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.