Gustave Flaubert

[B] The manuscript of this essay, unlike all other early manuscripts of Gustave Flaubert, bears no date. It belongs to the earliest of his writing, a time when there was a far from unanimous opinion among the literary cognoscenti regarding the work of Rabelais.

NO NAME in literature has been more generally cited than that of Rabelais; and never, perhaps, has one been cited with so much ignorance and injustice. Thus, to some minds he is merely a drunken, cynical old monk, with a mind disordered and fantastic, as obscene as it is ingenious, dangerous in its ideas and revolting in their expression. To others he is a practical philosopher, gentle and moderate; sceptical, certainly, but, after all, an honest man of reputable life. He has been alternately loved and despised, misunderstood and rehabilitated; and ever since his prodigious genius first launched at the world his biting and all-embracing satire, in the form of the colossal mocking glee of giants, creatures of his imagination, each century has puzzled over his meaning, and has interpreted in a thousand fashions this long enigma, apparently so trivial, gross and merry, but in reality profound and true.

Rabelais’ work is a historical achievement, in itself so important that it belongs to and illumines the thought of each age. Thus, at the beginning of the sixteenth century, when first given to the world, it was in reality an open revolt, a moral pamphlet. It had the importance of actuality and the controlling power of a revolution. Rabelais may be regarded as a Luther in his own way. His sphere was that of laughter, but his power over men was such that with titanic mockery he demolished more of evil than the good man of Wittenberg, with all his anger. He managed everything so well—wielded so cleverly the sharp chisel of satire—that his laughter became a terror. His work is the embodiment of the grotesque; it is as eternal as the world.

Rabelais was the father of the frank and naÏve literature of the seventeenth century—of MoliÈre and La Fontaine,—all were immortals, geniuses, in spirit the most essentially French of Gallic writers. All three regarded poor human nature with a smile at once good-natured and cynical; all were frank, free and easy in their language, men in every sense of the word: careless of philosophers, of sects, of religions, they were of the religion of mankind itself, and well they understood it. They turned it over, analysed and dissected it; one in a strange story full of gross obscenities, bursting with laughter and blasphemy; the second, on the stage, in deftly constructed dialogue, full of truth and wisdom and a naÏvetÉ almost sublime—more of a philosopher in the simple laughter of his Mascarille, in the good sense of Philinte, or in the bilious spleen of Alceste, than any other philosopher that ever lived; and the third, in fables for children with morals for men, in verses full of good-nature and kindly humour, in words and phrases, wherein rests something of sublimity; in crystalline sonnets, in all the poetic gems that deck his name with splendid ornaments.

But Rabelais is to-day a subject of serious study, the favourite author of those rare minds that rise superior to the ordinary limitations of intelligence. Besides those men whose names we cite, La BruyÈre studied and appreciated his work with the utmost impartiality. The great romancer was not sufficiently correct to please the scrupulous taste of Boileau, or to accord with the reserve and purity of Racine. That prudish age, governed by Madame de Maintenon, so well typified in the flat and angular garden at Versailles, was ashamed of literature at once so frank and open, nude and picturesque. This giant made them fear. They seemed instinctively to feel that they were placed between two terrible epochs: the sixteenth century, which produced a Luther and a Rabelais, and the Revolution, which was to give a Mirabeau, a Robespierre. First the demolishers of faith, then the demolishers of life: two abysses, ‘twixt which they stood firm in the adoration of themselves!

In the eighteenth century things were still worse. Philosophers then were of a high moral tone, and would have none of Rabelais. The poor curate of Meudon would have found himself much out of place in the salons of the witty and beautiful marquises, or in the intellectual society of Madame du Deffand or Madame Geoffrin. Never would they have comprehended the flashing darts of wit, the bubbling spirits, the whirlwind, the poetic mind, throbbing with adventures, inventions, travel, and extravagances. The petty and affected tastes, the cold and formal manners of the age, were horrified at aught that might be called licentiousness of mind. The “Precieuses” probably preferred to have it in their manners! Voltaire, for instance, could pardon Rabelais because he ridiculed the Church; but of his style, of his meaning, Voltaire had scarce an idea, although he claimed to have a key to the great work, which he summed up in vicious epigram: “A mass of the grossest refuse ever vomited by a drunken monk.”

It is quite natural that this should have been his opinion. The glory and value of Rabelais, as in the case of all great men, all illustrious names, have long been vigorously disputed. His genius is unique, exceptional; its product stands alone among the histories of the literatures of the world. Where is his rival to be found?

To go back to antiquity, shall we cite Petronius or Apuleius, with their studied and premeditated art, their classic style, their scholarly conceptions?

Passing to the Middle Ages, shall we compare the epics of the twelfth century, the comic and the morality plays? No, certainly not; and although much of the comic material in the work of Rabelais is characteristic of the grotesque humour and manners of the Middle Ages, we do not find its predecessor in any literary document.

Coming down to modern times, his closest imitator, BÉroald of Verville, author of L’Art de Parvenir, is so far removed from his model in style and power that it is scarcely worth while to make a comparison. Sterne attempted to reproduce the style of Rabelais, but his affectation and over-refined sensibility destroyed the parallel.

No, Rabelais is unique because he himself expresses the traits and characteristics of an entire century. His work possesses the highest significance in literature, politics, morals and religion. Certain geniuses appear from time to time, to create new literatures, or to resuscitate old ones; they deliver their message to the world, express the sentiment of their own generation, and we hear from them no more.

Homer sang the glories of the martial life, of the valiant and warlike youth of the world, the vernal season when the trees put forth new sprouts. In Virgil’s day civilisation was already old; we find him full of tears, of shadows, sentiment and delicacy. Dante is sombre and radiant at the same time; he was the Christian poet, the bard of death and of hell, full of melancholy and of hope also. In olden times, if satiety overtook a people, if doubt entered into all hearts, if all beautiful dreams, all illusions, all Utopian yearnings fell, one by one, destroyed by stern realities, by science, reason, and analysis, what did the poet do? He retired within himself; he had sublime flights of pride and enthusiasm, and moments of poignant despair. He sang the agonies of the heart and the vagaries of fancy. Then, all the griefs that compassed him, the sobs that rang in his ears, the maledictions that he heard on every side, resounded in his soul—which God had made great, responsive, all-embracing—and issued thence through the voice of genius, to mark forever in history an epoch in a nation’s life, to record its sorrows, and carve indelibly the names of its unfortunates. In our own day Lord Byron has done this. For this reason, the true poet is more accurate than the historian, and indeed most poets are more strictly truthful than historians. Great writers, then, may be compared, in the realms of thought, to the capitals of kingdoms. They absorb the brains of every province and every individuality; mingling those qualities of each that are distinctively personal and original, they amalgamate them, arrange them, and after a time the result is seen in the form of art.

Rabelais was born in 1483, the year that Louis XI. died. Luther had just become known. The king had overthrown the ancient feudalism; the monks were about to attack the Papacy: this situation describes the history of the Middle Ages—a period divided between the wars of Nations and of the Church. But the people, weary of both, would have no more of either. They realised that the men of arms devoured their substance and ruined them; they knew the priests made use of them for their own selfish purposes, besides deceiving them. For some time the people contented themselves with inscribing satires and scurrilities on the stones of the cathedrals, with making songs against the seigneurs, or publishing, broadcast, biting criticisms of the ruling power or of the nobility, as in the Romance of the Rose. But something more was wanted: a revolt, a reform. Symbols were old, and so were mystery plays and poems; and there was a general feeling that an entirely new form of attack was desirable. Science was needed, even in poetry and philosophy.

In 1473, a caricature representing the Church, with the body of a woman, the legs of a chicken, the claws of a vulture, and the tail of a serpent, was circulated throughout Europe. It was the epoch of Comines, of Machiavelli, of ArÉtin. The Papacy had lately had Alexander VI.; now it had Leo X., who was no better. An intellectual orgy had set in, destined to be long, and to end with blood. During the eighteenth century this was repeated, and the termination was the same.

In the chaotic conditions belonging to this epoch lived Rabelais. We are not surprised that, in the midst of this society, corrupt from its debaucheries and tottering on its foundations, and being witness to such ruin and devastation, the genius of this wonderful man prompted him to reveal, by means of withering sarcasm, the frightful past of the Middle Ages, the effects of which were still felt in his own century, which looked back upon that past with horror.

In my opinion, those who have claimed to possess a key to Rabelais, to be able to understand his allegories, and to translate each jest into its real significance, do not understand him in the least. His satire is general and universal, not at all personal or local. A careful reading of his work should prove the fallacy of such pretensions.

Shall I cite all that was done in this respect in the sixteenth century, and tell of all the abuse poured by that century upon the Middle Ages, of which it was the outcome? For instance, without saying anything of Ariosto, are not Falstaff, Sancho Panza, and Gargantua a grotesque trilogy forming a bitter satire on the old society?

Falstaff belongs wholly to England; he is John Bull bloated with beer and pork; fat, sensual, running away from the dead, eternally drawing from his pocket a flask of old Spanish wine. He possesses none of the terrible grotesqueness of Iago, or of the deliberate immorality of Schiller’s Hassan, the Moor. His greatest passion was self-love; he carried it to the highest degree; it was even sublime. He was egotism personified, with a certain facility in analysis and a strain of ridicule, by which he managed to turn everything to his own advantage.

As for peaceful Sancho Panza, mounted on his lazy, tawny ass, snoring all night and sleeping all day, a poltroon, not able to understand the meaning of heroism, full of proverbs, the prosaic man par excellence,—is not his base blood the crying reason why he endeavours with all his power to stop Don Quixote from tilting at the windmills, which the worthy knight takes for giants? The man of gentle birth attacks them, nevertheless, but he breaks his arm and wounds his head. His helmet is a barber’s basin, his horse, Rosinante, and a labourer’s donkey brays at the sight of his coat-of-arms.

Placed between these two figures, that of Gargantua is vaguer, less precise. His characterisation is ampler, freer, and grander. Gargantua is less gluttonous, less sensual than Falstaff, and not so lazy as Sancho Panza; but he is a greater drinker, a heartier laugher, and makes a louder clamour. He is terrible and monstrous in his gaiety.

One more reflection: the satire of Rabelais does not apply to his own day only. He denounces, for all time, all abuses, crimes, and everything that is ridiculous. Perhaps he was able to foresee a better state of the body politic and a society whose moral laws should be purified. Existing conditions aroused his pity, and, to employ a trivial expression, all the world was a farce. And he made himself a part of the farce.

Since his time, what has been done? Everything has changed. Reform has come, with independence of thought. We have had the Revolution. We possess material independence. And what besides all this?

Thousands of questions have been discussed,—sciences, arts, philosophies, theories,—how many questions even during the last twenty years! What a whirlwind of thoughts and ideas! Where will they lead us?

Let us see. Where are we? Are we in the twilight or in full dawn? We have no more Christianity. What have we? I ask. Railways, factories, chemists, mathematicians. To be sure, our bodies are better off, we suffer less in the flesh, but the heart still bleeds! Do you not feel the perturbation of your soul, although its outward covering seems calm and happy? It is plunged in the abyss of universal scepticism; it is overcome by that deadly ennui that seizes upon our race even in the cradle. Meanwhile, politicians babble, poets have scarcely time to rhyme their fancies and scribble them hastily on ephemeral sheets of paper; and the suicidal bullet is heard in every garret and every palace where dwell misery, pride, or satiety!

Material questions have been settled. But others—have they also been solved? Answer me that! And the longer you delay in filling this yawning chasm in the soul of mankind, the more I mock at your efforts to be happy, and laugh at your miserable sciences, that are worth no more than a blade of grass.

Now is the time for another genius like Rabelais to arise. Let him be without anger, without hatred, without grief. What could he laugh at? Not at kings—there are no more; nor at God, because although we may have lost our faith, yet a certain fear remains; nor at the Jesuits, for they are an old story.

What could he laugh at, then? The material world has improved, or at least it is on the road to improvement.

But the other? He would have fine sport with that. And if such a poet could conceal his tears and laugh instead, I assure you his book would be the most terrible and the most sublime that ever has been written!