Serendipity – or was it?

Serendipity is probably not the perfect word to use; however, I have struggled to find a better one even after consulting my Roget’s Thesaurus, which is always on my bedside table. Initially that didn’t go well because I picked up my copy of Fermat’s Last Theorem which strangely was also on the table. If you have never read that book, I can thoroughly recommend it as a fascinating read. It is the history of a mathematics puzzle and people’s attempts to solve it over a period of more than 300 years.

Serendipity describes the occurrence and development of events by chance in a happy or beneficial way. The event I’m describing was certainly initially by chance; however, the development in a happy and beneficial way came about because I chose to pursue a course of action.

Over the Easter Weekend a slight error led to that initial chance event. I had not planned for the public library being closed for four days and consequently found myself without a book to read on Monday evening having finished the last library book I had the night before. I like to read at least a few pages before going to sleep. Being an avid user of the library, I do not possess many books and those that I do have I thought had all been read.

I looked through my meagre bookshelves to find a suitable book to re-read, one where I could not remember the storyline. It was then that I found a book I had no recollection of ever having read and no idea about how I had acquired it. It was ‘Notes on a Scandal’ by Zoe Heller, not something I would normally read. It was shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 2003, something that would make me less likely to want to read it. Nevertheless, at that moment it was a shining jewel in my collection; it was unread.

I am enjoying reading it; it is different from my normal fare of crime and thriller novels. Although it is centred around a possible criminal act. What gave rises to the occurrence and development of events by chance in a happy or beneficial way was the discovery of a word I did not know. A rare event after 60 years of reading. That word was Pantagruelian, what a fine specimen. I deduced its meaning from the context and stored it away in my memory to research in the morning.

Pantagruelian – adjective rare – enormous. Origin late 17th century: from Pantagruel (the name of an enormous giant in Rabelais’s novel Pantagruel (1532)) + -ian. I just had to find out more.

The novel’s full name is Pantagruel: King of the Dipsodes and was published 1532, under the pseudonym Alcofribas Nasier (an anagram of François Rabelais). In 1534 he published a prequel Gargantua and Pantagruel which dealt with the life and exploits of Pantagruel’s father Gargantua. I found it interesting that the father should give rise to the vastly more popular word gargantuan. That could have been because that book was more favourable to the monarchy than the preceding volume had been.

François Rabelais has been called the first great French prose author. I don’t think he set out to be that. He started writing to supplement his income and used giants as the basis for his allegorical writing because they were popular in literature that sold well at the time. He certainly wasn’t considered a great prose author in his day, many thought his words were heresy and in 1543 both his first two books were condemned by the Sorbonne, then a theological college. His third and fourth books, written under his own name, fared better. They introduce the character Panurge which gave rise to the French idiom ‘Comme les moutons de Panurge’ – ‘Panurge’s sheep’ and our derogatory term ‘like sheep’. It comes from a story where Panurge is overcharged when buying a sheep and he gets his revenge.

“Suddenly, I do not know how, it happened, I did not have time to think, Panurge, without another word, threw his sheep, crying and bleating, into the sea. All the other sheep, crying and bleating in the same intonation, started to throw themselves in the sea after it, all in a line. The herd was such that once one jumped, so jumped its companions. It was not possible to stop them, as you know, with sheep, it’s natural to always follow the first one, wherever it may go.”

— Francois Rabelais, Quart Livre, chapter VIII

What a rich vein I started to mine when I investigated Pantagruelian and it doesn’t stop. Thinking about pantagruelian and gargantuan – similar meaning but vastly different in terms of popularity of usage reminded me of two other words like that, behemoth and leviathan. I think I wrote a blog post about those two words may years ago. While searching for it I can across another blog post with a title that related to Panurge’s sheep, Nuanced Lemmings.

I took a break from my journey developing events in a happy and beneficial way to write this and deal with the everyday things in life. I will resume the journey soon, exploring the life and works of François Rabelais. I am now about half way through reading ‘Notes on a Scandal’. Last night I came across another word that was not familiar to me, bowdlerize – verb to remove material that is considered improper or offensive from a text or account, especially with the result that the text becomes weaker or less effective. Origin mid-19th century: from the name of Dr Thomas Bowdler (1754–1825), who published an expurgated edition of Shakespeare in 1818, + -ize.

I foresee another journey developing events by chance in a happy or beneficial way.

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