Cyrano de Bergerac

Cyrano de Bergerac

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Cyrano de Bergerac

Bust of Cyrano.

Hector Savinien de Cyrano de Bergerac (6 March 1619 – 28 July 1655) was a French dramatist and duelist who is now best remembered for the many works of fiction which have been woven around his life story. In these fictional works he is featured with an overly large nose; portraits suggest that he did have a big nose, though not nearly as large as described in Edmond Rostand's play and the subsequent works about him. A statue of him stands in the town of Bergerac, Dordogne.

Life and works
In fiction, film, theater, and opera
See also
External links

Life and works

Cyrano de Bergerac ? born Savinien de Cyrano ? was born into an old Parisian family and spent much of his childhood in Saint-Forget (now Yvelines). He went to school in Paris and spent his adult life there when he was not on a military campaign. He was not, therefore, a Gascon. Many of his fellow soldiers would have been Gascons, and their swashbuckling manner was much admired; so he may have cultivated a myth of Gascon origins. Although it is true that he was a popular poet and a fine swordsman who fought many duels, his abilities were embellished by Rostand, the playwright of Cyrano de Bergerac. Cyrano de Bergerac's writings do, in fact, indicate that he had an unusually large nose, of which he was quite proud.

Though not as famous as his classical contemporaries, Bergerac was a successful writer. The playwright Molière even borrowed a scene from Le Pédant Joué. Bergerac's most prominent works are his duo of proto-science fiction novels,The Other World: The Comical History of the States and Empires of the Moon (1657) and "The Comical History of the States and the Empires of the Sun" (unfinished at his death) which describe fictional journeys to the Moon and Sun. The methods of space travel he described are inventive, often ingenious, and sometimes rooted in science. They reflect the materialist philosophy of which Bergerac was a devotee. Bergerac's primary purpose in writing those early science fiction novels was to criticize subtly the anthropocentric view of man's place in creation, as well as the social injustices of the 17th century. The Other World was subjected to censorship.

There has been considerable speculation among historians and other scholars about his sexuality. It is believed that around 1640 he became the lover of Charles Coypeau d'Assoucy, a writer and musician, until around 1653, when they became engaged in a bitter rivalry. This led to Bergerac sending d'Assoucy death threats that compelled him to leave Paris. The quarrel extended to a series of satirical texts by both men. Bergerac wrote Contre Soucidas (an anagram of his enemy's name) and Contre un ingrat ("Against an Ingrate"), while D?Assoucy counterattacked with Le Combat de Cyrano de Bergerac avec le singe de Brioché au bout du Pont-Neuf ("The Battle of Cyrano de Bergerac with the Monkey of Brioché on the Pont Neuf").

The model of the Roxane who appears in the Rostand play was Bergerac's cousin, who lived with his aunt Catherine de Cyrano at the Convent of the Daughter of the Cross, where he was tended for injuries sustained from a falling beam. http://www.coolfrenchcomics.com/dartagnancyrano.htm As in the play, he did fight at the siege of Arras (1640), a battle of the Thirty Years' War between French and Spanish forces in the Netherlands (though this was not the more famous final Battle of Arras, fought fourteen years later). One of his confreres in the battle was the Baron of Neuvillette, who married Cyrano's cousin. However, the play's plotline involving Roxane and Christian is almost entirely fictional ? the real Cyrano did not write the Baron's love letters for him.

Cyrano was a freethinker and a pupil of Pierre Gassendi, a canon of the Catholic Church who tried to reconcile Epicurean atomism with Christianity. Cyrano's insistence on reason was rare in his time, and he would have been at home in the Enlightenment that came a century after his death.

He died in Sannois in 1655, at the age of 36, and was buried in the convent of the Filles de la Croix (Daughters of the Cross), rue de Caronne, Faubourg Saint Antoine, Paris.

In fiction, film, theater, and opera

In 1897, the French poet Edmond Rostand published a play, Cyrano de Bergerac, on the subject of Cyrano's life. This play, by far Rostand's most successful work, concentrates on Cyrano's love for the beautiful Roxane, whom he is obliged to woo on behalf of a more conventionally handsome but less articulate friend, Christian de Neuvillette. The play has been adapted for cinema several times, most recently in 1990 with Gerard Depardieu in the title role. That 1990 version's dialogue is in French with subtitles written by Anthony Burgess in rhymed couplets, mirroring the form of the dialogue in the original play. The most famous film version in English is the 1950 film, with José Ferrer in the title role, a performance for which he won the Academy Award for Best Actor. In 1959, Hiroshi Inagaki wrote and directed a Japanese version, Aru kengo no shugai starring Toshiro Mifune. Ferrer reprised the role in the 1960 French film Cyrano et d'Artagnan, directed by Abel Gance, opposite Jean-Pierre Cassel as D'Artagnan. Much later, Cassel made a cameo appearance as Cyrano de Bergerac in The Return of the Musketeers: the character was depicted as fifty-something and attempting to travel to the Moon with the aid of a balloon. Other film interpretations include Roxanne, starring Steve Martin, and the romantic comedy The Truth About Cats & Dogs. Cyrano Fernández (2007) is a retelling from Venezuela, set in contemporary times, in which Cyrano is disfigured but lacks the large nose.

Geraldine McCaughrean rewrote the play as a novel entitled Cyrano, which was longlisted for the Carnegie Award in 2007. In 1936, Franco Alfano composed his opera, Cyrano de Bergerac, to a libretto based on the play. Most recently, David DiChiera rewrote the play as another opera entitled Cyrano, which was produced first by Michigan Opera Theater and then by the Opera Company of Philadelphia (February 2008).

The character of Cyrano also inspired a song, "Cyrano," by Italian performer Francesco Guccini about the hypocrisy, servitude to conventions, and superficialities of modern show business and political society. Savinien de Cyrano de Bergerac is one of the main characters in Philip José Farmer's Riverworld novels.

A couple of characters in modern works are based on Cyrano, although not named as such. Robert Heinlein's Glory Road features a cameo appearance by such a figure. The Swordmaster in Alain Ayrole's and Jean-Luc Masbou's French comic book De cape et de crocs portrays a colorful gentleman living on the Moon, at ease either with a sword or with a sonnet, and using both to silence those foolish enough to mock his prominent nose!

In 1998, James L. Carcioppolo wrote and published The Lost Sonnets of Cyrano de Bergerac. The book fictionalizes a dying Cyrano writing a sequence of sonnets in an attempt to come to terms with his conflicted life. It portrays a Cyrano very close to the historical personage without diminishing his love for freedom and individuality.