The REAL Cyrano de Bergerac (who knew?)
Cyrano de Bergerac, Comical History of the States and Empires of the Moon
While stargazing with friends, the narrator has the startling thought that “the Moon is a World like ours, to which this of ours serves likewise for a Moon.” He sets out to prove this by traveling to the moon, by means of bottled dew which makes him float. However, he lands back on earth in "New France." Undeterred, he tries again, this time with a flying machine. Though at first he crashes, eventually the narrator reaches the moon and meets its four-legged, singing inhabitants. In this passage, he’s being entertained at a lunar dinner party by a philosophizing doctor who suspects that our bodies are more than they seem, as he goes graphically explains:
Now read on:
'It remains to be proved, that there are infinite Worlds, in an infinite World. Fancy to yourself then the Universe as a great Animal; and that the Stars, which are Worlds, are in this great Animal, as other great Animals that serve reciprocally for Worlds to other Peoples; such as we, our Horses, &c. That we in our turns, are likewise Worlds to certain other Animals, incomparably less than our selves, such as Nits, Lice, Hand-worms, &c. And that these are an Earth to others, more imperceptible ones; in the same manner as every one of us appears to be a great World to these little People. Perhaps our Flesh, Blood, and Spirits, are nothing else but a Contexture of little Animals that correspond, lend us Motion from theirs, and blindly suffer themselves to be guided by our Will which is their Coachman; or otherwise conduct us, and all Conspiring together, produce that Action which we call Life.
For tell me, pray, is it a hard thing to be believed, that a Louse takes your Body for a World; and that when any one of them travels from one of your Ears to the other, his Companions say, that he hath travelled the Earth from end to end, or that he hath run from one Pole to the other? Yes, without doubt, those little People take your Hair for the Forests of their Country; the Pores full of Liquor, for Fountains; Buboes and Pimples, for Lakes and Ponds; Boils, for Seas; and Defluxions, for Deluges: And when you Comb yourself, forwards, and backwards, they take that Agitation for the Flowing and Ebbing of the Ocean. Doth not Itching make good what I say? What is the little Worm that causes it but one of these little Animals, which hath broken off from civil Society, that it may set up for a Tyrant in its Country? If you ask me, why are they bigger than other imperceptible Creatures? I ask you, why are Elephants bigger than us?'
What we love about this passage...
Have you ever imagined what it’s like to be a louse? That’s exactly what the 17th-century writer Cyrano de Bergerac is attempting here—hair, pores, and pimples become features of the landscape, and itching is experienced as a force of nature akin to the moon’s gravity.
Cyrano's Comical History also goes to the other size extreme, reconceiving the entire universe as an animal. We love the dizzying way in which Cyrano plays with scale, and his earnestness in trying to gain perspective on human life.
This passage is also notable for describing an approximation of the cell-based theory of biology, already in 1657! Seven years later, Robert Hooke would use the newly invented microscope to publish a study of cells called Micrographia.
About the author
Cyrano de Bergerac (1599-1655) was a French writer who is best known as the title character of Edmond Rostand’s play Cyrano de Bergerac with his famously prominent nose, rapier-sharp wit, and dashing white-plumed hat. The real Cyrano's book Comical History and its sequel, The States and Empires of the Sun, were fantastical satires which paved the way for the likes of Swift, Poe, and Voltaire. They also laid the groundwork for modern science fiction.
Cyrano died under murky circumstances—supposedly from a fallen wooden beam, but most likely from injuries sustained during a botched assassination attempt.
To read alongside...
If you're interested in reading more fiction about moon travel, there is a vast number of selenography narratives. Here are a few suggestions:
In Francis Godwin's The Man in the Moone (1638), a man goes to the moon in a chariot pulled by geese. Margaret Cavendish’s The Blazing World (1666), and early example of science fiction, depicts a woman becoming emperor of the moon. In 1835, Edgar Allan Poe published a moon voyage tale called 'The Unparalleled Adventure of One Hans Pfaal'. That same year, the Great Moon Hoax took place in which the New York Sun fooled its readers with articles announcing that a human-like society had been discovered on the moon.
Selenography stories really took off later in the nineteenth century. Jules Verne wrote two books about journeying to the moon (1865 and 1870). G.H. Ryan's Fifteen Months in the Moon (1880) depicts a human-like, futuristic moon civilization. One of the best known of moon voyage narratives is H.G. Wells's The First Men in the Moon (1901). In George Melies's The Voyage to the Moon (1902), one of the world's earliest films, the moon has a big smiling face, and the rocket carrying the astronauts lands in its eye.
Jean-Paul Sartre said in 1974: 'the moon means less to me since people go there...it changed the moon into a scientific object, and it lost the mythical character it had had up to then.'
Our Cyrano excerpt for today also plays with scale -- imagining tiny things being enormous, and vice versa. This too has been popular in literature, for example in Jonathan Swift's Gulliver’s Travels (1726), a narrative that is fascinated with metaphysical voyages, experiments with scale, as well as the human body and its strange crudeness. Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (1865) features similar distortions, as Alice drinks a potion that makes her tiny and eats a cake that make her enormous (an ordeal repeated later on with a mushroom), and meets a hookah-smoking caterpillar far bigger than her.
Suggest a LitHit!
Tell us your own favourites from literature you've read, and we can feature you as a Guest Curator. Just email us with the following information:
Your full name
The title of the book you're suggesting
The location of the excerpt within the book (e.g., "in the middle of chapter 5"), or the excerpt itself copied into the email or attached to it (in Word)
Why you love it, in just a few sentences
**Please note that we welcome all suggestions but at the moment we can only release excerpts that are out of copyright and in the public domain. This means 75 years or more since the author's death. You can find many such out-of-copyright texts on the internet, for example at Project Gutenberg and Standard Ebooks.
About LitHits
You might also enjoy...
Writers Make Worlds: https://writersmakeworlds.com/
The Ten Minute Book Club: https://www.english.ox.ac.uk/ten-minute-book-club
Project Gutenberg: https://www.gutenberg.org/
Standard Ebooks: https://standardebooks.org/
“Five Tips to Get Reading Again if You’ve Struggled During the Pandemic,” The Conversation (8 January 2021): https://theconversation.com/five-tips-to-get-reading-again-if-youve-struggled-during-the-pandemic-152904
Curator's Corner
Today's guest curator is Jack Delaney, who also curated last week's newsletter. Additional contributions were generously made by Daniel Abdalla.
Feedback
We'd love to hear your thoughts on our newsletter:
kirsten@lit-hits.co.uk
Graphic design by Sara Azmy
All curation content © 2022 LitHits. All rights reserved.