Gargantua and Pantagruel

by François Rabelais

  ‘What?’ said Carpalim. ‘Is he as daft as an apple-headed cabbage!’ Triboullet girded on the sword and the game-pouch, took the pig’s bladder in his band, munched some of the apples and drank all the wine. Panurge gazed at him intently and said, ‘I have yet to see a fool – and I have seen more than ten thousand francs worth of ’em – who didn’t enjoy drinking and taking long swigs.’

  Panurge then expounded his concerns to him in elegant, grandiloquent words. Before he could finish Triboullet gave him a big blow between the two shoulder-blades with his fist, thrust the bottle back into his hand, gave him a tweak on the nose with his pig’s bladder, and, while very strongly jerking his head about, said nothing in reply save, ‘By God, God! Raving fool! ‘Ware monk! Horn of the Buzançais bagpipes!’

  Having said which, he drew apart from the company, playing with his pig’s-bladder and delighting in the euphonious sound of the peas. From thenceforth it was not possible to get another peep out of him; and when Panurge wanted to pose further questions Triboullet drew his sword and went to strike him.

  ‘A fine pickle we’re in. We truly are!’ said Panurge. ‘What a beautiful answer! He’s a fool all right! No denying that. But bigger fool still the one that brought him to me. And I am the biggest fool who confided my thoughts to him!’

  ‘That,’ said Carpalim, ‘is aimed right at my visor!’

  ‘Without working ourselves up’ said Pantagruel, ‘let us consider his gestures and words. I note deep mysteries in them and am no longer as astounded as I used to be that the Turks venerate such fools as teachers and prophets. Did you notice how – even before he opened his mouth to speak – his head jerked and rocked about? By the teachings of ancient philosophers, the ceremonies of Magi and the reflections of jurisconsults, you can conclude that such a movement was produced by the advent and inspiration of the Spirit of prophecy who, rushing into a substance weak and small – you realize of course that a big brain cannot be contained in a little head – made it jerk about in the same fashion as the physicians account for the tremor which seizes upon the limbs of the human body: partly that is from the mass and violent shock of a weight sustained: partly from the feeble power of the organ which bears it.

  ‘An obvious example is provided by those who, not having eaten, cannot hold a large beaker of wine without their hands trembling. That was prefigured for us of old by the Pythian prophetess who, before answering through the oracle, jerked the laurel about which she kept in her cave.

  ‘So too Lampridius tells how the Emperor Heliogabalus, so as to be reputed a prophet, would, amongst the fanatical eunuchs during several festivals before his great idol, publicly jerk his head about. So too did Plautus declare in his Asinaria that Saurias would walk along, jerking his head as though raving mad and out of his mind, terrifying the people who encountered him; and again, when exposing elsewhere why Charmides would jerk his head about, he says that it was because he was in ecstasy. So too Catullus tells in Berecynthia and Atys of the spot where the Maenads, those bacchanalian women, those priestesses of Bacchus, dementedly prophesying and bearing laurel-branches, jerked their heads about, as did those castrated priests of Cybele, the Galli, when they celebrated their liturgies, from which, according to the ancient theologians, Cybele got her name, since kubisthai in Greek means to twist, turn and jerk the head about, and to act the wry-neck.37

  ‘So too does Livy write that men and women during the bacchanalian festivals in Rome appeared to be prophesying on account of a certain counterfeit jerking and jectigation of their bodies, for the collective voice of the philosophers and the opinion of the common people held that prophesying was never granted by the heavens without there being frenzied motions in the trembling, jerking body, not only when it was receiving that gift but also when it displayed it and manifested it.

  ‘Julianus, an outstanding jurisconsult, was, in fact, asked on one occasion if a slave was to be held sane who had frequented the company of fanatical and raging worshippers, had apparently prophesied without however such jerking of the head.

  ‘He replied: “Held sane.”

  ‘And so to this present day we find teachers and schoolmasters giving the heads of their pupils a shake, pulling and vellicating their ears as one shakes a pot by the handles, the ear being the member dedicated to memory according to the teachings of the Egyptian sages, thus bringing their minds (which had perhaps wandered off into strange thoughts and been terrified by ludicrous emotions) back to sound philosophical learning. Virgil claims that he was himself vellicated by Apollo Cynthius.’38

  How Pantagruel and Panurge diversely interpret what Triboullet said

  CHAPTER 46

  [Was originally Chapter 43.

  The portmanteau term ‘morosopher’ (combining moros, a fool, with philosopher) goes back to Lucian’s Alexander. Erasmus spread it widely in his Praise of Folly.

  Those who bear religious titles such as Brother, Father or Sister do not commit simple fornication or adultery: they commit incest.

  Fou (Fool) and Tou (All) are two nearby villages in Lorraine.

  Solomon says that ‘the number of fools is infinite’ in Ecclesiastes 1: 15. Avicenna says that ‘the species of madness are infinite’ (Canon: Fen I, cap. 14, doc. xix. Tertii).

  Two adages of Erasmus are relevant: IV, VIII, IV, ‘Nothing can be added or taken away’ and, for the Emperor Domitian who enjoyed catching flies, II, I, LXXXIV, ‘Not even a fly’.

  For the Lesbia of Catullus and her sparrow see his Odes 2 and 3.]

  ‘He says that you are a fool. And what sort of fool! A raging fool who would bind and enthral yourself in marriage in your declining days. He says to you, ’Ware monk. On my honour you’ll be cuckolded by some monk or other. Yes, I risk my honour upon it: I could not risk anything greater if I alone held peaceful sway over Europe, Africa and Asia. See how greatly I defer to Triboullet, our morosopher. The other replies and oracles had quietly made it plain that you will be cuckolded, but they never expressly stated who would make your wife an adulteress and so you a cuckold. This noble Triboullet does tell us. And that cuckoldom of yours will be notorious and deeply offensive. Must your marriage-bed be defiled by incest with a monk?

  ‘He also says that you will be the horn of the Buzançais bagpipes, that is to say, you will be blown like a horn, horn-piped and horny. And just as that fellow who intended to beg King Louis the Twelfth to grant the farming of the Buzançais salt-tax to one of his brothers but in fact asked for bagpipes, you, likewise, thinking to wed a good decent wife, will in fact wed a wife who is void of wisdom, blown up with arrogance and as nastily droning as bagpipes are.

  ‘Note moreover that it was with the pig’s bladder that he gave you a tweak on the nose and thumped you on the spine. That foretells that you will be beaten by her, bonked on the nose – and robbed, just as you robbed those little children in Vaubreton of their pig’s bladder.’

  ‘On the contrary,’ replied Panurge. ‘Not that I want to exclude myself unwisely from the Land of Folly. I admit that I am one of its subjects: I belong there. All the world is a fool. In Lorraine, by sound judgement, Fou (Fool) is near to Tou (All): all is a fool!

  ‘Solomon says that the number of fools is infinite. Nothing can be subtracted from infinity: nothing added to it. Aristotle proves that. And I would indeed be a raving fool if, fool that I am, I did not reckon myself a fool. It is that which likewise makes the number of maniacs and raving madmen infinite. Avicenna states that the species of mania are infinite.

  ‘But the rest of Triboullet’s words and gestures make for me. He says of my wife, ’Ware moine. By moine (monk) he meant a moineau (sparrow) which she will delight in, just as Catullus’ Lesbia delighted in hers; it will flit about after flies, passing its time as happily as did Domitian [the Fly-swatter].

  ‘More. He implies that she will be a country-maid, as sweet and lovely as bagpipes from Saulieu or Buzançais. That veracious Triboullet has well understood my nature and my inner feelings; for I promise you tha
t I’m more delighted by merry, loose-haired little shepherd-girls whose bums smell of Our-Lady’s-bedstraw than by those ladies in our great courts with their rich fineries and their cracks pungently smelling of navel-wort. I take more pleasure in rustic bagpipes than in the strumming of lutes, rebecs and aulic violins.

  ‘Triboullet gave me a thump with his fist on me poor ole spine. By God’s love, so be it: so much off the pains of purgatory! He meant no harm: he thought he was thumping some lackey or other. He is, I assure you, a good fool, an innocent. Whoever thinks ill of him is committing a sin. I forgive him with all my heart.

  ‘He did tweak my nose: that means those little endearments between my wife and me as happens to all newly weds.’

  How Pantagruel and Panurge decide on visiting the Dive Bouteille

  CHAPTER 47

  [Was originally Chapter 44.

  The Divine Bottle, Dive Bouteille, makes her first appearance. Dive (from the Latin diva) means divine or saint or saintly.

  There is word-play on debts and Lord Debity (Deputy), the title of the English Governor of Calais.

  The ‘trespasses’ of the Lord’s Prayer in English are ‘debts’ in Latin and French. Similarly ‘them who trespass against us’ are simply ‘Debtors’ (in Latin, ‘Debitoribus’). The punning is at once obvious and obscure. There was a saying: ‘He is all debitoribus’, meaning he dares not face his creditors.

  There is also play on the English word fellow and the French words fallo or fallot, which mean a lantern or a fire-basket.

  Lanternois appears as a land in a little book which Rabelais did not write, The Disciple of Pantagruel, 1537, which went through several re-editions. Rabelais drew upon it for his Fourth Book.

  Amongst other meanings ‘to lantern may almost always suggest sexual intercourse.]

  ‘And here is another point which you aren’t taking into account, yet is the very nub of the matter: Triboullet returned that bottle into my hand. What does that signify? What does it mean?’

  ‘It means perhaps,’ said Pantagruel, ‘that your wife will be a drunkard.’

  ‘On the contrary,’ said Panurge, ‘for the bottle was empty. I swear to you on the backbone of Saint Fiacre-en-Brie that our morosopher – not the loony but the only Triboullet – is referring me back to the Bottle; so I freshly update my original vow: here in your presence I swear by Styx and by Acheron always to wear my glasses in my bonnet and never to wear a codpiece on my trunk-hose until I have, on this my enterprise, the Word of the [Dive] Bouteille.

  ‘I am acquainted with a wise man, a friend of mine, who knows the way there, the land and the part of the country in which her temple and her oracle are to be found. He will guide us safely there. Let’s go there together. I beg you not to let me down. I shall be an Achates to you, a Damis, a companion throughout all the voyage. I’ve long known you to be a lover of peregrinations, ever wanting to see and ever wanting to learn. We shall see wonderful sights, believe you me.’

  ‘Willingly,’ said Pantagruel, ‘but before undertaking that long peregrination, full of hazards and evident dangers…’

  ‘What dangers?’ said Panurge, cutting him across. ‘Dangers flee seven leagues from me wherever I am, just as the arrival of the king supersedes the magistrate, the arrival of the sun banishes the darkness, and the arrival of the relics of Saint-Martin at Candes causes maladies to flee.’

  ‘That reminds me,’ said Pantagruel, ‘there are certain details we must quickly see to before we set out.

  ‘First, let us send Triboullet back to Blois (which was done that very hour, Pantagruel giving him a coat of gold crêpe). Second, we must have the counsel and congee of the king my father. We must also find us a sybil to serve as guide and interpreter.’

  Panurge replied that his friend Xenomanes would amply suffice, and that he was already thinking about travelling through the Lanternois in order to pick up there a certain learned and experienced female Lantern who would be for them on their voyage what the Sybil was for Aeneas when he descended into the Elysian Fields. Carpalim, who was escorting Triboullet back, was passing by and, hearing what was said, called out,

  ‘Hey! Panurge! Lord Sans-Debts. Take my Lord Debity with you from Calais, for he’s a good fellow. And don’t forget debitoribus: they’re Lanterns. [Then you’ll have both fellow and fallo – Companion and Lantern].’

  ‘My forecast,’ said Pantagruel, ‘is that we shall engender no melancholy on our way. I can see that clearly enough already. My one regret is that I cannot speak good Lanternese.’

  ‘I,’ replied Panurge, ‘shall speak it for all of you. I know it like my mother-tongue. I use it as a vernacular:

  Briszmarg d’algotbric nubstzne zos

  Isquebfz prusq; albork crinqs zacbac.

  Misbe dilbarlkz morp nipp stancz bos.

  Strombtz Panrge walmap quost grufz bac.

  ‘Now then, Epistemon. Guess what that means.’

  ‘They’re like the names of devils,’ replied Epistemon, ‘devils errant, devils passant and devils rampant.’

  ‘Words truly brayed, fair friend!’ said Panurge. ‘It is the courtly form of Lanternese. I will compile a nice little lexicon for you en route, but it won’t last much longer than a new pair of shoes: you’ll have learnt it sooner than witness a sunrise.

  ‘What I said, translated from Lanternese into our vernacular, is a song like this:

  A lover was I: ever sadness

  Dogged all my steps and me befell.

  Married folk have every gladness.

  Panurge, now wed, knows all that well.’

  ‘All that remains, then,’ said Pantagruel, ‘is to hear what my royal father wills and obtain his congee.’

  How Gargantua establishes that it is never licit for children to marry without the knowledge and consent of their fathers and mothers

  CHAPTER 48

  [Was originally Chapter 45.

  By a curious error, still retained in ‘52, the second speech is attributed to Pantagruel not to Gargantua, to whom it clearly belongs. Most editors correct it, as is tacitly done here.

  The chapter consists of diatribes against clandestine marriages, that is, against marriages entered into by young people without the prior permission of their parents and kinsfolk. Such marriages were legal in the eyes of the Church and for the civil authorities too wherever the law of the (unreformed) Church held sway. In this matter Church Law took absolute precedence, requiring simply the consent of the partners (expressed in an exchange of vows ‘for the future’ and then ‘for the present’, as still today in the English marriage service), followed (as still today) by consensual sexual intercourse. Normally a priest was present as witness, but his presence was not a sine qua non. Rabelais is championing Roman Law against long-established Ecclesiastical Law. For the Church and its Law, it is the consent of the partners which validates the marriage service: in Roman Law it is the consent of the parents, who may punish as rapists and abettors of rape the men involved in marrying their daughter without their prior consent whether the woman herself consented or not. By sometimes changing his original term ‘myste’ (translated here by ‘mysteriarcb’), to ‘taulpetier’ (translated here by ‘mole’ but strictly more like ‘monk living like a mole in his convent’), Rabelais increasingly aims his attacks specifically against the religious Orders. Clandestine marriages which involved the clergy were more likely to involve a monk or mendicant than a parish priest dependent on local patronage. (It was a Franciscan who married Romeo and Juliet.)

  The subject was very much in the air. All the variously reformed Churches took marriage in hand. There were forces trying to make the French government do so too, and override Church Law. The arguments and vocabulary of Rabelais are those shared, for example, by the liberal French legal authority Coras and the Lutheran theologian Martin Bucer. Rabelais was taking on the Roman Church in a vital aspect of its role. To many traditionalists he would have seemed simply Lutheran or Réformé, though many others shared his views, not least am
ongst the nobility, whose daughters were most at risk.

  The revenge taken by her brethren for the rape of Dinah in Genesis is condemned by Jacob; it nevertheless became a prime example to be cited with approval as by Rabelais. Erasmus is present in an adage: I, X, XLV, ‘diametrically opposed’ for whatever is ‘vehemently repugnant and incompatible.’]

  As Pantagruel came into the Great Hall of the château he found his good father Gargantua coming out of his council-chamber and gave him a brief account of their experiences, outlined their project and begged him that they might execute it with his approval and congee.

  Our good Gargantua was holding in his hands two fat bundles of petitions answered and memoranda to be answered. He handed them to Ulrich Gallet, his long-established Receiver of Requests [and Petitions]. He drew Pantagruel aside and said, looking happier than usual:

  ‘My dearest son, I praise God who keeps you in virtuous desires. It greatly pleases me that you should see your voyage through, but I could also wish that it similarly came to you too to wish and desire to marry. It seems to me that you have now reached the age when it is becoming to do so. Panurge has tried hard to break down the difficulties which could be an impediment to him. Tell me about yourself.’

  ‘Father most gracious,’ replied Pantagruel, ‘I have yet to give any thought to it. In all such matters I was showing deference to your own good-favour and fatherly command. Rather than to be seen married and alive without your good-pleasure, I would, in your displeasure, pray God to be found stone dead at your feet. I have never heard that there has ever been any law, sacred, civil or barbarian, which allowed children to wed without their fathers, mothers and closest kin consenting to it, willing it and advocating it. All law-givers have removed such a freedom from children and reserved it to their families.’

  ‘My dearest son,’ said Gargantua, ‘I believe you; and I praise God that only good and praiseworthy matters come to your attention, and that nothing save liberal learning has entered into the dwelling-place of your mind through the windows of your senses; for during my time there has been found a land within our continent in which there are certain species of molelike pastophors, hating wedlock like the pontiffs of Cybele in Phrygia (only they are not capons but cocks full of lechery and salaciousness), who have dictated to married folk laws governing marriage!