Savinien de Cyrano de Bergerac ( , ; 6
March 1619 – 28 July 1655) was a French
novelist
A novelist is an author or writer of novels, though often novelists also write in other genres of both fiction and non-fiction. Some novelists are professional novelists, thus make a living writing novels and other fiction, while others aspire to ...
,
playwright
A playwright or dramatist is a person who writes plays.
Etymology
The word "play" is from Middle English pleye, from Old English plæġ, pleġa, plæġa ("play, exercise; sport, game; drama, applause"). The word "wright" is an archaic English ...
,
epistolarian, and
duel
A duel is an arranged engagement in combat between two people, with matched weapons, in accordance with agreed-upon Code duello, rules.
During the 17th and 18th centuries (and earlier), duels were mostly single combats fought with swords (the r ...
ist.
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
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 cen ...
'' (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.
Life
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
''The Other World: Comical History of the States and Empires of the Moon'' (french: L’Autre monde ou les états et empires de la Lune) was the first of three satirical novels written by Cyrano de Bergerac. It was published posthumously in 1657 ...
'') 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
Auguste Jal (12 April 1795, in Lyon – 5 April 1873) was a French author who wrote on maritime archaeology and history.
Biography
He was educated at the naval school in Brest, and led a company of the cadets in the defense of Paris during the H ...
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
William Marsh Rice University (Rice University) is a Private university, private research university in Houston, Houston, Texas. It is on a 300-acre campus near the Houston Museum District and adjacent to the Texas Medical Center. Rice is ranke ...
, 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.
[Consider what Madeleine Alcover has written in the '' « Biographie » de Cyrano de Bergerac'': "It was necessary to renounce a kind of writing where the author presents to the readers as 'facts' purely subjective assertions; that kind of writing, known in ]Narratology
Narratology is the study of narrative and narrative structure and the ways that these affect human perception. It is an anglicisation of French ''narratologie'', coined by Tzvetan Todorov (''Grammaire du Décaméron'', 1969). Its theoretical li ...
as characteristic of the infallible and omniscient narrator, is totally misplaced in a biography. The readers must always be able to distinguish the content of a document from the interpretation that is made of it; the lack of documentation from a hypothesis (more or less well founded…)"
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
The Parliament of Paris (french: Parlement de Paris) was the oldest ''parlement'' in the Kingdom of France, formed in the 14th century. It was fixed in Paris by Philip IV of France in 1302. The Parliament of Paris would hold sessions inside the ...
, and of Espérance Bellanger (1586-164?), "daughter of deceased nobleman Estienne Bellanger, Counsellor of the King and Treasurer of his Finances".
Ancestors
![Nicolas Delamare-Traité de la police, 1729, lII](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/14/Nicolas_Delamare-Trait%C3%A9_de_la_police%2C_1729%2C_lII.jpg)
His paternal grandfather, Savinien I de Cyrano (15??-1590), was probably born into a notable family from
Sens[Saint Savinian is the name of the first archbishop of Sens.] in
Burgundy
Burgundy (; french: link=no, Bourgogne ) is a historical territory and former administrative region and province of east-central France. The province was once home to the Dukes of Burgundy from the early 11th until the late 15th century. The c ...
. 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 Francis I or Francis the First may refer to:
* Francesco I Gonzaga (1366–1407)
* Francis I, Duke of Brittany (1414–1450), reigned 1442–1450
* Francis I of France (1494–1547), King of France, reigned 1515–1547
* Francis I, Duke of Saxe-Lau ...
,
Henry II and
Francis II). He married Catherine Valeton, daughter of a
property tax
A property tax or millage rate is an ad valorem tax on the value of a property.In the OECD classification scheme, tax on property includes "taxes on immovable property or net wealth, taxes on the change of ownership of property through inheri ...
collector from
Nantes
Nantes (, , ; Gallo: or ; ) is a city in Loire-Atlantique on the Loire, from the Atlantic coast. The city is the sixth largest in France, with a population of 314,138 in Nantes proper and a metropolitan area of nearly 1 million inhabita ...
, Audebert Valeton, who, accused of involvement in the
Affair of the Placards
The Affair of the Placards (french: Affaire des Placards) was an incident in which anti-Catholic posters appeared in public places in Paris and in four major provincial cities, Blois, Rouen, Tours and Orléans, in the night of the 17 to 18 Octob ...
, 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
The rue Saint-Honoré is a street in the 1st arrondissement of Paris, France.
It is named after the collegial situated in ancient times within the cloisters of Saint-Honoré.
The street, on which are located a number of museums and upscale bou ...
), 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;
[She was baptised on 11June 1586 at the church of St-Gervais-et-St-Protais.] he was about forty-five.
[The testamentary executors accounts show that, several days before his death in January 1648, Abel de Cyrano said he was "older than eighty years". Therefore he was born before 1568.] 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 traces the fate of the witnesses (and more particularly their links with pious milieus) and notes that many of them "had entered the worlds of high finance, the ''
noblesse de robe
The concept of the Scottish Noblesse, a class of nobles of either peerage or non-peerage rank, was prominently advocated for by Sir Thomas Innes of Learney during his tenure as an officer of arms. Innes of Learney believed that Scottish armiger ...
'', of the aristocracy (including the Court) and even the ''
noblesse d'épée
The Nobles of the Sword (french: noblesse d'épée) were the noblemen of the oldest class of nobility in France dating from the Middle Ages and the Early Modern period, and arguably still in existence by descent. It was originally the knightly cl ...
''".
His father's library
In 1911 Jean Lemoine made known the inventory of Abel de Cyrano's worldly goods. 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
Desiderius Erasmus Roterodamus (; ; English: Erasmus of Rotterdam or Erasmus;''Erasmus'' was his baptismal name, given after St. Erasmus of Formiae. ''Desiderius'' was an adopted additional name, which he used from 1496. The ''Roterodamus'' wa ...
,
Rabelais,
Juan Luis Vives
Juan Luis Vives March ( la, Joannes Lodovicus Vives, lit=Juan Luis Vives; ca, Joan Lluís Vives i March; nl, Jan Ludovicus Vives; 6 March 6 May 1540) was a Spanish ( Valencian) scholar and Renaissance humanist wh ...
), knowledge of Italian, interest in the sciences. On the religious side, one notices the presence of two Bibles, of an Italian
New Testament
The New Testament grc, Ἡ Καινὴ Διαθήκη, transl. ; la, Novum Testamentum. (NT) is the second division of the Christian biblical canon. It discusses the teachings and person of Jesus, as well as events in first-century Christ ...
and the Prayers of
St. Basil in
Greek
Greek may refer to:
Greece
Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe:
*Greeks, an ethnic group.
*Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family.
**Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor ...
, 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
François de la Noue (1531 – August 4, 1591), called Bras-de-Fer (Iron Arm), was one of the Huguenot captains of the 16th century. He was born near Nantes in 1531, of an ancient Breton family.
He served in Italy under Marshal Brissac, and in t ...
, two volumes of
George Buchanan
George Buchanan ( gd, Seòras Bochanan; February 1506 – 28 September 1582) was a Scottish historian and humanist scholar. According to historian Keith Brown, Buchanan was "the most profound intellectual sixteenth century Scotland produced." ...
, the ''Dialectique'' of
Pierre de La Ramée
Petrus Ramus (french: Pierre de La Ramée; Anglicized as Peter Ramus ; 1515 – 26 August 1572) was a French humanist, logician, and educational reformer. A Protestant convert, he was a victim of the St. Bartholomew's Day massacre.
Early life ...
, 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
The Huguenots ( , also , ) were a religious group of French Protestants who held to the Reformed, or Calvinist, tradition of Protestantism. The term, which may be derived from the name of a Swiss political leader, the Genevan burgomaster Be ...
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
Auguste Jal (12 April 1795, in Lyon – 5 April 1873) was a French author who wrote on maritime archaeology and history.
Biography
He was educated at the naval school in Brest, and led a company of the cadets in the defense of Paris during the H ...
, 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,
[In two documents from January and February 1649 concerning the succession of Abel I de Cyrano, Abel II is said to be "of the age of emancipation, progressing under the authority of the said Savinien de Cyrano, his brother and guardian" (« émancipé d'âge, procédant sous l'autorité de Savinien dudit Cyrano, son frère et curateur »).] 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.
Childhood and adolescence
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
Under the French monarchy, the Courts of Accounts (in French ''Chambres des comptes'') were sovereign courts specialising in financial affairs. The Court of Accounts in Paris was the oldest and the forerunner of today's French Court of Audit. ...
, 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
Vincent de Paul, CM (24 April 1581 – 27 September 1660), commonly known as Saint Vincent de Paul, was a Occitan French Catholic priest who dedicated himself to serving the poor.
In 1622 Vincent was appointed a chaplain to the galleys. Afte ...
, 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
![La Vallée de Chevreuse en 1701](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e7/La_Vall%C3%A9e_de_Chevreuse_en_1701.jpg)
In 1622, Abel de Cyrano left Paris with his family and went to settle on his lands at Mauvières and Bergerac in the ''
Vallée de Chevreuse
Vallée de Chevreuse (Chevreuse Valley) is the valley of the Yvette River in the Yvelines and Essonne departments.
It encompasses the communes around Chevreuse ( Saint-Rémy-lès-Chevreuse, Choisel, Dampierre, etc.) within the Parc naturel r ...
'', which had come to him in part after the death of his mother in 1616.
His possessions, situated on the banks of the
Yvette River
The Yvette () is a small river in southern Île-de-France (France), left tributary of the Orge, which is a tributary of the Seine. It is long. Its source is in Les Essarts-le-Roi, north of Rambouillet, in the Yvelines department. Various commune i ...
in the parish of
Saint-Forget
Saint-Forget () is a commune in the Yvelines department in the Île-de-France region in north-central France. The commute consists of three hamlets: Le Mesnil-Sevin, Haute-Beauce, and The Sablons. This small town is 30 kilometers from Paris. It i ...
, 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
![Abraham Bosse, Le maître d'école](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/2b/Abraham_Bosse%2C_Le_ma%C3%AEtre_d%27%C3%A9cole.jpg)
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 rom the schoola little too suddenly and, without considering if his son would be better off elsewhere, he sent him to that city aris Aris or ARIS may refer to:
People
* Aris (surname)
Given name
* Aris Alexandrou, Greek writer
* Aris Brimanis, ice hockey player
* Aris Christofellis, Greek male soprano
* Aris Gavelas, Greek sprinter
* Aris Howard, Former President of the Jama ...
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,
[Pierre II de Cyrano, Lord of Cassan.] with whom, according to Le Bret, he would build a lasting friendship.
![Détail du plan de Gomboust, 1652](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/62/D%C3%A9tail_du_plan_de_Gomboust%2C_1652.jpg)
He continued his secondary studies at an academy which remains unknown. It has long been maintained that he attended the
Collège de Beauvais
The College of Beauvais (also known the College of Dormans-Beauvais) was in Paris in what is now the Rue Jean de Beauvais. At the end of the 17th century and at the beginning of the 18th century, it was one of the leading schools of France, educ ...
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''
Charles Sorel
Charles Sorel, sieur de Souvigny (c. 1602 – 7 March 1674) was a French novelist and general writer.
Life
Very little is known of his life except that in 1635 he was historiographer of France. He wrote on science, history and religion, ...
, who perhaps also studied there, made vitriolic portrait of it in his ''Francion''. (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'').[It seems that the author here means ]Charles Sorel
Charles Sorel, sieur de Souvigny (c. 1602 – 7 March 1674) was a French novelist and general writer.
Life
Very little is known of his life except that in 1635 he was historiographer of France. He wrote on science, history and religion, ...
, whose biographer, Émile Roy, wrote in 1891 that he knew Paris particularly well and "described it all, even the 'excrescences'". But the expression is an invention of the 19th century and appears nowhere in the works of Sorel. 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
:''See also François Tristan l'Hermite''
Tristan l'Hermite (died c. 1478) was a French political and military figure of the late Middle Ages. He was born in Flanders near the beginning of the century.
He was provost of the marshals of the Kin ...
and Saint-Amant and cultivated the memory of Théophile and his impious lyricism.
![Da Sousy](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/dc/Da_Sousy.jpg)
In his voluminous biography of
Charles Coypeau d'Assoucy
Charles Coypeau (16 October 1605 Paris – 29 October 1677, Paris) was a French musician and burlesque poet. In the mid-1630s he began using the ''nom de plume'' D'Assouci or Dassoucy.
Life
From the time he was eight or nine, Charles Coypeau b ...
, Jean-Luc Hennig suggests that the poet-musician had begun around 1636 (at thirty-one) a homosexual relationship with Cyrano, then seventeen. In support of this hypothesis, he notes that both had families from Sens, a lawyer father and religious brothers and sisters, that the elder only liked youths and in regard to the women of
Montpellier
Montpellier (, , ; oc, Montpelhièr ) is a city in southern France near the Mediterranean Sea. One of the largest urban centres in the region of Occitania (administrative region), Occitania, Montpellier is the prefecture of the Departments of ...
who accused him in 1656 of neglecting them, he wrote that "all of that has no more foundation than their fanciful imagination, already concerned, which had taught them ''the long-time habits''
hat he
A hat is a head covering which is worn for various reasons, including protection against weather conditions, ceremonial reasons such as university graduation, religious reasons, safety, or as a fashion accessory. Hats which incorporate mecha ...
had had with C
apelle late D
B
rgeracand late C."
[« tout cela est sans autre fondement que leur chimérique imagination, déjà préoccupée, qui leur avait appris ''les longues habitudes'' u'ilavait eues avec C apelle feu D B rgeracet feu C. »]
Cyrano's homosexuality was first explicitly hypothesized by Jacques Prévot in 1978.
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
The Latin Quarter of Paris (french: Quartier latin, ) is an area in the 5th and the 6th arrondissements of Paris. It is situated on the left bank of the Seine, around the Sorbonne.
Known for its student life, lively atmosphere, and bistro ...
, 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
The aristocracy is historically associated with "hereditary" or "ruling" social class. In many states, the aristocracy included the upper class of people (aristocrats) with hereditary rank and titles. In some, such as ancient Greece, ancient Ro ...
, 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
Syphilis () is a sexually transmitted infection caused by the bacterium ''Treponema pallidum'' subspecies ''pallidum''. The signs and symptoms of syphilis vary depending in which of the four stages it presents (primary, secondary, latent, an ...
. She also claims that he may have been
homosexual
Homosexuality is romantic attraction, sexual attraction, or sexual behavior between members of the same sex or gender. As a sexual orientation, homosexuality is "an enduring pattern of emotional, romantic, and/or sexual attractions" to peop ...
and around 1640 became the lover of
Charles Coypeau d'Assoucy
Charles Coypeau (16 October 1605 Paris – 29 October 1677, Paris) was a French musician and burlesque poet. In the mid-1630s he began using the ''nom de plume'' D'Assouci or Dassoucy.
Life
From the time he was eight or nine, Charles Coypeau b ...
,
[Addyman, Ishbel, ''Cyrano: The Life and Legend of Cyrano de Bergerac'', (Simon & Schuster, 2008), ] a writer and musician, until around 1653, when they became engaged in a bitter rivalry. This led to Bergerac sending d'Assoucy
death threat
A death threat is a threat, often made anonymously, by one person or a group of people to kill another person or group of people. These threats are often designed to intimidate victims in order to manipulate their behaviour, in which case a de ...
s that compelled him to leave Paris. The quarrel extended to a series of
satirical
Satire is a genre of the visual, literary, and performing arts, usually in the form of fiction and less frequently non-fiction, in which vices, follies, abuses, and shortcomings are held up to ridicule, often with the intent of shaming or e ...
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
Théophile de Viau (159025 September 1626) was a French Baroque poet and dramatist.
Life
Born at Clairac, near Agen in the Lot-et-Garonne and raised as a Huguenot, Théophile de Viau participated in the Huguenot rebellions in Guyenne from 1615 ...
, the French poet and
libertine.
He is said to have left the
military
A military, also known collectively as armed forces, is a heavily armed, highly organized force primarily intended for warfare. It is typically authorized and maintained by a sovereign state, with its members identifiable by their distinct ...
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
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 cen ...
'' 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
The Thirty Years' War was one of the longest and most destructive conflicts in European history
The history of Europe is traditionally divided into four time periods: prehistoric Europe (prior to about 800 BC), classical antiquity (80 ...
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
A sortie (from the French word meaning ''exit'' or from Latin root ''surgere'' meaning to "rise up") is a deployment or dispatch of one military unit, be it an aircraft, ship, or troops, from a strongpoint. The term originated in siege warfare. ...
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
A polymath ( el, πολυμαθής, , "having learned much"; la, homo universalis, "universal human") is an individual whose knowledge spans a substantial number of subjects, known to draw on complex bodies of knowledge to solve specific pro ...
Pierre Gassendi
Pierre Gassendi (; also Pierre Gassend, Petrus Gassendi; 22 January 1592 – 24 October 1655) was a French philosopher, Catholic priest, astronomer, and mathematician. While he held a church position in south-east France, he also spent much t ...
, a
canon
Canon or Canons may refer to:
Arts and entertainment
* Canon (fiction), the conceptual material accepted as official in a fictional universe by its fan base
* Literary canon, an accepted body of works considered as high culture
** Western ca ...
of the
Catholic Church
The Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the largest Christian church, with 1.3 billion baptized Catholics worldwide . It is among the world's oldest and largest international institutions, and has played a ...
who tried to reconcile
Epicurean
Epicureanism is a system of philosophy founded around 307 BC based upon the teachings of the ancient Greek philosopher Epicurus. Epicureanism was originally a challenge to Platonism. Later its main opponent became Stoicism.
Few writings by Epi ...
atomism
Atomism (from Greek , ''atomon'', i.e. "uncuttable, indivisible") is a natural philosophy proposing that the physical universe is composed of fundamental indivisible components known as atoms.
References to the concept of atomism and its atoms ...
with
Christianity
Christianity is an Abrahamic monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth. It is the world's largest and most widespread religion with roughly 2.38 billion followers representing one-third of the global pop ...
.
![Cyrano de Bergerac (statue)](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/10/Cyrano_de_Bergerac_%28statue%29.jpg)
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
''The Other World: Comical History of the States and Empires of the Moon'' (french: L’Autre monde ou les états et empires de la Lune) was the first of three satirical novels written by Cyrano de Bergerac. It was published posthumously in 1657 ...
''", 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
Science fiction (sometimes shortened to Sci-Fi or SF) is a genre of speculative fiction which typically deals with imaginative and futuristic concepts such as advanced science and technology, space exploration, time travel, parallel unive ...
. 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
Jonathan Swift (30 November 1667 – 19 October 1745) was an Anglo-Irish Satire, satirist, author, essayist, political pamphleteer (first for the Whig (British political party), Whigs, then for the Tories (British political party), Tories), poe ...
,
Edgar Allan Poe
Edgar Allan Poe (; Edgar Poe; January 19, 1809 – October 7, 1849) was an American writer, poet, editor, and literary critic. Poe is best known for his poetry and short stories, particularly his tales of mystery and the macabre. He is wide ...
and probably
Voltaire
François-Marie Arouet (; 21 November 169430 May 1778) was a French Age of Enlightenment, Enlightenment writer, historian, and philosopher. Known by his ''Pen name, nom de plume'' M. de Voltaire (; also ; ), he was famous for his wit, and his ...
.
Corneille
Pierre Corneille (; 6 June 1606 – 1 October 1684) was a French tragedian. He is generally considered one of the three great seventeenth-century French dramatists, along with Molière and Racine.
As a young man, he earned the valuable patronag ...
and
Molière
Jean-Baptiste Poquelin (, ; 15 January 1622 (baptised) – 17 February 1673), known by his stage name Molière (, , ), was a French playwright, actor, and poet, widely regarded as one of the greatest writers in the French language and world ...
freely borrowed ideas from ''Le Pédant joué''.
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
Sannois () is a commune in the northwestern suburbs of Paris, France. It is located 15.2 km. (9.4 miles) from the center of Paris, in the Val-d'Oise department in Île-de-France in northern France.
Population
Transport
Public transpo ...
. He was buried in a
church
Church may refer to:
Religion
* Church (building), a building for Christian religious activities
* Church (congregation), a local congregation of a Christian denomination
* Church service, a formalized period of Christian communal worship
* C ...
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.
In fiction and media
Rostand
In 1897, the French
poet
A poet is a person who studies and creates poetry. Poets may describe themselves as such or be described as such by others. A poet may simply be the creator ( thinker, songwriter, writer, or author) who creates (composes) poems (oral or writte ...
Edmond Rostand published a play, ''
Cyrano de Bergerac
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 cen ...
'', on the subject of Cyrano's life. 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
Louis Gallet (14 February 1835 in Valence, Drôme
Valence (, ; oc, Valença ) is a commune in southeastern France, the prefecture of the Drôme department and within the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes region. It is situated on the left bank of the ...
, 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 appears as one of the main characters of the ''
Riverworld
Riverworld is a fictional planet and the setting for a series of science fiction books written by Philip José Farmer (1918–2009). Riverworld is an artificial "Super-Earth" environment where all humans (and pre-humans) are reconstructed. The ...
'' series of books by
Philip José Farmer
Philip José Farmer (January 26, 1918 – February 25, 2009) was an American author known for his science fiction and fantasy novels and short stories.
Obituary.
Farmer is best known for his sequences of novels, especially the ''World of Tiers ...
.
Cyrano de Bergerac served as an inspiration for the creation of Saint-Savin, one of the main characters of
Umberto Eco
Umberto Eco (5 January 1932 – 19 February 2016) was an Italian medievalist, philosopher, semiotician, novelist, cultural critic, and political and social commentator. In English, he is best known for his popular 1980 novel ''The Name of the ...
's novel ''
The Island of the Day Before
''The Island of the Day Before'' ( it, L'isola del giorno prima) is a 1994 historical fiction novel by Umberto Eco set in the 17th century during the historical search for the secret of longitude. The central character is Roberto della Griva, an ...
''.
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
Robert Anson Heinlein (; July 7, 1907 – May 8, 1988) was an American science fiction author, aeronautical engineer, and naval officer. Sometimes called the "dean of science fiction writers", he was among the first to emphasize scientific accu ...
's novel ''
Glory Road
''Glory Road'' is a science fantasy novel by American writer Robert A. Heinlein, originally serialized in ''The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction'' (July – September 1963) and published in hardcover the same year. It was nominated for ...
'', Oscar Gordon fights a character who is not named, but is obviously Cyrano.
John Shirley
John Shirley (born February 10, 1953) is an American writer, primarily of fantasy, science fiction, dark street fiction, westerns, and songwriting. He has also written one historical novel, a western about Wyatt Earp, ''Wyatt in Wichita'', and ...
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
Adam Browne (born 1963) is an Australian speculative fiction writer. He lives in Melbourne, Australia. Browne illustrates his own work.
Bibliography
Books
* ''Pyrotechnicon: Being a True Account of the Further Adventures of Cyrano de Berg ...
, ''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 Keith Stevenson, 2014.
''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
Alexandre Charles Lecocq (3 June 183224 October 1918) was a French composer, known for his opérettes and opéras comiques. He became the most prominent successor to Jacques Offenbach in this sphere, and enjoyed considerable success in the 1870 ...
's 1896
opéra comique
''Opéra comique'' (; plural: ''opéras comiques'') is a genre of French opera that contains spoken dialogue and arias. It emerged from the popular '' opéras comiques en vaudevilles'' of the Fair Theatres of St Germain and St Laurent (and to a l ...
''
Ninette''.
["The Drama in Paris", ''The Era'', 7 March 1896, p. 13]
Film
Most recently his likeness was the center of a musical romantic drama, ''
Cyrano Cyrano may refer to:
Astronomy
* 3582 Cyrano, a small main belt asteroid
* Cyrano (crater), a lunar impact crater that lies on the far side of the Moon
Stage and film
* ''Cyrano'' (Damrosch), a 1913 opera by Walter Damrosch
* ''Cyrano'', a 195 ...
'', 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
Peter Hayden Dinklage (; born June 11, 1969) is an American film, television and stage actor. He received international recognition for portraying Tyrion Lannister on the HBO television series ''Game of Thrones'' (2011–2019), for which he ...
, starred as Cyrano. The film was widely received with positive reviews and went on to be nominated for awards at the
79th Golden Globe Awards
The 79th Golden Globe Awards honored the best in film and American television of 2021, as chosen by the Hollywood Foreign Press Association (HFPA). The ceremony took place privately on January 9, 2022. The nominees were announced on December ...
, four nominations at the
75th British Academy Film Awards
The 75th British Academy Film Awards, also known as the BAFAs (or BAFTAs), were held on 13 March 2022 at the Royal Albert Hall in London, honouring the best national and foreign films of 2021. Presented by the British Academy of Film and Telev ...
and a
Best Costume Design nod at the
94th Academy Awards
The 94th Academy Awards ceremony, presented by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS), took place on March 27, 2022, at the Dolby Theatre in Hollywood, Los Angeles. The awards were scheduled after its usual late February dat ...
.
There is also a popular French film, ''
Cyrano de Bergerac
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 cen ...
,'' starring
Gerard Depeardiu''.'' Additionally, Cyrano de Bergerac is the premise of
a 1925 film and
a 1950 film.
Bibliography
Original editions
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
Translations
*
*
*
:*
*
* (The dream is a translation of ''D'un songe'', first published in ''Lettres diverses''.)
*
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
Year 358 ( CCCLVIII) was a common year starting on Thursday (link will display the full calendar) of the Julian calendar. At the time, it was known as the Year of the Consulship of Datianus and Cerealis (or, less frequently, year 1111 '' Ab ur ...
, named after de Bergerac
Notes
References
Biographies
*
*
*
* Rogers, Cameron (1929). ''Cyrano: Swordsman, Libertin, and Man-of-Letters.'' New York: Doubleday, Doran & Company.
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
Studies of Cyrano or his work
Madeleine Alcover
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
Guilhem Armand
*
*
*
Pierre-Antonin Brun
*
*
Jean Lemoine
*
*
Jacques Prévot
*
*
Others
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
Further reading
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
External links
*
*
*
*
Le Vrai Cyrano de Bergeracnbsp;– Biography
Cyrano(s) de Bergeracnbsp;– Information on fictional portrayals compared to the real person
nbsp;– annotated English language edition
{{DEFAULTSORT:Cyrano de Bergerac
1619 births
1655 deaths
17th-century French dramatists and playwrights
French science fiction writers
Writers from Paris
17th-century French male writers
17th-century French novelists
French male novelists
French duellists
French satirists
French people of the Thirty Years' War