RABELAIS[B]
[B] The manuscript of this essay, unlike all other early manuscripts of Gustave Flaubert, bears no date. It belongs to the earliest of his writing, a time when there was a far from unanimous opinion among the literary _cognoscenti_ regarding the work of Rabelais.
N]No name in literature has been more generally citedthan that of Rabelais; and never, perhaps, has one been cited with somuch ignorance and injustice. Thus, to some minds he is merely adrunken, cynical old monk, with a mind disordered and fantastic, asobscene as it is ingenious, dangerous in its ideas and revolting intheir expression. To others he is a practical philosopher, gentle andmoderate; sceptical, certainly, but, after all, an honest man ofreputable life. He has been alternately loved and despised,misunderstood and rehabilitated; and ever since his prodigious geniusfirst launched at the world his biting and all-embracing satire, in theform of the colossal mocking glee of giants, creatures of hisimagination, each century has puzzled over his meaning, and hasinterpreted in a thousand fashions this long enigma, apparently sotrivial, gross and merry, but in reality profound and true.
Rabelais' work is a historical achievement, in itself so important thatit belongs to and illumines the thought of each age. Thus, at thebeginning of the sixteenth century, when first given to the world, itwas in reality an open revolt, a moral pamphlet. It had the importanceof actuality and the controlling power of a revolution. Rabelais may beregarded as a Luther in his own way. His sphere was that of laughter,but his power over men was such that with titanic mockery he demolishedmore of evil than the good man of Wittenberg, with all his anger. Hemanaged everything so well--wielded so cleverly the sharp chisel ofsatire--that his laughter became a terror. His work is the embodiment ofthe grotesque; it is as eternal as the world.
Rabelais was the father of the frank and naive literature of theseventeenth century--of Moliere and La Fontaine,--all were immortals,geniuses, in spirit the most essentially French of Gallic writers. Allthree regarded poor human nature with a smile at once good-natured andcynical; all were frank, free and easy in their language, men in everysense of the word: careless of philosophers, of sects, of religions,they were of the religion of mankind itself, and well they understoodit. They turned it over, analysed and dissected it; one in a strangestory full of gross obscenities, bursting with laughter and blasphemy;the second, on the stage, in deftly constructed dialogue, full of truthand wisdom and a naivete almost sublime--more of a philosopher in thesimple laughter of his Mascarille, in the good sense of Philinte, or inthe bilious spleen of Alceste, than any other philosopher that everlived; and the third, in fables for children with morals for men, inverses full of good-nature and kindly humour, in words and phrases,wherein rests something of sublimity; in crystalline sonnets, in all thepoetic gems that deck his name with splendid ornaments.
But Rabelais is to-day a subject of serious study, the favourite authorof those rare minds that rise superior to the ordinary limitations ofintelligence. Besides those men whose names we cite, La Bruyere studiedand appreciated his work with the utmost impartiality. The greatromancer was not sufficiently correct to please the scrupulous taste ofBoileau, or to accord with the reserve and purity of Racine. Thatprudish age, governed by Madame de Maintenon, so well typified in theflat and angular garden at Versailles, was ashamed of literature at onceso frank and open, nude and picturesque. This giant made them fear. Theyseemed instinctively to feel that they were placed between two terribleepochs: the sixteenth century, which produced a Luther and a Rabelais,and the Revolution, which was to give a Mirabeau, a Robespierre. Firstthe demolishers of faith, then the demolishers of life: two abysses,'twixt which they stood firm in the adoration of themselves!
In the eighteenth century things were still worse. Philosophers thenwere of a high moral tone, and would have none of Rabelais. The poorcurate of Meudon would have found himself much out of place in thesalons of the witty and beautiful _marquises_, or in the intellectualsociety of Madame du Deffand or Madame Geoffrin. Never would they havecomprehended the flashing darts of wit, the bubbling spirits, thewhirlwind, the poetic mind, throbbing with adventures, inventions,travel, and extravagances. The petty and affected tastes, the cold andformal manners of the age, were horrified at aught that might be calledlicentiousness of mind. The "Precieuses" probably preferred to have itin their manners! Voltaire, for instance, could pardon Rabelais becausehe ridiculed the Church; but of his style, of his meaning, Voltaire hadscarce an idea, although he claimed to have a key to the great work,which he summed up in vicious epigram: "A mass of the grossest refuseever vomited by a drunken monk."
It is quite natural that this should have been his opinion. The gloryand value of Rabelais, as in the case of all great men, all illustriousnames, have long been vigorously disputed. His genius is unique,exceptional; its product stands alone among the histories of theliteratures of the world. Where is his rival to be found?
To go back to antiquity, shall we cite Petronius or Apuleius, with theirstudied and premeditated art, their classic style, their scholarlyconceptions?
Passing to the Middle Ages, shall we compare the epics of the twelfthcentury, the comic and the morality plays? No, certainly not; andalthough much of the comic material in the work of Rabelais ischaracteristic of the grotesque humour and manners of the Middle Ages,we do not find its predecessor in any literary document.
Coming down to modern times, his closest imitator, Beroald of Verville,author of _L'Art de Parvenir_, is so far removed from his model in styleand power that it is scarcely worth while to make a comparison. Sterneattempted to reproduce the style of Rabelais, but his affectation andover-refined sensibility destroyed the parallel.
No, Rabelais is unique because he himself expresses the traits andcharacteristics of an entire century. His work possesses the highestsignificance in literature, politics, morals and religion. Certaingeniuses appear from time to time, to create new literatures, or toresuscitate old ones; they deliver their message to the world, expressthe sentiment of their own generation, and we hear from them no more.
Homer sang the glories of the martial life, of the valiant and warlikeyouth of the world, the vernal season when the trees put forth newsprouts. In Virgil's day civilisation was already old; we find him fullof tears, of shadows, sentiment and delicacy. Dante is sombre andradiant at the same time; he was the Christian poet, the bard of deathand of hell, full of melancholy and of hope also. In olden times, ifsatiety overtook a people, if doubt entered into all hearts, if allbeautiful dreams, all illusions, all Utopian yearnings fell, one by one,destroyed by stern realities, by science, reason, and analysis, what didthe poet do? He retired within himself; he had sublime flights of prideand enthusiasm, and moments of poignant despair. He sang the agonies ofthe heart and the vagaries of fancy. Then, all the griefs that compassedhim, the sobs that rang in his ears, the maledictions that he heard onevery side, resounded in his soul--which God had made great, responsive,all-embracing--and issued thence through the voice of genius, to markforever in history an epoch in a nation's life, to record its sorrows,and carve indelibly the names of its unfortunates. In our own day LordByron has done this. For this reason, the true poet is more accuratethan the historian, and indeed most poets are more strictly truthfulthan historians. Great writers, then, may be compared, in the realms ofthought, to the capitals of kingdoms. They absorb the brains of everyprovince and every individuality; mingling those qualities of each thatare distinctively personal and original, they amalgamate them, arrangethem, and after a time the result is seen in the form of art.
Rabelais was born in 1483, the year that Louis XI. died. Luther had justbecome known. The king had overthrown the ancient feudalism; the monkswere about to attack the Papacy: this situation describes the history ofthe Middle Ages--a period divided between the wars of Nations and of theChurch. But the people, weary of both, would have no more of either.They realised that the men of arms devoured their substance and ruinedthem; they knew the priests made use of them for their own selfishpur
poses, besides deceiving them. For some time the people contentedthemselves with inscribing satires and scurrilities on the stones of thecathedrals, with making songs against the seigneurs, or publishing,broadcast, biting criticisms of the ruling power or of the nobility, asin the _Romance of the Rose_. But something more was wanted: a revolt, areform. Symbols were old, and so were mystery plays and poems; and therewas a general feeling that an entirely new form of attack was desirable.Science was needed, even in poetry and philosophy.
In 1473, a caricature representing the Church, with the body of a woman,the legs of a chicken, the claws of a vulture, and the tail of aserpent, was circulated throughout Europe. It was the epoch of Comines,of Machiavelli, of Aretin. The Papacy had lately had Alexander VI.; nowit had Leo X., who was no better. An intellectual orgy had set in,destined to be long, and to end with blood. During the eighteenthcentury this was repeated, and the termination was the same.
In the chaotic conditions belonging to this epoch lived Rabelais. We arenot surprised that, in the midst of this society, corrupt from itsdebaucheries and tottering on its foundations, and being witness to suchruin and devastation, the genius of this wonderful man prompted him toreveal, by means of withering sarcasm, the frightful past of the MiddleAges, the effects of which were still felt in his own century, whichlooked back upon that past with horror.
In my opinion, those who have claimed to possess a key to Rabelais, tobe able to understand his allegories, and to translate each jest intoits real significance, do not understand him in the least. His satire isgeneral and universal, not at all personal or local. A careful readingof his work should prove the fallacy of such pretensions.
Shall I cite all that was done in this respect in the sixteenth century,and tell of all the abuse poured by that century upon the Middle Ages,of which it was the outcome? For instance, without saying anything ofAriosto, are not Falstaff, Sancho Panza, and Gargantua a grotesquetrilogy forming a bitter satire on the old society?
Falstaff belongs wholly to England; he is John Bull bloated with beerand pork; fat, sensual, running away from the dead, eternally drawingfrom his pocket a flask of old Spanish wine. He possesses none of theterrible grotesqueness of Iago, or of the deliberate immorality ofSchiller's Hassan, the Moor. His greatest passion was self-love; hecarried it to the highest degree; it was even sublime. He was egotismpersonified, with a certain facility in analysis and a strain ofridicule, by which he managed to turn everything to his own advantage.
As for peaceful Sancho Panza, mounted on his lazy, tawny ass, snoringall night and sleeping all day, a poltroon, not able to understand themeaning of heroism, full of proverbs, the prosaic man _parexcellence_,--is not his base blood the crying reason why he endeavourswith all his power to stop Don Quixote from tilting at the windmills,which the worthy knight takes for giants? The man of gentle birthattacks them, nevertheless, but he breaks his arm and wounds his head.His helmet is a barber's basin, his horse, Rosinante, and a labourer'sdonkey brays at the sight of his coat-of-arms.
Placed between these two figures, that of Gargantua is vaguer, lessprecise. His characterisation is ampler, freer, and grander. Gargantuais less gluttonous, less sensual than Falstaff, and not so lazy asSancho Panza; but he is a greater drinker, a heartier laugher, and makesa louder clamour. He is terrible and monstrous in his gaiety.
One more reflection: the satire of Rabelais does not apply to his ownday only. He denounces, for all time, all abuses, crimes, and everythingthat is ridiculous. Perhaps he was able to foresee a better state of thebody politic and a society whose moral laws should be purified. Existingconditions aroused his pity, and, to employ a trivial expression, allthe world was a farce. And he made himself a part of the farce.
Since his time, what has been done? Everything has changed. Reform hascome, with independence of thought. We have had the Revolution. Wepossess material independence. And what besides all this?
Thousands of questions have been discussed,--sciences, arts,philosophies, theories,--how many questions even during the last twentyyears! What a whirlwind of thoughts and ideas! Where will they lead us?
Let us see. Where are we? Are we in the twilight or in full dawn? Wehave no more Christianity. What have we? I ask. Railways, factories,chemists, mathematicians. To be sure, our bodies are better off, wesuffer less in the flesh, but the heart still bleeds! Do you not feelthe perturbation of your soul, although its outward covering seems calmand happy? It is plunged in the abyss of universal scepticism; it isovercome by that deadly ennui that seizes upon our race even in thecradle. Meanwhile, politicians babble, poets have scarcely time to rhymetheir fancies and scribble them hastily on ephemeral sheets of paper;and the suicidal bullet is heard in every garret and every palace wheredwell misery, pride, or satiety!
Material questions have been settled. But others--have they also beensolved? Answer me that! And the longer you delay in filling this yawningchasm in the soul of mankind, the more I mock at your efforts to behappy, and laugh at your miserable sciences, that are worth no more thana blade of grass.
Now is the time for another genius like Rabelais to arise. Let him bewithout anger, without hatred, without grief. What could he laugh at?Not at kings--there are no more; nor at God, because although we mayhave lost our faith, yet a certain fear remains; nor at the Jesuits, forthey are an old story.
What could he laugh at, then? The material world has improved, or atleast it is on the road to improvement.
But the other? He would have fine sport with that. And if such a poetcould conceal his tears and laugh instead, I assure you his book wouldbe the most terrible and the most sublime that ever has been written!