Gargantua and Pantagruel

by François Rabelais

  CHAPTER 27

  [For the second paragraph of this chapter Rabelais again turns to an adage of Erasmus, I, V, LVI, ‘Theta praefigere’ (‘To set up a theta’); however a capital alpha (A) was printed in error for the capital delta (Δ) given by Erasmus. That misprint is corrected here.

  Another echo of the Adages is of I, II, XXVI, ‘The catastrophe of a drama’. (‘Catastrophe’ in this sense is the third part of a drama ‘in which things suddenly change’.)

  Rabelais, developing what he wrote in Chapter 21 of the Third Book, gives us here the only account we have of the death of Guillaume Du Bellay, the Seigneur de Langey, to whom he was a physician. As we were told in the Third Book, Guillaume Du Bellay died at Mont Tarare near Lyons on his way back from Italy. Named persons, lords and physicians are mentioned as present at his death.

  In scholastic philosophy a good or evil spirit may work something against Nature; a true miracle, something against the whole order of Nature, appertains to God alone.

  When Rabelais was writing these pages he was, again as physician, part of the household of Cardinal Jean Du Bellay, the brother of his hero. We can assume that Rabelais read the Fourth Book privately to him before it was published. The cardinal then heard how his brother’s death enabled Rabelais to unveil the true and deeper meaning of the pages of Plutarch he is transposing. Beneath the veil of Plutarch lie intimations of immortality.]

  ‘I wouldn’t have missed suffering that storm at sea which so greatly tormented and distressed us if it meant having to miss what that good Macrobe had to say. I am moreover readily inclined to believe what he told us about the comet seen in the skies on certain days preceding the departure of such a soul. For some souls are so noble, rare and heroic that signs that they are to leave their lodgings and die are given to us by the heavens some days beforehand. And just as the wise physician, when he recognizes the signs portending that his patient is sinking towards death, warns the wife, children, kinsfolk and friends a few days beforehand of the imminent decease of their husband, father and neighbour so that, in the time he has left, they can warn him to set his household in order, counsel and bless his children, commend widowhood to his wife, make the necessary arrangements for the care of his under-age charges, and be not himself surprised by death before he has drawn up his will and made dispositions for his soul and his household: so too the kindly heavens, as though rejoicing at a new reception for such blessèd souls, seem to be lighting festive fires before their deaths with such comets and shooting stars, which the heavens intend to be reliable prognostics and genuine predictions for human beings that within a few days those venerated souls will leave their bodies and this Earth.

  ‘In much the same way the judges of old in the Areopagus at Athens, when voting about the verdict to be reached over men imprisoned on criminal charges, wrote certain alphabetical signs depending on their conclusions: Θ (theta) signified the death sentence; Τ (tau) signified acquittal; and when the case was not yet liquid-clear, Δ (delta) signified More amplification needed. Those symbols were exposed to public view, thus freeing from anxiety and conjecture the kinsfolk, friends and others who wanted to know what would be the outcome and verdict on the malefactors detained in prison: similarly, by such comets (as though by notifications in the upper air) the heavens tacitly say: “Mortal Men: if there is anything at all you wish to know, learn, hear, understand or foresee from these blessèd souls touching the public good and your private concerns, present yourselves quickly before them and receive an answer from them. For the catastrophe of the drama approaches. Once that is passed, in vain will you regret them.”

  ‘They go further: in order to pronounce the Earth and its peoples unworthy of the presence, company and enjoyment of such worthy souls, they astonish and terrify them with marvels, portents, omens and other preceding signs formed against the whole order of Nature: as we saw several days before the departure of the illustrious, bountiful and heroic soul of that learned and chivalrous knight, the Seigneur de Langey, of whom you have spoken.’

  ‘I well remember it,’ said Epistemon, ‘and even now my heart quakes and trembles within its tegument when I think about those marvels, so varied and terrifying, which we clearly saw five or six days before his departing; such that the Seigneurs d’Assier, Chemant, Mailly-le-Borgne, Saint-Ayl, Villeneuve-la-Guyart, as well as Maître Gabriel, the physician from Savillan, Rabelais, Cohuau, Massuau, Majorici, Bullou, Cercu (called Bourguemestre), François Proust, Ferron, Charles Girad, François Bourré and so many others – friends, intimates and servants of the dying man – stared at one another in silence, without a word passing their lips, all of them thinking and foreseeing in their minds that France would soon be bereft of so accomplished a knight, one so necessary to her glory and protection, and that the heavens were claiming him as owing to them as one naturally belonging to them.’

  ‘By the tip of my cowl,’ said Frère Jean, ‘I’ll turn scholar in my advancing years! Mind you: I have quite a fine intellect;

  I have a question that’s quite hard:

  Like a king’s unto his guard

  Or a queen’s unto her ward:

  these heroes and semi-gods you have spoken of, at death can they cease to be? Byre Leddy, I used to think in my Land-of-Thought that they were immortal like angels fair. May God forgive me for it. But this most-revered Macrobe says that they die a death that is final.’

  ‘Not all of them,’ said Pantagruel: ‘the Stoics say that all are mortal save One, who alone is immortal, invisible and impassable. Pindar specifically states that there is no more thread (that is, life) spun by the unkindly Fates and Destinies from their flax and distaffs for the Hamadryads (who are goddesses) than for the trees of which they are guardians: namely for the oaks from which the Hamadryades sprang according to the opinion of Callimachus and also of Pausanias (in his section on Phocis); with both of whom Martianus Capella agrees. As for the semi-gods, pans, satyrs, wood-sprites, hobgoblins, sylvan goat-pans, nymphs, heroes and daemons, many, starting from the sum total of their various ages computed by Hesiod, have calculated that their lives last for 9720 years (that number being composed of unity passing to quadrinity, that entire quadrinity four times doubled; then five times multiplied by solid triangles. See Plutarch in his book Why Oracles have ceased.’)

  ‘That,’ said Frère Jean, ‘is certainly not Breviary-stuff. Of that I shall believe only what you want me to.’

  ‘I believe,’ said Pantagruel, ‘that all intellective souls are exempt from the scissors of Atropos: all those of angels, daemons and humans are immortal. I will, however, relate to you a history on this subject, a very strange one but written and vouched for by several learned and knowledgeable historiographers.’

  How Pantagruel relates a poignant History touching upon the death of Heroes

  CHAPTER 28

  [In the last chapter the extreme length of life of 9720 years is supplied by Plutarch (415 E-D), but the method of reaching it is not clear to many today as the language of mathematics has fundamentally changed. Pantagruel’s statement of belief which closes that chapter is strictly orthodox, fully in accord with the recent insistence by the Church on the immortality of souls in the definitions and anathemas of the Bull Apostolici Regiminis of Leo X (1513).

  Rabelais is now ‘however’ to retell not a tale but an histoire, an historical event: the death of Pan vouched for by Plutarch’s professor of grammar, Epitherses. If that god Pan really did die in the sense of his soul’s having been snuffed out, then even the higher souls are mortal and come eventually to an end. But with a second ‘however’ Pantagruel will proceed to unveil the hidden truth. By inserting the word ‘god’ into his text – ‘the great god Pan is dead’ – Pantagruel opens the way for what is for Christians the only God truly to die, Jesus, and his death is no snuffing out into nothingness. The dying Lord who lies veiled behind Pan can be revealed by a deeper understanding of his name: behind Pan the Shepherd god (ΠAν) lies the great ‘Shepherd of the sheep’ of Heb
rews 13:20; and there also lies Pan in the sense of All (ΠAν), for the crucified Lord is Pantagruel’s All, ‘in whom we live and move and have our being’, as he is for Paul and for Luke (Acts 17:28). To his other veiled sources Pantagruel adds Virgil in his Second Eclogue, 33 who is taken to mean that Pan (truly understood) ‘Takes care of the sheep and their pastors too’, of whom Rabelais was one.

  Once again Rabelais applies to Christ the title the Most-good, Most-great God, the old title of Jupiter definitively adopted by Christians for God the Father. That is arresting: it normally does not apply to the Son. Cf. the introduction to the Prologue to this Fourth Book.]

  ‘Epitherses, the father of Aemilian the rhetorician, was sailing from Greece to Italy on a boat conveying a variety of merchandise and several passengers, when, the wind having dropped one evening near the Echinades – which are islands between the Morea and Tunis – their vessel was carried close to Paxos. Having reached the coast (with some of the passengers asleep, others awake, others drinking and dining) from the isle of Paxos there was heard a voice of someone loudly crying, Thamous. At which cry all were struck with terror. Thamous was their pilot; he hailed from Egypt but was not known by name except to a few of the passengers. That voice was heard a second time, calling with a terrifying cry for Thamous. No one answered; all remained silent and deeply perturbed, so the voice was heard a third time, more terrifying than before. To which Thamous did indeed reply: “Here I am. What do you require of me? What do you want me to do?” Whereupon that voice was heard more loudly still, telling him, commanding him, to state and announce when he came to Palodes that Pan, the great god, was dead. Epitherses said that all the seamen and passengers were struck with awe upon hearing those words and were deeply afraid. As they were discussing amongst themselves whether it would be better to suppress what they had been ordered to publish or to announce it, Thamous counselled that if they had a stiff wind astern they should sail straight by without saying a word, but it the sea were calm, to announce what they had heard.

  ‘Now when they were off Palodes they chanced upon neither wind nor current, so Thamous mounted on to the prow and casting his gaze shorewards, cried as he had been commanded to: that the great Pan was dead. He had not finished the last word when there were heard great sighs, great lamentations and tumultuous cries from the land, not of one solitary person but of many together.

  ‘News of this soon spread throughout Rome (since many people had been present). Tiberius Caesar, then the Emperor of Rome, sent for that Thamous and, once he had heard what he had to say, believed him. Upon inquiring from the many learned scholars then in his Court and throughout Rome who that Pan was, he discovered from their reports that he was the son of Mercury and Penelope. So had Herodotus written some time before, and Cicero too in the Third Book of On the Nature of the Gods.

  ‘However, I would interpret Pan as alluding to that Great Servator of the faithful, who was shamefully put to death in Judaea through the envy and iniquity of the Pontiffs, doctors, priests and monks of the Mosaic Law. That interpretation does not seem to me to be incompatible, for in Greek he can rightly be called Pan, seeing that he is our All, all that we are, all that we live, all that we have, all chat we hope, is in him, of him, by him. He is the Good Pan, that Great Shepherd who (as attested by the passionate shepherd Corydon) not only loves and cherishes His lambs but also his shepherds. At whose death were heard plaints, sighs, tumultuous cries and lamentations throughout the entire machine of the Universe: Heaven, earth, sea and Hell.

  The date is compatible with my interpretation, for that Most-good, Most-great Pan, our Only Servator, died near Jerusalem during the reign in Rome of Tiberius Caesar.’

  Pantagruel, on finishing with those words, remained silent in deep contemplation. Soon afterwards we saw tears pour from his eyes as big as ostrich eggs.

  One word of a lie, then may God take me!’

  How Pantagruel called in at the Island of Tapinois over which reigned Quarêmeprenant

  CHAPTER 29

  [The previous mystic chapter ended with a smile. The companions then sail away unusually happy. (It was a truism that diabolical interventions make you feel happy at first but leave you troubled: true, Godly revelations trouble you at first but leave you exceptionally happy.)

  ‘Tapinois’ means dissimulation, hypocrisy. ‘Quarêmeprenant’ is for many the three days before Ash Wednesday but for Rabelais he is the personification of Lent (Carême). He is a bleak, unnatural figure who traditionally defeats fat and festive Mardi Gras. Mardi Gras is an enemy to be overcome, whose excesses are encouraged by the dicipline of Lenten observances of which Rabelais disapproves. Like Erasmus Rabelais would replace (or perhaps limit) Lenten excesses by moderation. The followers of Mardi Gras were, and still ought to be, allies of pantagruelism. Glum Lent is the enemy.

  The name of the ‘Ichthyophagi’, the Fish-eaters, recalls a famous colloquy of Erasmus with that name.

  The theme develops into a variant of the Battle between Carnival and Lent, widely known from the picture of Brueghel.

  Rabelais calls the North Wind ‘Aguyon’.]

  With the ships of the joyful convoy refitted, overhauled and laden with fresh victuals, with the Macraeons more than contented and pleased about the money which Pantagruel had spent amongst them; and with our folk more than usually happy, the next day, in high spirits, our sails were set for a delightful, gentle Aguyon. At high noon Xenomanes pointed out in the offing the island of Tapinois, over which there reigned Quarêmeprenant, of whom Pantagruel had already heard tell and whom he would have been pleased to meet in person had not Xenomanes discouraged him, partly because of the long detour and partly for the lean pastimes to be found, he said, everywhere in that isle and at the court of that lord.

  ‘You’ll find nothing for your pot,’ he said, ‘but a great swal-lower of dried peas, a great champer of snails, a great catcher of moles, a great trusser-up of hay, a semi-giant with a mangy beard and a double tonsure, of the Lanternland breed, a great lantern-lecher, the banner-bearer of the Ichthyophagi, a dictator of Mustardland, a beater of little boys, a burner of ashes, a father and enricher of physicians, one who abounds in pardons and indulgences (and church-visits to gain them) – a fine man, a good Catholic and of great devotion! He weeps three-quarters of the time and is never found at weddings.

  ‘It is true that he is the most industrious maker of meat-skewers and larding-pricks to be found in forty kingdoms. About six years ago I carried off a gross of them and gave them to the butchers of Candes. (They esteemed them highly; and not without cause. When we get home I can show you two of them affixed to their main gate.) The fodder he feeds upon consists of salted hauberks, salted helmets and head-pieces and salted green sallets, for which he often suffers a heavy dose of the clap. His dress is merry, I must say, both in cut and colour, for he wears: grey and cold; nothing fore or aft; sleeves to match.’

  ‘You would do me a pleasure,’ said Pantagruel, ‘if, just as you have portrayed me his vestments, his food, the way he behaves and his pastimes, you were to expound his form and flesh in all its parts.’

  ‘Do it, I beg you, you cuddly Bollock,’ said Frère Jean, ‘for I have stumbled across him in my Breviary: he comes in after the Movable Feasts.’

  ‘Willingly,’ replied Xenomanes. ‘We shall perhaps hear more fully about him when we pass through the Ile Farouche dominated by the chubby Chidlings who are his mortal enemies and against whom he wages a sempiternal war. Were it not for the succour of noble Mardi Gras, their good neighbour and protector, Quarêmeprenant, that great Lantern-lecher, would long since have exiled them from their dwellings.’

  ‘Are they male or female?’ asked Frère Jean; ‘angel or mortal? Matron or maid?’

  ‘They,’ replied Xenomanes, ‘are female in sex, of mortal condition; some are maids, others not.’

  ‘I give myself to the devil if I’m not on their side,’ said Frère Jean.

  Warring against women! What sort of disorder in
Nature is that! Let’s go back and slaughter the great villein.’

  ‘What!’ said Panurge. ‘In the name of all the devils, fight against Quarêmeprenant! I’m not that daft and daring too! What will the outcome be if we find ourselves squeezed between Chidlings and Quarêmeprenant, between the hammer and the anvil? Avaunt, ye fiends! Let’s draw away. What I say is, Fare ye well, Quarêmeprenant. I commend the Chidlings to you. And don’t overlook the Hog’s Puddings.’

  How Xenomanes describes Quarêmeprenant anatomically

  CHAPTER 30

  [As for centuries past, medicine still worked through analogies. Those evoked for Quarêmeprenant in the next three chapters show him to be grotesque and unnatural.]

  ‘Where his innards are concerned Quarêmeprenant has,’ said Xenomanes, ‘or in my time had:

  – a brain which, in size, colour, substance and potency is like the left testicle of a male tick;

  – the ventricles of it, like a surgeon’s terebra;

  – the worm-shaped epiphysis, like a block-beetle;

  – the membranes, like a monk’s cowl;

  – the infundibulum, like a mason’s mortar-board;

  – the trigone, like a wimple;

  – the pineal gland, like a bagpipe;

  – the rete mirabilis, like a horse’s armoured frontlet;

  – the mamillary tubercles, like a hobnailed boot;

  – the eardrum, like a fencer’s flourish;

  – the petrosal bone, like the tip of a goose-wing;

  – the neck, like a hand-lantern;

  – the sinews, like a tap;

  – the uvula, like a pea-shooter;

  – the palate, like a mitten;

  – the salivary gland, like a turnip;

  – the tonsils, like a monocle;