Scotist doctors alleged that his mother breast-fed him and that she could draw from her bosom on each occasion fourteen hundred tuns of milk [plus six quarts]. Which is unlikely, and condemned by the Sorbonne as [mam-malarily] scandalous, offensive to pious ears and redolent from afar of heresy).

  Under that regimen he spent one year and ten months, at which time they decided on the advice of the physicians to transport him about, so a beautiful bull-cart was ingeniously constructed for him by Jean Denyau, in which they happily bore him hither and thither; he was a joy to behold, for he sported a fine dial and had all but eighteen chins. He hardly ever cried, but was always messing himself, since he was wondrously subject to phlegmatic mucous of the backside, partly because of his natural complexion and partly from an accidental disposition brought on by an excessive slurping of the juice of September.

  And not a drop did he slurp down without good cause, for if he should happen to be crotchety, fretful, irritable or grumpy, or if he threw himself about and cried and bawled, it was enough to bring him a drink to restore him to his natural state, and he immediately remained quiet and contented.

  One of his governesses told me [swearing boy ‘er vaith] that he had grown so used to doing so that at the mere sound of cask or flagon he would be caught away in ecstasy as though tasting the joys of paradise, and that they, out of consideration for his devout complexion, would keep him happy in the morning by tapping glasses with a knife, or flagons with their bungs, or jugs with their lids. At those sounds he would cheer up, bob and rock himself about while wagging his head, humming through his fingers and playing a baritone with his bum.

  How Gargantua was dressed

  CHAPTER 7

  [Becomes Chapter 8.

  Gargantua is sumptuously dressed as befits a royal giant.

  In Plato’s Symposium (or Banquet) Aristophanes playfully suggests that the first human beings were created double then split into two. A man and a woman truly love when they find their ‘better half’. The androgyne was found by some in Genesis 1:27. Rabelais adopts the androgyne as an emblematic device on a badge for Gargantua to wear in his cap, supplying it with an appropriate motto taken from Saint Paul’s praise of love in I Corinthians 13:5, ‘Charity seeketh not her own’. He cites it in Greek capitals: Η ΑΓΑΠΗ ΟΥ ΖΗΤΕΙ TA ΕΑΥΤΗΣ. He does not translate it. Without help, his Greekless readers would have been foxed!

  Emblems were in fashion, and some found their way on to men’s hats as here.

  Andrea Alciato’s Emblemata had appeared in Paris in 1534.

  At Saint-Louand there is a Benedictine Abbey which Frère Rabelais would have known. The ‘Caballists’ there are no doubt the monks.

  The Fuggers of Augsburg were a family of great bankers.]

  When Gargantua had reached that age, his father commanded that clothes be made for him in his livery, which was of white and blue: the work was indeed done and they were made, all cut and stitched in the style then current. From ancient muniments in the audit office of Montsoreau I find that he was dressed as follows:

  For his shirt they took nine hundred ells of Châtellerault cloth, together with two hundred for the diamond-shaped gussets set under the armpits. There were no puckerings, since such gatherings-up of cloth for shirts was not invented until seamstresses, having broken the tops of their needles, started to work with their bottoms.

  For his doublet were taken eight hundred and thirteen ells of white satin, and for the points fifteen hundred plus nine-and-a-half dog-skins. Men began at that time to lace their breeches to their doublets and not their doublets to their breeches – it being unnatural [as was amply declared by Occam commenting on the Exponibilia of Magister Topbreeches].

  Eleven hundred plus five-and-a-third ells of white estamin-cloth were taken for his hose, which were slashed in col
umns, fluted and channelled on the back so as not to overheat his kidneys. They puffed out the slashes from within with as much damask-cloth as was needed.

  And note that he had very fine tibias, well proportioned to the rest of his body. For his codpiece were taken sixteen and a quarter ells of the same cloth. In shape it was like a flying-buttress well and merrily attached to two beautiful golden buckles and fixed on by two enamel hooklets; in each of them was mounted a large emerald as big as an orange (for as Orpheus states in his book On Precious Stones and Pliny in his final Book, it has properties for erecting and invigorating the organ of Nature.

  The opening of the codpiece was about a pole in length; it was slashed like the hose, with the blue damask-cloth puffing out as before. But on seeing the beautiful embroidery on it, with its threads of gold, its delightful strap-work garnished with fine diamonds, fine rubies, fine turquoises, fine emeralds and Persian pearls, you would have likened it to a horn-of-plenty such as you can see on antiques and such as Rhea bestowed on Adrastea and Ida (the two nymphs who brought up Jupiter). It was ever vigorous, succulent, oozing, ever verdant, ever flourishing, ever fructifying, full of humours, full of flowers, full of fruits, full of all delights. As God is my witness it was good to see! But I will expound all this much more fully for you in a book I have written On the Dignity of Codpieces.

  But I warn you: long and ample though it was, it was nevertheless well furnished and well victualled within, in no wise resembling those hypocritical codpieces worn by masses of weaklings, codpieces full of nothing but wind, to the great prejudice of the female sex.

  For his shoes there were cut four hundred and six ells of velvet of crimson blue. They too were most daintily slashed with a herring-bone pattern [in parallel lines united in regular cylinders]. For their soles were used the hides of eleven hundred dun cows, cut in the shape of cod-fish tails.

  For his cloak were taken eighteen hundred ells of blue velvet, dyed fast in the fibre, embroidered round the edges with sprigs of vine and in the middle with pint wine-pots worked in silver-thread with interlacing rings of gold, and a great many pearls, thus indicating that he would be in his time a good whipper-back of pint-pots.

  His belt was of three hundred and a half ells of silken serge, half white [unless I am much mistaken] and half blue.

  His sword did not come from Valencia nor his dagger from Saragossa, since his father loathed all those boozy, diabolically half-converted Hidalgos: he had a fine wooden sword and a dagger of boiled leather, painted and gilded enough to satisfy anyone.

  His purse was the scrotum of an elephant given to him by Herr von Pracontal, the Libyan consul.

  For his gown were cut two-thirds of an ell short of nine thousand six hundred ells of blue velvet (as above) all embroidered in unravelled gold-thread forming diagonals which, when you looked at them from a particular angle, radiated a colour which has no name, such as you can see on the necks of doves, which marvellously rejoiced the eyes of those who contemplated it.

  For his bonnet were cut three hundred plus two-and-a-quarter ells of white velvet. It was large and round and fitted the whole of his head, since his father held that those Moorish bonnets raised up like pie-crusts will cause some evil to fall one day on to close-cropped pates. For its plume he wore a large and beautiful blue feather taken from the wilds of Hyrcania; it hung most attractively over his right ear.

  For the medallion of his bonnet he wore, on a tablet of gold weighing some sixty-eight marks, a figure of appropriate enamel portraying a human body with two heads, each turned to face the other, four arms, four feet and two bottoms, such as Plato says in The Symposium was the nature of Mankind at its mythical beginning.

  Around it was inscribed in Greek script:

  HE AGAPE OU ZETEI TA HEAUTES5

  To wear round his neck he had a golden chain weighing twenty-five thousand and sixty-three golden marks, fashioned in the form of huge berries, between which were set huge green jaspers cut and engraved with dragons entirely surrounded by sparks and rays of light such as was worn of old by King Necephos. It hung down as far as the hollow below the breastbone. From it he enjoyed all his life such benefit as is known to the Greek physicians.

  For his gloves sixteen goblin-skins were used, and for their borders three hides of werewolves; they were made from those materials following the prescriptions of the Caballists of Saint-Louand.

  For his rings (which his father wanted him to wear to bring back that ancient mark of nobility) he wore on the index-finger of his left hand a carbuncle as big as an ostrich-egg, most attractively set in gold as pure as that of Turkish sequins. On his middle finger he wore a ring composed of the four metals assembled in the most ingenious fashion that has ever been seen, such that the steel never rubbed away the gold, and the silver never encroached upon the copper. It was entirely the work of Captain Chappuys and Alcofribas, his good factor. On the middle finger of his right hand he wore a spiral-shaped ring, in which were set a perfect balas-ruby, a tapered diamond and an emerald from the land of the river Pison; it was of estimable value. Hans Carvel, the Great Lapidary of the King of Melinde, estimated its worth at sixty-nine million eight hundred and ninety-four thousand [and eighteen] Agnus Dei crowns.

  That was also the estimate of the Fuggers of Augsburg.

  Gargantua’s colours and livery

  CHAPTER 8

  [Becomes Chapter 9.

  There is an abyss between the natural and the conventional sign as great as between word and action. Rabelais enters the lists against a popular book of heraldry, The Blason of Colours, which, he maintains, makes the meanings of colours arbitrary, whereas colours in fact have natural meanings internationally recognized across the centuries by natural law.

  Rabelais also distinguishes between august, courtly emblems and fustian rebuses. Rebuses are essentially a matter of puns, puns such as Rabelais himself exploits with delight in other contexts. Some of the puns have become unclear even for French readers because the pronunciation of French has changed so much. Funs do not often lend themselves to translation. The links are as easy in French as a sprig of rue, say, is for ‘rueful’ in English, or as banewort, for ‘baneful’. I have transposed some when it helps to convey the flavour of Rabelais.

  One of the sources of the knowledge of the ‘sacred writings’ of Egypt was Horapollo’s On Hieroglyphics, which was already published with a translation by a protégé of Marguerite d’Angoulême, the Queen of Navarre. The basic work on emblems by Andrea Alciato was translated into French and dedicated to the Admiral of France, Chabot, a highly placed evangelical. It was printed in 1536 but Rabelais knows of it beforehand and of its dedication to the Admiral de France. The admiral’s official emblem was an anchor entwined by a dolphin. It is linked to an adage of Erasmus, ‘Hasten Slowly’, (II, I, I, ‘Festina lente’). It is the object of a long and rich commentary by Erasmus.

  The Dream of Polifilo of Francesco Colonna is one of the great illustrated books of the Renaissance, particularly interesting to Rabelais for its portrayal of ancient hieroglyphs and sumptuous buildings.]

  Gargantua’s colours, as you have been able to read above, were white and blue. By them his father intended it to be understood that his son was a Heaven-sent joy for him, since for him white signified joy, pleasure, happiness and delight, while blue signified heavenly things.

  I realize that you are laughing at the old tippler when you read these words: you judge that his interpretation of those colours is far too gross and absurd and say that white signifies faith and blue firmness.

  But without getting agitated, angry, overheated or thirsty – for the weather is dangerous – answer me this, if you want to that is: for I will use no further constraint against you or anyone else whoever they may be; I shall simply tell you one word of the Bottle: who is pushing you? who is prodding you? who is telling you that white means faith, and blue means firmness?

  Why, a wretched book, peddled by hawkers and hucksters, entitled The Blason of Colours. Who wrot
e it? Whoever it was, he was wise not to put his name to it. I simply do not know what should astonish me more, his presumption or his stupidity: his presumption: in that he has dared, on his private authority, without reason, cause or verisimilitude, to prescribe what colours should mean; such is the practice of tyrants, who intend their will alone to take the place of reason, not of the learned and wise who satisfy their readers with evident reasons; his stupidity: in that he thought that the world, without further demonstrations or valid arguments, would govern their devices by his fatuous impositions. Indeed, as the proverb puts it, A besquittered bum in shit abounds: he has found a few nincompoops left over from the days when hats were tall who have placed their trust in his writings and have, in accordance with them, fashioned their mottos and apophthegms, bedizened their mules, dressed their pages, quartered their breeches, embroidered their gloves, fringed their bed-curtains, painted their medallions, composed their songs and – what is worse – secretly spread their frauds and dirty little deceits amongst honest matrons.

  In similar darkness are plunged those show-offs at court, [those transposers of puns,] who, when they want to signify ‘hope’ (espoir) on their devices portray a sphere; for ‘pains’ portray the pens (quills) of a bird; for ‘bankrupt,’ a ruptured banc; for ‘melancholy,’ some ancoly; for ‘a crescent life’,6 a hornèd moon; a non and an armoured breast-plate for ‘non durabit’, [and a lit (bed) without a ciel (canopy) for a licentié (a graduate),] which are rebuses so inept, so insipid, so yokelish and barbarous that, from this day forth, we ought to stick a fox’s tail behind the collars of anyone who would still employ them in France and make masks of cow-pats for their faces.7

  By the same reasoning (if reasoning is what I should call it and not lunacy!) I could paint a hamper to denote that I am hampered, or a mustard-pot to signify My heart most tardily moves; I could paint a chamber-pot for a chamberlain; the seat of my breeches for a vessel of paix and pets (of peace and farts); my codpiece for a wand-bearer, or a dog’s-turd for my sturdy rod, Wherein lies the love of my lady.8