‘Strike sails!’
‘That’s well said. What! Not doing anything, Frère Jean? Is this the time to be drinking? How do we know that the devil – Saint Martin’s foot-boy – isn’t brewing up a fresh storm for us? Do you want me to help you again over there? Golly. I know it’s too late now, but I’m sorry that I never followed the teachings of those good philosophers who say that it is a safe and delectable thing to stroll near the sea, and to sail near the land. It’s like going on foot whilst leading your horse by the bridle. Ho, ho, ho! By God: everything is going well. Shall I help you again over there? Give it to me. I’ll do it or the devil will be in it somewhere.’
Epistemon had all the palm of one hand flayed and bloody from having held fast to a hawser with all his might; upon hearing the words of Pantagruel, he said,
‘Believe me, my Lord, I felt no less fear and terror than Panurge. But then what? I did not spare myself as I helped. I consider that if, in truth, dying is – as indeed it is – a matter of fatal and unavoidable necessity, dying at such-and-such a time and in such-and-such a manner is within the holy will of God. Wherefore we must ceaselessly implore him, entreat, invoke, petition and beseech him. But we must not make that our bounds and our limit: we, on our part, must duly exert ourselves and, as the Holy Envoy say, be workers together with him.55
‘You know what Gaius Flaminius, the consul, said when he was cleverly pinned down by Hannibal near the lake in Perusia called Thrasymene: “Lads,” he said to his soldiers, “you cannot hope to escape from here by making vows or imploring the gods: it is by our might and valour that we must escape, slicing our way through the enemy with the edge of our swords.”
‘So too in Sallust: “The help of the gods [said Marcus Portius Rabelais remains loyal to the partly/partly moral theology of Saint Bonaventura, which he studied as a Franciscan friar. Cato] is not secured by idle vows or womanish weepings: it is by watching, toiling and exerting ourselves that all things reach [as we wish] a goodly port. If anyone is neglectful, unmanly and lazy in the face of danger and necessity it is in vain that he implores the gods, who are angered by him and outraged.”’
[‘I,’ said Frère Jean, ‘will give myself to the devil…’
– ‘And I,’ said Panurge, ‘will go halves with you!’ –
‘… if all the grapes hadn’t been harvested and the abbey-close wrecked, if I had merely chanted Against the fear of our enemies (as those other monks were doing, the devils), without coming to the defence of our vines by thwacking those pillagers from Lerné with the shaft of the Cross.’]
‘Sail on, O galley!’ said Panurge. ‘Everything’s going well. And Frère Jean over there is doing nothing. [His name is Frère Jean Do-nowt.] He’s just watching me sweating and toiling away to help Matelot the First, this good fellow here.
‘Hola, dear friend of ours! A couple of words, if it’s not a bother. What’s the thickness of the timbers of this vessel?’
‘A good two fingers thick,’ the pilot replied: ‘Don’t be frightened.’
‘God almighty,’ said Panurge; ‘we’re always two fingers’-breadth from death then! Is this one of the nine joys of marriage? Ha, my dear friend, you do well to measure danger by the yardstick of fear. Personally I feel no fear: I’m called William the Fearless: I have courage to spare. I mean not the courage of a lamb: I mean the courage of a wolf and the confidence of a cut-throat. There is nothing I fear – but dangers.’
How Panurge is declared by Frère Jean to have been needlessly afraid during the storm
CHAPTER 24
[Panurge as often twists his sources, here cheekily applying Genesis 3 to himself, especially the curse laid upon the fallen Adam: ‘In the sweat of thy face thou shalt eat thy bread’.
The sayings of Anacharsis are commented upon by Erasmus (Apophthegms, VII, Anacharsis Scytha, XIII and XV).
Chapelle in French – as (just) in English – can mean an alembic as well as a place of worship.]
‘Good morrow, gentlemen,’ said Panurge. ‘Good morrow to each one of you. [Is every one of you faring well, thanks to God and to you? Be most truly and timely welcome.] Let’s clamber ashore. [Ho there, ship’s-boys: lower the ladder and bring that pinnace alongside.]
‘Shall I help you again over there?
‘[I have a ravenous hunger for doing good and toiling away like four oxen. This is truly a beautiful place; and the people are good. Do you still need my help, lads? For God’s sake, spare not the sweat of my brow. Adam (that means, Man) is born to plough and to toil as a bird is born to fly. Our Lord wishes (do you hear it well?) that in the sweat of our face we do eat our bread – not by doing nothing at all like Frère Jean, that decrepit monk you can see tippling away over there and dying of fear.]
‘The fair weather has come. I now know the reply of that noble philosopher Anacharsis to be true and well founded in reason: asked which ship he believed to be safest: he replied, The one in the harbour.’
[‘Better still,’ said Pantagruel, ‘was when he was asked which were more numerous, the quick or the dead; he replied, How do you class those sailing the seas?, quietly suggesting that those who sail the seas are always so close to the risk of death that they live as they die and die as they live. Thus did Portius Cato say that he regretted three things only: ever having told a secret to a woman; ever having idled a day away; ever having travelled by sea to anywhere accessible by land.’]
‘By this worthy frock that I wear,’ said Frère Jean [to Panurge], ‘you, my friendly old bollock, were frightened [during that storm] without rhyme or reason: it is not your [fated] destiny to perish by water; you will be high up in the air (hanged, certainly, or else jolly well burnt like a Friar). [My Lord: would you like a good mantle to ward off the rain? Drop all those wolf-skin or badger-skin cloaks: have the hide off Panurge and cover yourself with it. But for God’s sake don’t approach the fire with it on or pass in front of a blacksmith’s forge: you would see it burnt to a cinder in a flash. Yet expose yourself to the rain as much as you like, and to snow and to hail. Dive deep down into water with it on, yet by God you will never get wet. Make winter boots from it: they will never let in the rain. Make bladders from it for boys who are learning to swim: they will learn without danger.’
‘His hide, then,’ said Pantagruel, ‘would be like the herb called maidenhair fern, which never gets damp nor soggy: it always stays dry even when kept as long as you like in deep water: that is why it is called impermeable (adiantos).’
‘Panurge, my friend,’ said Frère Jean. ‘Never fear water, I pray you. Your life will be terminated by the contrary element.’]
‘Maybe,’ replied Panurge, ‘but the devil’s chefs sometimes go mad and err in their duties: they often put souls on to boil which were meant to be roasted [, just as in our kitchens here below the cooks often lard up their partridges, pigeons and queests, presumably intending to roast them, only to end up boiling them, the partridges with cabbage; the pigeons with leeks, and the queests with turnips.
‘Now listen, my fine friends: I contend before you all that when I vowed a chapel to Monsieur Saint Nicholas ‘Twixt Candes and Monssoreau (take heed) I meant a rose-water alembic, Where never calf nor cow can feed, because I shall toss it down to the bottom of the river.’
‘Behold the brave!’ said Eusthenes: ‘the brave, now a brave-and-a-half. It proves what is asserted by the Lombardy proverb:
‘The peril once off, the saint’s worshippers scoff’].
How Pantagruel landed after the storm on the islands of the Macraeons
CHAPTER 25
[In ‘48 this was Chapter 11, the last of its chapters, Which begins but does not come to a proper end After ‘It is true that’ in the second paragraph, the ‘48 Fourth Book peremptorily breaks off with ‘quia plus n’en dict’ (‘because, no more is said’).
Macraeon and Macrobios mean long-liver, hence ‘Macrobe’.
Macquerelle means a procuress. The Ile Maquerelle in Paris, apparently then known for its ba
wdy-houses, is now called the Ile des Cygnes.
Rabelais sometimes uses ‘oysters in their shell’ for women of easy virtue or for vaginas or cunnilingus.
During the storm God had regard for the ‘simplicity and pure intentions’ of Pantagruel and his men. Cf. the same qualities in Judge Bridoye (Third Book, Chapters 37 and 43). Behind the laughter serious thoughts are being prepared.]
We at once disembarked at the port of an island which was called the Isle of the Macraeons. The good folk there welcomed us honourably. An ancient Macrobe (such was the title of their chief provost) wanted to bear Pantagruel off to the Town Hall, there to rest at his ease and have something to eat, but Pantagruel refused to leave the jetty before every one of his men had come ashore. After reviewing them, he ordered each of them to change his clothes and the totality of the ship’s victuals to be set out on the quayside so that all the crew could make merry. Which was done at once. And Lord knows how they drank and feasted. All the people of the isle also brought provisions in abundance: the Pantagruelists gave them even more.
It is true that their own provisions had been somewhat spoilt during the preceding storm.
Once the feast was over Pantagruel told every man to do his task and dutifully repair the damage. Which they all did with a good heart. The task of repair was made easy by the fact that the inhabitants of that island were all carpenters and craftsmen such as can be seen at the Arsenal in Venice; only the largest island was inhabited, and that in three ports and ten parishes: all the rest was given over to tall trees and was as thinly populated as the forest of the Ardennes.
At our insistence the old Macrobe showed us what was worth seeing or outstanding on the island: within those dark and deserted woodlands he revealed to us several ancient ruined temples and several obelisks, monuments and tombs bearing various inscriptions and epitaphs, some in hieroglyphics, some in the Ionic tongue, or in the Arabic, Hagarene, Slavonic or other tongues. Epistemon carefully copied them down. Meanwhile Panurge said to Frère Jean, ‘This is the Isle of the Macraeons: macraeon in Greek means an old man, a man of many years.’
‘What do you want me to do about it?’ said Frère Jean. ‘Undo it?’ I certainly wasn’t here when this land was christened.’
‘While on the subject,’ said Panurge, ‘I think that the term maquerelle derives from macraeon, for procuring becomes only the old women: using their bums becomes the young ones. It makes you wonder whether this is the model and prototype of the Ile Maquerelle in Paris. Let’s fish about for a few oysters in the shell.’
That ancient Macrobe asked Pantagruel in the Ionic tongue how and by what toil and labour they had managed to dock in their harbour on a day when there had been such a violent disturbance in the air and such a terrifying tempest out at sea.
Pantagruel replied that the Servator on high had regarded the simplicity and pure intentions of his people, who were not voyaging for gain nor dealing in merchandise. One single cause had brought them to put to sea: namely a scholarly desire to see, learn and visit the Oracle of Bacbuc and to have the word of La Bouteille concerning certain difficulties exposed by one of their company. It had not however been without sore affliction and evident peril of shipwreck.
Then Pantagruel asked him what he deemed to be the cause of that frightful storm, and whether the neighbouring seas were normally subject to tempests, as are the Raz-Saint-Matthieu, Maumusson and (within the Mediterranean) the Gulf of Adalia, Montargentan, Piombino, Cape Melio in Laconia, the Straits of Gibraltar, the Straits of Messina and others.
How the good Macrobe tells Pantagruel about the Manor and the Departure of Heroes
CHAPTER 26
[Rabelais has meditated deeply on Plutarch’s Obsolescence of Oracles. Interpreting Plutarch and other Classical authors as veiled forerunners of Christianity is typical of the fifteenth-century Renaissance in Italy and of the first half of the sixteenth century for the Northern Renaissance. A reading of the Obsolescence of Oracles is interesting in itself and throws much light on to Rabelais’ mind in this and the following chapters. (Even better would be to read all the treatises in Volume 5 of the Loeb bilingual edition of Plutarch’s Moralia, each of which Rabelais draws upon). This chapter is particularly indebted to sections 419 Ε to 420 F of the Obsolescence of Oracles.
The ‘unveiling’ of half-hidden truths by Renaissance humanists is not to be confused with the absurd finding of the Christian sacraments in Ovid, which Rabelais mocked in the Prologue to Gargantua. It is in a learned tradition which reaches back to Eusebius and his Preparation of the Gospel (third-fourth centuries AD). It is fully within the humanist syncretism prepared for in the Prologue to this Fourth Book. Origen and the Greek fathers encouraged it. So in their different ways did, amongst many others, Marsilio Ficino and Erasmus. Rabelais unveils the deeper meanings of Plutarch and in so doing brings precise changes to the text. Plutarch assumes that even exceptional human souls are eventually snuffed out like candle-flames, leaving nothing but stormy disturbances in the air. Rabelais does not: for him and his entire culture death is not extinction but the final separation on earth of body and soul. Plutarch’s texts are adapted by Rabelais to such ends.
‘Hero’ is used here as in Plutarch for someone who is above the normal human level in the scale of Being.
The mystical islands off Britain are, it seems, the Channel Islands.
For the last paragraph Rabelais turns to an adage of Erasmus, I, III, LXXX, ‘When I am dead let the earth be mixed with fire’, and probably to the following one, ‘To mix sea and sky’.]
Whereupon that good Macrobe replied:
‘Strangers and friends, you have here one of the Sporades: not those Sporades of yours in the Caspian Sea but the Oceanic Sporades; they were once rich, much visited, mercantile and densely populated, being subject to the Ruler of Britain: now, given the lapse of time and the world in decline, they are poor and abandoned, as you can tell.
‘Within the darkling forest that you see yonder, which is over three-score and eighteen parasanges in length and breadth, there lies the habitation of Daemons and Heroes who have grown old; and (since the comet which had appeared to us over three full days before no longer shines) we believe that one of them has died, at whose death was aroused the dreadful storm which you experienced. For while they are alive, all good things flourish here and in the other isles near by: then at sea all is ever calm and serene. When one of them dies we regularly hear great and piteous lamentations throughout the forest, and witness plagues, disasters and tribulations on land, tumults and darkness in the air, storm and gales at sea.’
‘In what you say,’ said Pantagruel, ‘there is every appearance of truth. For as the wax-torch or candle, all the time that it is burning with a living flame, shines on those who are near it and throws light on to its surroundings, gratifying each person and offering to each its light and its service, causing no harm or annoyance to anyone, yet the instant it is extinguished it infects the air with its smoke and vapours, troubling those who are near it and offending each one: thus it is with those noble and outstanding souls. During all the time that they inhabit their bodies, their dwelling-place is peaceful, fruitful, delectable, honourable: but come the hour of their Departure there commonly occur throughout the isles and mainland great commotions, darkness, lightning and storms of hail in the air; shocks, quakes and perturbations on land; gales and tempests at sea, with lamentations amongst peoples, mutations of religions, transfers of kingdoms and the overthrowing of commonwealths.’
‘Not long ago,’ said Epistemon, ‘we saw that from experience during the demise of the learned and chivalrous knight Guillaume Du Bellay. While he was alive France was in such felicity that all the world envied her, all the world courted her, all the world feared her: immediately following his death France long suffered the world’s contempt.’
‘Thus,’ said Pantagruel, ‘when Anchises died at Trepani in Sicily, the storm caused great distress to Aeneas. And it perhaps explains why, once Herod (the t
yrant and cruel king of Judaea) realized that he was close to a horrible, naturally terrifying death – he died of phthiriasis, consumed by worms and lice, as did before him Lucius Sylla, Pherecydes of Syria (the preceptor of Pythagoras), Alcman the Greek poet, and others still: and foreseeing that the Jews would be lighting joyful bonfires when he died, he caused all the nobles and magistrates from every city, town and fortress in Judaea to gather in his private palace under the colour of the fraudulent pretext that he wished to communicate to them matters of importance to the governance and safety of the Province. Once they had arrived and presented themselves in person, he had them locked up in his palace race-course. He then said to Salome his sister and to Alexander her husband:
‘“I am convinced that the jews will rejoice over my death, but if you grasp what I shall tell you and carry it out, my obsequies will be honoured ones: and there will be public displays of grief. The moment I am dead, order the archers of my guard – who have an express commission from me – to slaughter every one of the nobles and magistrates locked up in there. By your so doing, all the inhabitants of Judaea will start grieving and lamenting despite themselves: it will seem to foreigners that that is because of my death, as though some heroic soul had passed away.”
‘A certain irredeemable tyrant had similar pretensions: “When I die,” he said, “let the earth and fire mix together”, meaning, let the entire universe perish. Which that vile Nero changed, as Suetonius tells us, into “While I live!”
‘That detestable saying (which Cicero mentions in his book On the Ends of Good and Evil, and Seneca in Book Two of On Clemency) is attributed to Tiberius by Dion Cassius and Suidas.’
How Pantagruel reasons about the Departures of Heroic souls: and of the awe-inspiring prodigies which preceded the death of the late Seigneur de Langey