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Thelema, over the gate of which was written the words that are never far from the hearts of wise Utopian Christians, the profound words, the philosophical words, the most shrewd Cabalistic words, and the words that "lovers" alone can understand--"Fay que ce Vouldray!" Do as Thou Wilt!
Little they know of Rabelais who call him a lewd buffoon--the profanest of mountebanks. He was one of those rare spirits that redeem humanity. To open his book--though the steam of the grossness of it rises to Heaven--is to touch the divine fingers--the fingers that heal the world.
How that "style" of his, that great oceanic avalanche of learning and piety and obscenity and gigantic merriment, smells of the honest earth!
How, with all his huge scholarship, he loves to depend for his richest, most human effects, upon his own peasant-people of Touraine! The proverbs of the country-side, the wisdom of tavern-wit, the shrewdness and fantasy of old wives tales, the sly earthly humors of farmers and vine-tenders and goat-herds and goose-girls--these are things out of which he distils his vision, his oracles, his courage.
There is also--who could help observing it?--a certain large and patriarchal homeliness--a kind of royal domesticity--about much that he writes. Those touches, as when Gargantua, his little dog in advance, enters the dining hall, when they are discussing Panurge's marriage, and they all rise to do him honor; as when Gargantua bids Pantagruel farewell and gives him a benediction so wise and tender; remain in the mind like certain passages in the Bible. These are the things that aesthetic fools "with varnished faces" easily overlook and misunderstand; but good simple fellows--"honest cods" as Rabelais would say--are struck to the heart by them. How proud the man might be, who in the turmoil of this troublesome world and beneath the mystery of "le grand Peut-?tre" could answer to the ultimate question, "I am a Christian of the faith of Rabelais!"
Such a one, under the spell of such a master, might indeed be able to comfort the sick and sorry, and to whisper in their ears that cosmic secret--"Bon Espoir y gist au fond!" "Good Hope lies at the Bottom!" "Good Hope" for all; for the best and the worst--for the whole miserable welter of this chaotic farce!
Therefore, "with angels and archangels" let us bow our heads and hold our tongues. Those who fancy Rabelais to be lacking in the kind of religious feeling that great souls respect, let them read that passage in the voyage of Pantagruel that speaks of the Death of Pan. Various accounts are given; various explanations made; of the great cry, that the sailors, "coming from Paloda," heard over land and sea. At the last Pantagruel himself speaks; and he tells them that to him it refers to nothing less than the death of Him whom the Scribes and Pharisees and Priests of Jerusalem slew. "And well is He called Pan, which in the Greek means 'All'; for in Him is all we are or have or hope." And having said this he fell into silence, and "tears large as ostrich-eggs rolled down his cheeks."
To all who read Rabelais and love him, one can offer no better wish than that the mystic wine of his Holy Bottle may fulfil their heart's desire. Happy, indeed, those who are not "unwillingly drawn" by the "Fate" we all must follow! "Go now, my friends," says the strange Priestess, "and may that Circle whose Centre is everywhere and its Circumference nowhere, keep you in His Almighty protection!"
DANTE
The history of Dante's personal and literary appeal would be an extremely interesting one. No great writer has managed to excite more opposite emotions.
One thing may be especially noted as significant: Women have always been more attracted to him than men. He is in a peculiar sense the Woman's great poet. There is a type of masculine genius which has always opposed him. Goethe cared little for him; Voltaire laughed at him; Nietzsche called him "an hyaena poetizing among the tombs."
The truth is, women love Dante for the precise reason that these men hate him. He makes sex the centre of everything. One need not be deceived by the fact that Dante worships "purity," while Voltaire, Goethe and Nietzsche are little concerned with it. This very laudation of continence is itself an emphasis upon sex. These others would play with amorous propensities; trifle with them in their life, in their art, in their philosophy; and then, that dangerous plaything laid aside would, as Machiavel puts it, "assume suitable attire, and return to the company of their equals--the great sages of antiquity."
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