Gargantua si Pantagruel

Gargantua and Pantagruel #1-5

by François Rabelais

Biting and bawdy, smart and smutty, lofty and low, Gargantua and Pantagruel is fantasy on the grandest of scales, told with an unquenchable thirst for all of human experience. Rabelais's vigorous examination of the life of his times-from bizarre battles to great drinking bouts, from satire on religion and education to matter-of-fact descriptions of bodily functions and desires-is one of the great comic masterpieces of literature.

Genres: Classics, Fiction, France, French Literature, Literature, Fantasy, Humor

384 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1532

About the author

French humanist François Rabelais wrote satirical attacks, most notably Pantagruel (1532) and Gargantua (1534), on medieval scholasticism and superstition.

People historically regarded this major Renaissance doctor of fantasy, satire, the grotesque, bawdy jokes, and songs. Considered of the great of world literature, he created modern Europe. He also published under the names Alcofribas Nasier and Séraphin Calobarsy.

François Rabelais était un des grand écrivains de la Renaissance française, médecin et humaniste. Il a toujours été considéré comme un écrivain de fantaisie, de satire, de grotesque et à la fois de blagues et de chansons de débauche. Rabelais est considéré comme l'un des grands écrivains de la littérature mondiale et parmi les créateurs de l'écriture européenne moderne. Il a également publié sous les noms Alcofribas Nasier et Séraphin Calobarsy.

Reviews

[Nathan "N.R." Gaddis]

Good fellow pantagruelists, join us in our feast! Trinck! Read! Pass another pint of tripe! All you pouty agalasts, I fart upon you! To the devil with you, you black-beetles, you dull and dappled drips. Here we make it merry! Pantagruelists of goodreads, unite! You have nothing to lose but the contents of your bowels. Trinck! Laugh! Burst!

Properly to give Rabelais his due, to pursue you and persuade you that (as our Good Book says), “Pantagrueling is the beginning of wisdom,” would require the subtlety of a soft shoe but all I have is a flagon of our best vendange. Can you do justice to one such as Shakespeare? Is there any word one can say about that great bard? Which hyperbole do you prefer, you donkey, you aardvark, you zebra? So with our French Shakespeare, that laughing monk, that Doctor of our melancholy, his gentle and jovial giants Gargantua and Pantagruel, hyperbole says always just never quite . . . what I mean to say is that your logorrhea will never be adequate to the task. Would that in our schools the erudition of such a man were taught, that pantagruelian laughter were the curriculum, satire of those stodgy dip-shits (yes, those dip-shits) ran rampant, the motto of the Abbey of Thélème, “Do what thou wilt,” were emblazoned across our grammar books. Or one might parody the satirist, a task again out of my reach, my humility swamped; but we have our own Rabelaisian erudition, 21st century style, Pynchonian panache; may 78 devils take me could I pantagruel my way to review Herr Magister Rabelais with the proper gargantuan garishness. No erudite essayist am I, nor parodic peacock; encomia to our First Novelist, our Best Novelist, a Man of Letters bestriding our centuries, the copious stream from his lower belly of littered letters drowning us in laughter (he pisses like a horse!), such encomia would that I could, but forget all of that and pass another pint of tripe, together we might break a bit of wind. Tap another hogshead! We’ve got all night for our feast!


___________
“If on a friend’s bookshelf
You cannot find Joyce or Sterne
Cervantes, Rabelais, or Burton,

[Gaddis or Gass, Pynchon or McElroy,
David Foster Wallace, William T Vollmann,
Alexander Theroux or Gilbert Sorrentino,]

You are in danger, face the fact,
So kick him first or punch him hard
And from him hide behind a curtain.”
― Alexander Theroux [Ergänzung von "N.R."]


_____________
Why Rabelais?

“With the motto ‘Do What You Will,’ Rabelais gave himself permission to do anything he damn well pleased with the language and the form of the novel; as a result, every author of an innovative novel mixing literary forms and genres in an extravagant style is indebted to Rabelais, directly or indirectly. Out of his codpiece came
Aneau’s Alector
Nashe’s Unfortunate Traveller
López de Úbeda’s Justina
Cervantes’ Don Quixote
Béroalde de Verville’s Fantastic Tales
Sorel’s Francion
Burton’s Anatomy
Swift’s Tale of a Tub and Gulliver’s Travels
Fielding’s Tom Jones
Amory’s John Buncle
Sterne’s Tristram Shandy
the novels of Diderot
and maybe Voltaire (a late convert)
Smollet’s Adventures of an Atom
Hoffmann’s Tomcat Murr
Hugo’s Hunchback of Notre-Dame
Southey’s Doctor
Melville’s Moby-Dick
Flaubert’s Temptation of Saint Anthony and Bouvard and Becuchet
Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
Frederick Rolfe’s ornate novels
Bely’s Petersburg
Joyce’s Ulysses
Witkiewicz’s Insatiability
Barnes’ Ryder and Ladies Almanack
Gombrowicz’s Polish jokes
Flann O’Brien’s Irish farces
Philip Wylie’s Finnley Wren
Patchen’s tender novels
Burroughs’s and Kerouac’s mad ones
Nabokov’s later works
Schmidt’s fiction
the novels of Durrell
Burgess (especially A Clockwork Orange and Earthly Powers)
Gaddis and
Pynchon
Barth
Coover
Sorrentino
Reed’s Mumbo Jumbo
Brossard’s later works
the masterpieces of Latin American magic realism ( Paradiso, The Autumn of the Patriarch, Three Trapped Tigers, I the Supreme, Avalovara, Terra Nostra, Palinuro of Mexico)
the fabulous creations of those gay Cubans Severo Sarduy and Reinaldo Arenas
Markson’s Springer’s Progress
Mano’s Take Five
Ríos’s Larva and otros libros
the novels of Paul West
Tom Robbins
Stanley Elkin
Alexander Theroux
W M. Spackman
Alasdair Gray
Gaétan Soucy and
Rikki Ducornet (‘Lady Rabelais,’ as one critic called her)
Mark Leyner’s hyperbolic novels
the writings of Magister Gass
Greer Gilman’s folkloric fictions and
Roger Boylan’s Celtic comedies
Vollmann’s voluminous volumes
Wallace’s brainy fictions
Siegel’s Love in a Dead Language
Danielewski’s novels
Jackson’s Half Life
Field’s Ululu
De La Pava’s Naked Singularity and
James McCourt’s ongoing Mawrdew Czgowchwz saga.”
--from Steven Moore, The Novel: An Alternate History volume 1: Beginnings to 1600, p330-331.

The fore=going list (which is NOT MY list), has now been turned into a Listopia List by Friend Aubrey. Go ; and VOTE!!! Here’s the list :: https://www.goodreads.com/list/show/4... .)

_____________
M.A. Screech’s translation published by Penguin should be the standard English translation for years to come. I had previously read the Burton Raffel translation but was disappointed, had a deep suspicion that I was not hearing the full range of Rabelais’ voice; I quickly grabbed Screech's edition. Screech provides short introductions to each chapter which identify the context and target of Rabelais' wit, points out difficulties involved in the translation, such as his handling of puns and wordplays, and indicates variations among the various editions published during Rabelais’ lifetime; footnotes are kept to a minimum. The principle of this edition seems to be maximal transparency with minimal scholarly intrusions. Screech is perhaps the most respected Rabelaisian scholar working in English. His translation is smart, verbose, and rich. A life time of Rabelaisian research means that he knows both the letter and spirit of our most sacred pantagrueling.


For Bakhtin's thesis regarding the carnivalesque, Rabelais and His World; an indispensable treatise.

[Fergus, Weaver of Autistic Webs · Rating 4 out of 5]

François Rabelais fired a twenty-four gun cannonade of expletives to welcome this scatological chef d’œuvre to one of the bloodiest centuries this side of Hades. The century of the Reformation.

The twenty-four cannons, of course, were the choicest epithets and most obscene appellations he could think of for the rioting Protestant factions’ view of those soi-disant damned Catholic clerics. And they’re scattered abundantly throughout these books.

Cannon fodder indeed.

Our age naturally would never stoop so low, though our recent political history shows us that extremism never sleeps. And even though our wars are largely waged by trade or by proxy, our guilt never sleeps either.

None of us can be so over-the-top nowadays with tinderbox politics, and not get stung.

But Rabelais was way, way outta bounds.

And would have been appropriately labelled as such, had not Mr Gutenberg enabled every Huguenot foot soldier (if he so wished) to be equipped with a copy of this book in his backpack allowance.

In the same way Bunyan’s Puritan fantasies battle-readied many an English Roundhead.

But Rabelais?

In an age like I grew up in (the fifties) his books would have been simply labelled obscene by the Supreme Court and any public reference thereto would have been considered anarchistic rabble-rousing.

I know, I know, Rabelais is 'great literature'!

But when Henry Miller’s novels began to appear in the sixties (put it down to JFK’s cultural glasnost) my mom STILL wouldn’t hear of us reading him. A little knowledge is a dangerous thing.

Unless it brings you back to an awareness of your own, and God’s, true nature.

Yes, my Mom distrusted political hypocrisy of ALL stripes...

For which I simply say to her memory now: thank God and all His saints.

For, as Ramakrishna exclaimed, "neti, neti, neti!" Go your OWN way, friends.

[Mir · Rating 3 out of 5]

You know what philosophy needs? François thought to himself. More fart jokes. And excrement jokes. Also some obscenity, blasphemy, over-eating, and sex. Ooh, and giants! But most of all, more fart jokes.

Personally, the philosophical discourses were the part I found most interesting, but if you think several hundred pages of various characters calling one another prattling gabblers, lickorous gluttons, freckled bittors, mangy rascals, shite-a-bed scoundrels, drunken roysters, sly knaves, drowsy loiterers, slapsauce fellows, slabberdegullion druggels, lubberly louts, cozening foxes, ruffian rogues, paltry customers, sycophant-varlets, drawlatch hoydens, flouting milksops, jeering companions, staring clowns, forlorn snakes, ninny loblocks, scurvy sneaksbies, fondling fops, base loons, saucy coxcombs, idle lusks, scoffing braggarts, noddy meacocks, blockish grutnols, dollipol-joltheads, jobbernol goosecaps, foolish loggerheads, flutch calf-lollies, grouthead gnat-snappers, lob-dotterels, gaping changelings, codshead loobies, woodcock slangams, ninnyhammer flycatchers, noddypeak simpletons, turdy-gut, shitten shepherds &etc would brighten your weary hours, this is the book for you! Plus it is a classic so you can claim to be improving your mind.

[Ian "Marvin" Graye · Rating 5 out of 5]

An Exuberant Masterpiece

This novel is almost 600 years old, yet it’s hugely entertaining, far more so than I had expected.

In both content and style, there were times when I couldn’t have guessed when it was written.

It’s no longer argued that it was the first ever novel. However, its narrative diversity highlights that the institution of the novel has always been about stylistic innovation and that there is little that differentiates the origins of the novel from subsequent Modernism and Post-Modernism.

I read the early translation begun by Sir Thomas Urquhart, both in ebook form and in a lovely old hardback version that I had bought in 1983, because I loved the stylish pen and ink drawings by the Australian artist Francis J. Broadhurst (who also illustrated “The Decameron”). Some of his illustrations accompany this review.

There have been several translations since Urquhart’s. However, I couldn’t fault his version. It read easily. Any lengthy sentences were more playful than turgid. Steven Moore describes it as an “exuberant masterpiece...but they took too many liberties with the text and made too many mistakes.” I was oblivious to these flaws. Suffice it to say that I felt that they never detracted from the fluidity and humour of the prose that ended up on the page. This must be a tribute to either the author or the translators.

Urquhart was an “extravagant and eccentric” Scottish writer who shared a fascination with neologisms, especially those in “Gargantua”. There’s an interesting site dedicated to him here:

http://sixdegreesofsirthomas.blogspot...





A Primer

The novel is actually a compendium of five books, each of which consists of up to 60 chapters that are usually two to four pages long with headings that clearly announce the subject matter.

The first book to be written and published appears second, the first being a prequel. The success of these two books was so great that Rabelais was tempted to keep adding to them until his death, a tradition maintained by Hollywood.

The adjective “Rabelaisian” derives from the character of the book, meaning “displaying earthy humour or bawdy” or “marked by gross robust humor, extravagance of caricature, or bold naturalism”.

These characteristics are evident. However, what surprised me was the underlying serious intent of the novel. While couched in a satirical framework, it targets important social, political and religious issues. It attacks perceived evils and promotes or investigates alternatives. At times, particularly in relation to the excesses of lawyers, it resembled Machiavelli’s “The Prince" (published in 1532, the year of publication of the first book) at one extreme and Jonathan Swift’s “Gulliver’s Travels” (1726) at the other. It is a sort of primer in social studies without being overtly or overly didactic.

“Rabelais and His World”

It is difficult to read about “Gargantua” without encountering Mikhail Bakhtin’s “Rabelais and His World”. I haven’t read it yet. However, I have utilised some of his approach in my review, and tried to identify where I might have felt differently about it.

Bakhtin analyses “Gargantua” in terms of:

• “Carnival”; and

• “Grotesque Realism”.





“Carnival”

The tone of the novel is “carnivalesque” in the sense that most of us have come to understand the word. However, while I was aware of Bakhtin and his use of the word, I certainly wasn’t aware of how extensive and important his work was in defining its literary connotations.

The novel creates a superficial impression of humour, pleasure and ribaldry. It is verbally playful, and its subject matter is often the role of recreation or play within a broader context. Each chapter is a comic set piece, much like an individual act in a circus. There are frequently crowds or large numbers of people who form an audience for the rituals, performances and activities that are described.

Bakhtin contributes four additional characteristics to the context:

• Free interaction between people of different classes;

• Tolerance of otherwise eccentric behavior;

• The unification of cultural traits or tropes that would usually be separated or opposed; and

• The absence of sanction or punishment for sacrilegious or transgressive behavior.

Historically, various carnivalesque celebrations totaled about three months of the Roman Catholic calendar year. To some extent, they reflected the retention or preservation of pagan traditions and practices. Thus, in a way, they were safety valves for social, political and religious tensions.

Bakhtin’s analysis isn’t one that is superimposed on the text from outside. The Festival of Carnival is mentioned many times in the novel. If a modern reader had some knowledge of the implications of Carnival, then some of Bakhtin's analysis would become apparent from the text itself.

As you learn to appreciate Rablelais' perspective, it becomes increasingly apparent that the two alternative worldviews that he is contrasting are Carnival and Lent, two aspects of the Christian calendar.

Carnival represents idleness, leisure, exuberance, excess, libertinism, ribaldry and hedonism.

Lent represents abstinence, sobriety, asceticism, puritanism, rigidity and self-discipline.

The characters and the reader are confronted with a choice between the two. Alternatively, they might have to find a third road of their own making.

The relative importance of alcohol is revealed in the narrative structure: as early as the first sentence of the Author’s Prologue, Rabelais addresses Readers as “most noble and illustrious drinkers”.

The novel is not just about passively observing or participating in a public spectacle. It’s equally, if not more, about conversation within the confines of a public house or inn. The narrative style belongs to an oral, spoken, occasionally a dramatic or theatrical, tradition. The narrator is talking to us while we’re all consuming alcohol. Each chapter is a discrete tale. It’s just the right length before it’s time to refill our mugs or glasses. This is story-telling at its best. Only the purpose of this story-telling is both enlightenment and laughter.

It doesn’t occur outdoors in a public forum. It happens in an intermediate semi-private, semi-public sphere that is still quite distinct from the private or intimate sphere of the individual.

Nevertheless, like a public arena, status or class distinctions are abolished. Anyone who is present is entitled to both speak and drink, provided of course that they can afford to pay for their alcohol.

The inn, therefore, represents Carnival, while the Church represents Lent.

Challenging the Status Quo

Another aspect of the carnivalesque or drinking context is that it temporarily suspends the enforcement of the status quo. The carnival showcases alternative options, while the inn provides a venue to discuss them. Thus, the tales told while drinking are “what if” or speculative accounts about what it might be like if life and society were otherwise.

This theory is applicable to the events within the novel. On the other hand, the novel itself is a tangible object that must submit to the full jurisdiction of the law. For a long time, it encountered problems with both civil and ecclesiastical law.

Within the novel, the explicit challenge to the status quo is disguised by the fact that both Gargantua and Pantagruel are giants. They are inflated, gross, exaggerated and excessive. Nothing about them is average or mediocre. Everything about them is realistic apart from their "gargantuan" size and strength. However, it’s almost as if they have a gigantic licence to do things differently because of their size. They are not open to challenge.

It helps that they are also royalty in their milieu. Gargantua's son, Pantagruel (whose name means "all thirst"), has an unquenchable thirst for knowledge and an insatiable appetite for food and alcohol. He receives the best tuition and acquires both wisdom and judgement. The novel effectively describes his adventures in learning, both within France and offshore. His diplomatic status assures him of safe passage. Thus, Rabelais is able to experience and assess other political options by observation without overtly challenging the status quo of his fictional royal family, precisely because it is a member of the family (the Prince) who is conducting the investigation.

The narrative is a number of successive inquisitions. It doesn't betray any particular preference or bias. Information and knowledge are goals in their own right. They do not have to be purposive within the framework of the novel, even if Rabelais' own goal might have been to encourage greater freedom of choice in real life.

“Grotesque Realism”

Just as the world of Pantagruel is gross, it is "grotesque" in Bakhtin's eyes.

Grotesque Realism conceives of reality or the human body as structured in a hierarchical or stratified manner.

At the highest level is the abstract, ideal, spiritual and noble aspect of the mind. At the lowest level is the material, vulgar, irreverent, wanton aspect of the genitalia.

Bakhtin sees the one transform into the other by a process of death, decay and degradation.

The middle level is that of the belly, the gut or the womb, which represents the process of excretion, transformation, renewal, rebirth or birth of a new being.

These anatomical metaphors apply just as much to the body politic as the human body. Thus, the middle level is the process by which society and social order changes, e.g., by way of elimination, rebellion or revolution. The top level is both inverted and subverted from below.

Rabelais would argue that these processes are not just violent, vulgar and offensive, but natural, inevitable and necessary. Hence, his novel, in which he describes the processes explicitly, is both ribald and profoundly serious. It is both sexual and revolutionary, hence its perceived threat to the status quo upheld by King and Pope.





The Opposite Sex and the Opposing Side

Through our genitals and our mouths, we interact with each other and the world by way of sex, eating and drinking, all of which proliferate in the novel. Bumguts, tripes, bowels, codpieces, gashes and congress abound.

Often, women are the mere target of male sexual activity. This has attracted much criticism, starting at the time of publication when a number of women wrote fictional rejoinders. However, in its defence, there are a number of women who are queens or abbesses or in other positions of power in their own right.

Equally importantly, there is a sense of wonder or ignorance, of apprehension or fear about the female body and mind. For all the sexual congress, women are a mystery, an unknown, an inexplicable.

The institution of marriage represents both an opportunity and a concern. Surely, without marriage, there cannot be infidelity. Therefore, concludes the Prince's adviser, Panurge ("all will or drive"), the best way to avoid being cuckolded is to eschew marriage.

Thus, Rabelais suggests that the progress of life is not just about comprehending the workings of the social order, but also the nature of the opposite sex and the union with it in holy or unholy matrimony.

Where Rabelais places conflict, Pantagruel seeks resolution. He seems to have a unique ability to placate opponents, resolve disputes and achieve a new order. He shepherds people through the process of change.

The subjects he most despises are not his opponents, but the lawyers who would provoke, inflame and prolong disputes for their own profit (no doubt billed at hourly rates or per folio of written word).





"Do What You Will"

The closest Rabelais gets to some sort of Utopian vision is his description of the Abbey of Thélème and its residents as early as the first book. In it:

"All their lives was spent not in laws, statutes, or rules, but according to their own free will and pleasure…this one clause to be observed, ‘Do What Thou Wilt.’”

The logic is that Men and Women long after things that are forbidden to them and desire what is denied to them. Therefore, freedom, honour and contentment can be achieved by giving to us what we long for and desire.

"En Oino Aletheia"

Rabelais alerts us early in his novel that it would be misguided to think that his words contain:

"...nothing in them but jests, mockeries, lascivious discourse, and recreative lies…

"Therefore is it, that you must open the book, and ... [then] shall you find that it containeth things of far higher value than the box did promise; that is to say, that the subject thereof is not so foolish as by the title at the first sight it would appear to be…

"[you would have found] a more than human understanding, an admirable virtue, matchless learning, invincible courage, unimitable sobriety, certain contentment of mind, perfect assurance, and an incredible misregard of all that for which men commonly do so much watch, run, sail, fight, travel, toil and turmoil themselves.”

On reflection, the claim to unimitable sobriety might be an exaggeration.

Towards the end of the book, he describes another motto:

"En Oino Aletheia"

This phrase might be more familiar to us as “In Vino Veritas” or “In Wine Truth”.

Thus, regardless of the quest or the grail, truth is really to be found in the cup itself, and its contents (the real sanc-greal, "a most divine thing"). Hence, Rabelais’ counsel that the only way to satiate your thirst for knowledge is to drink, to drink eternally and to drink of eternity. At which point, most noble and illustrious drinkers, it’s time we all returned to the inn.

[Sasha · Rating 4 out of 5]

Rabelais! The foreman of farts! The sheik of shit! The rajah of rectums! Listen, the first joke in the world was a fart joke; Sophocles, Shakespeare, Melville, all liked fart jokes; but no one has ever farted like Rabelais.

Here's the dirty truth: if you're not super into 1100 pages of 16th century fart jokes, you can read the first two books and skip the rest. I KNOW! Only assholes do that! Look, you don't have to take my advice, I don't care, I'm just...do kids still say "keeping it real"? No? No, they never actually said that? Whatever. I fart in your general direction, pedant. You can read the first two books and love Rabelais, or read the whole thing and be annoyed. Your choice.

Book One (in the order they were written) is Pantagruel, and here's what Pantagruelism is, so you know what your pretentious college professor friends are talking about it when they start throwing that word around - p.s. people who use this word are like 30 seconds from hinting that they swing, so just be aware of that - it's "A certain merriness of mind pickled in contempt for things fortuitous." It means talking about heavy things, but not too heavily. There's a lot of drinking involved. (But not drunkenness! You know how Europeans are.) Pantagruelists are educated and intelligent; they're very pleased with themselves for being educated and intelligent; they swish wine around in their glasses before drinking it; they cultivate a certain smug detachment from the world. They're annoying, but not the most annoying; they do have interesting things to say, although they tend to bang on quite a bit.

And there are a lot of them - this is like 80% of college literature professors - so you might as well read this first book to understand them better.

More stuff about Pantagruelists
"They will never take in bad part anything they know to flow from a good, frank and loyal heart."

"There was but one clause in their Rule: Do what thou wilt, because people who are free, well-bred, well taught and conversant with honourable company have by nature an instinct - a goad - which always pricks them towards virtuous acts and withdraws them from vice."

See, they're not bad. Just sorta douchey.

This book also introduces the character Panurge, who is (initially) a terrific scoundrel. He wears a cloak with "over 26 pouches and pokes", containing "verjuice, which he flung into the eyes of the folks he came across; in another, burrs...in yet another, he kept a pile of little cornets full of fleas and lice [which] he threw on to the collars of the most sugary of the young ladies." He's a dastardly prankster. Fun stuff.

Book Two is Gargantua, and this is great too. It features the famous bit where the young Gargantua describes all the different things he's tried wiping his ass with: cats, roses, hats, pigeons, but the best, he says, is a goose. Which is not true, because geese are cruel, but who are you gonna believe, me or a famous writer?

Anyway, Gargantua is driven insane by dumb medieval learnin', which I think we can all identify with; this is similar to what happens to Don Quixote 65 years later. Rote memorization is what turns Gargantua into a blithering idiot. A reeducation in the humanist, Renaissance style - a focus on being well-rounded, understanding texts, and also physical education - saves him.

This book also introduces the fightin', fuckin' cleric Frere Jean, one of Rabelais' better characters: "young, gallant, lively, lusty, adroit...a galloper through of mattins...a polisher-off of virgins: in short, a true monk if ever there was one since the monking world first monked about with monkery."

Book Three is the most philosophical book, otherwise known as the most boring one. Panurge suddenly turns from a scoundrel to a dunce; he spends the whole book whinging about whether he should get married, which Rabelais uses as an excuse to expound on a number of Renaissance debates that you don't care about. "I was greatly vexed there for three reasons. first: because I was vexed. Second: because I was vexed. Third, because I was vexed."

Book Four is pretty okay. It's just like an Odyssey-style journey, so that's fun. But inessential.

There's a lot of controversy over whether Book Five was written by Rabelais at all; my translator, whose name is seriously Screech, is positive it wasn't. That should give you enough of an excuse to skip it; it's fine but you certainly have the idea by now anyway, and it has nothing amazing to add.

Rabelais is pretty cool. There are some good jokes in here. It's also possibly the world's greatest repository of band names, including such hits as:
- Farthing, Farthing Up Your Bum
- Angel Nards
- Fields of Enemas
- Farty Kick-back Bollocks
- Lawless Codpiece

He doesn't love women, when he thinks about them at all. There's this aside: "Madam, mind you don't fall in. there's a great dirty hole right there in front of you!" and this great story from a "parlourmaid of Sparta":
"Have you ever had anything to do with men?"
"No, but men have occasionally had something to do with me."
But "If [Rabelais] dreamt: it was of flying phalluses scrambling up walls." This is a man's world.

Look, Rabelais is right: someday "you shall die, all peacefully pickled in farts." There's time to visit his terrific writing first. But maybe not all of it.

[Nikos Tsentemeidis · Rating 5 out of 5]

«Αν μου πείτε: «Δάσκαλε, φαίνεται πως δεν στάθηκες ιδιαίτερα σοφός με το να μας γράψεις ετούτες τις κουταμάρες και ετούτες τις χαρωπές κοροϊδίες» σας απαντάω πως δεν είσαστε διόλου πιο σοφοί, αφού χάνετε την ώρα σας να τις διαβάζετε. Πάντως, αν για να περνάει χαρούμενα η ώρα σας τις διαβάζετε, όπως περνούσα κι εγώ την ώρα μου όταν τις έγραφα, εσείς κι εγώ είμαστε αξιότεροι συγγνώμης απ’ ό,τι ένας μεγάλος σωρός από Σαραβαΐτες, θρησκομανείς, σαλιγκαρομανείς, υποκριτές, ψευδοευλαβείς, πορνευλαβείς, καλόγερους σανταλοποδεμένους κι άλλες τέτοιες κατηγορίες ανθρώπων που έχουν μεταμφιεστεί και φορούν προσωπείο για να εξαπατούν τον κόσμο».

Πάντως εγώ ανήκω ξεκάθαρα στην δεύτερη κατηγορία, που όχι απλώς πέρασα ευχάριστα, αλλά γέλασα πολλές φορές με την αθυροστομία του συγγραφέα. Και δεν είναι αυτή η αθυροστομία της νεοελληνικής κουλτούρας-λογοτεχνίας της μαγκιάς, της δήθεν.

Πιο πολύ με συγκλόνισε το γεγονός ότι ένα έργο που τόλμησε να κυκλοφορήσει το 1541, παρ’ όλους τους αφορισμούς από Εκκλησία, πανεπιστήμια κτλ, στην Ελλάδα, αν εξαιρέσουμε την παρούσα έκδοση που δεν είναι παλιά, η πρώτη μετάφραση περίπου τη δεκαετία ’60 είχε αφαιρέσει όλες τις αθυροστομίες. Με συγκλονίζουν αυτοί οι άνθρωποι που πριν 4,5 αιώνες τόλμησαν, ρίσκαραν με τη ζωή τους, απέναντι στις υπερσυντηρητικές κοινωνίες της εποχής, όπως επίσης ο Γαλιλαίος, ο μαρκήσιος ντε Σαντ κτλ.
Το τεράστιο αυτό έργο είναι ένα σατιρικό έργο. Σατιρίζει τους πάντες και τα πάντα. Ο όγκος των πληροφοριών (σημειώσεις) που συνοδεύουν το κείμενο είναι μεγάλος, αλλά αξίζει. Κάτι αντίστοιχο σε σύγχρονη εποχή είναι η «Ελληνική μυθολογία» του Νίκου Τσιφόρου. Άλλωστε ο Γαργαντούας και ο Πανταγκρυέλ, πατέρας και γιος, είναι δυο φανταστικά πρόσωπα, με τη μορφή γιγάντων, που μας παραπέμπουν στον Όμηρο και περισσότερο στον Ησίοδο.

Εξαιρετικός γνώστης της αρχαίας ελληνικής και λατινικής γραμματείας ο Rampelais . Ανυπομονώ να διαβάσω το έργο του Bakhtin «Ο Ραμπελαί και ο κόσμος του».

Υ.Γ. Διαπιστώνω ότι στα ελληνικά δεν έχει μεταφραστεί το σύνολο του έργου!!!

[Luís · Rating 5 out of 5]

It was perhaps my lucky day when chance put this volume into my hands, which contains two works by the man who is probably considered the first great novelist in literary history.
Gargantua and Pantagruel are part of these complete works which alone embrace several literary sources: the novel of chivalry, the fantastic tale, parody and satire…; as well as several themes and sources of inspiration: war, education, burlesque dialogues, incredible journeys, verisimilitude and improbability, fantasy ... This heterogeneous mixture is based on great freedom and improvisation; a pleasant and surprising style that we find in the first great fictional works like Don Quixote by Cervantes, Jacques Le Fataliste by Diderot or perhaps even Tristam Shandy by Sterne. These works have inspired novelists' dreams and still fascinate readers.
This fascination could repel some fans of the classic nineteenth-century novel. But you should know that we are in front of two masterful works where the imagination had the magic of the tales of the Thousand and One Nights. This kind of series of stories can insert other stories in the same vein, another fantastic night, without the text losing its general unity. We find images in the masters of magical realism, in whom humour goes hand in hand with depth. In Gargantua and Pantagruel, Rabelais used his erudition and keen observation to create this universe, with its unforgettable characters (among them, the famous Panurge).
For the modern reader that we are, Rabelais and his two works are linked to the 16th century, when so many changes took place, especially in language. Rabelais makes us relive this bygone century with its customs, its conflicts, its great ideas, its quarrels, this spirit of humanism, as well as this thirst for knowledge worthy of the Renaissance; all this expressed with great relief and picturesque humour, especially with erudition. Rabelais tells us about these two good giants' itinerary from birth, describing their education and exploits.

[MJ Nicholls · Rating 5 out of 5]

That is why, Drinkers, I counsel you to lay up a good stock of my books while the time is right; as soon as you come across them on the booksellers’ stalls you must not only shuck them but devour them like an opiatic cordial and incorporate them within you: it is then that you will discover the good they have in store for all noble bean-shuckers. Reading Rabelais over the last few months has been an enlightening and perplexing and stimulating pleasure, a delirious encyclopaedic cornucopia of codpiece cracks, heftily quoted Erasmus adages, early renaissance medical insights, highbrow fart humour, lowbrow fart humour, pyromaniacal punning, witchy-and-wizardy wordplay, unbothersome biblical allusions, magical and phantasmagorical adventures, saucy swiving scenes, Panurgian cowardice, inept marriage advice, proto-neo-cleo-surrealist larks, over-my-head erudition, and welcome thumb agony. This edition places the notes and comment before each chapter, making the G&P experience twice as cerebrally satisfying and infinitely clearer to read sans notes. M.A. Screech as a translator has as much panache as a humorist, word-spinner, and egghead as one demands from this monolith and made my daily reading a delight. Take up your Rabelais, noble bean-shuckers!

[Roy Lotz · Rating 4 out of 5]

Rabelais is not to be skipped in literary history as he is a source of so much proverb, story & joke which are derived from him into all modern books in all languages
—Ralph Waldo Emerson

It is perhaps one of the most reassuring aspects of reading great books of the past how often you come across an individual who lived in a different time and place, who spoke a different language and held different beliefs, whose life was shaped by none of the same technologies or institutions—but who is nonetheless immediately recognizable and even intimately familiar. Such is Montaigne, such is Cervantes, and such is Rabelais.

It’s hard to describe Rabelais without comparing him to his great successor, James Joyce. Like Joyce, Rabelais was enormously learned; unlike many of his contemporaries, he knew how to read Greek, and translated many of the works of Hippocrates and Galen. (He buttered his bread by working as a doctor.) During his lifetime, he corresponded with many of the brightest lights of Europe, including Erasmus. This book is full of references to theology, history, law, science, and virtually any other subject that existed at the time. And yet, as in Joyce, all this massive learning is marshaled to better deliver jokes about defecation, micturation, flatulation, copulation, and inebriation.

I am told by scholars that, despite all this, Rabelais was a real believing Catholic; but it’s a bit hard to swallow. I can’t imagine a book more pagan, more irreverent, more hedonistic, and more carnal and earthy than this one. When religion is examined, it is inevitably to parody the hypocrisies of monks and clergyman, and eventually of the papacy itself. Certainly, one finds no avowals of atheism or even open hostility towards religion as a whole in these pages. But the entire spirit of this work is so much closer to Aristophanes than to, say, Dante, that picturing Rabelais as a monk is about as easy as picturing Karl Marx shouting “Buy! Buy!” at the top of his lungs on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange.

Like his great predecessor, Aristophanes, Rabelais proves that repetition is one of the comedian’s most useful tools. A joke that is at first merely amusing becomes, after iteration and iteration, and after it is blown up to the most absurd proportions, side-splittingly hilarious. Just so, the most characteristic Rabelaisian technique is the list. The book is overflowing with absurd catalogs and inventories, wherein Rabelais, whose learning appears endless and whose linguistic ingenuity is nigh infinite, shows off his inexhaustible inventiveness. To pick just one example, Rabelais portrays how the cake-bakers of Lerné insulted the shepherds of Grandgousier’s country:

calling them babblers, snaggle-teeth, crazy carrot-heads, scabs, shit-a-beds, boors, sly cheats, lazy louts, fancy fellows, drunkards, braggarts, good-for-nothings, dunderheads, nut-shellers, beggars, sneak-thieves, mincing milksops, apers of their betters, half-wits, gapers, hovel-dwellers, poor fish, cacklers, conceited monkeys, teeth-clatterers, dung-drovers, shitten shepherds, and other such abusive epithets.

But the use of these incredible lists isn’t enough for Rabelais; to satisfy his linguistic thirst, he must constantly parody myriad other works, veering chaotically from style to style, from subject to subject, as if he is determined to satirize not only his era, but the whole preceding history of the world before he’s through. The narrative and the characters of this “novel” are just vehicles for the author. Rabelais is not in the business of writing stories and forming consistent personalities; rather, the stories and the personalities are invented on the spot—often causing serious inconsistencies, as characters behave one way in one chapter, and then are repurposed in another chapter. In other words, Rabelais isn’t interested in creating the kind of immersive experience we have come to expect from novels, where the internal world is so fully realized and consistent that we can forget it isn’t real. Rabelais doesn’t want you to forget his characters and stories aren’t real; they are just puppets for him, just a way to organize the torrent of his overflowing brain spilling onto the page.

If this work consisted only of the first two books, I would be giving it five stars. They are as exuberant and hilarious as anything in literature, the equal even of Don Quixote. After that, however, my enthusiasm somewhat cooled. The third book repeats the same joke one too many times; and, further, the oracles and divinations and the paranoia of cuckoldry that tie the story together are less interesting for the modern reader. The fourth book is rather various in quality, containing much of Rabelais’s best, but also much that is meandering and pointless. And the fifth book, which was published after Rabelais’s death, was clearly put together from some half-completed notes that Rabelais left behind, and may even contain some writing that wasn’t his.

But for all the clumsiness and inelegance that one finds in these pages, for all of the dead ends and inconsistencies, and for all of the jokes that are stretched beyond their useful life, there is no denying that this is one of the great books in world literature. Rabelais was not a craftsman; he did not polish his phrases, he did not round out his narratives. Rather, Rabelais was an adventurer, pushing the vessel of his mind was far as it could go, traveling across all the oceans of the world, seeing all there was to see, eating and drinking everything offered to him, following the wind wherever it led him. He scorned nobody except the scornful; he only snubbed his nose at snobs. The final result is this work, which is perhaps the most slipshod, irregular, rough, coarse, bumpy, lumpy, uneven, shaggy, slapdash, messy, untidy, soiled, grimy, bedraggled, disheveled, muddled, chaotic, jumbled, and grubby of all the great classics in history, but which, for all that, contains as much parable as the New Testament, as much myth as Homer, as much wisdom as Socrates, as much humor as Aristophanes, and more exuberance and ebullience than anyone since.

[Το Άθχημο γατί του θενιόρ Γκουαναμίρου · Rating 1 out of 5]

Eschatological scatology this one I'm afraid. I did not think twas possible to mix so many farts with so many medieval microaggressions, dissertationes de misogynia etc.

The author narrates the adventures of two giants, Gargantua (the father) and Pantagruel (the son) and their comrades, using so many scatological exaggerations that the entire text becomes unbearable. Rabelais devotes a whole chapter to Gargantua's experiments to find the ideal material for wiping one's arse, with an abundance of repulsive, explicit details.

In another chapter we are being presented with a story about how a married woman, rejecting another man's sexual advances, receives the punishment of being raped and ripped by a pack of dogs.

This is textbook example of what the average medieval monk fantasized when they where not terrorizing their flocks with devilish visions of eternal punishment.

Αυτό το πεντάτομο συνονθύλευμα από αηδίες, σάχλες, χοντράδες και καλογερίστικες προκαταλήψεις γράφτηκε στο διάστημα ανάμεσα στα 1532 και 1564. Ο πέμπτος τόμος δεν έχει γραφτεί από τον Rabelais (1494 – 1553) αλλά κυκλοφόρησε με το όνομά του. Η κεντρική διήγηση αφορά τις περιπέτειες δύο γιγάντων του Gargantua και του γιου του, Pantagruel και περιέχει διηγήσεις για εξερευνητικά ταξίδια, πολεμικές συγκρούσεις, σπουδές σε πανεπιστήμια και επαφές με διάφορες επινοημένες και μη πολιτικές και θρησκευτικές προσωπικότητες και βασίζεται σε ένα προγενέστερο, παρεμφερές έργο που είχε κυκλοφορήσει ανώνυμα.

Η ελληνική έκδοση "Γαργαντούας και Πανταγκρυέλ¨ σε (πολύ καλή) μετάφραση του Φίλιππου Δρακονταειδή από τις εκδόσεις Εστία περιλαμβάνει μόνο το δεύτερο βιβλίο της σειράς που φέρει τον τίτλο "Gargantua: La vie très horrifique du grand Gargantua, père de Pantagruel", που κυκλοφόρησε στα 1535 για πρώτη φορά, με μια διορθωμένη, από τον ίδιο τον συγγραφέα, επανέκδοση, στα 1542.

Πριν από αυτό κυκλοφόρησε γύρω στα 1532 το πρώτο βιβλίο της σειράς με τίτλο "Pantagruel: Les horribles et épouvantables faits et prouesses du très renommé Pantagruel Roi des Dipsodes, fils du Grand Géant Gargantua".

Τα υπόλοιπα βιβλία είναι μια συνέχιση των περιπετειών του Pantagruel σε διάφορους φανταστικούς κόσμους.
Στο μεγαλύτερο μέρος της διήγησης των περιπετειών των δύο γιγάντων και των συντρόφων τους κυριαρχεί μια σκατολογική υπερβολή που καταντά ανυπόφορη. Ο συγγραφέας αφιερώνει ένα ολόκληρο κεφάλαιο στις δοκιμές του νεαρού Gargantua προκειμένου να βρει το ιδανικό μέσο για σκουπίζει τα κόπρανα από τα οπίσθιά του, παραθέτοντας έναν εμετικό κατάλογο με τα πειράματά του, καθώς και μερικά συναφή ποιητικά δείγματα:

"Χέζοντας τις προάλλες μύρισα
το φόρο που στον κώλο μου χρωστάω.
Αλλιώτικη βγήκε μυρουδιά απ' ό,τι συνηθάω
κι άρχισα να βρομοκοπάω.
Αχ! αν κάποιος μου 'φερνε τη ρήγισσα,
την κόρη που περίμενα [και λαχταράω]
χέζοντας
θα 'πιανα να της καλαφάτιζα την τρύπα
απ' όπου κατουράει καταπώς ξέρω κι είπα.
Και τα δαχτύλια της στο μεταξύ
την τρύπα του σκατού μου θα βόλευαν μαζί,
χέζοντας".

(από τη μετάφραση του Δρακονταειδή σελ. 95)

Παραθέτω αυτό το μικρό απόσπασμα, που αποτελεί ένα ελάχιστο τμήμα από εκτενέστατες και κατά πολύ ανούσιες διηγήσεις για κακοήθεις όγκους που όζουν και πυορροούν, διάρροιες, και ποταμούς ούρων που αρκούν για να πνίξουν ολάκερο το Παρίσι ή να εξοντώσουν ορδές εχθρικών στρατευμάτων.

Πέρα από αυτό οι ήρωες φαίνεται πως διακατέχονται από ένα ιδιότυπο σύνδρομο μισογυνισμού, προφανώς απόρροια του μοναστικού περιβάλλοντος του συγγραφέα που τους έπλασε όπου κυριαρχούσε ένα είδος ομοκοινωνικότητας. Ετερόφυλοι άνδρες δεμένοι με δεσμά τόσο ισχυρά όσο εκείνα που θα προέκυπταν από τον βαθύτερο και πλέον παράφορο έρωτα, βλέπουν τη γυναίκα ως μια ενοχλητική παρέκβαση προκειμένου να εκτονώσουν τις σεξουαλικές ανάγκες τις οποίες βάσει καθορισμένων κοινωνικών και θρησκευτικών επιταγών δεν μπορούν, δεν διανοούνται, δεν δύνανται να εκφράσουν με οποιονδήποτε άλλο τρόπο.

Το ισχυρότερο παράδειγμα μιας τέτοιας νοοτροπίας παρατίθεται στο πρώτο βιβλίο του Pantagruel. Εκεί ένας από τους συντρόφους του γίγαντα, ονόματι Panurge δοκιμάζει την απόρριψη, όταν εξομολογείται τον έρωτά του σε μια παντρεμένη, ευγενή Παρισινή Κυρία:

"Κυρία, πρέπει να ξέρεις πως είμαι τόσο βαθιά ερωτευμένος μαζί σου, που αδυνατώ να κατουρήσω και να χέσω. Δεν ξέρω τι θα κάνεις με όλα αυτά που σου λέω, αλλά τι θα γίνει αν με βρει κάποια συμφορά;"

Η Κυρία, ειδικά μετά από μια τέτοια ερωτική προσέγγιση, επιμένει στην απόρριψή της, γεγονός που προκαλεί το εκδικητικό μένος του Panurge. Την πλησιάζει μέσα στην εκκλησία, την ώρα της λειτουργίας, την ραίνει με μια σκόνη "materia medica" που ερεθίζει όλα τα σκυλιά της πόλης, οποία της επιτίθενται, την βιάζουν και την ξεσκίζουν. Κι όταν ο Panurge ειδοποιεί τον φίλο του Pantagruel για την φάρσα που σκάρωσε εκείνος σπεύδει να επιβραβεύσει τον σύντροφό του με λόγια που εκφράζουν την απόλυτη ικανοποίησή του:

"Μόλις ο Panurge έφτασε στην κατοικία του Pantagruel, του είπε "Κύριέ μου, σε παρακαλώ έλα να δεις όλα τα σκυλιά αυτής της πόλης, μαζεμένα γύρω από μια Κυρία, την ωραιότερη της πόλης, όλα έτοιμα να χώσουν τα καυλιά μέσα στην φαρδιά της τρύπα". Και βλέποντας όλα αυτά ο Pantagruel έσπευσε να συμφωνήσει με την όλη κωμωδία η οποία του φάνηκε πρωτότυπη και όμορφη".

Όποιο επιχείρημα και να χρησιμοποιήσει κάποιος, και διάβασα αρκετά κάνοντας μια διερεύνηση στην υπάρχουσα βιβλιογραφία, σχετικά με τη συσχέτιση του συγκεκριμένου αποσπάσματος με τις μεσαιωνικές φάρσες, αναμφίβολα δεν υπάρχει τίποτα το χιουμοριστικό και το αστείο σε μια τέτοια αφήγηση.

Ακόμα και στα σημεία εκείνα όπου ο συγγραφέας φαντασιώνεται έναν κόσμο ειρηνικό, μέσα στην ευγένεια και στη μελέτη των αρχαίων (σε μοναστήρια όπου οι άνδρες μπορούν να συζούν ελεύθερα με δεκάχρονα κορίτσια) η γυναίκα δεν παίζει κανέναν ρόλο πέρα από εκείνον της γεννητικής μηχανής, υποβιβάζεται σε ένα αυτόνομο αιδοίο που μετά την εκπλήρωση του μοναδικό λόγου ύπαρξής της, μπορεί να πεθάνει, ώστε οι άνδρες να συνεχίσουν ανενόχλητοι τη δράση τους.

Μάλιστα ούτε για τα δεδομένα της εποχής εκείνης στην οποία γράφτηκε, το έργο αυτό δεν είναι ανεκτό. Ήδη από εκείνη την εποχή και λίγο πιο πριν, πολλοί άνδρες και γυναίκες του πνεύματος, προσπαθούσαν με επιχειρήματα συμβατά με τις νοοτροπίες και ιδεολογίες της εποχής τους, να αποδείξουν την αξία και τις αρετές του γυναικείου φύλου κόντρα σε αυτές τις καλογερίστικες αγκυλώσεις. Η πνευματική αυτή κίνηση είναι γνωστή ως "La querelle des femmes" (Το περί γυναικών ερώτημα).

Που λοιπόν κρύβεται ο πολυθρύλητος ουμανισμός του Rabelais; Και τι ορίζεται ως ραμπελαισιανός ουμανισμός; Δεν είναι τίποτε άλλο από μια ενδοεκκλησιαστική κριτική, μια διεκδίκηση για περισσότερες ελευθερίες (συνεπώς και μεγαλύτερη ασυδοσία) μεταξύ των παπάδων η οποία δεν φέρει ούτε ρανίδα από τις ανθρωπιστικές, πανανθρώπινες αξίες μια τέτοιας πνευματικής κίνησης.

Το ερώτημα ωστόσο που απομένει είναι γιατί και από ποιους αγαπήθηκε τόσο αυτό το έργο; Για αιώνες το δυτικό εκπαιδευτικό σύστημα απευθυνόταν στην πλειοψηφία των ευκατάστατων νέων ανδρών και είχε έναν σαφή θρησκευτικό προσανατολισμό. Τα μεγαλύτερα ευρωπαϊκά πανεπιστήμια ήταν υπό τον έλεγχο της Εκκλησίας η οποία διέθετε τεράστια πολιτική επιρροή. Εκεί, μέσα σε αυτό το περιβάλλον όλες οι ραμπελαισιάνες εξτραβαγκάντσες πρέπει να αποτελούσαν ένα αποτελεσματικό μέσο εκτόνωσης και αντίδρασης στο αυστηρό πιετιστικό περιβάλλον. Έτσι φτάνουμε ακόμα και στον 19ο αιώνα όπου συναντούμε αυτές τις μισογυνιστικές επιρροές σε συγγραφείς όπως ο Balzac, ο οποίος υπήρξε θερμότατος θαυμαστής του Rabelais, καίτοι με σαφώς πιο μετριασμένη ένταση.

Το συμπέρασμά μου από όλην αυτήν την μαρτυρική ανάγνωση είναι πως πρόκειται για ένα υπερεκτιμημένο έργο, που αγαπήθηκε από μια σειρά από διανοούμενους οι οποίοι, μεγαλωμένοι σε ένα ανδροκρατούμενο πνευματικό περιβάλλον, του προσέδωσαν μεγάλη αξία, ορίζοντάς το ως ένα από τα σπουδαιότερα έργα του ευρωπαϊκού πνεύματος, διαιωνίζοντας έτσι όλες τις προκαταλήψεις που περιόριζαν τις γυναίκες στο περιθώριο της κοινωνίας, υποβιβάζοντας το ρόλο και τη θέση τους μέσα σε αυτή.

[sepagraf · Rating 5 out of 5]

Така пригода закінчилась, що аж сумно. Півтора місяці життя, стільки різних думок і вражень, широченна амплітуда емоцій - навіть аналізувати нічого не хочеться.
Краще згідно із заповіддю Рабле тринькнемо 🫡

[Ed · Rating 4 out of 5]

Gargantua and Pantagruel is a bawdy feast of wordplay and erudition; a wild departure from the simple tales of The Decameron. It is unfortunate that so much of the linguistic inventiveness is obscured by the need for translation, as well as forgotten references and changes in meaning and pronunciation over time. However the translator did an excellent job of conveying the spirit of Rabelais’ original words in contemporary English.

The edition I read is the newer Screech translation, containing all five books appearing in published order (a departure from the conventional order, where Gargantua appears first), as well as several supplemental almanacs and prognostications, which provide some interesting context but are by no means integral to the experience. If you are looking to read the whole of Gargantua and Pantagruel, research the edition - another one I came across in a bookshop did not contain all five books (I've found these Penguin Classic editions to be fantastic in general, offering a lot of additional information and commentary).

Of the five books, I enjoyed the first two the most. They have more of a roguish and irreverent tone, which at times feels surprisingly contemporary. Book three is concerned almost entirely with arguments for or against Panurge’s marriage, and books four and five (this last having disputed authorship) detail the naval voyages of Pantagruel. Some episodes are interesting; others not. But the chapters are short, so one is not stuck in one place for very long. I found the extensive philosophical musings which featured more heavily in the later books (especially the third) to be quite tedious, framed as they are in biblical and historical authority, and concerned with questions that are no longer pertinent.

All of which makes Gargantua and Pantagruel something of a mixed bag as a reading experience. I wholeheartedly agree with Alex's advice to read the first two books and skip the rest.

[Geoff · Rating 5 out of 5]

I miss having time to write reviews

But you pick something up and something has to fall from you
(Human hands hold very little)
A skull blinks & centuries have dusted away
Since Rabelais

...
I miss having time to read
Uninterrupted hours and time to think about what I read
But we take on other tasks knowing we must make and remake ourselves and the ones we care about every day all day
(A chisel is a tool against time, but one starts feeling stupid chiseling at wind)
... & really I still have time to read
And remember to live joyfully
And drink and don't despair

Today I read an essay about someone I once spent a weekend with and it made me dwell seriously on our far flung fates and the old questions raised by Yorick and what it is to be absent mistaking ourselves about presence

I do the same thing because I need to live and others say they need me
But something must slip away when something else is taken up
And remembering to live joyfully
Saying farewell to holidays and empty ends isn't everything
We once walked this earth unconcerned all of us not so long ago

Centuries dusted away since Rabelais
& most of living is fighting dispersal
Quite stupidly

All thought has been thought before into dust we've thrown armies against those walls we've laughed and drank through our severed heads since time began

"Back then it felt like the center of everything happening on earth and all kinds of people would come and go but they were always working on something talking about something making something all I knew is he was a good guy and he constantly made me aware that I could be better than what I am right now"

Blinked away blinked away

& there's these little containers inchesxinches in dimension they can hold everything and all time open them to any place and you're miles deep again
Away

One day I will have written a review of Rabelais

[Cody · Rating 5 out of 5]

I got to spend another week transported fore and aft through time’s really insignificant continuum—we’re such a self impressed species, aren’t we?—with Rabelais and his creations that stand outside of it. Truly eternal wellspring, it is all a beautiful balm.

Personally, a case of COVID v. 66 2/3 turned into bacterial pneumonia, an infection I’m still trying to best. The better medicine of Frère Jean des Entommeures alone has no steroidal counterpart, no nebulizable chemical compound; apply liberally on that which ails you.

And, above all things transient and material, it is always a good thing to be reminded of the sole tenet of pantagruelism, my friends:

LIVE JOYFULLY

To the sum Good, however nebulous but known, that this counterbalances the sum Bad, we must do into our own destructions; the most important part is to live joyfully until one can no longer live, NOT just until one can no longer find joy within living. Despite all otherwise appearances, joy may very well be the psychic expression of the physical act of living. I hope we all find and shelter that, as that is a resistance predicated upon love against the gathering armies of darkness and hatred. Fuck them—we’ve got solidarity and Love Power and the sweetest goddamn music! Day breaks until it doesn’t, and, come that dawn, it still breaks for all our beautiful, brilliant comrades. We just get to call it a day and head for home.

[Fernando · Rating 4 out of 5]

“Al ver cómo el dolor te come, te derrota. Prefiero escribir sobre reír que llorar, porque la risa hace a los hombres humanos y valientes."

“Gargantúa y Pantagruel” es un libro monstruoso, gigantesco, al igual que los personajes que le dan el nombre a esta monumental obra escrita por el médico y sacerdote de François Rabelais entre 1532 y 1564 y que consta en realidad de cinco novelas en una.
Junto con el "Decamerón" de Boccaccio o "Los cuentos de Canterbury" de Geoffrey Chaucer marcó una época y definió un estilo que fue imitado por muchos.
Toda la parodia, lo grotesco y el sarcasmo posibles están desperdigados a través de la obra en la que el autor agrega además todos los ingredientes e influencias que lo forjaron en la literatura, especialmente la mitología griega y latina, las novelas de caballerías, la tradición popular y las tradiciones francesas caricaturizando y deformando a estas últimas.
Cabe destacar el contenido altamente escatológico de muchos capítulos que seguramente escandalizaron a quienes leyeron la obra en ésa época y máxime si tenemos en cuenta que el autor era sacerdote. Al fin y al cabo era todo un juego para Rabelais y a la vez, un aporte al humor tal cual lo expresa en el epígrafe de esta reseña.
Si bien publicó primero la vida de Pantagruel y después la de su padre Gargantúa, en las ediciones actuales eso se invirtió para darle un cauce cronológico a la historia.
Un punto para tener en cuenta es la relación de amistad entre Pantagruel y Panurgo, que pareciera asemejarse notablemente a la de Don Quijote y Sancho Panza.
Durante las cinco novelas nos encontraremos con un sinfín de historias fantásticas, heroicas, grotescas y absurdas. Yo considero que indudablemente influyó fuertemente a muchos grandes autores que surgirían después en la literatura, siendo para mí continuadores de ciertos estilos narrativos de Rabelais escritores como Miguel de Cervantes, Herman Melville, William Defoe, Jonathan Swift, Lewis Carroll y James Joyce.
Debo decir también que el libro es extremadamente largo y por momentos su lectura se torna realmente interminable, agotadora y tediosa en ciertos aspectos, pero era un clásico que no podía dejar pasar y aunque me llevó un largo tiempo terminarlo me ha dejado más que satisfecho.

[W.D. Clarke · Rating 5 out of 5]

Five full stars, but really how (given that this is the Mater Familias of that whole riverrunning Shandean Spawn...) could it be otherwise?

Loved the Abbey of Thèléme and the Quintessence most of all, and will welcome you future readers with the latter's own words (which are even more delicious if possible in the Urquhart rendering, but these are Screech's):

‘The candour which scintillates from the circumference of your minds fully convinces me of the virtue hidden within their ventricles; and, having noted the mellifluous suavity of your eloquent courtesies, I am readily persuaded that your heart suffers no vitiation nor any paucity of deep and liberal learning but abounds rather in several peregrine and rare disciplines which nowadays (because of the common practices of the imperite mob) are more easily sought than caught.

‘That explains why I, who have in the past overmastered any private emotions, cannot now restrain myself from uttering to you the most trite words in the world, namely: Be ye welcome, most welcome, most utterly welcome.’

[El · Rating 3 out of 5]

How to describe this book? (You don't describe it, you read it, hahahaha...)

This book is absurd. It makes me think absurd things and make stupid jokes. It has some funny moments, yes, but it's sort of like when you're with that one funny friend who just takes it all a step too far and can't let a joke go, and pretty soon it's just like, "Yeah, dude, shut up already." That's how it felt reading Rabelais and his fart joke after fart joke, references to other bodily functions and other dirties, and absurdity after absurdity.

But the thing is there's this whole other... stuff... going on. And it's worth reading through the muck to get to it, even if you don't understand all of it (or any of it). Rabelais was a master of language, and I think this book illustrates that impressively. He made up a lot of words, way before people like David Foster Wallace or Alexander Theroux were making up words. There are whole paragraphs where you're trying to follow along and at the end of it you realize that less than half of those words were probably even real words, and ain't nobody got time to go looking them all up just to be certain. This is a ride, a Gargantua and Pantagruel ride, and you're better off just shutting up and going along with it.

Obviously some words are easier to realize are made up than others. Some of these words are not like the others, for example:

But what harm had poor I done? cried Trudon, hiding his left eye with his kerchief, and showing his tabour cracked on one side: they were not satisfied with thus poaching, black and blueing, and morrambouzevezengouzequoquemorgasacbaquevezinemaffreliding my poor eyes, but they have also broke my harmless drum.

WTF, right? And on the same page:

One of the querries, who, hopping and halting like a mumping cripple, mimicked the good limping Lord de la Roche Posay, directed his discourse to the bum with the pouting jaw, and told him, What, Mr Manhound, was it not enough thus to have morecrocastebezasteverestegrigeligoscopapopondrillated us all in our upper members with your botched mittens, but you must also apply such moderegripippiatabirofreluchamburelurecaquelurintimpaniments on our shinbones with the hard tops and extremities of your cobbled shoes.
(p 541)

Undoubtedly there will be a GR-review-reader out there who will tell me I just misspelled one of those words. Let's just get this out of the way now, shall we?: Eat shit.

There are lots of occasions like that where even if you remove the goofy words, the sentences don't make a whole lot of sense, and you're still sort of reeling from trying to tell (from the big word) what is really being said that the whole page just needs to be lit on fire.

It almost seems like I didn't like this book, doesn't it? There's no point in really discussing the story itself (though there are unicorns! I like unicorns!) because for me the real magic of this book is the language itself. Funny, considering I didn't read this in the actual French (because that would be cray-cray), so how can I say anything about the language? Two different translators were involved in this particular edition, the second of whom is apparently considered sort of a hack, so who's to say that the last two books (out of the five that make up this behemoth) are even close to the original French? (I mean besides bilingual people who are insane enough to read the French and English side-by-side and not expect to get paid for it.)

In some of the made-up words that didn't take off, there are other words that Rabelais used in this book that are now actual words that we use like every day. Neat! Gargantuan is just one of them. (Poor Pantagruel - his name didn't become an adjective.) The introduction tells me these are words that Rabelais introduced the modern reader, which means he was wicked smart, right? (Or the modern reader was terribly stupid. Whichever.): agriculture, aspect, catastrophe, ecstasy, encyclopedia, excrement, imposture, inscription, maritime, parasite, prelude, and sympathy. Thanks for making modern readers smarter, Rabelais!

It makes one wonder if Rabelais' friends who got to read advanced readers copies of this book totally hated him for making up words, because they probably didn't know either which ones were real and which were made up. "Stop trying to make esperruquanchuzelubelouzerireliced happen, Gretchen Wieners, it's not going to happen."

Of note, the introductions compares these books to Homer's The Iliad and The Odyssey. Good stuff, right? And for once I'm glad I read the introduction first because I would probably not have figured that out on my own because I'm not all that smart. But it makes complete sense. The first two books are more like The Iliad and the last two books are more like The Odyssey (not surprisingly I enjoyed those books more than the first few since I thought The Odyssey is Homer's bestest), but the introduction doesn't say what the third book is like. Apparently the third book isn't Homer-esque at all and is therefore of no real importance.

But, anyway, since you're not asking, the story itself is about giants who tell fart jokes and there's talk of 16th-century boners and food. And unicorns. I'm pretty sure some other stuff happened too.

[Jan-Maat]

You have to have a certain type of sense of humour to enjoy this. And a taste for lists. And for shaggy dog stories. A sense of the ridiculous also helps.

It's learned, playful and inventive. A book in which you can learn that the neck of a goose is the best thing for wiping your arse (the goose presumably holds a divergent opinion on this), appreciate some of the pitfalls of conducting a formal academic debate in a university using your own invented sign language and learn why if you go to war against a giant who has a giant horse with a full bladder you should keep your army out of valleys and other low-lying areas.

[Caroline · Rating 5 out of 5]

[This is a review of three interrelated books: Moby Dick, Gargantua and Patragruel, and Baktin’s study, Rabelais and His World. Same review posted in all three places.]

[second read in December 2020 in preparation for a Rabelais seminar with Classical Pursuits starting late January. Actually a listen; audiobook was very well done. Review unchanged from first read.]

In others, the nose grew so much that it looked like the spout of a retort, striped all over and starred with little pustules, pullulating, purpled, pimpled, enameled, studded, and embroidered gules, as you have seen in the cases of Canon Bellybag and of Clubfoot, the Angers physician…

Others grew in the length of their bodies, from whom came the giants, and from them Pantagruel. [a Biblical series of begats] …

Since I was not alive in that age I will cite the cite the authority of the Massoretes, good ballocky fellows and fine Hebraic bagpipers, who affirm that in fact Hurtali was not in Noah’s Ark. Indeed, he could not get in, for he was too big. But he sat astride of it, with one foot on each side, as small children do on hobby-horses, or as the great Bull of Berne, who was killed at Marignan, riding astride on a great stone-hurling canon, which is undoubtedly a beast, of a fine, jolly pace. [Gargantua and Pantagruel]

When, good heavens! What a sight! Such a face! It was of a dark, purplish, yellow color, here and there stuck over with large, blackish looking squares… Ishmael, on first beholding Queequeg.

Nor was it his unwonted magnitude, nor his remarkable hue, nor yet his deformed lower jaw, that so much invested the whale with natural terror, as that unexampled, intelligent malignity which, according to specific accounts, he had over and over again evinced in his assaults…and then it was, that suddenly sweeping his sickle-shaped lower jaw beneath him, Moby Dick had reaped away Ahab’s leg, as a mower a blade of grass in the field. No turbaned Turk, no hired Venetian or Malay, could have smote him with more seeming malice.… [ Moby Dick]

Renaissance grotesque imagery, directly related to folk carnival culture, as we find it in Rableais, Cervantes, and Shakespeare, influenced the entire realistic literature of the following centuries. Realism of grand style, in Stendhal, Balzac, Hugo, and Dickens, for instance, was always linked directly or indirectly with the Renaissance tradition. Breaking away from this tradition diminished the scope of realism and transformed it into naturalist empiricism. Bakhtin Rabelais and His World

Millions of words have been written about these books, so this will be a review limited to a serendipitous reading.

My reading plan for 2015 includes both Moby Dick (read decades ago) and Gargantua and Pantagruel. I started MD (immediately bowled over by Melville) and a few days later G&P. As noted in my updates, suddenly I found myself reading, on the same day, a chapter in MD on the color white (ghostly, forboding, fear-inducing), and a chapter in G&P on the colors white and blue (white: joy, solace, and gladness). What had happened between 1530 and 1852? Had Melville read Rabelais?

It turns out that not only had Melville read Rabelais, but he had read him only a year or two previously in a great binge of classics, and his novel Mardi immediately preceding MD was criticized as too dependent on Rabelais. So I read on, looking for influences and adding the Russian Mikhail Bakhtin’s Rabelais and His World to my co-reading adventure. Bakhtin comments extensively on how the Romantics lost the joyful, regenerative aspect of the grotesque that abounds in Rabelais, a concept that strongly colored the way I read the rest of the novels. I have read additional bits of biography and other criticism as I went along, but mostly this review is an unmediated reaction to these three books.

While Bakhtin doesn’t mention Melville, MD might be a case study in the turn from the original Carnival to the negation of the elements of Carnival that are critical to the Renaissance buoyancy and positive life in Rabelais. On land, Ishmael and Queequeg revel in oyster stew and their physicality; they proceed by happenstance and whim. On the Pequod life is ruled by bells and rank, and absolute hierarchy reigns: Starbuck is repeatedly rebuked for respectfully, even piously, suggesting the monomaniacal chase is ill-chosen. This is the complete reverse of the Feast of Fools atmosphere of Carnival, where the lowly can say anything to the powerful, and a commoner is elected King or Pope for a day.

A selection of observations (note: many spoilers below):

First of all, of course, one confronts the revolving omnibus approach to the novel. These two gargantuan works encompass everything: satire, broad humor, slapstick, tragedy, scientific treatises, battles, quests, erudition, philosophical reflections, psychology, political and religious satire and commentary, exploration, the ocean, the bonds formed by men fighting the elements and the enemy, food, and so much more. Melville clearly learned the power of this, and must have studied Rabelais’s method carefully. And yet his novel is more tightly linear in plot, by design as well as due to his writing it as one coherent work, while Rabelais published G&P over twenty years (1532-1552).

Then there is the observant narrator. In MD he dominates the first sentence: ‘Call me Ishmael." In G&P, in contrast, I think I was a quarter of the way through before the ‘I’ first appeared. ‘I’? Who is this? The reader never finds out, and only encounters ‘I’ a few more times. How is ‘I’ that different from Ishmael, who after selecting the Pequod, never enters the action again? An issue that would take much thought.

The grandiose ruler who destroys his kingdom: Ahab and Picrochole.

Discourses on rope: the harpoon line and hemp.

Science. Melville was writing in the midst of a scientific world; philology and geology had led to questions about the Bible, and evolution was I think fairly commonly discussed, even if Darwin’s theory of natural selection was a few years in the future. Unknown lands were being explored. (Although Ishmael still insists the whale is a fish.) The industrial revolution meant the mechanics of everything were of interest, and the mechanics of whaling populate every page. Similarly, Rabelais’s medicine permeates G&P, with equal importance: the body is ever-present. He has a long explanation of the circulation of the blood. In battles, no one is ever just run through with a lance: the path through every organ and tendon is detailed. The guts and genitals of the Carnival are evolving into a Renaissance awareness of anatomy and science.

The practical joke. Panurge’s and Villon’s violent practical jokes that have serious physical consequences for their victims, contrasted with Stubb’s practical joke on the French captain (‘rescuing’ him from the noxious fumes of the whale filled with ambergris), with its serious financial consequences. Attention has turned from the body to profit.

The repeated advice from outsiders to cease and desist. In G&P, much of Book Three is devoted to soliciting both friendly and ‘professional’ (fortune-tellers and seers) advice for Panurge: should he marry? No, they all agree he will be a cuckold in short order, beaten and robbed. Similarly, Ahab is advised by Starbuck, the English Captain and the other Nantucket captain who has lost his son to give up this irrational and doomed chase. But neither Ahab nor Panurge can be reached—they are consumed by their passions. But then, neither do Ishmael and Queequeg heed Elijah when he warns them about Ahab. So their last land-based encounter with Elijah could be looked at as a turning point between whim and unswerving mission. In any case, both Panurge and Ahab end up pursuing their passionate quest in a ship, and barely surviving a tremendous storm.

One of the most complex comparisons between the two novels involves Panurge and Pip. This is because Pip is so dependent on the intervening Shakespeare’s fools, but I think the link to the terrified Panurge (as the storm at sea rages) is still there in Pip.

Religion: Rabelais was a monk, although perhaps a reluctant one. He also trained as a physician, and, unusual for his time, knew Greek. Bakhtin backs the critic Lucien Febvre’s stance that Rabelais could not have been a rationalist atheist, as claimed by Abel Lefranc, because his culture did not enable him to have such a thought. Hard to say. G&P certainly overflows with rapacious and salacious priests, harsh satire on sellers of indulgences and well-fed monks, etc. Rival orders parade through one story after another. And yet, one doesn’t feel totally engaged in real theological issues. Very different from MD, where not only the differences between Quaker and Congregationalist, but between south seas wooden idols and Fedallah’s Zorastrianism matter. [However, my copy of G&P had very few footnotes, so I may have missed 90% of Rabelais’s comments on religion. That inability to understand much of Rabelais without help because of so many intervening centuries was frustrating. I have ordered Screech’s translation of G&P, which apparently has much more complete notes.]

One of the most interesting religious questions is about vengeance. Ahab goes to his death defying the Biblical ‘Vengeance is mine’ saith the Lord. There is plenty of vengeance in the Carnival life of G&P, including the utterly unjustified shaming of the Lady of Paris by Panurge, and the physical destruction of the monk who will not loan clerical garb to Villon for a Carnival play. This is contrasted by the complete forgiveness exhibited by Gargantua in the non-Carnival ‘plot’ to those who have attacked his country, caused war with its accompanying destruction and death. He is magnanimous in victory.

One has to read Melville on ‘vengeance is mine’ in its time: against the looming Civil War. As I noted in my progress notes, he also wrote on property rights (Fast Whales and Loose Whales) shortly after passage of the Fugitive Slave Act.

There is so much more to say. These are books I will think about and come back to, I know.

A word on editions: I listened to Anthony Heald read Moby Dick; he was fabulous. The scientific sections were full of expression, let alone the ‘story’ chapters. Hard copy: I have not yet explored the material, but I think the critical apparatus in the Norton edition of Moby Dick will be very useful, even if the Rockwell Kent illustrations in the Modern Library edition are lovely. Rabelais: as mentioned above, I felt as though I was missing a lot in the Penguin edition of G&P (Cohen translation) so have ordered the Screech translation, which is supposed to have more help. And to be a good, alternative translation. And on Bakhtin: yes, he is repetitive, but worth it; much to think about there.

[Francesca · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ma le opere degli uomini non vanno giudicate con tanta leggerezza [...] E talora veste abito monacale chi tutto è meno che monaco [...] Aprire il libro dunque bisogna e attentamente pesare ciò che vi è scritto. Allora v'accorgerete che la droga dentro contenuta è di ben altro valore che la scatola non promettesse [...]

Gargantua e Pantagruele, F. Rebelais

Questo libro parla di bischerare e biscottare, gozzovigliare e banchettare, di pisciare ed orinare, di cagare e defecare. Narra di becchi e di veggenti, di ignavi e di combattenti. Di monaci e di dèmoni, di peccatori impenitenti.
E d'altro ancora.
Di grandiosi giganti che a caval dell'arca alla salvazione dell'umanità concorrono. Grandiosi e generosi, ché certo più che di statura d'animo grandi lo sono veramente quei titani. E canta, questo libro, di dinastie di coglioni, di bevitori d'ogni occasione, mangiatori a corpo vuoto, ma molto meglio se già un po' pieno.
Che altro aggiungere io posso per convincervi che tal testo fa per voi o per niente affatto?
Come poeta morente che diviene veggente, per "disgiuntive" vi parlerò e certo non sbaglierò.
Leggetelo, non leggetelo.
Leggerlo sarà ben fatto,
ma molto meglio sarà
non leggerlo affatto.
Scegliete quel che fare e quel che farete è ciò che vi è destinato. Ché, se destino è, in lettura vi toccherà codesta avventura! XD

Chiedo scusa. Si fa per giocare.

[Claire · Rating 1 out of 5]

Thank you, Colin, for reminding me to add this book to my Hate Shelf.

Great hammer of Thor, I hate this book. Seriously. It is the most heinous book ever. I can handle the Renaissance humor, although, as my dad put it (we both got stuck reading this book in college classes and our mutual hate of Rabelais binds us together): "There's only so much you can do with codpiece jokes."

Well said, Father. Well said.

[Ronald Morton · Rating 5 out of 5]

So enjoy yourselves my loves happily reading what follows for your bodily comfort and the good of your loins. Listen now, you ass-pizzles. May ulcers give you gammy legs: and remember to drink a toast back to me! And I shall pledge you double quick.

A note, to begin, on this particular edition (the Penguin Classics translation by M. A. Screech). There are two things found here that I particularly liked: first, where applicable, Screech has managed to intuitively provide the text from the original version of G&P as well as the additions and omissions from the later definitive version. He does this mostly with the text itself, with some minor footnoting as well. It was easy to follow, and I loved the additional insight to the textual differences. And, second - and this was particularly wonderful - he provides an introduction to each chapter, providing background and references up front. In this manner he keeps the amount of footnotes to a minimum, while still catering to the lay reader. This is greatly facilitated by the very short chapters of the text, but I still wish I would see this method used more frequently, as I vastly prefer it to having to bounce back and forth checking footnotes (or, even worse, endnotes).

Now, on to the text itself.

Well, actually: before that, some random notes from the first 100 pages, before I really put my head down and got to reading.

1. Rabelais really liked the word syphilitic. A lot.
2. The Latinate distortion of (originally French, translationally) English in the sixth chapter is exceptionally well done (both by Rabelais and by Screech) and funny.
3. I wish the made up list of books were real. I'd read them all.
4. It's quickly obvious how inventive Rabelais is in his satire, and how varied his approaches are going to be.
5. But, seriously, who wouldn't want to read Putting Things into the Mouths of Masters of Arts?
6. Much as in Sterne's Tristam Shandy, even though the humor of the book is undeniable, what really stands out is both Rabelais' erudition, as well as his education. This is a highly learned text, which balances piety, crass humor, witty satire, and deft displays of intelligence with aplomb.
7. Slurp-ffart might be one of the greatest surnames in literature.
8. Wall of vaginas.
9. I hit the beast tale and thought to myself, I should read Ysengrimus again; and, lo and behold, Brother Renard shows up.
10. Holy shit this is bawdy.
11. Squeeze-crupper
12. "The phrase towards the end of the chapter placed between asterisks was added in the Juste 1534 edition but is not retained after the Juste 1537 edition. It was too audaciously funny." = "The French sure have a weird sense of humor."

Onwards.

One of the most notable differences between the earlier version and the definitive version is that almost any time a small number was in the original text, Rabelais has made it ludicrously larger in the definitive version. The other major notable frequent change is that Rabelais adds hyper specific details to the text, frequently also with numbers - where there is an insanely large number in the text, Rabelais adds either integer details down to the decimal, or adds a fractional specific. Both of these make the text much more extravagant, over the top, and generally add a great deal to the overall hilarity of the work. It's also a fascinating revision process, and again is a notable highlight of this particular version.

The thing about this book is that there is very little that it does not do; it is vulgar, certainly, absolutely; it is also encyclopedic and list-loving; it is frequently funny, hilarious at times; it is learned, multi lingual, well read, philosophical; it's also kind of tedious at times, especially the long (extremely long) section dedicated to Panurge seeking wedding advice, especially because he is destined to be cuckolded. But, there is almost no stretch of this book - even the long winded tedious parts - that is not interesting, or funny, or absurd (frequently all three); sometimes it's just an interesting phrasing, or vulgar anecdote, or bawdy reference, or passing insult, but Rabelais keeps things interesting and rewarding throughout the duration of the book. (Also, Rabelais' imagination appears to have been boundless, as this book is endlessly inventive)

*alright, technically "The Fifth Book of Pantagruel" is a bit lacking (not terribly surprising considering it's uncertain lineage), but even then there is some good stuff to be found (and it's short, and the end is in sight)*

And this is a rewarding read, one that is basically necessary for those of you who like the absurd and the experimental. Much of you like was done here, hundreds of years ago, and it remains vital and compelling even today.

One more random note:

13. [translator note] The name of the fair Niphleseth, the Queen of the Sausages, derives from a Hebrew word for an ‘object of shame’ (a dildo).

[Tom · Rating 5 out of 5]

September
This is going to be a long term, yet highly enjoyable, reading project. Gargantua and Pantagruel is the anti-novel before the novel, a proto-Swift, a proto-Pynchon, who combines and blurs the boundary between low and high culture. It's also highly readable, as each chapter is maybe 1-3 pages long.

December
The behemoth has finally fallen, slain at my feet (by my feat?). What memories have I of the battle? That it was one of the greatest battles I've ever fought.

Gargantua and Pantagruel is a simultaneously a history of, commentary on, and parody of, the Occident from the dawn of civilization through the European Renaissance, as seen through the eyes of a (probably) twisted 16th-century French monk named Francois Rabelais. Its scope covers the classics works of Greek and Latin, medieval romances, epics, as well as such "low" topics as cuckoldry, codpieces, and any bodily function you can think of. It is about this book, after all, that Bahktin formed his theory of the Carnival, in which the king is turned on his head, his crown on his ass, and thus the low being elevated and conflated with the high.

But Rabelais is not just about destroying the boundary between the vulgar and the classic; he also imbues his stories with unique ways of looking at the world. One such example of this comes from Book 4 (which, along with Book 5, comprises the story of a quest for the Oracle of the Bottle, a parody of the Holy Grail): While Pantagruel and his crew are out to sea, they hear strange noises, as if words from humans' mouths, though no one else is around. Eventually, Pantagruel discovers these sounds to be the thawing of frozen words (and other sounds) in the air from years before. One could literally pluck the words out of the air hear their utterances as they melt into sound once again.

There are only two possible things to detract one from reading Gargantua and Pantagruel: the length and the archaic language. As for the latter, I find that the Shakespearean English makes the ribaldry all the more hilarious. As for the former (i.e. the length), there is no getting around that - Rabelais is a maximalist to the core, using 100 words where 10 would do just fine, creating insanely long lists of ridiculous epithets, books, games, etc, in parody of the epic convention of the catalogue.

In short, never has a monster such as Gargantua and Pantagruel walked the earth before, and never shall one again.

[J · Rating 2 out of 5]

I know that this was considered an important transition between renaissance literature and the beginnings of what we call the novel, but I found this next to impossible to get into. Rabelais might not have invented toilet humor, but he stretches it out about as far as it can possibly go (which ultimately, isn't that far). The constant references to glands and bodily fluids get old real fast. I suppose that in the 16th century, the fact that people poop, pee, spit, vomit, sneeze, fornicate and fart was cause for endless laughter, and those things can still be funny, just not for 700 pages on end. The whole thing is a colorful and inventive mess, but a mess none the less. If you're looking for something to read from this era, try Don Quixote instead, it's got plenty of toilet humor but actually has good characters and a delirious narrative structure which really puts this bloated thing to shame.

[Fionnuala]

Je crois que ces maroufles veulent que je leur paye ici ma bienvenue et ma gratification. Ils ont raison. Je vais leur donner le vin...

This is the frontispiece of the illustrated edition of Rabelais' five books, which I bought simply for the illustrations by Gustave Doré — I'd already read the books in separate editions from Éditions Seuil:

Gargantua

Pantagruel

Le Tiers Livre

Le Quart Livre

Le Cinquième Livre

[Michael · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read this years ago in the Everyman's Library edition, which reprints an old translation by Sir Thomas Urquhart. Urquhart has been criticized for taking liberties with his translation--i.e., not translating the text "accurately." To that I say: so what! I'm never going to read this book in French. And Urquhart was himself a brilliant writer, and his translation is a marvel. So over-the-top funny and strange, such verbose genuis, I had a hard time putting it down.

[Alan · Rating 5 out of 5]

On horoscopes; read his Pantegrueliene Prognostication, which I translated for my friend's Jan 1 birthday, 1982:

This year, the fashionable woman wears
her face in front, her behind behind;
this year hats will be worn on heads
primarily, while pussies will be black
for the most part. Numerous virgins
will lose something, due to Venus
and a full moon; and litigious men
will find lawyers to press their claim.
I foresee…the rich will fare some better than
the poor; the healthy, still better yet
than the myriad of sick--

But Oh! I see great slaughter
among beef, pork and chicken.
Nothing will abate their killer's appetite.
And, sad to report, I fear great strife
between dog and cat, man and wife;
between the skinny and the fat;
between Arab and Jew, Greek and Turk;
between the blond-haired, and the black.

But cheer up. This year will see
wealth increase, and this will be
among those who have no need of it.
We predict a fiscal surplus such
that the governmnet will have to overpay
many, to come out even; some, twice
they'll pay and dub them double-dippers.

Likewise, we expect to see
a decrease of coin among the needy.
There will be, in sum, floods,
fires, wars, flus, and hatred,
vengeance, sensational crimes;
old age will prove fatal to many,
but rashness will kill more young than old.

This year, the influence preponderent
will be the U.S. government,
even if there's partial ecclipse.
Listen, keep with this one list;
don't believe any half-assed futurist.
And finally, I most predict,
all other forecasts aren't worth shit.

[Dave Schaafsma · Rating 4 out of 5]

I am writing this because last night I saw the opening episode of the 27th season of South Park by Trey Parker and Matt Stone and I have no more appropriate forum for writing about it than this. Rabelais was a sixteenth-century priest, doctor and satirist that wrote, among other things, this series of five satirical novels depicting the excesses of the day, with a focus on the rich and disgusting and corrupt and greedy and powerful. Scatological humor. Heresy? He was accused of that. So South Park is in good historical territory here. It's scatological, deliberately as offensive as it can get. You can watch it on Amazon Prime now but soon you will be able to see it anywhere. I warn you it is outrageous and meant to offend as political and social critique.

The episode is a direct response to the firing of Stephen Colbert by CBS/Paramount and is both angry and a clinic on the nature of comedy, which is often about crossing lines, of course. I recalled the film The Aristocrats, which is a documentary featuring numerous comedians telling different, you-can't-top-this versions of the dirtiest and most ofensive joke of all time. Warning: It is MEANT to be offensive, and teach you something about comedy, satire.

As is the South Park episode. Except their satire is Rabellaisian political satire in its viciousness--Trump in bed with Satan, and South Park--the town--sued by Trump in the show, has to pay 3.5 million or billion dollars to him for protesting against his requirement to have Christianity and only Christianity taught as the state religion in schools (Parker and Stone were raised Mormon and infamously created The Book of Mormon, a hit on Broadway).

The South Park episode takes on a rich and powerful and corrupt and deliberately offensive (anti-woke! Make fun of the disabled! Women! Gays!) Trump (and his rich minions such as CBS) in a way that Rabelais would approve of: One condition of the lawsuit against South Park is that the town make a series of promotional videos praising Trump as Jesus-like, so they have him in the desert, as Jesus was, but he's grotesquely obese, and it's too hot for his signature suit, he's soon naked, lying on his back like a beached whale, with a teeny tiny. ... . sexual organ who approves the message. There, I said it.

Not "woke," which is what the Right supposedly hates. Stan wears a shirt with the word Woke on it, and South Park has never been woke except maybe underneath it all, all the juvenile offensiveness and satire it cares about people.

Doonesbury and others began satirizing Trump in the nineties, and whole collections of strips from Trudeau are collected in a book, so there is a long history of making fun of him, but this is the most outrageous and angry so far. And yeah, I know we are supposed to stop talking about Jeffery Epstein now, I know. So of course Trump's long time friend is in there, while Congress recesses to figure out how to protect the rich and powerful on the list instead of the perhaps hundreds of girls who were their victims.

Remember: Rabelais was a priest, and his offensive takedowns of the rich and fat and disgusting and horrible (sexual sins and diseases are pretty high on his list) are born of righteous wrath. Ubu Roi is in this tradition, a send-up of a grotesque king. The Russian Mikhail Bakhtin wrote a book, Rabelais and His world, about the author's use of carnival to satirize the rich and powerful by the poor, the working class, the victims of what are now billionaires. A long tradiion of humans to protest, as we saw in some of the No Kings rallies. Long live the comedians (though in the end of the episode Parker and Stone have Stan admit how fired they likely will be now. We'll see).

https://www.forbes.com/sites/siladity...

[Crito · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'd echo what pretty much everyone says in that you probably don't need to read all of this, but everyone should at least read Pantagruel (Book 1) as bare minimum, if not also Gargantua and Book 3. The first book is by far the most fun, and you get a good sense of the particular humanism of Rabelais which gives him his legacy. Here the indignity of someone shitting their pants is on par with the candor of Socrates declaring he knows nothing. His general style is combining low brow body humor with varying levels of erudite references and jokes, with a satirical target in mind. He draws a lot from Erasmus, More, and the classical world (Plutarch especially), but many times he'll have some very specific legal joke that requires the generous notes in order to pick up on. The general thrust of his satire is still readily apparent though. For example in book 3 they consult their archetype of a holy fool, a man who can divine the way of god accidentally through his babblings: a lawyer. The lawyer babbles in esoteric legal talk for 20 pages as way of explaining why he decides cases by throwing dice. It's a fun joke, we get it, but I can see how stuff like this could be taxing at times, especially if the poop and cuck jokes don't resolve the tension for you.
For the first three books there is a general self contained style in each. The fourth book introduces the frame narrative of a boat journey as a way of having an episodic set of unconnected shenanigans and brief satirical sketches. This isn't so bad and boring, a lot of them are quite fun and in the same spirit of the previous books, but if you're to see this point forward as a drop in quality it's because it drops all sense of cohesiveness and never quite says anything new. Cohesiveness didn't quite concern Rabelais before, and now he sets himself loose. We're still 70 or so years from Don Quixote, which sports a similar satirical style but manages to form a cohesive whole over what is superficially episodic. Cervantes is constantly building on his ideas, whereas Rabelais has a big well of Pantagruelism which he draws from in various gushes; at best he is only successive rather than iterative (as with book 3). But you can forgive him for not being as far ahead of his time as Cervantes (he was far enough as it stands), and his bad books are better than some people's good books. If people say to skip them it is only for redundancy. On the whole, Rabelais should still be read, whatever the manner may be.

[BAM doesn’t answer to her real name · Rating 3 out of 5]

One of the LibriVox narrators is cracking me up! I'm so entertained. So far he's continuously sipped from a glass of soda, burped, has a couple of hacking coughing fits, and he just farted loud enough the microphone picked it up.