#cyrano readalong

[oldshrewsburyian]

I have just learned that there is an anteater named Cyrano at a wildlife park in Alberta. This felt like crucial information to disseminate!

CYRANO THE ANTEATER.

Ahem. This is indeed crucial information, thank you; I hereby do so with the aid of an image from @end0skeletal-undead. It feels important to know that this is Cyrano's namesake:

C'est un roc !. . .c'est un pic !. . .c'est un cap ! He's so cute.

[pegasusdrawnchariots]

The Cyrano/Odyssey motif on this post by @oldshrewsburyian just reminded me of another way that Roxane & Cyrano inadvertently link themselves through fiction...

In the ballad duel, Cyrano compares himself to the hero Céladon, one of the main characters of L'Astrée written by Honoré d'Urfé during the 1600s & 1610s (just before Cyrano was born). Céladon was known for his sentimental/spiritual love towards the shepherdess Astrée (as opposed to physical lust) & would in the centuries between then & Rostand writing his play come to exemplify this concept of "l'amour céladonique". Not surprising that Rostand had Cyrano identify himself with Céladon then!

We now know Cyrano was reading d'Urfé. You know who else was?

Roxane swooning over Christian can find no higher praise for his looks than to compare him too to Céladon. Hmm 👀

I've seen this line translated as Christian having "the hair of a hero" or "the curls of a Greek god", which is understandable when your target audience is in the 20th century but it misses out on this little link that I just love! Roxane rhapsodising about her dream man & comparing him to the same fictional character Cyrano identifies with! Gah

Also, I just like to picture Cyrano & Roxane back when they were children reading & discussing L'Astrée together in Bergerac :')

[pinkcupboardwitch]

Posting late to the Cyrano read along, but when I reached the scene in the bakery where Roxane takes his wounded hand without noticing - and then notices - I had to physically get up and pace around to calm down.

[penwiper26]

Cyrano de Bergerac, Act II

I am just about reconciled to this readalong being an exercise in nostalgia for me. On reading Act II, I discovered passages that Young Me had all but committed to memory, because they rang so harmoniously with my own sentiments. I think I probably ignored the way that the arc of dramatic irony undercut these passages -- yet though I appreciate the irony now, Cyrano's words still chime with me:

-- To sing, to laugh, to dream, To walk in my own way and be alone, Free, with an eye to see things as they are -- A voice that means manhood -- to cock my hat Where I choose -- At a word, a Yes, a No, To fight -- or write. To travel any road Under the sun, under the stars, nor doubt If fame or fortune lie beyond the bourne -- Never to make a line I have not heard In my own heart; yet, with all modesty To say, "My soul, be satisfied with flowers, With fruit, with weeds even; but gather them In the one garden you may call your own."

Lines like this are a stiff breeze blowing through today's haze of computer-generated, monetized content -- and I love Cyrano for them.

And speaking of writing: why does nobody write anapests anymore? They weren't just made for limericks, you know. "The Cadets of Gascoyne, the defenders/Of Carbon de Castel-Jaloux!" I know the French original is not exactly the same meter, but in English anapests were used for exactly the same function: for songs to march to, to stomp your feet and clang your tankards to, to swag your shit like Reepicheep on a bender. I mean, at least we have hip-hop now; but will no one speak for the venerable anapest?

Speaking of Reepicheep, I do believe that my soul-recognition of Cyrano became so sedimented that even as I forgot about it, I wrote Ryswyck out of that same sandstone. Eructavit cor meum!

[oldshrewsburyian]

I feel as though I'm forgetting a dramatic term more specific than the so-called rule of three. But the point is: as if I didn't have enough feelings without it, Cyrano de Bergerac has an Odysseus/Penelope motif.

"Tel Ulysses, le jour il quitta Pénélope," quotes Ragueneau, just before we see Cyrano engaging in an unhinged scheme in an attempt to protect the happiness of the woman he loves.

Then Roxane insists, to Christian, that Penelope would have left her weaving and sailed to join her husband if she had received letters like the ones that he (Cyrano) has written to her in the middle of a war.

And then (the third one, the one with the twist of the knife in my heart), in Act V, we find Roxane with a piece of weaving that has been, for years, perpetually unfinished. And Cyrano returns to her again and again and again, to tease her about it.

[oldshrewsburyian]

It was at this juncture, dear fellow-readers, that I put my head in my hands and then got up to pace around the house for several minutes.

[oldshrewsburyian]

Cyrano Reread: What about Christian?

I kind of love that my pre-semester weekend of rereading madness has turned into an asynchronous multi-day event of literary analysis and suffering.

Anyway, I make this post to solicit ideas about who Christian is, and how to understand his place in the story. We get less of his interiority than we do for the other two principals -- and this makes sense, as he is canonically bad at articulating things. But I find that I struggle to decide what I really think about him as a character.

I suppose this makes sense, to a degree; there are obviously a lot of interpretative options for the other two principals. Christian just seems more of a blank slate, and the options seem to drive him (at least potentially) in dramatically different directions.

I think the most boring and the saddest option, in a way, is if he's basically just a pretty face: good-hearted, but too dull to understand what he's stumbled into or across in finding Roxane and Cyrano. He's genuinely attracted to Roxane, of course, but we might question how enduring that attachment might prove to be. Unfortunately, I feel that the Christian of the Ferrer film falls into this category.

His personality is blond.

Then there's Christian as having the personality and impossible-to-resist eyes of a particularly winsome puppy, all youthful enthusiasm and helpless affection. I'd put the '25 Christian in this category.

Bless. But I do see in both of these an interpretative tendency to make Christian less perceptive -- more of a himbo, if you will -- than he is. I think the text forestalls that option, though:

CHRISTIAN: Las ! je suis sot à m'en tuer de honte ! CYRANO: Mais non, tu ne l'es pas, puisque tu t'en rends compte.

But I don't really know what to do with that. Is Christian's fundamental tragedy that he's not quite perceptive enough? To what extent does he come to experience the collaboration with Cyrano, so welcome at the beginning, as "having a rival within himself"? Do we read that as something that has been bothering him (profoundly? intermittently? as a persistent niggle?), or as an expression of frustration in a particularly fraught moment? One of the things that torments me about that scene is, predictably, the canon law. Within minutes of finding out that Cyrano has been writing twice a day and that Roxane loves the soul of the man who has been writing to her, he's saying, "Well, the marriage was clandestine and without witnesses; it could be annulled!" Christian's not dumb! He's just... not on Cyrano and Roxane's level.

Since I've mentioned several other film Christians, I feel I owe it to Vincent Perez to say that I feel I have a very clear idea of what his Christian's experiences and relationships and emotions are; I just still don't feel that I know him as a person. In conclusion: who is this guy? Opinions? Thoughts?

[oldshrewsburyian]

Cyrano Readalong, Act II

...everything is beautiful and also everything hurts.

It has stiff competition, but "Oh! j'ai fait mieux depuis" is a very strong contender, I feel, for the most devastating line in the play.

Cyrano and Christian are both terrified of disappointing Roxane, and they have found the perfect solution. And I think it matters that Cyrano has known Roxane since she was wearing short skirts and playing with dolls, and to Christian, she is this intimidating intellectual beauty. Christian wants to progress past silent flirting without embarrassing himself. Cyrano... Cyrano refuses to have the girl he played with and the woman he loves experience disillusionment. He has it in his power to craft for her a hero of romance: beautiful and besotted, and capable of putting all his passion into words. This is fine.