The Enlightenment Comes a Century Early to Bergerac

Unlike the characters in The Trojan Women, whose uncertain historicity is discussed below, there is no doubt that a man named Cyrano lived, from 1619 to 1655. He was indeed a prolific poet, playwright and philosopher, a Gascon cadet in the Thirty Year’s War at the siege of Arras, and may have even had, as this portrait suggests, a rather large nose. Also like Rostand’s fictionalized character, the real Cyrano dreamed of going to the moon, attacked wealthy patrons and was killed by a piece of plank dropped from the sky, in all probability by a cowardly rival.

That’s about where the similarities between the real Cyrano and that of Rostand’s play—written nearly 300 years later—end. While Le Bret and Carbon are real historical figures, much of Cyrano’s relationship with them is probably invented. More essentially, the whole storyline of Roxanne (Cyrano did have a cousin, but we have no proof of feelings, or letters, between them) and Christian is almost certainly invented, as Cyrano was likely a homosexual. Furthermore, the real Cyrano lead a life of gambling and drinking, and was probably sexually active (some believe he really died of syphilis), so contrary to the sexual recluse portrayed in Rostand’s play.

Yet the most important similarity between 17^th Century Cyrano and Rostand’s imagined Cyrano is, to my mind, his (their?) iconoclastic worldview. For, as both a poet and a reader of his contemporaries’ philosophies, Cyrano was one of the first believers in Enlightenment thought, which Cyrano must have attempted to meld with his more romantic, poetic ideals. According to this biography, in spite his affinity for dueling, Cyrano was fiercely opposed to the death penalty, and favored an “individualist” thinking unknown to his day. He brazenly opposed practices of the Catholic Church, and argued against the prevailing skeptics of heliocentric beliefs. Cyrano’s faith in rationalism, so rare for its time, foreshadowed the course of world intellectual history. This part of the historical man, more than anything, must have been Rostand’s truly important source material—a man before his time who held closely to his convictions.