So
famous is the wildly obscene humor of Gargantua and Pantagruel that its
author's name has given rise to an adjective--"Rabelaisian"--to
describe just such humor. Rabelais was a monk and a physician, but in his
writings he celebrated his real loves: scholarship and drinking, with the
latter often serving as a symbol of the former. As a beneficiary of the age of
the printing press, he was intoxicated by the sudden availability of all manner
of books. As much as any of the Renaissance Humanists, it is Rabelais who
articulates their view that a new age has dawned. If his portrait of the Middle
Ages as a time of ignorance and superstition is grossly exaggerated (and it
is), it nevertheless helps to convey the excitement of the Humanists during the
fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. This passage, a letter from father to son
advising him on his education, is written in the elaborate, balanced style of
formal prose in the period, quite unlike the tumbling, bawdy narrative that
surrounds it. Read aloud, with appropriate pauses at the punctuation marks, it
conveys a grand rhythmic majesty.
Of what invention of the Renaissance does Gargantua not approve?
But even though my late father Grandgousier, of blessed memory, strove with all
his ability that I should profit from and learn political knowledge, and even
though my labors and studies matched or even surpassed his desires,
nevertheless, as you can well understand, the times were not fit or favorable
for learning as is the present; and I did not have the abundance of such
instructors as you have had. The times were still dark (1), and reflected the
misery and calamity of caused by the Goths (2) who had destroyed all good
scholarship. But, through divine grace, during my life light and dignity have
been restored to learning; and we witness in them so much improvement that now
I would have trouble being accepted into a children's beginning class, I who in
my maturity was reputed (and not wrongly) the most learned man of the time. I
do not say this out of vain boasting--even though I could properly do so in
writing to you as you may understand by the authority of Marcus Tullius Cicero
in his book Old Age, and the teachings of Plutarch in his book
titled How to Praise Oneself Honorably (3)--but to inspire in you
the desire to strive for the highest achievements.
Now all the
disciplines have been restored, languages revived: Greek, without which it is
shameful for a person to call himself learned: Hebrew, Chaldean (4), and Latin.
Elegant and correct printed editions are available, the result of a
divinely-inspired invention of my time, as are in contrast guns--the product of
diabolical suggestion. The world is full of learned men, fine teachers, ample
libraries; and it is my opinion that neither in the time of Plato (5), nor of
Cicero (6), nor of Papinian (7) were there such opportunities for study as we
see today; and no one should now go out in public who has not been well
polished in Minerva's workshop (8). I see the robbers, hangmen, freebooters and
grooms of today more learned than the theologians and preachers of my day. What
can I say? Even women and girls (9) aspire to the honor and celestial manna of
good learning. Things have changed so much that at my advanced age I have had
to learn Greek, which I had not rejected like Cato, but which I had not had the
leisure to learn in my youth; and I delight in reading the Morals
of Plutarch, the beautiful Dialogues of Plato, the Monuments
of Pausanias, and the Antiquities of Athenaeus as I await the hour
at which it may please God, my Creator, to summon and order me to leave this
world.
Translated by
Paul Brians
Notes
(1) The Humanists were fond of referring to the
Middle Ages as dark, but this must not be confused with later definitions of
the Dark Ages which ended centuries before the Renaissance.
(2) The Goths, headed by Alaric, sacked Rome in 410.
This invasion is often considered to have marked the end of the classical world
and the beginning of the Dark Ages (although many historians reject this latter
term). The Humanists used the term broadly to mean barbaric, and considered the
artistic styles which sprung up in their wake barbaric as well, calling the
great cathedrals of the High Middle Ages Gothic as an insult.
(3) Like the other Humanists, Rabelais delights in
making references to ancient Latin works.
(4) The language of the Biblical Babylonians, famed
for their astronomical and astrological studies.
(5) 5th Century BCE, Greece.
(6) 1st Century BCE, Rome.
(7) 3rd Century CE, Rome. Papinian was a great
authority on Roman law.
(8) Minerva (Greek Athena) was the goddess of
wisdom, so her workshop is scholarship.
(9) Rabelais was a great friend and admirer of the
queen and writer, Marguerite de Navarre, to whom he dedicated one of his books.