Customer Reviews

Gargantua and Pantagruel: The Histories of Gargantua and Pantagruel (Penguin Classics)

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This is not about the work of Rabelais itself, which does not need promotion, but about Cohen's translation, which a reviewer below has maligned. Because 22 of 27 people so far have found his/her review "helpful" I feel obliged to put in a word, though not on account of any agenda. Opinions on translation are nearly as personal as opinions on more recognizable arts, yet some objections are also clearly mistaken.

The reviewer below complains that paragraphs have been invented. S/he uses this as a representative example of the numerous 'mistakes'. Yes, paragraphs have been invented but if you look at other modern translations - here on Amazon, where you can use the Look Inside feature - you will notice the paragraphs in Frame's and Raffel's versions break off at the same point as Cohen's, for whatever common purpose they have in mind (I assume readability). Urquhart's translation (incomplete, 17th century, finished by Motteux) is regarded as a classic, but it is not the "best", the most accurate or the most readable. The reviewer also insists Cohen's translation is not literal enough, as if this were a major fault. Literalness is not the most important, much less the only principle by which to judge a translation, it is one among many. Many readers who pick up the Urquhart today would probably be put off by Rabelais. (I am put off by the Raffel, though it is recent, so contemporaneity is not an overriding concern either.) Also remember Rabelais was writing in the early 16th century, and the language has changed significantly, so even the average French reader today engages in a certain degree of "translation" - comparing every word and syntactical deviation between the French and English texts is misleading. Literary translation is an inherently faulty art, and the translator has priorities that differ from the author's (you can't always be faithful to the author when the reader needs more attention); s/he is bound to make compromises. Not that comparison is impossible, nor that there is no such thing as a poor translation, but Cohen was one of the best in his trade and this translation, which I too have compared with the original text, is not particularly "worse" or "better" than Frame et al. Each of them lapses where another succeeds, each of them make choices that may be more or less accurate, reader-friendly, or grammatically consistent. To pick the first paragraph as an example again, Rabelais alludes to a popular saying of "Flacce" in the original - Frame translates the name as Flaccus, Cohen as Horace. The latter choice may seem egregious at first, but consider: Flaccus was a popular name in Rome and may stand for nearly any one of the several Roman personalities with Flaccus as a last name, whereas it would be quite clear to Latin readers, which most or all literate people of Rabelais' period and society were, that Rabelais is talking about Horace, whose full name was Quintus Horatius Flaccus. Frame remains literal, but Cohen opts to remove a possible early stumble for the contemporary reader. Yet, on the next page, Cohen does not translate the inscription HIC BIBITUR, but Frame does: "Here you drink".

If you want to choose a suitable translation, in this case, you have to decide which one appeals to you most by browsing several first; the scholarly-minded will have to learn the language anyway if they want to carry out a textual analysis. There are also previous versions by LeClerq and Putnam (one of the highly recommended translators of Cervantes). And of course, once you read Rabelais, the irony of discussing academic questions about his work won't evade you; though if it does, then you probably did pick a bad translation ...

If you thought the vulgar humor in such films as PORKY'S and AMERICAN PIE was a modern phenomena, you're in for a shock: both are fairly mild in comparison with the works of Rabelais, which plumb the depths of human crassness in full Renaissance style. Writing before European authors had codified the novel as a form, Rabelais presents a series of very episodic tales about the adventures of the giant Gargantua, his son Pantagruel, and Pantagruel's trickster friend Panurge--and the three vomit, belch, fart, and engage in a number of equally distasteful bodily functions across page after page in some of the funniest writings found in the whole of Western literature.

But unlike contemporary bad-taste comedy, Rabelais is hardly willing to let his reader go with just a laugh. There is sharp intelligence behind his naughty laughter--and he directs his considerable wit at everything from education to fashionable society in page after page of unspeakably hilarious incident. (My own favorite passage concerns the trick Panurge plays upon the fashionable, church-going lady who spurns his attentions; it never fails to throw me into near-hysterical laughter.) Vividly written and extremely memorable, GARGANTUA AND PANTAGRUEL is the sort of stuff they don't teach in highschool... and more's the pity: it would probably convert more students to the classics than all the Romantics combined. Truly serious scholars should, of course, compare various translations, but the Cohen translation will do the trick for the more casual reader. Strongly recommended.

Some years ago I read a quote by Rabelais -- something about whether a chimera bombinating in a vacuum could devour second intentions -- and I sensed that his humor might appeal to me. "Gargantua and Pantagruel," his literary landmark and the source of that quote, is a virtual encyclopedia of Renaissance satire that contrives a heroic epic as a backdrop for a comprehensive commentary of medieval and classical history and mythology.

The story, which concerns the adventures of the giant Gargantua, his son Pantagruel, and Pantagruel's friend Panurge, is completely silly; just scan the chapter titles in the table of contents for an indication. Silly, but not stupid: Rabelais is a serious scholar who has written a book that is not intended to be taken seriously. An epicure with an insatiable appetite for learning and a fascination with bodily functions, he believes that wine, scatology, and the pursuit of knowledge are inseparable. The book is all codpieces, urination, defecation, and flatulence at the service of satirizing the pedantry in the medical, legal, ecclesiastical, and academic professions as they existed in the sixteenth century. It should be noted that Rabelais's satire is generally playful and cheerful rather than bitter and mean-spirited, so the book's tone is always light even if its content is very erudite.

The plot, such as it is, is episodic rather than unified. Gargantua defends his country, Utopia, from invasion by King Picrochole of Lerne, in a war started by an argument between Utopian shepherds and Lernean cake-bakers; Pantagruel and Panurge then defend Utopia from invasion by Anarch, King of the Dipsodes; Panurge conducts inquiries among a variety of experts on whether or not he should get married, which leads to several discussions about cuckoldry, impotence, and cuckoldry as a consequence of impotence; and Pantagruel and Panurge, along with their monkish friend Friar John and several cohorts, embark on a sea voyage to consult the oracle of the Temple of the Bottle, visiting many strange islands and encountering many bizarre creatures along the way. As mentioned, it is of course all nonsense, but it is a definite precursor to the more farcical works of Jonathan Swift, Voltaire, Lewis Carroll, and James Joyce, and for that reason it has significant value as a ribald curiosity.

I am not commenting on Rabelais, whom I would give 5 stars, but rather on his translator J.M. Cohen. Cohen's translation of Gargantua departs so far from Rabelais' syntax and vocabulary that it is outright scandalous. If Rabelais uses the phrase "et à non autres", you can count on Cohen rendering it "and to everyone" instead of the correct "and to no others". If Rabelais wanted to say "and to everyone" nothing prohibited him from doing so: French is no different from English in at least this respect. There is always someone in translating classes who asks the teacher, say, "Can't one render the phrase 'es ist nicht unmoglich' 'it is possible?'" as opposed to the correct "It is not possible." The answer, of course, is "OF COURSE NOT! THIS IS NOT YOUR TEXT; IT IS THE AUTHOR'S: YOU'RE _HIS_ TRANSLATOR!!!" But Cohen's rendering above is only one example; there are much graver mistakes at higher structural levels: one need look not beyond the first paragraph, for example: it turns out that Cohen's paragraph breaks off after the third or fourth sentence, while in fact the original text begins with a paragraph that extends for, if I remember, more than one page. Apparently Cohen thinks that he can invent paragraphs for Rabelais whenever he feels it will make things more clear or easier to read. If such intentions don't bother you, then fine, buy this text; but if translators who refuse to say things as the author said things bother you, then order instead the very good (i.e., literal) Urquart translation.

Gargantua and Pantagruel is a vast, comfortable book, bristling with crudity, humor, invention, and an erudition reminiscent of Robert Burton or Isaac Disraeli. It is one of those books which, before reading, I knew to be earthy, I suspected to be boring, and which, by virtue of my low expectations, was almost sure to win me over. The plot (a description of the life and times of Gargantua, and his son Pantagruel) exists only as a springboard for the author's verbal games, and the espousement of his philosophy, which is essentially: eat, drink, and be merry. It might be added that Rabelais never appears disingenuous in this -- in fact, there are chapters where one suspects he was drunk at the time of composition. Fortunately for the reader he is a happy drunk, and like many others of that sort, hospitably invites the reader to approach his work in the same state.

In addition to being written by an author of great learning, earthiness, and personal charm, Gargantua and Pantagruel is remarkably eccentric. Reading it, I sometimes felt as if I were watching a Peter Greenaway movie that went on for days. There is chapter describing Gargantua's clothes, a chapter that is an inventory of the various games he played at school, chapters consisting of rhyming epithets for certain characters, chapters listing different kinds of food, etc. One is a list of unusual deaths suffered by real historical figures. Another discusses the death of the giant Slit-Nose, whose diet consisted of windmills. The haggling scene from Life of Brian is prefigured here, and for the entirety of Book Three, Pantagruel and his friend Panurge debate whether or not the latter should marry, much to the delight of the reader. In short, it feels more avant-garde than almost anything published today, which may only be another way of saying that it is a classic.

Rabelais is much heralded for his skewering of the rich and powerful. Frankly he does not measure up to Thomas More, Machiavelli, Erasmus or Castiglione or their writings. Some may find his works clever or cute, they may certainly rattle pre-conceptions of the stiffness of the era. As for me, it lacked wit and was mostly just crude, which some find to be groundbreaking but in fact crudeness has existed through out the ages.