French poet and dramatist (1868–1918)
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Valvert: Your … your nose is … errr … Your nose … is very large! Cyrano: [gravely] Very. Valvert: [laughs] Ha! Cyrano: [imperturbable] Is that all? Valvert: But … Cyrano: Ah, no, young man, that is not enough! You might have said, dear me, there are a thousand things … varying the tone … For instance … Here you are: — Aggressive: "I, monsieur, if I had such a nose, nothing would serve but I must cut it off!" Amicable: "It must be in your way while drinking; you ought to have a special beaker made!" Descriptive: "It is a crag! … a peak! … a promontory! … A promontory, did I say? … It is a peninsula!" Inquisitive: "What may the office be of that oblong receptacle? Is it an inkhorn or a scissor-case?" Mincing: "Do you so dote on birds, you have, fond as a father, been at pains to fit the little darlings with a roost?" Blunt: "Tell me, monsieur, you, when you smoke, is it possible you blow the vapor through your nose without a neighbor crying "The chimney is afire!"?" Anxious: "Go with caution, I beseech, lest your head, dragged over by that weight, should drag you over!" Tender: "Have a little sun-shade made for it! It might get freckled!" Learned: "None but the beast, monsieur, mentioned by Aristophanes, the hippocampelephantocamelos, can have borne beneath his forehead so much cartilage and bone!" Off-Hand: "What, comrade, is that sort of peg in style? Capital to hang one's hat upon!" Emphatic: No wind can hope, O lordly nose, to give the whole of you a cold, but the Nor-Wester!" Dramatic: "It is the Red Sea when it bleeds!" Admiring: "What a sign for a perfumer's shop!" Lyric: "Art thou a Triton, and is that thy conch?" Simple: "A monument! When is admission free?" Deferent: "Suffer, monsieur, that I should pay you my respects: That is what I call possessing a house of your own!" Rustic: "Hi, boys! Call that a nose? You don't gull me! It's either a prize parrot or a stunted gourd!" Military: "Level against the cavalry!" Practical: "Will you put up for raffle? Indubitably, sir, it will be the feature of the game!" And finally in parody of weeping Pyramus: "Behold, behold the nose that traitorously destroyed the beauty of its master! and is blushing for the same!" — That, my dear sir, or something not unlike, is what you could have said to me, had you the smallest leaven of letters or wit; but of wit, O most pitiable of objects made by God, you never had a rudiment, and of letters, you have just those that are needed to spell "fool!" — But, had it been otherwise, and had you been possessed of the fertile fancy requisite to shower upon me, here, in this noble company, that volley of sprightly pleasentries, still should you not have delivered yourself of so much as a quarter of the tenth part of the beginning of the first … For I let off these good things at myself, and with sufficient zest, but do not suffer another to let them off at me!"
And what is a kiss, specifically? A pledge properly sealed, a promise seasoned to taste, a vow stamped with the immediacy of a lip, a rosy circle drawn around the verb 'to love.' A kiss is a message too intimate for the ear, infinity captured in the bee's brief visit to a flower, secular communication with an aftertaste of heaven, the pulse rising from the heart to utter its name on a lover's lip: 'Forever.
Attendez!... Je choisis mes rimes... Là, j'y suis.
(Il fait ce qu'il dit, à mesure.)
Je jette avec grâce mon feutre,
Je fais lentement l'abandon
Du grand manteau qui me calfeutre,
Et je tire mon espadon;
Élégant comme Céladon,
Agile comme Scaramouche,
Je vous préviens, cher Mirmidon,
Qu'à la fin de l'envoi, je touche!
(Premier engagement de fer.)
Vous auriez bien dû rester neutre;
Où vais-je vous larder, dindon ?...
Dans le flanc, sous votre maheutre ?...
Au coeur, sous votre bleu cordon ?...
- Les coquilles tintent, ding-don !
Ma pointe voltige: une mouche !
Décidément... c'est au bedon,
Qu'à la fin de l'envoi, je touche.
Il me manque une rime en eutre...
Vous rompez, plus blanc qu'amidon ?
C'est pour me fournir le mot pleutre !
- Tac! je pare la pointe dont
Vous espériez me faire don: -
J'ouvre la ligne, - je la bouche...
Tiens bien ta broche, Laridon !
A la fin de l'envoi, je touche.
(Il annonce solennellement:)
Envoi
Prince, demande à Dieu pardon !
Je quarte du pied, j'escarmouche,
Je coupe, je feinte...
(Se fendant.) Hé! Là donc!
(Le vicomte chancelle, Cyrano salue.)
A la fin de l'envoi, je touche.
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"- LE VICOMTE, suffoqué :
Ces grands airs arrogants !
Un hobereau qui... qui... n'a même pas de gants !
Et qui sort sans rubans, sans bouffettes, sans ganses !
- CYRANO :
Moi, c'est moralement que j'ai mes élégances.
Je ne m'attife pas ainsi qu'un freluquet,
Mais je suis plus soigné si je suis moins coquet ;
Je ne sortirais pas avec, par négligence,
Un affront pas très bien lavé, la conscience
Jaune encore de sommeil dans le coin de son oeil,
Un honneur chiffonné, des scrupules en deuil.
Mais je marche sans rien sur moi qui ne reluise,
Empanaché d'indépendance, et de franchise ;
Ce n'est pas une taille avantageuse, c'est
Mon âme que je cambre ainsi qu'en un corset,
Et tout couvert d'exploits qu'en rubans je m'attache,
Retroussant mon esprit ainsi qu'une moustache,
Je fais, en traversant les groupes et les ronds,
Sonner les vérités comme des éperons."
(Acte I, scène IV)