Throughout the years of my close involvement with wor(l)ds’ transactions, as a translator, in the triangle of the Renaissance doctors Rabelais, Montaigne, and, yes, Louis-Ferdinand Céline, the French ...author of the novel Journey to the End of Night (1932), their views on satire can be considered from a rather unconventional angle. By means of an imaginary morbid epistolary medical council, the impromptu introduction tries to entangle this peculiar trio in a freewheeling alliance, leading to the assumption that every translation defies the interpretational ambiguities of the utopian Thelema motto “Do as you will”. In the satirical context of all source and target faces, it is always acting on the verge of the paradoxical encomium, the hypothetical pasticcio, and obscurantist reversals of the original text. Of course, the issue at stake here is one of the convolutions of Erasmus’ Praise of Folly, Rabelais’ utopian Thelema Abbey, and the German Epistles of Obscure Men in pathetically wretched Latin. This paper deals with Renaissance and humanist satire, focusing on Rabelais’ five books of Gargantua and Pantagruel (1532-1564) and the interplay between the ideas of truth, truthfulness, and seriousness. In addition, the paper deals with how the Renaissance spirit of this satirical contemporary and ally of ours challenges the issue of verbal boundaries and the materiality of language.
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