Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete - The Original Classic Edition. Rabelais François

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       yet its merit lies precisely in the fact that it succeeds in concealing the toil, in hiding the seams. He could not have reached this perfection at a first attempt. He must have worked long at the task, revised it again and

       again, corrected much, and added rather than cut away. The aptness of form and expression has been arrived at by deliberate means, and owes nothing to chance. Apart from the toning down of certain bold passages, to soften

       their effect, and appease the storm--for these were not literary

       alterations, but were imposed on him by prudence--one can see how numerous are the variations in his text, how necessary it is to take account of

       them, and to collect them. A good edition, of course, would make no attempt at amalgamating these. That would give a false impression and end

       in confusion; but it should note them all, and show them all, not combined,

       but simply as variations.

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       After Le Duchat, all the editions, in their care that nothing should be

       lost, made the mistake of collecting and placing side by side things which

       had no connection with each other, which had even been substituted for each other. The result was a fabricated text, full of contradictions naturally.

       But since the edition issued by M. Jannet, the well-known publisher of the Bibliotheque Elzevirienne, who was the first to get rid of this patchwork, this mosaic, Rabelais' latest text has been given, accompanied by all the earlier variations, to show the changes he made, as well as his

       suppressions and additions. It would also be possible to reverse the method. It would be interesting to take his first text as the basis, noting the later modifications. This would be quite as instructive and

       really worth doing. Perhaps one might then see more clearly with what care he made his revisions, after what fashion he corrected, and especially what were the additions he made.

       No more striking instance can be quoted than the admirable chapter about the shipwreck. It was not always so long as Rabelais made it in the end:

       it was much shorter at first. As a rule, when an author recasts some passage that he wishes to revise, he does so by rewriting the whole, or at least by interpolating passages at one stroke, so to speak. Nothing of the kind is seen here. Rabelais suppressed nothing, modified nothing; he did not change his plan at all. What he did was to make insertions, to slip in between two clauses a new one. He expressed his meaning in a lengthier way, and the former clause is found in its integrity along with the additional one, of which it forms, as it were, the warp. It was by this

       method of touching up the smallest details, by making here and there such little noticeable additions, that he succeeded in heightening the effect

       without either change or loss. In the end it looks as if he had altered

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       nothing, added nothing new, as if it had always been so from the first, and

       had never been meddled with.

       The comparison is most instructive, showing us to what an extent Rabelais' admirable style was due to conscious effort, care, and elaboration, a fact which is generally too much overlooked, and how instead of leaving any trace which would reveal toil and study, it has on the contrary a

       marvellous cohesion, precision, and brilliancy. It was modelled and remodelled, repaired, touched up, and yet it has all the appearance of having been created at a single stroke, or of having been run like molten wax into its final form.

       Something should be said here of the sources from which Rabelais borrowed. He was not the first in France to satirize the romances of chivalry. The romance in verse by Baudouin de Sebourc, printed in recent years, was a parody of the Chansons de Geste. In the Moniage Guillaume, and especially

       in the Moniage Rainouart, in which there is a kind of giant, and occasionally a comic giant, there are situations and scenes which remind us of Rabelais. The kind of Fabliaux in mono-rhyme quatrains of the old Aubery anticipate his coarse and popular jests. But all that is beside the question; Rabelais did not know these. Nothing is of direct interest save what was known to him, what fell under his eyes, what lay to his hand--as the Facetiae of Poggio, and the last sermonnaires. In the course of one's reading one may often enough come across the origin of some of Rabelais' witticisms; here and there we may discover how he has developed a situation. While gathering his materials wherever he could find them, he

       was nevertheless profoundly original.

       On this point much research and investigation might be employed. But there

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       is no need why these researches should be extended to the region of fancy. Gargantua has been proved by some to be of Celtic origin. Very often he is a solar myth, and the statement that Rabelais only collected popular traditions and gave new life to ancient legends is said to be proved by the large number of megalithic monuments to which is attached the name of Gargantua. It was, of course, quite right to make a list of these, to draw

       up, as it were, a chart of them, but the conclusion is not justified. The

       name, instead of being earlier, is really later, and is a witness, not to

       the origin, but to the success and rapid popularity of his novel. No one has ever yet produced a written passage or any ancient testimony to prove the existence of the name before Rabelais. To place such a tradition on a sure basis, positive traces must be forthcoming; and they cannot be adduced

       even for the most celebrated of these monuments, since he mentions himself the great menhir near Poitiers, which he christened by the name of Passelourdin. That there is something in the theory is possible. Perrault

       found the subjects of his stories in the tales told by mothers and nurses.

       He fixed them finally by writing them down. Floating about vaguely as they were, he seized them, worked them up, gave them shape, and yet of scarcely any of them is there to be found before his time a single trace. So we

       must resign ourselves to know just as little of what Gargantua and

       Pantagruel were before the sixteenth century.

       In a book of a contemporary of Rabelais, the Legende de Pierre Faifeu by

       the Angevin, Charles de Bourdigne, the first edition of which dates from

       1526 and the second 1531--both so rare and so forgotten that the work is only known since the eighteenth century by the reprint of Custelier--in the introductory ballad which recommends this book to readers, occur these lines in the list of popular books which Faifeu would desire to replace:

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       'Laissez ester Caillette le folastre,

       Les quatre filz Aymon vestuz de bleu, Gargantua qui a cheveux de plastre.'

       He has not 'cheveux de plastre' in Rabelais. If the rhyme had not suggested the phrase--and the exigencies of the strict form of the ballade and its forced repetitions often imposed an idea which had its whole origin in the rhyme--we might here see a dramatic trace found nowhere else. The name of Pantagruel is mentioned СКАЧАТЬ