Cyrano de Bergerac

00:00:01
Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you missed in History Class, a production of I Heart Radio. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Holly Fry and I'm Tracy the Wilson. Somehow we have never talked about Syrano de Bergerac. Somehow I was not entirely clear that Serrano to Burserac was a real person. He was, uh, And he's often called a man of letters, or a philosopher, or a soldier, or a duellist, or a playwright or many other things. He was all of those things. But really what he may have been best at with self invention and his real story, because he was a real person, is pretty blurry to begin with, and he definitely contributed to that blur. But that story has been even more obscured over the centuries by the fictionalized versions of his life, or so obscured that you maybe didn't know he was a real person. So today we are going to take a and what we actually do know about the man who called himself ser um. You know, if you say Sira no with a really beautiful French accent, it sounds great, but for me it starts to sound spitty. So I'll probably do the more anglesh heads up. We do want to let you know there is a brief mention of harm to an animal in this one. It comes pretty late in the second segments, to just be aware of that. Going in seven year does Sereno de Bergerac was born on March six, sixteen nineteen, in Paris. We had an older brother named Denny, who had been born in sixteen fourteen, and then in the five years between those two there were two other sons who died in infancy, and then after Sarah no another son was born named a Belle in sixteen four He also had a sister named Catherine, but we're not really sure where in the birth order she was born. He may have had some other siblings as well. It's not certain. For a long time time, it was believed that he had been born in Gascony. Sereno himself is said to have cultivated this particular myth. We'll talk about that a little bit more in a bit. And his father was Abell, the first Decipine Lord of Mauville, and his mother was Esperance Belan and Abell, whose family was considered kind of minor gentry, is estimated to have been roughly twenty years older than his wife Esperance. The Belang family was well connected and relatively powerful. One biographer summed up Syrano's family situation as quote richer entitles than in the States. The family lived in Paris until sixteen twenty two, and at that point they moved to the family lands at Maulviere that was southwest of Paris, and Abelle had inherited this after his mother had died, so that was Sarano's grandmother. The idea of inheriting a country manner might conjure up images of grandness, but this was especially the case here. This estate had a large house and a mill and some farm buildings, but it really wasn't especially big or fancy in comparison to a lot of other estates. No, it was they moved to the country, essentially in the way you might think of that phrase as being a little less grand At the age of seven, syra No was sent away to school, and it was here that he met his lifelong friend, al re Lebrette. This was not a boarding school situation. This was a curate run boarding house managed by, as Librette would later write, quote a good country priest who took in little borders. According to Lebrette's accounts, Syrano was both precocious and smart, and he thought from a pretty early age that the priest really didn't have anything he could teach him. As a side note, will be referencing the Brette's account of syra No's life a lot because he was the first one to write a biography of syra No. He did that not long after Syrano's death. It is through le Brett, who was his best friend, that we know what we do about Syrano, which is relatively little. That also comes with some question marks as to the accuracy and truthfulness of this biography because Labrette really had his own agenda and how he presented his friend. I mean there's there's a there's a perspective there when you're writing about your friend in the first place. Yes, But beyond that, we will get into some of this more later in the episode. Syrah No made the case to his father repeatedly that he was not learning anything from the priest until he was finally allowed to move to Paris on his own and his father quote left him to his own devices until the age of nineteen per Librett's account. Now it is a little unclear what age Serrano was when this happened, and it is certainly unlikely that he was actually just kind of turned loose in Paris to fly solo as a kid or even a teenager. It is more likely that he moved in with one of his relatives. He allegedly went to some school in Paris, although which one is once again a mystery. There is some evidence in his writing through references to people in places, that points to College de beaus One of those references is the name of a character in his first play, Le Penanjue or the Pennant duped the head of the school, and the play is named gar And right around the time that Serena would have been college aged, the head of the College de Beauvis was a man named Graa, whose tenure in that role including some scandal involving who he had decided to marry, as well as allegations of misappropriating funds. The grang of the play is the main character, but really not a hero. This plot involves him losing out on the woman that he loves to his son and then being left alone and unhappy. This play is the first instance of something that would become an integral part of the Serrano legend, and that is nose jokes. So in the play the character of Grange is insulted for a wide range of failings, but in regards to his nose, the ingenieux of the piece says, quote, as for his nose, well, it's just asking for us to have a dig. This wonderful nose arrives everywhere a quarter of an hour before its master. Ten reasonably fat cobblers could take shelter from the rain underneath it to do their work. So that, of course brings us to the question did Sarah no have a large nose? And according to engravings that were made during his lifetime, there are really only a few of them. Yes, absolutely he had a large nose, but he doesn't seem to have been particularly troubled by it. The way the fictionalized Seran No is he made jokes about this is a true sign of superiority and his fiction writing, having a big nose is a positive for his main character. There's so nos talk aside. After finishing up with his schooling, Serrano, who was headstrong as well as whip smart, was a little bit of a cat in the specific details of his misbehavior are not clear, although whatever it was, absolutely caused friction between Syrano and his father. There was also another issue in play between Serrano and his father, one that stemmed from above, selling off the family estates at Mauviller and Bergerac and moving the family back to Paris. As an aside, the Bergerac here appears to have not been the town of Bergerac, which is a real place in a place where uh some of Syrano's relatives may have fought in a battle, but in fact an estate named Bergerac after that place. But the sale of these family lands meant that the family had no basis to claim any kind of nobility any longer, and they would not be able to use the names de Bergerac or de Mauviller, and they could not use the crests associated with those places. So to Syrano, this really kind of cut the legs out from under the identity that he seemed to be building for himself that was one of a rogue and rakish young noble who lived as he wished. Additionally, Syra No felt that he would have done a fine job running those estates, and that had been taken away from him. He also was losing what had really been his childhood home and his ties to the countryside, which, based on his writings, he had clearly loved. At this point in Syrano's life, he became, by most accounts, deeply debaucherous. Le Brett later wrote of his friend, quote, the age at which human nature is more easily corrupted, and the great freedom he had to do whatever he pleased led him to a dangerous tendency. Lebrette went on to say, quote, I dare to boast that I stopped him by compelling him to enter the company of the guards with me. But we don't get any additional specificity regarding the nature of Syrano's behavior. It is generally assumed that that auchery included things like heavy drinking and gambling and dueling. There has also been a lot of speculation over the years that Serrano may have been homosexual, which may have been a concern to Librette, But truthfully, we don't know what he was up to, just that people found it troubling. It was just as likely that the real heart of Syrano's friends concern was his status as a libertine, and we mean that in the definition of the word that indicates a rejection of religion. Some of the murkiness in terms of Librett's account, which seems to have been deliberately done to leave out any potentially damning or unsavory information, has made it really easy for later writers to embellish the Serranos story, even when they're writing a biography versus a fiction based on speculation, thus contributing to the disparity between the real person and the fictional character that most of us are more familiar with. In a moment, we'll talk about Syrano's time in the military, but before we get to that, we are going to take a quick sponsor break. In his military service, syran No, along with his friend Lebrette, was a member of a company that served under Commander Carbon de Castel Jalou and was made up largely of Gascon's This is the source of the incorrect information often repeated over the centuries that syran No was from Gascony, something he himself had put forth as a sort of personal reinvention. Gascony was the home of Charles Dubas d'Artagnan fictionalized by Alexander Dumont and the Three Musketeers, as well as Already the Third of Navarre, who became Henry the fourth of France. So over the years, the Serrano legend has thus aligned him with other notables by aligning with their birthplace. Syran No and d'Artagnan incidentally were both present at battles during the Franco Spanish War, so they may have even crossed paths, but it does not appear that they were ever friends. But syran No also started using the name Syrano de Bergeract during this time, which was less accurate considering the sale of the family land than the name seven yeend syran No would have been. According to Serrano biographer ishbel Adaman quote, Syrano's decision to join the cadets may have been partly prompted by a pragmatic desire to improve his lot in life, but it was above all a decision to seek death or glory. This was, as we said, a time for reinvention for syra No. He was relying entirely on his wits and bravado as he entered the Guard. He didn't have money and he had no social standing. Yeah, this was at a time when like, if you didn't have those things, a military career could elevate you. But even though he started with nothing in the Guard, Serrano found a degree of success and a great deal of admiration, and that is because he did raise his social standing among his fellow soldiers. But he did it through dueling. He had had fencing training as part of his education, and he put this to you so allegedly in the Guard, by fighting a duel every single day, according to Lebrette quote, duels, which at the time seemed the unique and most rapid means of becoming known in a few days, rendered him so famous that the gascons, who composed nearly the whole company, considered him the demon of courage and credited him with as many duels as he had been with them days. Labrette did not include details of who Serrano dueled with or what kinds of conflicts led to these duels. There is no mention of injuries or fatalities. What he does mention is that Serrano always fought as a second. This was never over any personal beef, and he claimed that Serrano fought as a second and dozens and dozens of duels. Syrano has been described in various accounts as having scars all over his person from dueling. And while we don't have a way to verify that he was doing that much dueling, sure seems possible. So to contextualize what was going on in France in the two years that syran No was in the military. When syran No and Lebrette joined the King's Guard in sixty eight, France was in the midst of both optimism and upheaval. Louis finally had a male heir in September of that year, who would become Louis, and that had been the source of much celebration because they had been without an air for a while. Meanwhile, France was also socially unstable. The rise of the bourgeoisie had blurred the lines between classes, and while that blurry nous allowed men like syran No to kind of create their own mystique and chart their own rise through society, it also meant that there was a lot of suspicion and discord and ill will in the very circles that he was trying to rise into. The Thirty Years of War had begun the year before sarah No was born, although France didn't officially join until sixteen thirty five. That's when France declared war against Spain and the Holy Roman Empire. That also marked the beginning of the first phase of the Franco Spanish War, which was sort of a conflict within a conflict of the Thirty Years War. The first engagement that Serrano was part of was the Siege of Musan, which took place in sixteen thirty nine. Germany had attacked Muson as it sought to expand its border, and the citizens of the town and the soldiers sent there all ran low on food. This is something Serrano compared to fasting for lent when he wrote for a Musan in a letter, he wrote sarcastically, quote, we have no reason at all to complain. We are in another sort of heaven, since we neither drink nor eat. They want to bring us to paradise through starvation and for fear that we may take nourishment in at the ears. They even forbiddest words in bad taste. So, despite the poor conditions, the lack of sustenance, and no permission to bolster morale with vulgarity or slang, the French were able to fend off the German effort to take Muzan, but syran No was wounded. He was hit with a musket ball in the side and that passed through his body and exited out the back. But the battle that Syrano disc is most famously associated with is the Siege of Arras, which began on June twenty sixty. Just to avoid confusion, there was also a Battle of Arras in sixteen fifty four and another Battle of Arras during World War One, so if you go looking for more info on this particular incident, keep an eye on those dates. Very easy to get confused. At the time of the conflict that syran No was involved in, Arras was held by Spain. It was considered part of the Spanish Netherlands, which included the surrounding area of Artois. This was, to be clear an awful situation. Immediately after or the French had established their encampment, which was something that had required a diversionary attack on another nearby city. Too clear, some of the Spanish troops out of Arras, which was really heavily fortified. The Spanish army had surrounded the camp and this cut off all the supply lines. The men went hungry for two weeks. They weren't able to leave the encampment to carry away any wastes, so sanitation grew worse and worse. Men got sick and died, but their bodies couldn't be carried out for fear that anybody trying to do that would be killed. Supplies did manage to finally break through the Spanish line on August two, and that offered some help to the French troops. Within a week, the siege was over, and surprisingly the French were victorious, able to take the city. The day before the siege of Arris ended, Syrao had his second significant battle injury, when a sword hit him in the neck. This injury never really healed completely, but his convalescence gave his modern myth one of its key figures. While he was recovering in Paris, his cousin Madeline Robino, the Baroness de Nuvillette, supported him financially, and she would later become famously fictionalized as the character of Roxanne. There's no evidence that the real serran No ever pined for her. They seemed to be friends in Ste Sira, No officially turned away from his military career to pursue a life of the mind. He enrolled at the College de Lisieux. He also started taking both fencing and dancing lessons, and this shift is described in all real Lebrette's writings as having been the result of the injury that Serano had suffered, and that was surely a contributing factor, but sira No had also been really hardened by his time in battle. There's some irony here that Lebrette had likely encouraged Serano to enlist because he had fallen in with a crowd that, among other things, was known to be atheist. But military life only made Syrano more convinced that there was no God, and he grappled with his memories of his military experiences for the rest of his life. And it is in this period of Syrano's life, when he had left the army, that Labrette described another significant part of the Syrano mythos, and that is fighting a duel with one hundred men at once. We do, not, as usual, know all of the details here, and it is not even clear whether Syriano himself was the target of an attack, or whether one of his friends, who like him, were all Libertines, was the intended target. One version goes that a friend of his named Linnier had insulted a man who sent the one d men after him and syran No, knowing and Ambush was waiting, walked his friend home that night, vanquishing the Ruffians as they went. The Labrette version is actually pretty similar to that, but it all takes place during broad daylight. This sounds ludicrous, and Labrette says so himself, but he also insists that it's true. He names a three other witnesses to it. There's Monsieur de Bourgeon, Monsieur de Cavay, and Monsieur de Cuigy. All of them were honorable men. There's been some speculation by various historians that this was really a publicity stunt that syran No orchestrated to kind of boost his post military image, but we'll never really know the truth on that one. Syran No, of course emerged the victor in the version of this that we have. It definitely sounds like an over the top movie sequence. It does, which is part of why people have been like, we know, he was trying to improve his social standing, so it is entirely possible he would do something like this. He definitely had a flair for the dramatic um. Another one of syran Nos exploits during this period involved dueling with an ape by which we literally mean an animal. Uh. This was in a real duel. But this ape was trained as a performer by a man named Briosh who had a puppet theater near pont Neuf, And one day Brioche dressed the ape as syran No as a joke, and so syran No deeply insulted, drew his sword and ran the animal through with it and killed it. Brioche actually sued Syrano for damages, but Syrano got out of this whole thing by promising to memorialize the animal in verse. We're going to pause here to hear from some of the sponsors that keep Stuffy miss in History class going, and when we come back, we will talk more about syran No the writer. During the period of his life when he focused on his studies post military, Syrano became the pupil of philosopher Pierre gus in d possibly by simply forcing himself into the man's lectures, depending on what account you read. Gus Indee is known for a number of things in astronomy. He was the first person to identify Mercury's parahelian that's the point in its orbit where it's nearest the sun. That was significant because it supported the work of Copernicus. He also wrote a famous critique of Descartes in St. One, which was included in the second edition of Descartes Meditations. But Gussin Dye also tried to reconcile atomism, breaking down scientific concepts into smaller components for analysis with the concepts of Christianity, and noted that the way that we perceived the natural world is just inherently limited by our senses. Syrano's time with gas Indie deeply influenced his writing, and writing was something Serrano had done throughout his life. Labrette wrote about watching Serrano casually composing verse with great skill, even in the guard room, and his work expanned everything from first plays to political pamphlets to novels. He wrote lemnisl di staph Lambi, the Minister of the Burning State in sixteen forty nine, which he signed just with the initials d B. In this and other political pamphlets, he makes a critique of Louis the fourteenth Chief Minister Cardinal Jules Mazzarine, writing that he was quote a man soiled by murders, poisonings and sacrileges. But Syrano was actually not consistent in that messaging, as he later defended Mazzarine in writing starting in sixteen fifty one. That actually led the speculation that Mazarin had bought Syra nos change of heart. In sixteen fifty two, Sira No entered the patronage of the Duke Darpagent. This offered him a chance to publish his work with the stability of a patron behind him and a bit of his own money. This is when he published his plays. We mentioned the satirical play The Pedant Joue earlier that's believed to have been written about sixteen forty five or sixteen forty six, although Syrano didn't publish it until he was under the Duke's protection. This play's influence lives on in the work of Moliere, who borrowed from, or in some opinions, even plagiarized it for his play The Cheets of Chopin. Muliere, of course, is also tied to Syrano in a fictional way, as he appears as a character in the Syrano de Bergerac play by Edmund Rosten. We'll talk about that play a bit more in a little bit. He also published a tragic play in the sixteen fifties titled The Death of Agrippine. This play is a fictionalized version of a revolt against Tiberius Caesar Augustus mounted by the widow of Germanicus Agrippine, and this work was considered blasphemous by many people at the time because it used some double entendre and the Romans setting to make cleverly cloaked jabs at religion. During performances, some lines were said to produce outcry from the audience at Syrano's anti religion in u window. The end of Serrano's life is actually a bit of a mystery, and there are several different causes mentioned for his death. This really depends on what source you look at, as well as there being some speculation. One of the popular versions is that while he was entering the home of his patron, the Duke Darpegel, a beam or a plank from the ceiling fell on him, which struck him in the head. In this version, he didn't die there on the spot, but the injury may have been serious enough to have impacted his behavior. Another commonly discussed possibility that also includes the detail of a behavior change, is that syran No may have had untreated syphilis. This version of the end of his life includes the sad detail that his brother had him confined to an asylum. And the third and simplest version of Syrano's death story is that he was in a street fight and he died from the injuries that he received. And and yet another theory, which is supported by historical die documents, he may have been injured during an assassination attempt on the life of the Duke Darpegel. Although the cause of his death still remains a little bit murky, it is known that he died in Paris on July fifty five, at the age of thirty six. It was not until after Syrao's death that two of the three books in a Histoire comique series are published. The first of these is The Comical History of the States and Empires of the Moon, and the second is Comical History of the States and Empires of the Sun. These together are known as The Other World. We don't know what happened to the third novel in these series. It's usually described as having been lost or destroyed. Yeah, you'll sometimes just see all of this listed as one book called lautremond, which also which means the Other World, and it can be a little bit tricky to find both of them translated. These books are really significant because they hold the places early science fiction. They are what's sometimes called fantastic voyage fiction that tells stories of imaginary travels to you guessed it, the moon and the Sun. And this framework for the stories is wrapped around the hallmark of Syranos writing satirization and critique of both religion and science of the day. He included seven different ways that people could leave the Earth in these books, including one that describes a breathing engine very similar to the ramjet engine that was invented in nineteen thirteen, so long after his death. Another means of conveyance that the narrator of the books, who was also named syran No, leaves the Earth for space travel is by strapping bottles of dew to his person, writing quote, I planted myself in the middle of a great many glasses full of dew tied fast about me, upon which the sun so violently darted his rays, that the heat, which attracted them as it does the thickest clouds, carried me up high, that at length I found myself above the middle region of the air, not so grounded in science, but pretty fantastical and fun. When syr No visits the Moon, he finds a whole culture there. The inhabitants have four legs, and when they speak, it sounds like music. He also meets the demon of Socrates or the ghost of Socrates, depending on which translation you're reading, who tells him quote, if there is something you men cannot understand, you either imagine that it is spiritual or that it does not exist. Both conclusions are quite false. The proof of this is the fact that there are perhaps a million things in the universe which you would need a million quite different organs to know. In the second book, the Sun is similarly peopled. Syran No offers a sort of strange explanation for why people can live there, and it turns out, and his writing, we're wrong about the Sun. It's not made of flaming anything. It's just a regular planet. The narrator gets to the Sun by building a device that has lenses which focus the energy of the Sun. But it works a lot better than he intended. He was just trying to fly, but winds up being pulled all the way to the Sun, and the Sun, it turns out, in this book has a very petite monarch to rule it. The Syrano of the book is then taken to the Kingdom of the Birds, where he's put on trial for all the wrongs done to birds here on earth, and he is sentenced to death, but a parrot that he once helped on earth defends him, and he has eventually let go. That's just one section of what is a very long and meandering tale. Lebrette wrote that after the injury that was ultimately fatal for Serrano, he was different and a more moral man. Quote that at last the libertineage of which most young people are suspected came to seem monstrous to him, and I can attest that from then on he felt all the aversion toward it that anyone who wishes to lead a Christian should have. And this offers a hint at how one might want to approach these particular writings, particularly if you read one of these earlier versions. Labrette, syran Nos longtime friend, had at this point in his life become a Jesuit priest, and it was he who prepared Syranose novels for publication, with the biography that he wrote included in the text preceding the comical History of the States and Empires of the Moon. There were later editions based on Syranos manuscripts that are are truer to them, but the versions that Labrette edited were edited for content and removed any elements that Labrette thought might be perceived as heretical. Sarah No's life story has been retold in so many different versions over the years, particularly in the last two centuries, but the most famous version is, of course, the play by Edmund Roston, who wrote Serrano de Bergerac in that version has some did most of the ideas about sierr No the man that are really different from who he actually was. Yeah, definitely romanticized. The opening night of Raston's version of Syrano's life was December, and it was reportedly so successful that the ovation for it lasted over an hour, with dozens and dozens of curtain calls. Rosamund Rostand later wrote of her husband's accomplishment that it had moved members of the audience so deeply that even men who had been at odds for years put their grudges away and embraced. That sounds as likely as dueling a hundred people at once, But boy, I bet Syran No would have loved that description, for it caused peace among people who had been feuding. UM love it so much. UM for listener mail, I have a question about the Gear, which from our listener Juliana, who writes, I've been a huge fan of the podcast for years. I was so happy to listen to the episode on Louis de Gare. I've read before that he created the first picture of a person, the man cleaning shoes and the attached image. Until then, it was believed humans might not be able to be photographed. People moved too fast and weren't usually captured due to the longest exposure of the Gara type. So this guy seated for a long time got photographed by chance. My question is is this a true story. I haven't been able to fact check it and I'm dying to know so uh that is, if you do a quick search online for uh de gear first photo of a human, you will find this picture. It's a photograph of a street in France, and she's right, but it's not the person doing the shoeshine. It's the person getting his shoes shined that is visible. It's very far off in the distance. It's in the lower left quadrant of the picture. And because he was standing there, he's kind of standing. He looks kind of like he's in a jaunty pose, but really he's standing there with his foot up on the shoeshines block. And you can't actually see the person who's shining his shoes because he's moving a bit too much. You can kind of see a vague outline, but the man who was presumably standing there still getting his shoes done is the one that you see. So yes, that is that is uh the only version of that story I have ever heard, so I believe it to be true. Um. I also just wanted to give a quick shout out to our listener Katie, who has earned her pH d and stuff you in history class by listening to every episode and wrote us and she got the shirt from t Public that we have available and she's wearing it, so congratulations and thank you for being a listener. Uh. It means so much to us that people would spend that much time with us, So thank you, thank you, Thank you, Katie, and congratulations and hopefully he'll stick with us as we continue on our merry way. Uh. If you would like to write to us, you can do so History podcast at i heart radio dot com. You can also find us on social media as missed in History. You would like to subscribe and you haven't gotten around to it yet, couldn't be easier. You can just do that on the I heart radio app or wherever it is you listen to your favorite podcasts. Stuff you Missed in History Class is a production of I heart Radio. For more podcasts from I heart Radio, visit the i heart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.