CYRANO

 Author : Ishbel Addyman

Publisher : Simon & Schuster, Year  2008, Pages  307  + 16 pages of b&w photographs

 

Review by : Indra Mani Lal

Excerpts :

( ) Cyrano’s anger at his father’s decision to sell off the country estates and his conviction that he could have handled the family’s fortunes better himself, may help to explain the theme of father-son conflict which runs throughout his works.

( ) Cyrano had only one path for him to try: ‘the career of arms’. His time as a member of the ‘honourable profession’ was short-lived. He served as a member of the noble corps of cadets for just two years between 1638 and 1640. The name cadet derives from the tradition that it was the younger brother or cadet who was destined for the army. The oldest son, being the heir to the family fortune, was too precious to be risked on the battlefield and was kept at home, where he would learn to manage his estates and be groomed for a life as lord of the manor. Younger sons, with no such glittering prospect to look forward to, were expected to forge a path for themselves.

( ) As a writer, Cyrano always reveled in the possibilities of double meaning and paradox and seems to have found the love letter a particularly rich field for his inventive, playful wit.

( ) Cyrano, who combined a distinct lack of religious feeling with the powerful antipathy for violence of an ex-soldier who has seen bloody combat, became convinced that religion was all too often the root cause of man’s inhumanity to man.

( ) His own brother apparently had him locked away in a lunatic asylum. Cyrano’s close friend Jacques Rouhault had been the first to discover the ill-treatment his elder brother had subjected him to. Le Bret never specifies that Cyrano’s captivity was within the walls of an asylum, rather than a prison.

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My Take :  This is a biography of a legendry Swordsman Cyrano de Bergerac of the age of the musketeers of  over 350 years ago. He is remembered by the famous box-office smash hit play of Edmund Rostand, but the man behind the legend is more or less forgotten. In this book the real Cyrano, rebellious, intellectual adventurer and diplomatic thinking is brought out.

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Subject Type - Biography

Narrative Style – Good

Readability – Excellent

Maintaining Readers Interest – Good

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