SOURCE: “Les Lettres: Imagination as Kaleidoscope,” in Cyrano de Bergerac and the Universe of the Imagination, Librairie Droz, 1967, pp. 80-97.

[In the following excerpt, Lanius examines the fantastic images found in Cyrano's letters.]

The most familiar arrangement of Cyrano's letters is Paul Lacroix' three-part division in his edition of 1858, entitled Œuvres Comiques. The three parts are: Lettres diverses, Lettres satiriques and Lettres amoureuses. Lacroix' edition is based on two mss, one of 1648 and the other of 1654. Frédéric Lachèvre followed Lacroix' division in his edition of the letters of 1933, entitled Œuvres Diverses.¹ Lacroix' arrangement is generally satisfactory, and although I shall compare individual letters from the three groups for their fantastic nature, there is no advantage in establishing a new arrangement. The Lettres diverses and Lettres satiriques cover a variety of subjects—Nature, death, dreams, contemporary figures, literature, whereas the Lettres amoureuses have but one subject, love.

Cyrano's letters were only nominally addressed to individuals, and then primarily by way of dedication. The greatest number were dedicated to the Duc d'Arpajon, Cyrano's patron from 1653 to 1655. The feelings and impressions represent Cyrano's reaction to Nature, love, institutions, friends and enemies. (Cyrano describes a person or institution so that it reflects the reaction of a fantasist to events, his sensation in love or impressions of the countryside, his manner of seeing things in new and different ways.) And when Cyrano wrote of dueling or love, it is likely that he had experience with them.² In writing about them, however, he does not do so as one composing memoirs. He draws on his experiences, real or imaginary, makes fanciful associations and sees new possibilities. Only in that Cyrano may have had similar experiences are they biographical, and one comes to see in them the same imaginative writer who created a world of the imagination in the voyage to the moon and sun.

In the Lettres, Cyrano's imagination runs to what Raymond Lefèvre calls the “sens fantasque,” by which he meant that as a writer of letters, Cyrano, “se plaisait à imaginer un monde où tout n'était qu'une caricature ou déformation, …”³ Brun uses the term “jeux d'esprit” to describe the same effect,⁴ thus suggesting that the lettres are interesting for their fantasy. In the Lettres as in L'Autre Monde, we find imagination in the ability to see things in new and unusual ways. Unlike L'Autre Monde, however, these things are interesting in themselves, irrespective of how the same thing might be in reality. It is the term fantasy which is best used to indicate this: however, unlike the fantasies of Granger and Agrippine, the term fantasy in the letters does not imply there is confusion involved in the view of things—only that such is not the way in which they are generally seen. In the Lettres, Cyrano shows what possibilities the imagination is capable of, the things to be seen by the mind's eye—images. As Faguet points out in speaking of the epistolary form, it offers freedom of style and fluidity, lending itself to the investigation of a variety of subjects and ideas: “Donc, le genre épistolaire est non seulement compréhensif, mais encore très fuyant, comme la conversation.”⁵ There is a broad range of subjects which appear in spontaneous fashion as in conversation.

As in L'Autre Monde, so in the Lettres it is necessary to distinguish between Cyrano the visionary and the narrator who experiences what Cyrano envisions. In each letter a different sort of personage speaks: in the Lettres amoureuses, it is a lover, in the Lettres diverses, it is a lover, a duelist, sleep, a bird, a spectator at a funeral. Yet no one of the personages speaking is Cyrano the individual; each presents various imagined possibilities as they are seen in the mind of Cyrano. In the Lettres new worlds of vision are open to the mind through being a lover, a duelist, arousing the imagination to see things in wholly new ways. This involves imaginative sensitivity, consciousness of the existence of unlimited images and visions. Cyrano presents these realistically, in terms of things felt, such as when the narrator feels himself burning and blistering by passion or cold in winter. Each such image passes and another follows with similar effect. The importance of them lies in what possible views and reactions one might feel; the narrator becomes an agent who lives through all these scenes, who is hardly different from a created personage experiencing created life in a novel or a play. What the narrator experiences, what he says, is what Cyrano imagines, and then presents in a series of flashes or points, as though witnessed by a spectator. The effect is that in each letter we see a series of scenes and ideas, each of which is part of the letter, a single facet of it, unique but insignificant beyond the context of the letter. The device of a series of flashes or ideas is a way of presenting a seemingly unlimited number of impressions, none of which is final or not suggestive of other possibilities. The narrator becomes aware of unlimited possibilities in seeing an object or person, and the impossibility of ever seeing anything in a definitive way. This attitude is implicit, for in ever searching and finding something new, Cyrano suggests that there is only continuous change, a fantasmagoria.

This is first seen in the great number of subjects the letters cover. There is a reflection of the scope of Cyrano's life experiences, from dueling to love, knowledge of the sciences, views of other writer's works, his feelings about fate, death and religion. Although some of the subjects are abstract in nature, things which could allow for lengthy philosophical discussion, Cyrano is not interested in philosophizing. Death, for instance, is usually an abstract matter. Cyrano's interest is rather in the impressions of an afterlife it evokes, of a world as much unlike our own as possible. But, because of its general and mysterious nature, he can imagine a variety of things about it, find in it a source of possibilities, none of which is definitive. In similar manner, magic evokes images of weird and strange things, the unknown, phantoms, and the unreal. On the other hand, the use of more definite, historical personages as well as military heroes lends itself to imaginative possibilities because such men were themselves imaginative, conceiving of and shaping the world as we know it. As men, they are themselves imaginative; as points in the past, they have an appeal to the imagination, arousing the desire to imagine how things once were, since no one can be certain how they really were. Cyrano thus attains variety and stimulates the reader's imagination; a great and varied number of such figures forms a galaxy of suggested scenes, each figure evoking an idea or an impression.

Cyrano emphasizes variety through a diversity of means, presenting subjects both from as many points of view and in as many ways as possible. The principle device is free association by which we see Cyrano's many interests in life, and more importantly, a taste for novelty and change. Thus, first and foremost in the letters there is no objective reality. There is an impression resulting from variety; Cyrano forms mental images of things not present, but real by the vivid way in which he presents them. The role of the narrator is to present these, much as do the narrator and Drycona in L'Autre Monde. To maintain the fantastic value of the things imagined, Cyrano could not belabor a point; he had to be ever moving on to a new idea or point of view. He could avoid a moral or philosophic tone this way, as when he pokes fun at an individual's pride or self-esteem, or at some literal interpretation of the Bible. The esthetic effect predominates, and the imagination becomes a kaleidoscope which is unlimited in the possibilities it can conceive of and envision. The kaleidoscope is a world of ever changing scenes, self-dissolving images as they are succeeded by other images. In each letter there is an imaginative departure from a given subject, a representation of it as it is generally not seen. The subject is not interesting in itself; it is only material from which a series of images can be developed.

The first group of letters to be considered are the Lettres amoureuses. Love has been a universal theme in literature, offering to all who have loved or would love an interest that is individual and stimulating to new thoughts about love. In these letters the narrator is a lover who stands between life and death, for he cannot hope to win his lady's heart without first destroying his state as an unhappy lover. Love is a contradiction for him since he sees both happiness and death as possible results of it. Should the lady fall in love with him, he will no longer be unhappy and suffering, but at the same time she will destroy his love for her, a love which is real only because he is aware of it through suffering.

The love letters do not reflect an interest in a particular lady as much as the sensitivity of the narrator to love. His sensitivity results in a mixture of mental anguish, passion and accompanying physical symptoms of his state. The letter “A Madame—” opens with an ambiguous statement: “Madame, le mal que je souffre pour vous n'est point la mort assurément, et toutefois je me meurs, …” (158).⁶ “Mal” is his suffering, and from this he develops two corresponding ideas, death and dying: dying is what one imagines death to be since it is the closest one can come to death and remain conscious. The image is visual, which is typical of imagery in all the letters. Cyrano uses a device common in his love letters—several short descriptive statements by which his condition is graphically described: “Je brûle, je tremble, mon pouls est déréglé.” But then he returns to the cause, love, which is like a fever, so that his state is the result of the mind's power over the body: “C'est donc la fièvre? Hélas! Ce ne l'est point: car on la définit une disproportion querelleuse des qualités de l'animal, …” (158). Fever is the basis of his state, emotional disquietude, bringing on an hallucinatory state, “disproportion querelleuse.” Contradiction is the basic state of the lover, and is symbolized by his frustration. In turn, frustration is symbolic of his inner state: he at once wants and does not want his lady's love, knowing that for him the truth of love lies in suffering, that if she falls in love with him, he will not suffer. It is his suffering that results from sensitivity to her beauty and the desire for perfection it inspires: “La parfaite harmonie de nos tempéraments qui m'a rendu malade.” When the narrator speaks of frustration, it is as though he were in prison. But as love is mental, he is his own prisoner, showing this through the effect of love on his body: “Mon cœur souffloit dans mes entrailles, frappoit contre les murs de sa prison et maudissoit le Ciel, …” (158). This is an imagined state which is described in realistic terms. There is a movement in the love letters in the effect of love on the narrator: it is physical, and he mentions how it affects the parts of his body in a series of points: “cœur,” “foie,” “poumons,” “pouls.” But the effect is total, like fire, all consuming and unending: “Je suis déjà si sec que la moindre étincelle qui me touchera, c'est fait de moi.” Fire is most often associated with a conscious state: fire, as related to love, is symbolic of the extreme sensitivity and suffering of the lover. But the fire is internal, “fait de moi,” so that while the lady is the apparent cause, the cause and effect of his state is really within him. The lover would seek to realize his feelings, moving on to visualize the contradiction in terms of the lady's appearance: “Votre visage me dit ‘oui’ cette cruelle me dit ‘non’.” Elsewhere he evokes the gods themselves: “Oh! Dieux, que notre bien est mal assuré lorsqu'il est entre les mains d'une jeune fille et de la Fortune.” Thus, he compares the lady's indifference to fate. Turning to the subject of death, the narrator imagines that he will die, and that his lady will know of his death, will suffer in turn, thus associating himself with her by imagining her to be conscious of his love. The image of fire, contagious and spreading, is used to represent this: “Il [Dieu] vous condamnera de brûler sous la terre, car j'ai brûlé dessus” (160). Then the image reverts back to him, and they are finally together in a state of mutual passion: “Brûlons d'amour.” The lover becomes conscious, which Cyrano presents in terms of a physical effect on the lover. There is perfection in both of them suffering in their mutual feeling, for then will both be conscious of the feeling of the other.

Cyrano describes the effect of love in a variety of ways, each different, but without leading away from the essential point he had in mind at the start of the letter. E.g., the lover says:

Cependant il s'est dépité de telle sorte ‘ce petit Souverain,’ de n'être pas absolue dans son empire, qu'il me refuse ses fonctions; il ne prend rien de mon foie, qui ne soit combustible; il arrête le mouvement de mes poumons, de peur d'en être rafraîchi; partout il envoie du fiel, et si je dure encore trois jours en cet état, on verra peut-être mon corps s'allumer au milieu des rues; je suis déjà si sec que la moindre étincelle qui me touchera, c'est fait de moi.

(158)

The entire sentence up to the end conveys both the cause and effect through images of feeling, physical and mental, and from these evolves another image: “Prévenez cet accident, Madame; …” All figures, all ideas he sums up in one image, suggesting association with what already has been, “cet accident.”

Cyrano does not explain an idea, or analyze it; he constantly extends it by adding to it and seeing it from a different point of view. He presents different images in the same manner, suggesting an unlimited variety of feelings and sentiments. The object is soon forgotten for its own sake and the thought is the basis for other imagined possibilities. For instance, Cyrano suggests the narrator's state through verbs, showing that it is ever changing. He introduces several short phrases like points that reflect this: “Je vous ai vue, je brûle, je tremble, mon pouls est déréglé.” Then he introduces a long phrase in which he formulates a comparison without identifying the basis of the relationship, thereby suggesting an imagined state rather than a reality: “Ce ne l'est point: car on la définit une disproportion querelleuse des qualités de l'animal, et c'est la parfaite harmonie de nos tempéraments qui m'a rendu malade.” He captures the physical effect of her appearance with images showing the effect on him: “Votre front me flatte, vos yeux me promettent, votre bouche me rit.” Then the lover generalizes in a longer phrase: “Mais il survient à la traverse ma mauvaise Fortune qui me défend d'espérer.” “Espérer” carries attention away from particulars, and projects further sentiments he might imagine.

The lover's state is physical as well as mental: love is a lofty sentiment, but real by sensual effect. The impression is of energy and force. In “Effets amoureux d'une absence” he says: “… Plus je mouille mon sein, plus il me brûle, et sans doute que ce Dieu qui composa d'argile le corps du premier homme a taillé le mien d'une pierre de chaux, puis je m'allume dans l'eau” (156). There is allusion to a strange physical transformation, which conveys the physical and mental relationship of love's effect on him. Elsewhere in the letter, the lover says how he would appear to others if they saw him: “Je n'oserois plus marcher dans les rues, embrasé comme je suis, que les enfants ne m'environnent de fusées parce que je leur semble une figure echappée d'un feu d'artifice; ni à la campagne, qu'on ne me prenne pour un de ces Ardents qui traînent les gens à la rivière, …” (158). Viewed independently of the letter, the examples he uses would hardly seem to concern the state of a suffering lover. Rather, they would suggest the adventures of a picaresque hero in an adventure romance. But the idealistic lover suggested through suffering is only more strongly depicted through the contrasting realistic expression of his feelings. He asks the reader to sympathize with him in his lot: “Figurez-vous donc, non seulement mes idées peintes avec mon sang, mais mon sang comme il fumoit dans mes veines, encore imprégné des idées qu'il a reçues de la douleur” (160). This description of suffering indicates the vividness of his feelings and suffering in his own mind.

In the love letters Cyrano states contradiction in images of cold and heat: “Imaginez-vous un feu composé de glace embrasée, qui brûle à force de trembler, que la douleur fait tressaillir de joie, et qui craint autant que la mort la guérison de ses blessures” (A Mlle de Saint-Denis, 155). In his solitary state, the lover imagines himself as another: he is two persons, a lover and the one who observes and sees himself in love. Hence the state is real in the suffering lover, but as an imagined state, it is fantasy. The image is presented realistically through the suggestion of real fire which burns and blisters; at the same time, this serves to inspire him and he feels himself “tressaillir de joie.” The lover cannot hope to free himself from his passion; he is so taken with it that he enjoys suffering. “Je combattois, comme qui vouloit être vaincu; …” (A Madame ****, 145). To encourage his love, the narrator encourages his imagination, although he also wishes to forget it: “… Et tandis que j'encourageois ma raison au triomphe, je formois en mon âme des vœux pour sa défaite” (145). The narrator knows he can satisfy his anguish, but in doing so he would destroy his imagined state as lover; “raison” and “âme” are in conflict, and it is “âme” which prevails. When he refers to the flesh, images are nearly always visual and sensual. In the third letter to Madame ***** he says: “Ha! Madame, excusez la fureur d'un désespéré; non, non paroissez! c'est une loi pour les hommes, qui n'est pas faite pour vous; …” (148). His concept of love is strictly masculine, showing the state of a suffering lover who can never win his lady; should he triumph, she is no longer interesting to him. Women do not suffer because they are less imaginative than men, as Cyrano points out in “Contre les Sorciers.” “… Une femme a l'esprit plus léger qu'un homme et plus hardi, par conséquent, à résoudre des Comédies de cette nature.” Women are like sorcerers who inspire the imagination, who in themselves, like a flower, a tree or a star, do not feel, but make others suffer who are conscious of them.

Women are deceptive, and as such they play on men's desires much as do the valets on Granger's desire in Le Pédant joué. Women see that men will never give up, will ever forego a state of calm to worship them: “J'aurois tort de me dérober aux secrets de votre magie, puis qu'ayant à choir sous vos coups, mon trespas sera plus glorieux s'il arrive par des moyens surnaturels et qu'il faut un miracle pour le causer” (“Sur des bracelets de cheveux,” 151). The narrator prefers to suffer from love rather than give up, even though he knows it is pure wish to think he can win her love. He thus consciously allows the lady to play on his emotions.

In the letters on Nature which Lacroix includes in the Lettres diverses, the imagery is more concrete than in the Lettres amoureuses. And, humanizing what is external, he imagines how seasons feel, how a tree, bird or flower sees the world. The result is that Cyrano creates a variety of effects as the narrator is sensitive and reacts to a flower, a bird or season. Nature, like love, is real, but like love it is most real when it is imagined. This is evident in “D'une Maison de Campagne” when he describes the site through a series of allusions: “Monsieur, j'ai trouvé la jeunesse perpétuelle, enfin j'ai trouvé la Nature au maillot.” There is a pleasant tone in the fantasy due to the lyrical harmony of the description. Cyrano uses trees, ponds, birds, sky, flowers to convey what is pleasant. Humanizing them, he goes on to imagine movement, as if they were conscious of their state. As the identity of the lady whom he addresses in the Lettres amoureuses was unimportant, so the particular spot or objects present are secondary to his imagining them. When he describes trees, it is not because they are unusual as trees. The trees only awaken the narrator's sensitivity to a particular way of seeing them. There is a gradual build-up to a single impression as his mind goes from a walk to an oak:

On rencontre à la porte de la maison une étoile de cinq avenues, tous les chênes qui la composent font admirer avec extase l'énorme hauteur de leurs cimes en élevant les yeux de la racine jusqu'au faîte, puis les précipitant du sommet jusqu'aux pieds, on doute si la terre les porte, ou si eux-mêmes ne portent point la terre pendue à leurs racines; vous diriez que leur front orgueilleux plié comme par force sous la pesanteur des globes célestes, dont il ne soutiennent la charge qu'en gémissant.

(35)

The trees soon become roots and tops only, their treeness is forgotten as the narrator discusses two extremities of them. The effect is imagined movement and height. The narrator humanizes the tree in imagining it reacting and feeling about its lot: rather than branches, it has arms which reach out to heaven as a man would extend his arms. Cyrano thus takes a point of departure, and from it, goes on to find new points which appear as possibilities of real scenes. He is taken with one aspect, then by another. What is most remarkable about his description of an object is that there is sudden and sharp movement upward, symbolic of his imaginative freedom, as with the oaks and skies: “… Tous les chênes … font admirer avec extase l'énorme hauteur de leurs cimes en élevant les yeux de la racine jusqu'au faîte, puis les précipitant du sommet jusqu'aux pieds, …” The abruptness of the upward swing of the trees corresponds to the sudden movement of his own vision. There is fantasy in a contrast of vertical and horizontal movement in the first lines of the letter, emphasizing the nearly static qualities of the sea when represented as a rug.

The narrator's vision then follows along paths, a lawn, finally arriving at a single concrete object, the grass in this case which is likened to an emerald, that sums up all that he described before. “A côté du château se découvrent deux promenoirs, dont le Gazon vert et continu forme une émeraude à perte de vue; …” Chateau and walk might be real features, but then the narrator quickly gets on to the impression they create: “Le mélange confus des couleurs que le printemps attache à cent petites fleurs, égale les nuances l'une de l'autre, et leur teint est si pur qu'on juge bien qu'elles ne courent ainsi après elles-mêmes que pour échapper aux amoureux baisers des vents qui les caressent.” Although the narrator may well see all the things he mentions, how he sees them is his own imaginative perspective, a “mélange confus,” which he explains as due to spring, and then compares, “égale les nuances l'une de l'autre.” He sees their purity, using a metaphor of kissing to describe the winds bending them.

The level appearance of the place evokes various sorts of terrain, even and level by nature. The fantasy lies in the comparison:

On prendroit maintenant cette prairie pour une mer fort calme, mais aux moindres zéphyrs qui se présentent pour y folâtrer, ce n'est plus qu'un superbe océan, … renfrogné, menace d'engloutir ces petits téméraires; mais parce que cette mer n'offre point de rivage, l'œil, … y envoie vivement la pensée doutant encore que ce terme qui finit ses regards ne soit celui du monde, veut quasi se persuader que des lieux si charmants auront forcé le Ciel de se joindre à la Terre.

(37)

The narrator's fantasy evokes movement, “le Ciel de se joindre à la Terre.” There is fantasy as movement, the result of moving from one point to another without the reader's having to recall the original idea. The end is not fixed by one idea; another idea follows, and continuation is suggested. The process resembles the surrealistic concept of non-associative imagery. The surrealists were not concerned with presenting things as they existed, not in how they might present them as much as in the conceptual process and its relationship to an already extant impression. The thing, person, or situation which is cause exists only as effect and image.

As in L'Autre Monde, Cyrano constantly adds new images, creating an ever expanding “Univers infini,” building up to a view that suggests the notion of constant movement. In the letters, Cyrano does create new impressions, all related, interesting in themselves. In the first clause of the above quote, he mentions the sea, in the last the heavens and earth. They are related by one element common to their physical nature. In addition to that, they are related by the similarity of the effect on him, appearing as imaged possibilities, moments of insight. The narrator says, “On prendoit cette prairie pour une mer.” Then, he turns to aspects of the ocean, waves and buoyancy: the garden is forgotten and the idea of the sea prevails. Next the sea is like a rug: “Tapis si vaste et si parfait court, à bouillons d'argent, une fontaine rustique.” A new idea strikes his imagination and he is in turn absorbed by it: “… Qui vit les bords de son lit émaillés de jasmins, d'orangers et de myrtes; …” The fountain is then forgotten, flowers occupy the scene, and a particular flower is the center of interest: “A considérer sa face jeune et pliée comme elle est, qui ne montre pas la moindre ride, …” He then completely humanizes the flower and it suggests a girl. “Elle estoit honteuse de se voir caresser si proche de sa mère, elle repousse avec murmure les mains audacieuses qui la touchent.” He then comes to the conclusion: “Le voyageur, qui s'y vient rafraîchir, courbant sa tête dessous l'onde, s'étonne qu'il soit grand jour sur son horizon, pendant qu'il voit le Soleil aux Antipodes, et ne se penche jamais sur le bord qu'il n'ait peur de tomber au firmament.” The narrator has a final image, a precipice, which is part of the entire pastoral scene. The final image implies that there is more, typifying further movement and an unrelenting search for the new, the narrator's unending quest for a new point and a new perspective. “Tomber d'un précipice” suggests infinite imaginative possibilities, and so the letter ends not on a point, but on the possibility of more images.

The first line of “Le Campagnard” reveals the effect of Nature on the narrator's imagination. He seems to have no definite interest, no particular view of the country, yet on seeing and becoming conscious of it, his imagination is excited. The narrator compares life in the country, referring back to the court to emphasize the country. In the passage quoted next, observe how terms are used to emphasize the qualities of country life which attract the narrator: they are “codindes,” “ardente,” “fièvre,” “ronfler paisiblement,” “dévorant de lard jaune”:

Monsieur, si vous saviez qu'un gentilhomme champêtre est un prince inconnu, n'entend parler du roi qu'une fois l'année, et ne le connaît que par quelque vieux cousinage …, et si de la Cour où vous estes, vous aviez des yeux assez bons pour apercevoir jusqu'icy ce gros garçon qui garde vos codindes, le ventre couché sur l'herbe, ronfler paisiblement un somme de six heures tout d'une pièce, se guérir de la fièvre en dévorant un quartier de lard jaune, dont il fait une doublure à son estomac, vous troqueriez sans doute votre manteau d'hermine à son casaquin.

Cyrano creates a fanciful contrast between the immediate pleasantness of the country and the remoteness of the court. But the country is also real as he begins with a series of exclamations that arrest his thought: “O! Dieux” and “Hé! Monsieur.” Then he asks, “Un Philosophe comme vous, peut-il préférer au repos d'un si agréable retraite la vanité, les chargins et les embarras de la Cour?” Thus, he returns the scene to reality, interrupts the picture of the country, reminding himself of his point of departure. The question raises doubt as to which is more real to him, the distant royal court or the immediate scene whereby his imagination is awakened: the court is not real, the country is. But the nature of the country as concrete image is soon forgotten, and the narrator goes on to investigate and discover what excites his imagination, just as the general idea of the bucolic scene first inspired his thought.

In the letters on Nature, Cyrano shows through the individual seasons and the changes from one season to another how his thought is stirred and his imagination reacts in various ways. Through comparing the effect of winter on himself, he demonstrates winter's effect on aspects of the external world of Nature. “Pour le Printemps” finds him joyful to see Nature reviving, and he himself feels rejuvenated. While he is acting in accord with a total effect of Nature, emotionally and physically, he is nonetheless aware of his distance from these effects. This physical effect he presents as something clinging to him, as though it had life of its own in “Pour l'Eté”: “Il brûle, il court, il semble dévaler de son cercle; et se voulant jeter à notre cou, il en tombe si près, que pour léère que soit l'essence d'un Dieu, la moitié des hommes dégoutte de sueur en le portant” (13). Cyrano does not stop at explaining Nature as do the Romantics of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries; he speculates on it, imagining it with feelings equal to his own, and this in turn further inspires his imagination. The Romantics sought out the somber wildernesses of America and the dense forests of Germany and Switzerland, finding their own violent drama in the storms, waterfalls and other natural violence, a projection of their own feelings through identification. There is no violence in any of Cyrano's pastoral scenes. He chooses subjects that reflect solitude, man's ability to isolate himself from the world and so find a world where he can freely imagine whatever he wishes without personal involvement. There is, for instance, no rebellion such as that which the Romantics found in natural violence. In “Pour l'Eté” the narrator scorns rebellion: “Vous fulminez contre lui [l'été], sur ce qu'il dérobe … jusques à nos ombres; …” (13). As with the attraction of the narrator to the world of the moon, so when conscious of something, the narrator in the letter is able to realize his vision or feeling. In love, the narrator seeks to perpetuate his state as lover and to see it in new ways, not to realize his end as lover. The heat of summer is forced on all, none can escape it. To refuse its condition is pointless: however, one can be imaginative about it, overcome it by taking it lightly, imagining it as it is not: to portray this Cyrano uses humor: “Monsieur, il me semble que j'aurois bien du plaisir à jurer contre l'Automne, si je ne craignois de fâcher le tonnerre, …” (15).

There is a fantasy of melancholy in “Sur l'ombre des arbres dans l'eau” by which Cyrano develops the idea of loneliness and solitude, and which Bernardin calls “fugitive et à peine saisissable.”⁷ This is not representative of a mood of depression, but is another imagined experience, another state in which to envision further possibilities. In the letter the narrator imagines himself as another, revealing that not only is he able to see other things in different ways, but varying moods in himself. He does this by comparing the soul with depths in a pond, much as a bird sees its own reflection and thinks another is present: “… Et le brochet, jaloux de rencontrer un étranger sur son trône, le cherche en le trouvant, le touche et ne le peut sentir, …” (25).

What an individual sees and imagines is determined by the degree of his imaginative sensitivity, and he is as many things as he can imagine himself. Cyrano refers to the pond as a “miroir fluide,” a looking-glass, suggesting that the imagination is unlimited in regard to what it can envision. One impression follows another, and the narrator knows that no one of them is more real than another. The material that forms the image remains the same, but the appearance changes for the spectator as he becomes aware of more things in it. He imagines each possibility, but he becomes conscious of them, particularly as he makes an effort to see them differently. Then, as the impression is succeeded by another, he is increasingly convinced that there is no final impression that conveys the scene: “Cette description est un rien visible, un caméléon spiritual, … un procès des yeux et de la raison, une privation de clarté que la clarté met au jour; …” (Sur l'ombre des arbres dans l'eau”). If he could fix one perspective definitely, there would be an apparent reason for his act. But the narrator's imagination is constantly working, as in a kaleidoscope. The only truth is that there is continuous change, that the world is a “caméléon spirituel,” just as at the end of L'Autre Monde Drycona finds an absolute in infinite speculation.

The next series of letters to be discussed come under the grouping Lettres diverses as well, but the subjects are fate and death. Like those on Nature, fantasy lies both in the variety of impressions and ideas. There is movement and change in a variety of things, bringing traits into relief by irony and paradox. Mythological, historical, literary and scientific personages confront one another with a fantasmagoric effect in “D'un Songe.” Just as Cyrano associated natural phenomena with human characteristics in the letters on Nature, so these personages are freely associated with one another on the basis of a peculiarity of their individual mythological or historical importance. François de Montmorency, executed for dueling, is found among Greek grammarians who invented verbal dueling, thus evoking two examples from the past in a comparative image. Julius Caesar is with gamblers, for “… D'un seul coup de dés qu'il jeta sur le Rubicon, il avoit gagné l'empire du monde” (65). As the narrator's imagination is aroused and grasps whatever it seizes on, so Caesar was imaginative and conceived of winning the world, gambling both militarily and politically as well as with fate in making history. The most commonly known historical and mythological personages confront one another according to some detail or foible in their career, legendary or true, but with whom they normally have nothing in common, so that the reader gets a wholly different view of them: “Les bourreaux avec les médecins, à cause qu'ils sont payés pour tuer.” There is both irony and burlesque, but no real personal attack in his comparisons. The narrator evokes the idea by associating two different professions, and there results a new view of each due to its association with the other. The fantasmagoria of a “caméléon spirituel” is recalled, for his view is ever changing, not in respect to one person, but to all the historical and mythical personages encountered in it. The association of one person with another is unexpected, spontaneous, and seems to be based on insight. Yet each association is an imaginative experience, complete and unique. This is not because they are ever changing in themselves any more than the scenes of Nature changed, but because the narrator's mind ranges freely over the whole of history. and conceives of new possibilities through association. There is a difference, however; the change in Nature is as much seasonal, as much in one aspect of itself as in the narrator's mind. The examples range from Pythagoras who is found with comedians to Raymond Lulle⁸ found with rich wastrels because both sought how to make gold drinkable. By the rapidity with which the different types are run off, one is aware of immediate, free association of Cyrano's sensitivity to instantaneous recognition of similarities in things of ordinarily dissimilar nature. Each association is unique for its paradoxical truth, as in “Sur un recouvrement de santé” in which a sick person makes a quick turn for the better. The narrator says: “J'admire en vérité, comment vous qui choisissez toujours les choses les plus faciles …, vous avez tourné bride avec tant de précipitation” (62). Like Cyrano himself, the sick person chooses the most likely thing, makes the easiest choice: Cyrano decides on whatever image presents itself to his imagination.

In “D'une Enigme” the narrator speaks as an enigma, showing what he is by what he does, suggesting the power of the imagination in determining individuality. “Les mélancoliques, je les enfonce aux plus noires horreurs d'une solitude épouvantable” (78). In the imagination if not in reality, one is capable of being everything. At the end of the letter the enigma reveals itself as sleep, whose surprise effect is heightened by previous allegorical allusions to it, representing the various effects it can have, while not identifying it until the end. In a dream one is free to see waking experiences in new lights, through free association, and to become whatever, see and be whatever one wishes. Similarly, Cyrano conceives of new views, which inspire new imaginative possibilities.

The last group, Les Lettres satiriques, finds imaginative fantasy taking the form of caricature and ridicule, involving religious and professional institutions as well as certain individuals, some of whom are writers. To a greater degree perhaps than others, these letters reflect the reaction of a writer to events in his private life and to individuals he knew. In the satirical letters there is imaginative fantasy as humor, wit and on occasion, vituperation. These are not intended to attack, but to reveal a variety of possibilities in seeing a person or institution. They are imagined possibilities, fantasies which amuse. As in the Lettres diverses, there is a good deal of variety in the subject matter as well as in the images used to present the matter. There is the same abruptness through a series of flashes or points, and new associations which create the effect of a fantasmagoria. These associations are based on the body, comparisons of things in Nature, historical and mythological figures, or allusions to objects such as a violin that reveals how an individual might be seen. The impression is not lasting as each image is succeeded by another.

As Richard Aldington points out in the introductory essay of his translation of L'Autre Monde, “The Satirical letters … do not denounce types, they blackguard individuals.”⁹ An example of such is “Contre un gros Homme” in which Cyrano caricatures the actor Montfleury, responsible for an inferior tragedy, La Mort d'Asdrubal. As with most of the satirical letters, this one begins with a derogatory salutation that indicates the point of view that will predominate throughout the letter. Realistic terms and the view of the man are the basic features of the fantasy: “Enfin, gros homme, je vous ai vu!” The effect of the caricature is formed through points: Montfleury is like a sphere, resembling the earth, which the narrator has to travel over to find out what it is: “Mes prunelles ont achevé sur vous de grands voyages; … j'eus le temps de parcourir votre hémisphère, …” The narrator makes few allusions to Montfleury's size without associating it with his verbosity as a writer: “La moitié de ce que je vois, … je m'imagine voir aux Limbes tous les Fidèles dans le sein d'Abraham, sainte-Ursule qui porte les onze mille Vierges … ou le Cheval de Troie farci de quarante mille hommes.” These mythological allusions reveal his view of Montfleury the writer: as a writer he is like the Trojan horse. As many men exit from the horse, so words pour forth from Montfleury, and Cyrano thus forms a visual image of verbiage as its spews forth from Montfleury. The image stands of itself, and appreciation of it does not require knowing anything about Montfleury. Cyrano caricatures Montfleury's size by relating it to his sexual prodigiousness, presenting the image of his siring America: “Et si la Terre est un animal, vous voyant aussi rond et aussi large qu'elle, … qu'elle a depuis peu accouché de l'Amérique, dont vous l'aviez engrossée” (109).

Although it is Montfleury the playwright who inspires Cyrano's imagination, few references are made to his plays alone. For the most part, Cyrano presents images of the man's size, comparing his gross formlessness to his plays to convey the impression of an unpoetic and unoriginal mind. Cyrano suggests the extent of his borrowings through an allusion to a mythological figure: “… Si vous parlez, c'est comme jadis l'antre de la Sibylle qui parloit sans le savoir.” And: “Mais encore que les fumées qui sortent de votre bouche, je voulois dire de votre bondon, soient aussi capables d'enivrer que celles qui s'exhaloient de cette grotte, je n'y vois rien d'aussi prophétique; c'est pourquoi j'estime que vous n'êtes plus que la caverne des sept Dormants, qui ronflent par votre bouche.” As in the letters previously discussed, Cyrano here uses nouns as concrete points—“circonférence,” “globe,” “terre,” “ballon,” on which the fantasy of Montfleury centers.

Cyrano uses the comparison of Scarron's talent to a musical instrument in opening the letter “Contre Scarron”: “N'appréhende-t-il point de faire penser aux rieurs que vu le temps qu'il dure sous l'archet, il doit estre bon violon” (115). An instrument conveys the image of noise and concretizes the notion of Scarron's playful witticisms. Elsewhere, Cyrano exaggerates some physical characteristic, but here an individual's talent for humor is emphasized. Cyrano arrives at each point he wants to make, and they stand in relief due to their poignant, immediate nature: “… Que si ses pensées se forment au moule de sa tête, il doit avoir la tête forte plate; que ses yeux sont des plus grands, s'ils bouchent les coups détachés dont Nature a fêlé son cerveau” (115). Allusions to classical figures revert the sense of time, giving an impression of depth and a point of reference for the reader. Cyrano refers to Aesop, Virgil and the Aeniad. Then he personalizes a classic figure, “La Parque,” in a fantasy of Scarron's physical deformity. “On dit qu'il y a plus de dix ans que la Parque lui a tordu le cou sans le pouvoir étrangler, et que personne aujourd'hui ne le regarde, courbé comme il est, qui ne croie qu'il se penche petit à petit pour tomber doucement en l'Autre Monde, …” (115). Even more forceful is the fantasy of Scarron being dissected, when Cyrano compares him to an empty carcass, a void: “Il ne dit pas d'offenser de ces saillies d'imagination, car que je le crois passer comme un monstre, depuis le temps que les apothicaires sont occupez à ratisser le dedans de sa carcasse, ce doit estre un homme bien vide” (116). Cyrano suggests more images, indicating unlimited imaginative possibilities on the subject of Scarron.

In “A un Comte de Bas Aloy” Cyrano shows the cowardly character of the individual through a series of images and verbs that connote mannerisms: “… Efforcez-vous, mon pauvre monsieur, grincez les dents, mordez vos doigts, tapez du pied, jurez un ‘par la mort’ et tâchez de devenir courageux!” (133). The count's superficiality is evident in his ineffectual mannerisms, suggestive of his insignificance. In ridiculing plagiarism in “A M. de V …” Cyrano uses the same process of evolving images through points of comparison as in “Contre un gros homme.” In “A M. de V. …” he says the man is like a tree: “Vos membres mêmes sont si prodigieux, qu'à les considérer on croit que vous avez deux géants pendus du ventre à la place de vos cuisses; et vous avez la bouche si large que je crains quelque fois que votre tête tombe dedans” (99). Cyrano likens the subject's plagiarism to his size and moral code, all of which is summed up in the image of his production as coming from a disproportionate hole.

When ridicule is based on a personal point in the life of the caricatured—sexual habits, appearance and mannerisms—the imaginative effect is more successful than when it involves ridicule of a more abstract matter such as an individual's honor. The same can be said of the religious letters in which he avoids philosophic questions and concentrates on realistic and concrete images, for instance, the appearance of a priest or easily recognized Biblical allusions. Many of his allusions were undoubtedly considered blasphemous by contemporaries and explain the libertine tradition in cyranesque studies. However, Cyrano was not interested in the religious nature of the allusions. One can more aptly say as regards sources of the imagination, that Cyrano found in the Bible and religious institutions a storehouse of matter to inspire his imagination. In “Apothéose d'un Ecclésiastique” there is fantasy in the mixed allusions which suggest a caprice of the imagination as much as satire: “Je m'étonne fort que … vous qui fassiez réciter des fables de Peau d'Ane à Jésus-Christ, …” (118). Again when he describes a priest, he compares physical and mental features: “Vos cheveux plus droits que votre conscience, un front coupé de sillons (c'est-à-dire, taillé sur le modèle des campagnes de Beauce), … vos yeux à l'ombre de vos sourcils touffus, qui ressemblent à deux précipices au bord d'un bois, …” (120). Cyrano is not interested in moral questions: he refuses to center interest on ideas when he constantly expands his references to include more and more things. Thus, no one point is driven home to make a value judgment. The imagination is stimulated by one thing, then another, never resting on any one in particular. The letter continues to ridicule fantastically the priest's appearance, much as he played on Scarron's physical deformity: “Votre visage est harnaché d'un nez, dont l'infection punaise est cause que vous avez toujours vécu en fort mauvaise odeur …” (120).

The same interest in imagined possibilities, fantasy rather than philosophical problems, although the content may suggest them, is found in “Contre un Jésuit assassin et médisant.” In it Cyrano capriciously envisions institutions of the Church, revealing like Rabelais that even the most traditional things can be seen in different ways. Cyrano opens the letter in a typical way, with a humorous if sarcastic salutation: “Père criminel,” and then turns to a galaxy of subjects presented as concrete objects: “On a purgé vos Collèges de ce mauvais sang, et le souvenir de la Pyramide empêche que le massacre ne passe de votre bouche dans les mains de ceux qui vous écoutent” (121). Then, he shows the fantasy of capricious and whimsical thought of unimaginative people: “Père écervelé, me croyez-vous si stupide de me figurer que le Monde soit né comme un champignon, que les Astres aient pris feu et se soient arrangé par hasard, … ?” (122). Later in the letter the points are in the form of a variety of allusions, the caprice of which suggests the nature of the priest's thinking: “A la vérité, vous êtes plus grand qu'eux en fourbes, en lâchetés, en trahisons, et par vous Dieu s'est trouvé depuis Judas plus d'une fois entre les mains d'un traître, …” (123). This is not an ethical reaction: it is a fantasy comprised of various images as they flash across the mind: the number of allusions, poignant and forceful, resemble an insight itself, a new thought. We thus see that Cyrano's interest is the creation of effects rather than presenting rhetorical arguments for or against something. The letters that have a religious subject, can thus be viewed in the same light as the letters on love or those on Nature—interesting for their imaginative features rather than for their subject matter.

In “Pour les Sorciers” the narrator finds a world consistent with his imaginative nature through a dream. Cyrano begins the letter by the narrator going off as though he were on a walk: “… Je sortis à la promenade pour dissiper les sombres et ridicules imaginations … et comme je m'efforçois à déprendre ma pensée … de ces contes obscurs, …” (39). However, so imaginative is he that he cannot help but come to another world, when, as though carried in flight, his thought is freed: “Je sentis envoler par le vague de l'air; … je me trouvai sur mes pieds au milieu d'un désert … mais cette solitude m'étoit un nouveau monde.” In this state, he is correspondingly more lucid, his imagination more sensitive: “Je voyois les étoiles luire au Ciel avec un feu bleuetant, la lune étoit en son plein, mais beaucoup plus pâle qu'à l'ordinaire.” There are many objects present, yet the narrator feels totally alone, as though he were more daring than anyone: “L'horreur d'un silence effroyable qui régnoit partout” (39). Freedom is accompanied by silence, suggesting the solitude of space where he is. The narrator meets metaphysicians such as Socrates and Faustus, who by their wisdom were singular among mortals. Like them, the narrator's power of vision makes him solitary, for he is told: “… Entre tous les mortels, je t'ai choisi pour assister à des mysteres que je ne célèbre qu'une fois en vingt ans” (42). To be imaginative is to be exceptional, and if one is imaginative, there is no limit to what can be seen. For instance, the power of the imagination is thus described:

Je fais courir les Ardents sur les monts et sur les fleuves pour noyer les voyageurs. J'excite les Fées à danser au clair de la Lune. Je pousse les Joueurs à chercher le trèfie à quatre sous les gibets, … Je donne la pistole volante qui vient ressauter dans la pochette quand on l'a employée. … Je fais tout renverser dans une maison par des Esprits folets.

(43)

Thus, the imagination is the source of all actions, and Cyrano represents it as a Sorcerer. The imagination even controls the body, for the narrator says on awakening: “Le corps tout froissé du travail de l'âme” (45). The dream is a reality, the effects physical. Like any other experience, however, its realness is lost when it ends: then it is but an image, one possibility among others.

It is perhaps in the letter “Contre les Sorciers” that Cyrano makes the clearest explanation of his notions about the imagination. While inspiration is important, it is reason which is the means of giving form to what is imagined: “La raison seule est ma reine, à qui je donne volontairement les mains, …” (47). This is not a concept of the nature of reason such as the “philosophes” of the late seventeenth and the eighteenth centuries formulated. Cyrano suggests, rather, that reason is fundamental to an individual manner of seeing things, following one's own nature and finding freedom—“volontairement,” through free association. For example, when the narrator sees a cross, he does not think of its traditional meaning. Instead, he lets his imagination see it with no particular view in mind, by free association: “Cette croix que vous tenez n'est pas une croix, à cause qu'elle est d'ébène; cette autre n'est pas à cause qu'elle est d'argent, mais l'une et l'autre sont des croix, à cause que sur une longueur, on a mis une largeur qui la traverse” (55). Cyrano does not reject its symbolic meaning; by free association he sees it in geometric form which is only a momentary view of it, not final, for other views follow.

In Cyrano's Lettres the tone is as often humorous as serious and, when humorous, it as much the result of the variety and manner of expressing his ideas as of their incongruity. In the letters, Cyrano presents a variety of views as imagined possibilities, interesting in that alone. He was unlimited and unrestrained in his choice, and where he saw paradox, irony, in short, possibilities for imaginative play, he used them. He was thus uninhibited before all things—religious, political and moral matters, even Scarron's deformities, writing without serious conceptual pretensions. If Cyrano included institutions of the Church, it was primarily because he saw there possibilities for fantasy without entertaining any serious idea of changing it. Fascinated by many things, Cyrano was able to toy with ideas as though they had no other reason for being than to amuse and could not help putting his impressions down on paper. His letters have no intellectual strategy as do Pascal's Lettres d'un Provincial with which Charles Nodier compares them.¹⁰

Because of the humorous nature of his images on the Church and Biblical figures, some critics have seen Cyrano as a precursor of the eighteenth century “philosophe”. What is more striking, however, is the combination he makes of the materials rather than a philosophical concern in the use of such subjects. In Cyrano's letters, an object, an idea is insignificant in itself, exists only to the degree that the narrator is conscious of it, and the manner in which he presents it. The narrator can see an oak as an oak is not, see it defy gravity and reach up to heaven, much as Cyrano imagines Drycona's going to the sun. One might speculate as Cyrano would seem to have done, that had he imagined it differently, so he would have presented it. It is just how he imagined something, and it cannot be further explained except that he was conscious of the object existing in a certain way. It is not what the thing is, not how he sees it that is important, but that he sees it differently at different moments, cannot restrain his imagination, a philosophy Cyrano suggests in “Contre les Sorciers,” and in “D'un Songe.” Cyrano reveals the power of the imagination as an unlimited source of ideas, impressions and views, a “caméléon spirituel.” These views and ideas are momentarily real, but pass and are forgotten when a new image presents itself. If there is a philosophy in the Lettres, it lies in the search for the novel and new in any form for its own sake.

Notes

1. I shall use this edition by Frédéric Lachèvre [Œuvres libertines de Cyrano de Bergerac (Paris, Librarie Ancienne Honoré Champion, 1921)] as the source in this chapter: as in the previous chapters, the page references follow the quotation in the text.

2. Louis-Raymond Lefèvre, La vie de Cyrano de Bergerac (Paris, 1927), p. 192, includes sources of the letters. Behind the love letters is a certain “Rousse,” who may have been in fact Cyrano's mistress. Lefèvre comments in similar manner on the caricature of contemporaries.

3. Lefèvre, p. 34.

4. Pierre Brun, Savinien de Cyrano Bergerac (Paris, diss., Université de Paris, 1893), p. 155.

5. Emile Faguet, Histoire de la poésie français de la Renaissance au Romantisme (Paris, 1862), Vol. II, p. 125.

6. Lefèvre, op. cit., pp. 139-151, identifies her as a certain Alexie.

7. Napoléon-Maurice Bernardin, Hommes et mœurs du XVII^e siècle (Paris, 1900), p. 145.

8. Raymond Lulle was an early fourteenth century Catalan priest, poet and mystic.

9. Richard Aldington, trans., Voyages to the Moon and Sun (London, 1929), p. 38.

10. Charles Nodier, “Cyrano de Bergerac,” Bulletin de Bibliophile, III (1839), p. 348.