Most of what is known about his life comes from the preface which his friend Henri Le Bret wrote for Comical History of the States and Empires of the Moon , published nearly two years after Cyrano de Bergerac's death. Savinien II de Cyrano was born in Paris. His exact date of birth is unknown. It is known that he was baptized on March 6, and it is possible that he was born on the same day.
In , Abel I de Cyrano inherited a country estate in the north-east of France and moved there with his family. The young Savinien de Cyrano failed to do well at the local village school.
For that reason, at some point in his adolescence, it is unknown exactly when, his father sent him back to Paris. The adolescent Savinien de Cyrano was largely left to his own devices in the city.
In , Abel de Cyrano sold his country estate and moved back to Paris himself, although it is unlikely that the father and son lived together after that time. He joined the army and fought in the Franco-Spanish War of to He was wounded in the throat at the Siege of Arras, which took place between June 13 and August 6, He is also said to have fought several duels during his military career.
The play went on to be published and was reprised in the late s. These stories of imaginary journeys to the sun and the moon derided the religious and astronomical beliefs of the time. This playwright, novelist, poet and duelist has been immortalised in books, in film and on stage. In this production, Cyrano played by Depardieu is too embarrassed to woo Roxane Brochet the girl of his dreams.
He believes that his large nose is too big an obstacle to overcome. Cyrano did have an exceptional proboscis. His death, at the age of just 36, remains a mystery. Stories abound. Others believe that the injuries caused by a falling wooden beam were his undoing. We will probably never know. One thing is for sure. Clarke , Cyrano must be credited both for first applying the rocket to space travel and, for inventing the ramjet.
Cyrano wrote:. The real Cyrano de Bergerac had very little in common with the hero of the Rostand play. The name "de Bergerac" derived from a place attached to one of his family's estates. His early education Cyrano received from a priest, whom he disliked and repeatedly complained of his situation to his father.
In , Cyrano left Beauvais, and turned to a life of drinking, gambling, and duelling. At nineteen he he entered the army, M. Cyrano's friend Henry Le Bret later wrote that "duels, which at that time seemed the unique and most rapid means of becoming known, in a few days rendered him so famous that the Gascons, who composed nearly whole company, considered him the demon of courage and credited him with as many duels as he had ben with them days.
His humanitarian way of thinking was acknowledged by his contemporaries and the next generations. Le Doyen's portrait of him, made after Heince, shows a sceptically smiling man, with thin moustaches and a large nose. Although he flirted with his cousin Madeleine, he was probably a homosexual. Cyrano was severely wounded twice, he was shot through the body, and at the siege of Arras in he was hit in the neck with a sword. Cyrano never fully recovered from this wound.
During his convalescence in Paris Cyrano was helped financially by his cousin, Madeleine Robineau, the Baroness de Neuvillette, whom he used as a model for the beautiful Roxane. In the following year Cyrano gave up his military career and started to study under the philosopher and mathematician Pierre Gassendi.
Influenced by Gassendi's theories and libertine philosophy, he wrote stories of imaginary journeys to the Moon and Sun, and satirized views, which saw humanity and the Earth as the center of creation. He also mocked Descartes' idea that animals are soulless machines. In his trip to the Moon the narratot takes off from the Earth in an apparatus festooned with firecrackers, and lands on the Tree of Life. The first person he meets is Elias, whom he upsets with his mocking comments about the soul.
At the end he is thrown into the sky with an atheist, and lands safely in Italy.
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