★★★★★ Cyrano de Bergerac, by Edmond Rostand
My introduction to classical French Drama
Cyrano de Bergerac
Edmond Rostand
My introduction to classical French Drama
I was a high school student when I first read Edmond Rostand's Cyrano de Bergerac. I believe I read it first in English translation, then in French, and it quickly became my Number One Favorite book (a position it no longer holds -- I had yet to discover Jane Austen). This was partly because I was just an ignorant high-school kid, and it was a revelation to me. I was astonished to discover that the entire play is a poem, rhymed and metric. You're thinking, "But surely you, ignorant though you were, were aware of the existence of opera, of classic epic poetry." Yes, in theory, but those were inaccessible. Cyrano is told in such a way that even a 16-year-old kid with just three years of high school French can enjoy it -- no Greek or Latin necessary, no idiot gods fouling everything up, no music that only experts could enjoy...
You probably know the basic story. Cyrano, an impecunious author and duelist is secretly in love with his young and beautiful bluestocking friend Roxanne. (The word "bluestocking" was new to high-school me.) Cyrano, who has a grotesquely large nose, believes that no woman could love him. Roxanne becomes infatuated with a handsome young soldier, Christian. She asks her wise and dangerous friend Cyrano to befriend him and protect him. Cyrano does, to such effect that he writes love letters to Roxanne signed with Christian's name. These letters cause Roxanne's infatuation to deepen to love, for the author of the letters -- Christian as she supposes. Then other things happen, which I will not spoil.
I particularly remember one of the early scenes, before Roxanne appears on the scene. At a theater the young and foolish Vicomte de Valvert tells Cyrano that his nose is "very big". Cyrano upbraids him for his lack of imagination and uncorks a long stream of nose jokes, which are in fact rather funny. He then murders Valvert. In Roxanne, the 1987 Steve Martin remake of Cyrano, this scene is reprised as a bar fight -- without the murder. (A friend of mine on seeing the movie opined that the scene was a self-indulgent invention by Martin -- I let her know that in fact the scene came from Rostand's play.)
What can I say? It's a classic, and deserves to be.