In a letter of June 3, 1532, he raised a disconcerting question.
How comes it, most learned Tiraqueau, that in the abundant light of our century, in which by some special gift of the gods we see all the better disciplines recovered, there are still found everywhere men so constituted as to be either unwilling or unable to lift their eyes from the more than Cimmerian darkness of the gothic time to the evident torch of the sun?[77]
The irony of this is iterated and underlined in the oft-quoted eighth chapter of his Pantagruel, where Gargantua recalls his youth.
As you may easily understand, the times were not so suited, so convenient for literature, as the present, and had few such teachers as you have had. The times were still dark, and still exhaled the awkwardness and ill luck of the Goths, who had destroyed all good literature. But by divine goodness light and dignity have been restored to literature in my time; and I see such improvement that at present I should hardly be received in the beginning class, though as a man I used to be reputed the most learned of my time. I say this not in vain boasting, though I might legitimately do so in writing to you (see Marcus Tullius De senectute and Plutarch in the book entitled How to praise oneself without reproach), but to show you my deep affection.
Nowadays all the disciplines have been restored, the languages reëstablished: Greek, without which ’tis a shame for any one to call himself learned, Hebrew, Chaldee, Latin; printed editions as elegant as correct in usage, which were invented in my time by divine inspiration, as artillery by suggestion of the devil. The whole world is full of scholars, of most learned teachers, most ample libraries; and it seems to me that neither the time of Plato nor that of Cicero offered such convenience for study as is seen now. Hereafter we need not find in office or in society any one unpolished by the shop of Minerva. I see brigands, executioners, adventurers, stableboys of today more learned than the doctors and preachers of my time. Nay more, women and girls have aspired to that praise and celestial manna of good instruction.
What is pierced here is not medieval ignorance, but Renaissance complacency. The pedantry that Rabelais satirizes is of both ages. His quarrel with the Sorbonne of his own day may have been edged by the banning of Pantagruel. The book was banned as obscene. It is obscene. Let us no longer pretend that he attacked obscurantism as a champion of enlightenment. For whatever his motive, Rabelais remained singularly detached. He was far from being an apostle of enlightenment, or of anything else.
Yet he is still cited in some histories as forecasting modern education. An educational theory has been extracted from him, even a scheme. To support this, his conventional or picturesque ridicule of university teaching and of student manners is at most negative. A positive contribution has been found in his abbey of Thelème (I. lii-lviii).
Thelème, the ideal abbey that is the scene of the so-called scheme of education, takes its name probably from that preposterous allegory Hypnerotomachia,[78] wherein the hero forsakes the guidance of Reason (Logistica) for that of will (Thelemia). Its architecture and landscape gardening, again reminding of Colonna’s pseudo-classical elaboration, receive, with the furniture and accessories, ten times as much space as the studies. It has 9,332 suites. Its library abounds in Greek, Latin, Hebrew, French, Tuscan, and Spanish (omitting English and German); and its frescoes are of “antiques prouesses.” Outside are fountains, a hippodrome, a theater, swimming pool, garden, labyrinth, tennis court, and park. Inside it is supplied with costumers and furnishers. Its community of men and women, all handsome, richly dressed, and commanding the six languages well enough to compose in prose and verse, has no community obligation. Living in luxury, with the six languages among their pastimes, freed from the world and from all duties to one another, these privileged souls have for their community device “Fais ce que voudras.”
The humor of this, which ought to be discernible even to those preoccupied with schemes of education, might more easily be taken to imply that irresponsibility plus command of languages is not a sufficient educational formula even in an ideally luxurious environment. Since this would be a shrewd satire on the Renaissance, it may well be what Rabelais meant. Certainly he did not mean to propose Thelème for adoption as an idea, much less as a scheme. Do as you please, provided you live in luxury and command six languages. Is that an educational idea? Is it by any tenable interpretation an educational scheme? To range Rabelais with such pioneers of the fifteenth century as Guarino and Vittorino, or with such coming leaders as Vives and Loyola, is not only to misinterpret him; it is to do him wrong. His satire is not limited to the loud and boisterous; he is master also of irony. Let Thelème rest as he left it, an ironical fantasy.