February 09, 2008

Cyrano de Bergerac was real, but not as Rostand depicted him. For one, his nose wasn't that big. He was a successful writer. His most prominent work is now published under the title 'Other Worlds', a collection of stories describing his fictional journeys to the Moon and Sun. Cyrano thus rests alongside such minds as Kepler and Jules Verne in the genre of Science Fiction. But Cyrano as a gay anti-Catholic sci-fi writer with the pox?

Ishbel Addyman presents a convincing case for him in this, her first book, as one of the more fascinatingly enigmatic characters of the seventeenth century; original, iconoclastic, risk-taking and not without a certain doomed glamour. More on the real Cyrano here from 2007.

posted by At Swim Two Birds 16 years ago
  • Good stuff indeed. However - I think the 'Other Worlds' text only covers what I know as "States and Empires of the Moon" ie, 'L'Autre Monde ou Etats et Empires de la Lune', published 1657. There's a second book, published later which covers the "States and Empires of the Sun", though I think it only survives in a censored version. I might be confused, because I'm relying on memory here - I've got copies but can't find them.
  • French text of both.
  • Oooh, nice linkage, Pleggers. I grew up loving Rostand's play, and am always glad to see the bignose getting some love. It's always good-- and useful-- to highlight the differences between history and literature.
  • I was reading this piece on another 17th century sodomite earlier. I shall claim the win, as although this is a great read ably supported by further links from Plegs, mine has a haunting and the only hanging of a still-frocked Anglican bishop, for “incest, buggery, and many other enormous crimes.” Enormous crimes! If we'd like to actually have an argument about something, can we not say that imagined other worlds in early modern literature are in no sense science fiction, but part of a tradition of allegory? I of course don't know, not having read either of Cyrano's books, but ignorance has never held me back in the past.
  • Monkeyfilter: incest, buggery, and many other enormous crimes
  • Nice set of articles! As much as I love the Rostand play (and as deep as my ensuing crush on Jose Ferrer may have been), the real Cyrano's life seems dramatic enough to warrant a different, more historically accurate one.
  • Fantastic links everyone, thank you. Monkeyfilter: ignorance has never held me back in the past