Mimesis (49 page)

This rise of man to wholeness in the natural world, this triumph of the animal and the creatural, offers us the opportunity to remark in more detail how ambiguous and therefore subject to misconstruction is the word individualism, which is often, and certainly not unjustifiably, used in connection with the Renaissance. There is no doubt that, in Rabelais’ view of the world, in which all possibilities are open, which plays with every aspect, man is freer in his thinking, in realizing his instincts and his wishes, than he was earlier. But is he therefore more individualistic? It is not easy to say. At least he is less closely confined to his own idiosyncrasy, he is more protean, more inclined to slip into someone else’s shoes; and his general, super-individual traits, especially his animal and instinctive traits, are greatly emphasized. Rabelais has created very strongly marked and unmistakable characters, but he is not always inclined to keep them unmistakable; they begin to change, and suddenly another personage peers out of them, as the situation or the author’s whim demands. What a change in Pantagruel and Panurge during the course of the work! And even at the given moment, Rabelais is not much concerned with the unity of a character, when he mingles complacent cunning, wit, and humanism, with an elementally pitiless cruelty which is perpetually flickering in the background. If we compare the grotesque underworld of book 2, chapter 30 (in which he turns his personages’ earthly situations and characters topsy-turvey), with Dante’s beyond, we see how summarily Rabelais deals with human individuality; he delights in tumbling it over. Actually the Christian unity of the cosmos, and the figural preservation of the earthly personality in the divine judgment, led to a very strong concept of the indestructible permanence of the individual (most strongly evident in Dante, but also to be seen elsewhere). And this was first endangered when Christian unity and Christian immortality no longer dominated the European concept of the universe.

The description of the underworld referred to above is also inspired by a dialogue of Lucian’s (
Menippus seu Nekyomantia
), but Rabelais carries the joke much further—indeed, far beyond the limits of discretion and taste. His humanistic relation to antique literature is shown in his remarkable knowledge of the authors who furnish him with themes, quotations, anecdotes, examples, and comparisons; in his thought upon political, philosophical, and educational questions,
which, like that of the other humanists, is under the influence of antique ideas; and particularly in his view of man, freed as it is from the Christian and stratified-social frame of reference which characterized the Middle Ages. Yet his indebtedness to antiquity does not imprison him within the confines of antique concepts; to him, antiquity means liberation and a broadening of horizons, not in any sense a new limitation or servitude; nothing is more foreign to him than the antique separation of styles, which in Italy even in his own time, and soon after in France, led to purism and “Classicism.” In Rabelais there is no aesthetic standard; everything goes with everything. Ordinary reality is set within the most improbable fantasy, the coarsest jokes are filled with erudition, moral and philosophical enlightenment flows out of obscene expressions and stories. All this is far more characteristic of the later Middle Ages than of antiquity—at least in antiquity “laughing truth-telling” had never known such a wide swing of the pendulum to either side; for that, the late medieval mixture of styles was necessary. Yet Rabelais’ style is not merely the Middle Ages monstrously exaggerated. When, like a late medieval preacher, he mingles a formless plethora of erudition with coarse vulgarity, the erudition no longer has the function of supporting some doctrine of dogma or ethics by authority—instead, it furthers the grotesque game which either makes the momentary subject matter seem ridiculous and nonsensical, or at least raises the question of how seriously Rabelais means what he is saying. His popular appeal too is different from that of the Middle Ages. Undoubtedly Rabelais appeals to the people, because an uneducated public—so far as it understands his language—can always be vastly amused by his stories. But those to whom his work is really addressed are members of an intellectual elite, not the people. The preachers addressed the people; their vivid sermons were intended for direct delivery. Rabelais’ work was meant to be printed, in other words to be read. That, in the sixteenth century, still meant that it was addressed to a very small minority; and even in that small minority, he is not addressing the same stratum as that for which the chapbooks were intended.

Rabelais himself expressed his opinion on the level of style of his work, and in doing so he cited not a medieval but an antique example, namely Socrates. The text is one of the finest and ripest in his work, the Prologue to
Gargantua
, that is, to the first book, which, however, as we mentioned before, was not written and published until after the second.
Beuveurs tres illustres, et vous, Verolez très précieux—car à
vous, non a aultres, sont dediez mes escriptz
—thus begins the celebrated text, which, in its polyphonic richness, in its announcement of the various themes of the work, can be compared to a musical overture. Few if any authors ever before addressed their readers in this fashion, and the Prologue becomes even more of a prodigy through the sudden appearance of a subject, which, after such a beginning, is the last thing one expects:
Alcibiades ou dialoge de Platon intitulé Le Bancquet, louant son precepteur Socrates, sans controverse prince des philosophes, entre aultres parolles le dict estre semblable es Silenes
. … For the platonizing mystics of the Renaissance, for the
libertins spirituels
in Italy, Germany, and France, Plato’s
Symposium
was almost a sacred text; and it is something from the
Symposium
that he has a mind to tell the “illustrious drinkers and thrice-precious pockified blades,” as Urquhart drolly translates it. With this very sentence he sets the tone, that of the most prodigious and unrestrained mixture of genres. There immediately follows an insolent and grotesque paraphrase of the passage in which Alcibiades compares Socrates with the figures of Silenus inside which there are little images of the gods; for, like the Sileni, he is outwardly repulsive, ridiculous, boorish, poor, awkward, a grotesque figure and a mere vulgar buffoon (this part of the comparison, which, in Plato, Alcibiades only briefly suggests, Rabelais sets forth at length); but within him there were the most wonderful treasures: superhuman insight, amazing virtue, unconquerable courage, invariable content, perfect firmness, incredible scorn for all those things for which men lie awake and run and bestir themselves and fight and travel. And what—Rabelais in effect goes on—did I mean to accomplish by this Prologue? That you, when you read all the pleasant titles of my writings (here follows a parade of grotesque book titles), will not suppose that there is nothing in them but jests and stuff for laughter and mockery. You must not so quickly draw conclusions from mere outward appearances. The habit does not make the monk. You must open the book and carefully consider what is in it; you will see that the contents are worth far more than the container promised, that the subjects are nowhere near so foolish as the title suggests. And even if, in the literal sense of the contents, you still find enough stuff for laughter of the sort that the title promises, you must not be satisfied with only that: you must probe deeper. Have you ever seen a dog that has found a marrow bone? Then you must have observed how devoutly he guards it, how fervently he seizes it, how prudently he approaches it, with what affection he breaks it open, how diligently he sucks it.
Why does he do all this, what does he expect as his reward for so much trouble? Only a little marrow. But indeed that little is the most precious and perfect nourishment. Like him, you must have a keen nose to smell these goodly, well-fattened books (
ces beaux livres de haulte gresse
), to perceive and value their contents; then, by sedulous reading and frequent meditation, you must break the bone and suck the marrow, which contains the substance—or the things which I intend by my Pythagorean symbols—in the sure hope that by so reading you will win intelligence and courage; for you will find in it a far finer taste and a more abstruse teaching, which will reveal deep secrets and terrible mysteries to you touching both our religion and our political and economic life.

In the closing sentences of the Prologue, to be sure, he turns all profound interpretation into comedy again; but there can be no doubt that, with his example of Socrates, his comparison of the reader to the dog who breaks open the bone, and his designating his work as
livres de haulte gresse
, he meant to indicate a purpose which lay close to his heart. The comparison of Socrates to the figures of Silenus (to which Xenophon also refers) appears to have made a great impression on the Renaissance (Erasmus includes it in his
Adagia
, and this is perhaps Rabelais’ direct source). It offers a concept of Socrates’ personality and style which seems to give the authority of the most impressive figure among the Greek philosophers to the mixture of genres which was a legacy of the Middle Ages. Montaigne too produces Socrates as his star witness for the same point at the beginning of the twelfth essay of his third book; the tone of the passage is quite different from Rabelais’, but the subject under discussion is the same—the mixture of styles:

Socrates faict mouvoir son ame d’un mouvement naturel et commun. Ainsi dict un païsan, ainsi dict une femme. Il n’a jamais en la bouche que cochers, menuisiers, savetiers et maçons. Ce sont inductions et similitudes tirées des plus vulgaires et cogneues actions des hommes: chacun l’entend. Sous une si vile forme nous n’eussions jamais choisi la noblesse et splendeur de ses conceptions admirables. …

(Socrates makes his mind move with a natural and familiar motion. A peasant says this, a woman says that. He never speaks but of charioteers, joiners, cobblers and masons. His inductions and similes are drawn from the most common and best-known activities
of men; everybody understands him. Under so humble a form we should never have recognized the nobility and splendour of his admirable ideas. …) Translated by E. J. Trechmann, Oxford University Press, 1927.

To what extent Montaigne or even Rabelais were justified in calling Socrates to witness when they declared their liking for a strong and popular style, may here be left out of consideration. It is enough for us that a “Socratic” style meant to them something free and untrammeled, something close to ordinary life, and indeed, for Rabelais, something close to buffoonery (
ridicule en son maintien, le nez pointu, le reguard d’un taureau, le visaige d’un fol … tousjours riant, tousjours beuvant d’autant à un chascun, tousjours se guabelant
. …), in which at the same time divine wisdom and perfect virtue are concealed. It is as much a style of life as a literary style; it is, as in Socrates (and in Montaigne too), the expression of the man. As a level of style, this mixture was particularly suitable for Rabelais. First, on purely practical grounds, it permitted him to touch upon things that shocked the reactionary authorities of his time, to display them in a twilight between jest and earnest, which, in case of need, made it easier for him to avoid full responsibility. Secondly, it was thoroughly consonant with his temperament—out of which, despite the earlier tradition, which was present in his mind, it arose as an absolutely characteristic phenomenon. And above all, it precisely served his purpose—namely, a fruitful irony which confuses the customary aspects and proportions of things, which makes the real appear in the super-real, wisdom in folly, rebellion in a cheerful and flavorful acceptance of life; which, through the play of possibilities, casts a dawning light on the possibility of freedom. I consider it a mistake to probe Rabelais’ hidden meaning—that is, the marrow of the bone—for some definite and clearly outlined doctrine; the thing which lies concealed in his work, yet which is conveyed in a thousand ways, is an intellectual attitude, which he himself calls Pantagruelism; a grasp of life which comprehends the spiritual and the sensual simultaneously, which allows none of life’s possibilities to escape. To describe it more in detail is not a wise undertaking—for one would immediately find oneself forced into competition with Rabelais. He himself is constantly describing it, and he can do it better than we can. I wish to add but one thing—namely, that the intoxication of his multifarious play never degenerates into formless ravings
and thus into something inimical to life; wildly as the storm sometimes rages in his book, every line, every word, is strictly under control.

The riches of his style are not without their limits; the grotesque frame in itself excludes deep feeling and high tragedy; and it is not probable that he could have attained to them. Hence it might be doubted whether he has rightfully been given a place in our study, since what we are tracing is the combination of the everyday with tragic seriousness. Certainly, no one can deny him the former, since he constantly makes it appear in the setting of his super-real world, and, in describing it, becomes a poet. That, among many other things, he was a lyric poet, a polyphonic poet of realistic situations, has often been remarked and numerous passages have been quoted to demonstrate it—for example, the wonderful sentence at the end of book 1, chapter 4, which describes the dance on the lawn.

We shall not deny ourselves the pleasure of quoting at least one example of his lyrico-everyday polyphony, namely the poem of the sheep, which he slips into the brief moment between the bargaining scene and the unexpected throwing of the ram into the sea, while Dindenault, stupid and unsuspecting, is shamelessly belaboring Panurge with broad witticisms (end of book 4, chapter 7):

Panurge, ayant payé le marchant, choisit de tout le troupeau un beau et grand mouton, et l’emportoit cryant et bellant, oyans tous les aultres et ensemblement bellans et regardans quelle part on menoit leur compaignon.

(Panurge, having paid the merchant, chose out of all the flock a fine topping ram; and as he was hauling it along, crying out and bleating, all the rest, hearing and bleating in concert, stared to see whither their brother ram should be carried.) After Motteux’s translation.