Cyrano de Bergerac
Template:Short description Template:About Template:Infobox writer Savinien de Cyrano de Bergerac (Template:IPAc-en Template:Respell, Template:IPA; 6<ref group=note name=birthdate /> March 1619 – 28 July 1655) was a French novelist, playwright, epistolarian, and duelist.
A bold and innovative author, his work was part of the libertine literature of the first half of the 17th century. Today, he is best known as the inspiration for Edmond Rostand's most noted drama, Cyrano de Bergerac (1897), which, although it includes elements of his life, also contains invention and myth.
Since the 1970s, there has been a resurgence in the study of Cyrano, demonstrated in the abundance of theses, essays, articles and biographies published in France and elsewhere. Cyrano's novels L'Autre Monde: ou les États et Empires de la Lune ("Comical History of the States and Empires of the Moon", published posthumously, 1657) and Les États et Empires du Soleil (The States and Empires of the Sun, 1662) are classics of early modern science fiction. He was the first writer to depict space flight by use of a vessel that has rockets attached, and he introduced Moon-Men as an extraterrestrial race in his novels. Cyrano's mixture of science and romance in his novels is credited with influencing the works of Jonathan Swift, Edgar Allan Poe and probably Voltaire. Both Pierre Corneille and Molière freely borrowed ideas from Cyrano's works, although only Molière was accused of directly plagiarizing them.
Life and works
He was the son of Abel de Cyrano, lord of Mauvières and Bergerac, and Espérance Bellanger. He received his first education from a country priest and had for a fellow pupil his friend and future biographer Henri Lebret. He then proceeded to Paris and the heart of the Latin Quarter, to the college de Dormans-Beauvais,<ref name=Voy /> where he had as master Jean Grangier, whom he afterwards ridiculed in his comedy Le Pédant joué (The Pedant Tricked) of 1654. At the age of nineteen, he entered a corps of the guards, serving in the campaigns of 1639 and 1640.<ref name=eb>Template:Cite EB1911</ref> As a minor nobleman and officer he was notorious for his dueling and boasting. His unique past allowed him to make unique contributions to French art.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>
One author, Ishbel Addyman, varies from other biographersTemplate:Who? and claims that he was not a Gascon aristocrat, but a descendant of a Sardinian fishmonger, and that the appellation Bergerac stemmed from a small estate near Paris where he was born, not in Gascony, and that he may have suffered tertiary syphilis. She also claimsTemplate:Clarify that he may have been homosexual and around 1640 became the lover of Charles Coypeau d'Assoucy,<ref name="Addyman, Ishbel 2008">Addyman, Ishbel, Cyrano: The Life and Legend of Cyrano de Bergerac, (Simon & Schuster, 2008), Template:ISBN</ref> 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.<ref name="Addyman, Ishbel 2008" /> 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, at the end of the Pont-Neuf). He also associated with Théophile de Viau, the French poet and libertine.
He is said to have left the military and returned to Paris to pursue literature, producing tragedies cast in the orthodox classical mode.<ref name="eb" />
The model for the character Roxane in Rostand's play Cyrano de Bergerac was Bergerac's cousin, who lived with his sister, Catherine de Bergerac, at the Convent of the Daughter of the Cross. As in the play, Bergerac did fight at the Siege of Arras in 1640, a battle of the Franco-Spanish War (1635-1659) between French and Spanish forces in France (though this was not the Battle of Arras, fought fourteen years later). During the siege he suffered a neck wound from a sword during a sortie by the Spanish defenders, a day before the surrender of the Spanish troops and the end of the siege.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> One of his confrères in the battle was the Baron Christian of Neuvillette, who married Cyrano's cousin. However, the plotline of Rostand's play involving Roxane and Christian is entirely fictional.
Cyrano was a pupil of the French polymath Pierre Gassendi, a canon of the Catholic Church who tried to reconcile Epicurean atomism with Christianity.
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Cyrano de Bergerac's works L'Autre Monde: ou les États et Empires de la Lune ("Comical History of the States and Empires of the Moon", published posthumously, 1657) and Les États et Empires du Soleil (The States and Empires of the Sun, 1662) are classics of early modern science fiction. In the former, Cyrano travels to the Moon using rockets powered by fireworks (it may be the earliest description of a space flight by use of a vessel that has rockets attached) and meets the inhabitants. The Moon-men have four legs, firearms that shoot game and cook it, and talking earrings used to educate children.
His mixture of science and romance in the last two works furnished a model for many subsequent writers, among them Jonathan Swift, Edgar Allan Poe and probably Voltaire. Corneille and Molière freely borrowed ideas from Le Pédant joué.<ref name="eb" />
Accused of plagiarizing Le Pédant joué, Molière supposedly replied, "Il m'est permis de reprendre mon bien où je le trouve" ("I am allowed to take back my property where I find it.").<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>
Death
The play suggests that he was injured by a falling wooden beam in 1654 while entering the house of his patron, the Duc D'Arpajon. However the academic and editor of Cyrano's works Madeleine Alcover uncovered a contemporary text which suggests an attack on the Duke's carriage in which a member of his household was injured. It is as yet inconclusive whether or not Cyrano's death was a result of the injury, or an unspecified disease.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
Cyrano died over a year later on July 28, 1655, aged 36, at the house of his cousin, Pierre de Cyrano, in Sannois. He was buried in a church in Sannois. However, there is strong evidence to support the theory that his death was a result of a botched assassination attempt as well as further damage to his health caused by a period of confinement in a private asylum, orchestrated by his enemies, who succeeded in enlisting the help of his own brother Abel de Cyrano.Template:Fact
In fiction and media
Rostand
Other authors
In A. L. Kennedy's novel So I Am Glad, the narrator finds de Bergerac has appeared in her modern-day house share.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
In Robert A. Heinlein's novel Glory Road, Oscar Gordon fights a character who is not named, but is obviously Cyrano.<ref>M. E. Cowan. "Never-Born". A Heinlein Concordance. Heinlein Society.</ref>
John Shirley published a story about Cyrano called "Cyrano and the Two Plumes" in a French anthology; it was reprinted at The Freezine of Fantasy and Science Fiction.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
The novel by Adam Browne, Pyrotechnicon: Being a TRUE ACCOUNT of Cyrano de Bergerac's FURTHER ADVENTURES among the STATES and EMPIRES of the STARS, by HIMSELF (Dec'd), was a sequel to Cyrano's science fiction, published by Coeur de Leon in 2012.<ref name="a304">Template:Cite web</ref>
Cyrano de Bergerac is the leading male character in Charles Lecocq's 1896 opéra comique Ninette.<ref name=era>"The Drama in Paris", The Era, 7 March 1896, p. 13</ref>
Film
Most recently, his likeness was the center of a musical romantic drama, Cyrano, adapted as a screenplay by Erica Schmidt who had previously written the script as a stage musical of the same name.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
1990 Film
Roxanne
Bibliography
Original editions
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Translations
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- Template:Cite book (The dream is a translation of D'un songe, first published in Lettres diverses.)
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Critical editions
- L'Autre monde: I. Les Estats et Empires de la Lune (texte intégral, publié pour la première fois, d'après les manuscrits de Paris et de Munich, avec les variantes de l'imprimé de 1657). — II. Les Estats et Empires du Soleil (d'après l'édition originale de 1662)
- The Other World: I. The States and Empires of the Moon (full text published for the first time following the Paris and Munich manuscripts including variations from the 1657 edition). — II. The States and Empires of the Sun (following the original edition of 1662)
- Le Pédant joué, comédie, texte du Ms. de la Bibl. nat., avec les variantes de l'imprimé de 1654. — La Mort d'Agrippine, tragédie. — Les Lettres, texte du Ms. de la Bibl. nat. avec les var. de 1654. — Les Mazarinades: Le Ministre d'Etat flambé; Le Gazettier des-interessé, etc. — Les Entretiens pointus. — Appendice: Le Sermon du curé de Colignac, etc...
- The Pedant tricked, comedy, text from Mss. in the National Library with variations from the edition of 1654. — The Death of Agrippina, tragedy. — The Letters, text from Mss. in the National Library with variations from 1654 edition. — The Mazarinades: The Minister of State roasted; The disinterested Gazetteer, etc. — The sharp interviews. — Appendix: The sermon of the curate of Colignac, etc...
- Includes an afterword, a dictionary of characters, chronological tables and notes. Illustrated with engravings taken from scientific works of the time.
- Includes an introduction, chronology and bibliography
- Republished as:
- Introduction, chronology, notes, documentation, bibliography and lexicon by Bérengère Parmentier.
See also
- Asteroid 3582 Cyrano, named after de Bergerac
Notes
References
Further reading
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External links
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- Le Vrai Cyrano de Bergerac – Biography Template:In lang
- Cyrano(s) de Bergerac – Information on fictional portrayals compared to the real person Template:In lang
- The Other World: Society and Government of the Moon – annotated English language edition
- Cyrano de Bergerac (1950) film
- Cyrano de Bergerac
- 1619 births
- 1655 deaths
- 17th-century French dramatists and playwrights
- 17th-century French male writers
- 17th-century French novelists
- 17th-century French LGBTQ people
- French duellists
- French male novelists
- French military personnel of the Thirty Years' War
- French satirists
- French science fiction writers
- Writers from Paris