Cyrano de Bergerac

French writer

• Born: March 6, 1619
• Birthplace: Paris, France
• Died: July 28, 1655
• Place of death: Paris, France

Although the real-life Cyrano de Bergerac was a gallant soldier, a fine swordsman, a playwright, and an author, he is best remembered as the hero of numerous romantic but unhistorical legends. Since the nineteenth century, many readers have known him only as the protagonist of a poetic drama by Edmond Rostand.

Early Life

Savinien Cyrano became famous as Cyrano de Bergerac (see-rah-noh deh buhr-zheh-rahk), an appellation he took from the name of an estate near Paris. When Cyrano was born, France was entering a turbulent but exciting period. Young Louis XIII was on the throne, and Cardinal de Richelieu was consolidating his power behind that throne. The great philosophers René Descartes (1596-1650) and Blaise Pascal (1623-1662) flourished during this period. Pierre Corneille (1606-1684) became the era’s great tragic dramatist, abandoning the comic stage to Jean-Baptiste Poquelin, known by the pseudonym Molière (1622-1673). Corneille’s even greater successor, Jean Racine, was born in 1639. The French Academy had been established only four years earlier.

The first half of the seventeenth century was a time of revivification in France, and Paris was the scene of furious activity when, as legend has it, a brilliant, impudent nineteen-year-old Gascon, Cyrano de Bergerac, arrived in the capital. Although Cyrano certainly fit the Gascon stereotype of a swaggering boaster, most sources list Paris as his birthplace, which means that the appealing story of a young fire-breather from the provinces who takes the capital by storm is probably fiction. However, Cyrano could outswagger and outboast anyone in France, and his fearsome sword arm supported his bravest words. In Edmond Rostand’s play Cyrano de Bergerac (1897), the author presents a hero whose swordplay is a match for that of a hundred men. Although this characterization suits Rostand’s romantic purposes, it also is historically accurate. Cyrano’s capacity for dazzling violence was larger than life, even in a violent age. His personality utterly charmed his friends, embittered his enemies, and assured him of having plenty of both.

Cyrano’s most prominent physical feature was his long nose—so long, indeed, that it was thought to be disfiguring. A modern historian might be tempted to attribute Cyrano’s disdain for the nobility, the clergy, artistic dilettantes, and the reigning beauties of the day to a neurotic compensation for his facial disfigurement. Regardless of the source of his motivation, he was a force with which to be reckoned during the stormy seventeenth century.

As a very young man, Cyrano had joined a company of guards, and he was a soldier up to the age of twenty-three. During his distinguished military career, he was twice wounded, suffering one of these injuries while serving gallantly at the Siege of Arras.

Life’s Work

In 1642, Cyrano left military life to study science and literature. His teacher was the philosopher and mathematicianPierre Gassendi . Cyrano was strongly influenced by his tutor’s scientific theories and libertine philosophy and, as a result, had become a skeptic and a materialist by the time he began his writing career.

He published works in several genres. His writings for the stage include a comedy, Le Pédant joué (1653; The Ridiculous Pedant or The Pedant Imitated ), and a tragedy La Mort d’Agrippine (1654; The Death of Agrippina ). His best-known works, however, were collected and published after his death by his friend Le Bret. These two science fiction books are L’histoire comique des états et empires de la lune (1657; The Other World, or the States and Empires of the Moon )—the complete text of which appeared for the first time in 1921 as L’Autre Monde —and L’histoire comique des états et empires du soleil (1662; The States and Empires of the Sun ). His other writings, the Lettres and Le ministre d’état flambé, are difficult, if not impossible, to find in English translations.

Cyrano was a free thinker who questioned traditional religious beliefs and challenged the authority of the church. He was ahead of his time in arguing that animals possess intelligence and in stating that matter is made up of atoms. His science fiction is sometimes prescient; for example, it predicts the invention of the phonograph and Esperanto, an artificial language that was not created until 1887. His writings in this genre satirize seventeenth century religious and astronomical beliefs, which placed humans and their world at the center of the universe. Cyrano was not, however, a rigorous, systematic thinker. Rather, his mind was that of a brilliant poet, capable of achieving inspired insights.

His earlier dramatic work The Ridiculous Pedant was ebullient but was considered too frivolous for the established taste of classicism. The value of its liveliness and high spirits was recognized first by Molière, who based two scenes in one of his plays on it, and later by modern readers. The Death of Agrippina is a fine, intellectually impressive play that advances daring ideas through impassioned tragic dialogue. Among Cyrano’s political writings—he was a fearless political satirist—was a violent pamphlet against the men of the Fronde (opposition)—a series of political disturbances between 1648 and 1653 during the minority of King Louis XIV . In this pamphlet, he defends Cardinal Jules Mazarin, prime minister to Louis XIV, as a political realist in the tradition of Niccolò Machiavelli. Cyrano’s Lettres , filled with bold and original metaphors, are among the finest examples of baroque prose, an elaborate and ornate style. His works inspired a number of later writers.

Despite the quality of these works, Cyrano’s colorful life consistently evokes more interest than does his work, largely because of the continuing popularity of Rostand’s play. When the name Cyrano de Bergerac is mentioned, it is the Cyrano of Rostand’s somewhat fanciful account that usually comes to mind. In the plot of this play, the gallant soldier and brilliant poet becomes a shy lover because of his remarkably large nose (a period portrait of the historical Cyrano attests to the reality of this facial feature).

Because no satisfactory biography of Cyrano is to be found in English and because multiple translations of Rostand’s play, ranging over a period of many years, are still in print, Cyrano’s life story has become Rostand’s version. This version reflects a poetic, if not a literal, truth. For example, Cyrano was an unorthodox and daring, yet essentially minor, dramatist. In histories of French drama, even of seventeenth century French drama, Cyrano’s career is summarized in paragraphs, whereas whole chapters are devoted to the comedies of Molière and the tragedies of Racine. Yet Rostand seizes upon Cyrano’s independence and iconoclasm as a dramatist and heightens those qualities for theatrical effect. In Act I, he has Cyrano interrupt the performance of a classical play that has just begun before a full house. A fat and windy actor, in the costume of a rustic shepherd, is driven from the stage by the high-handed hero because his acting has offended Cyrano’s artistic sensibilities.

Likewise, Rostand takes the florid baroque style for which Cyrano was known and creates one of the most memorable scenes in his play. When a young nobleman seeks to goad the hero into a duel with swords by telling him his nose is “rather large,” Cyrano chides him for wasting his opportunity to insult imaginatively and reels off twenty outrageously witty metaphors for the hugeness of his nose. The dim-witted nobleman is a stereotype of the aristocracy that the writer scorned.

Next, the playwright charmingly combines Cyrano’s audacity with his facility in composition. As he fights the young man who insulted him, he composes an extemporaneous ballade—three stanzas of eight lines each and a refrain of four. As he declaims the last line of the refrain, he runs his opponent through.

Rostand dramatizes Cyrano’s well-documented contempt for clerics by introducing, in Act III, a vain, greedy, and rather stupid Capuchin monk who is easily duped into marrying young lovers. While the marriage is being performed, Cyrano distracts an unwanted suitor by dropping from a branch, as from a great height. He confronts the man, disguising his face. He claims to have fallen from the Moon and dazzles his victim by recounting vivid details of his journey through the constellations. When the ceremony has been completed and the importunate lover can no longer interfere, Cyrano reveals his true identity. The interloper sarcastically suggests that Cyrano some day write a book about his experiences on the Moon. He replies that he has engaged himself to do so. Of course, the historical Cyrano did write such a book.

Other scenes are pure invention. The historical Cyrano died young, at the age of thirty-six. Rostand sets the romantic death in the park of a Parisian convent after Cyrano has declared his long-concealed love for his beautiful cousin Roxane. He has suffered a mortal head wound, inflicted in a cowardly sneak attack by his enemies. In the delirium resulting from his injury, he composes his epitaph, grandiloquently identifying himself as Hercule-Savinien de Cyrano de Bergerac—philosopher, scientist, poet, musician, duelist, wit, and lover. He dies still speaking brilliant dialogue. This is the legendary Cyrano, the Cyrano who has largely absorbed and mythologized the historical person.

Significance

Cyrano’s short life was marked by imprudence and misfortune. His was a genius that perhaps revealed itself only in snatches. He was a writer fated to be remembered less for his own works than as a precursor or inspiration to other writers. His “imaginary voyages” influenced Bernard le Bovier de Fontenelle, Jonathan Swift, and Voltaire—all of whom improved on his ideas. Molière in his farcical Les Fourberies de Scapin, first performed on May 24, 1671, borrows from Cyrano’s The Ridiculous Pedant the idea of the famous galley scene as well as the account of the trick Scapin plays on Géronte.

However, Cyrano’s persona has become more comparable to a character from Alexandre Dumas’s Les trois mousquetaires (1844; The Three Musketeers, 1846) than to Molière or Racine. His image has been molded by the many actors who have portrayed him in Rostand’s charming vehicle. The first actor to play the role was Constant Coquelin. His performance so pleased the playwright that the published version of the play was dedicated to him. According to Rostand, the soul of Cyrano was reborn in Coquelin. Actor José Ferrer won an Academy Award for his portrayal of Cyrano in a 1950 film adaptation of the play. The French leading-man Gérard Depardieu won praise for his rendition of the role in another film version released in 1990.

The prolific novelist, screen writer, and essayist Anthony Burgess translated and adapted Cyrano de Bergerac as a play with music. His version was published in 1971 and produced on Broadway as Cyrano in 1973. The dramatic character and the charismatic real person from whom he was created continue to fascinate.

Bibliography

Butler, Kathleen T. A History of French Literature: From the Earliest Times to the End of the Eighteenth Century. Vol. 1. New York: Russell & Russell, 1966. In Chapter II, “Literature Under Richelieu and Mazarin (1610-1661),” the author refers to Cyrano’s comedy as burlesque, reflecting a freedom that preceded the standard of taste to which the next generation of writers conformed.

Cazamian, L. A History of French Literature. Oxford, England: Clarendon Press, 1955. Discusses the smoothness of Cyrano’s style and characterizes him as the most intellectually fertile of the “irregulars” preceding the marshaled ranks of the classics.

Dowden, Edward. A History of French Literature. London: William Heinemann, 1911. Describes Cyrano’s taste, under the influence of the mannerisms of Italy and Spain, as “execrable” but also notes the satiric truth to be found within his wild fantasies.

Lloyd, Sue. The Man Who Was Cyrano: A Life of Edmond Rostand, Creator of Cyrano de Bergerac. Bloomington, Ind.: Unlimited, 2002. The first full-length English biography of Rostand, the book recounts the origins of Cyrano de Bergerac and describes how he expressed his own character and ideals in the character of Cyrano.

Romanowski, Sylvie. “Cyrano de Bergerac’s Epistemological Bodies: ’Pregnant With a Thousand Definitions.’” Science Fiction Studies 25, no. 3 (November, 1998): 414-432. Examines the scientific imagery and treatment of the human body in Cyrano’s science fiction novels, L’Histoire comique des états et empires de la lune, and L’Histoire comique des états et empires du soleil.

Rostand, Edmond. Cyrano de Bergerac. New York: Three Sirens Press, 1931. A translation by Helen B. Dole, illustrated with pen-and-ink drawings by Nino Carbe. Valuable because of W. L. Parker’s introduction, which compares the historical Cyrano with the hero of the play. Parker concludes that Cyrano’s skill with the sword is “no metaphor.” Also contains critical commentary on the play by W. P. Trent.

‗‗‗‗‗‗‗. Cyrano de Bergerac. Translated by Brian Hooker. New York: Modern Library, 1923. In a lengthy foreword, Clayton Hamilton comments upon the romantic power of the play and the quality of this translation. Most interestingly, he compares the opening performance (October 3, 1898) of Richard Mansfield, the first American actor to play Cyrano, with a 1900 performance by Constant Coquelin, the French actor who originated the role in Paris. Hamilton writes that Mansfield “acted the part admirably” but that Coquelin “was Cyrano.”