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Cyrano: Not just another pretty face
Cyrano de Bergerac by Edmond Raton (1898), a play in five acts. Where Romeo and Juliet was a play about tragic, adolescent romance, Cyrano was about adult intimacy but not sex, true intimacy. Where Romeo and Juliet barely spent a week together, Cyrano and Roxanne knew each other their entire lives, from childhood playmates to lifelong intimates only admitting to each other as lovers moments before Cyrano’s death. Both plays cover similar topics and maybe it’s my age showing, but I feel more satisfied by the relationships of Cyrano and Roxanne. In so many ways, Cyrano and Roxanne have a wonderful relationship with only a few misunderstandings. Their relationship was hardly a tragedy. They chose their lifestyle, but poor silly Romeo and Juliet, were so on fire from their hormones they barely knew the train wreck of their love. The tragedy for Romeo and Juliet came from the chaos of their age, (both chronological age and era) and family situations. For Cyrano and Roxanne, it was a drama arising from male insecurity and misplaced desire, but they still spent their entire lives together. Cyrano was always there for Roxanne and she was always there for him. They were family, not a perfect family, but what family is?
Cyrano is about the most common of male problems, the fear of rejection by society and by women, here by a certain woman, Roxanne. All of Cyrano’s wit and fighting skills came from an over compensation from his big nose. Actually he thought he was just too ugly for Roxanne to love him like a man. She already loved him, but as “almost like a brother.” Cyrano did thus suffer from the sin of ambition but not vanity, unlike the rest of the men in the play. Cyrano was never giving empty boasts about his fencing skills. He could do everything he said he could do. What a lucky woman was Roxanne. She was a pretty face that generated that superficial love and admiration which she admits she loathed. What she desired was the deep love; the intimacy she knew existed because of her life with Cyrano. Roxanne had the best of both worlds, to be desired for her outer and inner self. How fulfilling. And she experienced plenty of both in her life.
Strangely, despite Cyrano’s skills as a soldier and courage to confront the aristocratic pomposity, it was Cyrano’s cowardly fear of Roxanne rejecting his true feelings that generated the tension in the play. Cyrano should have known better. He knew Roxanne better than anyone in the world. He should have known she would understand true intimacy. Cyrano’s words had been her comfort her entire life. Why she didn’t recognize them when spoken by another man is a bit confusing. She was a little giddy with romantic love true. She was in love with the pretty face, dumbass boy Christian. These silly things happen to even the smartest of people. Maybe it was wishful thinking that blinded her? When Cyrano’s words then come from Christian’s pretty mouth, it was the man of her dreams, wish fulfillment pure and simple. She was intoxicated by getting exactly what she wanted and Cyrano was so much her intimate already that he gives her exactly her heart’s desire. Maybe it was what he thought was her heart’s desire to be exact; his words, his love, their intimacy within a pretty face. He lied to her for her happiness. Not the best maneuver in a relationship, lying. It never works as Cyrano finds out. He should have let Christian talk for himself and Roxanne would have lost any interest in the dumbass no matter how pretty he was.
Because of his fear and then his feeling of duty and loyalty, Cyrano and Roxanne never consummate their physical relationship. Cyrano was a noble yet silly man. He held back on that fulfillment because of the fear of spoiling the relationship he and Roxanne already had. True, it was a relationship to cherish and protect, I agree. Cyrano and Roxanne were the most important people in each other’s lives. The limits, restraints of their relationship, possibly allowed them to achieve the true goal of a relationship. Well, maybe my ideal then. To weave one’s lives so tightly together that you know what each other will do in any situation that is true intimacy. True intimacy is much better than superficial, love-at-first-sight, pretty-face infatuation, because with age, that love disappears along with that pretty young face. Infatuation is a volatile elixir. Just as physical beauty is a temporary attribute. True love is defined as becoming one with the other for eternity. Thus true love and infatuation are two separate things. True love is not even plural either. There are no True Lovers, it is two people in True Love; two people with exactly the goal, maintaining the intimacy of the relationship. Of course, this was what Cyrano and Roxanne already had. They were always there for each other. It’s called devotion. They were devoted to each other’s lives. This play is thus much more romantic than Romeo and Juliet, to me at least.
Cyrano’s tragic flaw was his misdirected or maybe deflected anger. He loved to piss off authority figures, the pompous yet unskilled braggarts and fops; the totally superficial elements of society. This flaw is a device in the play to emphasize its main theme, the battle of the external with the internal worlds, to put it more simply, outer beauty verse inner beauty. A beautiful jerk is still a jerk. And Cyrano was not beautiful in any outward sense, at least that’s what he believes. His anger is not real for the fops and aristocratic fools, nor was it against Roxanne for not seeing his inner beauty. No, Cyrano was angry with himself for being ugly. That was what he was so pissed about. Also, he was angry with his own fear of rejection, his weakness around Roxanne. He gives her everything she desires. For being a nasty, ill-tempered killer, that’s what soldiers are, he was a big softy. He was still Roxanne’s childhood playmate. He was still a little boy around her. It is this weakness that allows the audience to like, be sympathetic to the nasty brawler, Cyrano.
In the opening scenes of the play, he is a jerk to everyone in the tavern who is just there to have a good time; he shuts the whole thing down. Even his follow soldier questions his actions, his outright jerkiness. It was a good warning. Cyrano’s bad attitude is what finally kills him. But they didn’t get him until he was older and slower. Time evaporates beauty and reaction time. Cyrano tried his best. But the one thing that never diminished was Cyrano’s extreme devotion to his intimates, both Roxanne and this regiment, well, you gotta love that!
Cyrano was punished for his weaknesses and fears. In the universe of the play, balance is necessary. Characters that are too good are simply uninteresting. The Devil always gets the best lines over God or his angels, in any play. Cyrano’s pending death also releases him to speak the whole truth to Roxanne. The truth had to be said aloud for the play to work. That final scene was nice, outside in the courtyard of the Nunnery in the autumn. The red leaves fall down. Roxanne was protected from the world there. Cyrano’s anger was finally defeated by his own recklessness. Fifteen years has caused the Pretty face to fall, the superficial is being peeled away the final lies, the final, if minor, deceit. Cyrano and Roxanne’s kiss was then both a consummation of their lifelong truest of loves, and a farewell. What more could an audience asked for?
In this modern world of lists then, who was the better romantic hero? Both Cyrano and Romeo were poetic street brawlers, with Cyrano being better at both. Cyrano was a much better lover to Roxanne than Romeo to Juliet. Roxanne lived a long protected and relatively happy life. Juliet ended up dead after one week of knowing Romeo. Cyrano’s love and devotion protected Roxanne even when she was being reckless, he protects her from herself. Romeo, “O’ fortune’s fool,” on the other hand, gets everyone killed! True love should protect not destroy. What is to compare between these two dramas? Inner beauty wins out over surface outer beauty every time. Romeo and Juliet was about transitory, short-term wish fulfillment, infatuation, while Cyrano de Bergerac was about true love and the truest of romance. It is a play about the struggle to build the ideal male – female relationship, whereas Romeo and Juliet’s relationships is an excuse to defy their parents and do the nasty without feeling guilty. Romeo and Juliet’s affair is totally superficial emotion and ultimately meaningless. Cyrano and Roxanne is a true romance, showing devotion, loyalty, and friendship over a life time. It is obvious which play should top the list.
THE END
Just to be perfectly clear!
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