SOURCE: “Miracle: The Attack,” in Cyrano de Bergerac and the Polemics of Modernity, Columbia University Press, 1970, pp. 9-54.

[In the excerpt below, Harth examines Cyrano's treatment of miracles in his works, noting the author's consistently skeptical view of religion.]

The consistent denunciation of miracles by Cyrano is one of the most original aspects of his work. A close examination of his method of assault will provide an understanding of his thinking on such basic issues as religion, sorcery, and superstition. Textual analysis of his treatment of miracles and a discussion of his contemporaries' ideas on them will reveal that Cyrano's position was distinctive.

Cyrano's attack on miracles, whether in his Autre Monde, his letters, or his two plays, is presented in a satirical or ironic fashion. This does not mean that his works are in themselves satires, but merely that the genre of each permits a satirical or, as in the case of La Mort d'Agrippine, an ironic treatment of the subject. The two voyages of the Autre Monde are a good example. Classified by William Eddy as extraterrestrial fantastic voyages (subdivisions of what he terms the “Philosophic voyage”),¹ their form is fluid enough to include many satirical passages.²

Because the voyages are not strict formal satires, it is difficult to establish a consistent picture of that character whom Alvin Kernan chooses to call the satirist.³ In the Estats et empires de la lune, for example, the character, Cyrano, changes drastically from the scene in the paradis terrestre at the beginning to the closing scenes in which he is engaged in a long colloquy with the fils de l'hôte. In the first scene Cyrano expresses such irreligious opinions that the saintly Hélie forbids him to eat the fruit of the Arbre de Sçavoir and indeed taxes him with atheism (I, 31). In the closing scenes Cyrano is the upholder of religion and morality and is shocked at the unconventional views of his host (I, 90 ff.).⁴ The two contrasting attitudes presented in each scene are, of course, satiric devices, similar to the ones in Pascal's Provinciales. The underdog is pitted against the respectable fellow as a means of satirizing the generally accepted views of the latter. It is to be assumed that both the character Cyrano of the paradis terrestre scene and the fils de l'hôte are at once “satirists” and porte-parole for the ideas of the author Cyrano.

Cyrano's account of terrestrial paradise, suppressed in the 1657 printed edition of his moon voyage, departs radically from that of the Bible. The serpent, in a Rabelaisian episode, is transformed into a phallic symbol (I, 28). The fruit of the Tree of Knowledge produces not wisdom but ignorance—unless you are fortunate enough to bite through the thick outer skin (I, 29). Adam, according to Elijah, who serves as Cyrano's guide in paradise, after having been expelled from paradise, was made by God to eat the skin of this fruit so that he would not find his way back.

Il fut, depuis ce temps-là, plus de quinze ans à radotter et oublia tellement touttes choses que ny luy ny ses descendans jusques à Moyse ne se souvinrent seulement pas de la Création.

(I, 29)

After this time he was to spend more than fifteen years babbling, and so completely did he forget everything that until the time of Moses neither he nor his descendants remembered even so much as the Creation.

It is to be noted that, due to the fruit's power, neither Adam nor his descendants remembered the Creation, suggesting that there elapsed a considerable period of time in which generations of men were ignorant of the Creation, a fancy which casts some doubt as to the veracity of the events in Genesis.

Elijah recounts to Cyrano his marvelous experience prompted by his consumption of a piece of the fruit which happened to lack the brain-numbing skin.

Il me sembla qu'un nombre infiny de petits yeux se plongèrent dans ma teste et je sçeus le moyen de parler au Seigneur. Quand depuis j'ay faict réflexion sur cet enlèvement miraculeux je me suis bien imaginé que je n'aurois pas pu vaincre par les vertus occultes d'un simple corps naturel la vigilance du Séraphin que Dieu a ordonné pour la garde de ce Paradis. Mais parce qu'il se plaist à se servir de causes secondes, je creus qu'il m'avoit inspiré ce moyen pour y entrer, comme il voulut se servir des costes d'Adam pour luy faire une femme, quoy qu'il peust la former de terre aussy bien que luy.

(I, 29)

It seemed to me that an infinite number of tiny eyes plunged into my head and that I discovered the means of speaking to the Lord. When afterwards I reflected on this miraculous translation, I though that I would not have been able to overcome by the occult virtues of a simple natural body the vigilance of the Seraph which God ordered to guard this Paradise. But because it pleases him to use secondary causes, I believed that he had inspired me with this means of entering, as he chose to use Adam's ribs to make him a wife, even though he could have formed her of clay just as easily as he did Adam.

Instead of simply accepting his “enlèvement” as a miracle, Elijah reflects upon it, and this attitude is adopted in a similar passage by the character Cyrano. After he eats of the fruit, he finds that although the terrestrial paradise has vanished, he still remembers everything. But he finds a natural explanation for this “miracle.”

Quand depuis j'ai faict réflexion sur ce miracle, je me suis figuré que cette escorce ne m'avoit pas tout à fait abruti à cause que mes dents la traversèrent et se sentirent un peu du jus de dedans, dont l'énergie avoit bien dissipé les malignitez de la pelure.

(I, 32)

When afterwards I reflected on this miracle, I fancied that the skin had not entirely stupefied me, because my teeth had bitten through it and had tasted some of the juice within, whose power had dissipated the malignities of the rind.

Although both Elijah and Cyrano refuse to accept a miracle without questioning, their meditations upon it differ. Elijah decides that he would not have been able to enter paradise alone, by natural or mortal means,⁵ so God gave him supernatural or divine means. God also could have left the formation of Eve to natural means; he could have formed her of clay instead of creating her miraculously from Adam's rib. Why did he choose the latter way? Elijah's answer is that he prefers to use “causes secondes” or miraculous means. Therefore, Elijah, while careful to ponder and analyze the miraculous, concludes by accepting it as the effect of God's will.

Cyrano, on the other hand, reflecting on the mysterious disappearance of paradise and his equally mysterious remembrance of it, does not have recourse to God in his explanation. He could easily have said that although God banished him forever from that holy place, he yet wished him to retain a memory of it. Instead, he ascribes the preservation of his wits to a natural cause. It is Cyrano's attitude and not Elijah's which will be adopted throughout the Autre Monde. The rational, human explanation of miracles is found consistently in Cyrano's works.

The climax of the paradis terrestre scene occurs at the moment when Elijah, about to describe one of the “assomptions” (to the paradise in the moon) that he had mentioned to Cyrano, begins by: “Sçachés donc que Dieu. …” (Know then that God. …) As if waiting for the word “God” as a cue, Cyrano interrupts with a humorous and totally irreverent account of the assumption of Saint John the Evangelist. His blasphemous speech moves Elijah to exile him forthwith from paradise (I, 31).

Biblical miracles are mocked throughout the paradis terrestre scene. There is a satirical reference to Jacob's Ladder and a parody of the story of the Flood (I, 24, 25-26), perhaps reflecting a popular belief that paradise must have been located on the moon because the floodwaters would then not have been able to reach the just inhabiting it.⁶

The satirical attack on miracles in the paradis terrestre scene is linked to an attack on revealed religion. Not only are the miracles of Genesis parodied, but also a doctrine as essential to the Judaeo-Christian heritage as that of Creation is questioned. Elijah accepts God's will to produce “causes secondes” as sufficient explanation of miracles, but the character Cyrano does not. And if his will does not produce miracles, which then indeed are no longer miracles at all, a serious doubt must be placed on revealed religion.

Luciano Erba, who views the Autre Monde as an allegorical, mystical, and magical work, finds that its most sublime episode is the paradis terrestre scene, which he likens to Dante's Paradiso.⁷ Erba thus eliminates any consideration whatsoever of the satirical elements. An interpretation of this scene which similarly removes from it not only all satirical, but also all intellectual, elements is found in Edward W. Lanius's recent study.⁸ The humor in the paradis terrestre scene, however, especially in Cyrano's version of the serpent and of the “assumptions,” would be difficult to overlook. It is obvious that if the scene is satirical, it is the events of Genesis which are being satirized. Richard Aldington acknowledges Cyrano's parody of the Bible and sees in these passages the influence of the burlesque school.⁹

Miracles are again put to a test in the dialogue with the fils de l'hôte. This time the assault on the miraculous includes a criticism of man's credulity. Cyrano has bestowed a left-handed compliment on his host's misguided intelligence: “C'est un aussy grand miracle de trouver un fort esprit comme le vostre, ensevely de sommeil que de veoir du feu sans action” (I, 91). (It is just as great a miracle to find a sharp mind like yours buried in slumber as to see an inactive fire.) The host chides him for his use of the word “miracle.”

Mais … ne déférés-vous jamais vostre bouche aussy bien que vostre raison de ces termes fabuleux de miracles? Sçachés que ces noms-là diffament le nom de Philosophe. Comme le Sage ne veoit rien au Monde qu'il ne conçoive ou qu'il ne juge pouvoir être conceu, il doibt abominer touttes ces expressions de miracles, de prodiges, d'événemens contre Nature qu'ont inventés les stupides pour excuser les foiblesses de leur entendement.

(I, 91)

But … do you not ever banish from your lips as well as from your reason these fabulous terms of miracles? Learn that such words disgrace the name of Philosopher. Since the Sage sees nothing in the World that he does not understand or that he does not judge capable of being understood, he must abominate all these expressions—miracles, prodigies, phenomena contrary to Nature—that the ignorant have invented to excuse the weaknesses of their minds.

The philosopher-host's objection to the use of the term “miracle” is that it is an insult to human intelligence, which is self-sufficient and at least potentially capable of understanding anything without having recourse to supernatural explanations. This affirmation of the power of human reason, reminiscent of Descartes, is again found in a famous passage from the letter “Contre les sorciers”: “La raison seule est ma reine, à qui je donne volontairement les mains” (II, 212). (Reason alone is my queen, to whom I voluntarily swear allegiance.) In Cyrano's world, according to John Spink, “everything can be conceived and can exist; nothing is impossible.”¹⁰ Cyrano's attitude toward human reason contrasts sharply with the fideism of most of his scholarly contemporaries, including that of his supposed teacher, Gassendi.¹¹

Cyrano protests that he has seen miraculous cures with his own eyes, to which his host replies that they are caused by “la force de l'imagination” (the force of imagination) (I, 92). A sick man is not cured by prayers but by his desire to get well: “N'est-il pas bien plus vraysemblable que sa fantaisie, excitée par les violens desirs de la santé, a faict cette opération?” (I, 93). (Is it not much more likely that his imagination, stimulated by his violent desires for health, effected this task?) Imagination would here seem to include the will to recover, and in the Estats du soleil, imagination and volonté are used almost synonymously. It is, for instance, Cyrano's strong desire (“cette ardeur de ma volonté” [I, 135] [the ardor of my will]) which finally enables him to land on the sun. He describes also the influence of the imagination in attaining his goal: “Je roidis avec plus d'attention que jamais toutes les facultez de mon âme pour les attacher d'imagination à ce qui m'attiroit” (I, 135). (With more care than ever I stiffened all the faculties of my soul so as to attach them in imagination to what was pulling me.) The association of will and imagination in this context underscores the human effort in producing effects that some may presume to be miracles. It reflects Cyrano's confidence in the powers of man to do what is commonly attributed to God's omnipotence.

The most striking effect of the imagination is to be found in the scene of the Estats du soleil in which the sun-creatures willfully undergo several metamorphoses. The “Homme-Esprit” of the sun explains to Cyrano the role of imagination in the metamorphoses, which he might unknowingly assume to be miraculous.

Mais écoute, et je te découvriray comment toutes ces métamorphoses qui te semblent autant de miracles ne sont rien que de purs effets naturels. Il faut que tu sçaches qu'estant nés habitans de la partie claire de ce grand Monde où le principe de la matière est d'estre en action, nous devons avoir l'imagination beaucoup plus active que ceux des régions opaques, et la substance du corps aussi beaucoup plus déliée. Or cela supposé, il est infaillible que nostre imagination ne rencontrant aucun obstacle dans la matière qui nous compose, elle l'arrange comme elle veut, et, devenuë maistresse de toute notre masse, elle la fait passer, en remuant toutes ses particules, dans l'ordre nécessaire à constituer en grand cette chose qu'elle avoit formée en petit.

(I, 145)

But listen, and I will reveal to you how all of these metamorphoses which seem to you so many miracles are nothing but simple natural effects. You should know that being natives of the light part of this great World, where the principle of matter is to be in action, we necessarily have a much more active imagination than the inhabitants of the opaque regions, and also a much more loosely packed bodily substance. Now with this supposition it is certain that our imagination, encountering no obstacle in the matter of which we are composed, arranges this matter as it wishes, and, having become mistress of our entire mass, the imagination rearranges it, by moving all of its particles, into the order necessary to constitute on a large scale what it had formed on a small one.

Although the metamorphoses will eventually be seen as much more complex than simply effects of the will or imagination, Cyrano is here emphasizing their natural, rather than supernatural, cause. The “Homme-Esprit” replaces miracles by the power of imagination to rearrange matter. It is undoubtedly the doctors of theology to whom Cyrano is referring when he says that, owing to the explanation of the sun-creature, he was able to rid himself of certain widely accepted notions propounded by them: “Je me désabusay d'un grand nombre d'opinions mal prouvées, dont nos Docteurs aheurtez préviennent l'entendement des foibles” (I, 145). (I was undeceived concerning a great number of poorly proved opinions with which our obstinate Doctors prejudice the intellects of the weak.) The “opinions” are evidently those supporting belief in divinely inspired miracles. Cyrano would substitute natural, materialistic, and human reasons for these opinions, which he considers merely the prejudices of the weak-minded: “Je conceus … que cette imagination pouvoit produire sans miracle tous les miracles qu'elle venoit de faire” (I, 146). (I understood … that the imagination could produce without a miracle all the miracles which it had just effected.)

The theory of imagination as one of the explanations of miracles is outlined by Pomponazzi in his De Incantationibus. Henri Busson cites the passages from the Autre Monde just discussed as uses by Cyrano of Pomponazzi's theory.¹² In the passage on imagination in the Estats du soleil, Cyrano mentions several examples of well-known marvels having imagination as their cause. Busson sees the influence of Montaigne's essay on imagination here,¹³ and Montaigne, who brings up the question of miracles not infrequently in the Essais, may well have served as an inspiration to Cyrano. The latter's works contain many echoes of Montaigne's judgment of miraculous effects: “Il me semble qu'on est pardonnable de mescroire une merveille, autant au moins qu'on peut en destourner et elider la verification par voie non merveilleuse.” (It seems to me that we may be pardoned for disbelieving a marvel, at least as long as we can turn aside and avoid the supernatural explanation by nonmarvelous means.)¹⁴ Montaigne, who, according to Busson, definitely does use the De Incantationibus, may therefore have been the source through which Pomponazzi's ideas filtered through to Cyrano, especially since by the beginning of the seventeenth century Pomponazzi's book itself was hard to find and rarely read.¹⁵

One passage in particular in the Estats du soleil resembles a passage on the power of imagination in the De Incantationibus. When Cyrano meets Campanella he is mystified by the fact that the old philosopher can read his mind and asks him what “demon” could have given him the information. Campanella explains that there was no demon at all; the power of the imagination, based on a materialistic logic, alone accounts for the seemingly marvelous trick.

Afin de connoistre vostre intérieur, j'arrangeay toutes les parties de mon corps dans un ordre semblable au vostre; car estant de toutes parts situé comme vous, j'excite en moy par cette disposition de matière, la mesme pensée que produit en vous cette mesme disposition de matière.

(I, 178)

In order to know your interior, I arranged all the particles of my body in an order similar to yours; for having a structure like your own in all parts, I provoke in myself by this arrangement of matter the same thought that is produced in you by the same arrangement of matter.

Pomponazzi attributes the influence of one person's imagination on other people to the force exerted by the “agent” which is sufficient to produce effects on one's own “passive” nature as well as similar ones on the passive nature of others. The materialistic concept of thought found in Cyrano is not, however, developed here. The active is transmitted to the passive by a sort of vapor, whereas in Cyrano the influence is made possible by the arrangement of matter alone.

Bien que ce soit par les espèces dans l'âme, par les passions en nous et dans les corps où on les trouve que se produisent ces effects extraordinaires [de l'imagination], rien n'empêche que des effets semblables soient extériorisés dans le corps d'autrui. L'hypothèse se prouve parce qu'il évident que le passif a les mêmes dispositions chez les autres qu'en nous et parfois de meilleures, et que l'agent a une puissance suffisante pour cela: les effets peuvent donc se produire chez autrui (Platon étant disposé comme Socrate, l'agent émettant une sorte de vapeur de mêmes propriétés pour l'extérieur que pour l'intérieur, les mêmes effets se produisent chez Platon ad extra que chez Socrate ad intra).¹⁶

Although it is by the species in the soul, by the passions in us and in the bodies where they are found that these extraordinary effects [of the imagination] are produced, nothing prevents similar effects from being exteriorized in the bodies of others. The hypothesis is proved, because it is evident that the passive has the same arrangements in others as in us, and sometimes better ones, and the agent has sufficient power for the externalization. The effects can therefore be produced in others (Plato being arranged like Socrates, the agent emitting a sort of vapor of the same properties for the exterior as for the interior, the same effects are produced in Plato ad extra as in Socrates ad intra).

A more fundamental similarity between Pomponazzi and Cyrano is to be found in one of the three reasons listed by the former for not attributing miraculous-seeming cures and other marvels to the work of demons:

Les causes naturelles nous suffisent pour expliquer ces phenomènes et il n'y a aucune raison nécessitante de les attribuer aux démons: il est donc vain d'y recourir. Il est ridicule en effet et tout à fait extravagant d'abandonner ce qui se voit, ce qui se prouve par raison naturelle pour chercher l'invisible et l'invraisemblable.¹⁷

Natural causes suffice to explain these phenomena, and there is no overriding reason to attribute them to demons: it is therefore futile to have recourse to them. It is in fact ridiculous and completely foolish to abandon that which can be seen and proven by natural reason to seek the invisible and the implausible.

For Pomponazzi as well as for Cyrano natural causes should be sought as the source of miracles. But Pomponazzi's “natural” causes include ones not accepted by Cyrano, such as occult powers and astrological influence.¹⁸ For Cyrano all the causes are natural or human, which means that miracles as such do not exist.

The implications of Cyrano's satirical presentation of miracles are far-reaching. In his treatment of doctrine of Creation, for instance, Cyrano goes considerably beyond mere parody. The fils de l'hôte expounds his ideas on the controversial problem of the origin of the world, one of paramount importance for thinkers and theologians of Cyrano's time. He begins his argument by denying Creation and ends it by denying God, in a significant progression of ideas. His primary objection to Creation is the Aristotelian ex nihilo nihil. In giving alternative explanations of the world's beginning, he arrives at the conclusion that God need have played no part at all.

Car dites-moy, en vérité, a-t-on jamais conceu comment de Rien il se peut faire Quelque chose? Hélas! entre Rien et un Atome seulement, il y a des disproportions tellement infinies que la cervelle la plus aigüe n'y sçauroit pénétrer. Il fauldra donc pour eschapper à ce labirinthe inexplicable que vous admettiès une Matière Eternelle avec Dieu, et alors il ne sera plus besoing d'admettre un Dieu, puisque le Monde aura peu estre sans luy.

(I, 75-76)

For tell me, in truth, has anyone ever understood how from Nothing Something could be created? Alas! between Nothing and one single Atom there are such infinite disproportions that the keenest brain could not penetrate them. In order, then, to extricate yourself from this inexplicable labyrinth, you will have to admit a Matter coeternal with God, and then you will no longer need to admit a God, since the World could exist without him.

Lachèvre notes with well-placed surprise (I, 75, n. 1) Brun's comment on this passage that Cyrano avoided atheism by making matter coeternal with God. Brun's error would have been understandable had he been using LeBret's 1657 printed edition in which the last part of the quotation was omitted, but since he was using the manuscript of the Bibliothèque Nationale it is difficult to see why he chose to ignore what Weber has called the “passage de l'averroïsme à l'athéisme dans la pensée de Cyrano”¹⁹ (transition from Averroism to atheism in Cyrano's thought) in the last clause. It is an essential transition. As a result, Cyrano dispenses entirely with Averroist solutions to the question of Creation and all compromises between Mosaic Creation and the Aristotelian concept of the eternity of the world.²⁰ In the opinion of the fils de l'hôte, once matter coeternal with God is admitted, God becomes superfluous because matter can arrange itself, and in a long passage following this one he shows how it does just that (I, 76-82). Busson remarks that Cyrano absolutely refuses to explain the origin of the world by Creation and will explain it only by natural (atomistic) causes.²¹

Running like a motif throughout the conversation with the fils de l'hôte is the humorous attempt of Cyrano to convert him. The consistently irreligious replies of the lunarian constitute a kind of “Profession de foi d'un libertin.” His faith is not in religious doctrine and miracles, which he vehemently refutes, but in reason and common sense. Along with Creation he will reject the ideas of the soul's immortality and of resurrection, replacing them with totally materialistic explanations. He ridicules the paradoxical notion of the incorporeal soul of man leaving the body at death while the animal's corporeal soul dies with the body. And if the human soul needs the five senses to function perfectly in life, how can it function perfectly after death, when it is deprived of all of them (I, 93-94)?

Cyrano correctly deduces from the foregoing statements by the fils de l'hôte that the idea of resurrection is only a “chimère.” The young philosopher calls it a “Peau-d'Asne” (fairy tale) and proceeds to attack it by his fable of a Christian eating a Mohammedan. What will happen to offspring of the Christian, made up of the substance of the Mohammedan, at the resurrection? Will the Mohammedan recover his body? But in that case the young Christian will not have one. If he, however, recovers his, the Mohammedan in turn will be deprived of his. God could of course create a new body for the Mohammedan, but in that case he would no longer be the same individual, since Christian doctrine affirms a man to be the unity of his body and soul. God's only recourse would be to damn and save the same man for all eternity (I, 94-95).

The outlandish dilemma posed by the fils de l'hôte to illustrate what he considers to be the absurdity of the resurrection is indisputably the result of materialistic thinking. Having negated the spirituality and immortality of the soul by having it be dependent on the senses, he discusses resurrection chiefly as a bodily phenomenon, which he demonstrates to be logically impossible. The materialistic account renders meaningless such ideas as damnation and salvation. The distinction between sinner and saint (he conveniently uses as examples a Mohammedan and a Christian to dramatize the differences—and the lack thereof) becomes blurred when a man is seen as no more than his material substance, composed of other material substances entirely indifferent as to moral attributes.

Cyrano had previously in the Estats de la lune alluded to the idea of resurrection in a materialistic fashion. The démon de Socrate, after a short absence, reappears to the captive Cyrano in the form of a youth. Cyrano, knowing him only as an old man, does not recognize him. The demon tells him how he was able to effect the change by resurrecting a young cadaver.

Sans estre apperçu, je m'inspiré dedans [dans le corps] par un souffle. Mon vieil cadavre tomba aussi tost à la renverse; moy, dans ce jeune, je me levé. On cria miracle, et moy, sans araisoner personne, je recourus promptement chez vostre basteleur où je vous ay pris.

(I, 40)

Without being perceived, I insufflated myself inside [the body]. My old corpse immediately fell back, and I rose up in this young body. Everyone shouted “miracle,” and I, without enlightening anyone, ran promptly to your mountebank, where I fetched you.

Although this resurrection may be part of the “marvelous” baggage of a fantastic voyage, Cyrano calls our attention to the fact that it is not miraculous, as the uninformed public would believe.²² In the context of all the adventures on the moon, the young man's revivification is a marvel, but one for which a rational account can be given. The “miracle” can be reasoned out. Busson clarifies this passage by informing us that according to both Théophile Raynaud and the Naudeana, a certain professor of medicine at Montpellier named Saporta (d. 1605), son of Antoine who was a fellow student of Rabelais, made a public speech denying the miracle of the resurrection. The Naudeana goes on to mention a book in Latin by a doctor in which a rational explanation is offered for miracles of resurrection. Raynaud also states that Saporta was punished by death for his blasphemy.²³ The passage in Cyrano, according to Busson, reflects these events.²⁴

Man's immortal soul is constantly the butt of mockery for the misanthropic birds in the “Histoire des Oiseaux.” Busson lists five passages in the Autre Monde in which the soul's spirituality and immortality are denied, four of which are found in the “Histoire des Oiseaux.²⁵ The refusal on the part of the superior birds to grant immortality to man's soul is here part of a general debunking of man. Immortality is more directly attacked in a passage in La Mort d'Agrippine, also mentioned by Busson.²⁶

It is, as Busson remarks, a passage stoical in tone. Agrippina depicts to Sejanus in graphically lurid terms the death awaiting him as punishment for his treason. Sejanus counters with calm denials of the soul's immortality and therefore of any reason to fear death: “De ma mortalité je suis fort convaincu; / He! bien, je dois mourir, parce que j'ay vescu” (II, 149). (Of my mortality I am convinced; / Ah well, I must die, because I have lived.) Agrippina nevertheless attempts to overwhelm him with fear in describing to him the horrors of the last moments. She concludes: “Voilà de ton destin le terme espouvantable” (This will be the frightful end of your destiny), to which Sejanus replies: “Puisqu'il en est le terme, il n'a rien d'effroyable. / La mort rend insensible à ses propres horreurs” (II, 149). (Since it is the end, it holds nothing to fear. / Death renders us indifferent to its horrors.) Death is a state of complete nonexistence: “Estois-je malheureux, lors que je n'estois pas? / Une heure après la mort, nostre âme évanouie / Sera ce qu'elle estoit une heure avant la vie” (II, 150). (Was I unhappy when I existed not? / One hour after death, our vanished soul / Will be what it was an hour before life.)

The entire passage, with its emphasis on the soul's mortality and consequently on the nothingness of death, is especially reminiscent of Lucretius,²⁷ a major source for Cyrano. The pronouncements of Sejanus on death, however, reveal not only the stoical spirit of the De Rerum Natura, but also an irreverence, if not atheism, which bear Cyrano's own stamp. This is particularly evident in Act II, scene iv, in which Sejanus denies the power of the gods. His dialogue with Terentius is almost comic in tone and indeed seems misplaced in a tragedy. The very frivolity of Sejanus's replies may have been a dramatic device used by Cyrano to show just how little the gods meant to the Roman reprobate. It may also have been due to the absence of classical restraint in separating genres, which was perhaps responsible for the equally misplaced monologue on death and immortality by Granger at the end of Le Pédant joué. Whatever the reason, Sejanus gives an amusing reply to Terentius's somber warning to fear the gods. Terentius admonishes: “Respecte et crains des Dieux l'effroyable tonnerre!” (Respect and fear from the Gods their dreadful thunderbolts!) Sejanus replies:

Il ne tombe jamais en Hyver sur la terre.
J'ay six mois pour le moins à me moquer des Dieux
En suitte je feray ma paix avec les Cieux.

(II, 120)

They never fall on the earth in winter.
I have at least six months to mock the Gods
After which I will make my peace with Heaven.

Terentius again enjoins him to believe in the gods: “Qui les craint, ne craint rien.” (Whoever fears them fears nothing.) Sejanus replies with an ironic play on Terentius's words, that the gods are to be counted as mere creations of man, and if they have any usefulness at all it is but to help maintain political order:

Ces beaux riens qu'on adore, et sans sçavoir pourquoy,
Ces altérez du sang des bestes qu'on assomme,
Ces Dieux que l'homme a faicts, et qui n'ont poinct faict
l'homme,
Des plus fermes Estats ce fantasque soustien,
Va, va Térentius, qui les craint, ne craint rien.

(II, 120)²⁸

These fine nothings which we adore, without knowing why,
These beings thirsting after the blood of beasts which we fell,
These Gods which man has made, and which have not made man,
Of the strongest States a whimsical support,
Now, now Terentius, whoever fears them fears nothing.

Busson sees a strain of Machiavellianism, typical of the libertins, in Cyrano's works, and as an example he cites the following from Cyrano's satirical letter, the “Apothéose d'un ecclesiastique bouffon”: “J'avoue que pour la manutention des Estats, il y a beaucoup de choses vraies qu'il faut que le peuple ignore, beaucoup de fausses que nécessairement il faut qu'il croie.”²⁹ (I will admit that for the administration of States, there are many true things of which it is necessary that the people remain ignorant, many false things which they must of necessity believe.) Another example of Machiavellianism can be seen in the above-quoted speech of Sejanus. His statement that religion can serve to support a well-ordered society is not an attempt by Cyrano to defend religion but a cold-blooded rational effort to find some use for it, and in the letter quoted by Busson, Cyrano goes on to say: “Mais nostre religion n'est pas establie sur cette maxime” (II, 167). (But our religion is not based on this principle.) He thereby indicates that this is what he, Cyrano, finds of practical value in religion, but not religion's own account of its raison d'être (although in Cyrano's eyes perhaps it should be).

Terentius, in the scene from La Mort d'Agrippine, tries in vain to refute Sejanus's blasphemies with the traditional argument of the harmony of the world as proof of God's existence: “Mais s'il n'en estoit point! [des dieux] cette Machine ronde …” (II, 120) (But if there were none [Gods], this round Machine …), but Sejanus cuts him off with his final answer: “Ouy, mais s'il en estoit, serois-je encor au monde?” (II, 120). (Yes, but if there were would I still be on this earth?)

Spink points out that Cyrano uses the same argument in his letter “Contre le pédant” to prove the existence of God.³⁰ He notes other inconsistencies which do not, however, modify his appraisal of Cyrano as having “an eminently sane and courageous mind.”³¹ Cyrano's argument in “Contre le pédant” seems to be mainly a rhetorical device used in his murderous denunciation of the Jesuit. The entire letter consists of an accumulation of insulting exaggerations, not unlike those found in the Pédant joué, which produce a comical impression. The passage in La Mort d'Agrippine should be taken more seriously.

Henry Lancaster quotes Cyrano's contemporaries Tallement des Réaux, La Monnoye, and Guéret to demonstrate that their reaction to the Mort d'Agrippine was generally shock at its impiety.³² And, indeed, Gabriel Guéret, in his Guerre des autheurs anciens et modernes (1671) has Balzac allude thus to the reception of Cyrano's play:

Je ne parle point des impiétez qui vous sont si naturelles, et qui se rencontrent à chaque page, c'est le principal caractère de toutes vos pieces, et vous sçavez bien aussi que c'est ce qui fit deffendre vôtre [sic] Agrippine, qui sans trente ou quarante Vers qui blessent les bonnes Moeurs auroit diverti longtemps le Public, et tiendroit encore sa place sur le Théâtre.³³

I will not speak of the impieties which come so naturally to you, and which are found on every page; this is the chief characteristic of all your works, and you know very well that it is what caused the censorship of your Agrippina, which, minus thirty or forty Lines offending good Manners, would have entertained the Public for a long time, and would still rank high in the Theatre.

La Monnoye relates in the Menagiana that there were shouts of protest at Cyrano's atheism from the audience when Sejanus said, “Frappons, voila l'Hostie.”³⁴ (Let us strike, here is the Hostie.) The indignation may have been ill-founded, since Cyrano, perhaps employing a wily double-entendre, does use “hostie” in the sense of “victim,” as Lancaster has pointed out.³⁵ But the audiences could perfectly well have been shocked at other passages in the play, such as the dialogue of Sejanus and Terentius on the gods. However, Lancaster feels that their reaction even to other passages was not justifiable, because Cyrano did not necessarily share the opinions expressed by Sejanus. Spink acknowledges this possibility, but ultimately rejects it.³⁶ Lancaster considers that since Sejanus is portrayed as a villain, his ideas could not coincide with Cyrano's.³⁷ Busson evidently does not agree when he comments that Cyrano was exceptional for his time in expressing the materialism found in La Mort d'Agrippine.³⁸

The notion that Sejanus was meant by Cyrano to be a villain of whom he disapproved is worth examining. There are several curious aspects of the play bearing on this question. Although the title is La Mort d'Agrippine, Agrippina herself does not die in the play. The subject of the play would seem rather to be death in general, and more specifically “la mort qu'a voulue Agrippine” (the death wanted by Agrippina). It will be remembered that she desired the death of either Sejanus or Tiberius (II, 106-107). But she constantly derides the weaknesses of Tiberius,³⁹ and in Act IV, scene ii, she even tells him that he is a victim not worthy of her wrath. Drawing out a dagger which she disdainfully throws at the emperor's feet, she says to him: “Mais vis en seurté, la Veufve d'un Alcide / Rougiroit de combattre un Monstre si timide” (II, 136). (But you may live in safety; the Widow of a Heracles / Would blush to do combat with so timid a Monster.) However, if Tiberius's death is not worthy of her, Sejanus's is. At the end of the scene quoted above, in which Agrippina is unsuccessful in her attempt to humble Sejanus before his death, she finds herself concluding that he is to be admired for his conduct at his last hour:

                                                                                          Je te rends grâce, ô Rome!
D'avoir d'un si grand coeur partagé ce grand Homme;
Car je suis seure, au moins, d'avoir vengé le sort
Du grand Germanicus par une grande mort.

(II, 150)⁴⁰

                                                            I render thanks unto you, O Rome!
To have bestowed such a great heart on this great Man;
For I am at least certain of having avenged the fate
Of the great Germanicus with a great death.

No main character in La Mort d'Agrippine can really be considered likable, with the possible exception of Agrippina, who is depicted as a little too bloodthirsty for the taste of most spectators. Livia is an adulteress, the murderer of her husband and brother; Tiberius has already turned into the cruel tyrant remembered by history, and each protagonist is plotting against the next. It would therefore seem unlikely that Sejanus was singled out to be the villain, for a villain must, after all, be contrasted with goodness, and one would have to conduct a careful search to find it in this play.⁴¹ Sejanus shows, if anything, a courage and nobility in the face of death, recognized by Agrippina, which give him more stature than the other characters. Cyrano evidently did not intend to disparage what Sejanus represents, but rather to write a play about death and about what Cyrano himself considered a great and noble death. This is not to say that Sejanus becomes a hero,⁴² but if evil has its banality so has it its originality. Viewed as a nonconformist, an evil one perhaps, but with the courage of his convictions, Sejanus is not truly villainous. It is highly probable that Cyrano did not wish to dissociate himself from the ideas expressed by his protagonist, but that he was in agreement with them.

It is precisely the expression of atheistic ideas by a character of whom the author does not disapprove that distinguishes this mid-seventeenth-century tragedy from others of the time. Lancaster has stated that Cyrano's play and Jean Magnon's Séjanus are identical in theme.⁴³ While certain aspects of the plots may be similar, the central character of each, Sejanus, retains an individual identity. Magnon's Sejanus is a real villain. He is ruthlessly ambitious, cruel, and a consummate Tartuffe in tragic guise.⁴⁴ Cyrano's Sejanus is obviously ambitious too, but he is mainly characterized by his atheistic stoicism. There is no hint in Magnon's play of irreligion on the part of Sejanus, although we might of course assume that a man so wicked could not possibly be religious. The most blasphemous lines in the play are pronounced by Sejanus to defend himself before Tiberius:

Que le Ciel à vos pieds m'abisme d'un tonnerre
Ou que vif devant vous, m'engloutisse la terre,
Ou que je sois, mon Prince, éloigné de vos yeux;
Serment bien plus sacré, que celui de nos Dieux.(45)
Let Heaven strike me down at your feet with a thunderbolt
Or let the earth swallow me up alive in front of you,
Or let me, my Prince, be removed from your eyes;
An oath much more sacred than that of our Gods.

Sejanus emits no stoical reflections upon death in this play. In contrast to the defiant fortitude with which Cyrano's Sejanus goes forth to meet his doom, Magnon's protagonist stabs himself.⁴⁶ Although Cyrano undoubtedly knew and used Tacitus, the historian's description of Sejanus seems a more fitting one for Magnon's character than for Cyrano's:

He had a body which could endure hardships, and a daring spirit. He was one who screened himself, while attacking others; he was as cringing as he was imperious; before the world he affected humility; in his heart he lusted after supremacy, for the sake of which he was sometimes lavish and luxurious, but oftener energetic and watchful, qualities quite as mischievous when hypocritically assumed for the attainment of sovereignty.⁴⁷

Among sources for La Mort d'Agrippine, Brun lists La Mort de Sénèque by Tristan l'Hermite, to whom Cyrano pays homage in the Estats de la lune (I, 35-36). Here again the similarities are but superficial. Tristan's play is imbued with Christian feeling, and Seneca, while expressing stoical ideas similar to those of Cyrano's Sejanus, is a totally different figure from the crafty conspirator in La Mort d'Agrippine. Seneca is the embodiment of virtue, and there are definite suggestions that if he is not already a convert to Christianity, he soon will be.⁴⁸ There is no trace of the impious iconoclast Sejanus exulting in his defiance of law and tradition.

Sejanus's stoicism is not at all religious in tone; it represents the rational materialistic attitude of a mortal who accepts death as the end of both physical and psychical life. Spink's judgment of Cyrano's stand on religion applies especially to La Mort d'Agrippine: “Cyrano was as non-pagan as he was non-Christian. There is no trace of religious feeling in his work at all.”⁴⁹

Notes

1. William Eddy, Gulliver's Travels, A Critical Study, pp. 8-10.

2. Pietro Toldo, “Les Voyages merveilleux de Cyrano de Bergerac et de Swift et leurs rapports avec l'oeuvre de Rabelais,” Revue des études rabelaisiennes, IV (1906), 297-99. Cyrano's voyages fall into that one of Toldo's three categories which he calls satirical, in the tradition of Lucian, a product of the Renaissance.

3. Alvin Kernan, The Cankered Muse, pp. 14 ff.

4. This is a common satiric device in Cyrano's work. Cf. J.-J. Bridenne, “Cyrano de Bergerac et la science aéronautique,” Revue des sciences humaines, N.S. Fasc. 75 (July-Sept. 1954), 242.

5. See the variant c, I, 29: “mortal” for “natural” in the Munich manuscript.

6. Cf. John Wilkins, Discovery of a New World, in The Mathematical and Philosophical Works, p. 111.

7. Luciano Erba, “L'Incidenza della magia nell'opera di Cyrano de Bergerac,” Pubblicazioni, Università Cattolica del sacro cuore (Milan), Contributi del Seminario de Filologia Moderna, I (1959), 53 ff.

8. Edward W. Lanius, Cyrano de Bergerac and the Universe of the Imagination, p. 29. In the paradis terrestre scene, according to Lanius, “Cyrano is not theorizing on original sin.” For Lanius, despite the allowance in his conclusion (p. 103) that there is also an “intellectual” aspect to Cyrano, the Autre Monde is little more than an exercise in the imagination, a series of cinematic tableaux. The effect of this interpretation is to remove all ideas from Cyrano's works. Thus on page 38 of his study Lanius tells us that there is no satirical purpose to the voyages of the Autre Monde, and on page 96 he informs us that the “Lettre contre les sorciers” makes no attack on the Church, but represents only rovings of the imagination and “free association.” Such an interpretation, in my opinion, makes serious omissions, because it is based on false premises. There is no reason why the description of an “imagined” universe should preclude exposition of serious ideas. The present examination of Cyrano's works reveals, on the contrary, an imaginative presentation of philosophical concepts.

9. Cyrano de Bergerac, Voyages to the Moon and the Sun, ed. and trans. Richard Aldington, p. 40.

10. J. S. Spink, French Free-Thought from Gassendi to Voltaire, p. 64.

11. For discussions of Gassendi's fideism, see Richard H. Popkin, The History of Scepticism from Erasmus to Descartes, pp. 103-9; Henri Busson, La Pensée religieuse française de Charron à Pascal, pp. 299-301; René Pintard, Le Libertinage érudit dans la première moitié du XVII^e siècle, I, 483-98. Pintard does not see him as a “pur fidéiste.”

12. Pietro Pomponazzi, Les Causes des merveilles de la nature, ou Les Enchantements, ed. and trans. Henri Busson, p. 76.

13. Ibid. Leo Jordan also mentions the influence of Montaigne's essay on Cyrano. See Leo Jordan, “Cyrano Bergerac und Montaigne,” Archiv für der neuren Sprachen und Literaturen, 8° Bd. 135, N.S. Bd. 35 (1916), 391-92.

14. Montaigne, “Des boyteux,” in his Essais, II, 480. Cf. Alan Boase, The Fortunes of Montaigne, pp. 258-59. Boase calls attention to the influence of this essay particularly on Cyrano's “Lettre contre les sorciers.” Montaigne, “Of Cripples,” in The Complete Essays of Montaigne, trans. by Donald M. Frame (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1965), III: 11, p. 789. All translations of Montaigne are taken from this edition.

15. Pomponazzi, Les Enchantements, ed. and trans. Busson, p. 103.

16. Pomponazzi, Les Enchantements, p. 129.

17. Ibid., p. 118.

18. Cf. Lynn Thorndike, A History of Magic and Experimental Science, V, 110, and Pomponazzi, Les Enchantements, pp. 21-25, 33.

19. Cyrano de Bergerac, L'Autre Monde, ed. Henri Weber, p. 133, n. 1.

20. See Busson, Pensée religieuse, pp. 166-77, for Averroist ideas and other explanations of Creation.

21. Ibid., p. 174.

22. Luciano Erba makes a useful distinction between the magical and the marvelous, which can perhaps be modified to apply to the miraculous and the marvelous: “Non si presentano sotto il segno deciso della magia le situazioni originate dal meraviglioso, quasi nate a ridosso di questo et divenute in seguito autonome: inverisimili a lume di ragione, ma del tutto plausibili per il lettore che abbia accettato, sorprendendosi una volta per tutte, la prima frattura con la verisimiglianza.” (Situations derived from the marvelous are not presented under the definite sign of magic, as if they had arisen close by it and had subsequently become independent: [they are] unlikely in the light of reason, but completely plausible to the reader who has accepted, experiencing surprise once and for all, the first rupture with verisimilitude.) Erba, “L'Incidenza della magia,” pp. 34-35.

23. Busson, Pensée religieuse, p. 349.

24. Ibid., p. 349: “Cyrano, qui est décidément le plus incrédule de nos libertins, a mis en roman ce blasphème.” (Cyrano, who is decidedly the most incredulous of our libertins, fictionalized this blasphemy.)

25. Ibid., p. 500.

26. Ibid.

27. Lucretius, On the Nature of Things, ed. and trans. Cyril Bailey, Bk. III, pp. 133-42.

28. Edward Lanius maintains that these lines reveal Sejanus's desire to believe in the gods, an interpretation which hardly seems justified in the context of the philosophical tone of the entire play and of Cyrano's other works. See Lanius, Cyrano de Bergerac and the Universe of the Imagination, p. 72.

29. Lachèvre, II, 167. Cf. Busson, Pensée religieuse, pp. 105-6, and Antoine Adam, Histoire de la littérature française au XVII⁶ siècle, II, 147. Adam also sees the Machiavellian strain in Cyrano.

30. Spink, French Free-Thought, p. 52. Cf. in “Contre le pédant”: “Mais sçachez que je connois une chose que vous ne connoissez point, que cette chose est Dieu, et que l'un des plus forts arguments … qui m'ont convaincu de sa véritable existence, c'est d'avoir considéré que sans une première et souveraine bonté qui règne dans l'univers, foible et meschant comme vous estes, vous n'auriez pas vecu si longtemps impuny” (II, 169-70). (But know that I know a thing that you do not know, that this thing is God, and that one of the strongest arguments … which has convinced me of his real existence is to have considered that without a primary and sovereign goodness reigning in the universe, you, weakling and rascal that you are, would not have lived so long with impunity.)

31. Spink, French Free-Thought, p. 52.

32. Henry Carrington Lancaster, A History of French Dramatic Literature in the Seventeenth Century, II, Part III, 169. Cf. Lachèvre, I, xc.

33. Gabriel Guéret, La Guerre des autheurs anciens et modernes, p. 155.

34. Menagiana (II, 1715), quoted in Lancaster, French Dramatic Literature, II, Pt. III, 169. Cf. Lachèvre, I, xc.

35. Lancaster, French Dramatic Literature, II, Pt. III, 169.

36. Spink, French Free-Thought, p. 52. Cf. p. 64.

37. Lancaster, French Dramatic Literature, II, Pt. III, 169. In this he concurs with Gautier. See Theophile Gautier, Les Grotesques, pp. 188-89.

38. “Quelques très rares audacieux, Cyrano, Hénault, ont pu risquer sous le couvert d'un païen notoire une tirade matérialiste. Mais ce sont là des exceptions. Si l'on peut soupçonner que dans la vie beaucoup partagèrent leur incrédulité, ils ne l'avouaient pas.” (Some very rare bold spirits—Cyrano, Hénault—were able to risk a materialistic speech under the cover of a notorious pagan. But they are exceptions. If it may be suspected that in real life many shared their incredulity, these people did not admit it.) Busson, Pensée religieuse, p. 162.

39. See, for example, II, 152 (Act V, scene vii).

40. Vítor Ramos notes the admiration for Sejanus expressed by Agrippina in these lines. See Vítor Ramos, Cyrano, Auteur tragique, p. 26.

41. Cf. Charles Nodier, “Cyrano de Bergerac,” Bulletin du bibliophile, No. 8, 3^e série (Oct. 1838), 350. Vítor Ramos characterizes Agrippine as an amoral and nihilistic play, with pride and will the main motivating forces. Ramos, Cyrano, Auteur tragique, pp. 136-37.

42. Ramos sees him as a “héros malchanceux” (unlucky hero), and, in agreement with Pintard and Adam, a “Surhomme” (Superman). See Ramos, Cyrano, Auteur tragique, pp. 39, 97, 136.

43. Lancaster, French Dramatic Literature, II, Pt. III, 170.

44. See especially I, ii, in which Sejanus tells his wife how much he loves her and her children although he is about to divorce her; also his scene of “repentance,” IV, ii. Jean Magnon, Séjanus.

45. Ibid., p. 59.

46. Ibid., p. 85.

47. Tacitus, Annals, 4. 1.

48. Tristan l'Hermite, La Mort de Sénèque, Act II, iv, p. 55, and notes to ll. 703-10. Among Tristan's sources are religious as well as pagan works.

49. Spink, French Free-Thought, p. 64.

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