translated by W. F. Smith
[Cambridge University Press, $4.25]
IN 1893 Mr. W. F. Smith, fellow of St. John’s College, Cambridge, the most accomplished English Rabelaisian of his time, published an annotated translation of the writings of Rabelais. Afterward he continued to correct, revise and enlarge his work, with a view to bringing out a second edition; but he died in 1919 while assembling his materials, and in the long delay which followed, scholars pretty well gave up hope of ever getting the benefit of Mr. Smith’s project. At last, however, Mr. D. H. Beves, of King’s College, put the new edition in order, and the first volume of this invaluable work is now off the Cambridge University Press, encouraging the ardent hope that the rest of it will soon follow.
Mr. Smith’s work is hardly for casual readers (which is as it should be, for casual readers have no business with Rabelais) but rather for scholars and well-equipped serious students. His translation bears the same relation to the earlier translation of Urquhart and Motteux that the Revised Version of the English Bible bears to the King James Version. Its correctness is so unimpeachable that a reader who has it before him may safely let the French original repose for long periods undisturbed upon the shelf. Mr. Smith’s running commentary is so abundant and comprises so vast a store of illustrative reference that it may fairly be called a complete index of source-material. All in all, the work is a superb monument of untiring diligence, profound and accurate Scholarship and all-embracing literacy.
On some points of interpretation, especially where impressionist criticism is alone available, Mr. Smith would not expect universal agreement, nor, naturally, would he find it. For example, his view of certain details concerning the authorship of the Fifth Book is open to plausible amendment. Again, one might demur a little at his suggestion that Rabelais ever took any other than a detached story-teller’s interest in certain historical events, such as the lawsuit over de Ste-Marthe’s fish-weir, the querelle des femmes and the French war of 1544; or that Rabelais’s intimation of an ‘inner meaning’ beneath the surface of his writings is to be taken overseriously. But these are matters on which final judgment must be suspended for lack of evidence perhaps forever, and therefore, in default of some miracle of discovery, opinion will remain free. The reader who paraphrases Matthew Arnold’s great dictum and bears always in mind that ‘the more reasonable Rabelais is the true one’ will have no trouble with them; nor will Mr. Smith’s dealings with them interfere with his pronouncing the present work flawless, a work which will never be superseded and will never have to be done again.
ALBERT JAY NOCK