^{Note 1 in page 795} The text quoted will be that of the edition of Lacour (1874).

^{Note 2 in page 795} Before him three 20th-century scholars had discussed the Cymbalum: Ernst Walser, Der Sinn des Cymbalum mundi von Bonaventure des Périers [Eine Spoilschrift] gegen Calvin, in Gesammelte Studien zur Geistesgeschichte der Renaissance (Basel 1932), pp. 151–168; Abel Lefranc in the critical edition of Rabelais (1922), iii, lxi; and Phil. Aug. Becker, Bonaventure Des Périers als Dichter und Erzahler, in Wiener Sitzungsberichte, cc [1924], 48 seq. Walser focusses his attention only on those parts of the Cymbalum which can be interpreted as containing allusions to Calvinism, that is, on the first, second, and the opening of the third dialogue. He adds to the anagrams upon which all scholars are agreed—Rhetulus = Lutherus, Cubercus = Buccerus, Drarig = Girard (Erasmus)—new, phantastic identifications: according to him the name Calvinus is hidden in Curtalius, Lefèvre d'Eslaples (*Fabrinus) in Byrphanes, and Farel (*Farelio) in Ardelio. Lefranc, in turn, deals only with the scene of the dogs of the fourth dialogue, in which scene the dog Hylactor would represent Bonaventure, and Pamphagus Rabelais—Hylactor-Bonaventure encouraging Pamphagus-Rabelais to come out in the open with his truth (his antireligious doctrine). Becker sees in the Cymbalum a series of loosely connected, Lucianesque dialogues into which the author has freely introduced details reminiscent of his own biography (Mercury's busy life is Bonaventure's own life at the court; it is he who feels tempted to “speak out” like the dog Hylactor, but would in so doing compromise his true nature). None of these critics has given attention to the Cymbalum as a work of art complete in itself; all of them have sacrificed to the furor identificandi, to considerations outside of the work of art. As a matter of fact, a complete critical survey of the different interpretations of the Cymbalum in the last 30 years is now offered by V. L. Saulnier in Bibl. d'humanisme el renaissance, xiii (April 1951), 43–69, in the first part of an article in which the well known seizièmiste announces a forthcoming interpretation of his own. Among those publications in Prof. Saulnier's article that I have been able to read, I find myself in—partial—agreement only with L. Delaruelle's article in Rev. d'hist. litt., xxxii, 1–22 (This writer vigorously opposes any allegorical interpretations which would lead to the assumption that Bonaventure was an atheist, but denies the existence of one basic idea which would bind the four dialogues of the Cymbalum together), and with that of C. A. Mayer, Bibl. d'hum. el renaiss., xii, 190–207. Mayer points out in detail the Lucianic reminiscences in the Cymbalum, especially those centering around the figure of Mercury, yet endorses Febvre's theory of Des Périer's anti-christianism supposedly due to the reading of Contra Celsum and of the identity of Mercury and Christ, although restricting this identity to certain parts of the work.

^{Note 8 in page 796} This rapprochement had been made previously and somewhat hesitantly by Henri Busson, Les sources et le développement du rationalisme (1922), p. 197.

^{Note 4 in page 800} I am using the translation of Frederick Crombie, Origen contra Celsum (Edinburgh, 1872).

^{Note 5 in page 800} Critics have also blithely identified certain dramatis personae with personages of contemporary history without considering with philological earnest Bonaventure's mode of procedure in coining names. Thus Walser, applying the method of Ménage, (haquenéeequus!), identifies Ardelio with Farel. He forgets, however, that the great majority of the names in the Cymbalum are of Greek or Roman origin, and that in this par ticular case a well-known Latin appellative serves Bonaventure's purpose of characterization: ardalio is attested in Martial (Epigr. ii.7), in the meaning ‘busybody, meddler’: a name that corresponds exactly to the rôle of the figure in the Cymbalum from whom the thieves hide the stolen book because they fear his talkativeness, his obsession with money and his hunger for easy profit—qualities of which he gives us ample evidence in the scene of the speaking horse. Ardelio, we are told, will tell the story of Phlegon to maistre Cerdonius, lequel ne l'oblira pas en ses annalles—who bears a name (similar to that of Ardelio) derived from Lat. cerdo-onis ‘(an artisan) who seeks sordid profits’ (a coinage from the Gr. kerdos ‘gain‘) and whose “annals” are obviously only a way to make money.

^{Note 5 in page 802} We are reminded here of the scene in the Lucianesque Latin dialogue Charon by the 15th-century Italian humanist Giovanni Pontano in which Mercury is forced to admonish three irascible grammarians quarelling about words in the netherworld: “Reverentius, grammatici! Verbis enim, non manibus vobis contendendum est. . . ”

^{Note 7 in page 804} Later reference in the third dialogue to Jupiter's impotence after the book of Fate has been stolen must be considered as part of Bonaventure's satirical strategy in dramatizing the situation laid out in the Prognostication: Jupiter, after the theft, is deprived of all his power and is brought down to the level of the astrologers: in the announcement Mercury is to read on his behalf in Dial, in Jupiter threatens: “de s'en aller par les douze maisons du ciel, oú il [Jupiter] pourra aussi bien deviner celuy qui l'aura que les astrologues”—which is a perfect self-annihilation on the part of the father of the gods.

^{Note 8 in page 806} The same motif of the meaningless speech of animals has already been expressed in Dial, ii by Trigabus when he skeptically remarks about the particles of the philosophers' stone with which the philosophers are busying themselves at the moment: “mais icelles n'ont eu aucune vertu ne proprieté, sinon qu'ilz en ont transformé des hommes en cigales, qui ne font autre chose que cacqueter, jusques a la mort; d'aultres en perroquetz injurieux, non entendans ce qu'ilz jargonnent ...” The animals which do not understand their own chatter are thus consistently opposed in the second and third dialogues to the horse and dogs in the third and fourth dialogues, to those animals, that is, which understand what they say without being understood by man—and to the animals (birds) which do not speak like man but are understood by him (in the episode of Celia which we shall treat later). All of these details prove the consistent manner in which Bonaventure composed his dialogues: even the more loosely connected second dialogue contains details which will be developed in the later dialogues.

^{Note 9 in page 809} It is noteworthy that the illiterate dog Hylactor, too, is steeped in literature and is given to quotations from books (with chapter references) as though he were a humanistic scholar. Bonaventure has developed a virtuosity in presenting his characters in a nowhereland between reality and irreality.

^{Note 10 in page 809} The idea that one may acquire the qualities of a certain being by eating from its flesh is a widespread folkloristic belief underlying, for example, the French phrase avoir mangé du singe ‘to be in a bad mood.‘

^{Note 11 in page 809} Another contradiction in Pamphagus' character: when Hylactor promises Pamphagus to tell him the next day (which happens to be, we are told, that of the Saturnalia, the day of free speech for everyone—a most appropriate day for Hylactor to indulge his craving to speak!) a number of fables (which he lists), Pamphagus reacts only with the short spiteful remark: “je suis tout bersé de telles matières”—yet he himself, as we saw, tells us in another passage that he owes his capacity of speech to a fable! Incidentally, the list of the fables in which Hylactor delights has been grossly misrepresented by Febvre: of the 6 items, 5 are ancient, 3 of which can be found mentioned in Contra Celsum (but they are common property of ancient thought: Prometheus, Hercules, and Er—as well as two not mentioned by Origen: Paris and Psaphon). Under such circumstances, is one entitled to conclude that Bonaventure has drawn here his inspiration from the Contra Celsum? We can even go further and state that our passage is surely not under this influence since one of the fables listed is “le grand Hercules de Lybie” (an allusion to the classification of “six Herculeses” in Cicero, De nat. deorum) while in Origen (pp. 102, 476) there is mention only of “Hercules,” and since with Celsus, Hercules the false god is grouped once with the Dioscures, Aesculapius, and Dionysus, another time with Orpheus, Aesculapius, Anax-archus, and Epictectus, never with Prometheus, Er, and Psaphon. The essential trait, however, of this passage is not the list of ancient fables, but the comparison—and the ironical destruction—of the ancient fables by the coupling of them with the modern French nonsense-verse (chanson de ricochet). We witness in our passage, under the disguise of a list of six “fables,” the explosion of the list by one of its items which, with its non-sensicality, casts doubt on the five others.

^{Note 12 in page 811} To summarize, we find the motif of “parole” in tie following episodes of the Cymbalum: (1) in the episode of the philosophers' stone: “parole” in the form of a verbalistic pseudo-philosophical altercation concerning a philosophers' stone-which-is-only-a-word; (2) in the episode of the theft of Jupiter's booh: “parole” in the form of Jupiter's dubious book-which-is-just-words and in the form of deceitful astrological predictions; (3) in the episode of Mercury and the inn-keeper: “parole” in the form of Mercury's empty promises to perform a miracle; (4) in the episode of Mercury's transformation: “parole” in the form of magic words, symbols of a pseudo-possibility for man to gain superhuman powers; (5) in Mercury's monologue in Dialogue III: (a) errand for Juno: “parole” used by animals who mechanically imitate human words; (b) commission from Venus: “parole” as a dissimulative device in the game of love; (c) commission from Minerva: “parole” as used in futile literary polemics; (6) in the episode of Mercury and Phlegon: (a) Mercury's use of magic words (cf. above, n. 4) and (b) the speaking horse, Phlegon: “parole” vainly used by an animal striving to transcend itself and the inefficacity of its speech among men; and, finally, (7) in the episode of the speaking dogs: “parole” as a powerful, but useless, urge in man (as reflected in the dogs) toward self-expression and self-transcendence.

^{Note 13 in page 812} It is a confirmation of our views concerning the “cluster” that the same association of nouvelle—merveille—curiosité—bruit is also to be found in the Prognostication (choses nompareilles—nouvelles nouvelles—bruyt).

^{Note 14 in page 813} It is ironical that the “natural” miracle performed by Cupid is made to coincide chronologically with the moment of utmost helplessness of “Jupiter altitonant,” who is unable to thunder because he has lost his “book.”

^{Note 15 in page 813} The fact that Celia has no visual experience of the miracle is the more striking since, in other scenes of the Cymbalum, human beings come to see miraculous outward events happening before their eyes and believe them real only because they have “seen” them. Thus Ardelio acknowledges the miracle of the speaking horse by saying: “Or jamais je n'eusse creu qu'ung cheval eust parlé, si je ne l'eusses veu et ouy” (Dial, iii); similarly Byrphanes comments on Mercury's descent: “Il ne s'en fault gueres que je ne croye ce que tu me diz, veu aussi queye voy la chose à l'Œil. Pardieu! Voylà ung homme accoustré de la sorte que les poètes nous descripvent Mercure. Je ne sçay que faire de croyre que ce le soit.” Curtalius in turn affirms his belief in the miracle because he has seen come true what he “saw” written : “Que je regarde? Je voy maintenant ce que j'ay tant de foys trouvé en escript, et que je ne pouvois croire.” How should we explain this contrast between Celia who believes without seeing and the other characters who believe because they have seen? Did Bonaventure wish to imply that only the episode of Celia is real and the rest of the scenes of the Cymbalum a phantasmagoria, that indeed the latter scenes “n'ont pas eu lieu?”

^{Note 16 in page 814} In Bonaventure's view, the use of language for poetry, as opposed to Mercury's magic abracadabra, is legitimate. It is characteristic that the love songs of Cupid are borrowed from contemporary popular poetry and from a poem of Marot which most closely approximates popular poetry. Cupid, who is Nature, must needs express himself in the most “natural” poetic form.

^{Note 17 in page 816} Cf. the chapter “La première légende de Luther” in Will G. Moore's thesis La réforme allemande et la littérature française (Strasbourg, 1930).

^{Note 18 in page 816} The philosophers' stone has been proved to be an apple of Eris—if Bucer had his way, he would convert it into the “ring of toleration” of Nathan der Weise.

^{Note 19 in page 816} A similar technique has been used later by Wieland in his Lucianesque satirical novel about Greek philistinism, Die Abderiten, into which he introduced elements suggestive of his own Thuringian environment—again with the result that modern critics mistook the work for a satire attacking exclusively things German. Cf. L. Edelstein, Univ. of California Publ. in Mod. Philol., xxvi, 441–472.

^{Note 20 in page 818} Becker's suggestion, made only in passing, that the puzzling name of this monastery is nothing but the Latin verb form dabas “you gave,” is worth expansion: by this mystifying name, Bonaventure, writing under the pseudonym of Thomas Incrédule, gives slyly to understand to his public of Pierres Croyants that “you” (i.e., the public) gave “me” (the author) the MS (i.e., the subject matter of my work: the superstitions and the gullibility which are to be found in all of you).

^{Note 21 in page 818} This must be assumed because the epithet cymbalum mundi in the personal meaning of “advertiser,” “glorifier of the whole world” used by Tiberius could not apply to any character in Bonaventure's dialogues.

^{Note 22 in page 819} As parallels to the idea of cymbalum “noisy world,” we may quote from the Prognostication the phrase “les hauts sons et les cornées” (said of the “prognosticateurs”) and the following passages from the poem Invective contre Renommée, probably addressed to Marguerite and describing uncritical praise in terms of empty sound:

Et quand tu [Renommée] vois que tes langues cliquantes

Ne sont tel loz justement expliquantes . . .

Car ces vertus qui ne sont point nombrées,

Ne veulent point estre ainsi celebrées

Par bruit mondain ny par humaine voix

Qui bien souvent fraudent le prix et le poix . ..

^{Note 23 in page 819} The detail of the frayed cloths and the verb alget must have been prompted by Martial's expression algentes togae (xii.36; xiv.137) ‘togas so frayed that their bearers must freeze.‘

^{Note 24 in page 819} A few details have been contributed to this article by my father, Leo Spitzer. But more than to his material help I am indebted to his creed and working hypothesis—that the work of art should be analyzed first in itself, in a kind of critical immanentism, before we ask ourselves what influences from the outside (sources, biography, history) may have left their stamp upon it.