#ClassicsCommunity 2021 Reading Challenge discussion

I opened this topic in the hope of finding others who want to join me in reading Rabelais, and won't let me give up. :)

You can read the five books in any language. You can even say you only want to read one book or two books of the five, why not? I'm fine with all such possiblities.

The case is last year I got a bilingual copy of Les ​Cinq Livres des faits et dits de Gargantua et Pantagruel by François Rabelais. It's printed in both five-hundred-year-old French and modern French, next to each other. I really, really wanted to read it, but I gave up after a few pages, because of the difficult vocabulary. (I'm Hungarian; English is my first foreign language. I started learning French as an adult, and I've already read a few short novels in French, both contemporaries and classics.)

In 2020 I'd like to get to the end. It might take a very long time, but I want to do it. I'd like to start in January, with a set number of pages every day, but if someone reads faster than I do, they can join me later and catch up. Just don't leave me alone please. :)

I’m interested. This is another book I’ve been meaning to read for over 50 years. I remember that I checked out of the library when I was in high school, got a little way into it (as far as the use of ducks), but didn’t really have time for it then.
I have both print and eBook versions that I’ve purchased relatively recently (i.e., in this century).
I think I’d like to start in February or March. I’m estimating that I’ll probably read it in less than 2 months, even with other reading going on. I’ll be reading it in English. Probably better to save the reading of it in French for my third or fourth reading, which means I’ll probably be dead by then.

Barry wrote: "I’m interested. This is another book I’ve been meaning to read for over 50 years. I remember that I checked out of the library when I was in high school, got a little way into it (as far as the use..."

Thanks for joining! I'm so glad! And be more optimistic about your life-span please. :)))

I've never heard of this book before, but since I want to try something new, I guess it would be fun to try. My plans for January will be pretty packed, so I'm probably starting on Feb.

Paperback wrote: "I've never heard of this book before, but since I want to try something new, I guess it would be fun to try. My plans for January will be pretty packed, so I'm probably starting on Feb."

Wonderful, thank you. It will certainly be something you don't expect...

Israa wrote: "I would also like to join in this buddy read!!!!! We will read all of the books or just one? I hope we do all of them!!!!!! And March sounds good to start!!!!!"

I'm glad you're so enthusiastic. :)
I'd like to read all the five books from the beginning of January on, but you can of course join us later, and you don't have to read all of them, only if you want to.

I have the first two books in Norwegian translation, and would like to join you at least for those. I'll see when I'm done with those if I want to continue.

Maria wrote: "I have the first two books in Norwegian translation, and would like to join you at least for those. I'll see when I'm done with those if I want to continue."

Thank you! The more the merrier. :) When would you like to start?

This is just to let you know that I'm starting now. I counted the pages in my edition, distracting the number of pages taken up by the foreword and explanations and all such added stuff, and I calculated that if I read five pages a day (pretty optimistic of me, considering the density of print and my limited French vocabulary), I can get to the end of the five books by the end of April, and still have time for work and other, easier readings. We'll see.
If I can find something that I should specially recommend or warn you against, I'll tell you. :)

I've read the first fifteen pages of Gargantua. I'm not as sure as I used to be that I'll have finished the series by May. It looks more like July. We'll see.

I don't know if any of you have started it, but let me help you (especially those of you who haven't heard about the book before) a bit by telling you why I'm doing this.

When I was at university, I read Mikhail Bakhtin's book on Rabelais. It told me what I had suspected but had been unable to explain before: that laughter had its own tradition and culture. That whatever is funny can still be taken very seriously. That humour does not have to be a mere "wrapping" around the "gist" of a text. That there are things which are best told in the language of comedies.

Since then, I've read a lot of books which are part of the culture of popular laughter. I don't like Molière, Erasmus of Rotterdam, Sterne or Burton: they are too bitter for me (yes, even Sterne), and I don't like narrators who seem to look down on humankind and laugh at its folly. I prefer Aristophanes, Cervantes (the second volume of Don Quixote, not the first!), Gogol, Villon, E. T. A. Hoffmann, Dickens and their Hungarian counterpart Jenő Rejtő,* because most of their books feel more like laughing TOGETHER than laughing AT somebody. They do not annihilate the world with their humour, or if they do, they renew it at the same time.

From Bakhtin's book and other sources I suspected Rabelais had written the same kind of a comedy. His books, however, have never been translated into Hungarian in full. Only the first three ones. I know (from Bakhtin, and partly from the personal experience of those first fifteen pages) that their humour is mostly vulgar, even obscene and blasphemous. And yet they have become classics. Without them, the culture of popular laughter wouldn't be the same. So, after reading a few books in French, I want to take part in that experience.

So far, I haven't been able to laugh at the books (they are far too difficult to read for that), only smile sometimes. But I don't mind at all. I can sense the "laughing together" and the possibility of renewal and liberation in the book. Plus I can't sense anyone looking down on humankind. I honestly don't care if that means reading about piles of excrement, and long digressions about the French law of five hundred years before. And if I have to spend one or two hours every day, finding impossible words in the dictionary, words which I probably will never use in my life (check out "rataconniculer" for instance), then so be it.

I hope that helps you cope with the difficulties at the beginning of the book.

* Whose best books have, sadly, not been published in English. :( I can fully understand why: the humour inherent in his diction must be almost impossible to translate. If anyone speaks the language of comedy exclusively, he does.

Hailey wrote: "I will definitely join this group. I probably can't start until March because of other buddy reads and the fact that January is pretty much library reads, but I look forward to this. If I start bef..."

Thank you for joining us. :) I'm looking forward to others reading this book, too. :) I'm pretty sure now that I'll be able to read it through, it's getting less and less difficult by the day.

Timár — thank you for your recommendation of Bakhtin’s book. I picked up a used copy of it and have just started it too.
Don’t worry about going too slow; I’ll be getting off to slow start too. Something possessed me to sign up for buddy reads of Proust’s I Search of Lost Time, The Tale of Genji, and The Brothers Karamazov. The first two of these seem more ambitious to me than Rabelais, but I expect to get through everything by the summer, along with some lighter fare as it comes along from my hold list at the library.

Barry wrote: "Timár — thank you for your recommendation of Bakhtin’s book. I picked up a used copy of it and have just started it too.
Don’t worry about going too slow; I’ll be getting off to slow start too. Som..."

You're absolutely welcome. I'm always glad to see others interested in Bakhtin. :) And I'm not that slow, as it turns out. So far I've managed to keep to at least five pages a day, and in seventeen days I've read 190 pages, in the meantime memorising the words with the help of Quizlet. I guess it's going to get faster when I get more used to it.

Timár — I gather you are reading Gargantua first. I had started reading the Urquhart and Motteux translation (which is the free eBook from Project Gutenberg) and the Raffel translation (which is the physical book I have had for a while). These both place Gargantua first because it is the first in the narrative’s timeline even though Pantagruel was the first written. I grew frustrated with these: the first because of its archaic 17th century English, the second because of its small print, and both because of their lack of notes. I finally broke down and spent $15 on the more scholarly Penguin Classics eBook edition translated by Scrrech, which follows the publication order.

Barry wrote: "Timár — I gather you are reading Gargantua first. I had started reading the Urquhart and Motteux translation (which is the free eBook from Project Gutenberg) and the Raffel translation (which is th..."

Yes, Gargantua comes first in the French edition published by Fragonard, too. I like it this way. I know it shouldn't be so, but I can understand the change.
(By the way - and unless you'd like to be formal and are doing it on purpose -, my first name is Krisztina. :) I know I should have swapped the order of the names when registering on a website used mostly by English-speaking people. Yet I kept the order used in my country.)

OK — Krisztina. Got it.

Finished Gargantua today, starting Pantagruel tomorrow...

Krisztina — I finished Gargantua yesterday. I also read Lucian’s The Ship to go along with Chapter 31 (or 33, depending on your edition). One can really see how Rabelais was inspired by Lucian.
I am enjoying the much more than I did when I was 16 or 17. I get the classical allusions now with a well annotated edition and 50+ more years of reading under my belt; before, they were just noise.

Barry wrote: "Krisztina — I finished Gargantua yesterday. I also read Lucian’s The Ship to go along with Chapter 31 (or 33, depending on your edition). One can really see how Rabelais was inspired by Lucian.
I a..."

Great idea, reading Rabelais together with Lucian! I wish I had thought of that, having Lucian's complete works here at home. In translation - for I cannot read in Greek. :( I've read a few of his texts before, but that was years ago. Now I was wondering which author to read first, and then I chose the bigger challenge. Next time, when I re-read Rabelais, I'll make sure I finish Lucian first.

Krisztina — The Ship from Lucian is fairly short (less than 30 minutes to read) and it’s connection is obvious. The notes in my edition suggest that Pyrrhus from Plutarch was also an inspiration. I didn’t get to it because it’s much longer and it seemed like only a small part was going to be relevant.

Barry wrote: "Krisztina — The Ship from Lucian is fairly short (less than 30 minutes to read) and it’s connection is obvious. The notes in my edition suggest that Pyrrhus from Plutarch was also an inspiration. I..."

I LOVED the Pyrrhus part from Plutarch, especially the battle of Argos! I'll check out both stories. In good time. Thank you for telling me!
Of course they are short. :) So are my days, unfortunately. :) I'm a teacher, and it's term-closing time. :) All the reading I do for my classes (plus the time Rabelais takes, plus my further studies in cultural history) will pretty much fill up the hours in which I can keep my brains active. :)
And by the way, I'm about as interested in Lucian as in Rabelais. Once I plunge into those two volumes, I want to get to the end.

Gargantua was fine enough. But Pantagruel is way better. It's just what I expected.

Barry wrote: "Krisztina — The Ship from Lucian is fairly short (less than 30 minutes to read) and it’s connection is obvious. The notes in my edition suggest that Pyrrhus from Plutarch was also an inspiration. I..."

And JUST when I have the most work to do, one of my friends creates the Lucian buddy read (on another site, not here) that she's been promising to start for years. When else? :) I still insist that I won't start reading Lucian until at least March... I insist, but I don't know how long.

Finished Pantagruel tonight. I just love the fantasy parts (walking around in the underworld and inside Pantagruel's body), and I can't say how much I hate at least half of what Panurge says and does. The other half is fine, especially when he starts speaking in all kinds of languages.
The journeys of the fourth book look much more interesting than the dialogues of the third (centred on who else but Panurge - oh no), but from now on I'll be following the original arrangement. I hope my decision will pay off.

I finished Le Tiers Livre yesterday. God, I thought it would never end.
I didn't like it half as much as the first two books. It was pretty good, but definitely not a fantasy novel, and also difficult to read. Not because of the vocabulary, though. I'm getting better and better in that respect. :)
And yet, even so, even though it's not the best piece of the series, it gave me something wonderful. I can't really put my finger on it. I can't even say why or how it did it. Still it helped me among all these frightening events going on around the world.
So I'm starting Le Quart Livre today.
What about you? Which book are you reading, or have you finished?

Timár_Krisztina wrote: "I finished Le Tiers Livre yesterday. God, I thought it would never end.
I didn't like it half as much as the first two books. It was pretty good, but definitely not a fantasy novel, and also diffi..."
I too finished the third book a little over a week ago and had a similar reaction. It droned on and on. Panurge keeps asking the same question and getting the same answer he doesn't like, so he asks somebody else, and on and on. When you deliver a joke, you can do three variations to build tension before getting to the punch line, but you better deliver the punch line at the end of the third variation. Otherwise, your audience will wander off. I lost track of how many time Panurge was told he would be a cuckold. But it was more than three. My mind kept wanting to wander off.
I'll be getting to Book Four by the end of the month. As usual, I reading at least a half a dozen things at the same time. The eBooks that I have from the library that had long wait lists I have to finish before they are due or put them on hold again or buy them. So sometimes the Rabelais has a lower priority, but I seem to be keeping to the book a month pace.
I'm really enjoying the Penguin Classics English edition translated by M.A. Screech. It's well annotated, which is really helpful.
Stay safe and healthy Krisztina.

Barry wrote: "I'll be getting to Book Four by the end of the month. As usual, I reading at least a half a dozen things at the same time. The eBooks that I have from the library that had long wait lists I have to finish before they are due or put them on hold again or buy them. So sometimes the Rabelais has a lower priority, but I seem to be keeping to the book a month pace.
I'm really enjoying the Penguin Classics English edition translated by M.A. Screech. It's well annotated, which is really helpful.
Stay safe and healthy Krisztina."

I'm so glad there's another person somewhere in the world reading with the same persistence as I do. :)
Rest assured, I'm reading several books at the same time as well.
I wish you the best health and a happy Easter, too.

I'm reading Le Quart Livre. In fact, I've read two thirds of it already. And I can tell you it's much, MUCH better than the previous one. It's much more of a fantasy, or rather a parody of fantasies before the genre was even invented, and also a parody of chivalric romances. It's still difficult to read, but I like it very much with its journey among islands with strange and grossly funny cultures. If you think you've had enough of Rabelais after the boredom of Le Tiers Livre, you're wrong. It's worth reading on.

Timár_Krisztina wrote: "I'm reading Le Quart Livre. In fact, I've read two thirds of it already. And I can tell you it's much, MUCH better than the previous one. It's much more of a fantasy, or rather a parody of fantasie..."
I'm working on it too. I'm only about 1/3 of the way through right now. I have another library book I have to finish in the next two days, but I should finish Le Quart Livre in the next week or so.
Definitely more variety in this book. Reminding me some of the last half of Gulliver's Travels.

Barry wrote: "Definitely more variety in this book. Reminding me some of the last half of Gulliver's Travels."

Yes, I'm sure writers like Swift, or other classics of the fantastic knew their way around Rabelais's work. And Lucian's, of course. I'm going to continue with him, once I've finished Rabelais. I can't read the two at the same time, unfortunately, for the lack of time.

Love the frozen words.
That’s what all writing and books are about.
The author’s writing freezes words onto the page; the reader’s reading melts them and makes them speak.

Barry wrote: "Love the frozen words.
That’s what all writing and books are about.
The author’s writing freezes words onto the page; the reader’s reading melts them and makes them speak."

That's right. I loved that part, too.

It's strange how the best parts seem to merge into each other in my memory. I cannot even remember which came first and which next sometimes, but I can remember the exact words used in the scene.
It must be because of the difficulties of vocabulary, and the lengthy dialogues.

Finally finished. The last book certainly was different. Almost more like Robert Howard in its descriptions.

Barry wrote: "Finally finished. The last book certainly was different. Almost more like Robert Howard in its descriptions."

That's great! I only started it yesterday. My edition says it's not completely by Rabelais, that's why it's different. But nobody knows which part is his and which was finished by someone else after his death.

Barry wrote: "Finally finished. The last book certainly was different. Almost more like Robert Howard in its descriptions."

I'm so glad you started this "project" with me, and have been so persistent. :) Thank you.

I finished the last book today. I'm so glad I made it through the volume. My friends who read in French tell me whoever reads this series in French is able to do about anything afterwards. :)