I
THE LEGEND OF CYRANO
The legend of Cyrano de Bergerac began, one might say, during his life; but it was strongly founded by his friend Henry Le Bret who editedThe Voyage to the Moonwith an introduction, in 1657, two years after Cyrano's death. The 'Préface' of Le Bret is one of the chief sources of information about Cyrano. It is no discredit to Le Bret that he drew as favourable a portrait of his friend as he could, but we cannot accept literally everything he says and we are forced to read between the lines of his panegyric. Le Bret is largely responsible for the moral legend of Cyrano. He says:
"In fine, Reader, he always passed for a man of singular rare wit; to which he added such good fortune on the side of the senses that he always controlled them as he willed; in so much that he rarely drank wine because (said he) excess of drink brutalizes, and as much care is needed with it as with arsenic (with this he was wont to compare it) for everything is to be feared from this poison, whatever care is used; even if nothing were to be dreaded but what the vulgar callqui pro quo, which makes it always dangerous. He was no less moderate in his eating, from which he banishedragoûtsas much as he could in the belief that the simplest and least complicated living is the best; which he supported by the example of modern men, who live so short a time compared with those of the earliest ages, who appear to have lived so long because of the simplicity of their food.
"He added to these two qualities so great a restraint towards the fair sex that it may be said he never departed from the respect owed it by ours; and with all this he had so great an aversion from self-interest that he could never imagine what it was to possess private property, his own belonging less to him than to such of his acquaintance as needed it. And so Heaven, which is not unmindful, willed that among the large number of friends he had during his life some should love him until death and a few even beyond death."[1]
It will be seen later that many of these virtues were probably necessities arising from an unheroic cause; but this moral character given by Le Bret was very useful to the 19th-century builders of the Cyrano legend.
Other 17th-century writers give a very different impression of Cyrano de Bergerac: where Le Bret saw a noble, almost austere genius, they went to the opposite extreme and saw a madman. An anecdote in theHistoriettesof Tallemant des Réaux gives us another Cyrano:
"A madman named Cyrano wrote a play calledThe Death of Agrippinawhere Sejanus says horrible things against the Gods. The play was pure balderdash (un vray galimathias).[2]Sercy, who published it, told Boisrobert that he sold out the edition in a twinkling. 'You surprise me', said Boisrobert. 'Ah, Monsieur', replied the bookseller, 'it has such splendid impieties'."[3]
The implication that the success of the play was due to its "impieties" is repeated in an anecdote of theMenagianaquoted by Lacroix, to the following effect: When the pious people heard there were impieties inThe Death of Agrippina, they went prepared to hiss it; they passed over in silence all the tirades against the Gods which had caused the rumour, but when Sejanus said:
"Frappons, voilà l'hostie",[4]
they interrupted the actor with whistling, booing and shouts of:
"Ah! the rascal! Ah! The atheist! Hear how he speaks of the holy sacrament!"
I cannot find this anecdote in my own copy of theMenagiana, but since my edition is 1693 and Lacroix quotes that of 1715, I presume his is an addition. In my edition I find another anecdote of Cyrano which I give here both for its rarity and because it shows 17th-century contempt for Cyrano at its most virulent:
"What wretched works are those of Cyrano de Bergerac! He studied at the Collège de Beauvais in the time of Principal Grangier. They say he was still in his 'rhetoric' when he wroteThe Pedant Outwittedagainst his head-master. There are a few passable things in this play but all the rest is very flat. When he wrote hisVoyage to the MoonI think he had one quarter of the moon in his head. The first public sign he gave of his madness was to go to mass in the morning in trunk hose and a night cap without his doublet. He had not onesouwhen he fell ill of the disease from which he died and if M. de Sainte-Marthe had not charitably supplied all his necessities he would have died in the poor-house."[5]
More 17th-century anecdotes of Cyrano will be found in theLife; those cited will at least show the early tendency to attach anecdotes to him and the curious conflict of contemporary opinion. During the second half of the 17th century Cyrano remained popular and his works were frequently reprinted. The 18th century saw a great decline in reputation and in editions; Voltaire repeated the accusation: "A madman!" No edition of Cyrano's works appeared in Paris between 1699 and 1855: the last of them before the revival of the 19th century was the Amsterdam edition of 1761. For a century there was no edition of Cyrano. He dropped out of sight almost entirely; but in the 19th century he was destined to be revived as an increasingly legendary figure, culminating in the heroic apotheosis of Rostand'sCyrano de Bergerac.
Strangely enough the revival began in England in 1820 with an article in theRetrospective Review.[6]This article shows some acquaintance with Cyrano's originals as well as with the translation reviewed. The anonymous writer says:
"Cyrano de Bergerac is a marvellously strange writer—his character, too, was out of the common way. His chief passion appears to have been duelling; and, from the numerous affairs of honour in which he was concerned in a very short life and the bravery he displayed on those occasions, he acquired the cognomen of 'The Intrepid'. His friend Le Bret says he was engaged in no less than one hundred duels for his friends, and not one on his own account. Others however say, that, happening to have a nose somewhat awry, whoever was so unfortunate or so rash as to laugh at it, was sure to be called upon to answer its intrepid owner in the field. But however this may be, it is indisputable that Cyrano was a distinguished monomachist and a most eccentric writer."[7]
Seventeen years later that amiable man of letters, Charles Nodier, resuscitated Cyrano in hisBonaventure Desperiers et Cyrano de Bergerac. Before this Nodier had incidentally defended Cyrano in hisBibliographie des Fous:
"As to this book (The Voyage to the Moon), which he wrote whenhe was already mad(according to Voltaire), would you not be astonished if you were told that it contained more profound perceptions, more ingenious foresight, more anticipations in that science whose confused elements Descartes scarcely sorted out, than the large volume written by Voltaire under the supervision of the Marquis du Châtelet? Cyrano used his genius like a hot-head, but there is nothing in it which resembles a madman."[8]
Nodier is responsible for that portion of the Cyrano legend which makes him an innovator, plagiarized from, and persecuted to an early grave.
"It seems that a man who opened up so many paths to talent and who went so far in all the paths he opened, ought to have left a name in any literature....
"There was once a wooden horse which bore in its flanks all the conquerors of Ilion, yet had no part in the triumph. This begins like a fairy-tale ... and yet it is true.
"Poor wooden horse! Poor Cyrano!"[9]
But, if Charles Nodier carried on the legend, he did little more than open the way for Theophile Gautier, whose famousGrotesqueis filled with every conceivable error of fact and yet is obviously one of Rostand's chief sources.Les Grotesquesappeared in 1844 and contained ten pseudo-biographical sketches of "romantic" personalities in French literature chiefly of the 17th century. The book itself is an interesting by-product of the romantic movement, but here we are only concerned with the sixth sketch,Cyrano de Bergerac. This opens with a fantastic divagation upon noses, perhaps the most exaggerated development of the legendary Cyranesque appendage. If the reader will examine Cyrano's portraits, without prejudice and with particular attention to the nose, he will scarcely be prepared for this outburst:
"This incredible nose is settled in a three-quarter face [portrait], the smaller side of which it covers entirely; it forms in the middle a mountain which in my opinion must be the highest mountain in the world after the Himalayas; then it descends rapidly towards the mouth, which it largely obumbrates, like a tapir's snout or the rostrum of a bird of prey; at the extremity it is divided by a line very similar to, though more pronounced than, the furrow which cuts the cherry lip of Anne of Austria, the white queen with the long ivory hands. This makes two distinct noses in one face, which is more than custom allows, ... the portraits of Saint Vincent de Paul and the deacon Paris will show you the best characterized types of this sort of structure; but Cyrano's nose is less doughy, less puffy in contour; it has more bones and cartilage, more flats and high-lights, it is more heroic."
Cyrano de Bergerac.
Cyrano de Bergerac.
Cyrano de Bergerac.
We then learn that Cyrano was a wonderful duellist, that he revenged any insult to his nose with a challenge; after more disquisition on noses we read that Cyrano was "born in 1620, in the castle of Bergerac, in Périgord"[10], that he was unable to endure the pedantry of his schoolmaster and so that good country gentleman, his father, allowed him to go to Paris, where at eighteen he threw himself into fashionable life with the greatest success. Then comes a highly-coloured picture of the contrast between life in Paris in 1638 and the Bergerac family in their "tranquil and discreet house, sober and cold, well ordered and silent, almost always half-asleep in the shadow of its pallid walnut trees between the church and the cemetery." This is followed by a defence of Cyrano against the charge of atheism with a quotation fromThe Death of Agrippina. Next we hear that this Gascon gentleman joined the Gascon company of guards with Le Bret and of his numerous prowesses with the sword, and this slides into a description of Cyrano's early slashing style, with quotations fromThe Pedant Outwittedand the story of the actor whom Cyrano forbade to play. This is followed by several pages of excited panegyric, paraphrased from Le Bret; we get Cyrano's wounds, his love of study, his disinterestedness, his love of freedom and scorn of servingles grands, his subsequent service with the duc d'Arpajon, the falling timber on his head and his death; then we hear of his simple habits, his brilliant friendships and his study under Gassendi. The essay ends with several pages, dealing with Molière's famous plagiarism fromThe Pedant Outwittedand containing a most exaggerated account of Cyrano's writings, extremely loose in expression, showing that Gautier can have had but a superficial acquaintance with Cyrano's books.
If this essay of Gautier's were meant as biography and criticism, one can only say that it is likely to be misleading; if as fiction, that the form is not well chosen. Nevertheless, this and Nodier's article stimulated curiosity in Cyrano sufficiently to cause his works to be reprinted in 1855. Lacroix in 1858 issued another edition and wrote an enthusiastic preface (from the point of view of an ardent free-thinker), making Cyrano a great predecessor of the 18th-centuryphilosophesand adding more legend.
After this, the legend of Cyrano smouldered for some forty years and then broke out in a final conflagration in 1897, with Edmond Rostand'sCyrano de Bergerac. Everything picturesque which fancy and rumour had attached to the name of Cyrano during the centuries was taken up by Rostand, exaggerated, idealised almost to infinity—and the world believed, and doubtless still believes, that this is the "real" Cyrano de Bergerac. Strangely, Rostand apparently shared this illusion; for a French savant, M. Emile Magne, wrote a pamphlet pointing out some of Rostand's worst errors, and Rostand replied with a letter, claiming that his play was historically correct.
Rostand's play is a pleasing, if belated, specimen of the French romantic drama; its dramatic quality is undeniable, its appeal to the sentiments irresistible, its verse skilfully handled; it is characteristically, delightfully, absurdly French; it deserved its popularity. A man who cannot enjoy Rostand'sCyranohas taste too fastidious for his own good. But when he has watched the heroic lover of Roxanne fight his duels to the accompaniment of a ballade, promenade his huge nose about the stage, exhibit the remarkable delicacy of his sentiments and finally die a Gascon death—"mon Panache!"—this imaginary spectator must not tell us that this is "the real" Cyrano de Bergerac. It is an amusing Cyrano one would prefer not to lose; but Rostand's invention has nothing to do with the man who wrote the tragedy ofThe Death of AgrippinaandThe Voyages to the Sun and Moon; this is not the young man who enlisted in M. de Casteljaloux's company of guards; this is not the follower of Gassendi and Rohault; and this delicate lover is—alas!—not that Savinien de Cyrano, self-styled de Bergerac, who died miserably in the prime of his age not so much from the effects of the falling piece of timber as probably of venereal disease.