Of Truly Gargantuan Proportions: From the Abbey of Thélème to the Androgynous Self

HOWARD 1. NEEDLER Of Truly Gargantuan Proportions: From the Abbey of Theleme to the Androgynous Self 1 Enigma stands at both the beginning and the end of Rabelais's Gargantua. An immeasurably long bronze tomb is found: opened at a place sealed with the sign of a goblet, and inscribed in Etruscan letters, it is seen to contain nine flagons, centred beneath which is the book of Gargantua's genealogy. And at the end of this same volume are the Corrective Conundrums,' a set of riddling verses that constitute a puzzle at the very heart of an origin. Perhaps this collocation is itself a clue to the function of these verses, suggesting that their enigmatic opacity is the 'antidote' to the explanatory clarity of the narrative that they follow: they may serve to remind its readers that origins, however straightforwardly accounted for, remain essentially mysterious. For mystery is assuredly here, at the opening of Rabelais's book, and it is richiy layered. A gigantic tomb, surprisingly, does not appear to house a gigantic body - Gargantua's end is seemingly to remain even more mysterious than his beginnings; rather, it is the tomb of a buried book, which our author has contrived to transcribe only through the art of reading unapparent letters. A 'buried' alphabet and a buried book, buried letters and buried meanings, are presented to the reader and assert his dependence upon the author, archaeologist of this stratified verbal tumulus. Although the Corrective Conundrums follow the story in the source, the author places them first without comment, then launches his tale. The fmal chapters of this describe a grandiose structure that no reader of Rabelais can ignore, although there is a wide range of opinion as to how seriously it should be regarded: the vast, but carefully delimited and precisely dimensioned, Abbey ofTheleme.' But once the last word about the Abbey and its institutions has been set down, the author adds, in a final chapter and almost by the way: 'I must not forget to write down for you .. .' (p 160; OC, p 160) - another puzzling rhyme, the Prophetic Riddle. Again he has reversed the order of his sources, since the verses are said to have been discovered in the foundations excavated for the Abbey buildings; and again, he may be implying that all is not quite so utterly clear as it may seem. Ingenious spirits, both within the work and (in far greater numbers) outside it, have sought to gloss one or the other of these riddles. But their placement in the text opens a more general field of meaning. By setting the Corrective Conundrums immediately before his UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO QUARTERLY, VOLUME 51, NUMBER 3, SPRING 1982 oo42-o247/8210500-0221-o247S01.5010 to UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO PRESS 222 HOWARD I. NEEDLER account of Gargantua's birth, and the Prophetic Riddle immediately after the description of the Abbey that Gargantua founds, Rabelais suggests that these bounding events of Gargantua's life, like the riddles, may enfold secrets that the plain text does not relate, and so give rise to new and far-reaching possibilities of interpretation. Rabelais does not leave such matters solely to the reader's discretion, however. His Prologue seems to proclaim that interpretation will be a thematic concern of some importance for the reader of his book, and it canvasses extensively the question ofwhere interpretative effortcan most profitably be exerted, and where it is worthless (and, indeed, derisory). The discussion of the Silenus, or apothecary's spice box, and its human analogue, Socrates, seems intended to establish beyond a doubt the need for penetration of external appearances. None the less, it is immediately followed by a mocking repudiation of just such allegorizing interpretations as may seem to follow from a literaryapplication ofRabelais'sgeneral argument.> The relation of this polemic to what precedes itappears to depend upon an implicit distinction between two kinds of reader. Those who belong to one of these, exemplified by the list of a1legorizers of Homer, and epitomized by the egregiously foolish 'Friar Lubin: moralizer of Ovid, claim to find in whatever they read - whether Homer, Ovid, or even (presumably) Rabelais - something that is in fact the productor projection of their...