The Man who was Cyrano: A Life of Edmond Rostand, Creator of "Cyrano de Bergerac" (review)

This, the first full biography in English of Edmond Rostand, is a well researched and a compelling narrative. It will convince many of its readers that the much acclaimed playwright has yet to receive his full share of attention from Anglo-Saxon critics. Spanning almost exactly the period from the Franco-Prussian conflict to the end of the Great War, Rostand's life is in many respects a barometer of that turbulent yet heady era. Its cultural and historical resonances are conveyed with commendable lightness of touch throughout Sue Lloyd's biography. As we weave our way through the literary, theatrical and political lives that overlapped with Rostand's, we also gain illuminating insights into his closest friendships. A particularly rich and lively account is given of his long association with Sarah Bernhardt. But naturally (given the title of this biography) it is the wildly enthusiastic reception of Cyrano de Bergerac, performed for the first time on 29 December 1897, that is seen by Lloyd as being the defining moment in Rostand's life and career. This huge personal triumph, accompanied by a sense of the overwhelming burden that precocious success brings, is also held to be a turning point in the French theatre more generally. With Cyrano, Lloyd affirms, Rostand not only wins the hearts of the French people and restores the theatre to its erstwhile glory, he also revitalizes French national pride and wipes out the humiliation suffered at the hands of the Prussians some twenty-seven years earlier.

While the success and the legacy of Rostand's play are beyond doubt, some readers will feel that there is exaggeration in this. Just as Lloyd argues that Cyrano is the crucial defining event of Rostand's own life, so too there are moments when it risks over-burdening her own narrative. If we would understand Rostand, it is implied, then it is quintessentially through Cyrano that we are to do so. The cynical reader might conclude (unfairly) that this was the only realistic option for the biographer of a man who remains a "one-hit wonder" in the eyes of many. More justifiably, we could feel that there is too much special pleading on the part of the biographer, who writes in such obvious admiration of her subject that she retrospectively wills the glory of Cyrano to extend outwards over his entire existence. In so doing, she also gives the impression that the quality of Rostand's talent is indissociable from his moral worth. Seeing him as a man of idealism and fundamental decency, she is often tempted into "voiceover" mode, as she takes up his cause and justifies or defends him retrospectively against his enemies. But there is some dueling with shadows here. Rostand's artistic failures are put down to misunderstandings by critics or spectators, bad acting, ill will among his enemies, or whatever. Repeated attempts are made to rescue them against the judgment of history, rather than accept them for what they were.

Nonetheless, like all good narratives, this one acquires sufficient momentum to carry it through and beyond the admiration of its subject or even the problematic burden of its focus on Cyrano. Perhaps in the face of the overwhelming momentum of events, there is an interesting change of emphasis in the latter stages. The happy family man supported lovingly by his wife (who, we are frequently reminded, sacrificed her own talent and career for his) cuts a quite different figure in the closing years of his life. But while he has several passionate affairs (notably with Anna de Noailles and with a twenty-year-old actress by the name of Mary Marquet) his classically devoted wife undergoes a more interesting transition as she launches into an open liaison with a man much younger than herself. The story of this marriage is one of the many curiosities that Lloyd's biography raises, not least because...