||back to cyrano main page|| Savien Cyrano de Bergerac French soldier, satirist and dramatist, who has been the basis of many romantic but unhistorical legends. Best known of them is Edmond Rostand's stage play Cyrano de Bergerac (1897) which describes adventures of the 17th century nobleman, known for his large nose and swordsmanship, and who loves desperately beautiful Roxane. Real Cyrano de Bergerac had, in real life, very little in common with the hero of the Rostand play. He was born in Paris, and educated by a a priest in the village of Bergerac. Later he was sent to the Collège de Beauvais. After acquiring fame as a dueller and Bohemian, he enlisted the army at the age of 20. He was severely wounded twice, once at a fight with Gascon Guard, and at the siege of Arras in 1640. In the following year he gave up his military career and started to study under the philosopher and mathematician Pierre Gassendi. Influenced by Gassendi's theories and libertine philosophy, he wrote stories of imaginary journeys to the Moon and Sun, and satirized views which saw humanity and the Earth as the center of creation. In the 1650s Cyrano de Bergerac published two plays, LA MORT D'AGRIPPINE (1654), which was suspected of blasphemy, and LE PÉDANT JOUÉ (1654), from which Molière borrowed heavily for his play The Cheats of Chapin. Only parts of his major work, L'AUTRE MONDE, were published in posthumous versions. His friend Henri le Bret censored their heretical elements. It is assumed, that the third volume in Cyrano Bergerac's serie HISTOIRE COMIQUE, The History of the Stars, is lost or it is destroyed. The books belong in the genre 'fantastic voyages', of which the oldest examples are Sumerian Epic of Gilgamesh, from the third millenium BC, and Homer's Odyssey, from the first. In the 17th century were written also Johannes Kepler's Somnium (1643), Francis Bacon's New Atlantis (1627), and Tommasso Campanella's City of the Sun. The works influenced several later satirists, among them Jonathan Swiftand Voltaire. Cyrano de Bergerac died in Paris on July 28, 1655. For further information: The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction by John Clute and Peter Nichols (1993) Selected works: LA MORT D'AGRIPPINE, 1654 - THE DEATH OF AGRIPPINE LE PÉDANT JOUÉ, 1654 - THE PEDANT IMITATED Molieré based two scenes of Les Fourberies de Scapin The Cheats of Scapin - on this play HISTORIE COMIQUE DES ÉTATS ET EMPIRES DE LA LUNE, 1656 SELENARCHIA: THE GOVERNMENT OF THE WORLD IN THE MOON HISTORIE COMIQUE DES ÉTATS ET EMPIRES DE SOLEIL, 1662 OTHER WORLDS: THE COMICAL HISTORY OF THE STATES AND EMPIRES OF THE MOON AND SUN (both books, Moon and Sun, transl. Geoffrey Strachan, 1965) ŒUVRES, 1957 Youth Cyrano de Bergerac was born in Paris, on March 6, 1619. In 1622, when Cyrano was three, the family moved to Mauvières. There, Cyrano spent most of his youth wandering the countryside, absorbed in the flora and fauna while fantasizing about duels, rescuing maidens, and other heroic exploits. In the local school, he met and became boyhood friends with Henri Le Bret. Their friendship lasted a lifetime. Le Bret eventually became Cyrano's editor and biographer - and also a Jesuit priest, attaining the rank of Grand Provost. He died at 93, in 1710. In 1629, Cyrano de Bergerac was sent to the College of Beauvais. Precocious and eager to learn, his expectations were destroyed by Master Jean Grangier, the principal of the college. For eight years, Cyrano was more beaten than taught. His father, Abel, ignored his son's pleas to be transferred to another institution. Hurt and angered, Cyrano turned to the sword and began to practice relentlessly. Ironically, Cyrano eventually got his revenge on Grangier not by the blade, but by the pen: in 1648 he wrote THE PEDANT TRICKED, a play which criticized his former instructor as fat, bald and filthy. Military In 1636, Cyrano's father sold the family properties in Mauvières and Bergerac and moved back to Paris. A year later, Cyrano left Beauvais and enlisted, along with his friend Le Bret, in Carbon de Casteljaloux's private company of musketeers composed of Gascons. To survive their company and to belong, Cyrano embraced the heritage of Gascony. Anyway, temperamentally, he was a Gascon. His long nose and swaggering manner, his readiness to duel - and win - and his ability to debauch with the best of them, soon earned him the respect and trust of his new companions. Cyrano had dreams of eventually earning, by valor, a Marshal's baton. A year later he had his chance. In 1639, the Croats besieged Carbon's Gascons at Mouzon. Cyrano volunteered to reprovision his garrison - and was promptly wounded by a pistol ball. He took several months to recover. Undaunted, in 1640, Cyrano and Le Bret joined the Gendarmes of Conti. In the fight with the Spanish at Arras, Cyrano suffered a second serious war wound - a sword thrust to the neck. Again, Cyrano de Bergerac underwent a long convalescence. Yet this time his recovery found him utterly disillusioned about his military prospects; he returned to Paris depressed and financially impoverished. His father, as usual, was of no help (Abel Cyrano died soon after, leaving most of his wealth to a female servant). Cyrano was, however, aided by his cousin, Madeleine Robineau, the Baroness de Neuvillette (the Roxane of Rostand's play). She was related to him through his mother, Espérance Bellenger. Madeleine married Christophe de Champagne, the Baron de Neuvillette, at 25 and became very active socially. Her support enabled the still young Cyrano to swagger about in a crimson doublet, velvet breeches, and green satin gloves - all for the purpose of attracting some rich heiress. But tragedy soon struck Madeleine: she lost her husband, her mother, and her child - all within a year. She turned to prayer and found solace by giving service to the poor. The romance of Cyrano and Roxane has little historical support. Libertines and Literature Cyrano de Bergerac soon came under the influence of the Libertines - freethinkers who questioned the doctrine and morality of religion; many lived a very debauched lifestyle, and many were executed. One of Cyrano's heroes was Theophile de Viau, one of the original Libertines - and a man who did not recant his beliefs, even under torture. Meeting many literary men among them, Cyrano felt his old hunger for learning surfacing. He began to write poetry, sketch out ideas for plays, and debate philosophy. He would exchange a sword for a pen - or so he thought. His star, he felt, would yet rise. At this time, Cyrano met a teacher whose influence he was to feel for the remainder of his life, a man that was everything that Master Jean Grangier was not: Pierre Gassendi, a philosopher trying to revive Epicureanism in an attempt to reconcile mechanistic atomism and Christian theology. He taught that one ought to perceive and understand reality through one's own eyes. It was in Gassendi's study group that Cyrano first met Molière. Later, Cyrano would complain that the great playwright had stolen lines from his THE PEDANT TRICKED - though, in Cyrano's day, published material was considered common property. Yet Cyrano could not completely stifle his Gascon temperament and sense of honor - he had fully assimilated his image. His nose was, afterall, 'rather large,' (as remarked upon by a character in Rostand's play). He continued to fight duels, both as principal and as a chosen second to others. His swordsmanship was phenomenal, and he became even more feared. The fray at the Porte de Nesle gate, as portrayed by Rostand, was, for the most part, historically accurate. A dozen men - not the hundred envisioned by Rostand - were supposedly hired by a certain gentleman (the Monsieur de Grammont - not Rostand's Comte de Guiche) to punish one of Cyrano's friends(the Chevalier de Lignières) for having written a quatrain highly critical of the good man's honor. Cyrano, hearing of the danger, insisted on walking his friend home; he encountered and fought the men - killing two and wounding seven. The incident greatly added to Cyrano's fame. And so it is not surprising that Cyrano de Bergerac made powerful enemies. These escapades, along with his outspokenness, intellectual honesty, and criticisms of the Church may well have cost him literary renown in his lifetime. When most creative men of the time sought patrons to finance their activities, Cyrano did little to cajole them. Most feared the association. It was only in 1652 that he relented, and entered the service of the Duke d'Arpajon, who financed the production of Cyrano's THE DEATH OF AGRIPPINA. Their relationship, however, was short-lived: AGRIPPINA had but one performance before it was banned for blasphemy. The Duke was not known for social acumen and had not anticipated the reaction; he blamed Cyrano for deceiving him. Death A short time later, in early 1654, Cyrano was struck on the head by a large falling wooden beam while entering the Duke's residence. History has not decided whether the incident was an accident or an assassination attempt. Initially, Cyrano was treated inside his patron's residence - and then unceremoniously evicted. He was moved to a room in the house of a friend, Tanneguy Des Bois-Clairs, where he remained until July of the following year. Cyrano's condition gradually deteriorated. He died on July 28, 1655, at the age of 36. A few days prior, he had been moved, per his request, to the residence of his brother, Pierre Cyrano, in the township of Sannois - probably to avoid the intense efforts of his friend Le Bret - and Madeliene Robineau - to convert him to Christianity. Cyrano's works received little acclaim in his lifetime. It was only after his death that they came into their own. The COMICAL HISTORY OF THE STATES AND EMPIRES OF THE MOON, written in 1648, was published posthumously in 1657 by Le Bret - Cyrano's heretical passages having been edited out by his old friend. The COMICAL HISTORY OF THE STATES AND EMPIRES OF THE SUN, begun in 1650 and left unfinished, was published in 1662, also by Le Bret, and similarly censored. Both works were a unique mix of satire, philosophy and imaginative science anticipating Swift's GULLIVER'S TRAVELS. |