Cyrano de Bergerac and Literary Identity.

December 14, 2009 at 3:30 P.M. Spacing was altered and corrected in this essay since my previous review. The alterations will be reinserted in order to maximize the frustration effect. ("Roberto Unger's Revolutionary Legal Theory.")

January 18, 2008 at 4:53 P.M. only one new "error" inserted and corrected since my previous review of this essay.

August 8, 2007 at 8:55 A.M. I am blocking: http://view.atdmt.com/CN/view/msnkspc00200 (Quebecois? Canada?)
http://view.atdmt.com/iview/msnnkhac001300x250 (N.J. Hackers!)

August 5, 2007 at 9: 00 A.M. My system was hit with a new virus. I am running another complete scan. However, all of my efforts have slowed or frozen my computer.

August 3, 2007 at 12:30 P.M. I spent several hours working on an essay to be posted at my MSN group. Unfortunately, it was deleted as I completed it. This has happened to me before. I will revise it, then I will try to post it here. If I am successful, then I will try once again to post that essay at my MSN group. Unfortunately, my second book is not being distributed to booksellers because I am asked to create a new title page, then to purchase another proof copy, after paying the ISBN costs, again? However, it is finally available for download free of charge. I regret that the book will not be more widely available. The first book has more than 4,000 readers/hits. I am blocking:

http://ad.doubleclick.net/ad/N763.networksite.ww (NJ)

http://m1.2mdn.net/viewad/1442731/1-transparent (allows for removal or alteration of text?)

August 2, 2007 at 10:15 A.M., many distractions. Hackers have deleted letters here, but I will save what I have written, and then I will attempt to return to the text. I will struggle to continue writing. I am blocking:

http://view.atdmt.com/N21/iview/msnnklow/12600 (NJ Judiciary?)

August 3, 2007 at 12:34, spacing has been affected in this essay and I am blocking:

http://view.atdmt.com/msn/iview/msnnkhac001728x90... (Senator Bob! Hey, where's the Babe?)

There have been several alterations and defacements of this essay, even in draft form, which makes writing it much more difficult, aside from the noise and distractions that are inevitable. I will continue to struggle to write it. I expect more attacks and defacements of this essay, then more corrections, followed by reinsertions of the same "errors." (See my final paragraphs in this review.)


For Roxanne,

Bid me to live, and I will live
Thy protestant to be;
or bid me love, and I will give
A loving heart to thee.

A heart as soft, a heart as kind,
A heart as sound and free,
As in the whole world thou canst find,
That heart I'll give to thee.

Bid that heart stay, and it will stay,
To honour thy decree;
Or bid it languish quite away,
And't shall do so for thee.

Bid me to weep, and I will weep,
While I have eyes to see;
And having none, yet I will keep
A heart to weep for thee.

Bid me despair, and I'll despair,
Under that cyprus tree;
Or bid me die, and I will dare
E'en death, to die for thee.

Tou art my life, my love, my heart,
The very eyes of me;
And hast command of every part,
To live and die for thee.

-- Robert Herrick.

Cyrano de Bergerac (1990), a film by Jean-Paul Rappeneau, with Jacques Weber, Anne Brochet, Vincent Perez, Roland Bertin and the great Gerard Depardieu. My apologies to the Master for being unable to supply the accent on the first "e" in his name. Maybe he will sue me. Depardieu would make a great Falstaff.

Edmond de Rostand, Cyrano de Bergerac (New York: Barnes & Noble Classics, 2003), (1st pub. 1898), introduction and notes by Peter Connor (not very good), translation by Gertrude Hall (excellent).

Ben Brantley, "Rapier Wit and a Nose for Poetry," in The New York Times, November 2, 2007, at p. E1. (Kevin Klein, whose Hamlet was unforgettable, will take on this great role opposite Jennifer Garner, at the Richard Rodgers Theater.)

"To joke in the face of danger is the supreme form of politeness."

The historical Cyrano de Bergerac was an outstanding writer and thinker, a student of Descartes' greatest critic Pierre Gassendi. The "real" Cyrano's literary "trip to the moon" foreshadowed the adventures of Gulliver. For a sense of France in the classical age, I highly recommend the memoirs of Saint Simon and the classic stories of Charles Perrault. Also, a new film biography of Moliere is scheduled to appear this year.

It is no coincidence that, at a crucial moment in the Siege of Arras, Cyrano is depicted reading Descartes. This play/film is a philosophical text, but not one in which ideas are explained. Ideas are dramatized, embodied in characters connected to traditions in French history and culture that were in peril when the play was written. These ideas are even more threatened today. Professor Connor's contention that the play is the "antithesis" of idea-based theater is not simply mistaken, but bizarre. Cyrano's reading of Descartes alone suggests that he is a kind of Mind or Cogito to Christian's material body.

It is important to bear in mind that Edmund de Rostand is writing at the end of the nineteenth century. The Cyrano we know in the English-speaking world is a nineteenth century invention, shaped by late Romantic values, while still bearing the stamp of the Sun King and Cartesian rationalism. Which of the two characters is more "real" -- the historical person or literary figure -- is something I leave for others to decide. Perhaps this question is at the heart of Rostand's play, whether identity is a matter of historical events in some God-like objective way or an aesthetic interpretation or construction.

Despite the traditional form of the play -- it is much better than we are told in the English-speaking world, where this work is mostly misunderstood -- Cyrano de Bergerac is a daring work of literature. Rostand was a contemporary of Emile Zola (the distance between, say, "Nana" and "Cyrano" is greater than the journey from the earth to the moon).

Rostand was working in the aftermath of the Franco-Prussian War (1871) that saw the humbling of French imperial ambitions and the rise of a unified German-Prussian European power, under Bismark, with disastrous consequences for the world in the century to come. It took some courage to be an optimist and idealist in France during the period of the "decadents," such as Huysmans and Gide.

The evocation of French glory in the classical age and traditional heroic values, together with an association with idealism was a much-needed tonic for the French nation. Not surprisingly, this work regained popular support and admiration after the second world war in reaction to existentialist angst.

As with most fascinating French thought (and persons) there is a paradox at the center of Edmund de Rostand's "Cyrano" concerning the right blend of reason and feeling. But is this a false opposition, so that reason and feeling are never so separate? The play is an attempt to answer or explore such questions, then to resolve them in literature. Identity is a literary creation for Rostand. I will have to write a long essay examining Miss Jane Austen's novels. Self-invention through writing was also Austen's greatest achievement.

Cyrano is brilliant, witty, charming, heroic, brave, romantic, celebrating gallantry and art. Cyrano is the ultimate artist and man of action, thinker and poet. Cyrano is substance. Christian de Neuvillette is form, appearance, image. Yet Christian is also brave, good, honorable and decent. ("Christian" is an apt name.) Taken together, they represent French masculinity's ideal self-image. Cyrano is id, imagination, inner self; Christian is super-ego, public self. Together they are better than separated. Both are needed by Roxanne.

Who is this man? Cyrano is a great swordsman, a tragic figure, who happens to be a wit, composing a ballad as he duels. The play is still an important source for understanding France and the French character, if there is such a thing (and I think there is) as "the French character." For among the philosophical subjects examined in this very rich work are freedom and the possibilities of self-invention, the boundaries between literary and life-effort, the need for imagination, along with the association between imagination and emotional reality in relationships.

Most of all, the work is about moral heroism and passion. Cyrano is not at all about "food and sex." (Connor) France cannot be understood, I believe, without a sense of what these words, heroism and passion, mean for the French people.

How is it that the nation associated by every educated person with modern Rationalism and key landmarks in philosophical thought is also associated with romantic passion and an unrivalled excellence in the visual and performing arts, particularly during the Romantic period? Why is France both the land of feeling and thought in its public as well as private life? What is the meaning of the wisdom of this great text -- and yes, it is great -- that can be summed up in a sentence: "Empanachez-vous!"

Cyrano de Bergerac offers answers to these questions. Cyrano is among those few characters in world literature who become much more famous than their authors -- others include Don Quixote, Sherlock Holmes, Gulliver, Peter Pan, Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn, Harry Potter -- characters that end by recreating the authors who created them, but also by saying something profound and important about the nations in whose languages they come to life.

Don't we all come to life in languages? Yes, I am thinking of Lacan. Aren't we all "characters"? True, some of us more than others seem destined for adventures -- precious few, alas, will enjoy happy endings. Finally, it is this theme of coming to life in (or "as") language or literature, romance, that will concern us as students of this work. I ask you, reader, how do you find it possible to see a man being tortured -- witnessing the defacements of his creative work -- and do nothing? Have Cyrano's ideals become only a joke today? Is it all "relative"? ("Why I am not an ethical relativist.")

"I have written myself for you."

The film begins with a bravura moment, a great aria. We are about to see a performance of more than one play. Entry into the narrative is by way of a curious child (gesturing at the youthful Cyrano, perhaps). We see images illuminated by light -- an early ancestor of film -- as these characters also illuminate the men and women of an earlier age.

The theatrical performance -- the play within the play -- is stopped by Cyrano, who transforms the theater into his stage. We receive most of the information that we need for the entire play in a single scene. We are "at play," within the play, which is transformed into one's character's improvised playing.

When I say that African-American culture is highly romantic, I mean that you can see parallels in deep feeling and improvisational "playing" in the music of Miles Davis, for example, who was influenced by the impressionist Debussy and many late Romantic composers. No one has commented on the ways in which Muhammad Ali is a kind of Cyrano, dueling and making witty predictions. Norman Mailer's "The Fight" explains that Ali's artistry used boxing as a language of self-creation and expression.

The word "play" will come in handy. Every little boy has engaged in sword fights. As men their swords become vast fortunes or political power, but the same sense of theater will be present. No, a sword isn't always a phallic device. This week Rupert Murdoch acquired The Wall Street Journal -- with a boyish, prankish glee in his eyes -- whatever his age, one sees in Mr. Murdoch an unruly child. Newspapers, skyscrapers, fortunes are merely his toys. Mr. Murdoch's business adventures are a kind of playing. Awesome. Good for him.

On the French television program I saw recently, there was a segment on Fidel Castro. I cannot imagine another contemporary political leader who would have been more at home in the age of Musketeers and Cardinal Richielieu, but which would Castro be -- a sinister politician or sword-wielding Musketeer? A little of both? Cigar? I promise you that, despite their political differences, Castro and Murdoch would get along famously. (You will notice that New Jersey's hackers have affected the spacing of paragraphs in this essay.)

After encountering some of the thugs in this country who oppose Castro (notice the insertion of "errors" in this essay) -- as I also often disagree with and oppose Castro, in a very different way -- I can understand the situation faced by the fledgling Cuban Revolution in the early years of the regime. Batista's "enforcers" -- supported by the U.S. -- seem to fit right in with the censors and gangsters I have encountered in my life: "Santamaria's brother was ... captured and killed. The latter's testicles were severed and the brother's eyes gouged out and served to his sister while she was in prison. ..." The Prison Letters of Fidel Castro (New York: Nation Books, 2007), p. x. (Ann Louise Bardach, Introduction; Louis Conte Aguerro, Epilogue -- my apology to Mr. Aguerro for being unable to supply the dots over the "u" in his name.) By comparison, destroying art or writings must be easy. Right, Senator Bob? How are your friends from Florida? ("Corrupt Law Firms, Senator Menendez, and New Jersey Ethics.")

Roxanne is Cyrano's love interest. This "fact" is first communicated by Cyrano's almost invisible gesture of greeting to her and the stars in his eyes when he sees her. The villain "aristocrat," Montfleury, hovers about her. This villain reeks of duplicity and malice, as does the oily Compte de Guiche. Today this "nobleman" is a politician in France (or better, in New Jersey!) concerned with foreign trade issues and honorariums for speaking engagements. "I am for all the people," he says. ("Senator Bob, the Babe, and the Big Bucks" and "Does Senator Menendez Have Mafia Friends?")

Roxanne is really "Magdeleine" by name. Edmund de Rostand's wife (called "Rosemonde") was a music lover, given a piano for her wedding by Jules Massenet, composer of "Marie-Magdeleine" in 1873. Massenet was a guest at the couple's wedding who shared their passion for poetry. Perhaps Massenet's "Charlotte" in Werther bears Rosamonde's imprint. I was fortunate to hear Alfredo Kraus sing the role of "Werther" at the MET, at a time when Mr. Kraus was the greatest "interpreter" of Massenet's heros in the world.

Ms. Brochard's gentle sideways glance is enough for the men in the audience to be charmed in seconds by this beautiful woman. No women on earth can provide meaningful glances better than French women, making intelligence as well as learning so seductive and feminine.

There are few American actresses who can manage that subtle, longing, interesting and interested glance, filled with feminine power. If you want to understand what is meant by "grace," see that scene. Ms. Brochard does not say a word. She does not stand on her head or take off a single garment, yet the desired impact on the viewer is undeniable. ("The Art of Melanie Griffith.")

Having just returned from seeing Becoming Jane, I was one of nine men in the audience of about forty or fifty persons, I must say that Anne Hathaway did a fine job and seems to possess some of this elusive quality of grace and natural glamor. There is always hope. In our time, that inviting look might be provided by a woman running an international corporation or, perhaps, serving as a socialist candidate for the Presidency of France. There is nothing sexist about this observation, a point which is also understood in France and elsewhere -- including parts of the United States, like Hollywood. A woman may govern the world, while remaining a very feminine woman. In fact, many women do just that. Men often fail to notice this.

We meet a baker who writes poems and a poet who enjoys baked goods. Each approves of the other. This is called social cooperation. France is committed to the proposition that anyone may be an artist as well as appreciate art -- ideally, while purchasing products made in France.

Cyrano's nose is his Achilles' heel, his visible flaw and wound, which he appropriates from the mockers by turning it into a source of brilliant humor. Evil is without real creativity or imagination -- as I can attest from experience -- as is the force of dull conformity and brutality in every society, which says: "adjust." Cyrano's genius (symbolized by the swordfighting ability) is his great gift for dialectics punctuated by humor, wit -- which comes to a full stop with a single touch of his opponent's nose.

We also see the response to genius from envious mediocrities, always and everywhere, the slithering, behind the back assault, cowardice and malice with a smile. I have also experienced such malice. As Cyrano walks away from his defeated antagonist, he is attacked. As an immediate response, Cyrano kills this antagonist. Treachery, behind-the-back malice, may be the worst fault in French or all contemporary life -- and not just in politics. It has become the everyday coin of transactions in American legal circles. "On the one hand, but on the other hand ..."

"Like a slug slithering over a rose."

Cyrano is asked by Roxanne to watch over a man she loves who is to become a "Gascon," in Cyrano's company. She explains to the man who secretly loves her, that she loves this "Christian de Neuvillette," who is also an aristocrat.

Roxanne's feminine wiles are evident throughout this play, notably in her "resignation" to marriage with Christian -- who is astonished to discover that France requires his proposal and love for Roxanne as a matter of duty -- and even in her willing acceptance of Cyrano's love. Some critics complain that the wedding between Christian and Roxanne is not consumated. In the late nineteenth century, copulation on stage was rare in respectable theaters. This hardly suggests that either Cyrano, Christian or Roxanne happened to be "gay" or virgins. ("David Hume's Philosophical Romance.")

Did Roxanne always know Cyrano loved her? Did some part of Roxanne's mind hold this secret and mysterious power, like an ace that she might play at her most difficult moment? "Not to worry, I always have Cyrano's love?" Women's minds are not subject to human comprehension at this point in history -- at least, not by me. It is possible that much of the adventure was Roxanne's subconscious test or challenge for her Cyrano, who wins her love in the end. Women are right to doubt the affections of men and to pose challenges for their suitors. Mythology is filled with accounts of such challenges and quests.

"Every woman forgives adoration," Oscar Wilde says. This may be especially true of French women. The admiration of the Compte de Guiche for Roxanne is aesthetically unacceptable. A man of power, rude, blunt, without sensitivity. He only has money, it seems. Guiche is lacking in feeling, subtle emotion or taste, and cannot share the inner life of such a woman.

The marriage of power and beauty is "like a slug slithering over a rose," Cyrano says. A French audience recoils at the horror of such a fate -- especially women -- who may resign themselves to the torture where the powerful and very wealthy man is not bad looking and educable. American women seem to display an astonishing capacity for trans-cultural understanding in appreciating the nightmarish quality of such a fate. Can it be that one or two American women have made "sensible marriages" and lived to regret it? After all, a sensible marriage is almost a contradiction in terms, like smoking without inhaling. "One should never be sensible in love or in selecting a waistcoat," Oscar Wilde should have said -- maybe he did.

Cyrano forgives the unforgivable and is kind to this man, his one rival for the only love of his life, because it is Roxanne's wish. That's French honor. Cyrano is always in thrall to Roxanne's welfare and happiness. There is also honor between the two men. Cyrano informs the dying Christian that Roxanne loves and always loved, Christian, and not himself. And so she does. However, Roxanne also loves Cyrano. She always does in the play. It takes a while for Roxanne to realize this. ("Master and Commander.")

These men, Cyrano and Christian, are one psyche. They celebrate and embody loyalty, courage, honor, chivalry and patriotism. All of these qualities are also part of American masculinity. They are usually under the surface in a Protestant culture that values understatement, modesty, being "low key" and "down to earth." American heroism both on the part of young men and women is on display, every day, in many places in the world. If you have never seen "High Noon," see it. You will learn something that is still true about American men at their best.

American business men and professionals dress in gray, dark blue, black, with an occasional red or (gasp!) even a yellow tie for the daring or, possibly, sexually adventurous. A plume in one's hat is unthinkable. Vacations are an outlet. Even a Nobel prize winning American physicist will dismiss a magnificent achievement as trivial -- "Oh, it's nothing really. Just a little something I've been working on at the lab."

Cyrano says -- "No!' Life is a grand adventure. Live it. Eat well, relish language, savor words like the pastry chef's delicacies, visual beauties, sounds, friendship, passion, a woman's glance, the colors she wears, movement, laughter. This play is life-affirming, even as it accepts tragedy, loss and death. I do not believe that Cyrano is a virgin. However, I am certain that what he feels for Roxanne is romantic love, which includes desire but is not simply lust. The entire world, offered to Cyrano at the cost of himself, is not tempting to him -- "No, thank you!" (See pp. 75-77.)

The pact between Cyrano and Christian is the treaty of genius with worldly acumen: "Eloquence I will lend you ... and you, to me, shall lend all conquering physical charm" -- women are very physical, of course, even as men are more spiritual in their loves -- "and between us, we will compose a hero of romance!" (p. 83.)

How is this trick to be achieved? Why, through language, naturally. Those cupcakes and cookies made of letters on the page or spoken by our hero(s) to a lady on a balcony provide the tasty treat. Does this sound familiar? It should. This play is never about food. Pastries and delicacies serve as metaphors at several points in the story: first, for poems and literature; second, for home and love in the battlefield scene.

There are several gestures in Shakespeare's direction: the balcony scene (Romeo and Juliet) and battlefield encounter between Roxanne and the famished Gascons echoes both Twelfth Night and Henry V. Racine's tragedies and Moliere's bourgeois gentleman, "speaking prose without knowing it," are also explicitly invoked. The very idea of a "Gascon" -- a combination of a boy scout and a U.S. Marine -- is a gem of French culture.

For a contemporary response to these themes by a playwright immersed in this long-vanished era's theatrical works, see Christopher Hampton's "The Philanthropist," and "Total Eclipse," in The Philanthropist and Other Plays (London: Faber & Faber, 1991). The theme of literary construction of identities is explored by Mr. Hampton in his screenplay for Ian McEwen's Atonement; and from the English side of the waters, compare a masterpiece by (in my opinion) the greatest living English-language playwright, Tom Stoppard, Arcadia (London: Faber & Faber, 1993) and Ira Nadel, Tom Stoppard: A Life (New York: MacMillan, 2002), pp. 426-451, with Oscar Wilde's "The Importance of Being Ernest," in The Picture of Dorian Gray and Other Writings by Oscar Wilde (New York: Bantam, 1982), p. 397. ("Cyrano de Bergerac" may be the world's most impressive example of "Bunburying.")

"I breathe the perfume of the past."

It is in language, through his writings, that Cyrano unifies the warring aspects of his identity, an identity that is then presented for approval to Roxanne in the pleasant form of Christian. (See my short story "Sherlock Holmes and the Case of the Missing Author.") Once this task of self-presentation is complete, Christian's death becomes necessary.

Christian is integrated into Cyrano's persona. Christian is no longer needed. Cyrano has revealed himself -- indeed, he has become himself -- in words. The reference is to Hamlet. Cyrano's ugliness is transmuted into beauty as he is finally seen by Roxanne. (See Jean Cocteau's "Beauty and the Beast" and my short story by that title.)

Rostand's romance with his Rosamonde, I am sure, was conducted partly in letters, allowing the young poet to "emplot" himself, to "write himself" for her. (Paul Ricoeur) Foucault wonders: "Who or what is an author?" I am sure that, about half-way through writing this work, Cyrano de Bergerac became its true author. Rostand was transformed into his own greatest character. By the time of Rostand's appointment to the French academy, as demonstrated in his acceptance speech, Rostand had become himself -- that is, he had become "Cyrano," for "her."

For "her," yes. Even with the treacherous, anonymous death produced by a cowardly strike, even without his Roxanne -- whose love must be freely given, for Cyrano, and never a matter of pity -- Cyrano is triumphant in this tragedy as he awaits destruction, affirming the final wisdom of this great work, which still resonates for Latins especially. "A man can be destroyed," Hemingway writes, "but not defeated":

CYRANO: "What are you saying? That it is no use? ... I know it! But one does not fight because there is hope of winning! No! ... no! ... it is much finer to fight when it is no use! ... What are all of those? You are a thousand strong? ... Ah, I know you now ... all my ancient enemies! ... Hypocrisy? ... [He beats with his sword in the vacancy.] Take this! And this! Ha! Ha! Compromises? ... and Prejudices? and dastardly Expedients? [He strikes.] That I should come to terms, I? ... Never! Never! ... Ah, you are there too, you bloated and pompous Silliness! I know full well that you will lay me low at last ... No matter: whilst I have breath, I will fight you, I will fight you, I will fight you!"

This is a speech that bears comparison with the great soliloquies in Henry V:

CYRANO: "Yes, you have wrested from me everything, laurel as well as rose ... Work your wills! ... Spite your worst, something will still be left me to take whither I go ... and tonight when I enter God's house, in saluting, broadly will I sweep the azure threshold with what despite of all I carry forth umblemished and unbent ... and that is ... "

ROXANNE: "[Bending over him and kissing his forehead] That is? ..."

CYRANO: "[Opens his eyes again, recognizes her and says with a smile] ... My plume!" [The better translation or original that needs no translation is panache!]

[Curtain.]