Privy matters (2)

Cette distinction est trop obscure, nostre chouse vaut mieux, & puis j’ay mis dehors tous ceux qui n’aiment point raillerie,(*) soyez les bien ventrus,(†) la panse (‡) fait l’homme : je vous prie ça en liberté, y a-il personne de vous qui ait le ventre tendu, qui veuille aller en Purgatoire ? (§) tout est libre & bon en son temps, lieu & endroit ; ce fut un Moyne de S. Denys, disciple de Genebrard,(‖) qui m’aprit à nommer ainsi le privé, pource qu’on s’y purge.

[Béroalde de Verville], Le Moyen de parvenir. Oevure contenant la raison de tout ce qui a esté, est, & sera. Avec demonstrations certaines & necessaires, selon la rencontre des effets de VERTU. Et adviendra que ceux qui auront nez à porter Lunettes s’en serviront, ainsi qu’il est escrit au dictionnaire à dormir en toutes langues, S. Recensuit Sapiens ab A, ad Z. Imprimé cette année [1616] 

* ceux qui n’aiment point raillerie — i.e., the agelasts, whose inability to laugh is a mark of their inhumanity. In the Letter to Lord Odet, Cardinal de Châtillon, Rabelais names the agelasts alongside the cannibals and misanthropes as men that are desraisonnés, devoid of reason, like irrational beasts—solus homo ridet.

† ventrus — portmanteau of ventre and the past participle venu. The ventre/γαστήρ, or material corporeal substratum (материально-телесный низ — Bakhtin), which breaks down food in order for the body to put on new flesh, in an endless cycle of digestion and regeneration, particularly lends itself to jesting, to puns and word play, themselves a process of breaking down language to generate new meanings.

‡ la panse — the gut, bowels, paunch, from the Latin pantex, which was a vulgar term for venter (whence the French ventre), meaning both belly and womb, and, in the plural (pantices), tripe, sausages. The pantex/venter is the seat of the appetite, the material corporeal substratum, which defines and generates man's material nature: la panse fait l'homme.

§ Purgatoire — in Middle French the word could equally refer to spiritual and to physical purgation.

‖ Genebrard — Gilbert Génebrard (1535-1597). Benedictine theologian, Archbishop of Aix, ardent supporter of the anti-Huguenot Holy League in the French Wars of Religion (1562-1598).

This distinction is too subtle, our plan is the better, and I have heedfully expelled all who loathe laughter. I give you all a gut (good) welcome, ’tis the paunch that makes the man; here all is free. If any have tight bellies let them go to purgatory; there is a time for everything and a place too. (It was a monk of St. Denis, a disciple of Genebrard's, who taught me to call the privy purgatory, because it is there that a man purges him.)

Fantastic Tales or the Way to Attain—A Book Full of Pantagruelism Now for the First Time Done into English, trans. Arthur Machen. Privately Printed, Carbonnek, 1923

 

la panse fait l'homme