350 years before Cervantes. François Villon follows Charles d'Orléans;
Rabelais is the contemporary of Calvin; Racine is followed by
Voltaire. The précieux movement is followed by the burlesque; the hard
thought of Voltaire by the softness of Bernadin de Saint-Pierre; the
Romantics by the Naturalistes. The heterodox tradition from Le Roman
de Renart (12th century) and the Fabliaux (13th century) can be traced
throughout French literature to Anatole France and Remy de Gourmont.
French literature is like a great double stream which constantly
winds and branches out and reabsorbs side channels. We can see the
17th-century libertins as an episode in a great intellectual struggle
and Cyrano de Bergerac as a minor, but not unimportant, actor, in that
episode. In any case Cyrano is not an exception in French literature
in spite of a few eccentricities; he is one example of a perfectly
recognizable intellectual type and so far from being the complete
"original" he is made out to be, he has little to offer which cannot be
found in his contemporaries and immediate predecessors.[16]
[Footnote 16: F. T. Perrens, _Les Libertins en France au XVII^e
Siècle_, is an interesting book.]
V
THE WORKS OF CYRANO DE BERGERAC
The extant writings of Cyrano de Bergerac are: (1) A few poems,
including the libel on Mazarin; (2) Three or four political pamphlets
(doubtful); (3) _Entretiens Pointus_; a set of quibbling jokes; (4)
Three sets of Letters; (5) A prose comedy, _Le Pédant Joué_; (6) A
verse tragedy, _La Mort d'Agrippine_; (7) _Les Estats et Empires de la
Lune et du Soleil_; (8) _Traité de Physique_, fragmentary.
The first three are unimportant. The best of Cyrano's few short
poems is the sonnet to Jacqueline d'Arpajon. The political pamphlets
interest the researcher and are not certainly Cyrano's. The _Entretiens
Pointus_, or _Merry Conceited Jests_ are verbal quibbles and jokes,
supposedly memories of conversation in the Gassendi group.
With the letters we come to the first of Cyrano's works of literary
value and are at once met with a difficulty which makes the study
of Cyrano's work so troublesome. Whenever there exists a MS. of any
of his writings the differences between this and all the printed
editions before that of Gourmont (1908) is so considerable that in
many cases the whole intention of the work is different. Most of the
passages omitted in the printed editions are philosophical or satirical
arguments or sarcasms directed against the Church and religion and
were omitted in the 17th century for obvious reasons. No editions of
Cyrano show the MSS. texts prior to 1908; the editions of Gourmont and
particularly of Lachèvre have shown us a different Cyrano.
The Cyrano created by Gautier and Rostand was, of course, a chimera;
but there was something curious in his work which gave some support to
the theory that he was mad or at least very eccentric. He was not mad,
he was simply heavily censored. Essential words, sentences, paragraphs,
whole pages were omitted; always modifying the meaning, sometimes
making it absurd.
These Letters belong to a confused period of French literature, a
sort of interregnum between the age of Rabelais and Montaigne and the
age of Louis XIV. The literary influences in Cyrano's time were the
précieux, the satyriques and the burlesques. The letters of Guez de
Balzac (1594-1654) and Voiture (1598-1648) made polite letter-writing
fashionable. The libels of the Fronde, the satire of Regnier's
disciples, the burlesque of Sorel and Scarron formed, in the first half
of the century, the opposition to the Italianated schools of preciosity
and politeness--Marini, the Scudérys, Voiture, the Rambouillet salon.
Cyrano's Letters are a curious hotch-potch of these conflicting styles.
These fifty odd letters are Amorous, Descriptive and Satirical,
sometimes at the expense of real persons. Most of them are rhetorical
exercises; a few are serious. Nothing could be more creditable to
Cyrano than his letter _Against Sorcerers_. It is a vigorous and
well-expressed protest against the stupid belief in sorcery, the
grotesque legal proceedings and the barbarous sentences carried out
upon nervously hallucinated or innocent people. It is a wonderfully
just attack upon ignorance and superstition and contains his famous
saying:
"Not the name of Aristotle (more learned than I), not that of
Plato, nor that of Socrates, shall ever convince me if my judgment
is not convinced by reason that what they say is true."
The _Love-Letters_ are made of clever and wholly frigid conceits, which
glitter and clink like chains of icicles; nothing could be farther from
the language of genuine feeling. The Satirical Letters are abusive and
filled with "clenches." They do not denounce types, they blackguard
individuals. The _Lettres Diverses_ are mostly descriptive pieces on
themes like the seasons, a lady with red hair, a country house; written
in the highly conceited vein then affected by Cyrano. Some of them are
vigorous and well-expressed. They are well translated as to style by
the anonymous person who published _Bergerac's Satyrical Characters_ in
1658. The first edition of these Letters is dated 1654, but one of them
was published as early as 1648; others may have been written earlier.
They were probably rewritten before publication and were certainly
censored.
Cyrano de Bergerac is the author of a comedy, _Le Pédant Joué_, written
1645, published 1654, probably never played; and of a tragedy, _La Mort
d'Agrippine_, written in 1646, published 1654, played in 1653 or 1654
and revived for one performance on the 10th November 1872.
These plays alone would provide a theme for a very long essay; but here
I must necessarily be brief.
Corneille, Racine, and Molière were not isolated literary phenomena
without predecessors and contemporaries; any more than Shakespeare.
There is a large pre-Corneille and pre-Molière drama.[17] Du Ryer,
Rotrou, Gombaud, Scudéry, Hardy, Théophile de Viau, Boisrobert, are
some of the best known dramatists of the thirties and forties of the
seventeenth century. Among them was Cyrano de Bergerac. I cannot
wholly share the contempt expressed by official French criticism for
early French drama, though my acquaintance with it is superficial; I
certainly cannot agree with the contemptuous estimates of Cyrano's
plays. The fact that the plot of _The Pedant Outwitted_ is taken from
Lope de Vega seems very unimportant, when one considers the amazing
gusto and energy Cyrano put into his uncouth comedy. Here his curious
fustian style of ranting hyperbole serves him admirably; in _The Pedant
Outwitted_ bombast, exaggeration and caricature are carried to a
superlative degree. Nothing could be more pedantic than Granger, the
pedant, or more bombastic than the bragging poltroon, Chasteaufort.
Some of the best scenes, situations and scraps of dialogue in _The
Pedant Outwitted_ have been appropriated by more famous dramatists,
particularly by Molière. This may be seen in _Le Dépit Amoureux_, _Le
Bourgeois Gentilhomme_, and particularly in _Les Fourberies de Scapin_,
where the whole of the famous "Que diable allait-il faire dans cette
galère" scene is imitated from Cyrano.
[Footnote 17: See Rigal's _Le Théâtre Français avant la Période
classique_.]
The theme of the comedy is the outwitting of Granger by his son,
Charlot. Both wish to marry Genevotte; Granger attempts to send his son
away from Paris, and on various pretexts Charlot remains; by the device
of a play within a play Charlot marries Genevotte before Granger's
eyes. The whole is quite incredible, but amusing. The character Cyrano
most enjoyed was Granger, a caricature of his old schoolmaster. It
must be admitted that the long speeches of Granger and Chasteaufort,
ingenious and fertile as they are, grow somewhat tedious in a play;
all the characters, even the heroine, are infected with preciosity
and burlesque. Extraordinary hyperbolical epithets are piled one upon
another until the whole heap topples to absurdity; as for the rant of
Chasteaufort, it leaves that of Tamburlaine a mild understatement;
Bobadil and Bessus are realistic sketches in comparison with this. With
all its faults the play is a remarkable piece of work and ought to
interest anyone who likes Elizabethan drama.
The tragedy _The Death of Agrippina_ provides us with another surprise.
Whereas _The Pedant Outwitted_ seems extremely archaic for 1645, _The
Death of Agrippina_ has been compared favourably with Corneille's
minor tragedies. All the "precious" affectations of style, the
recondite allusions which make _The Pedant Outwitted_ a test of
one's knowledge of old French, all the oddities, the quiddities, the
"humours", disappear and we have a formal French tragedy written in
good Alexandrines, moving according to the rules and containing a
well-concerted action as well as good subsidiary scenes. Nothing could
better illustrate the versatility of Cyrano's literary personality; the
plays seem to have been written by two totally different persons. The
subject of the tragedy is the conspiracy of Sejanus against Tiberius;
Sejanus is in love with Agrippina, Livilla with Sejanus; Agrippina
takes part in the conspiracy to avenge herself upon Tiberius with the
hope of destroying Sejanus afterwards; the conspiracy is revealed by
Livilla and both Sejanus and Agrippina lose their lives. There is one
very fine scene at the end, where Sejanus is taunted by Agrippina; this
contains the "horrible impieties" complained of by Tallemant; but why
Sejanus should have talked like a Christian not even Cyrano's severest
censurers have yet explained. The play is well-written and impressive.
Cyrano's fragmentary treatise on Physics needs only the remark that it
is almost identical with Rohault's similar work and was either derived
from it or from a common source. It was in part to popularize these
studies and the sceptical ideas they inspired in him that Cyrano wrote
his famous _Voyages to the Moon and Sun_, so often reprinted in France.
_The Moon_ is supposed to have been written as early as 1648; _The Sun_
was begun about 1650 and was left unfinished. Two versions of _The
Moon_ exist. One is contained in the MSS. of Paris and Munich and the
other in the first edition, on the last of which all editions before
Gourmont's incomplete reprint were founded. The MSS. undoubtedly
contain the work as Cyrano wrote it and privily circulated it. The
1657 edition was heavily censored by Henry Le Bret, who was afraid
to publish many passages reflecting upon the Church, of which he was
a comfortably settled pillar. The early editions--and consequently
all previous English translations--mark the places of some of
these omissions with dots or the word "hiatus". The effect of this
expurgation was in some cases to make nonsense; in most to destroy
the point of Cyrano's sarcasm. Apart from merely variant readings and
single words or phrases (which often, by the way, greatly alter the
point of a passage), there are no less than fourteen out of a total of
ninety-six pages in M. Lachèvre's edition omitted by Le Bret, and these
are precisely the most daring and satirical parts of the whole work.
The last four pages are different in MSS. and in the printed editions;
I have given the MSS. These MSS. have only been recently available in
France and have never before been translated into English. Thus, if the
reader were familiar with Lovell's (1687) version and had also read the
French Bibliothéque Elzivirienne or Garnier editions, he would yet find
that about one-seventh of the matter given in this translation of _The
Moon_ would be new to him.
The MS. of _The Sun_ has disappeared; were it ever discovered we should
no doubt find that the printed editions had been mutilated, while if
the lost _Story of the Spark_ were recovered, we might find a still
more daring satire on Christianity. The first printed edition of _The
Voyage to the Sun_ appeared in 1662.
These imaginary voyages are often described by French writers as
'Utopias'; they are no more Utopias than _Pantagruel_ and _Gulliver's
Travels_. They lack the political system of the Utopian romance, whose
purpose is to recommend speciously some abominable form of tyranny
under the pretext of making everybody happy. At different times I
have read the _Republic_ of Plato, the _Utopia_ of Sir Thomas More,
Campanella's _Città del Sole_, William Morris's _News from Nowhere_,
and Hudson's _A Crystal Age_; and I am bound to say, with all reverence
to these great men, that Morris's _Nowhere_ sounded least unendurable,
while the rest were nightmares, visions of meddlesome cranks. I have a
deep reverence for Plato so far as I am able to comprehend him, but I
think I would rather die than be enslaved by his ideal state.
Now, Cyrano de Bergerac had no intention of creating one of these
ideally unpleasant tyrannies. His purpose was similar to that of
Rabelais and Swift. He wanted to satirise existing institutions,
humbugs and prejudices; he wanted to mock at a literal belief in the
Old Testament; he wanted to hold up to odium the fundamental villainy
of man; and he wanted to convey amusingly a number of quasi-scientific
and philosophical ideas which it was highly dangerous then to publish
and still more dangerous to try to popularise. Even then Cyrano dared
not publish the book in his lifetime; and it was mutilated when it
appeared after his death. The censorship of the _ancien régime_ was
almost exactly the antithesis to the police interference of to-day;
great licence in morals and personalities was allowed, obscenities
and even blasphemies were tolerated, but when an author, however
eminent and serious, trenched upon the authority of the Church or the
State, or offered new ideas which seemed likely to prove subversive,
he was certain of persecution and punishment. Both systems have
their defects. The tremendous hubbub raised against _Tartuffe_, the
self-exile of Descartes,[18] the prosecution of Théophile de Viau, the
outcry against Cyrano, the fact that Gassendi's _Syntagma_ did not
appear in print until after his death; all show the working of the
ancient censorship and the prejudices it appealed to in the populace.
One feels that many of the deplorable traits in Cyrano's character are
the result of a deliberate and high-spirited revolt against what he
thought was oppressive. He attacked the Church and war and paternal
authority as fiercely and recklessly as he attacked the _bravi_ at the
Porte de Nesle.
[Footnote 18: I know Descartes was patronised by Mazarin and made a
visit to Paris "to be honoured"; but he soon returned to Holland.]
Even in Cyrano's time there was nothing original in a fanciful voyage
to the Moon. Brun quotes a formidable list of predecessors--most of
whom one has never heard of--whose work Cyrano may or may not have
known. All probably derive directly or indirectly from Lucian of
Samosate. It is certain that Cyrano copied Rabelais, that he took whole
paragraphs and many ideas from Sorel's _Francion_ and several hints
from Bishop Godwin's _Man in the Moon_. Campanella furnished him with
numerous hints. The philosophic and quasi-scientific passages came
from Descartes, Gassendi, and Rohault. Cyrano is a Gassendist in _The
Moon_ and a Cartesian towards the end of _The Sun_. To trace these in
detail would be laborious; it is sufficient to say that the theory
which made Cyrano the predecessor of Rohault is now wholly disproved,
while those who have compared Cyrano with Gassendi and Rohault declare
that the author of the Voyages advances little that cannot be found
in their works. M. Juppont's endeavour to prove that Cyrano was a
marvellous scientific genius anticipating modern discoveries will
hardly bear investigation; to make his points he has to attribute to
Cyrano ideas derived from others and to wrest his language from the
scientific jargon of one period into the worse jargon of another. After
translating the Voyages, which implies a certain familiarity with them,
I conclude that when Cyrano attempts to be scientific he often fails to
understand thoroughly what he is talking about. As soon as he begins to
discourse of atoms, or attraction, or the magnet, his language becomes
vague, involved and hesitating; he is metaphorical at the moment he
should not be, and the thought obviously is not his own; the lack of
clarity in his speech suggests that he failed to comprehend the ideas
he pretends to expound, that he did not think them for himself but was
indoctrinated with them by others. He makes use of the anacoluthon
too often for a translator's comfort; for though the practice may
be defended in poetry, sermons and other inspired works, it is
unsuitable to the logical exposition of science. Finally, a certain
lack of common-sense often precipitates him into absurdity; he chooses
grotesque illustrations, wrecks ingenious ideas by some incongruity he
might easily have avoided. It is significant that when great men like
Molière and Swift have borrowed from Cyrano they improve on him chiefly
by purging him of what is grotesque and absurd.
I must confess I view Cyrano's plagiarisms more coolly than recent
French commentators; for Cyrano criticism has violently revolted from
the theory that he was a perfect, beplumed hero, the most original man
of his age, to the other extreme of a theory that he had no originality
whatever, that he was affected, vain, debauched, dirty, hypocritical;
ending up with a sort of Johnsonian "let us hear no more on't". Cyrano
deserves some severity in the matter of plagiarism on account of his
own stupid boast that he only read books to detect the plagiarisms
of the authors. We are all plagiarists; every word we use is the
creation of a poet; and a completely original author would probably be
completely incomprehensible. This scientists' prejudice about priority
of ideas is out of place in literature; we are engaged in creating
a temper of the mind, in civilizing, not in riding an intellectual
steeplechase. In works intended for amusement what matters plagiarism?
Cyrano took an idea, say, from Sorel; Cyrano amuses us, Sorel bores us;
are we not to read Cyrano because he plagiarized? And, in any event,
these sarcasms of his which are merely amusing to-day were perilous
matters then; if Cyrano had published an unexpurgated _Moon_ in 1650,
exile, imprisonment or some other torture might easily have been his
lot. The ideas in the Voyages are derived indeed, but they were then
new and worth circulating. Cyrano has been sneered at because, when
he had written these dangerous matters, he evaded the possibility of
martyrdom by refraining from publication; I confess I think he was
wise; Naaman bowed himself in the house of Rimmon, and there is no
obligation upon any man to sacrifice his life for his opinions.
Moreover, when we read an author whose purpose is "to instruct by
entertaining" we care little for the origins of the instruction so
long as the entertainment be there. Examined from this point of view
the Voyages emerge very well. In spite of all their faults, real and
alleged, they are entertaining. One would certainly rather spend an
evening with Cyrano than with his enemy, Father Garasse, that terrific
old bore, the "flail of the libertins". Moreover, the dullest passages
in _The Voyages_ are those he stole from his scientific friends and the
most entertaining those he took from Rabelais or Godwin or Sorel or
invented himself. By far the best part of _The Voyages_ is contained
in the early pages of _The Sun_, where Cyrano relates the persecutions
and inconveniences supposed to arise from the publication of _The
Moon_, together with his adventures with the police. The whole thing
bustles along admirably, reminding one of the adventures of the boys
in the _Satyricon_, and it is a dismal moment when Cyrano produces an
"icosahedron mirror" and we know we are in for some more quasi-science.
The satire on mankind in the story of the birds is very happy and
furnished Tom d'Urfey with an opera. The talking trees are quite good
until they get on to loadstones and iron filings and the poles and such
trash.
A large part of the opening of _The Moon_ is occupied with a parody of
the Old Testament, which Cyrano and his friends probably found more
amusing than we do. The influence of the burlesque school on Cyrano has
been noticed. Travesties then were a kind of craze; Virgil, Ovid, all
the classics were burlesqued. There was one book it was dangerous to
parody and Cyrano with his usual impetuosity rushed into a burlesque
of the Old Testament. Here indeed he may claim to have given Voltaire
several hints for his wickedly witty _Romans_.
It is not my intention to discuss _The Voyages_ at greater length. The
reader has here the full text before him and will form his own opinion.
He has in the introduction sufficient information to understand at
least in outline the writer of the book and his work, the _milieu_
in which it was produced, the intellectual movement which helped to
create it and its historical position.
The text used for the translation is that printed by M. Lachèvre in his
_Œuvres Libertines de Cyrano de Bergerac_, 2 vols., Champion, Paris,
1921. I wish to thank M. Lachèvre for the generosity with which he has
allowed me to make use of his book and his kindness in answering my
queries and supplying me with information. I am also indebted to the
work of Brun, Gourmont, Perrens, Lacroix, Juppont, Magne and of course
Cyrano's friend Le Bret. The only English work I have examined is an
essay by Henry Morley, which should be read with great caution.
RICHARD ALDINGTON
[Illustration: _Title-page to Lovell's expurgated translation._]
VOYAGE TO THE MOON
The moon was full, the sky clear, and the clocks had just struck nine
as I was returning with four of my friends from a house near Paris.[19]
Our wit must have been sharpened on the cobbles of the road for it
thrust home whichever way we turned it; distant as the moon was she
could not escape it. The various thoughts provoked in us by the sight
of that globe of saffron diverted us on the road and our eyes were
filled by this great luminary. Now one of us likened her to a window in
Heaven through which the glory of the blessed might be faintly seen;
then another, inspired by ancient fables, imagined that Bacchus kept
a tavern in Heaven and had hung out the Full Moon for his sign; then
another vowed that it was the block where Diana set Apollo's ruffs;
another exclaimed that it might well be the Sun himself who, having
put off his rays at night, was watching through a hole what the world
did when he was not there. For my part, said I, I am desirous to add
my fancies to yours and without amusing myself with the witty notions
you use to tickle time to make it run the faster, I think that the Moon
is a world like this and that our world is their Moon. The company
gratified me with a great shout of mirth.
[Footnote 19: Ed. 1657: "returning from Clamard, near Paris (where M.
de Cuigny the younger, who is its Seigneur, had entertained several of
us....)".]
"Perhaps in the same way", said I, "at this moment in the Moon they
jest at some one who there maintains that this globe is a world."
But though I showed them that Pythagoras, Epicurus, Democritus and, in
our own age, Copernicus and Kepler had been of this opinion, I did but
cause them to strain their throats the more heartily.
This thought, whose boldness jumped with my humour, was strengthened
by contradiction and sank so deep in me that all the rest of the way I
was pregnant with a thousand definitions of the Moon of which I could
not be delivered. By supporting this fantastic belief with serious
reasoning I grew well-nigh persuaded of it. But hearken, reader, the
miracle or accident used by Providence or Fortune to convince me of it: