Gargantua and Pantagruel

by François Rabelais

  ‘Why! God’s beautiful Decretals.

  ‘I intend to make a great secret known to you: in their crests and devices the universities of your world normally have a book, sometimes open, sometimes shut. What book do you think it to be?’

  ‘I really do not know,’ said Pantagruel; ‘I have never looked inside.’

  ‘It is,’ said Homenaz, ‘the Decretals, without which the privileges of all our universities would perish. I caught you out there! Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha!’ Here Homenaz began to break wind, fart, slobber and sweat; handing his gross, greasy square-cap with its four codpieces to one of the maidens. She (having lovingly kissed it as a token and pledge that she would be the first to be married) placed it most merrily on her shapely head.

  ‘Vivat!’ cried Epistemon: vivat, fifat, pipat, bibat! Oh, what an apocalyptical secret!’

  ‘Deacon!’ said Homenaz, ‘Deacon! Beacon! Shine light over here with double lanterns. And girls: bring in the fruit.

  ‘I was saying, then, that by devoting yourself to an exclusive study of the sacred Decretals you will be rich and honoured in this world. And I add that, as a consequence, you will be infallibly saved in the next, in that blessèd Kingdom of Heaven, the keys of which have been entrusted to our good Decre-taliarchic God. O, good my God, whom I adore yet have never seen, open for us, by special grace – at least in the article of death – the most sacred treasure of Holy Church, our Mother, of which thou art the Protector, Guardian, Custodian, Administrator and Distributor. And ordain that those precious works of supererogation and those handsome Pardons fail us not in our hour of need, so that the devils may find nothing to bite upon within our wretched souls, and the horrifying jaws of Hell never devour us. If Purgatory we must suffer, sufferance show! Within thy power and volition it lies to deliver us from it when thou wilt.’

  Here Homenaz began to shed thick, hot tears, beat his breast, cross his thumbs and kiss them.

  How Homenaz gave Pantagruel some Good-Christian pears

  CHAPTER 54

  [For the echo of Virgil in the third paragraph compare the poem at the end of the Third Book. The anti-papalist convictions of Father Rabelais have just been revealed as being as absolute as those of the later Luther. During his time in Metz after the Third Book Rabelais had read a Latin version of Luther’s harsh but effective satire Against the Popedome of Rome, Constructed by the Devil. From it he took the phrase Bon Christian (‘Good Christians’, a plural though it looks singular). For Luther the term ‘Good Christians’ is a sarcastic one, applied to simple, gullible, exploitable ‘papist’ folk by cynical men in the Vatican who themselves believe nothing and believe in nothing. Having read these chapters, one can understand why Cardinal de Châtillon eventually crossed the Channel to a royally reformed Church, for it is inconceivable that Rabelais would have written so boldly without the clear, prior, public support he enjoyed.

  Poires de bon chrétien (‘Good-Christian’pears) were, and are, excellent pears, but poire in French can also mean a booby.

  With the word ‘catastrophe’, already taken from Erasmus, Rabelais again emphasizes the dramatic, farcical conception of these chapters.

  Rabelais draws on another adage of Erasmus: (II, III, V, ‘He calls a fig a fig, a hoe a hoe’. It is applied to simple folk who tell things as they are.

  Here and throughout the Fourth Book Pantagruel is portrayed as a model of princely pantagruelism, wise, charitable and tolerant.]

  Upon seeing this wretched catastrophe, Epistemon, Frère Jean and Panurge hid behind their napkins and began to cry miaow, miaow, miaow, meanwhile wiping their eyes and pretending to weep. The maidens, who had been properly trained, offered full chalices of Clementine wine all round, with an abundance of preserved fruits. And thus was jollity restored to the feast.

  As dinner ended, Homenaz offered us a large number of lovely fat pears, saying:

  ‘Take these, Beloved. They are very special pears: you will find them nowhere else. No land yields every crop: only India yields black ebony; good incense comes from Sabaea, and sigil-late earth from the isle of Lesbos: and these beautiful pears are borne by this isle alone. If you would like to, plant some in a nursery-garden in your own land.’

  ‘What do you call them?’ asked Pantagruel. ‘They look excellent to me and very juicy. If you were to simmer them, quartered, in a casserole with a little wine and sugar they would make a wholesome dish for both the sick and the thriving.’

  ‘Just pears,’ replied Homenaz. ‘Since it so pleases God we are simple folk. We call figs figs, plums plums, and pears pears.’

  ‘Truly,’ said Pantagruel, ‘once I am back home (and that, please God, will be soon), I shall splice and graft some of them in my garden by the river Loire in Touraine. And they shall be called Good-Christian pears, for I have never seen better Christians than these good Papimanes.’

  ‘It would be just as good for me,’ said Frère Jean, ‘if he were to give us two or three cartloads of his maidens.’

  ‘What for?’ asked Homenaz.

  ‘To phlebotomize them between their big toes with certain well-honed pistons. By so doing we would graft some Good-Christian children on to them and their race would multiply in our lands (where folk aren’t all that good).’

  ‘Gosh,’ Homenaz replied. ‘We won’t do that. You’ll make them boy-mad. I can tell that from your nose, even though I’ve never seen you before. Alas, alack. A bit of a lad, you are. Do you really want to damn your soul? Our Decretals forbid it: I should like you to be well aware of that.’

  ‘Patience,’ said Frère Jean. ‘But if thou wilt not give them, Praesta quaesumus (Lend them, we pray). Breviary stuff! I fear no man sporting a beard, were he a triple-hooded doctor de-crystalline (I mean, decretaline).’64

  When the dinner was over we took our leave of Homenaz and all those good people, politely thanking them and promising that, in return for such kindness, we would, once in Rome, so deal with the Holy Father that he would speedily come to see them in person.

  We then returned to our ship.

  Pantagruel, out of generosity and in recognition of the sacred papal portrait, gave Homenaz nine pieces of cloth-of-gold, napped and friezed, to be hung before its iron-grilled window; he also filled their repair-and-fabric-fund box with Double-clog crowns,65 and caused nine hundred and fourteen Annunciation-crowns to be distributed to each of the maidens who had waited on them at table during dinner, to be used at the right time as a dowry.

  How on the high seas Pantagruel heard divers Words as they thawed out

  CHAPTER 55

  [An ambitious chapter from Rabelais the mythologist. In a myth he reconciles the linguistic ideas of Aristotle and Plato (as did Ammonius Hermaeus in late Antiquity). Aristotle taught that onomatopoeias alone convey their meanings directly without that need to impose meanings on to sounds, which all other words require. But in the Cratylus Plato and Socrates taught that the true meanings of many words may be found in their etymologies because of the wisdom of those who invented those words.

  Rabelais hints that etymologies are important. Here the French word discours is thought of as being composed of the di of divisans (conversing) and of cours (short). Good discours is short talk. That etymology is transposed here, hinting that the English word discourse is formed from the dis of discreet and the course of intercourse. (Discourse is discreet verbal intercourse). He returns to similar hints in the last paragraph.

  Rabelais takes the platonizing doctrines of the philosopher Petron in Plutarch’s Obsolescence of Oracles (422B-F) and simplifies them to their (here serious) essentials: the Manor of Truth is, as it were, a celestial equilateral triangle in which dwell the Platonic Ideas (‘the Words, Ideas, exemplars and portraits of all things past and future’).

  For the ‘equilateral triangle’ cf. the three ‘Pierres’ in the Prologue and the stricken physeter in Chapter 34. It may be relevant that Plutarch states that the Pythagoreans called the equilateral triangle Minerva, that is, Athene, the goddess of Wisd
om, and so a powerful symbol for the source of the Christian truths revealed in this episode (On Isis and Osiris, 381 F). Cf. the flying pig in chapter 41

  The terms used for the Platonic ‘Ideas’ are quite usual – Words, Ideas, exemplars and portraits – but it is Rabelais who gives pride of place to Words (parolles,). Around this ‘Manor of Truth’ lies the ‘Age’ (in Greek, the aeon) which Christians alone interpolate between Time and Eternity. Some of those ‘Words of Truth’ drip down on to this world ‘like catarrh’ (a comparison taken over from the end of the Cratylus). A scriptural example of such a dripping of divine Truth into this world is the account of Gideon’s fleece (Judges 6: taken by many to foretell the fecundation of the Virgin Mary). The key lies in the last words of the Risen Lord at the very end of Matthew’s Gospel: ‘I am with you always, even until the consummation of the Age.’

  The original French is close to the Latin Vulgate: the allusion is less clear in traditional English.

  Rabelais’ term parolle (Word) is given an initial capital in these chapters to distinguish it from the ordinary term mot (word) or the technical term voix, rendered by ‘voice’ but meaning simultaneously ‘voice’ and ‘word’. Both ‘voices’ (Latin voces,) and ‘vocable’ are technical terms. Erasmus is also present: first in two linked adages: I, IV, XV, ‘By hand and by foot’, and I, IV, XVIII, ‘By oar and by sail’; then in IV, III, XXV, ‘A cock – or a Gaul! – can do best on his own dunghill’, and I, X, XL, ‘A man who flees will fight again’.]

  When they were upon the open sea, feasting, singing and holding discreet intercourse in fair discourse, Pantagruel rose to his feet and stood scanning the horizon all round. He then said, ‘My companions, can you hear anything? I seem to hear several persons talking in the air, yet I can see no one. Hark!’

  At his command we were all attention, our ears lapping up the air like fine oysters-in-their-shells so as to hear any scattered word or sound. In order to let nothing escape us, some of us followed the example of the emperor Antoninus and cupped our palms behind our ears. We nevertheless affirmed that we could hear no voices whatsoever. Pantagruel was continuing to assert that he could hear in the air various voices of both men and women; then we too realized that either our ears were playing us up or we could likewise hear them too.

  The more we strove to listen, the more clearly we could hear those voices, eventually making out whole words.

  And it greatly frightened us.

  Not without cause: we could see no one yet we heard a great variety of voices and sounds as of men, women, children and horses; so much so that Panurge exclaimed: ‘Guts of Gosh! Is this a joke! We’re done for! Let’s fly from here. There’s an ambush all round us. Frère Jean, my friend, are you there? Stick close to me, I beseech you. Have you got your short-sword? Make sure it’s not stuck in its scabbard. You never do rub half the rust off it. We’re lost! Hark! By God, that’s cannon-shot that is. Let us flee. Not by feet and by hands, as Brutus put it during the battle of Pharsalia, but as I put it now: by oars and by sail. Let us fly. At sea I have no courage. I have more than enough in cellars and so on. Let’s fly. Let’s save ourselves. I don’t say that out of any fear that I have: I fear nothing but dangers. That’s what I always say; so did the France-archer de Bagnolet. Take no risks and get no biffs!

  ‘Let us fly. Turn about! Pull round the helm, you son of a whore. Would to God that I were now in the hamlet of Quin-quinais, at the cost of never getting married. Fly! We’re not up to them: they’re ten against one, I tell you. They’re on their own dunghills; we don’t know this place. They’ll kill us. Let us fly: there’ll be no disgrace. Demosthenes says, “He who flies, will fight again.” Let us at least fall back. Larboard! Starboard! Topsails! Studding-sails! We’re all dead men. Let us fly, in the name of all the devils, fly!’

  Pantagruel heard the racket Panurge was making and said, ‘Who is that deserter down below? First let us see who these people are. They may be our friends. I still can’t see anyone, even though I can see a hundred miles all round.

  ‘Let us try to understand.

  ‘I have read that a philosopher named Petron was of the opinion that there are several worlds so touching each other as to form an equilateral triangle at the core and centre of which lay, he said, the Manor of Truth, wherein dwell the Words, the Ideas, the exemplars and portraits of all things, past and future.

  ‘And around them lies the Age.

  ‘And during certain years, at long intervals, part of them drops down like catarrh on to human beings and as the dew fell upon Gideon’s fleece, whilst part of them remains where they are, kept until the consummation of the Age.

  ‘I also remember that Aristotle maintained that the Words of Homer are fluttering, flying, moving things and consequently animate.

  ‘Moreover, Antiphanes said that the teachings of Plato were like those Words which (being uttered in a certain land in the depths of winter, and freezing and congealing from the coldness of the air) are not heard: so too what Plato taught to young boys was hardly understood by them as old men.66

  ‘It is up to us to make a philosophical inquiry into whether this might perhaps be the very place where such Words unfreeze. And what a surprise if it were the head and the lyre of Orpheus: for, after the Thracian women had ripped Orpheus to pieces, they hurled his head and his lyre into the river Hebrus, which swept them down into the Black Sea as far as the isle of Lesbos, ever floating together upon the waters. And from that head there continually poured forth a mournful song seemingly lamenting the death of Orpheus, whilst, with that song, strokes from the winding winds made the chords accord.67

  ‘Let us keep a lookout in case we see them hereabouts.’

  How amongst the frozen Words Pantagruel came across words both of gullet and gules

  CHAPTER 56

  [A lighter chapter with more laughs than openly displayed erudition, one with Pathelin again in mind. There is a common legal source behind this chapter, the preceding one and the Third Book: the first title of Book 45 of the New Digest, headed On the Obligation of Words. It is from a gloss on that title that Rabelais cites the allusion to Exodus 20:18 (Vulgate Latin): ‘All the people saw the voices’.

  The Adages of Erasmus make further contributions: I, V, XLIX, ‘To give words’ – which means to deceive (as, says Erasmus, lovers do), and I, VII, XIX, ‘To suffer from money-quinsy’ (that is, Argen-tangina pati) as did Demosthenes who suffered from a sort of bribed aphasia when paid not to speak.

  Two Greek names are puzzling: in Antiquity the Arimaspians fought the Griffons, not the Nephelibates, whose made-up Greek name means ‘those who go through the clouds’.]

  The pilot replied:

  ‘My Lord: there is nothing to be afraid of. We are here at the approaches of the Frozen Sea over which there was a huge and cruel combat between the Arismapians and the Nephelibates at the onset of last winter. At that time, the Words and cries of men and the women, the pounding of maces, the clank of the armour of men and horses, the whinnying of steeds and all the remaining din of battle froze in the air. And now that the rigour of winter has passed and fine, calm, temperate weather returned, they melt, and can be heard.’

  ‘By God,’ said Panurge, ‘I believe it. But can we see one of them? I remember that, at the foot of the mountain on which Moses received the Jewish Law, the people actually saw the voices.’

  ‘Here: get hold of these,’ said Pantagruel. ‘Here are some which have not yet thawed out.’

  He then cast fistfuls of frozen Words on to the deck, where they looked like sweets of many colours. We saw gullet words – gules – and words sinople, words azure, words or and words sable; after they had been warmed up a little in our hands they melted like snow, and we actually heard them but did not understand them, for they were in some barbarous tongue, save for a rather tubby one which, after Frère Jean had warmed it in his hands, made a sound such as chestnuts make when they are tossed un-nicked on to the fire and go pop. It gave us quite a start. ‘In its ti
me,’ said Frère Jean, ‘that was a shot from a small cannon.’

  Panurge asked Pantagruel to give him some more. ‘Giving Words is what lovers do,’ said Pantagruel.

  ‘Sell me some, then,’ said Panurge.

  ‘Selling Words is what lawyers do,’ replied Pantagruel. ‘I would rather sell you silence more dearly (as Demosthenes did with his money-quinsy).’

  He nevertheless tossed three or four fistfuls on to the deck. And I saw many sharp Words, and bloodthirsty Words too (which the pilot said come home to roost with the man that uttered them and cut his throat); there were dreadful Words, and others unpleasant to behold. When they had all melted together we heard: Hing, hing, hing, hing: hisse; hickory, dickory, dock; brededing, brededac, frr, frrr, frrr, bou, bou, bou, bou, bou, bou, bou, bou. Ong, ong, ong, ong, ououou-ouong; Gog, magog and who-knows-what other barbarous words; and the pilot said that they were vocables from battles joined and from horses neighing at the moment of the charge; and then we heard other ones, fat ones which made sounds when they melted, some of drum or fife; others of bugle and trumpet. Believe you me, they provided us with some excellent sport.

  I had hoped to preserve a few gullet-words in oil, wrapping them up in very clean straw (as we do with snow and ice); but Pantagruel would not allow it, saying that it was madness to pickle something which is never lacking and always to hand as are gullet-words amongst all good and merry Pantagruelists.

  Panurge annoyed Frère Jean somewhat and made him mad with anger by taking him literally at his word68 when he was least expecting it. Frère Jean threatened to make him sorry (as Guillaume Jousseaulme was sorry he had sold his cloth to our noble Pathelin), and since Panurge had caught him out as you catch a man – by his words – he (if ever Panurge did get married) would catch him out like a calf, by his horns.