Gargantua and Pantagruel

by François Rabelais

  ‘Not in the least,’ replied Pantagruel. ‘It is misleading to claim that there is one natural language. Languages arise from arbitrary impositions and conventions amongst peoples: vocables (as the philologists put it) do not signify naturally but at pleasure. I do not tell you this idly: Bartolus (On the First Law: “On the Obligations of Words”) relates how there was in his day a certain Signor Nello de Gabrielis in Gubbio who had become deaf through an accident; he nevertheless understood anything that an Italian said, however quietly spoken, exclusively from his gestures and the movement of his lips.

  ‘I have also read in a learned and elegant author how Tiridates, the king of Armenia in the time of Nero, visited Rome and was received with solemn honours and magnificent ceremonies aimed at binding him in a sempiternal friendship to the Roman Senate and People; there was nothing worthy of attention which was not then shown and displayed to him. At his departure the Emperor bestowed on him great and surpassing gifts and further gave him the option of choosing whatever best pleased him in Rome, with a sworn undertaking not to deny him anything he asked for. But he merely asked for one of the players in the farces whom he had seen in the theatre. He had never understood a word he said, yet he had understood what he had conveyed by signs and gesticulations, adding that within his dominions there were peoples of a variety of tongues, requiring several interpreters to reply to them and address them, yet that one actor would suffice for them all, for he was so outstanding at communicating by gesture that he seemed to talk with his fingers.

  ‘You ought therefore to choose a mute who is deaf by nature so that his gestures and signs may be naturally prophetic, not feigned, falsified or affected.

  ‘There remains for us to know whether you prefer to take such advice from a man or a woman.’

  ‘I would willingly take it from a woman,’ Panurge replied, ‘were it not that I fear two things: one is that, no matter what they see, women always mentally conceive, consider and imagine it to refer to the penetration of the hallowed Ithyphallus. No matter what signs, gestures or gesticulations you make in their sight or in their presence, they relate them to the motions of the sieve. And so we would all be misled: the woman would think that all our signs were erotic.

  ‘Remember what happened in Rome two hundred and sixty years after it was founded: a young Roman gentleman met on Mount Coelion a lady from Latium called Verona; she was born deaf and dumb but he, unaware of her deafness, asked her, while making Italianate gestures, what time it was by the clock on the Tarpeian Rock.9She, not knowing what he said, imagined it referred to what was ever in her thoughts and what a young man naturally requires of a woman. So, by signs (which are incomparably more seductive, efficacious and compelling in courtship than words), she drew him aside into her house and made signs to show that she liked the game. And so finally, without one word of mouth, they produced a beautiful sound of bouncing bottoms.

  ‘The second is that the women would utter no reply whatever to our signs: they would simply fall flat on their backs, consenting practically to our unspoken requests. Or else, if they did make any reply to our propositions, it would be signs so fond and ridiculous that we ourselves would judge their thoughts to be erotic.

  ‘You know how that nun, Sister Bottome in Croquignoles, was got with child by a begging brother called Stiffly-Redeem-it. When the bulge became evident she was summoned by the abbess to the chapter-house and taxed with incest. She made excuses, maintaining that it had not happened with her consent but by violence, through being raped by Frère Stiffly-Redeem-it.

  ‘The abbess said, “You wicked little thing! It took place in the dormitory. Why did you not cry, ‘Rape’? We would all have rushed in to help you.”

  ‘She replied that she dared not cry out in the dormitory: in the dormitory one kept perpetual silence.

  ‘“But, you wicked little thing!” said the abbess, “why did you not make signs to the other nuns in the room?”

  ‘“I,” said La Bottome, “did make signs as hard as I could: with my bum; but nobody came to help me.”

  ‘“But, you wicked little thing,” demanded the abbess, “why did you not come straightaway to me, to tell me and formally accuse him? If it had happened to me, that is what I would have done to prove my innocence.”

  ‘“Because,” said La Bottome, “fearing to remain in sin – in a state of damnation – when overcome by sudden death, I made my confession to him before he left the room. The penance he gave me was not to reveal it and to tell it to nobody. To reveal his absolution would have been a most enormous sin, most odious before God and the angels. It might perhaps have been the cause of fire from Heaven burning down the whole of our abbey, and we might all have been cast down into the pit with Datham and Abiram.”’

  ‘You will never get me to laugh at that,’ said Pantagruel. ‘I know full well that the whole of the cloistered riff-raff are less afraid of trespassing against the commandments of God than against their provincial statutes.

  ‘Take a man, then. Nazdecabre seems suitable to me: he has been deaf and dumb from birth.’

  How Nazdecabre replied to Panurge by signs

  CHAPTER 20

  [This chapter recalls the fun in Pantagruel at the expense of Thaumaste with his signs and gestures. Nazdecabre’s gesture when he touches Panurge’s navel describes an item in the games of Gargantua: ‘Up, up the ladder, hand upon hand’.

  ‘Pistolandier’ is a dagger, translated here by ‘Pisstool’.

  Davus is a common name for a slave in Plautus, Terence, Perseus and others. Cf. Erasmus’ Adage, I, III, XXXVI, ‘I am Davus not Oedipus’.

  By citing the axiom ‘Every truth is consonant with every other truth’ Pantagruel emphasizes that all those consulted agree over what is in store for Panurge if he marries, which they would not have done if they had been false.]

  Nazdecabre was sent for and arrived the next day. On his arrival Panurge offered him a fatted calf, half a pig, two barrels of wine, a load of corn plus thirty francs in small coins. He then brought him before Pantagruel, and there, in the presence of the Gentlemen of the Chamber, made him the following sign: he produced a very long yawn and while doing so formed the shape of the Greek letter Tau with his right hand just before his mouth, frequently repeating it. He then raised his eyes to Heaven and rolled them about in his head like a nanny-goat when she aborts, coughing as he did so and deeply sighing. Having done that, he pointed to his lack of a codpiece, put his hand under the hem of his shirt, grabbed hold of his pisstool and flapped it melodiously against his thighs; he then leant forward, bending his left knee and remained thus, holding both his arms folded over his chest.

  Nazdecabre watched him carefully, then raised his left hand in the air and clenched all his fingers together in his fist, except the index as well as his thumb, the two nails of which he coupled gently together.

  ‘I understand what he means by that sign,’ said Pantagruel: ‘it signifies marriage and also the number thirty according to the doctrines of the Pythagoreans. You will be married.’

  ‘Thank you very much,’ said Panurge, turning towards Nazdecabre, ‘thank you my little Ruler-of-the-feast, my Master of the galley-slaves, my Warder [, my Archer-of-the-Watch, my Chief Sbirro].’

  Then Nazdecabre raised his left hand higher up in the air, extended all five fingers, stretching them as widely apart as he could.

  ‘Here,’ said Pantagruel, ‘by signifying the number five, he more amply suggests that you will be married. And not merely betrothed, engaged and married, but you will lie together and live it up. For Pythagoras called Five the number for nuptials, weddings and consummated marriages, because it is a compound of Three (the first odd, superflue number) and Two (the first even number), representing male and female conjoined. In Rome they used indeed to light five wax torches on the wedding-night, and it was forbidden to light more even for the nuptials of the richest, or fewer, even for the nuptials of the most indigent. Moreover, in days gone by, pagans used to invoke five gods (or one
god dispensing five boons) over those who were being married: Nuptial Jove, Juno, who presided over the marriage-feast, Venus the Beautiful, Pytho, the goddess of persuasion and fair converse, and Diana for succour in the labours of childbirth.’

  ‘O what a delightful Nazdecabre!’ cried Panurge. ‘I would like to grant him a farm near Cinais and a windmill in Mirabeau.’

  Whereupon the mute, turning to the left, gave a sneeze of such mind-departing violence that it shook his entire body.

  ‘Wooden-Ox almighty!’ said Pantagruel, ‘what is he up to! That’s not in your favour. It signifies that your marriage will be ill-favoured and wretched. That sneeze (according to the doctrine of Terpsion) is the daemon of Socrates, which, when turning to the right, signifies that one can confidently and assuredly do whatever, and go wherever, as projected; the beginning, continuance and outcome of it will be good and fortunate; turned to the left, it means the contrary.’

  ‘You are always interpreting things for the worst,’ said Pan-urge, ‘forever perturbed like a second Davus. I simply do not believe it. And I know poor shabby old little-read Terpsion only for his failures.’

  ‘Yet Cicero says something or other about him,’ said Pantagruel, ‘in the Second Book of On divination’

  Then Panurge turned towards Nazdecabre and made the following sign: he rolled his eyelids upwards, wrenched his chin from right to left and stuck his tongue halfway out of his mouth. That done, he opened his left hand flat, except for the middle finger, which he kept perpendicular to his palm, and placed it thus where his codpiece should be: the right he kept tightly clenched into a fist, (save for the thumb which he stuck up) and twisted it back below his right armpit, placing it firmly between the cheeks of his backside over the spot which the Arabs call Al katim.

  Then he suddenly changed over, giving his right hand the form of the left and placing it where his codpiece should be, and giving the left the form of the right, placing it over Al katim.

  Nine times he repeated that changing-over of hands. On the ninth he returned his eyelids to their natural position, doing the same for his chin and his tongue. Then he cast a cock-eyed glance at Nazdecabre, clacking his chops as idle monkeys do and as coneys do when nibbling at oats on the sheaf.

  Whereupon Nazdecabre raised his right hand into the air, flat open, then placed its thumb just on the first articulation between the third juncture – between the middle-finger and the leech-finger – squeezing them quite firmly round the thumb, bending their remaining articulations back into a fist and extending the index and the little finger. His hand, thus composed, he placed on Panurge’s navel, continually wiggling the said thumb and resting that hand on his little finger and index finger as on two legs. And thus he set his hand climbing in turn up over Panurge’s belly, chest, breast and neck and finally up to the chin, sticking that wiggling thumb into Panurge’s mouth. He rubbed Panurge’s nose with it, then, mounting further still towards the eyes, made as if he intended to poke them out with his thumb.

  At which Panurge grew angry and attempted to draw back and rid himself of the mute. But Nazdecabre, with that wiggling thumb, went on touching now his eyes, now his forehead, now the brim of his bonnet. In the end Panurge cried out, saying:

  ‘By God, Master Idiot, you’ll be thrashed if you do not let me be. Make me any more angry and my hand will slap a mask on your bloody face.’

  ‘He’s deaf, you silly bollock,’ said Frère Jean. ‘He can’t hear a word you’re saying. Make him a sign meaning a rain of blows on his conk!’

  ‘What the devil does this know-it-all think he’s doing?’ said Panurge. ‘He’s all but given me an eye poached in black butter! By God – allow me to swear! – I’ll treat you to a banquet of bonks on the nose interlarded with double flicks on the smeller.’

  Then he went off, aiming at him a volley of farts.

  The mute, seeing Panurge marching off, got in front of him, forced him to stop and made him the following sign: he lowered his right arm towards his knee as far as he could stretch it, squeezing all his fingers into a fist and thrusting the thumb between the middle and index fingers; with his left hand he then stroked the upper side of his right elbow and gradually, as he stroked, raised that hand into the air as far as the elbow and beyond, then suddenly brought it down to where it had been. Then he raised and lowered it at intervals and showed it to Panurge.

  Panurge was angered by that and raised his fist to strike the mute, but out of respect for the presence of Pantagruel he held back.

  Pantagruel then said:

  ‘If the signs anger you, O how much more will the things they signify! Every truth is consonant with all other truths.

  ‘The mute means and claims that you will be married, cuckolded, beaten and robbed.’

  ‘I concede the marriage,’ said Panurge, ‘and deny the rest. I beseech you to do me the favour of believing that never had man such luck over women and horses as is predestined to me.’

  How Panurge takes counsel from an aged French poet called Raminagrobis

  CHAPTER 21

  [It is Socrates, in Plato’s Phaedo, 85 AB, who teaches that dying poets may be divinely inspired and therefore prophetic. This dying old sage, despite his comic pussy-cat name, is wise, as is the dying man in the Colloquy of Erasmus called Funus (the Funeral) in which the evangelical Christian wishes to be left to die in peace, untroubled by rapacious Franciscans, Dominicans and others, varied in their vestments but all after his money. The platonic explanation of the prophetic powers of the dying, which compares the departing soul to a traveller exchanging signals with friends glimpsed from afar on the quayside as their ship draws near to the harbour, is from a well-known passage of Plutarch’s On the Genius of Socrates. The seriousness of the chapter for Rabelais is emphasized by the allusion to the death of his late patron Guillaume Du Bellay, the Seigneur de Langey, the statesman brother of his present patron Cardinal Jean Du Bellay. Rabelais was present at Langey’s death on the way back from Italy, having served there in his household. For Rabelais he was, in the strictest sense, a hero. (See in the Fourth Book, Chapter 27.)

  The reference to La Grande Gorre, the second wife of Ramina-grobis, producing the fair Bazoche, is obscure. It may well refer to a Mardi Gras procession in which a grotesque figure representing La Grande Gorre (the pox? an elegant woman?) gives birth to La Bazoche (the whole company of lawyers’ clerks in Paris), but its meaning in context remains puzzling.

  Two adages of Erasmus are exploited: I, IV, XXX, To move every stone’, and ‘I, II, LV, ‘Swan Song’.

  The verse cited is by Guillaume Crétin, though Rabelais may not have known that fact as the poem appeared anonymously in an anthology.

  The final words of Raminagrobis are markedly evangelical, echoing well-known phrases of Scripture (from, for example, Deuteronomy 31:29; Matthew 6:8; Revelation, 17:14, etc.).

  The name of Raminagrobis might suggest a fat-cat, a hypocrite, but Rabelais is showing that names can be misleading.]

  ‘I never ever expected to meet anyone as stubborn in his preconceptions as I see that you are,’ said Pantagruel. ‘Yet I am sure that we should leave no stone unturned to throw light on to your problem. Listen to my suggestion.

  ‘Swans, which are birds sacred to Apollo, never sing except when death approaches – specifically on the Meander, which is a Phrygian river (I add that because [Aelian and] Alexander Myndius write of having seen many die elsewhere but none die singing) – so that a swan’s song is a sure presage of its approaching death, and it will never die before it has sung. Poets, who are similarly under the protection of Apollo, normally turn prophetic as death approaches, singing under the inspiration of Apollo and foretelling things to come. I have often heard it said, moreover, that every aged man, when frail and near his end, may readily divine future events. I recall that Aristophanes in one of his comedies calls old men Sibyls: ‘Ο δὲ ϒέQων σιβνλλιᾷ.10

  ‘For when we are on a jetty and see the mariners and the passengers in th
eir ships far off upon the high seas we can only gaze at them in silence and pray piously for their safe berthing; but when they draw close to harbour we can greet them by both word and gesture and congratulate them on having reached us ashore in a safe port; similarly, according to the doctrines of the Platonists, angels, heroes and good daemons, seeing humans draw close to death (as to a most safe and salutary port of rest and quietness, free from earthly cares and solicitudes,) welcome them, comfort them, speak with them and already begin to communicate to them the art of divination.

  ‘I will not cite you the ancient examples as Isaac, Jacob, Patroclus with regard to Hector; Hector with regard to Achilles, [Polynestor with regard to both Agamemnon and Hecuba,] that man of Rhodes celebrated by Posidonius; Calanus of India with regard to Alexander the Great; Orodes with regard to Mezentius, and so on. I wish simply to recall to your mind that learned and gallant nobleman Guillaume Du Bellay, the late Seigneur de Langey, who died on Mount Tarara on the tenth of January in the year of his climacteric (1543 as we count it, Roman style).

  ‘The three or four hours before he died he employed in vigorous words, calm and serene in mind, foretelling to us what we have since partly seen already and now partly await to happen, even though, at the time, those prophecies seemed to us strange and implausible because no present cause or sign was then apparent portending what he foretold.

  ‘Here, near La Ville-au-Maire, we have a man who is both aged and a poet, Raminagrobis, who took La Grande Gorre as his second wife, producing the fair Bazoche. I have heard that he is at his last gasp and on the point of death. Make your way to him and hear his swan song. Perhaps you will find out from him what you seek and your doubt be resolved through him by Apollo.’

  ‘I want to,’ said Panurge. ‘Let us go there straight away, Epistemon, lest death should forestall us. Do you want to come, Frère Jean?’