Hector Savinien de Cyrano de Bergerac (6 March 1619 – 28 July 1655) was a French dramatist and duellist who is now best remembered for the many works of fiction which have been woven around his life story. In these fictional works he is featured with an overly large nose; portraits suggest that he did have a big nose, though not nearly as large as described in Edmond Rostand's play and the subsequent works about him. A statue of him stands in the town of Bergerac, Dordogne.

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Life and works

Cyrano de Bergerac — born Savinien de Cyrano — was born into an old Parisian family and spent much of his childhood in Saint-Forget (now Yvelines). He went to school in Paris and spent his adult life there when he was not on a military campaign. He was not, therefore, a Gascon. Many of his fellow soldiers would have been Gascons, and their swashbuckling manner was much admired; so he may have cultivated a myth of Gascon origins. Although it is true that he was a popular poet and a fine swordsman who fought many duels, his abilities were embellished by Edmond Rostand, the playwright of Cyrano de Bergerac . Cyrano de Bergerac's writings do, in fact, indicate that he had an unusually large nose, of which he was quite proud.

Though not as famous as his classical contemporaries, Bergerac was a successful writer. The playwright Molière even borrowed a scene from Le Pédant Joué . Bergerac's most prominent works are his duo of proto-science fiction novels, The Other World: The Comical History of the States and Empires of the Moon (1657) and The Comical History of the States and the Empires of the Sun (unfinished at his death) which describe fictional journeys to the Moon and Sun. The methods of space travel he described are inventive, often ingenious, and sometimes rooted in science. They reflect the materialist philosophy of which Bergerac was a devotee. Bergerac's primary purpose in writing those early science fiction novels was to criticize subtly the anthropocentric view of man's place in creation, as well as the social injustices of the 17th century. The Other World was subjected to censorship.

Modern scholars contend that de Bergerac was homosexual. ^{[1] [2]} It is believed that around 1640 he became the lover of Charles Coypeau d'Assoucy, a writer and musician, until around 1653, when they became engaged in a bitter rivalry. This led to Bergerac sending d'Assoucy death threats that compelled him to leave Paris. The quarrel extended to a series of satirical texts by both men. Bergerac wrote Contre Soucidas (an anagram of his enemy's name) and Contre un ingrat ("Against an Ingrate"), while D’Assoucy counterattacked with Le Combat de Cyrano de Bergerac avec le singe de Brioché au bout du Pont-Neuf ("The Battle of Cyrano de Bergerac with the Monkey of Brioché on the Pont Neuf").

The model for the Roxane character of the Rostand play was Bergerac's cousin, who lived with his aunt, Catherine de Cyrano, at the Convent of the Daughter of the Cross, where Bergerac was tended for injuries sustained from a falling beam. As in the play, Bergerac did fight at the siege of Arras (1640), a battle of the Thirty Years' War between French and Spanish forces in France (though this was not the more famous final Battle of Arras, fought fourteen years later). One of his confreres in the battle was the Baron of Neuvillette, who married Cyrano's cousin. However, the play's plotline involving Roxane and Christian is almost entirely fictional — the real Cyrano did not write the Baron's love letters for him.

Cyrano was a freethinker and a pupil of Pierre Gassendi, a canon of the Catholic Church who tried to reconcile Epicurean atomism with Christianity. Cyrano's insistence on reason was rare in his time, and he would have been at home in the Enlightenment that came a century after his death.

He was injured by a falling wooden beam in 1654 while entering the house of his patron, the Duc D'Arpajon. Whether it was a deliberate attempt on his life or merely an accident is unknown. It is also inconclusive as to whether or not his death was a result of the injury, or an unspecified disease. ^[3] He died over a year later on July 28, 1655, aged 36. His place of death was the house of his cousin, Pierre De Cyrano, in Sannois. ^[4] He was buried in a Church in Sannois.

In fiction

See also

• Cyrano de Bergerac (play)
• Cyrano de Bergerac (film)
• Asteroid 3582 Cyrano, named after de Bergerac.

References

1. Cronk, Nicholas (Introduction), ''Cyrano de Bergerac: A Heroic Comedy in Five Acts'', (Oxford University Press, 1998), ISBN 0192836439
2. Addyman, Ishbel, ''Cyrano: The Life and Legend of Cyrano de Bergerac'', (Simon & Schuster Ltd, 2008), ISBN 0743286197
3. Afterword to Cyrano de Bergerac’s The Other World - by Don Webb
4. www.cyranodebergerac.fr.