the New Pantagruel

On Pantagruelism

You may read in full Albert Jay Nock's speech "Rabelais and the Pantagrueline Spirit," delivered to the Faculty of Medicine at Johns Hopkins University on October 28, 1932, as well as D. S. Carne-Ross's "Pantagruelism for Our Time? Rabelais Reconsidered" at the New Criterion. The following are excerpts from exemplary or otherwise relevant texts.

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

--Erich Auerbach, "The World in Pantagruel's Mouth," chapter 11 in Mimesis: The Representation of Reality in Western Literature, trans. Willard R. Trask (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1953), pp. 281-2. Written in Istanbul between May 1942 and April 1945. First published in Berne, Switzerland, 1946, by A. Francke Ltd. Co.

What are the peculiar traits of the comic rituals and spectacles of the Middle Ages? Of course, these are not religious rituals like, for instance, the Christian liturgy to which they are linked by distant genetic ties. The basis of laughter which gives form to carnival rituals frees them completely from all religious and ecclesiastic dogmatism, from all mysticism and piety. They are also completely deprived of the character of magic and prayer; they do not command nor do they ask for anything. Even more, certain carnival forms parody the Church's cult. All these forms are systematically placed outside the Church and religiosity. They belong to an entirely different sphere.

Because of their obvious sensuous character and their strong element of play, carnival images closely resemble certain artistic forms, namely the spectacle. In turn, medieval spectacles often tended toward carnival folk culture, the culture of the marketplace, and to a certain extent became one of its components. But the basic carnival nucleus of this culture is by no means a purely artistic form nor a spectacle and does not, generally speaking, belong to the sphere of art. It belongs to the borderline between art and life. In reality, it is life itself, but shaped according to a certain pattern of play.

In fact, carnival does not know footlights, in the sense that it does not acknowledge any distinction between actors and spectators. Footlights would destroy a carnival, as the absence of footlights would destroy a theatrical performance. Carnival is not a spectacle seen by the people; they live in it, and everyone participates because its very idea embraces all people. While carnival lasts, there is no other life outside it. During carnival time life is subject only to its own laws, that is, the laws of its own freedom. It has a universal spirit; it is a special condition of the entire world, of the world's revival and renewal, in which all take part. Such is the essence of carnival, vividly felt by all its participants.

....The language of the sixteenth century, and especially the language of Rabelais, are sometimes described as naive even today. In reality the history of European literature presents no language less naive. Rabelais' exceptional frankness and ease are anything but that. The literary and linguistic consciousness of his time was aware of its media not only from the inside but also from the outside, in light of other languages.

Such an active plurality of languages and the ability to see one's own media from the outside, that is, through the eyes of other idioms, led to exceptional linguistic freedom. Even formal grammatical construction became extremely plastic. The artistic and ideological plane demanded first of all an unwonted freedom of images and of their combination, a freedom from all speech norms.

--Mikhail Bakhtin, "Introduction" and chapter 7, "Rabelais' Images and His Time," in Rabelais and His World, trans. by Helene Iswolsky (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1984), p. 7; 471.

But if you had rather take prudence for that which consists in the judgment of things, hear me, I beseech you, how far they are from it that yet crack of the name. For first 'tis evident that all human things, like Alcibiades' Sileni or rural gods, carry a double face, but not the least alike; so that what at first sight seems to be death, if you view it narrowly may prove to be life; and so the contrary. What appears beautiful may chance to be deformed; what wealthy, a very beggar; what infamous, praiseworthy; what learned, a dunce; what lusty, feeble; what jocund, sad; what noble, base; what lucky, unfortunate; what friendly, an enemy; and what healthful, noisome. In short, view the inside of these Sileni, and you'll find them quite other than what they appear; which, if perhaps it shall not seem so philosophically spoken, I'll make it plain to you "after my blunt way." Who would not conceive a prince a great lord and abundant in everything? But yet being so ill-furnished with the gifts of the mind, and ever thinking he shall never have enough, he's the poorest of all men. And then for his mind so given up to vice, 'tis a shame how it enslaves him. I might in like manner philosophize of the rest; but let this one, for example's sake, be enough.

Yet why this? will someone say. Have patience, and I'll show you what I drive at. If anyone seeing a player acting his part on a stage should go about to strip him of his disguise and show him to the people in his true native form, would he not, think you, not only spoil the whole design of the play, but deserve himself to be pelted off with stones as a phantastical fool and one out of his wits? But nothing is more common with them than such changes; the same person one while impersonating a woman, and another while a man; now a youngster, and by and by a grim seignior; now a king, and presently a peasant; now a god, and in a trice again an ordinary fellow. But to discover this were to spoil all, it being the only thing that entertains the eyes of the spectators. And what is all this life but a kind of comedy, wherein men walk up and down in one another's disguises and act their respective parts, till the property-man brings them back to the attiring house. And yet he often orders a different dress, and makes him that came but just now off in the robes of a king put on the rags of a beggar. Thus are all things represented by counterfeit, and yet without this there was no living.

And here if any wise man, as it were dropped from heaven, should start up and cry, this great thing whom the world looks upon for as a god and I know not what is not so much as a man, for that like a beast he is led by his passions, but the worst of slaves, inasmuch as he gives himself up willingly to so many and such detestable masters. Again if he should bid a man that were bewailing the death of his father to laugh, for that he now began to live by having got an estate, without which life is but a kind of death; or call another that were boasting of his family ill begotten or base, because he is so far removed from virtue that is the only fountain of nobility; and so of the rest: what else would he get by it but be thought himself mad and frantic? For as nothing is more foolish than preposterous wisdom, so nothing is more unadvised than a forward unseasonable prudence. And such is his that does not comply with the present time "and order himself as the market goes," but forgetting that law of feasts, "either drink or begone," undertakes to disprove a common received opinion. Whereas on the contrary, tis the part of a truly prudent man not to be wise beyond his condition, but either to take no notice of what the world does, or run with it for company. But this is foolish, you'll say; nor shall I deny it, provided always you be so civil on the other side as to confess that this is to act a part in that world.

--Desiderius Erasmus, In Praise of Folly, trans. John Wilson, 1688.

But you come from another order, where I am told that merriment, even the most inopportune sort, is viewed with indulgence." He was repeating what the Benedictines said about the eccentricities of Saint Francis of Assisi, and perhaps also the bizarre whims attributed to those friars and Spirituals of every kind who were the most recent and embarrassing offshoots of the Franciscan order. But William gave no sign of understanding the insinutation.

"Marginal images often provoke smiles, but to edifying ends," he replied. "As in sermons, to touch the imagination of devout throngs it is necessary to introduce exempla, not infrequently jocular, so also the discourse of images must indulge in these trivia. For every virtue and for every sin there is an example drawn from bestiaries, and animals exemplify the human world."

"Ah yes," the old man said mockingly, but without smiling, "any image is good for inspiring virtue, provided the masterpiece of creation, turned with his head down, becomes the subject of laughter. And so the word of God is illustrated by the ass playing a lyre, the owl plowing with a shield, oxen yoking themselves to the plow, rivers flowing upstream, the sea catching fire, the wolf turning hermit! Go hunting for hares with oxen, have owls teach you grammar, have dogs bite fleas, the one-eyed guard the dumb, and the dumb ask for bread, the ant give birth to a calf, roast chickens fly, cakes grow on rooftops, parrots hold rhetoric lessons, hens fertilize cocks, make the cart go before the oxen, the dog sleep in a bed, and all walk with their heads on the ground! What is the aim of this nonsense? A world that is the reverse and the opposite of that established by God, under the pretext of teaching divine precepts!"

"But as the Areopagite teaches," William said humbly, "God can be named only through the most distorted things. And Hugh of St. Victor reminded us that the more the simile becomes dissimilar, the more the truth is revealed to us under the guise of horrible and indecorous figures, the less the imagination is sated in carnal enjoyment, and is thus obliged to perceive the mysteries hidden under the turpitude of the images...."

...A heavy silence fell. Venantius of Salvamec dared break it.

"Venerable Jorge," he said, "Your virtue makes you unjust.... Brother William mentioned just now the Areopagite, who spoke of learning through distortion. And Adelmo that day quoted another lofty authority, the doctor of Aquino, when he said that divine things should be expounded more properly in figures of vile bodies than of noble bodies. First because the human spirit is more easily freed from error; it is obvious, in fact, that certain properties cannot be attributed to divine things, and become uncertain if portrayed by noble corporeal things. In the second place because this humbler depiction is more suited to the knowledge that we have of God on this earth: He shows Himself here more in that which is not than in that which is, and therefore our similitudes of those things furthest from God lead us to a more exact notion of Him, for thus we know that He is above what we say and think. And in the third place because in this way the things of God are better hidden from unworthy persons...."

--Le manuscrit de Dom Adson de Melk, traduit en français d'après l'éedition de Dom J. Mabillon, translated into English from Umberto Eco's Italian translation (1980) by William Weaver as The Name of The Rose (New York: Harcourt, 1983): 88-91.

Questioning with a peculiarly modern preference for game over seriousness, [Richard] Lanham [in The Motives of Eloquence: Literary Rhetoric in the Renaissance (Yale, 1976): 45-46; 43] asks whether Socrates' self "was especially worth knowing." "Isn't it really the testy, impatient, intolerant self of the religious zealot? ... So full of self-importance and self-satisfaction ... so willing to preach to others the error of their ways, is this man, whose whole life plays variations on 'Why the world should be more like me,' the perfect teacher? Is he indeed the model for Western man?" Though Lanham would say "no," Plato said "yes." Plato makes, as Lanham says, "the possibility of human seriousness depend on Socrates, on accepting him as a referential type of self, as divinely inspired." In like manner, the Renaissance laureates made the seriousness of their works depend on the seriousness of their own centered and self-knowing selves. "First give me faith," wrote [Ben] Jonson to one that asked to be sealed of the Tribe of Ben, "who know / Myself a little" (VIII, 220). To join the laureate's fit audience, to be sealed of his tribe, requires a constantly renewed act of faith in the inspiration, goodness, and self-knowledge of the laureate himself--an act of faith that neither amateur nor professional demands.

--Richard Helgerson, Self Crowned Laureates: Spenser, Jonson, Milton and the Literary System (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983): 44-5.

God and man, world and society form a primordial community of being. The community with its quaternarian structure is, and is not, a datum of human experience. It is a datum of experience in so far as it is known to man by virtue of his participation in the mystery of its being. It is not a datum of experience in so far as it is not given in the manner of an object of the external world but is knowable only from the perspective of participation in it.

The perspective of participation must be understood in the fullness of its disturbing quality. It does not mean that man, more or less comfortably located in the landscape of being, can look around and take stock of what he sees as far as he can see it. Such a metaphor, or comparable variation on the theme of the limitations of knowledge, would destroy the paradoxical character of the situation. It would suggest a self-contained spectator, in possession of and with knowledge of his faculties, at the center of the horizon of being, even though the horizon were restricted. But man is not a self-contained spectator. He is an actor, playing a part in the drama of being and, through the brute facts of his existence, committed to playing it without knowing what it is. It is disconcerting even when accidentally a man finds himself in the situation of feeling not quite sure what the game is and how he should conduct himself in order not to spoil it; but with luck and skill he will extricate himself from the embarrassment and return to the less bewildering routine of his life. Participation in being, however, is not a partial involvement of man; he is engaged with the whole of his existence, for participation is existence itself. There is no vantage point outside existence from which its meaning can be viewed and a course of action charted according to a plan, nor is there a blessed island to which man may withdraw in order to recapture himself. The role of existence must be played in uncertainty of its meaning, as an adventure of decision on the edge of freedom and necessity.

Both the play and the role are unknown. But even worse, the actor does not know with certainty who he is himself. ...The Socratic irony of ignorance has become the paradigmatic instance of awareness for this blind spot at the center of all human knowledge about man. At the center of his existence man is unknown to himself and must remain so, for the part of being that calls itself man could be known fully only if the community of being and its drama in time were known as a whole. Man's partnership in being is the essence of his existence, and this essence depends on the whole, of which existence is a part. Knowledge of the whole, however, is precluded by the identity of the knower with the partner, and ignorance of the whole precludes essential knowledge of the part. This situation of ignorance with regard to the decisive core of existence is more than disconcerting: it is profoundly disturbing, for from the depth of this ultimate ignorance wells up the anxiety of existence.

--Eric Voegelin, "Introduction: The Symbolization of Order," in Israel and Revelation, vol. 1 Order and History (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1956), pp. 1-2.