Cyrano de Bergerac

Allusions, or references to other works of literature and myth, abound in Cyrano de Bergerac. Many allusions are drawn from classical Greek works like the Odyssey and the Iliad by Homer. The allusions reflect the action of the play. For instance, romantic relationships are compared to the couple Ulysses and Penelope while the military hero Achilles is alluded to when the Cadets are at the front fighting the Spanish.

Apollo, Greek god of the sun, medicine, and poetry, is also alluded to several times in the play. As patron of poetry, Apollo can be seen as the patron of Cyrano, the wordsmith. However, Apollo is also the deity that punishes the Greeks in the Iliad for their pride and love of women, spreading disease in the camp at the start of the epic narrative. Furthermore, the god is often referred to as “gold-locked Phoebus” (61) or “Phoebus Apollo,” (65) meaning bright and beautiful, which more closely parallels Christian and raises questions about The Nature of Beauty and the Mind.

Later in the play, furthering Cartesian dualities, Ragueneau explains his wife’s adultery by contrasting Mars, god of war, and Apollo in his role as patron of poets, saying that Mars has taken his wife away when she left him for a soldier. Ragueneau, much later in the play, exhorts the virtues of many Greek and Roman gods when distributing aid to the Gascon soldiers. Roxane, speaking to the Spanish soldiers, is transformed into a deceptive Venus, goddess of beauty, which allows the goddess of the hunt and moon, Diana, to deliver meat to the starving Gascons.

Ragueneau’s allusions do not only constrain themselves to the divine in Greek and Roman myth. Upon seeing poems made into bags for pastry, he compares this act to the legendary poet Orpheus being torn apart by the maidens of Bacchus. He also compares his wife to the “monstrous,” if beautiful, Bacchantes, which contributes to her leaving. Cyrano himself also makes similarly obscure references. When encountering the Capuchin wandering from house to house, he inquires if the monk is “playing at Diogenes” (130). This is in reference to a noted habit of the Greek philosopher Diogenes, who is said to have wandered around the streets every day, apparently looking for an honest man.