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1500s Books Occult

The Drolatic Dreams of Pantagruel, 1565

The 120 woodcuts that make up the volume of Les songes drolatiques de Pantagruel appeared without almost any text in 1565.

“The great familiarity I had with the late François Rabelais (dear Reader), has moved and even compelled me to bring to light the last of his work, the drolatic dreams of the very excellent and wonderful Patagruel, a man very famous for his heroic deeds on which the more than veritable histories write awesome things.”

– Publisher Richard Breton writing in the preface to Les songes drolatiques de Pantagruel (The Drolatic Dreams of Pantagruel), 1565

Les songes drolatiques de Pantagruel - The Drolatic Dreams of Pantagruel
We’re not certain who drew these brilliant illustrations for Parisian bookseller and publisher Richard Breton’s Les songes drolatiques de Pantagruel (The drolatic dreams of Pantagruel) but the consensus is that they’re the work of French engraver François Desprez.
Les songes drolatiques de Pantagruel - The Drolatic Dreams of Pantagruel
Breton (1524 – 1571) had worked with Desprez on his costume book, Recueil de la diversité des Habits qui sont des present en usaige tant es Pays D’Europe, Asie, Afrique, et isles sauvages, 1564, and Recueil des effigies des roys de France (A Collection of Pictures of the Kings of France), 1567.  So it’s a pretty safe bet that Desprez was the artist who drew Les songes drolatiques de Pantagruel’s 12o far-out images.
The woodcuts are reflective of the bizarre style of previous artists such as Bruegel the Elder or Hieronymus Bosch. The creatures with faces in the chest are Blemmyes, a common feature of Medieval bestiaries. It’s said that a Blemmye in Ripon Cathedral in England was the inspiration for Lewis Carroll’s Humpty Dumpty.
Breton, a bookseller and expert marketeer, kept the artist’s identify deliberately vague to link his book to the great French writer François Rabelais (1494 – 1553), known as a satirist for his depictions of the grotesque, and for his larger-than-life characters. Breton’s choice of name for this book is a clear nod to Rabelais’ Gargantua and Pantagruel, or the Cinq Livres, a pentalogy of novels that tells of the adventures of two giants, Gargantua and his son Pantagruel.
Breton’s adoption of Rabelais is made more overt in the book’s preface – the only words that appear in it – in which he writes:
The great familiarity I had with the late François Rabelais (dear Reader), has moved and even compelled me to bring to light the last of his work, the drolatic dreams of the very excellent and wonderful Patagruel, a man very famous for his heroic deeds on which the more than veritable histories write awesome things. This was the main reason that I, wanting to avoid prolixity, did not want to add any comment apart from emphasizing that these are the most curious pictures that can be found in the whole world, and I do not think that Panurge would have ever seen or known more admirable ones in the countries visited during his last voyages.
The rest of the preface is Breton in full ringmaster mode, hailing the circus of wonders to follow in his book:
As to a detailed description of the properties and essence of these figures, I leave this work to those who are more versed in this faculty and more capable than I am, as well as the explanation of their mystical and allegoric meaning, and their provision with the names most fitting to them. Similarly, I have not seen it fitting to add a long recommendation before this work: may they do it who want to spread their fame all over the world, because as the proverb says, the good wine needs no bush. Nor have I wanted to entertain myself in finding out the author’s intentions, both as they are uncertain to me, and because of the great difficulty to reach the rather lunatic thoughts of such great geniuses.
Nevertheless I hope that many people will be satisfied with the present little work, because who are of a dreaming nature will find here enough matter to their dreams, the melancholic will find what to cheer him and the merry to laugh, due to the great variety to be found in it. And I also ask all of them to accept this in a good soul, assuring them that by giving this work to light I had no intention to insult or to scandalize anyone, but only to offer it as a pastime for the youth. I also add that open intellects will find several good inventions in it for preparing extravagances, organizing masquerades, or to apply them as the occasion requires. This is in truth the reason that has led me to avoid this little work being lost, and I beg you to accept it just as willingly as I offer it.

 

Les songes drolatiques de Pantagruel - The Drolatic Dreams of Pantagruel

 

Breton is but our humble servant, pulling back the curtain to reveal things to amaze and hold you spellbound. As for the rest of the book’s title, Rio Wang has more:

The title of the book includes an adjective (drolatique) which seems to appear here for the first time in French. Drôle means “funny, curious”, and this is the origin of the term drôlerie used by modern art history for the ornamental fantasies on the borders of medieval manuscripts or architectural decorations. Drôlerie is thus related to grottesco, but they are distinguished by the classical origins of the latter as contrasted to the medieval roots of the former. In late 16th-century France the meaning of drôlerie also included those satirical – and often grotesque – figures which since the beginning of the wars of religion flooded the press, as well as the animal-shaped masks and costumes…  Some centuries later, in 1830 it was Balzac to use again this term when he chose the title Les contes drolatiques for a series of unlikely medieval stories which gave him occasion to an uninhibited, at times rough, or even obscene narrative, and whose fifth edition in 1855, five years after Balzac’s death, was decorated with 425 fantastic illustrations and vignettes by Gustave Doré.

“Drolatic” is an adjective of “dream” in the title, and we must ask what kind of dream is this. It is certainly the dream of reason, as it gives birth to monsters. And also a dream of revelation through which we acquire a knowledge impossible in wakefulness. That dreams (especially by virtue of the vis imaginativa during the conception and pregnancy) can literally give birth to monsters, was well known by contemporary authors of treatises.

 

Les songes drolatiques de Pantagruel - The Drolatic Dreams of Pantagruel

  Les songes drolatiques de Pantagruel - The Drolatic Dreams of Pantagruel
Les songes drolatiques de Pantagruel - The Drolatic Dreams of Pantagruel Les songes drolatiques de Pantagruel - The Drolatic Dreams of Pantagruel
Les songes drolatiques de Pantagruel - The Drolatic Dreams of Pantagruel Les songes drolatiques de Pantagruel - The Drolatic Dreams of Pantagruel Les songes drolatiques de Pantagruel - The Drolatic Dreams of Pantagruel Les songes drolatiques de Pantagruel - The Drolatic Dreams of Pantagruel Les songes drolatiques de Pantagruel - The Drolatic Dreams of Pantagruel Les songes drolatiques de Pantagruel - The Drolatic Dreams of Pantagruel Les songes drolatiques de Pantagruel - The Drolatic Dreams of Pantagruel Les songes drolatiques de Pantagruel - The Drolatic Dreams of Pantagruel

 

You can see the 1565 original of Les songes drolatiques de Pantagruel – The Drolatic Dreams of Pantagruel – illustrations by François Desprez  at BnF’s Gallica.

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