As the title of the essay suggests,he makes a 'modest'attempt to define literature in a very concise manner that might serve as an entry in a short encyclopedia.
He writes:' Literature: A form of expression and communication by means of language , generally dealing with three set subjects in various contexts and combinations: 1)Sorrow or suffering.2)Protest or complaint.3) Consolations or semi-consolation or less,including submission.'
I think it is a very comprehensive definition of literature that includes almost everything.Homer and Oedipus.Dante and Don quixote. Kafka and Raskolnikov.
But when it comes to Rabelais and his 'Gargantua and Pantagruel', it refuses to fit into that definition.
Rabelais , a Renaissance man from France wrote everything that a writer can aspire to write.
His 'Gargantua and Pantagruel' contains within it--Don Quixote,Alice in wonderland,Pinchio,Gulliver's Travel and everything that Salman Rushdie and his ilk write.
It is a wonderful comic chronicle in which carnivalesque elements seamlessly blend with reality,Renaissance learning with obscene humour and takes you into a different world from which you can look at your own afresh.
It is a tale of comic chivalry that satirizes lawyers,uncouth professors, theologians, idiotic monarchs and anybody who comes in the way.
Milan Kundera is full of praise for him. In a conversation with Guy Screpetta(Encounter essays)he says:'Gargantua -Pantagruel is a novel from before novel existed.'In other words this is the first novel ever written in any language. But was Rabelais conscious that he was about to start a new genre? When he was writing 'Gargantua and Pantagruel', he was not aware that he was writing what we now call 'novel'.
Kundera further says:'...Rabelais' work contains enormous aesthetic possibilities , some of which have been realized in the novel's later evolutions and others never have been'(Encounter essays,Faber & faber,page 62).
Once Rushdie was asked what he liked most in French literature and his reply was Rabelais(and Flaubert).Because Rabelais was the pioneer ,the founding father ,the genius of the non-serious in the art of novel(Encounter Essays, page 67).
Now I cannot resist the temptation of quoting a few (humorous) lines from 'Gargantua and Pantagruel(Penguin classic,translated by M.A.Screech):
'This year there will be an eclipse of the moon on the fourth day of August.Saturn will be retrograde,venus,direct....As a result ,crabs this year will walk sideways,rope makers work backwards...'
'...when the Sun enters Cancer and other signs of the Zodiac they should watch out for the pox,cankers,hot-pisses,pimples on the groin, and so on.Nuns will find it very difficult to concieve without the ministration of a male , and hardly any virgin will lactate'.
A remarkable book.
It is not for nothing that Hazlitt says:"The name of Rabelais is a cordial for the spirits".
