INTRODUCTION


1. Donald M. Frame, review article,"Rabelais. By John Cowper Powys," RR 42 (1951) 287.

2. See Defaux, "Rabelais et son masque comique," ER II (1974) 89-136.

3. When uprooting a tree to use as a lance in 1.36, Gargantua is presumably at most roo feet tall; when
a pilgrim's staff hits a nerve in a tooth in 1.38, he must be nearer r,000 feet. When Pantagruel's mouth
holds a whole world for AN to explore (2.32), the giant must be r,000 miles or more tall; a chapter
later, when the miners clean out his bowels, his height might be one or two thousand feet—a fraction of a mile.

4. For more on Pierre Amy and his friendship with R, see Henri Busson, "Les Dioscures de Fontenay-le-
Comte: Pierre Amy-Francois Rabelais," ER 6 (1965) 1-5o.

5. Hippocrates' Aphorisms and Galen's Ars parva; April 17-June 24, 1531. R's text was a Greek MS of his
own, later published with his notes.

6. We do not know Du Bellay's illness; but R served him many years and on three such trips, his only ones
to Rome, January-March, 1534, July-February, 1535-1536, and summer, 1547 to some time in 1549.

7. His first work, in the Italian macaronics (verses mingling Latin with Italian) favored for such bur-
lesque romances, rated perhaps the best of all these.

8. Mellin de Saint-Gelais (1491-1558), vastly popular court poet (mainly im-proviser), whose publication
of his works in 1547 did not enhance his reputation as poet. The moot question of authorship of this en-
igma is well treated by R. L. Frautschi in French Studies 17 (1963) 331-340. The last ten verses are by
R, and Frautschi shows that the entire poem may well be his as well. See also Screech, p. 195.

9. Defaux (n. 2 above and n. 39 below) and Duval (n. 41 below), and especially La Charit6 (n. 15 and n.
41 below); also, I think, Bowen (n. 37 below), Cave (n. 40 below) and Rigolot (n. 14 below) may be so
described.

10. Lucian: "To one who said to him, 'You are a Prometheus in words,' " in Works, Loeb Classics ed., 6.424.

11. In 3.FM, R enlarges at great length on this and on his fear of the implications.

12. A kind of hash. Here R nods-unless it is Pantagruel-who had given that castleship to AN after his visit
inside his mouth (2.32).

13. A practice described in the text, like the consultation of the Bible at random for advice, once prac-
ticed in certain Christian homes.

14. ER 10 (1972) 186 pp.

15. See Raymond C. La Charite: "An Aspect of Obscenity in Rabelais," in Renaissance and Other Studies in
Honor of W. L. Wiley, ed. George B. Daniel, Jr. (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1968) 166-
189.

16. The original is this: "je vous supplie on nom et reverence des quatre fesses qui vous engendrerent et
de la vivificque cheville qui pour tors les
coupploit."

17. Blaise Pascal (1623-1662), whose Pensees are models of concision, and one of whose Provincial Letters
(1656-1657) ends in his memorable apology for not having had the time to make it shorter.

18. A note often sounded in Strunk and White's admirable-and concise-Elements of Style, 3d ed. (New York:
Macmillan, 1979).

19. Jacques Boulenger, Rabelais d travers les dges (Paris: Le Divan, 1925).

20. In the chapter on "Of the Works of the Mind," in his Caracteres, ed. Robert Garapon (Paris: Gamier,
1962).

21. In his Philosophical Letters, in Oeuvres completes, ed. Louis Moland (Paris: Gamier freres, 1877-1885),
vol. 22, p. 174. For all this section, fuller treat-ment may be found in my FRS, pp. 169-191, 212-216.

22. In a letter dated 1767; see Correspondence, ed. Theodore Baterman (Geneva: Institut et Musee Voltaire,
1953-1977).

23. In Les Contemplations written in 1856.

24. Jacques Boulenger, Rabelais d travers les dges, pp. 134-138.

25. Quoted from his Correspondence, p. 159; cf., pp. 156-158.

26. See Boulenger, pp. 127-131.

27. Goldsmith was an admirer; Fielding and Dr. Johnson regretted his obscenity but admired his genius;
Smollett drew on his in his political Adventures of an Atom.

28. Walter Besant mixes the highest of praises with a damning conclusion that
I think was not atypical in The French Humorists (London: R. Bentley, 1873). Although he considers him "a
glorious wit and satirist" and "a great moral teacher," he finds his obscenity extreme and his drollery a
pernicious enemy of seriousness"; see pp. 122-128, especially 128; see also pp. 89-131.

29. In Do What You Will (London: Chatto & Windus, 1929), pp. 307-328.

30. See Collected Essays, Journalism, and Letters of George Orwell, eds. Sonia Orwell and Ian Angus (New
York: Harcourt, Brace, and World, 1968),
2:45-46; 3:285.

31 The book he had read is Lazare Sainean, La Langue de Rabelais, 2 vols (Paris: E. Boccard, 1923). See
Alfred G. Engstrom, "A Few Comparisons and Contrasts in the Word-Craft of Rabelais and James Joyce," pp.
65-82 of the festschrift for W. Leon Wiley (see n. 15 above).

To the Reader: Not all chapters have notes.



BOOK 1



1: AUTHOR'S PROLOGUE


32. World: in the passage R has in mind, Plato has Socrates say that auxiliaries (who assist the rational
rulers in his ideal commonwealth) need the qualities of a good watchdog: gentle obedience to the good
(their masters), and courageous anger toward strangers.



1.1: OF THE GENEALOGY AND ANTIQUITY OF GARGANTUA.



33. French jurists in R's day claimed this descent for their monarchy, which was widely accepted, although
many, like Lemaire de Beiges and Ronsard, preferred Aeneas and the Trojans (idealized by Virgil) to his
perfidious Greeks as ancestors.

34. The phrase "return to our sheep" is still valid today and was already proverbial in R's day, from a
great favorite of R's, the late fifteenth-century Farce de Maistre Pathelin. When the shrewd lawyer Pathelin
has procured some cloth from draper and sheep farmer Guillaume but claimed not to have gotten it, and then
takes on the defense of a shepherd of Guillaume's charged with killing and eating one of his sheep, he gets
the draper confused between the crimes he charges to the point where the judge must remind him that the
present case concerns his sheep.

35. An imaginary allusion: Aristotle nowhere speaks of such an art, although in his Problems he touches on
maladies of vision.



1.2: THE ANTIDOTED FRIGGLEFRAGGLES.



36. French: "les Fanfreluches antidotees, trouvees en un monument antique." In this long piece of nonsense
verse, the omission of the initial characters of many verses is deliberate, aiming to support the narrator's
claim that the manuscript has been nibbled and gnawed by rats and moths or other harmful creatures.


1.4: How GARGAMELLE, WHILE PREGNANT WITH GARGANTUA, ATE A GREAT ABUNDANCE OF TRIPES.


37. Diableries (deviltries) were regular features of mystery plays but never had as many as four devils; so
this term suggests a baffling confusion.

38. The quille "skittle or nine-pin" is a handy symbol for the phallus.


1.5: THE PALAVER OF THE POTTED.


39. Or "at my canonical hours" (times for daily prayers), heures."

40. ... comme un beau pere guardian."

41. By forcing horses to bend down too far to reach water.

42. " . . . bouteille est fermee 1 bouchon, et flaccon a Viz." The pun hinges on con 'cunt."

43. "C'est biers chic chante": meaning crudely "well said.'(

44. A sponge epitomizes thirst, and esponge sounds like sponsus "bridegroom," the second claim later.

45. The speaker says duos (acc.) where duobus (abl.) is correct here.

46. Here end two rhymed couplets:

Ainsi se Feist Jacque Cuer riche.
Ainsi profitent boys en (riche.
Ainsi conquesta Bacchus l'lnde.
Ainsi philosophic Melinde.

I.e., says the speaker, love of the wisdom of Bacchus (wine) allowed Vasco da Gama to take Melinda, a fabled
city on the east coast of Africa.

47. "Longues beuvettes rompent le tonnoire." Allowed as a variant spelling of tonnerre, "thunder," tonnoire
suggests, and makes better sense as entonnoir, "funnel."

48. " . . . estrillons-le (ce fauveau) a profict de mesnaige." Our version here gives the parts of the phrase;
but "estriller fauveau" means to curry favor by flattery.

49. A Basque saying meaning: "Drink up, mate!" Many lackeys were Basques.

50. "1 thirst": John (19.28) makes this the next-to-last words of Jesus on the Cross.

51. The speaker might be a boastful Cordelier or other monk, but Panurge will use it of himself simply or as
boast of his sexual urge and prowess.

52. "Tear of Christ": name of a renowned Italian muscat wine.

53. Presumably a smooth but undistinguished wine.

54. "One-eared" means pleasing even connoisseurs. The wool suggests better than taffeta and seems a sequel
to it.

55. A gag from gambling; this raise is no doubt of his elbow, for good reason.


1.7: How THE NAME WAS GIVEN TO GARGANTUA.


56. " mammallement scandaleuse, des pitoyables aureilles offensive, et sentent de loing heresie."


1.8: How THEY DRESSED GARGANTUA.


57. "Les Exponibles de M. Haultechaussade." Probably a dig at both Ockham and Duns Scotus.

58. A comical imaginary book title. 1.9: OF THE COLORS AND LIVERY OF GARGANTUA.

59. First mention of the object of the later quest by Pantagruel and party in books 4-5.

60. The word is trepelu, "paltry," which also sounds much like tres peu lu, "very little read."

61. " . . . entre les pudicques matrones." The sense seems as much "against" as "among."

62. The vaunted mini-Renaissance in France under King Francis I (15151547)

63. Admiral: then title of a very high military commander; at this time Philippe de Chabot, seigneur de Brion,
Count of Buzancais, Admiral of France and Burgundy, conqueror of Piedmont in 1535. The admiral referred to here,
with the anchor and dolphin in his device, was the good friend and commander of Francis I, Guillaume Gouffier,
Lord of Bonnivet (1488?-1525), killed in the disastrous French defeat at Pavia.

64. If R (or Alcofribas Nasier) ever meant to do so, no trace of it remains today.


1.10: OF WHAT IS SIGNIFIED BY THE COLORS WHITE AND BLUE.


65. In legend, Aeneas's son Ascanius discovers a white sow at the site of the then future Alba Longa (Long White).

66. Ovation was a great victor's honor in Rome but much less so than a triumph.

67. Plutarch, in his We of Pericles (27), tells of his doing this at the seige of Samos to give more troops a
chance in battle.

68. For Aristotle and noted commentators of R's day like Jacques Lefevre d'Etaples in his Commentaries, two main
groups of spirits, prominent in psychic theory, were the vital (looking after life and the functioning of the or-
ganism; seated in the heart but able to tend toward the brain or spread through the body; subject to dilation and
dispersal from the sudden onset of great heat, which for some helped explain sudden deaths from excessive joy or
laughter); and secondly our noblest spirits, the animal (of the soul, anima or psyche) and much discussed in R's
day. Notable among these were the visive, which emanate from the eyes (thus reducing their substance) to form a
radiation that makes sight possible for the visual spirits, despite this loss.

69. A legal formula. 812


1.11 : OF THE CHILDHOOD OF GARGANTUA.


70. This and the ensuing actions by the child Gargantua are a mixture of the childish silly, the proverbial (us-
ually figurative and metaphoric), and the idiomatic, some of them a combination of these types.

71. Scolded a subordinate in the hope of giving a lesson to a superior.


1.13: HOW GRANDGOUSIER RECOGNIZED THE MARVELOUS MIND OF GARGANTUA BY THE INVENTION OF AN
ASS-WIPE.


72. Malzoin (maljoint or maujoin), here used to contrast with benjoin (benzoin), but also designating a woman's
genitals.

73. Opening words of a verse marking the end of each Bible reading during the mass.

74. French: "as-tu prins au pot?" Urquhart translates this: "hast thou been at the pot?" W. F. Smith makes it:
"hast thou burnt to?" (this last, a phrase used of milk which is boiling sticks to the pot, seems to fit best
here).


1.14: How GARGANTUA WAS INSTRUCTED BY A SOPHIST IN LATIN LETTERS.


75. Gothic was the heavy black-letter print and script that in R's time was being steadily and rather swiftly
replaced by the italic favored by humanists, which then prevailed for a century or so. Most unlearned books for
popular consumption, however, were still printed in Gothic, among them both R's Gargantua and his Pantagruel.

76. The cupola of Saint-Martin d'Ainay in Lyon was supported by four stout columns.

77. A dull scholastic treatise on the ways or modes of signification.

78. The term brelingant signified a woman's genitals.

79. R closes on Thubal with a couplet borrowed in adapted form from his friend the poet Clement Marot and writ-
ten as prose: "et fut Van mil quatre tens et vingt-de la verolle que luy vint."

80. Here R puns in conclusion on enfournames "baked in an oven" and the likelier en fourneasmes-nous "as we
ever furnished, or came up with."


1.15: How GARGANTUA WAS PUT UNDER OTHER TEACHERS.


81. Both names (of man and country) honor Erasmus, whose epistle to his friend Johannes Paladanus (des Marais)
introduces a panegyric to Don Felipe, viceroy of Castile. Papeligosse may be a rough mix of Pampeluna and Sar-
agossa; but it also approximates another Meridional, name for an imaginary kingdom-Pamperigouste.

82. " . voz resveurs mateologiens" (cf, Greek mataio "vain, empty, idle").


1.16: How GARGANTUA WAS SENT TO PARIS.


83. One Francois de Fayolles, a relative of Geoffroy d'Estissac, R's protector and Maecenas, may be the fictive
ruler R has in mind here.

84. An ancient massive quadrangular ruin near Chinon. I cannot identify any saint bearing that name.

85. Inversion of a familiar claim by and about the clergy.

86. A joke on their proverbial poverty.


1.17: How GARGANTUA PAID HIS WELCOME TO THE PARISIANS.


87. The proficiat, at first a wish for success, was for R a welcoming gift.

88. "Saincte Mamye": the divers oaths in many tongues in this passage parody the many languages heard in Paris,
the university especially.

89. The Hotel de Nesle (Left Bank): R had first written here "Sorbonne," which explains the remark about a neg-
lected oracle; prudence led to the change.


1.18: How JANOTUS DE BRAGMARDO WAS SENT TO RECOVER THE GREAT BELLS FROM GARGANTUA.


90. Short and fuzzy.

91. No longer needing to be changed to wine.

92. A play on in artibus and inertes; "a" and "e" were sounded much alike.


1.19: THE HARANGUE OF MASTER JANOTUS DE BRAGMARDO.


93. A corruption and contraction of Bona dies, "Good day!"

94. Although there is such a locality outside Paris, Bordeaux is in Gironde, Guyenne.

95. The famous Sermones aurei de Sanctis (pub. 1473) of Friar Leonardi de Utino (Udine). Sermones is of course
a plural, used for a singular by Janotus. The Utino presumably leads to the utinam (so that) that follows.

96. A concluding scholastic formula with the meaning of QED.

97. Third of nine modes of the first figure of the syllogism.

98. By mixing up the order, Janotus here attributes God's powers to the Virgin.

99. Gibberish deformation of an old adverb signifying affirmation.

100. An obvious boner when he means "the colic."

101. Formula for ending the work of a scribe or a buffoon.


1.20: How THE SOPHIST TOOK HOME HIS CLOTH.


102. The first chapter of the Parvalogicalia, introduction to scholastic logic. Already here, as later, R makes
Janotus speak against his own side and its abuses.


1.21: GARGANTUA'S MODE OF STUDY ACCORDING TO THE TEACHING OF HIS SOPHIST TUTORS.


103. Heavy irony: to rise so late was scandalous when daylight was essential.


1.22: GARGANTUA'S GAMES.


104. "A la cheveche" was perhaps a form of backgammon. As we have noted elsewhere, the edition of Gargantua by W.
F. Smith is a valuable guide here.


1.23: How GARGANTUA WAS TAUGHT BY PONOCRATES.


105. Hot baths being hard to come by in R's France, oil rubdowns were often substituted.

106. The twelve sections of the zodiac, from Aries to Pisces, in the sky, traversed by the planets in their daily
apparent circling around the earth.

107. Here apparently, as in Plato's Republic (530-531), harmonics, considered the most exacting (or one of these)
of the mathematical sciences.

108. The newer, clearer Roman script, not the crude old Gothic; and note the importance of a clear correct hand-
writing when printing was still new, and until recently all copying and copies of a text had to be made by hand.

109. The sporting event that gave rise to the modern shot put.


1.24: How GARGANTUA USED HIS TIME.


110. Chauny (Aisne) is a small town on the Oise in NE France fabled for skillful jugglers.


111. I.e., slick at passing of phonies as extraordinary, rare animals.


1.25: HOW THERE WAS AROUSED BETWEEN THE FOUACIERS OF LERNE AND THE MEN OF GARGANTUA'S COU-
NTRY A GREAT DISPUTE.


112. ...trop diteulx, breschedens, plaisans rousseaulx, galliers, chienlictz, averlans, limes sourdes, faictneans,
friandeaulx, bustarins, talvassiers, riennevaulx, rustres, challans, hapelopins, trainne-guainnes, gentilz flocquetz,
copieux, landores, malotruz, dendins, baugears, tezez, gaubregeux, gogueluz, claquedans, boyers d'etrons, bergiers
de merde.... " My debt to Urquhart is considerable for help with such litanies as this.

113. As noted above, this is a medieval form, then still in popular use, of "Par la mere de Dieu" (By the Mother
of God), but also a near homonym of "Par la merde" (By shit).

114. An omission thought by some to bring bad luck.

115. A large red grape, which Cotgrave finds better suited to medicine than to eating or wine-making.


1.26: How THE INHABITANTS OF LERNE ... MADE AN UNEXPECTED ATTACK.


116. This list is of artillery pieces smaller than cannons, larger than most guns.

117. Lengthened cannons, like culverins.


1.27: How A MONK OF SEUILLE SAVED THE ABBEY CLOSE.


118. A lance is not only a knight with a lance but the group attending him.

119. Entommeures, a variant of Entamures, "hashes," befits a scrapper with a prodigious appetite for good food
and drink.

120. Stunned, when on breaking the mold the bell turns out flawed or even cracked.

121. This is a syllabic breakdown of the monks' chant: impetum inimicorum ne timueritis: "You shall not fear the
enemy's attack," (from a response in the Breviary); missing some syllables.

122. "C'est bien chien chante"; expressing scorn for the pointless crappery of merely chanting.

123. Ironic proverbial saying meaning crooked, thus like English "straight as a corkscrew."


1.29: THE TENOR OF THE LETTER THAT GRANDGOUSIER WROTE TO GARGANTUA.


124. The apparent pessimism this shows about man's nature seems to clash with R's optimism in 1.5o (growth of
gratitude in the "man of reason") and in the only rule of Theleme (Do what you will) but probably merely qualifies
it, implying this: The Thelemites and the man of reason, knowingly or not, are obeying God and doing His will; but
when a man (here, Picrochole) abandons God by disobeying Him, God in turn abandons him, with the results that
R notes in Picrochole.

125. This date places the action during vintage time.


1.32: How GRANDGOUSIER, TO BUY PEACE, HAD THE FOUACES RETURNED.


126. The words couille et molle suggest scant virility, hence scant courage, a sissy. However, couille may also
mean "mortar," and molle may mean "mill," though why here I do not see.

127. In R's time all surgical cutting and such was done by the barbers on the direction of the surgeon, for whom
such manual work on a patient was considered infra dig.

128. " . . . oignez villain, il vous poindra; poignez villain, il vous oindra."

129. " . de la pance vient la dance." To express the same idea, we say that an army marches on its stomach.


1.33: How CERTAIN COUNSELORS OF PICROCHOLE, BY RASH ADVICE, PLACED HIM IN THE UTMOST PERIL.


130. In R's day men, like women, often wore hats indoors as well as out but doffed them before a superior. It was
a marked courtesy for a king or prince to invite a noble to remain covered, as does Picrochole here, and Panta-
gruel to Kissass and Sniffshit (a.ii).

131.... pour veoir de leur urine," means "to check their urine."

132. Arabia was counted as triple in R's day: Felix, petraea, and deserta.

133. A deformation of Marcoul to make Malcon, "Bad-cunt."

134. This comic inversion of victim and prize aims to express murderous frenzy.


1.34: How GARGANTUA LEFT THE CITY OF Pmt.'s TO SUCCOR HIS COUNTRY.


135. " ... le mestayer de Gouguet": this translation assumes Gouguet is a person; if it should be a placename, the
French would mean "the farmer from Gouguet."


1.35: How GYMNASTE KILLED CAPTAIN TRIPET.


136. This unidentified gymnastic stunt is presumably like a series of cartwheels.


1.37: How GARGANTUA, IN COMBING HIS HAIR, MADE ARTILLERY SHELLS FALL OUT OF IT.


137. Such disdain seems to fit Master Alcofribas and need not be R's but might be. Chroniclers, obsessed with ex-
ploits, sometimes wrote like today's "male chauvinist pigs."

138. This is not the familiar west English Cornwall but one in Quimper in Brittany.

139 .This Benedictine abbey in Chinon was governed by Philippe Hurault de Cheverny, Abbe de Turpenay.

140. One of the noble Essards family of Langeais, near Chinon.


1.38: How GARGANTUA IN A SALAD ATE SIX PILGRIMS.


141. At the famous abbey of Citeaux (Cote-d'Or) in Burgundy.

142. The elaborate Latin account is from Psalm 124 (12,3 of the Vulgate). These and others like them were contin-
ually being applied to contemporary events, specially by preachers, which is what R is ridiculing here.


1.39: How THE MONK WAS FEASTED BY GARGANTUA.


143. A Eurasian freshwater fish related to the dace, ill regarded in R's day.

144. This, often followed by "Dieu to gard de mal, masson," was a standard way of completely changing the subject.

145. This old prophecy of the coming of Christ involves multiple puns: it implies fertility; and the preceding moust
"must" suggests its homophone mou ."soft"; and a lack of softness (in the male member) suggests fertility. Then
the sounds of Jesse were those of ?ay se" (modern "J'ay soir), for some, the last words of Jesus on the Cross.

146. This is my guess for "Les perdrys nous mangeront les aureilles mesouan."

147. An actual neighbor of R's, referred to in the Prologue to Book 4 as "le boiteux," the lame or the limper. The
name itself means "bad greyhound" (levrier); one or more of these reasons may explain why Frere Jean is not sure
whether he did wrong.


1.40: WHY MONKS ARE SHUNNED BY EVERYONE.


148. According to Aulus Gellius Attic Nights 2.22.

149. This is the only time in R that Gargantua contradicts his father.

150. These quarrels were square-headed bolts or arrows to fire from a crossbow.

151. These proctors (ecclesiastical judges) were reputed to take gifts (apices or spices, as they were called) from
both sides in a single case.

152. Ad to levavi or "I raised to Thee," begins Psalm 123; but the Latin sounds like French lava vit "prick rose,"
which is more in keeping with Frere Jean's themes.


1.41: How THE MONK PUT GARGANTUA TO SLEEP.


153. The chill of the wee hours brought out the colds afflicting many monks.

154. In falconry, purges for the bird. The other term used here, tyrouer, is ex-plained in the text; but since it also
is related to tiroir, one of Gargantua's terms for his flask-breviary, off we go again.

155. Here "use" means the particular form of the ritual used.

156. "Come, let's drink": a clear parody of the beloved old hymn Venire adoremus "0 come, let us adore Him."


1.42: How THE MONK ENCOURAGES HIS COMPANIONS.


157. A topos that R uses often with jocular irony (4.8 etc.).


1.43: How PICROCHOLE'S SCOUTING PARTY WAS MET BY GARGANTUA.


158. Gregorian water was water blessed according to Saint Gregory's formula; but R has named this water Gringorian,
after the dramatic poet Pierre Gringore, 1475-ca. 1538 (whose popular sotie, Le Jeu du Prince des Sots, aimed main-
ly at Pope Julius II, portrays the Church as the Frere Sotte), and who Victor Hugo popularized (as Gringoire) in his
novel Notre-Dame de Paris (1831).


1.50: THE SPEECH THAT GARGANTUA MADE TO THE VANQUISHED.


159. " . . . au vent vesten Nordest," meaning "west northeast." R's likely intent
here and the wind the context calls for, would be either NE or ENE.


1.51: How THE GARGANTUIST VICTORS WERE ,REWARDED AFTER THE BATTLE.


160. The town of Logrono, in Spanish Navarre.

161. These places, all presumably near Chinon and La Deviniere, are rewards Gargantua gives his warriors, leaders,
and friendly helpers for help in win-ning the war.


1.52: How GARGANTUA BUILT FOR THE MONK THE ABBEY OF THELEME.


162. This tidy truism recalls and may derive from Socrates, Erasmus, or both.

163. R writes quoy vault toille? "What is the value of cloth?" but means: "What is she good for?" (Que vault-elle?
a homophone). The toille suggests the shirts.

164. " ... bien formees et bien naturees"; the "well natured" makes this the likely meaning of R's critical "well
born" (1.57) rather than the other possible sense "nobly born."


1.53: How THE ABBEY OF THE THELEMITES WAS BUILT AND ENDOWED.


165. "estoille poussiniere," suggested also by the astronomical sun-crowns.

166 Châteaux famed for their splendor, of which all but Bonnivet still exist.

167. In an exhaustive lexical study in ER s (1964) 71-78, Robert Marichal shows that either of these meanings is
quite possible; and Cotgrave also lists "elembic." Marichal notes in passing that Theleme lacks not only any common
chapel but also both a kitchen and a refectory.


1.54: INSCRIPTION PLACED OVER THE GREAT GATE OF THELEME.


168. "Vieulx matagotz, marmiteux, borsouflez." These seven stanzas (though not the seven shorter refrains) abound
in intricate internal rhymes as well as the standard ones ending each verse: e.g., " ... bigotz, / Vieulx matagotz" and
later: "Entrez, qu'on fonde icy la foy profonde, / Puis qu'on con-fonde," etc. Like all earlier translators, I have found
these quite beyond my powers to reproduce or emulate and have settled for doing my lame best with the end rhymes
and the meter.

169. "Ny Ostrogotz, precurseurs des magotz."

170. "... de Dangler palatins.": palace guards of Dangler, the jealous husband, hating any lover, of the Romance of the
Rose and its many epigones.


1.55: How THE MANOR OF THE THELEMITES RAN.


171. " . . . bains mirificques a triple solier," i.e., marvelous baths at three stories or levels.


1.57: How THE THELEMITES WERE REGULATED IN THEIR WAY OF LIFE.


172. The master of contemporary Rabelais studies, especially in matters theo-logical, M. A. Screech, illuminates much
of the Theleme episode and thus of these final chapters of Gargantua in "Some Reflexions on the Abbey of Thelema"
in ER 8 (1969) 107-114. The reader must please allow me to quote him at length:

The principal aim of the episode, summed up in the rule Fay a que vouldras, is to show how subservient obedience must
be dispensed with. If Socrates cannot govern himself and so declines to govern others, who--on earth--could lay claim
to the ability to do so? ... That is why the abbey is the Abbey of Will (thelema); that is why the one and only rule insists
on doing what one will, building discipline and right uniformity of conduct on the right thinking resulting from a proper ex-
ercise of the trained power of synderesis (here called honneur). (p.m) Webster's International Dictionary, unabridged
(sec.ed., 1936), s.v., syntheresis (or synderesis), defines this as "habitual knowledge of the pri¬mary principles of moral
action."


1.58: A PROPHETIC RIDDLE.


173. " . . . la machine ronde," a common term for the earth in R's day.

174. "Quand sur un filz de Titan fut jectee."

175. Inarime: Virgil's name and story (Aeneid 9.857) of the volcanic island of Ischia in the Tyrrhenian Sea not far from
Naples.

176. Curiously, in R's day tennis (our court tennis) was played with just a cord separating the sides instead of a net; so
a ball passing close to it (just over or under) might be called either way; one more reason why scorers were so widely
used, besides the main reason, the extreme complexity of the game and the scoring.

Notes