François Rabelais
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François Rabelais (ca. 1493 -1553-04-09) was a French humanist writer of satirical romances.
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- Je m'en vais chercher un grand peut-être; tirez le rideau, la farce est jouée.
- I am going to seek a grand perhaps; draw the curtain, the farce is played.
- Last words, according to Peter Anthony Motteux, in his Life of Rabelais
- Je n'ai rien vaillant; je dois beaucoup; je donne le reste aux pauvres.
- I have nothing, owe a great deal, and the rest I leave to the poor.
- His one line will, as quoted in Arthur Machen : A Short Account of His Life and Work (1964) by Aidan Reynolds and William E. Charlton, p. 186
[edit] Pantagruel (1532)
- Les horribles et espouvantables faictz & prouesses du tres renommé Pantagruel Roy des Dipsodes, filz du grand géant Gargantua
- Readers, friends, if you turn these pages
Put your prejudice aside,
For, really, there's nothing here that's outrageous,
Nothing sick, or bad — or contagious.
Not that I sit here glowing with pride
For my book: all you'll find is laughter:
That's all the glory my heart is after,
Seeing how sorrow eats you, defeats you.
I'd rather write about laughing than crying,
For laughter makes men human, and courageous.
-
- BE HAPPY!
- Introduction, as translated by Burton Raffel (1989)
- BE HAPPY!
- [Mais par ce que selon le sage Salomon,] Sapience n’entre point en ame malivole, & science sans conscience n’est que ruyne de l’ame.
- [But as wise Solomon said,] Wisdom entereth not into a malicious mind, and science without conscience is but the ruin of the soul.
- Ch. 8
[edit] Gargantua (1534)
- La vie inestimable du grand Gargantua, père de Pantagruel
- Pour ce que rire est le propre de l'homme.
- To laugh is proper to man.
- Rabelais to the Reader (prefatory note on leading page)
- [Puis pour curieuse leczon, & meditation frequente] rompre l'os, & sugcer la substantificque mouelle.
- [And then for strange lesson and frequent meditation,] break the bone and suck out the substantific marrow.
- Prologue
- Les heures sont faictez pour l'homme, & non l'homme pour les heures.
- Translation: I never follow the clock: hours were made for man, not man for hours.
- Ch. 39 (frère Iean des Entommeures)
- Et guerre faicte sans bonne provision d'argent, n'a qu'un souspirail de vigueur. Les nerfz des batailles sont les pecunes.
- Translation: War begun without good provision of money beforehand for going through with it is but as a breathing of strength and blast that will quickly pass away. Coin is the sinews of war.
- Ch. 44
- À la venue des cocquecigrues.
- Tanslation: About the coming of the cocklicranes
- Ch.49
- What, pray tell, is a "cocklicrane"
[edit] Le Tiers-Livre des faicts et dicts héroïques du bon Pantagruel (1546)
[edit] Le Quart-Livre des faicts et dicts héroïques du bon Pantagruel (1548, 1552)
- Certaine gayeté d'esprit conficte en mespris des choses fortuites.
- A certain jollity of mind, pickled in the scorn of fortune.
- Prologue de l'autheur
- A son [Timon le Misanthrope] exemple ie denonce à ces calumniateurs diaboliques, que tous ayent à se pendre dedans le dernier chanteau de ceste lune. Ie les fourniray de licolz.
- Following his example, I encourage all these diabolical calumniators to go hang themselves before the last moon's quarter is done. I will supply the rope.
- Prologue of the 1548 "old" edition
- He that has patience may compass anything.
- Ch. 48
- We will take the good will for the deed.
- Ch. 49
- ...l'estomach affamé n'a poinct d'aureilles, il n'oyt goutte.
- The belly has no ears nor is it to be filled with fair words.
- Ch. LXIII
[edit] The Works of Francis Rabelais (1854)
- As translated by Sir Thomas Urquhart and Peter Anthony Motteux
- Appetite comes with eating...but the thirst goes away with drinking.
- Book I, Treating Of the Inestimable Life of the Great Gargantua, Father Of Pantagruel, Ch. 5
- There was left only the monk to provide for, whom Gargantua would have made Abbot of Seville, but he refused it. He would have given him the Abbey of Bourgueil, or of Sanct Florent, which was better, or both, if it pleased him ; but the monk gave him a very peremptory answer, that he would never take upon him the charge nor government of monks. For how shall I be able, said he, to rule over others, that have not full power and command of myself: l If you think I have done you, or may hereafter do you any acceptable service, give me leave to found an abbey after my own mind and fancy.
- Book I, Ch. 52, How Gargantua caused to be built for the monk the abbey of Theleme
- All their life was spent not in laws, statutes, or rules, but according to their own free will and pleasure. They rose out of their beds when they thought good : they did eat, drink, labour, sleep, when they had a mind to it, and were disposed for it. None did awake them, none did offer to constrain them to eat, drink, nor to do any other thing ; for so had Gargantua established it. In all their rule, and strictest tie of their order, there was but this one clause to be observed,
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DO WHAT THOU WILT. - Because men that are free, well-born, well-bred, and conversant in honest companies, have naturally an instinct and spur that prompteth them unto virtuous actions, and withdraws them from vice, which is called honour. Those same men, when by base subjection and constraint they are brought under and kept down, turn aside from that noble disposition, by which they formerly were inclined to virtue, to shake off and break that bond of servitude, wherein they are so tyrannously enslaved; for it is agreeable with the nature of man to long after things forbidden, and to desire what is denied us.
- Book I, Ch. 57 How the Thelemites were governed, and of their manner of living. The famous dictum of the abbey of Theleme presented here, "Do what thou wilt" (Fais ce que voudras), evokes an ancient expression by St. Augustine of Hippo: "Love, and do what thou wilt." The expression of Rabelais was later used by the Hellfire Club established by Sir Francis Dashwood, and by Aleister Crowley in his The Book of the Law (1904): "Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law."
- Subject to a kind of disease, which at that time they called lack of money.
- Book II, Ch. 16
- So much is a man worth as he esteems himself.
- Book II, Ch. 29, How Pantagruel discomfited the three hundred Giants armed with free-stone, and Loupgarou their Captain (Loup-garou is the french term for werewolf)
- Loupgarou was come with all his giants, who, seeing Pantagruel in a manner alone, was carried away with temerity and presumption, for hopes that he had to kill the good man. Whereupon he said to his companions the giants, You wenchers of the low country, by Mahoom, if any of you undertake to fight against these men here, I will put you cruelly to death. It is my will, that you let me fight single. In the meantime you shall have good sport to look upon us.
- Book II, Ch. 29
- Come, pluck up a good heart; speak the truth and shame the devil.
- Plain as the nose in a man's face.
- Book V, author's prologue
- Looking as like...as one pea does like another.
- Book V, Ch. 2
