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?