Old Jawbreaker

RABELAIS (424 pp.)--John Cowper Powys--Philosophical ($3.75).

THE LAUGHING PHILOSOPHER (206 pp.)--M. P. Willcocks--Macmillan ($3.75).

Franc,ois Rabelais warned his readers to be careful with Gargantua and Pantogruel. "Following the dog's example," he told them, "you will have to be wise in sniffing, smelling, and estimating these fine and meaty books; swiftness in the chase and boldness in the attack are what is called for; after which, by careful reading and frequent meditation, you should break the bone and suck the substantific marrow."

Rabelais had his tongue in his cheek as usual--yet as usual his enunciation of the home truth was unimpaired. To get the marrow out of the masterpiece, it is pretty necessary to follow the dog's example, and in modern times, rather few readers, all in all, have cared to exert enough jaw for that. Rabelais has been put aside, largely untasted, on the snap judgment that he is, as Voltaire said, a "drunken philosopher" who wrote "an extravagant and unintelligent book . . . prodigal of erudition, ordures and boredom." The book which Rabelais merrily dedicated to "Drinkers and . . . Syphilitics" has become the property of prurients and scholars.

Two studies of Rabelais, published almost simultaneously, come as a periodic reminder of a writer who was surpassed in his age only by Shakespeare and Cervantes. Rabelais, by ancient (78) English Novelist-Essayist John Cowper Powys, enfolds the jolly old cleric in a loose shirt of verbiage that he would surely have found too hairy for comfort; The Laughing Philosopher, by M. P. Willcocks, sometimes muffles the Rabelaisian laughter in a modesty he certainly never felt. Yet both books bring back a strong, winey breath of the most exuberant of writers from Aristophanes to Balzac; a man who drank life to the drains, and then couldn't deny himself the loudest belch in literature.

Forbidden Texts. Franc,ois Rabelais was born in Touraine around 1495, the son of a country lawyer. He was placed, in early youth, as a novice in a Franciscan monastery, and later he was ordained a priest. A crack student, Franc,ois soon got his hands on some forbidden Greek texts. Enraged, the good brothers snatched his books away. Outraged, Franc,ois pulled strings and had himself transferred to the cultured Benedictines, who encouraged the study of Greek.

Yet not long after, Franc,ois impulsively doffed his Benedictine habit, and went absent without leave on a grand tour of the French universities. He became first a theologian, then a lawyer, then a doctor--in all, one of the most erudite men of his age. He was almost 40 when he began writing his tales of Gargantua and Pantagruel, partly for love of writing, but partly for need of money.

The book was an instant bestseller; its ribald irreverence made Rabelais famous to the laity, infamous to the clergy. It did not help his case that he was a lapsed monk, and the known father of a bastard. The rest of his life (he lived to be close to 60) was spent under the continual threat of the Inquisitional stake.

Oracle of the Bottle. His Gargantua and Pantagruel is the history of a dynasty of easygoing giants. At Gargantua's birth (from his mother's left ear), 17,913 cows were required for his feeding. Pantagruel, his son, needed only 4,600 cows, but he was so vigorous that he ate one of the cows, and had to be bound in his crib with the chain later used for young Lucifer when he had the colic. When Pantagruel goes to Paris, he meets Panurge, a gay dog who knows 63 ways to make money and 214 to spend it.

Panurge has a flea in his ear who keeps suggesting that he get married. With Pantagruel and a bawdy monk named Friar John of the Funnels, Panurge sets out for India to consult the Oracle of the Holy Bottle on the matter. On the way they encounter a race of people whose noses are formed like the ace of clubs, and a nation that eats & drinks nothing but wind.

At last they reach the Holy Bottle, and Panurge puts his question. The Bottle replies, "Trine!"--which is interpreted by the priestess to mean, "Drink!" And here Rabelais, in symbolic language, offers his cup of life to whoever has the taste for it: "We hold not that laughing, but that drinking is the distinguishing character of man." Panurge interprets the oracle to mean that he should take whatever cup life offers him, and drinks it down with a will.

That was Rabelais' way, in death as in life. He expressed the whole philosophy of it in the famous last words ascribed to him: "I go to seek a great perhaps."

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