Edmond Rostand Quotes

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.

ROXANE. One hundred men against one: you! — So, good bye! — We are the best of friends, are we not? CYRANO. Assuredly, we are!

- 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.

Christian gets to kiss Roxane, and Cyrano gets to pluck lots of rhetorical flowers while keeping his precious plume unblemished.

My nose is Gargantuan! You little Pig-snout, you tiny Monkey-Nostrils, you virtually invisible Pekinese-Puss, don't you realize that a nose like mine is both scepter and orb, a monument to me superiority? A great nose is the banner of a great man, a generous heart, a towering spirit, an expansive soul — such as I unmistakably am, and such as you dare not to dream of being, with your bilious weasel's eyes and no nose to keep them apart! With your face as lacking in all distinction — as lacking, I say, in interest, as lacking in pride, in imagination, in honesty, in lyricism — in a word, as lacking in nose as that other offensively bland expanse at the opposite end of your cringing spine — which I now remove from my sight by stringent application of my boot!

Cyrano: I can see him there — -he grins — -
He is looking at my nose — -that skeleton — -What's that you say? Hopeless? — -Why, very well! — -
But a man does not fight merely to win!
No — -no — -better to know one fights in vain!...
You there — -Who are you? A hundred against one — -
I know them now, my ancient enemies — -
Falsehood!...There! There! Prejudice — -Compromise — -Cowardice — -
What's that? No! Surrender? No!
Never — -never!...
Ah, you too, Vanity!
I knew you would overthrow me in the end — -
No! I fight on! I fight on! I fight on!
Yes, all my laurels you have riven away
And all my roses; yet in spite of you,
There is one crown I bear away with me,
And to-night, when I enter before God,
My salute shall sweep all the stars away
From the blue threshold! One thing without stain,
Unspotted from the world, in spite of doom
Mine own! — -
And that is...
Roxane: — -That is...
Cyrano: My white plume....

Oh, don't take it so hard. I drove into this madness. Every woman needs a little madness in her life.

Vedete, quando si é avuto troppo successo nella vita, come me, sia pure senza avere fatto nulla di veramente cattivo, si finisce per sentire mille piccole nausee di sé, che nell'insieme non danno un rimorso ma un indefinibile oscuro fastidio. Così i mantelli ducali, strisciando lungo i gradini che portano al potere, trascinano nelle pieghe del loro bordo impellicciato cumuli di illusioni inaridite e rimpianti, come le foglie morte che la vostra veste di vedova smuove in questo chiostro.

I am never away from you. Even now, I shall not leave you. In another world, I shall be still that one who loves you, loves you beyond measure.

Abia noaptea-i minunat sa crezi in lumina

Voyez-vous, lorsqu'on a trop réussi sa vie,
On sent, — n'ayant rien fait mon Dieu de vraiment mal! — Mille petits dégoûts de soi, dont le total
Ne fait pas un remords, mais une gêne obscure ;
Et les manteaux de duc traînent dans leur fourrure,
Pendant que des grandeurs on monte les degrés,
Un bruit d'illusions sèches et de regrets,
Comme, quand vous montez lentement vers ces portes,
Votre robe de deuil traîne des feuilles mortes.

CYRANO:
Thy name is in my heart as in a sheep-bell,
And as I ever tremble, thinking of thee,
Ever the bell shakes, ever thy name ringeth!
All things of thine I mind, for I love all things;
I know that last year on the twelfth of May-month,
To walk abroad, one day you changed your hair-plaits!
I am so used to take your hair for daylight
That, — like as when the eye stares on the sun's disk,
One sees long after a red blot on all things — So, when I quit thy beams, my dazzled vision
Sees upon all things a blonde stain imprinted.

ROXANE (agitated):
Why, this is love indeed!. . .

CYRANO:
Ay, true, the feeling
Which fills me, terrible and jealous, truly
Love, — which is ever sad amid its transports!
Love, — and yet, strangely, not a selfish passion!
I for your joy would gladly lay mine own down, — E'en though you never were to know it, — never! — If but at times I might — far off and lonely, — Hear some gay echo of the joy I bought you!
Each glance of thine awakes in me a virtue, — A novel, unknown valor. Dost begin, sweet,
To understand? So late, dost understand me?
Feel'st thou my soul, here, through the darkness mounting?
Too fair the night! Too fair, too fair the moment!
That I should speak thus, and that you should hearken!
Too fair! In moments when my hopes rose proudest,
I never hoped such guerdon. Naught is left me
But to die now! Have words of mine the power
To make you tremble, — throned there in the branches?
Ay, like a leaf among the leaves, you tremble!
You tremble! For I feel, — an if you will it,
Or will it not, — your hand's beloved trembling
Thrill through the branches, down your sprays of jasmine!

(He kisses passionately one of the hanging tendrils.)

ROXANE:
Ay! I am trembling, weeping! — I am thine!
Thou hast conquered all of me! — Cyrano de Bergerac III. 7

Ah non ! C'est un peu court jeune homme
On pourrait dire, O Dieu, bien des choses en somme
En variant le ton, par exemple, tenez:
Agressif: moi monsieur, si j'avais un tel nez
Il faudrait sur le champ que je me l'emputasse !
Amical: mais il doit tremper dans votre tasse
Pour boire faîtes-vous donc fabriquer un hanap.
Descriptif: c'est un roc ! c'est un pic ! c'est un cap !
Que dis-je, c'est un cap ? c'est une péninsule !

Et sonnant d’avance sa victoire, Mon chant jaillit si net, si fier, si peremptoire Que l’horizon, saisi d'un rose tremblement, M’obéit.

Cyrano’s attitude toward the sweetmeat vendor thus foreshadows his attitude toward the body in general (it is not a zone of pleasure) and the fair sex in particular. More comfortable with the gallant word (such as, “despite my Gascon pride”) or gesture (“He kisses her hand”) than with the idea of accepting her “dainties,” he settles for a mere “trifle,” for which silliness he is lambasted by his friend Le Bret. Under the guise of gallantry, Cyrano has found a way to formalize a circumspection with regard to women, a hesitancy and perhaps a fear that we see at work also in his relation to Roxane. His relation to sex is purely rhetorical. Cyrano himself attributes his unease with women to fear of being laughed at. By his own admission, the distance he imposes between himself and women is a form of self-defense: “My heart always cowers behind the defence of my wit. I