Death.
Die, then!
[He gathers up the shroud, lying beside him on the ground, and bears away Nero, wrapped in its folds.]
RABELAIS[B]
[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.