Yesterday was the 150th anniversary of birth by Edmond Eugene Alexis Rostand in Marseille. But also in this 2018 the centenary of his death en Paris. So France has declared it a year of national commemoration of this author and among the celebrations is the Edmond Rostand Festival In his hometown.
And we all know the most famous literary creature departure from his pen, Cyrano de Bergerac. But he wrote more works like Chantecler, a play where the characters are animals, or The Aiglon, a drama in which Rostand about the figure of Napoleon and against the horrors of war. Today I remember Rostand reading a little to the great Cyrano.
Edmond Rostand
Rostand grew up in a rich and cultivated family. He studied law but never practiced law and devoted himself to literature. In 1890 he published a volume of poems, The Musardises, which did not gain acceptance like his next work from 1891, Les Deux Pierrots. Yes, his comedy in verse was very successful The novelists, which represented the Comédie Française in 1894. Then he wrote two pieces for the actress Sarah Bernhardt: The distant princess y The Samaritan.
It was in December 1897 when it was represented Cyrano de Bergerac, the brave musketeer with a huge nose, which was a total triumph. This verse drama is set in seventeenth-century France and introduces us to the poet and swordsman secretly in love with his beautiful cousin Roxana. Cyrano does not dare to declare his love to him because of his ugliness and for fear of being rejected. But it will help a young cadet, Christian deNeuvillette, to conquer Roxana by dictating letters and phrases that at least serve to express that passion.
His next work, entitled The Aguilucho, in the first year of the twentieth century, was similarly successful. Thus he was able to enter the French Academy at the age of thirty-three. Lived in the Basque Country and in Paris, but he finally withdrew to the Basque-French country when he fell ill with pneumonia. In 1910 it was released Chantecler. Those published posthumously in 1921 were Don Juan's last night and the poems he wrote inspired by the First World War.
Cyrano on the boards now
Because on March 15th the umpteenth montage of Cyrano de Bergerac in the Reina Victoria Theater de Madrid. Star it Jose Luis Gil, Ana Ruiz, Alex Gadea, Rocío Calvo, Carlos Heredia, Ricardo Joven and Nacho Rubio, with direction of Alberto Castrillo-Ferrer.
Cyrano de Bergerac - Fragments
There are so many moments, phrases and fragments that it is very difficult to choose, but I will stay with the magnificent monologue of No thanks and that definition of kiss for Roxana.
No thanks
And what do I have to do?
Looking for a powerful defender, a good master, and like ivy, which curls itself in a branch looking for protection and reinforcement in another's house, to climb with tricks, instead of with effort?
No thanks.
Being a slave, as so many are, of some important man? Serve him as a jester with the vile pretense that some verse of mine will draw a smile on his dark face?
No thanks.
Or swallow a toad every morning, wear my chest sunken, my clothes in tatters from so much kneeling with a helpful air?
Survive at the expense of my spine?
No thanks.
To be like those who see God begging - oh, damned hypocrites - and the mallet giving? And that, with the hope of some sinecura, they smother with incense who is procured for them?
No thanks.
Dragging myself from room to room until I am lost in my own ambition? Or sail with oars made of madrigals and, by wind, the sigh of banal maidens?
No thanks.
Publish by putting money out of my own pocket?
Thank you very much, I don't want to.
Make me name papa in those jokes that idiots celebrate, gathered together, in cafes?
No thanks.
Go out of my way to forge myself a name that has the deified what does not have as a man?
No thanks.
Join a puppet club? Wanting at all costs to be in the gazettes? And say to myself: there is nothing that matters to me as long as my wits are listed in the Court?
No thanks.
Be fearful? Calculating? Coward? Having a thousand visits busy in the afternoon? Use my pen to write fallacies?
No thanks, mate. The answer is: no thanks.
Sing, dream, instead. To be alone, to be free.
Let my eyes flash and my throat vibrate.
Put my hat on backwards if I please,
whip me on a whim or make an appetizer.
Work without desire for glory or fortune.
Imagine that I am going to conquer the Moon.
Never write anything that does not rhyme with me and say to me, modest:
Ah, my little friend, may the leaves, the flowers and the fruits suffice for you,
as long as your garden is where you collect them.
And if luckily one day you achieve glory like this,
you are not to give to Caesar what he did not give to you.
That to your merit you gave your luck, not to thrive,
and in short, that by doing what ivy does not do,
even when you lack the robustness of the oak,
what you lose when you are big, don't miss out on being noble.
********
Kiss
… What is, madam, a kiss?
ROXANA
Is it you?
CYRAN:
I am.
ROXANA:
And you talk about ... about a ...
CYRAN:
Kiss.
Sweet was the word in your mouth,
but you do not pronounce it. If your lip burns,
What wouldn't action do? Be generous
overcome your fear ... without realizing it.
Not long ago you slipped without anxiety
from laughter to sigh and sigh
crying ... slide more now
and you will reach the kiss without noticing it,
because the distance between the two is so little
that a single chill separates them.
ROXANA:
Shut up!
CYRAN:
After all, what is it, ma'am,
A kiss? An oath made closely;
a pink underline
that to the verb love they add; a secret
that mistakes the ear for the mouth;
a statement that is confirmed;
an offer that the lip corroborates;
an instant that has something eternal
and passes like a murmuring bee;
a communion sealed on top
from the calyx of a flower; sublime form
to savor the soul to the surface of the lip
and breathe in all the aroma of love.