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Mikhail Bakhtin
Francois Rabelais' creativity and folk culture of the Middle Ages and Renaissance

© Bakhtin M.M., heirs, 2015

© Design. LLC "Publishing house" Eksmo ", 2015

* * *

Introduction
Formulation of the problem

Of all the great writers of world literature, Rabelais is the least popular, least studied, least understood and appreciated in our country.

Meanwhile, Rabelais belongs to one of the very first places among the great creators of European literature. Belinsky called Rabelais a genius, "Voltaire of the XVI century", and his novel - one of the best novels of the past. Western literary critics and writers usually place Rabelais - for his artistic and ideological strength and for his historical significance - immediately after Shakespeare or even next to him. French romantics, especially Chateaubriand and Hugo, attributed him to a small number of the greatest "geniuses of mankind" of all times and peoples. He was considered and is considered not only a great writer in the ordinary sense, but also a sage and a prophet. Here is a very revealing judgment of the historian Michelet about Rabelais:

“Rabelais collected wisdom in folk elements of old provincial dialects, sayings, proverbs, school farces, from the lips of fools and jesters. But refracting through this buffoonery, reveals in all its greatness the genius of the century and its prophetic power. Wherever he does not find yet, he foresees he promises, he directs. In this forest of dreams, under each leaf lies the fruits that will be collected future. This whole book is "Golden bough"1
Michlielet J., Histoire de France, v. X, p. 355. " Golden bough"- the prophetic golden branch, presented by Sibylla to Aeneas.

(here and in subsequent quotes, italics are mine. - M. B.).

All such judgments and assessments are, of course, relative. We are not going to solve here the questions of whether it is possible to put Rabelais next to Shakespeare, whether he is higher than Cervantes or lower, etc. But Rabelais's historical place among these creators of new European literatures, that is, in the series: Dante, Boccaccio, Shakespeare , Cervantes, - in any case, there is no doubt about it. Rabelais substantially determined the fate of not only French literature and the French literary language, but also the fate of world literature (probably no less than Cervantes). There is also no doubt that he - most democratic among these pioneers of new literatures. But the most important thing for us is that he is more closely and more essential than others. with folk sources, moreover - specific (Michelet lists them quite correctly, although far from complete); these sources determined the entire system of his images and his artistic worldview.

It is precisely this special and, so to speak, radical nationality of all Rabelais' images that explains the exceptional saturation of their future, which Michelet quite correctly emphasized in our judgment. It also explains Rabelais's special "non-literary" character, that is, the discrepancy between his images and all the canons and norms of literaryism that have dominated from the end of the 16th century to our time, no matter how their content changes. Rabelais did not correspond to them to an incomparably greater degree than Shakespeare or Cervantes, who did not correspond only to the relatively narrow classicist canons. Rabelais' images are inherent in some special principled and indestructible "informality": no dogmatism, no authoritarianism, no one-sided seriousness can coexist with Rabelaisian images hostile to any completeness and stability, any limited seriousness, any readiness and determination in the field of thought and worldview.

Hence, Rabelais' special loneliness in subsequent centuries: you cannot approach him along any of those large and beaten paths along which they walked artistic creation and the ideological thought of bourgeois Europe during the four centuries separating it from us. And if during these centuries we meet many enthusiastic connoisseurs of Rabelais, then we do not find any complete and expressed understanding of him anywhere. The romantics who discovered Rabelais, as they discovered Shakespeare and Cervantes, did not manage to reveal him, however, they did not go beyond enthusiastic amazement. Rabelais repelled and repelled very many. The vast majority simply do not understand him. In fact, the images of Rabelais still remain a mystery to this day.

This riddle can only be solved through deep study. folk sources Rabelais... If Rabelais seems so lonely and unlike anyone else among the representatives of the "big literature" of the last four centuries of history, then against the background of correctly disclosed folk art, on the contrary, these four centuries of literary development may seem to be something specific and like nothing similar and the images of Rabelais will find themselves at home in millennia of development of folk culture.

Rabelais is the most difficult of all the classics of world literature, since for his understanding he requires a significant restructuring of the entire artistic and ideological perception, requires the ability to abandon many deeply rooted requirements of literary taste, revision of many concepts, most importantly, he requires deep penetration into the little and superficial explored areas of folk laughing creativity.

Rabelais is difficult. But on the other hand, his work, correctly disclosed, sheds a reverse light on the millennia of development of the folk culture of laughter, of which he is the greatest exponent in the field of literature. Rabelais's illuminating significance is enormous; his novel should become the key to the little-studied and almost completely misunderstood grandiose treasures of folk art of laughter. But first of all it is necessary to master this key.

The purpose of this introduction is to pose the problem of the folk culture of laughter in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, to determine its scope and to give a preliminary description of its originality.

Folk laughter and its forms are, as we have already said, the least studied area of ​​folk art. The narrow concept of nationality and folklore, formed in the era of pre-romanticism and completed mainly by Herder and the romantics, almost did not at all fit into its framework the specific folk culture and folk laughter in all the richness of its manifestations. And in the subsequent development of folklore and literary studies, the people laughing in the square did not become the subject of any close and deep cultural-historical, folkloristic and literary study. In the vast scientific literature devoted to the rite, myth, lyric and epic folk art, only the most modest place is given to the laughing moment. But at the same time, the main trouble is that the specific nature of folk laughter is perceived completely distorted, since ideas and concepts of laughter that are completely alien to it, which have developed in the conditions of bourgeois culture and aesthetics of modern times, are applied to it. Therefore, it can be said without exaggeration that the deep originality of the folk laughter culture of the past is still not revealed at all.

Meanwhile, both the volume and significance of this culture in the Middle Ages and in the Renaissance were enormous. A whole boundless world of laughter forms and manifestations opposed the official and serious (in its tone) culture of the ecclesiastical and feudal Middle Ages. With all the variety of these forms and manifestations - areal festivals of the carnival type, individual laughing rites and cults, jesters and fools, giants, dwarfs and freaks, buffoons of various kinds and ranks, huge and varied parody literature and much more - all of them, these forms, have a single style and are parts and particles of a single and integral folk-laughter, carnival culture.

All the diverse manifestations and expressions of folk laughter culture can be subdivided into three main types of forms by their nature:

1. Ritual and spectacular forms(festivities of the carnival type, various public laughing events, etc.);

2. Verbal laughter(including parody) works of various kinds: oral and written, in Latin and in folk languages;

3. Various forms and genres of familiar-areal speech(swear words, God, oath, folk blazons, etc.).

All these three types of forms, reflecting - for all their heterogeneity - a single laughing aspect of the world, are closely interconnected and are diversely intertwined with each other.

Let's give a preliminary description of each of these types of laughter forms.

* * *

Carnival-type festivals and associated laughing acts or rituals occupied a huge place in the life of a medieval person. In addition to carnivals in the proper sense with their many-day and complex square and street actions and processions, special “festivals of fools” (“festa stultorum”) and “donkey festival” were held, there was a special free “Easter laughter” (“risus paschalis”), consecrated by the tradition. ). Moreover, almost every church holiday had its own, also consecrated by tradition, folk-square laughing side. Such are, for example, the so-called "temple holidays", usually accompanied by fairs with their rich and varied system of areal amusements (with the participation of giants, dwarfs, freaks, "learned" animals). The carnival atmosphere prevailed in the days of the performances of the Mysteries and Sotis. It also reigned at such agricultural festivals as the grape harvest (vendange), which was also held in cities. Laughter usually accompanied both civil and domestic ceremonies and rituals: jesters and fools were their constant participants and parodically duplicated various moments of a serious ceremony (glorification of winners in tournaments, ceremonies for the transfer of fiefs, knights, etc.). And household feasts were not complete without elements of a laughter organization, for example, the election of queens and kings for the time of the feast “for laughter” (“roi pour rire”).

All the ritual and spectacular forms that we have named, organized at the beginning of laughter and consecrated by tradition, were common in all countries of medieval Europe, but they were distinguished by their special wealth and complexity in the Romanesque countries, including France. In what follows, we will give a more complete and detailed analysis ritual and spectacular forms in the course of our analysis figurative system Rabelais.

All these ceremonial-spectacular forms, as organized at the beginning laughter, extremely sharply, one might say fundamentally, differed from serious official - ecclesiastical and feudal-state - cult forms and ceremonies. They gave a completely different, emphatically unofficial, extra-church and extra-state aspect of the world, man and human relations; they seemed to be building on the other side of everything official second world and second life, in which all medieval people were more or less involved, in which they at certain times lived... This is a special kind two-worldness, without taking into account which neither the cultural consciousness of the Middle Ages, nor the culture of the Renaissance can be correctly understood. Ignoring or underestimating the laughing folk Middle Ages distorts the picture and the entire subsequent historical development of European culture.

The double aspect of the perception of the world and human life existed already at the earliest stages of the development of culture. In the folklore of primitive peoples, along with serious (in terms of organization and tone) cults, there were also laughter cults that ridiculed and humiliated the deity ("ritual laughter"), along with serious myths - laughter and abusive myths, next to the heroes - their parody doubles. Recently, these laughing rites and myths have begun to attract the attention of folklorists. 2
See very interesting analyzes of laughter doubles and considerations on this issue in the book "The Origin of the Heroic Epic" by EM Meletinsky (Moscow, 1963; in particular, on pp. 55–58); the book also contains bibliographic indications.

But in the early stages, in the conditions of the pre-class and pre-state social system, the serious and laughable aspects of the deity, the world and man were, apparently, equally sacred, equally, so to speak, “official”. This persists sometimes in relation to individual rites and in later periods. So, for example, in Rome and at the state stage, the triumph ceremony almost on equal terms included glorification and ridicule of the winner, and the funeral rite - and mourning (glorifying) and ridicule of the deceased. But under the conditions of the existing class and state system, complete equality of the two aspects becomes impossible, and all forms of laughter - some earlier, others later - move to the position of the unofficial aspect, undergo a certain rethinking, complication, deepening and become the main forms of expression of the people's world outlook, folk culture. Such are the carnival type of festivities of the ancient world, especially the Roman Saturnalia, such are the medieval carnivals. They, of course, are already very far from the ritual laughter of the primitive community.

What are the specific features of the laughter ritual and spectacular forms of the Middle Ages and, first of all, what is their nature, that is, what is the kind of their being?

These, of course, are not religious rites like, for example, the Christian liturgy, with which they are linked by a distant genetic relationship. The laughter principle organizing carnival rituals absolutely frees them from all religious and church dogmatism, from mysticism and from reverence, they are completely devoid of both a magical and prayerful character (they do not force anything and do not ask for anything). Moreover, some carnival forms are directly a parody of a church cult. All carnival forms are consistently outside of the church and outside of the religion. They belong to a completely different sphere of being.

By its visual, concrete-sensual character and by the presence of a strong gaming element, they are close to artistic and figurative forms, namely to theatrical and spectacular. Indeed, theatrical and spectacular forms of the Middle Ages in a significant part gravitated towards the folk-square carnival culture and, to a certain extent, were part of it. But the main carnival core of this culture is not at all purely artistic a theatrical and spectacular form and is generally not included in the field of art. It is located on the borders of art and life itself. In essence, this is life itself, but framed in a special playful way.

Indeed, the carnival knows no division into performers and spectators. He does not know the ramp, even in its rudimentary form. The ramp would destroy the carnival (and vice versa: destroying the ramp would destroy the theatrical show). Carnival is not contemplated - in it live, and live all because, in theory, he nationwide... While the carnival is taking place, there is no other life for anyone but the carnival. There is nowhere to go from it, because the carnival knows no spatial boundaries. During the carnival, one can live only according to its laws, that is, according to the laws of the carnival freedom... The carnival has a universal character, it is a special state of the whole world, its rebirth and renewal, in which everyone is involved. Such is the carnival in its idea, in its essence, which was vividly felt by all its participants. This idea of ​​carnival was most clearly manifested and realized in the Roman Saturnalia, which was thought of as a real and complete (but temporary) return to the earth of the Saturnian golden age. The traditions of the Saturnalia were not interrupted and were alive in the medieval carnival, which, more fully and purely than other medieval festivals, embodied this idea of ​​universal renewal. Other medieval festivals of the carnival type were limited in one way or another and embodied the idea of ​​carnival in a less complete and pure form; but even in them it was present and vividly felt as a temporary exit outside the usual (official) order of life.

So, in this respect, the carnival was not an artistic theatrical and spectacular form, but a kind of real (but temporary) form of life itself, which was not just played out, but which they lived almost in fact (for the duration of the carnival). It can be expressed this way: in the carnival, life itself plays, acting out - without a stage, without a stage, without actors, without spectators, that is, without any artistic and theatrical specifics - another free (free) form of its realization, its rebirth and renewal on best beginnings. The real form of life is here at the same time its revived ideal form.

The laughter culture of the Middle Ages is characterized by such figures as jesters and fools. They were, as it were, permanent, bearers of the carnival principle, fixed in ordinary (i.e., non-carnival) life. Such jesters and fools, such as, for example, Triboulet under Francis I (he also appears in Rabelais' novel), were not at all actors playing the roles of a jester and a fool on the stage (as later comic actors who played the roles of Harlequin, Hanswurst, etc. .). They remained fools and fools always and everywhere, wherever they appeared in life. Like jesters and fools, they are carriers of a special life form, real and ideal at the same time. They are on the borders of life and art (as if in a special intermediate sphere): they are not just eccentrics or stupid people (in the everyday sense), but they are not comic actors either.

So, in the carnival, life itself plays, and the game for a while becomes life itself. This is the specific nature of the carnival, the special kind of its being.

Carnival is the second life of the people, organized at the beginning of laughter. it his holiday life... Festivity is an essential feature of all laughter ritual and spectacular forms of the Middle Ages.

All these forms were also externally associated with church holidays. And even the carnival, which was not timed to coincide with any event of sacred history or any saint, adjoined the last days before Lent (that's why in France it was called “Mardi gras” or “Caremprenant”, in German countries “Fastnacht”). Even more significant is the genetic connection of these forms with the ancient pagan festivals of the agrarian type, which included an element of laughter in their ritual.

Celebration (any) is very important primary form human culture. It cannot be deduced and explained from the practical conditions and goals of social labor, or, in an even more vulgar form of explanation, from the biological (physiological) need for periodic rest. The festival has always had a substantial and deep semantic, world-contemplative content. No "exercise" in organizing and improving the social labor process, no "game of work" and no rest or respite from work by themselves can never become festive... For them to become festive, they must be joined by something from another sphere of being, from the sphere of spiritual and ideological. They must get sanction out of the world funds and necessary conditions, and from the world higher goals human existence, that is, from the world of ideals. Without this there is no and cannot be any festivity.

Celebration always has a significant bearing on time. It is always based on a definite and concrete concept of natural (cosmic), biological and historical time. At the same time, the festivities at all stages of their historical development were associated with crisis, turning points in the life of nature, society and man. Moments of death and rebirth, change and renewal have always been leading in the festive attitude. It was these moments - in the specific forms of certain holidays - that created the specific festivity of the holiday.

In the conditions of the class and feudal-state system of the Middle Ages, this festivity of the holiday, that is, its connection with the higher goals of human existence, with rebirth and renewal, could be realized in all its undistorted completeness and purity only in the carnival and in the folk-market side of other holidays. Here festivity became a form of the second life of the people, temporarily entering the utopian kingdom of universality, freedom, equality and abundance.

Official holidays of the Middle Ages - both church and feudal-state - did not take anywhere from the existing world order and did not create any second life. On the contrary, they sanctified, sanctioned the existing system and consolidated it. The connection with time became formal, changes and crises were relegated to the past. The official holiday, in essence, looked only back into the past, and with this past it sanctified the existing system in the present. The official holiday, sometimes even contrary to its own idea, asserted the stability, immutability and eternity of the entire existing world order: the existing hierarchy, existing religious, political and moral values, norms, and prohibitions. The holiday was a triumph of a ready-made, victorious, ruling truth, which appeared as an eternal, unchanging and indisputable truth. Therefore, the tone of the official holiday could only be monolithic serious, the laughing principle was alien to his nature. That is why the official holiday changed genuine the nature of human festivity, distorted it. But this genuine festivity was ineradicable, and therefore it was necessary to endure and even partially legalize it outside the official side of the holiday, to concede the people's square to it.

In contrast to the official holiday, the carnival triumphed, as it were, a temporary liberation from the prevailing truth and the existing system, the temporary abolition of all hierarchical relations, privileges, norms and prohibitions. It was a true celebration of time, a celebration of formation, change and renewal. He was hostile to all perpetuation, completion and end. He looked into an unfinished future.

Of particular importance was the abolition of all hierarchical relations during the carnival. On official holidays, hierarchical differences were clearly demonstrated: they were supposed to appear in all regalia of their rank, rank, merit and take a place corresponding to their rank. The holiday sanctified inequality. In contrast, at the carnival, everyone was considered equal. Here, on the carnival square, a special form of free familiar contact prevailed between people who were divided in ordinary, that is, non-carnival life by insurmountable barriers of class, property, official, family and age status. Against the background of the exceptional hierarchy of the feudal-medieval system and the extreme class and corporate disunity of people in the conditions of ordinary life, this free familiar contact between all people was felt very sharply and constituted an essential part of the general carnival outlook. A person was, as it were, reborn for new, purely human relations. The alienation temporarily disappeared. Man returned to himself and felt himself a man among people. And this genuine humanity of relations was not only an object of imagination or abstract thought, but was actually realized and experienced in living material-sensory contact. The ideal-utopian and the real temporarily merged in this one-of-a-kind carnival perception of the world.

This temporary ideal-real abolition of hierarchical relations between people created a special type of communication on the carnival square, impossible in ordinary life. Here, special forms of areal speech and gesture are developed, frank and free, not recognizing any distance between communicators, free from the usual (non-carnival) norms of etiquette and decency. A special carnival-areal style of speech has developed, examples of which we will find in abundance in Rabelais.

In the process of the centuries-old development of the medieval carnival, prepared by millennia of development of more ancient laughter rites (including - at the antique stage - Saturnalia), a kind of special language of carnival forms and symbols was developed, a language that is very rich and capable of expressing a single but complex carnival outlook of the people. This perception of the world, hostile to everything ready and completed, all claims to inviolability and eternity, required dynamic and changeable ("proteic"), playful and unsteady forms for its expression. All the forms and symbols of the carnival language are imbued with the pathos of changes and renewals, the consciousness of the cheerful relativity of the ruling truths and powers. It is very characteristic of a kind of logic of "reverse" (à l'envers), "on the contrary", "inside out", the logic of incessant movements of the top and bottom ("wheel"), face and rear, various types of parodies and travesty, reductions, profanation , clownish crowns and debunks. The second life, the second world of folk culture, is constructed to a certain extent as a parody of ordinary, that is, extra-carnival life, as "the world inside out." But it must be emphasized that carnival parody is very far from the purely negative and formal parody of modern times: in denial, carnival parody simultaneously revives and renews. In general, naked denial is completely alien to popular culture.

Here, in the introduction, we have only skimmed over the exceptionally rich and distinctive language of carnival forms and symbols. To understand this half-forgotten and in many ways already dark language for us is the main task of all our work. After all, it was this language that Rabelais used. Without knowing him, one cannot truly understand the Rabelaisian system of images. But the same carnival language was used in different ways and to varying degrees by Erasmus, and Shakespeare, and Cervantes, and Lope de Vega, and Tirso de Molina, and Guevara, and Quevedo; it was used by the German "literature of fools" ("Narrenliteratur"), and Hans Sachs, and Fishart, and Grimmelshausen, and others. Without knowledge of this language, a comprehensive and complete understanding of the literature of the Renaissance and the Baroque is impossible. And not only fiction, but also the Renaissance utopias and the Renaissance worldview itself were deeply imbued with the carnival attitude and were often clothed in its forms and symbols.

A few preliminary words about the complex nature of carnival laughter. This is primarily holiday laugh... This, therefore, is not an individual reaction to this or that single (separate) "funny" phenomenon. Carnival laughter, first, nationwide(the nation, as we have already said, belongs to the very nature of the carnival), laugh all, this is laughter "to the world"; secondly, he versatile, it is aimed at everything and everyone (including the participants in the carnival themselves), the whole world seems funny, perceived and comprehended in its laughter aspect, in its cheerful relativity; third, finally, this laugh ambivalent: he is cheerful, jubilant and - at the same time - mocking, ridiculing, he denies and affirms, and buries and revives. This is carnival laughter.

Let us note an important feature of folk-festive laughter: this laughter is also directed at the laughing ones themselves. The people do not exclude themselves from the emerging whole world. He, too, is incomplete, too, dying, is born and renewed. This is one of the essential differences between folk-festive laughter from the purely satirical laughter of the new era. A pure satirist who knows only denying laughter puts himself outside the laughed-out phenomenon, opposes himself to it - this destroys the integrity of the laughter aspect of the world, the funny (negative) becomes a private phenomenon. Ambivalent laughter of the people expresses the point of view of the becoming whole world, which includes the laughing one himself.

Let us emphasize here the especially world-contemplative and utopian nature of this festive laughter and its focus on the higher. In it - in a significantly rethought form - there was still vivid ritual ridicule of the deity of the most ancient laughter rites. Everything that is cultic and limited has disappeared here, but the all-human, universal and utopian have remained.

The greatest bearer and culminator of this folk-carnival laughter in world literature was Rabelais. His work will allow us to penetrate into the complex and deep nature of this laughter.

The correct formulation of the problem of popular laughter is very important. In the literature about him, there is still a rough modernization of him: in the spirit of laughter literature of the new time, he is interpreted either as a purely denying satirical laughter (Rabelais is declared to be a pure satirist), or as a purely entertaining, thoughtlessly cheerful laughter, devoid of any world-contemplative depth. and strength. His ambivalence is usually not perceived at all.

* * *

We turn to the second form of the laughter folk culture of the Middle Ages - to verbal laughter works (in Latin and in folk languages).

Of course, this is no longer folklore (although some of these works in folk languages ​​can be attributed to folklore). But all this literature was imbued with a carnival outlook, widely used the language of carnival forms and images, developed under the cover of legalized carnival liberties and - in most cases - was organizationally connected with carnival-type festivals, and sometimes directly constituted, as it were, a literary part of them. 3
The situation was similar in ancient Rome, where the liberties of the Saturnalia, with which it was organizationally connected, extended to the laughter literature.

And the laughter in her is an ambivalent holiday laughter. It was all festive, recreational literature of the Middle Ages.

Carnival-type festivals, as we have already said, occupied a very large place in the life of medieval people even in time: the big cities of the Middle Ages lived a carnival life for up to three months a year in total. The influence of the carnival perception of the world on the vision and thinking of people was irresistible: it forced them, as it were, to abandon their official position (monk, cleric, scientist) and perceive the world in its carnival-laughter aspect. Not only schoolchildren and petty clergymen, but also high-ranking churchmen and learned theologians allowed themselves merry recreation, that is, rest from reverent seriousness, and "monastic jokes" ("Joca monacorum"), as one of the most popular works of the Middle Ages was called. In their cells, they created parody or semi-parody learned treatises and other humorous works in Latin.

The laughter literature of the Middle Ages developed for a whole millennium and even more, since its beginnings date back to Christian antiquity. Over such a long period of its existence, this literature, of course, has undergone quite significant changes (the literature in Latin has changed least of all). Diverse genre forms and stylistic variations were developed. But for all the historical and genre differences, this literature remains - to a greater or lesser extent - an expression of the people's carnival outlook and uses the language of carnival forms and symbols.

Semi-parody and purely parody literature in Latin was very widespread. The number of manuscripts of this literature that have come down to us is enormous. All official church ideology and rituals are shown here in a laughable aspect. Laughter penetrates here into the highest spheres of religious thought and worship.

One of the oldest and most popular works of this literature - "The Supper of Cyprian" ("Coena Cypriani") - provides a kind of carnival-feast travesty of the entire Holy Scripture (both the Bible and the Gospel). This work was sanctified by the tradition of free "Easter laughter" ("risus paschalis"); by the way, the distant echoes of the Roman Saturnalia are also heard in it. Another of the most ancient works of laughter literature - "Virgil Maro grammatical" ("Vergilius Maro grammaticus") - a semi-parody scholarly treatise on Latin grammar and at the same time a parody of school wisdom and scientific methods of the early Middle Ages. Both of these works, created almost at the very turn of the Middle Ages with the ancient world, open up the ludicrous Latin literature of the Middle Ages and have a decisive influence on its traditions. The popularity of these works survived almost to the Renaissance.

M.M. Bakhtin
THE WORKS OF FRANCOIS RABLE AND THE FOLK CULTURE OF THE MEDIEVAL AND RENAISSANCE
INTRODUCTION
FORMULATION OF THE PROBLEM

new European literatures, that is, in the series: Dante, Boccaccio, Shakespeare,

Cervantes, - in any case, is not subject to any doubt. Rabelais essentially

determined the fate of not only French literature and French literary

language, but also the fate of world literature (probably no less than

Cervantes). There is also no doubt that he is the most democratic among these

pioneers of new literatures. But the most important thing for us is that it is closer and

more significantly than others associated with folk sources, moreover, with specific

(Michelet lists them quite correctly, although far from complete); these sources

determined the entire system of his images and his artistic worldview.

It is this special and, so to speak, radical nationality of all images of Rabelais and

explains the exceptional saturation of their future, which is completely

Michelet correctly emphasized in the above judgment. She also explains

Rabelais's special “non-literary”, that is, the inconsistency of his images with all

the canons and norms that prevailed from the end of the 16th century to our time

literary, no matter how their content changes. Rabelais did not match them in

incomparably more than Shakespeare or Cervantes, who did not answer only

relatively narrow classicist canons. Rabelais' images have some special

principled and indestructible "informality": no dogmatism, no

Rabelaisian images hostile to all completeness and stability, all

limited seriousness, any readiness and determination in the field of thought and

worldview.

Hence - Rabelais' special loneliness in subsequent centuries: it is impossible to approach him

along one of those great and beaten paths along which the artistic

creativity and ideological thought of bourgeois Europe for four centuries,

separating him from us. And if during these centuries we meet many

enthusiastic connoisseurs of Rabelais, then any complete and expressed understanding

we do not find it anywhere. The romantics who discovered Rabelais, how they discovered Shakespeare and

Cervantes, they did not manage to reveal it, and they did not

went. Rabelais repelled and repelled very many. The vast majority of him

just doesn't understand. In fact, the images of Rabelais to this day are largely

remain a mystery.

This riddle can only be solved through a deep study of folk sources.

Rabelais. If Rabelais seems so lonely and unlike anyone else among

representatives of "big literature" of the last four centuries of history, then against the background

correctly disclosed folk art, on the contrary, - rather, these four centuries

literary development may seem like something specific and no matter what

similar, and the images of Rabelais will be at home in the millennia of development of the

culture.

Rabelais is the most difficult of all the classics of world literature, since he requires

his understanding of the significant restructuring of the entire artistic and ideological

perception, requires the ability to detach from many deeply rooted requirements

literary taste, revision of many concepts, the main thing is that it requires

dedicated to the rite, myth, lyric and epic folk art,

the laughing moment is given only the most modest place. But at the same time, the main trouble is

in the fact that the specific nature of folk laughter is perceived completely

distorted, since completely alien ideas are attached to it and

concepts of laughter, which have developed in the conditions of bourgeois culture and aesthetics of the new

time. Therefore, it can be said without exaggeration that the deep originality

folk laughter culture of the past is still not revealed at all.

Meanwhile, both the volume and significance of this culture in the Middle Ages and in the Renaissance

were huge. A whole boundless world of laughter forms and manifestations resisted

official and serious (in tone) culture of the ecclesiastical and feudal

the middle ages. With all the variety of these forms and manifestations - areal

carnival-type festivities, individual laughing rites and cults, jesters and

fools, giants, dwarfs and freaks, buffoons of all kinds and ranks, a huge and

diverse parody literature and much more - all of them, these forms,

have a single style and are parts and particles of a single and integral

folk-laughter, carnival culture.

All the diverse manifestations and expressions of folk laughter culture can be

character to subdivide into three main types of forms:

1. Ritual and spectacular forms (carnival-type festivals, various areal

laughter actions, etc.);

2. Verbal laughter (including parody) works of various kinds: oral

and written, in Latin and in folk languages;

3. Various forms and genres of familiar-areal speech (curses, God,

oath, folk blazons, etc.).

All these three types of forms, reflecting - for all their heterogeneity - a single laughter

aspect of the world, are closely interconnected and diversely intertwined with each other.

Let's give a preliminary description of each of these types of laughter forms.

Carnival-type festivities and associated laughing acts or rituals

occupied a huge place in the life of medieval man. In addition to carnivals in

in a proper sense with their multi-day and complex square and street actions

and processions, celebrated the special "holidays of fools" ("festa stultorum") and

"Donkey holiday", there was a special, consecrated by tradition, free "Easter

laughter ”(“ risus paschalis ”). Moreover, almost every church holiday had

its own, also consecrated by tradition, folk-arena laughing side. Such are

for example, so-called “temple festivals,” usually accompanied by fairs with

their rich and varied system of areal amusements (with the participation of giants,

dwarfs, freaks, "learned" animals). The carnival atmosphere prevailed in the days

productions of mysteries and soti. She also reigned in such agricultural

festivals, like the grape harvest (vendange), which also took place in the cities. Laughter

usually accompanied both civil and domestic ceremonies and rituals: jesters and fools

were their constant participants and parodically duplicated various moments

serious ceremony (glorification of the winners in tournaments, handover ceremonies

rights, knights, etc.). And household revels were not complete without

elements of a laughter organization, for example, the election of queens for the feast and

kings “for laughter” (“roi pour rire”).

All named by us, organized at the beginning of laughter and consecrated by tradition

ritual and spectacular forms were common in all countries of the medieval

Europe, but they were distinguished by their special wealth and complexity in the Romanesque countries,

including in France. In the future, we will give a more complete and detailed analysis

ritual and spectacular forms in the course of our analysis of Rabelais' figurative system.

All these ceremonial and spectacular forms, as if organized at the beginning of laughter,

extremely sharply, one might say fundamentally, differed from serious

official - ecclesiastical and feudal-state - cult forms and

ceremonies. They gave a completely different, emphatically unofficial,

the extra-church and extra-state aspect of the world, man and human

relationships; they seemed to be building on the other side of the official second world and

a second life, which all medieval people were to a greater or lesser extent

involved, in which they lived at certain times. This is a special kind

two-worldness, without which neither the cultural consciousness of the Middle Ages, nor culture

Renaissance cannot be understood correctly. Ignoring or underestimating

laughing folk Middle Ages distorts the picture and all subsequent

the historical development of European culture.

The double aspect of the perception of the world and human life already existed at the very

early stages of cultural development. In the folklore of primitive peoples next to

serious (in organization and tone) cults, there were also laughter cults,

ridiculed and disgraced the deity ("ritual laughter"), next to serious

myths - ridiculous and abusive myths, next to the heroes - their parody

double-doubles. Lately, these laughing rites and myths are starting

attract the attention of folklorists.

But in the early stages, in the conditions of pre-class and pre-state social

the constructive, serious and laughable aspects of deity, the world and man were, apparently,

equally sacred, equally, so to speak, "official." It persists

sometimes in relation to individual rites and in later periods. So, for example, in

Rome and at the state stage, the ceremony of triumph is almost on an equal footing

included both the glorification and ridicule of the winner, and the funeral rite - and

mourning (glorifying) and ridicule of the deceased. But in the conditions of the prevailing

class and state system, complete equality of the two aspects becomes

impossible and all forms of laughter - some earlier, others later - go to

the position of the informal aspect, are subject to a certain rethinking,

complication, deepening and become the main forms of expression of folk

attitude, folk culture. Such are the carnival type of festivities of the antique

of the world, especially the Roman Saturnalia, such are the medieval carnivals. They,

of course, they are already very far from the ritual laughter of the primitive community.

What are the specific features of laughter ritual and spectacular forms

the Middle Ages and - above all - what is their nature, that is, what is the kind of their being?

These, of course, are not religious rites like, for example, the Christian liturgy, with

which they are related by distant genetic relationship. Organizing carnival

rituals, the laughing principle absolutely frees them from all religious and ecclesiastical

dogmatism, from mysticism and from reverence, they are completely devoid of both magical and

of a prayer nature (they do not force anything and do not ask for anything). Moreover,

some carnival forms are directly a parody of church cult. Everything

carnival forms are consistently outside of the church and outside of the religion. They belong

to a completely different sphere of being.

By its visual, concrete-sensual character and by the presence of a strong

game element, they are close to artistic-figurative forms, namely to

theatrical and entertaining. And indeed - theatrical and spectacular forms of the Middle Ages

in a significant part gravitated towards the folk-market carnival culture and

to a certain extent were part of it. But the main carnival core of this

culture is not at all a purely artistic theatrical and spectacular form and

does not belong to the realm of art at all. It is on the borders of art and

life itself. In essence, this is life itself, but framed by a special play

way.

Indeed, the carnival knows no division into performers and spectators. He is not

knows the ramps even in their rudimentary form. The ramp would destroy the carnival (like

conversely: destroying the ramp would destroy the theatrical spectacle). Carnival is not

they contemplate - they live in it, and everyone lives in it, because in its idea it is nationwide.

While the carnival is taking place, there is no other life for anyone but the carnival. From

he has nowhere to go, for the carnival knows no spatial boundaries. During

carnival can only live according to its laws, that is, according to the laws of the carnival

freedom. Carnival has a universal character, it is a special state of the whole world,

its revival and renewal, in which everyone is involved. Such is the carnival in its own way

idea, in essence, which was vividly felt by all its participants. This idea

carnival was most clearly manifested and realized in the Roman Saturnalia,

which were thought of as a real and complete (but temporary) return to earth

Saturn's golden age. The traditions of the Saturnalia were not interrupted and were alive in

medieval carnival, which is fuller and cleaner than other medieval festivities

embodied this idea of ​​universal renewal. Other medieval festivities

carnival type were limited in one way or another and embodied in

imagine the idea of ​​a carnival in a less complete and pure form; but in them she was present

and was vividly felt as a temporary exit outside the usual (official) order

So, in this respect, the carnival was not an artistic theatrical and spectacular

form, but a kind of real (but temporary) form of life itself, which is not just

played, and which they lived almost in fact (for the duration of the carnival). It's possible

express it this way: in the carnival, life itself plays, acting out - without stage

platforms, without a ramp, without actors, without spectators, that is, without any

artistic and theatrical specifics - another free (free) form of its

implementation, rebirth and renewal on a better basis. Real form

life is here at the same time its revived ideal form.

The laughter culture of the Middle Ages is characterized by such figures as jesters and fools.

They were, as it were, permanent, fixed in the usual (i.e. non-carnival)

life, bearers of the carnival beginning. Fools and fools like

Triboulet under Francis I (he also appears in Rabelais' novel), were not at all

actors who played the role of a jester and a fool on the stage (as later

comic actors who performed on stage the roles of Harlequin, Hanswurst, etc.). They

remained fools and fools always and everywhere, wherever they appeared in life.

Like jesters and fools, they are carriers of a special life form, real and

perfect at the same time. They are on the borders of life and art (as if in

special intermediate sphere): these are not just eccentrics or stupid people (in everyday

sense), but these are not comic actors either.

So, in the carnival, life itself plays, and the game for a while becomes life itself. V

this is the specific nature of the carnival, the special kind of its being.

Carnival is the second life of the people, organized at the beginning of laughter. It is his

festive life. Festiveness is an essential feature of all laughing

ritual and spectacular forms of the Middle Ages.

All these forms were also externally associated with church holidays. And even a carnival

not timed to any event of sacred history and to any saint,

adjoined the last days before Lent (therefore in France it was called

“Mardi gras” or “Carêmprenant”, in German countries “Fastnacht”). Even more

the genetic connection of these forms with ancient pagan festivals is essential

agrarian type, including in their ritual a laughing element.

Celebration (whatever) is a very important primary form of human culture.

It cannot be deduced and explained from the practical conditions and goals of social

labor or - an even more vulgar form of explanation - from biological

(physiological) need for periodic rest. The festival has always had

essential and deep semantic, world-contemplative content. No

"Exercise" in organizing and improving the social and labor process,

no "game of work" and no rest or respite from work by themselves never

may not become festive. In order for them to become festive, they must

to join something from another sphere of being, from the sphere of spiritual and ideological. They

must receive sanction not from the world of means and necessary conditions, but from the world

the highest goals of human existence, that is, from the world of ideals. Without this, no

and there can be no conviviality.

Celebration always has a significant bearing on time. It is always based on

lies a certain and specific concept of natural (cosmic),

biological and historical time. At the same time, the festivities at all stages

their historical development were associated with crisis, turning points in

life of nature, society and man. Moments of death and rebirth, change and

updates have always been leading in the festive attitude. It is these moments -

in specific forms of certain holidays - and created a specific

festiveness of the holiday.

In the conditions of the class and feudal state system of the Middle Ages, this

festivity of the holiday, that is, its connection with the higher goals of human

existence, with rebirth and renewal, could be carried out in all its

undistorted completeness and purity only in the carnival and in the folk-market side

other holidays. Holiday here became a form of the second life of the people,

temporarily entering the utopian kingdom of universality, freedom, equality and

abundance.

Official holidays of the Middle Ages - both ecclesiastical and feudal-state -

did not take anywhere from the existing world order and did not create any second

life. On the contrary, they sanctified, sanctioned the existing system and consolidated

his. The connection with time became formal, changes and crises were relegated to the past.

The official holiday, in fact, looked only back into the past and this past

consecrated the existing system in the present. An official holiday, sometimes even

contrary to his own idea, he asserted the stability, immutability and eternity of everything

the existing world order: the existing hierarchy, existing religious,

political and moral values, norms, prohibitions. The holiday was already a celebration

ready, victorious, ruling truth, which acted as eternal,

unchanging and indisputable truth. Therefore, the tone of the official holiday could be

only monolithically serious, the laughing principle was alien to his nature. Exactly

therefore, the official holiday betrayed the true nature of human

conviviality, distorted it. But this genuine conviviality was indestructible, and

therefore I had to endure and even partially legalize it outside the official

parties of the holiday, give her the people's square.

In contrast to the official holiday, the carnival triumphed, as it were

temporary release from the prevailing truth and the existing order, temporary

abolition of all hierarchical relations, privileges, norms and prohibitions. It was

a true holiday of time, a holiday of formation, change and renewal. He was

hostile to all perpetuation, completion and end. He stared into the unfinished

future.

Of particular importance was the abolition of all hierarchical

relationships. On public holidays, hierarchical differences are emphasized.

demonstrated: they were supposed to appear in all regalia of their rank,

rank, merit and occupy a place corresponding to their rank. The holiday sanctified

inequality. In contrast, at the carnival, everyone was considered equal. Here

- on the carnival square - a special form of free familiar

contact between people separated in ordinary, that is, extra-carnival, life

insurmountable barriers of class, property, service, family and

age position. Against the backdrop of exceptional hierarchy

feudal-medieval system and extreme class and corporate disunity

people in ordinary life, this free familiar contact between all

people felt very acutely and constituted an essential part of the general carnival

attitude. A person seemed to be reborn for new, purely human

relationships. The alienation temporarily disappeared. The man returned to himself and

Catalog: library
library -> "On the use of individual physical activity and the main valeological factors for the prevention and correction of diseases of the urinary system"

This is how our problem is posed. But the direct subject of our research is not folk laughter culture, but the work of François Rabelais. Folk laughter culture, in essence, is immense and, as we have seen, is extremely heterogeneous in its manifestations. In relation to it, our task is purely theoretical - to reveal the unity and meaning of this culture, its general ideological - world outlook - and aesthetic essence. This problem can be best solved there, that is, on such concrete material, where the folk culture of laughter is collected, concentrated and artistically conscious at its highest Renaissance stage - precisely in the work of Rabelais. Rabelais is indispensable for penetrating into the deepest essence of folk laughter culture. In his creative world, the inner unity of all the diverse elements of this culture is revealed with exceptional clarity. But his work is a whole encyclopedia of folk culture.

But, using Rabelais' creativity to reveal the essence of the folk culture of laughter, we do not at all turn it into only a means to achieve an objective outside of his. On the contrary, we are deeply convinced that only in this way, that is, only in the light of popular culture, can the true Rabelais be revealed, Rabelais can be shown in Rabelais. Until now, it has only been modernized: it has been read through the eyes of modern times (mainly through the eyes of the 19th century, the least vigilant to popular culture) and read from Rabelais only what for himself and his contemporaries - and objectively - was the least significant. Rabelais' exceptional charm (and everyone can feel this charm) still remains unexplained. For this, first of all, it is necessary to understand the special language of Rabelais, that is, the language of the folk culture of laughter.

This concludes our introduction. But to all his main themes and statements, expressed here in a somewhat abstract and sometimes declarative form, we will return in the work itself and give them full concretization both on the material of Rabelais's work and on the material of other phenomena of the Middle Ages and antiquity that served for him. direct or indirect sources.

Chapter one. SLAVE IN A STORY OF LAUGHTER

Write a story of laughter

it would be extremely interesting.

A.I. Herzen

The four-century history of Rabelais's understanding, influence and interpretation is very instructive: it is closely intertwined with the history of laughter itself, its functions and its understanding during the same period.

Rabelais's contemporaries (and almost the entire 16th century), who lived in the circle of the same folk, literary and general ideological traditions, in the same conditions and events of the era, somehow understood our author and were able to appreciate him. The high appraisal of Rabelais is evidenced by both the reviews of his contemporaries and immediate descendants that have come down to us, and the frequent reprints of his books in the 16th and first third of the 17th centuries. At the same time, Rabelais was highly valued not only in humanist circles, at court and at the top of the urban bourgeoisie, but also among the broad popular masses. Here is an interesting review by Rabelais's younger contemporary, the remarkable historian (and writer) Etienne Paquier. In one letter to Ronsard, he writes: “There is no one among us who does not know to what extent the learned Rabelais, fooling around wisely (en folastrant sagement) in his“ Gargantua ”and“ Pantagruel ”, acquired love among the people (gaigna de grace parmy le peuple) ".

The fact that Rabelais was understandable and close to his contemporaries is most clearly evidenced by the numerous and deep traces of his influence and a number of imitations of him. Almost all the prose writers of the 16th century who wrote after Rabelais (more precisely, after the publication of the first two books of his novel) - Bonaventure Deperrier, Noel du Fayle, Guillaume Boucher, Jacques Taureau, Nicolas de Scolière, and others - were, to a greater or lesser extent, Rabelaisians. Historians of the era - Paquier, Brantom, Pierre d'Etoile - and Protestant polemicists and pamphleteers - Pierre Vire, Henri Etienne and others did not escape his influence. The literature of the 16th century was even completed under the sign of Rabelais: "Menippian satire on the merits of the Spanish Catholicon ..." (1594), directed against the League, one of the best political satire in world literature, and in the field of fiction - a wonderful work "A Way to Succeed in Life" by Beroald de Verville (1612). These two works , ending the century, are marked with the stamp of Rabelais' significant influence; the images in them, despite their heterogeneity, live an almost Rabelaisian grotesque life.

In addition to the great writers of the 16th century named by us, who managed to translate Rabelais' influence and preserve their independence, we find numerous small imitators of Rabelais who did not leave an independent trace in the literature of the era.

It should also be emphasized that success and recognition came to Rabelais immediately - during the first months after the publication of Pantagruel.

What is evidenced by this rapid recognition, the enthusiastic (but not amazed) reviews of contemporaries, the tremendous influence on the great problematic literature of the era - on the learned humanists, historians, political and religious pamphleteers - finally, the huge mass of imitators?

Contemporaries perceived Rabelais against the background of a living and still powerful tradition. They could be struck by the strength and luck of Rabelais, but not by the very nature of his images and his style. Contemporaries were able to see the unity of the Rabelaisian world, were able to feel the deep kinship and essential interconnection of all the elements of this world, which already in the 17th century would seem sharply heterogeneous, and in the 18th century completely incompatible - high problematicity, drinking philosophical ideas, swear words and obscenities, low verbal comedians , scholarship and farce. Contemporaries grasped the common logic that penetrated all these phenomena so alien to us. Contemporaries vividly felt the connection between Rabelais's images and folk-spectacular forms, the specific festivity of these images, their deep penetration into the carnival atmosphere. In other words, contemporaries grasped and understood the integrity and consistency of the entire Rabelaisian artistic and ideological world, the uniqueness and consonance of all its elements as imbued with a single point of view on the world, a single great style. This is the essential difference between the perception of Rabelais in the 16th century and the perception of subsequent centuries. Contemporaries understood as phenomena of a single large style what people of the 17th and 18th centuries began to perceive as a strange individual idiosyncrasy of Rabelais or as some kind of cipher, a cryptogram containing a system of allusions to certain events and to certain persons of the Rabelais era.

But this understanding of his contemporaries was naive and spontaneous. What became a question for the 17th and subsequent centuries was taken for granted for them. Therefore, the understanding of contemporaries cannot give us an answer to our questions about Rabelais, since these questions did not yet exist for them.

At the same time, already among the first imitators of Rabelais, we observe the beginning of the process of decomposition of the Rabelaisian style. For example, in Deperrier, and especially in Noel du File, Rabelaisian images become shallow and soften, they begin to acquire the character of a genre and everyday life. Their universalism is sharply weakened. The other side of this process of rebirth begins to show itself where the images of the Rabelaisian type begin to serve the purposes of satire. In this case, there is a weakening of the positive pole of ambivalent images. Where the grotesque becomes the service of an abstract tendency, its nature is inevitably perverted. After all, the essence of the grotesque lies precisely in expressing the contradictory and two-faced fullness of life, which includes denial and destruction (death of the old) as a necessary moment, inseparable from affirmation, from the birth of a new and better. At the same time, the most material-bodily substrate of the grotesque image (food, wine, productive force, organs of the body) is deeply positive. The material-bodily principle triumphs, because in the end there is always an excess, an increase. An abstract tendency inevitably distorts this nature of the grotesque image. It shifts the center of gravity to the abstract-semantic, "moral" content of the image. Moreover, the tendency subordinates the material substrate of the image to a negative moment: exaggeration becomes a caricature. We find the beginning of this process already in the early Protestant satire, then in the Menippean satire, which we mentioned. But here this process is only at the very beginning. Grotesque images, put at the service of an abstract tendency, are still too strong here: they preserve their nature and continue to develop their inherent logic regardless of the author's tendencies and often in spite of them.

A very characteristic document of this process is the free translation of Gargantua into German by Fishart under the grotesque title Affenteurliche und Ungeheurliche Geschichtklitterung (1575).

Fishart is a Protestant and moralist; his literary work was associated with "grobianism". According to its sources, German Grobianism is a phenomenon akin to Rabelais: the images of material-bodily life were inherited by the Grobians from grotesque realism, they were also under the direct influence of folk-festive carnival forms. Hence the sharp hyperbolism of material-bodily images, especially images of food and drink. Both in grotesque realism and in folk-festive forms of exaggeration were positive; such are, for example, those grandiose sausages that dozens of people carried during the Nuremberg carnivals of the 16th and 17th centuries. But the morally political tendency of the Grobianists (Dedekind, Scheidt, Fishart) gives these images a negative meaning of something inappropriate. In the preface to his Grobianus, Dedekind refers to the Lacedaemonians who showed their children drunken slaves in order to turn them away from drunkenness; The images of Saint Grobianus and the Grobians created by him should also serve the same purpose of intimidation. The positive nature of the image is therefore subordinated to the negative goal of satirical ridicule and moral condemnation. This satire is given from the point of view of a burgher and a Protestant, and it is directed against the feudal nobility (Junkers), mired in idleness, gluttony, drunkenness and debauchery. It was this grobianistic point of view (under the influence of Scheidt) that partially formed the basis of Fishart's free translation of Gargantua.

Chapter one. SLAVE IN A STORY OF LAUGHTER

Write a story of laughter
it would be extremely interesting.
A.I. Herzen

The four-century history of Rabelais's understanding, influence and interpretation is very instructive: it is closely intertwined with the history of laughter itself, its functions and its understanding during the same period.
Rabelais's contemporaries (and almost the entire 16th century), who lived in the circle of the same folk, literary and general ideological traditions, in the same conditions and events of the era, somehow understood our author and were able to appreciate him. The high appraisal of Rabelais is evidenced by both the reviews of his contemporaries and immediate descendants that have come down to us, and the frequent reprints of his books in the 16th and first third of the 17th centuries. At the same time, Rabelais was highly valued not only in humanist circles, at court and at the top of the urban bourgeoisie, but also among the broad popular masses. Here is an interesting review by Rabelais's younger contemporary, the remarkable historian (and writer) Etienne Paquier. In one letter to Ronsard, he writes: “There is no one among us who does not know to what extent the learned Rabelais, fooling around wisely (en folastrant sagement) in his“ Gargantua ”and“ Pantagruel ”, acquired love among the people (gaigna de grace parmy le peuple) ".
The fact that Rabelais was understandable and close to his contemporaries is most clearly evidenced by the numerous and deep traces of his influence and a number of imitations of him. Almost all the prose writers of the 16th century who wrote after Rabelais (more precisely, after the publication of the first two books of his novel) - Bonaventure Deperrier, Noel du Fayle, Guillaume Boucher, Jacques Taureau, Nicolas de Scolière, and others - were, to a greater or lesser extent, Rabelaisians. Historians of the era - Paquier, Brantom, Pierre d'Etoile - and Protestant polemicists and pamphleteers - Pierre Vire, Henri Etienne and others did not escape his influence. The literature of the 16th century was even completed under the sign of Rabelais: "Menippian satire on the merits of the Spanish Catholicon ..." (1594), directed against the League, one of the best political satire in world literature, and in the field of fiction - a wonderful work "A Way to Succeed in Life" by Beroald de Verville (1612). These two works , ending the century, are marked with the stamp of Rabelais' significant influence; the images in them, despite their heterogeneity, live an almost Rabelaisian grotesque life.
In addition to the great writers of the 16th century named by us, who managed to translate Rabelais' influence and preserve their independence, we find numerous small imitators of Rabelais who did not leave an independent trace in the literature of the era.
It should also be emphasized that success and recognition came to Rabelais immediately - during the first months after the publication of Pantagruel.
What is evidenced by this rapid recognition, the enthusiastic (but not amazed) reviews of contemporaries, the tremendous influence on the great problematic literature of the era - on the learned humanists, historians, political and religious pamphleteers - finally, the huge mass of imitators?
Contemporaries perceived Rabelais against the background of a living and still powerful tradition. They could be struck by the strength and luck of Rabelais, but not by the very nature of his images and his style. Contemporaries were able to see the unity of the Rabelaisian world, were able to feel the deep kinship and essential interconnection of all the elements of this world, which already in the 17th century would seem sharply heterogeneous, and in the 18th century completely incompatible - high problematicity, drinking philosophical ideas, swear words and obscenities, low verbal comedians , scholarship and farce. Contemporaries grasped the common logic that penetrated all these phenomena so alien to us. Contemporaries vividly felt the connection between Rabelais's images and folk-spectacular forms, the specific festivity of these images, their deep penetration into the carnival atmosphere. In other words, contemporaries grasped and understood the integrity and consistency of the entire Rabelaisian artistic and ideological world, the uniqueness and consonance of all its elements as imbued with a single point of view on the world, a single great style. This is the essential difference between the perception of Rabelais in the 16th century and the perception of subsequent centuries. Contemporaries understood as phenomena of a single large style what people of the 17th and 18th centuries began to perceive as a strange individual idiosyncrasy of Rabelais or as some kind of cipher, a cryptogram containing a system of allusions to certain events and to certain persons of the Rabelais era.
But this understanding of his contemporaries was naive and spontaneous. What became a question for the 17th and subsequent centuries was taken for granted for them. Therefore, the understanding of contemporaries cannot give us an answer to our questions about Rabelais, since these questions did not yet exist for them.
At the same time, already among the first imitators of Rabelais, we observe the beginning of the process of decomposition of the Rabelaisian style. For example, in Deperrier, and especially in Noel du File, Rabelaisian images become shallow and soften, they begin to acquire the character of a genre and everyday life. Their universalism is sharply weakened. The other side of this process of rebirth begins to show itself where the images of the Rabelaisian type begin to serve the purposes of satire. In this case, there is a weakening of the positive pole of ambivalent images. Where the grotesque becomes the service of an abstract tendency, its nature is inevitably perverted. After all, the essence of the grotesque lies precisely in expressing the contradictory and two-faced fullness of life, which includes denial and destruction (death of the old) as a necessary moment, inseparable from affirmation, from the birth of a new and better. At the same time, the most material-bodily substrate of the grotesque image (food, wine, productive force, organs of the body) is deeply positive. The material-bodily principle triumphs, because in the end there is always an excess, an increase. An abstract tendency inevitably distorts this nature of the grotesque image. It shifts the center of gravity to the abstract-semantic, "moral" content of the image. Moreover, the tendency subordinates the material substrate of the image to a negative moment: exaggeration becomes a caricature. The beginning of this process we we find it already in the early Protestant satire, then in the Menippean satire, which we mentioned. But here this process is only at the very beginning. Grotesque images, put at the service of an abstract tendency, are still too strong here: they preserve their nature and continue to develop their inherent logic regardless of the author's tendencies and often in spite of them.
A very characteristic document of this process is the free translation of Gargantua into German by Fishart under the grotesque title Affenteurliche und Ungeheurliche Geschichtklitterung (1575).
Fishart is a Protestant and moralist; his literary work was associated with "grobianism". According to its sources, German Grobianism is a phenomenon akin to Rabelais: the images of material-bodily life were inherited by the Grobians from grotesque realism, they were also under the direct influence of folk-festive carnival forms. Hence the sharp hyperbolism of material-bodily images, especially images of food and drink. Both in grotesque realism and in folk-festive forms of exaggeration were positive; such are, for example, those grandiose sausages that dozens of people carried during the Nuremberg carnivals of the 16th and 17th centuries. But the morally political tendency of the Grobianists (Dedekind, Scheidt, Fishart) gives these images a negative meaning of something inappropriate. In the preface to his Grobianus, Dedekind refers to the Lacedaemonians who showed their children drunken slaves in order to turn them away from drunkenness; The images of Saint Grobianus and the Grobians created by him should also serve the same purpose of intimidation. The positive nature of the image is therefore subordinated to the negative goal of satirical ridicule and moral condemnation. This satire is given from the point of view of a burgher and a Protestant, and it is directed against the feudal nobility (Junkers), mired in idleness, gluttony, drunkenness and debauchery. It was this grobianistic point of view (under the influence of Scheidt) that partially formed the basis of Fishart's free translation of Gargantua.
But, despite this rather primitive tendency of Fishart, the Rabelaisian images in his free translation continue to live their original life, alien to this tendency. In comparison with Rabelais, the hyperbolism of material-bodily images (especially images of food and drink) is even intensified. The inner logic of all these exaggerations, as in Rabelais, is the logic of growth, fertility, overflowing with excess. All images here reveal the same absorbing and giving birth below. Also, the special festive character of the material-bodily principle is preserved. An abstract tendency does not penetrate deep into the image and does not become its real organizing principle. Likewise, laughter does not completely turn into naked mockery: it still bears a rather holistic character, it refers to the entire life process, to both of its poles, triumphant tones of birth and renewal still sound in it. Thus, in Fishart's translation, the abstract tendency has not yet become the complete master of all images. But nevertheless, she has already entered the work and, to a certain extent, turned his images into some kind of entertaining appendage to abstract moral preaching. This process of rethinking laughter could be completed only later, moreover, in close connection with the establishment of the hierarchy of genres and the place of laughter in this hierarchy.
Already Ronsard and the Pleiades were convinced of the existence hierarchy of genres... This idea, basically borrowed from antiquity, but reworked on French soil, could take root, of course, far from immediately. The Pleiad was still very liberal and democratic in these matters. Its members treated Rabelais with great respect and knew how to appreciate him, especially Du Bellay and Baif. However, this high assessment of our author (and the powerful influence of his language on the language of the Pleiades) ran counter to his place in the hierarchy of genres, the lowest place, almost beyond the threshold of literature. But this hierarchy was still only an abstract and not quite clear idea. Certain social, political and general ideological changes and shifts had to take place, the circle of readers and evaluators of the great official literature had to be differentiated and narrowed, so that the hierarchy of genres would become an expression of their real correlation within this great literature, so that it would become a real regulating and determining force.
This process ended, as you know, in the 17th century, but it begins to make itself felt by the end of the 16th century. Then the idea of ​​Rabelais as just an entertaining, only cheerful writer begins to take shape. Such, as you know, was the fate of Don Quixote, which for a long time was perceived as an entertaining literature for easy reading. This also happened with Rabelais, who, from the end of the 16th century, began to descend lower and lower to the very threshold of great literature, until he found himself almost completely beyond this threshold.
Already Montaigne, who was forty years younger than Rabelais, writes in Experiments: “Among the books simply amusing (simplement plaisants) I count from the new books The Decameron, Boccaccio, Rabelais and The Kisses of John Secundus (Jehan Second), if they should be attributed to this category, worthy to be entertained with them (dignes qu'en s'y amuse) "(" Essais ", book II, ch. 10; this place refers to the time of writing to 1580).
However, this “simply entertaining” Montaigne lies at the very border of the old and the new understanding and appreciation of “entertaining” (plaisant), “merry” (joyeux), “leisure” (récréatif) and other similar epithets to works that are so often included in XVI and XVII centuries in the very titles of these works. The concept of entertaining and cheerful for Montaigne has not yet completely narrowed down and has not yet acquired a shade of something low and insignificant. Montaigne himself in another place in his "Experiments" (Book 1, Ch. XXXVIII) says:
For myself, I only love books, either entertaining (plaisants) and light (faciles), which amuse me, or those that comfort me and advise me how to arrange my life and my death (à regler ma vie et ma mort). "
From the above words, it is clear that of all fiction in the proper sense, Montaigne prefers precisely entertaining and light books, since by other books, books of consolation and advice, he understands, of course, not fiction, but philosophical, theological, and above all books such as the "Experiments" themselves (Marcus Aurelius, Seneca, "Moralia" Plutarch, etc.). Fiction for him is still mostly entertaining, funny, recreational literature. In this respect, he is still a man of the 16th century. But it is characteristic that the questions of the order of life and death have already been decisively removed from the sphere of conducting merry laughter. Rabelais, alongside Boccaccio and John Secundus, "deserves to be entertained", but he is not one of the comforters and advisers in the "order of life and death." However, it was precisely such a comforter and advisor that Rabelais was for his contemporaries. They still knew how to pose the question of the organization of life and death in a cheerful plan, a plan of laughter.
In the history of laughter, the era of Rabelais, Cervantes and Shakespeare is a significant turning point. Nowhere are the lines separating the 17th and subsequent centuries from the Renaissance so sharp, principled and distinct than in the area of ​​attitudes towards laughter.
The attitude to the laughter of the Renaissance can be tentatively and roughly characterized as follows: laughter has a deep world-contemplative meaning, it is one of the most essential forms of truth about the world as a whole, about history, about man; it is a special universal point of view of the world, which sees the world in a different way, but no less (if not more) essential than seriousness; therefore, laughter is just as permissible in the large literature (moreover, posing universal problems), as is seriousness; some very essential aspects of the world are accessible only to laughter.
The attitude to laughter in the 17th and subsequent centuries can be characterized as follows: laughter cannot be a universal, world-contemplative form; it can only relate to some particular and private-typical phenomena of social life, phenomena of a negative order; essential and important cannot be funny; can not be funny story and people acting as its representatives (kings, generals, heroes); the area of ​​the funny is narrow and specific (private and public vices); the essential truth about the world and man cannot be said in the language of laughter, only a serious tone is appropriate here; therefore, in literature, the place of laughter is only in low genres, depicting the life of private people and the lower social class; laughter is either a light amusement, or a kind of socially useful punishment for people who are vicious and low. This, of course, in a somewhat simplified way, can be used to characterize the attitude towards laughter in the 17th and 18th centuries.
The Renaissance expressed its special attitude to laughter primarily by the very practice of its literary creativity and its literary evaluations. But there was no shortage of theoretical judgments justifying laughter as a universal world-contemplative form. This Renaissance theory of laughter was based almost exclusively on ancient sources. Rabelais himself developed it in the old and new prologue to the fourth book of his novel, based mainly on Hippocrates. The role of Hippocrates as a kind of theorist of laughter in that era was very significant. At the same time, they relied not only on his comments in medical treatises about the importance of a cheerful and cheerful mood of a doctor and patients for fighting diseases, but also on the so-called "Hippocratic novel". This is the correspondence of Hippocrates (apocryphal, of course) attached to the "Hippocrates Collection" about the "madness" of Democritus, which was expressed in his laughter. In the "Hippocratic Novel", Democritus' laughter has a philosophical world-contemplative character and has as its subject human life and all the empty human fears and hopes associated with the gods and the afterlife. Democritus substantiates laughter here as an integral worldview, as a kind of spiritual setting of a matured and awakened person, and Hippocrates in the end agrees with him.
The doctrine of the healing power of laughter and the philosophy of laughter "The Hippocratic Novel" enjoyed special recognition and dissemination at the medical faculty in Montpellier, where he studied and then taught Rabelais. A member of this faculty, the famous physician Laurens Joubert, published in 1560 a special treatise on laughter under the characteristic title: “Traité du ris, contenant son essence, ses causes et ses mervelheus effeis, curieusement recherchés, raisonnés et observés par M. Laur. Joubert ... "(" A treatise on laughter, containing its essence, its causes and its miraculous actions, carefully researched, substantiated and observed by Laurent Joubert ... "). In 1579 another of his treatises was published in Paris: “La cause morale de Ris, de l'excellent et très renommé Democrite, expliquée et témoignée par ce divin Hippocras en ses Epitres” (“The moral reason for the laughter of an outstanding and very famous Democritus, explained and attested by the divine Hippocrates in his epistles ”), which is, in essence, the French version of the last part of the“ Hippocratic novel ”.
These works on the philosophy of laughter came out after Rabelais's death, but they are only a late echo of those reflections and discussions about laughter that took place in Montpellier while Rabelais was there and which determined the Rabelaisian doctrine of the healing power of laughter and the "cheerful doctor ".
The second, after Hippocrates, the source of the philosophy of laughter in the era of Rabelais was the famous formula of Aristotle: "Of all living things, only man is inherent in laughter." This formula enjoyed tremendous popularity in the era of Rabelais, and an extended meaning was attached to it: laughter was considered as the highest spiritual privilege of man, inaccessible to other creatures. As is well known, this formula ends with Rabelais's opening poem to Gargantua:
Mieuex est de ris que de larmes escrire.
Par ce que rire est le prorpe de l'homme.
Even Ronsard still uses this formula in its extended meaning. In his poem dedicated to Belo ("Oeuvres", ed. Lemerre, vol. V, 10), there are the following lines:
Dieu, qui soubz l'homme a le monde soumis,
A l'homme seul, le seul rire a permis
Pour s'esgayer et non pas à la beste,
Qui n'a raison ny esprit en la teste.
Laughter, as a gift from God to one person, is presented here in connection with the power of man over the whole world, and with his presence of mind and spirit, which animals do not have.
According to Aristotle, a child begins to laugh not earlier than on the fortieth day after birth - only from that moment he becomes a person for the first time, as it were. Rabelais and his contemporaries also knew Pliny's assertion that only one person in the world began to laugh from his birth - Zoroaster; this was understood as an omen of his divine wisdom.
Finally, the third source of the Renaissance philosophy of laughter is Lucian, especially his image of Menippus laughing in the afterlife. Especially popular in this era was the work of Lucian "Menippus, or Journey to the Underworld." This work had a significant impact on Rabelais, precisely on the episode of Epistemon's stay in the underworld ("Pantagruel"). His "Conversations in the Kingdom of the Dead" also had a great influence. Here are some typical excerpts from the latter:
Diogenes advises you, Menippus, if you already have enough laughed at what was happening on earth, go to us (that is, to the afterlife), where to find even more reasons to laugh; on the ground, some doubts prevented you from laughing, like the constant: "who knows what will be behind the coffin?" - Here you will laugh incessantly and without any hesitation, as I laugh... "(" Diogenes and Polideukos ", I quote from the translation in the edition of Sabashnikov: Lucian. Works, vol. 1. Translation under the editorship of Zelinsky and Bogaevsky, Moscow, 1915, p. 188).
Then you Menippus drop yours freedom of spirit and freedom of speech, give up your carelessness, nobility and laughter: after all, no one but you laughs "(" Charon, Hermes and the various dead ", ibid., p. 203).
Charon. Where did you dig this cynic from, Hermes? I talked all the way ridiculed and made fun of everyone, sitting in the boat, and when everyone was crying, he was singing alone.
Hermes. You don't know, Charon, what kind of husband you brought! Husband, infinitely free not reckoning with anyone! This is Menippus! " (Charon and Menippus, ibid., P. 226).
Let us emphasize in this Lucian's image of the laughing Menippus the connection of laughter with the underworld (and with death), with freedom of spirit and with freedom of speech.
These are the three most popular ancient sources of the Renaissance philosophy of laughter. They determined not only the treatises of Joubert, but also the judgments about laughter, about its meaning and value, walking in the humanistic and literary environment. All three sources define laughter as a universal, world-contemplative principle, healing and regenerating, essentially connected with the latest philosophical questions, that is, precisely with those questions of the "order of life and death" that Montaigne already thought for himself only in serious tones.
Rabelais and his contemporaries knew, of course, the ancient ideas about laughter from other sources: according to Athenaeus, Macrobius, Aulus Gellius and others, they knew, of course, the famous words of Homer about the ineradicable, that is, eternal, laughter of the gods (“άσβεστος γέλως "," Iliad ", 1, 599, and" Odyssey ", VIII, 327). They also knew very well about the Roman traditions of freedom of laughter: about the Saturnalia, about the role of laughter during triumphs and in the funerals of noble persons. Rabelais, in particular, makes repeated allusions and references both to these sources and to the corresponding phenomena of Roman laughter.
Let us emphasize once again that for the Renaissance theory of laughter (as well as for the ancient sources we have described), it is precisely the recognition for laughter positive, revitalizing, creative meaning. This sharply distinguishes it from subsequent theories and philosophies of laughter, up to and including Bergson's, which put forward mainly its negative functions in laughter.
The ancient tradition that we have described was of significant importance for the Renaissance theory of laughter, which provided an apology for the literary tradition of laughter, which introduced it into the mainstream of humanistic ideas. (The very artistic practice of laughter of the Renaissance is determined primarily by the traditions of the folk laughter culture of the Middle Ages.
However, here, in the conditions of the Renaissance, there is not a simple continuation of these traditions - they are entering a completely new and higher phase of their existence. The entire rich folk culture of laughter in the Middle Ages lived and developed outside the official sphere of high ideology and literature. But it was precisely because of this unofficial existence that the culture of laughter was distinguished by exceptional radicalism, freedom and merciless sobriety. The Middle Ages, not allowing laughter in any of the official areas of life and ideology, provided him with exclusive privileges of freedom and impunity outside these areas: on the square, during the holidays, in recreational festive literature. And medieval laughter was able to widely and deeply use these privileges.
And in the Renaissance, laughter in its most radical, universal, so to speak, world-encompassing and at the same time in its most cheerful form, only once in history for some fifty to sixty years (in different countries at different times) burst from folk depths together with folk ("vulgar") languages ​​into great literature and high ideology to play a significant role in the creation of such works of world literature as Boccaccio's Decameron, Rabelais 'novel, Cervantes' novel, Shakespeare's dramas and comedies and others. The boundaries between official and unofficial literature in this era inevitably had to fall, partly due to the fact that these boundaries in the most important areas of ideology passed along the line of dividing languages ​​- Latin and folk. The transition of literature and certain areas of ideology to popular languages ​​was supposed to sweep away for a while, or, in any case, weaken these lines. A number of other factors associated with the disintegration of the feudal and theocratic system of the Middle Ages also contributed to this confusion and fusion of the official with the unofficial. The folk culture of laughter, which for centuries has formed and defended in unofficial forms of folk art - spectacular and verbal - and in unofficial life, was able to rise to the very heights of literature and ideology in order to fertilize them, and then - as absolutism stabilized and the formation of a new formality - descended into the lower classes of the genre hierarchy, settle in these lower levels, to a large extent break away from the folk roots, grind, narrow, degenerate.
A whole millennium of unofficial folk laughter burst into Renaissance literature. This millennial laughter not only impregnated this literature, but was itself impregnated by it. It was combined with the most advanced ideology of the era, with humanistic knowledge, with a high literary technique... In the person of Rabelais, the word and mask (in the sense of the design of the entire personality) of a medieval jester, a form of folk-festive carnival fun, a travesty and all-parodying fervor of a democratic cleric, the speech and gesture of a fair bateler were combined with humanistic scholarship, with the science and practice of a doctor, with political experience and knowledge of a man who, as confidant of the du Bellay brothers, was intimately privy to all the issues and secrets of high world politics of his era. Medieval laughter in this new combination and at this new stage of its development had to change significantly. His nationality, radicalism, liberty, sobriety and materialism from the stage of their almost spontaneous existence passed into a state of artistic awareness and purposefulness. In other words, medieval laughter at the Renaissance stage of its development became the expression of a new free and critical historical consciousness of the era. He could become one only because in him during the millennium of his development in the conditions of the Middle Ages the shoots and rudiments of this historicity, the potency for it, had already been prepared. How did the forms of medieval laughter culture take shape and develop?
As we have already said, laughter in the Middle Ages was beyond the threshold of all official spheres of ideology and all official, strict forms of life and communication. Laughter was ousted from church cult, feudal-state rank, social etiquette, and from all genres of high ideology. The official medieval culture is characterized by one-sided seriousness of tone... The very content of medieval ideology with its asceticism, gloomy providentialism, with the leading role in it of such categories as sin, redemption, suffering, and the very nature of the feudal system consecrated by this ideology with its forms of extreme oppression and intimidation, determined this exceptional one-sidedness of the tone, its chilling petrified seriousness. Seriousness was asserted as the only form for the expression of truth, goodness and, in general, everything essential, significant and important. Fear, awe, humility, etc. - such were the tones and shades of this seriousness.
Even early Christianity (in ancient times) condemned laughter. Tertullian, Cyprian and John Chrysostom opposed ancient spectacular forms, especially against mime, against mimic laughter and jokes. John Chrysostom directly declares that jokes and laughter come not from God, but from the devil; the only thing that befits a Christian is constant seriousness, repentance and sorrow for his sins. In the fight against the Arians, they were accused of introducing elements of mime into the service: chants, gestures and laughter.
But this very exceptional one-sided seriousness of the official church ideology led to the need to legalize outside of it, that is, outside of the official and canonized cult, rite and rank, the gaiety, laughter, and joke displaced from them. And now, next to the canonical forms of medieval culture, parallel forms of a purely laughter character are created.
In the forms of the church cult itself, inherited from antiquity, imbued with the influence of the East, and also subjected to some influence of local pagan rituals (mainly fertility rites), there are the beginnings of fun and laughter. They can be opened in the liturgy, and in the funeral rite, and in the rite of baptism, and in the wedding ceremony, and in a number of other religious rituals. But here these rudiments of laughter are sublimated, suppressed and drowned out. But they have to be resolved in near-church and near-holiday life, to allow even the existence of purely laughter forms and rituals parallel to the cult.
These are, first of all, the "holidays of fools" (festa stultorum, fatuorum, follorum), which were celebrated by schoolchildren and lower clergymen on St. Stefan, on New Year, on the day of "innocent babies", on the "Epiphany", on Ivan's day. These holidays were originally celebrated in churches and were completely legal in nature, then they became semi-legal, and by the end of the Middle Ages they were completely illegal; but they continued to exist on the streets, in taverns, merged into Maslenitsa entertainments. The festival of fools (fête des fous) displayed particular strength and perseverance in France. Fools' celebrations were mainly in the nature of a parody travesty of the official cult, accompanied by disguises and disguises, obscene dances. These entertainments of the lower clergy were especially unbridled in the new year and on the feast of the Epiphany.
Almost all the rites of the festival of fools are grotesque reductions of various church rites and symbols by translating them into the material-bodily plane: gluttony and drunkenness right on the altar, indecent gestures, nudity, etc. We will analyze some of these ritual actions of the holiday later.
The Feast of Fools, as we said, was particularly tenacious in France. An interesting apology for this holiday came from the 15th century. In this apology, defenders of the holiday of fools refer primarily to the fact that the holiday was established in the earliest centuries of Christianity by our ancestors, who knew better what they were doing. Then the emphasis is not on the serious, but on the purely playful (buffoonish) character of the holiday. This festive entertainment is necessary “to stupidity(buffoonery) which is our second nature and it seems born human could free yourself at least once a year... Wine barrels will burst if you do not open the holes and let air in from time to time. All of us humans are poorly put together barrels that will burst from guilt of wisdom if this wine will be in a continuous fermentation of awe and fear of God. You need to give it air so that it does not deteriorate. That is why we allow ourselves on certain days to play buffoonery (stupidity), so that later, with all the greater zeal, we can return to serving the Lord. " Such is the defense of the Fools' Feasts in the 15th century.
In this remarkable apology, buffoonery and stupidity, that is, laughter, are directly declared "the second nature of man" and are opposed to the monolithic seriousness of the Christian cult and worldview ("a continuous ferment of reverence and fear of God"). It was the exceptional one-sidedness of this seriousness that led to the need to create an outlet for the “second nature of man,” that is, for buffoonery, for laughter. This outlet - “at least once a year” - served as the holiday of fools, when laughter and the material-bodily principle associated with it received full will. We have here, therefore, a direct recognition of the second festive life of medieval man.
Laughter at the festival of fools was not, of course, an abstract and purely negative mockery of Christian ritual and of the church hierarchy. The denying mocking moment was deeply immersed in the jubilant laughter of material-bodily rebirth and renewal. The "second nature of man" laughed, the material-bodily bottom laughed, which could not find expression in the official worldview and cult.
The original apology for the laughter of the defenders of the festival of fools we have cited refers to the 15th century, but in earlier times one can find similar judgments on similar grounds. The 9th-century Fulda abbot Rabanus Maurus, a strict clergyman, created an abridged version of Coena Cypriani. He dedicated it to King Lothar II "ad jocunditatem", that is, "for amusement." In his dedicatory letter, he tries to justify the cheerful and degrading nature of the "Supper" with the following reasoning: "Just as the church contains both good and bad people, so his poem also contains the speeches of these latter." These "bad people" of the strict clergyman correspond here to the "second stupid nature" of man. Pope Leo XIII later gave a similar formula: "Since the church consists of a divine element and a human element, this latter must be revealed with complete frankness and honesty, as it is said in the book of Job:" God does not need our hypocrisy. "
V early era of the Middle Ages, popular laughter penetrated not only into the middle, but even into the highest church circles: Raban Mavr is by no means an exception. The charm of popular laughter was very strong at all levels of the still young feudal hierarchy (both ecclesiastical and secular). This phenomenon is explained, apparently, by the following reasons:
1. The official church-feudal culture in the 7th, 8th and even the 9th centuries was still weak and not fully developed;
2. The folk culture was very strong, it was impossible not to reckon with it, and its individual elements had to be used for propaganda purposes;
3. Traditions of Roman Saturnalia and other forms were still alive. legalized Roman folk laughter;
4. The Church timed Christian holidays to local pagan festivals (in order to Christianize them) associated with laughter cults;
5. The young feudal system was still relatively progressive and therefore relatively popular.
Under the influence of these reasons, in the early centuries, a tradition of tolerant (relatively tolerant, of course) attitude towards folk laughter culture could have developed. This tradition continued to live on, subject, however, to new and new restrictions. In subsequent centuries (up to the 17th century inclusive), it became a custom to refer to the authority of ancient clergy and theologians in defense of laughter.
Thus, the authors and compilers of collections of facets, anecdotes and jokes in the late 16th and early 17th centuries usually referred to the authority of medieval scholars and theologians who sanctified laughter. Thus, Melander, who compiled one of the richest collections of laughter literature (Jocorum et seriorum libri duo, 1st ed. 1600, the last - in 1643), introduces into his work a long catalog (several dozen names) of outstanding scientists and theologians who wrote facetias before him (“Catalogus praestantissimorum virorum in omni scientiarum facultate, qui ante nos facetias scripserunt”). The best collection of German Schwanks belongs to the monk and preacher Johannes Pauli, who was famous at the time. It came out under the title "Laughter and Deed" ("Schimpf und Ernst"), the first edition of it dates back to 1522. In the preface, speaking about the purpose of his book, Pauli cites considerations that are reminiscent of the above apology for the festival of fools: he compiled his book “so that spiritual children in closed monasteries would have something to read for amusements your spirit and rest: it is not always possible to be strict "("Wan man nit alwegen in einer strenckeit bleiben mag").
The purpose and meaning of such statements (many more can be cited) is to explain and somehow justify churchly laughter and “sacred parody” (parodia sacra), that is, a parody of sacred texts and rituals. There was, of course, no lack of condemnation of this laughter. Repeatedly held conciliar and judicial prohibitions on the holiday of fools. The oldest ban on it by the Toledo Cathedral dates back to the first half of the 7th century. The last judicial prohibition of the holiday of fools in France is the resolution of the Dijon parliament in 1552, that is, more than nine centuries after its first prohibition. Throughout these nine centuries, the holiday continued to live in a semi-legal form. Its late French variation is those carnival-type processions that the Societas cornardorum organized in Rouen. During one of these processions (in 1540), as we have already said, the name of Rabelais appeared, and during the feast the Chronicle of Gargantua was read instead of the Gospel. Rabelaisian laughter, as it were, returned here to the mother's bosom of its ancient ritual and spectacular tradition.
The Feast of Fools is one of the brightest and purest expressions of medieval festive laughter near the church. His other expression is “the feast of the donkey”, established in memory of the flight of Mary with the baby Jesus to Egypt on a donkey. In the center of this holiday was not Mary or Jesus (although there was a girl with a child here), but it was the donkey and his cry "Hinham!" Special "donkey masses" were served. The official of such a Mass has come down to us, drawn up by the strict churchman Pierre Corbeil. Each part of the mass was accompanied by a comic donkey cry - "Hinham!" At the end of the Mass, the priest, instead of the usual blessing, shouted like a donkey three times, and instead of “amen” they answered him three times with the same donkey shout. But the donkey is one of the oldest and most tenacious symbols of the material-bodily bottom, simultaneously reducing (mortifying) and regenerating. Suffice it to recall the "Golden Donkey" of Apuleius, donkey mimes common in antiquity, and finally, the image of a donkey as a symbol of the material-bodily principle in the legends of Francis of Assisi. The Donkey Festival is one of the variations of this ancient traditional motive.
The donkey festival and the festival of fools are specific holidays where laughter plays a leading role; in this respect they are like their blood relatives - carnival and shariwari. But in all other ordinary church holidays of the Middle Ages, as we said in the introduction, laughter always played a certain - greater or lesser - role, organizing the folk-square side of the holiday. Laughter in the Middle Ages was assigned to the holiday (as well as the material-bodily principle), was festive laughter par excellence. Let me first remind you of the so-called “risus paschalis”. An ancient tradition allowed laughter and free jokes even in church on Easter days. The priest from the pulpit allowed himself all sorts of stories and jokes these days, so that, after a long fast and despondency, he would make his parishioners laugh, like joyous rebirth; this laughter was called "Easter laughter". These jokes and funny stories mainly concerned the material-bodily life; these were carnival-style jokes. After all, the resolution of laughter was associated with the simultaneous resolution of meat and sexual activity (forbidden in fasting). The tradition of "risus paschalis" was still alive in the 16th century, that is, at the time of Rabelais.
In addition to "Easter laughter", there was also a tradition of "Christmas laughter". If Easter laughter was realized mainly in sermons, in funny stories, in anecdotes and jokes, then Christmas laughter is in funny songs. Songs of a very secular content were sung in churches; spiritual songs were sung to secular, even street motives (for example, the notes for "magnificat" have come down to us, from which it is clear that this church hymn was sung to the motive of a clown street song). The tradition of Christmas carols flourished especially in France. The spiritual content was intertwined in these songs with secular motives and with moments of material-bodily decline. The theme of the birth of the new, renewal, organically combined with the theme of the death of the old in a cheerful and degrading manner, with the images of buffoonery carnival debunking. Thanks to this, the French Christmas song - "Noël" - could develop into one of the most popular genres of revolutionary street song.
Laughter and the material-bodily moment, as a reducing and regenerating principle, play an essential role in the non-church or near-church side and other holidays, especially those of them that were local in nature and therefore could absorb elements of ancient pagan festivals, a Christian replacement for which they sometimes were. These were the feasts of the consecration of churches (the first mass) and patronal feasts. Local fairs were usually timed to coincide with these holidays with their entire system of folk-market amusements. They were also accompanied by unbridled gluttony and drunkenness. Food and drink were in the foreground and in the feasts of remembrance of the departed. In honor of the patrons and donors buried in this church, the clergy organized feasts, drank the so-called "poculum charitatis" or "charitas vini" for them. In one act of the Abbey of Quedlinburg it is directly stated that the feast of the priests nourishes and delights the dead: "plenius recreantur mortui". Spanish Dominicans drank to the patrons buried in their churches with the characteristic ambivalent toast "viva el muerto". In these last examples, festive fun and laughter are of a feast nature and are combined with the image of death and birth (renewal of life) in the complex unity of an ambivalent material-bodily lower body (absorbing and giving birth).
Some holidays took on a specific color due to the seasons when they were celebrated. So, the autumn holidays of St. Martin and St. Michael took Bacchic colors, and these saints were considered the patrons of winemaking. Sometimes the peculiarities of this or that saint served as a pretext for the development of out-of-church laughter and reducing material-bodily rituals and actions during his feast. So, on the day of St. Lazarus in Marseilles, a solemn procession was arranged with all the horses, mules, donkeys, bulls and cows. The entire population dressed up and danced in the squares and streets "big dance" (magnum tripudium). This is probably explained by the fact that the figure of Lazarus was associated with a cycle of legends about the underworld, which wore a material-bodily topographic coloring (the underworld is a material-bodily bottom), and with the motive of death and rebirth. Therefore, the feast of St. Lazarus could have absorbed the ancient elements of some local pagan festival.
Finally, laughter and the material-bodily principle were legalized in festive everyday life, feasts, street, marketplace and home amusements.
We will not talk here about the forms of Shrovetide, carnival laughter in the proper sense. We will specifically refer to him in due time. But here we must emphasize again significant relation of holiday laughter to time and time change... The calendar moment of the holiday comes to life and becomes acutely perceptible precisely in the folk-laughter unofficial side of it. Here, the connection with the change of seasons, with the solar and lunar phases, with the death and renewal of vegetation, with the change of agricultural cycles revives. In this shift, the moment of the new, coming, renewing was positively accentuated. And this moment acquired a broader and deeper significance: the people's aspirations for a better future, a more just socio-economic system, and a new truth were put into it. The folk-laughter side of the holiday to a certain extent played out this better future of universal material abundance, equality, freedom, just as the Roman Saturnalia played out the return of the golden Saturnian age. Thanks to this, the medieval holiday became, as it were, a two-faced Janus: if its official church person was turned into the past and served as the consecration and sanction of the existing system, then the people-square laughing face of his looked into the future and laughed at the funeral of the past and present... It opposed itself to the protective immobility, "timelessness", the immutability of the established system and worldview, it emphasized precisely the moment shifts and updates, moreover, in the socio-historical plan.
The material-bodily bottom and the entire system of declines, overturns, travestings received a significant relation to time and to socio-historical change. One of the obligatory moments of folk festive fun was dressing up, that is, renewal of clothes and one's social image. Another significant moment was the shifting of the hierarchical top to the bottom: the jester was declared king, at the feasts of fools they elected the clownish abbot, bishop, archbishop, and in churches directly subordinate to the pope, even the clown's pope. It was these buffoonish hierarchs who celebrated the solemn Mass; on many holidays, ephemeral (one-day) kings and queens of the holiday were necessarily elected, for example, on the feast of kings ("the bean king"), on the feast of St. Valentine. The election of such ephemeral kings ("roi pour rire") was especially widespread in France, where almost every household feast had its own king and queen. From putting on clothes inside out and having trousers over your head, to electing foolish kings and popes, the same topographic logic applies: move top to bottom, to cast off the high and the old - ready and completed - into the material-bodily hell for death and new birth (renewal). And so all this has received an essential relation to the time and to the socio-historical change. The moment of relativity and the moment of formation were put forward in opposition to any claims to the inviolability and timelessness of the medieval hierarchical system. All these topographic images sought to capture the very moment of transition and change - the change of two powers and two truths, old and new, dying and being born. The ritual and images of the holiday sought to play out, as it were, the time itself, mortifying and giving birth at the same time, melting the old into the new, not allowing anything to perpetuate. Time plays and laughs. This is the playing boy of Heraclitus, who has the highest power in the universe ("the child has dominion"). The emphasis is always on the future, the utopian appearance of which is always present in the rituals and images of folk festive laughter. Thanks to this, in the forms of folk-festive fun, those rudiments could develop that would later blossom into a Renaissance sense of history.
Summing up, we can say that laughter, ousted in the Middle Ages from the official cult and worldview, made an unofficial, but almost legal nest under the roof of every holiday. Therefore, each holiday, next to its official - church and state - side also had a second, folk-carnival, areal side, the organizing principle of which was laughter and the material-bodily bottom. This side of the holiday was decorated in its own way, had its own theme, its own imagery, its own special ritual. The origins of the individual elements of this ritual are heterogeneous. There is no doubt that here - throughout the Middle Ages - the tradition of the Roman Saturnalia continued to live. The traditions of the antique mime were also alive. But a significant source was also local folklore... It was he who to a large extent nourished the imagery and ritual of the folk-laughter side of medieval holidays.
In the Middle Ages, lower and middle clergy, schoolchildren, students, guild members, and finally those various extra-class and unsettled elements with which the era was so rich, were active participants in the public square festivities in the Middle Ages. But the laughter culture of the Middle Ages, in essence, was nationwide. The truth of laughter captured and involved everyone: no one could resist it.

The posthumous history of Rabelais, i.e. the history of his understanding, interpretation and influence over the centuries is, in fact, fairly well studied. In addition to a long series of valuable publications in the Revue des études rabelaisiennes (1903-1913) and Revue du seizième siècle (1913-1932), two special books are devoted to this story: Boulanger Jacques, Rabelais à tràvers les âges Paris, le Divan, 1923. Sainéan Lazar, L "influence et la réputation de Rabelais (Interpretes, lecteurs et imitateurs), Paris, J. Gamber, 1930. Here, of course, are collected also reviews of contemporaries about Rabelais.
"Estienne Pasquier, Lettres", book. II. Quoting from Sainéan Lazar, L "influence et la réputation de Rabelais, p. 100.
Satire reprinted: Satyre Ménippée de la vertue du Catholikon d "Espagne ..., Ed. Frank, Oppeln, 1884. Reproduction of 1st edition 1594.
Here is its full title: Beroalde de Verville, Le moyen de parvenir, oeuvres contenants la raison de ce qui a été, est et sera. Commented edition with variants and dictionary Charles Royer, Paris, 1876, two volumes.
For example, we have come down to an interesting description of a grotesque festival (carnival type) in Rouen in 1541. Here, at the head of a procession depicting a parody funeral, they carried a banner with an anagram of the name of Rabelais, and then during the festive feast one of the participants in monk's clothes read from pulpits instead of the Bible "Chronicle of Gargantua" (see Boulanger J. Rabelais à tràvers les âges, p. 17, and Sainéan L. L "influence et la réputation de Rabelais, p. 20).
Dedekind, Grobianus et Grobiana Libri tres (first ed. 1549, second - 1552). Dedekind's book was translated into German by Fishart's teacher and relative Kaspar Scheidt.
We say "in part" because, in his translation of Rabelais' novel, Fishart was not yet a fully grobianist. Karl Marx gave a sharp but fair characterization of Grobian literature of the 16th century. See K. Marx, Moralizing Criticism and Criticizing Morality. - K. Marx and F. Engels, Works, vol. 4, p. 291 - 295.
Here, for example, is the title of one of the remarkable books of the 16th century by Bonaventure Deperier: Nouvelles récréations et joyeux devis, that is, New Leisure and Merry Conversations.
The epithet "plaisant" in the 16th century was applied to all works of fiction in general, regardless of their genre. The most respected and influential work of the past for the 16th century was The Novel of the Rose. Clement Marot released in 1527 a somewhat modernized (in terms of language) edition of this great monument of world literature and in the preface recommended it with the following words: "C" est le plaisant livre du "Rommant de la Rose" ... "
In particular, in the sixth book of "Epidemics", to which Rabelais also refers in the above prologues.
Aristotle, On the Soul, Vol. III, ch. ten.

It's better to write about laughter than about tears
Because laughter is human.

God who subdued the whole world to man,
Only one person was allowed to laugh
To have fun, but not to the animal,
Which is devoid of both mind and spirit.
The Reich gives a lot of material about the ancient traditional freedom of ridicule, in particular, about the freedom of laughter in mimes. He cites a corresponding passage from Ovid's Tristii, where the latter justifies his frivolous verses, referring to the traditional mimic freedom and permitted mimic obscenity. He quotes Martial, who in his epigrams justifies his liberties before the emperor by referring to the tradition of ridicule of emperors and commanders during triumphs. Reich analyzes an interesting apology of the mime belonging to a 6th-century rhetorician. Chlorizius, in many ways parallel to the Renaissance apology for laughter. Defending the mimes, Chloricius first had to defend laughter. He examines the accusation of Christians that the laughter caused by the mime is from the devil. He declares that man is different from animal due to its inherent ability to speak and laugh... And the gods of Homer laughed, and Aphrodite "smiled sweetly." The strict Lycurgus erected a statue for laughter. Laughter is a gift from the gods. Chloricius also cites a case healing the sick with the help of a mime, through mime-induced laughter... This apology of Chlorizius is in many ways reminiscent of the defense of laughter in the 16th century, and, in particular, the Rabelaisian apology for it. Let us emphasize the universalist nature of the concept of laughter: it distinguishes man from animals, it is of divine origin, and finally, it is associated with healing - healing (see Reich. Der Mimus, pp. 52 - 55, 182 ff, 207 ff).
The ideas of the creative power of laughter were also characteristic of non-antique antiquity. In one Egyptian alchemical papyrus of the 3rd century. AD, stored in Leiden, the creation of the world is attributed to divine laughter: "When the god laughed, seven gods were born, ruling the world ... When he burst into laughter, there was a light ... He burst into laughter a second time - there were waters ..." At the seventh burst of laughter the soul was born. See Reinach S., Le Rire rituel (in his book: Cultes, Mythes et Religions, Paris, 1908, v. IV, pp. 112-113).
See Reich, Der Mimus, p. 116 and beyond.
An interesting story with "paths"; the cheerful and joyful tone of these tropes allowed elements of church drama to develop from them (see Gautier Léon, Histoire de la poesie liturgique, I (Les Tropes), Paris, 1886; see also Jacobsen YP Essai sur les origines de la comédie en France au moyen âge, Paris, 1910).
On the festival of fools, see Bourquelot F. L'office de la fête des fous, Sens, 1856; Vi11etard H. Office de Pierre de Corbeil, Paris, 1907; he, Remarques sur la fête des fous, Paris, 1911.
This apology is contained in the circular message of the Paris Faculty of Theology of March 12, 1444. The message condemns the holiday of fools and refutes the arguments of its defenders.
In the 16th century, two collections of materials from this society were published.
How tenacious the image of a donkey is in its given interpretation is evidenced by such, for example, phenomena in our literature: “The cry of a donkey » in Switzerland he revived Prince Myshkin and made him akin to foreign land and life (Dostoevsky's The Idiot); the donkey and the "cry of the donkey" are one of the leading images in Blok's poem "The Nightingale Garden".
For Easter laughter see Schmid J.P. De risu paschalis, Rostock, 1847, and Reinach S. Rire pascal, in the appendix to the article cited above, Le Rire rituel, p. 127 - 129. Both Easter and Christmas laughter are associated with the traditions of the Roman folk Saturnalia.
The point, of course, is not in everyday gluttony and drunkenness itself, but in the fact that they received here the symbolically expanded utopian meaning of "a feast for the whole world", the triumph of material abundance, growth and renewal.
See: Ebeling Fr.W. Flögel`s Geschichte des Grotesk-Komischen, S. 254.
We will talk about this cycle of legends in the future. Let us recall that "hell" was also a necessary accessory to the carnival.
It was the carnival with all the complex system of its images that was the most complete and pure expression of the folk culture of laughter.

“... I saw,” Gogol admitted in The Author’s Confession, “that you need to be very careful with laughter, especially since it is contagious, and it is only worthwhile for those who laugh more intelligently at one side of the matter, as he follows him whoever is dumber and dumber will laugh at all sides of the matter. "/

What did I learn after reading Bakhtin's book?

Existed separate a thousand-year-old laughing folk carnival culture that almost disappeared (?) with the end of the Middle Ages.

That Rabelais - the main exponent of this humorous folk culture - was not understood correctly up to Bakhtin, despite numerous assessments, rather unanimous, given by the most prominent representatives of culture, especially French.

That Christianity was the official gloomy, frightening outer millennial teaching imposed by those in power, opposed by the people in their millennial carnival culture (which contradicts the main modern research about the Middle Ages).

That seriousness and laughter are not states inherent in one subject, who uses them as needed, but are two universal points of view on the world, moreover, seriousness is negative, laughter is positive (Bakhtin's position hesitates about seriousness).

That the juicy curses, exaggerated obscenities and blasphemy (according to Bakhtin "material-bodily bottom"), which Rabelais used, are not caustic mockery and gaiety, but are destructively reviving, essentially sacred, words and actions, behind which, in the end , the "golden age" of universal equality and happiness is seen, that is, this is a wish for happiness, a blessing of its own kind.

All these theses made me doubt their truth, because after reading Rabelais' book, I did not see all of this. In addition, they came into conflict with what I read about the Middle Ages.

A. Gurevich writes:
Since the regulative principle of the medieval world is God, conceived as the highest good and perfection, the world and all its parts acquire a moral coloration. In the medieval "model of the world" there are no ethically neutral forces and things: they are all correlated with the cosmic conflict of good and evil and are involved in the world history of salvation.

A vision of the world where I was present " meeting of two levels of culture, scientist and folk, was a product of the deep originality of medieval culture. It was inherent in an educated monk, church leader, city dweller, peasant, knight. This vision of the world is widely represented in the art of the time. Let us emphasize: this is ecclesiastical art and monastic ingenuity. There is not even a trace of the "culture of the agelasti" - the bearers of the "frightening and frightened consciousness" (Bakhtin).

Huizinga about the Middle Ages: " The atmosphere of religious tension manifests itself as an unprecedented flowering of sincere faith. Monastic and knightly orders emerged. They create their own way of life. "Life was imbued with religion to such an extent that there was a constant threat of disappearance of the distance between the earthly and the spiritual."

I continue thinking. The reason why medieval culture has, in addition to the ridiculing side, reviving, I would say, optimistic - religious Christian consciousness who had the hope of an afterlife that was a reality in their daily lives. Rather, for Bakhtin there was a two-worldness, Soviet power was the official culture that he opposed, and for medieval culture, church teaching was not official, it was the blood and flesh of the culture of the Middle Ages, hence the vitality and full-bloodedness, the absence of fear and the ability to laugh at oneself, in no way destroying the "serious". "Death! Where is your sting? Hell! Where is your victory?" - I knew the culture and salvation in the church was a reality for everyone. Therefore, when Bakhtin writes:
"fetters reverence, seriousness, fear of God, oppression such gloomy categories as "eternal", "unshakable", "absolute", "unchanging", then the question arises - what era is he writing about?
When the secularization of the consciousness of medieval society took place, and Rabelais was a pioneer in this process, then the content of the grotesque, which is a form, changed - at first there was still an individual, no longer churchly, belief in the "golden age" (according to Bakhtin), later this belief rejected all hope, but there was a void that had to be filled to their existential meaning, even if this meaning is a lack of meaning.

Bakhtin writes that before him the medieval grotesque was studied through the glasses of his time, but I see that he himself looks through the “glasses of his time” and his personal preferences: the class struggle is the confrontation between the people and the feudal church oppressors, the glasses of militant atheism, that for people, religion is only an external phenomenon and they are just waiting to laugh at it, the glasses of Hegelian idealism with faith in the historical progress of mankind and the "immortality of the people's body", the glasses of the Soviet dissident - just like the clever Rabelais, with his work he opposes the system , the glasses of heroic Nietzscheism are the belief in the Man who challenged the dead "Apolonism", opposing him with "Dionysian" insights and the victorious one.

I also think that everything has its place - the material-bodily bottom, as a side of life, cannot create ideals leading to the revival of culture, and everything can destroy. Why did Bakhtin not accept the Bolshevik revolution, which was in many respects a triumph of the material-bodily bottom with reviving goals? It turns out that theory has diverged from practice, the ambivalence of the "bottom" has not manifested itself.

Let me summarize. The book is shocking, tendentious, at the same time giving impetus to explore numerous issues to develop their own views. It is important to read, because the book has firmly entered the Soviet culture and its echoes often sound today.

P.S. While researching the topics of the book, I came across the opinion of Averintsev:

Sergey Averintsev writes:
In reality - cruel disposition: during Bakhtin's lifetime, he was cruelly forgotten, and at the end of his life and after his death, the world canonized his theories, accepting them with a greater or lesser degree of misunderstanding, also quite cruel. The world-wide myth about the book "The Creativity of François Rabelais" is a match for the world-wide myth about "The Master and Margarita" Bulgakov, whose fate in many respects is parallel to the fate of Bakhtin's work. Bakhtin's eyes, turned in search of material for his utopia to the otherness of the West, seemed to have met the eyes of his Western readers, who are looking for something missing from the Russian thinker in the West - in order to build their own utopia.

Or maybe Bakhtin's book is a grandiose hoax and he still laughs at us? Then the king is not naked, but horned. It's Rabelais style)