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= Cyrano_de_Bergerac =
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Introduction
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Savinien de Cyrano de Bergerac ( , ; 6 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.
Sources
=========
Cyrano's short life is poorly documented. Certain significant chapters
of his life are known only from the Preface to the 'Histoire Comique
par Monsieur de Cyrano Bergerac, Contenant les Estats & Empires de
la Lune' ('Comical History of the States and Empires of the Moon')
published in 1657, nearly two years after his death. Without Henri Le
Bret, who wrote the biographical information, his country childhood,
his military engagement, the injuries it caused, his prowess as a
swordsman, the circumstances of his death and his supposed final
conversion would remain unknown.
Since 1862, when Auguste Jal revealed that the "Lord of Bergerac" was
Parisian and not Gascon, research in parish registries and notarial
records by a small number of researchers, in particular Madeleine
Alcover of Rice University, has allowed the public to know more about
his genealogy, his family, his home in Paris and those of some of his
friends, but has revealed no new documents that support or refute the
essentials of Le Bret's account or fill the gaps in his narrative.
Family
========
Savinien II de Cyrano was the son of Abel I de Cyrano, lord of
Mauvières (156?-1648), counsel ('avocat') of the Parliament of Paris,
and of Espérance Bellanger (1586-164?), "daughter of deceased nobleman
Estienne Bellanger, Counsellor of the King and Treasurer of his
Finances".
Ancestors
===========
His paternal grandfather, Savinien I de Cyrano (15??-1590), was
probably born into a notable family from Sens in Burgundy. Documents
describe him in turn as a "merchant and burgher of Paris" ('« marchand
et bourgeois de Paris »' 20 May 1555), "(sea-)fish merchant to the
King" ('« vendeur de poisson de mer pour le Roy »') in several other
documents in following years, and finally "Royal counsellor" ('«
conseiller du Roi, maison et couronne de France »' 7 April 1573). In
Paris, on 9April 1551, he married Anne Le Maire, daughter of Estienne
Le Maire and Perrette Cardon, who died in 1616. They are known to have
had four children: Abel (the writer's father), Samuel (15??-1646),
Pierre (15??-1626) and Anne (15??-1652).
Of his maternal grandfather, Estienne Bellanger, "Financial Controller
of the Parisian general revenue" ('« contrôleur des finances en la
recette générale de Paris »'), and of his background, we know almost
nothing. We know more about his wife, Catherine Millet, whose father,
Guillaume II Millet, Lord of Caves, was secretary of the King's
finances, and whose grandfather, Guillaume I Millet (149?-1563),
qualified in medicine in 1518, was doctor to three kings in succession
(Francis I, Henry II and Francis II). He married Catherine Valeton,
daughter of a property tax collector from Nantes, Audebert Valeton,
who, accused of involvement in the Affair of the Placards, was "burned
alive on wood taken from his house" on 21 January 1535 at the
crossroads of 'la Croix du Trahoir' (the intersection of the Rue de
l'Arbre-Sec and the Rue Saint-Honoré), in front of the 'Pavillon des
singes', where Molière lived almost a century later.
Parents
=========
Espérance Bellanger and Abel I de Cyrano were married on 3September
1612 at the church of St-Gervais-et-St-Protais. She was at least
twenty-six years old; he was about forty-five. Their marriage
contract, signed the previous 12July at the office of Master Denis
Feydeau, counsellor, secretary and king's notary, second cousin of the
bride, was only published in the year 2000 by Madeleine Alcover, who
minutely traced the fate of the witnesses (and more particularly their
links with pious milieus) and noted that many of them "had entered the
worlds of high finance, the 'noblesse de robe', of the aristocracy
(including the Court) and even the 'noblesse d'épée'".
His father's library
======================
In 1911 Jean Lemoine made known the inventory of Abel de Cyrano's
worldly goods.Reprinted in His library, relatively poorly stocked
(126 volumes), testifies to his schooling as a jurist and to an open
curiosity: a taste for languages and ancient literature, the great
humanists of the Renaissance (Erasmus, Rabelais, Juan Luis Vives),
knowledge of Italian, interest in the sciences. On the religious side,
one notices the presence of two Bibles, of an Italian New Testament
and the Prayers of St. Basil in Greek, but no pious works. There is no
object of that kind (engraving, painting, statue, crucifix) amongst
the other inventoried items, but in contrast "twelve small paintings
of portraits of gods and goddesses" and "four wax figures: one of
Venus and Cupid, another of a woman pulling a thorn, one of a
flageolet player and one of an ashamed nude woman". Finally, one notes
the presence of several books by well-known Protestants: the 'Discours
politiques et militaires' ("Political and Military Discourse") of
François de la Noue, two volumes of George Buchanan, the 'Dialectique'
of Pierre de La Ramée, the 'Alphabet de plusieurs sortes de lettres'
("Alphabet of different kinds of letters") by master calligrapher
Pierre Hamon and 'La Vérité de la religion chrétienne' ("The Truth of
the Christian Religion") by Philippe Duplessis-Mornay, whose presence
confirms that Abel spent his younger years in Huguenot surroundings.
Siblings
==========
Espérance and Abel I had at least six children:
* Denis, baptised at the church of Saint-Eustache on 31 March 1614 by
Anne Le Maire, his grandmother, and Denis Feydeau, financier. He
studied Theology at the Sorbonne and died in the 1640s;
* Antoine, baptized at Saint-Eustache on 11 February 1616 by his
paternal aunt, Anne Cyrano, and a godfather who is not named in the
baptismal register discovered by Auguste Jal, but who might have been
the financier Antoine Feydeau (1573-1628), younger brother of Denis.
Died at a young age;
* Honoré, baptized at Saint-Eustache on 3July 1617 by Honoré Barentin,
'trésorier des parties casuelles', and an unnamed godmother. Died at a
young age;
* Savinien II (1619-1655),
* Abel II, born around 1624, who took the title "Lord of Mauvières"
after the death of his father in 1648;
* Catherine, whose date of birth is not known and who died in the
early years of the following century, having become a nun at the
convent of the 'Filles de la Croix (de Paris)' ("Daughters of the
Cross (Paris)") in the Rue de Charonne in 1641, under the name Sister
Catherine de Sainte-Hyacinthe.
Baptism and godparents
========================
The historian Auguste Jal discovered the baptism of the (then)
supposed Gascon in the 1860s:
Finally, after long exertion, I knew that Abel Cyrano had left the
neighbourhood of Saint-Eustache for that of Saint-Sauveur, and that
Espérance Bellanger had given birth in this new dwelling to a boy
whose baptismal record is as follows: "The sixth of March one thousand
six hundred and nineteen, Savinien, son of Abel de Cyrano, squire,
Lord of Mauvières, and of the lady Espérance Bellenger ('sic'), the
godfather, nobleman Antoine Fanny, King's Counsellor and Auditor in
his Court of Finances, of this parish, the godmother the lady Marie
Fédeau ('sic'), wife of nobleman Master Louis Perrot, Counsellor and
Secretary to the King, Household and Crown of France, of the parish of
Saint-Germain-l'Auxerrois". This son of Abel de Cyrano who was not
given the name of his godfather, Antoine, because he had a brother of
that name, born in 1616, but was named Savinien in memory of his
grandfather, who could doubt that this was the Savinien Cyrano who was
born, according to the biographers, at the chateau of Bergerac in or
around 1620?
Thus Espérance Bellanger was thirty-three years old, Abel de Cyrano
around fifty-two.
The surname 'Fanny' appears nowhere in the very complete study of 'La
Chambre des comptes de Paris' ("Court of Finances of Paris") published
by Count H. Coustant d'Yanville in 1875 (or for that matter in any
other French document of the 17th century). In 1898, Viscount Oscar de
Poli suggested that it must have been a transcription error and
proposed reading it as 'Lamy'. An Antoine Lamy had actually been
accepted as an auditor of finances on 2September 1602, a year before
Pierre de Maupeou, Espérance Bellanger's cousin and son-in-law of
Denis Feydeau who was a witness to the marriage of Savinien's parents
in 1612. His wife, Catherine Vigor, associate of Vincent de Paul,
would become President of the 'Confrérie de la Charité de Gentilly'
("Charitable Fellowship of Gentilly") where the couple set up a
mission in 1634. She could well be the godmother of Catherine de
Cyrano.
Marie Feydeau, cosponsor with Antoine Lamy, was the sister of Denis
and Antoine Feydeau and the wife of Louis (or Loys) Perrot
(15??-1625), who, apart from his titles of "King's Counsellor and
Secretary", also had that of "King's Interpreter of Foreign
Languages".
Mauvières and Bergerac
========================
His possessions, situated on the banks of the Yvette River in the
parish of Saint-Forget, had been purchased by Savinien I de Cyrano
forty years earlier from Thomas de Fortboys, who had bought them
himself in 1576 from Lord Dauphin de Bergerac (or Bergerat), whose
ancestors had possessed them for more than a century.
When Savinien I de Cyrano acquired it, the domain of Mauvières
consisted of "a habitable mansion…with a lower room, a cellar beneath,
kitchen, pantry, an upper chamber, granaries, stables, barn, portal,
all roofed with tiles, with courtyard, walled dovecote; mill, enclosed
plot, garden and fishpond, the right of middle and low justice…".
The estate of Bergerac, which adjoined Mauvières, "comprised a house
with portal, courtyard, barn, hovel and garden, being an acre or
thereabouts, plus forty-six and a half acres, of which thirty-six and
a half were farmland and ten woodland, with the rights of middle and
low justice".
Country schooling
===================
It was in this rustic setting that the child grew up and in the
neighbouring parish he learnt to read and write. His friend Le Bret
recalls:
The education that we had together with a good country priest who took
in boarders, made us friends from our most tender youth, and I
remember the aversion he had from that time for one who seemed to him
a shadow of Sidias, because, in the thoughts which that man could
somewhat grasp, he believed him incapable of teaching him anything; so
that he paid so little attention to his lessons and his corrections
that his father, who was a fine old gentleman, fairly unconcerned for
his children's education and overly credulous of this one's
complaints, removed him [from the school] a little too suddenly and,
without considering if his son would be better off elsewhere, he sent
him to that city [Paris] where he left him, until the age of nineteen
years, to his own devices.
Parisian adolescence
======================
It is unknown at what age Savinien arrived in Paris. He may have been
accommodated by his uncle Samuel de Cyrano in a large family residence
in the Rue des Prouvaires, where his parents had lived up until 1618.
In this theory, it was there that he was introduced to his cousin
Pierre, with whom, according to Le Bret, he would build a lasting
friendship.
He continued his secondary studies at an academy which remains
unknown. It has long been maintained that he attended the Collège de
Beauvais where the action of the comedy 'Le pédant joué' takes place
and whose principal, Jean Grangier would inspire the character of
Granger, the pedant of 'Le pédant joué', but his presence in June 1641
as a student of rhetoric at the 'Collège de Lisieux' (see below), has
encouraged more recent historians to revise that opinion.
In 1636, his father sold Mauvières and Bergerac to Antoine Balestrier,
Lord of Arbalestre, and returned to Paris to live with his family in
"a modest dwelling at the top of the great Rue du Faubourg
Saint-Jacques close to the Crossing" (parish of Saint-Jacques and
Saint-Philippe), a short distance from the 'Collège de Lisieux'. But
there is no certainty that Savinien went to live with them.
A slippery slope
==================
Le Bret continues his story:
That age when nature is most easily corrupted, and that great liberty
he had to only do that which seemed good to him, brought him to a
dangerous weakness ('penchant'), which I dare say I stopped…
Historians and biographers do not agree on this 'penchant' which
threatened to corrupt Cyrano's nature. As an example of the romantic
imagination of some biographers, Frédéric Lachèvre wrote:
Against an embittered and discontented father, Cyrano promptly forgot
the way to his father's house. Soon he was counted among the gluttons
and hearty drinkers of the best inns, with them he gave himself up to
jokes of questionable taste, usually following prolonged libations…He
also picked up the deplorable habit of gambling. This kind of life
could not continue indefinitely, especially since Abel de Cyrano had
become completely deaf to his son's repeated requests for funds.
Forty years later, two editors added to the realism and local colour:
Since nothing binds Cyrano to the humble lodgings of the Rue du
Faubourg Saint-Jacques to which the uncertainties of fate condemned
his family, he gives himself over entirely to Paris, to its streets
and, according to the words of one of his close friends, "to its
excrescences" ('à ses verrues'). He drinks, diligently frequents the
Rue Glatigny, called Val d'amour, because of the women who sell
pleasure there, gambles, roams the sleeping city to frighten the
bourgeois or forge signs, provokes the watch, gets into debt and links
himself with that literary Bohemia which centered around Tristan
L'Hermite and Saint-Amant and cultivated the memory of Théophile and
his impious lyricism.
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, 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. 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.
One author, Ishbel Addyman, varies from other biographers 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 claims that he may have been
homosexual and around 1640 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, 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.
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 Thirty Years' War 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. 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.
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 firecrackers (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'.
Accused of plagirizing '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.").
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. He 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.
Rostand
=========
In 1897, the French poet Edmond Rostand published a play, 'Cyrano de
Bergerac', telling of the life of a fictionalized Cyrano with an
abnormally large nose. This play, which became Rostand's most
successful work, revolves around 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 made into operas and adapted for cinema several
times and reworked in other literary forms and as a ballet.
Other authors
===============
'The Adventures of Cyrano De Bergerac', by Louis Gallet, was published
in English by Jarrolds Publishers (London) in 1900. It bears no
resemblance to Rostand's play apart from the characteristics of the de
Bergerac character.
Cyrano de Bergerac served as an inspiration for the creation of
Saint-Savin, one of the main characters of Umberto Eco's novel 'The
Island of the Day Before'.
In A. L. Kennedy's novel 'So I Am Glad', the narrator finds de
Bergerac has appeared in her modern-day house share.
In Robert A. Heinlein's novel 'Glory Road', Oscar Gordon fights a
character who is not named, but is obviously Cyrano.
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'.
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.
'The Lost Sonnets of Cyrano de Bergerac: A Poetic Fiction' by James L.
Carcioppolo. Published in English by Lost Sonnet Publishing (Benicia,
California) in 1998. Fiction poetry with the premise that Cyrano wrote
a sequence of 57 sonnets during the last year of his life. Heavily
annotated.
Cyrano de Bergerac is the leading male character in Charles Lecocq's
1896 opéra comique 'Ninette'.
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.
Schmidt's husband, Peter Dinklage, starred as a reimagined Cyrano who
is short-statured rather than having a large nose due to Dinklage's
dwarfism. The film was widely received with positive reviews and went
on to be nominated for awards at the 79th Golden Globe Awards
(including Best Actor for Dinklage), four nominations at the 75th
British Academy Film Awards and a Best Costume Design nod at the 94th
Academy Awards.
There is also a popular French film, 'Cyrano de Bergerac', starring
Gérard Depardieu, which earned him a Best Actor nomination at the
Academy Awards. Additionally, Cyrano de Bergerac is the subject of a
1925 film and a 1950 film; the latter of which earned José Ferrer both
an Oscar and a Golden Globe for Best Actor. He also won a Tony Award
for the same role on Broadway, a few years prior to making the film.
'Roxanne (film)', a 1987 film by Fred Schepisi and starring Steve
Martin (with a prosthetic nose), is a modern retelling of the story.
Another rendition is a gender-flipped romantic comedy interpretation,
'The Truth About Cats & Dogs' (1996), starring Janeane Garofalo as
a veterinarian/radio talk show host (and the Cyrano in question), and
Uma Thurman as her model friend/facsimile.
Translations
==============
*
*
*
* At [
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/46547 Project Gutenberg].
*
* (The dream is a translation of 'D'un songe', first published
in 'Lettres diverses'.)
* At [
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/74000 Project Gutenberg]
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
Biographies
=============
*
*
*
* Rogers, Cameron (1929). 'Cyrano: Swordsman, Libertin, and
Man-of-Letters.' New York: Doubleday, Doran & Company.
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
External links
======================================================================
*
*
*
*
*[
https://web.archive.org/web/20160201161408/http://www.levraicyrano.com/
Le Vrai Cyrano de Bergerac] - Biography
*[
http://www.cyranodebergerac.fr/ Cyrano(s) de Bergerac] - Information
on fictional portrayals compared to the real person
*[
https://web.archive.org/web/20050802112906/http://www.bewilderingstories.com/special/tow.html
'The Other World: Society and Government of the Moon'] - annotated
English language edition
*[
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=64k1fJUf6hs Cyrano de Bergerac
(1950) film]
License
=========
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License URL:
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/
Original Article:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyrano_de_Bergerac
