Download the Full Version of ebook for Fast Typing at ebookmass.

com

Socially Extended Epistemology J. Adam Carter

https://ebookmass.com/product/socially-extended-
epistemology-j-adam-carter/

OR CLICK BUTTON

DOWNLOAD NOW

Download More ebook Instantly Today - Get Yours Now at ebookmass.com

 Recommended digital products (PDF, EPUB, MOBI) that
you can download immediately if you are interested.

Knowers and Knowledge in East-West Philosophy:

Epistemology Extended 1st Edition Karyn L. Lai (Editor)

https://ebookmass.com/product/knowers-and-knowledge-in-east-west-
philosophy-epistemology-extended-1st-edition-karyn-l-lai-editor/

ebookmass.com

PreTest Emergency Medicine Adam J. Rosh

https://ebookmass.com/product/pretest-emergency-medicine-adam-j-rosh/

ebookmass.com

PreTest Emergency Medicine 5th Edition Edition Adam J.

Rosh

https://ebookmass.com/product/pretest-emergency-medicine-5th-edition-
edition-adam-j-rosh/

ebookmass.com

Learning from Our Mistakes: Epistemology for the Real

World William J. Talbott

https://ebookmass.com/product/learning-from-our-mistakes-epistemology-
for-the-real-world-william-j-talbott/

ebookmass.com
Applied Epistemology Jennifer Lackey

https://ebookmass.com/product/applied-epistemology-jennifer-lackey/

ebookmass.com

John + Siena: Extended Bethany-Kris [Bethany-Kris]

https://ebookmass.com/product/john-siena-extended-bethany-kris-
bethany-kris/

ebookmass.com

The New Neighbor Carter Wilson

https://ebookmass.com/product/the-new-neighbor-carter-wilson/

ebookmass.com

The Dead Husband Carter Wilson

https://ebookmass.com/product/the-dead-husband-carter-wilson-2/

ebookmass.com

Broken Mate Beth D. Carter

https://ebookmass.com/product/broken-mate-beth-d-carter/

ebookmass.com
 OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 23/6/2018, SPi

Socially Extended Epistemology

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 23/6/2018, SPi
 OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 23/6/2018, SPi

Socially Extended
Epistemology
 
J. Adam Carter, Andy Clark, Jesper Kallestrup,
S. Orestis Palermos, and Duncan Pritchard

1
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 23/6/2018, SPi

3
Great Clarendon Street, Oxford, OX2 6DP,
United Kingdom
Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford.
It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship,
and education by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of
Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries
© the several contributors 2018
The moral rights of the authors have been asserted
First Edition published in 2018
Impression: 1
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in
a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the
prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted
by law, by licence or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics
rights organization. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the
above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the
address above
You must not circulate this work in any other form
and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer
Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press
198 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016, United States of America
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
Data available
Library of Congress Control Number: 2018932570
ISBN 978–0–19–880176–4
Printed and bound by
CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon, CR0 4YY
Links to third party websites are provided by Oxford in good faith and
for information only. Oxford disclaims any responsibility for the materials
contained in any third party website referenced in this work.
 OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 23/6/2018, SPi

Contents

List of Contributors vii

Introduction 1
J. Adam Carter, Andy Clark, Jesper Kallestrup, S. Orestis Palermos,
and Duncan Pritchard

Part I. Foundational Issues within Socially Extended

Epistemology
1. How far can Extended Knowledge be Extended?: The Asymmetry
between Research Teams and Artifacts 11
K. Brad Wray
2. Outsourcing Concepts: Social Externalism, the Extended Mind,
and the Expansion of our Epistemic Capacity 24
Cathal O’Madagain
3. Representations and Robustly Collective Attitudes 36
Jeroen de Ridder
4. Mind Outside Brain: A Radically Non-Dualist Foundation
for Distributed Cognition 59
Francis Heylighen and Shima Beigi
5. Practical Knowledge and Acting Together 87
Olle Blomberg
6. Group Know-How 112
S. Orestis Palermos and Deborah P. Tollefsen
7. Consensus as an Epistemic Norm for Group Acceptance 132
Joëlle Proust

Part II. Applications and New Directions

8. Socially Extended Moral Deliberation about Risks: A Role for
Emotions and Art 157
Sabine Roeser
9. Thinking Together about Genocide: Socially Shared Cognition
in Context 173
Holly Arrow and Alexander Garinther
10. Collective Amnesia and Epistemic Injustice 195
Alessandra Tanesini
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 23/6/2018, SPi

vi 

11. The “Ontological Complicity” of Habitus and Field: Bourdieu

as an Externalist 220
Georg Theiner and Nikolaus Fogle
12. Mandevillian Intelligence: From Individual Vice to Collective Virtue 253
Paul R. Smart
13. Solving the Frame Problem Socially 275
Harry Halpin

Index 307
 OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 23/6/2018, SPi

List of Contributors

H A, Department of Psychology, University of Oregon, USA.

S B, Department for Continuing Education, Oxford University, UK and
Department of Civil Engineering, University of Bristol, UK.
O B, Department of Media, Cognition and Communication, Lund
University, Sweden.
J. A C, Department of Philosophy, University of Glasgow, UK.
A C, Department of Philosophy, University of Edinburgh, UK.
N F, Department of Philosophy, Villanova University, USA.
A G, Department of Psychology, University of Oregon, USA.
H H, Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab, MIT, USA.
F H, Cybernetics, Free University of Brussels, Belgium.
J K, Department of Philosophy, University of Edinburgh, UK.
C O’M, Department of Developmental and Comparative Psych-
ology, Max Planck Institute, Germany.
S. O P, Department of Philosophy, Cardiff University, UK.
D P, Department of Philosophy, University of California, Irvine,
USA, and Department of Philosophy, University of Edinburgh, UK.
J̈ P, Institut Jean Nicod, France.
J  R, Department of Philosophy, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam,
Holland.
S R, Ethics and Philosophy of Technology, TU Delft, Holland.
P R. S, Electronics and Computer Science, University of Southampton, UK.
A T, Department of Philosophy, Cardiff University, UK.
G T, Department of Philosophy, Villanova University, USA.
D P. T, Department of Philosophy, University of Memphis, USA.
K. B W, Department of Philosophy, State University of New York,
Oswego, USA.
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 23/6/2018, SPi
 OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 23/6/2018, SPi

Introduction
J. Adam Carter, Andy Clark, Jesper Kallestrup,
S. Orestis Palermos, and Duncan Pritchard

Between 2013 and 2016, Edinburgh’s Eidyn research centre hosted the AHRC-funded
Extended Knowledge (AH/J011908/1) project (http://www.extended-knowledge.ppls.
ed.ac.uk/). The papers presented in this volume are the direct or indirect products of
workshops, conferences, and impact events held at the University of Edinburgh under
that umbrella. The project’s main team consisted of the present editors, but the project
itself comprised an international, interdisciplinary network spanning epistemology,
philosophy of mind, cognitive science, cognitive and social psychology, computer
science, Web science, and cybernetics. The goal was to provide, for the first time, a
systematic exploration of the various ways of “externalizing” knowledge.
Our focus was on two paradigmatic ways in which knowledge can be thought to be
“extended.” The first was to approach knowledge as a form of extended cognition.
The second was to conceive of knowledge as a form of distributed cognition. In both
cases, the result is a form of extended knowledge, where what is unique to the latter is
that the extension in question is distinctively social.
Extended and distributed approaches to cognition, fall under the general philo-
sophical trend of active externalism (Clark and Chalmers 1998; Clark 2007; Menary
2007; Rowlands 1999, 2004; Hutchins 1996). Active externalism holds that, under the
appropriate conditions, cognitive processes such as perception and memory as well
as mental states such as beliefs, desires and emotions can be constitutively realized by
elements that lie beyond the organismic shell. Typical examples include laptops,
smartphones, tablets, Filofaxes, lifelog applications, sensory substitution systems, or
even Transactive Memory Systems (where groups of two or more individuals col-
laboratively store, encode, and retrieve information (Wegner 1986; Wegner et al.
1985; Wegner et al. 1991; Sutton 2008; Sutton et al. 2010)). It should be noted that
active externalism is a hotly debated topic within philosophy of mind and cognitive
science. Nevertheless, it has successfully withstood criticism, generating significant
insights both within and outside academic philosophy. Currently, it is being increas-
ingly adopted by several related disciplines such as cognitive psychology, anthropol-
ogy, and computer science.
The idea of extended knowledge invites numerous philosophical questions. What
types of devices can count as proper extensions of agents’ epistemic abilities? How
can the extended knowledge approach to epistemology guide the design of such
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 23/6/2018, SPi

 . . , . , . , . . , . 

epistemic extensions? Do epistemic extensions pose a threat to the epistemic

autonomy of individual agents? What is the role of epistemic extensions in the future
of education? Readers who are also interested in these themes are directed to our first
volume, entitled Extended Epistemology (also with Oxford University Press) and to
the various journal articles published by the members of the Extended Knowledge
Project (e.g., Pritchard 2010, 2016, forthcoming, forthcomingb; Carter 2013; Carter
and Czarnecki 2016; Carter and Palermos 2014; Carter and Kallestrup 2016;
Palermos 2011, 2014, 2015, 2016, forthcoming; Clark 2015) and its international
network (e.g. Carter et al. 2014, 2016).
The present volume explores our project’s second point of focus, namely socially
extended knowledge. In a sense, socially extended knowledge is a more advanced
topic of research, because it does not just assume that knowledge and cognition
might be extended via artefacts. Socially extended knowledge goes further by sug-
gesting that knowledge can also be extended (socially) to other agents with whom we
closely collaborate. The core idea is that epistemic states such as beliefs, justification,
and knowledge can be collectively realized by groups or communities of individuals.
Typical examples that have already been explored in the literature include problem-
solving by juries, and the behaviors of hiring committees, scientific research teams,
and intelligence agencies.
One possible approach to socially extended knowledge that we have previously
argued for (Palermos and Pritchard 2013; Palermos 2015, forthcoming; Palermos
and Pritchard forthcoming; Kallestrup forthcoming) is to combine the hypothesis of
distributed cognition from philosophy of mind and cognitive science with virtue
reliabilism (e.g., Greco 2003, 2010; Sosa 2007) from mainstream epistemology. The
hypothesis of distributed cognition holds that, under the appropriate conditions,
groups of individuals can give rise to integrated distributed cognitive systems that
consist of all the participating members at the same time (Barnier et al. 2008;
Heylighen et al. 2004; Hutchins 1996; Palermos 2016; Sutton et al. 2010; Sutton
2008; Theiner et al. 2010; Theiner 2013a, 2013b; Theiner and O’Connor 2010;
Tollefsen and Dale 2012; Tollefsen 2006; Wilson 2005). As it happens, virtue
reliabilism is particularly amenable to an interpretation along the lines suggested
by the hypothesis of distributed cognition. This is because, according to virtue
reliabilism, for a process such as vision, hearing, and memory to count as
knowledge-conducive it does not matter whether it is wholly realized within an
individual’s head. What is crucial, instead, is that the process be cognitively integrated
within that subject’s cognitive character. By demonstrating that mainstream discus-
sions in the philosophy of mind and epistemology understand the notion of cognitive
integration in broadly the same way (Palermos 2014), we have provided arguments
for the view that knowledge and justification can be distributed between several
individuals at the same time (Palermos and Pritchard 2013; Palermos 2015; Palermos
and Pritchard forthcoming).
This approach to socially extended knowledge is one among many, however.
Several philosophers have in the past attempted to argue for the collective nature
of many instances of knowledge. These authors focus on the collective nature of the
belief component of the relevant piece of knowledge (Tuomela 2004; Gilbert 1994,
2007a, 2007b, 2010; Carter 2015), or to the way groups aggregate the justified true
 OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 23/6/2018, SPi

 

beliefs of their individual members (List and Pettit 2002, 2004, 2006, 2011; List 2005,
2008, 2011; Goldman 2014).
Socially Extended Epistemology attempts to further our understanding of socially
extended knowledge while also exploring its potential practical and societal impact by
inviting perspectives not just from philosophy but from cognitive science, computer
science, Web science, and cybernetics too. Contributions to the volume mostly fall
within two broad categories: (i) foundational issues within socially extended epistem-
ology (including elaborations on, defences, and criticisms of core aspects of socially
extended epistemology), and (ii) applications and new directions, where themes in
socially extended epistemology are connected to these other areas of research. The
volume is accordingly divided into two parts corresponding to these broad categories.
In the first part’s opening chapter, “How Far can Extended Knowledge be
Extended?: The Asymmetry between Research Teams and Artifacts,” Brad Wray
explores a potential problem that distributed cognition may pose for virtue epistem-
ology. By focusing on knowledge produced by scientific research teams, Wray targets
Pritchard’s (2010, 2017) groundbreaking virtue reliabilist account of extended know-
ledge. According to Pritchard, in order for an agent to know a proposition p, (i) her
cognitive success of believing the truth with regards to p must be attributable to her
cognitive abilities and (ii) she must take responsibility for p. Wray argues, however,
that theoretical considerations as well as certain cases within contemporary scientific
practice jointly demonstrate that collaboratively produced beliefs cannot satisfy both
of the above conditions on knowledge.
In “Outsourcing Concepts: Deference, the Extended Mind, and Expanding our
Epistemic Capacity,” Cathal O’Madagain employs the extended mind hypothesis in
order to explain how and why the meaning of some concepts is fixed by the minds of
others. O’Madagain argues that if we rethink this form of “semantic deference” in
terms of the extended mind hypothesis, we can answer both of the above questions: the
minds of others can be understood to play a role in storing the semantic knowledge
underpinning our concepts without undermining their functionality, and this “out-
sourcing” of semantic knowledge greatly expands our overall knowledge-bearing
capacity, both at the level of the individual and the community.
In “Representations and Robustly Collective Attitudes,” Jeroen de Ridder defends
the existence of robustly collective cognitive states against an argument that calls into
question the existence of collective representations, that is, representations held by
groups rather than individuals. De Ridder examines the argument that beliefs require
the existence of representations, so without collective representations there can be no
collective beliefs. In response, de Ridder argues that it is controversial whether belief
requires representation. But even if it does, he further notes, the above argument can
be resisted. This is because the extended and distributed cognition hypotheses can
provide a promising account of collective representations.
In their contribution, “Mind Outside Brain: A Radically Non-Dualist Foundation for
Distributed Cognition,” Francis Heylighen and Shima Beigi deny that cognition is
always centered around organismic agents. Usually, active externalists hold that cogni-
tion can extend beyond individual brains to the artefacts agents interact with, or that,
under the appropriate conditions, it can be distributed between several interacting
individuals at the same time. While such theories deny that cognition is restricted to
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 23/6/2018, SPi

 . . , . , . , . . , . 

organismic agents they hold that cognition is organism-centered, even if occasionally

extended and distributed. Heylighen and Beigi hold that this tendency to associate
cognition with organismic agents is misguided. Instead they explore the radical alter-
native of panpsychism. Their defense rests on an action ontology, according to which
mind and matter are aspects of the same network of processes, and all physical objects
may exhibit cognitive properties such as desires, intentions, and sensations.
In “Practical Knowledge and Acting Together,” Olle Blomberg explores a potential
problem that joint action raises for the concept of self-knowledge, of the kind
assumed to be possessed by all intentional agents. Specifically, according to one
influential philosophical view, an agent is intentionally φ-ing if and only if she has
a special kind of practical and non-observational knowledge that this is what she is
doing. Blomberg argues, however, that this self-knowledge view faces serious prob-
lems when extended to accounts for intentional actions performed by several agents
together as a result of their joint decision. According to Blomberg, since a theory of
intentional action ought to be able to make sense of singular and joint intentional
action, this suggests that practical and non-observational knowledge is not essential
to intentional action as such.
In their contribution, “Group Know-How,” S. Orestis Palermos and Deborah
Tollefsen welcome mainstream epistemology’s attempt to explore the nature of
individuals’ know-how (e.g., knowing-how to swim, ride a bike, play chess, etc.).
As they note, however, there is very little, if any, work on group know-how (e.g.,
sports-team performance, jazz improvisation, knowing-how to tango, etc.). Palermos
and Tollefsen attempt to fill the gap in the existing literature by exploring the relevant
philosophical terrain. After surveying some of the recent debates on individual
knowledge-how, they argue that group know-how cannot always be reduced to
individual knowledge-how. Subsequently they explore two possible approaches
to irreducible group know-how. First, they explore a joint intentionality approach
to group know-how, and then they consider an alternative approach that views group
know-how as a form of distributed cognition. Far from being exclusive, they con-
clude, a potential link might exist between the two approaches.
Finally, Joëlle Proust, in her contribution “Consensus as an Epistemic Norm for
Group Acceptance,” explores the nature of group beliefs. What are the propositional
attitude(s) involved in collective epistemic agency? According to Proust, there are
two main responses to this question. One holds that groups can have beliefs in their
own right, meaning that such beliefs are irreducible to the beliefs of the members of
the group. The other denies that groups have beliefs at all, suggesting instead that
groups form “goal-sensitive acceptances.” Proust argues that neither of these alter-
natives is satisfactory and introduces a third alternative, which she calls “accepting
under consensus.”
In the opening chapter of the second part of the volume, “Socially Extended Moral
Deliberation About Risks: A Role for Emotions and Art,” Sabine Roeser explores a
potential practical application of socially extended knowledge. She starts by noting
that current debates about risky technologies such as biotechnology, information
technologies, and energy technologies are frequently heated and end up in stale-
mates, due to the scientific and moral complexities of these risks. Emotions, however,
can make an important contribution to deliberation about ethical aspects of risk,
 OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 23/6/2018, SPi

 

because emotions are often taken to track evaluative properties. An impactful way for
exploring these kinds of risk-related emotions is through works of art about risky
technologies, which are useful in making abstract problems more concrete, letting us
broaden narrow personal perspectives, exploring new scenarios, going beyond
boundaries, and challenging our imagination. In this sense, Roeser argues, emotions
as well as works of art can contribute to socially extended knowledge concerning
ethical aspects of risk.
In “Thinking Together about Genocide: Socially Shared Cognition in Context,”
Holly Arrow and Alexander Garinther explore one of the primary examples of
distributed cognition within the literature, namely the phenomenon of collective
memory. The mutual influences between members of dyads, small groups, as well as
larger collectives many times allows people to “think together.” This is a social
phenomenon that allows group members to share attention and intentions, collect-
ively construct and validate meaning, and collaboratively develop and adjust distrib-
uted networks of learning, memory, and forgetting. Arrow and Garinther review the
psychological literature on socially shared and situated cognition and explore its
applications to the shared and unshared memories of survivors and killers in post-
genocide Rwanda.
In “Collective Amnesia and Epistemic Injustice,” Alessandra Tanesini also focuses
on collective memory by bringing together studies from epistemology, philosophy of
mind, and social psychology. Tanesini’s aim is to put forward an account of shared
memories as both a form of environmentally scaffolded cognition (e.g., on the basis
of memorials) and as socially scaffolded cognition (e.g., on the basis of social
interactions). Further, she argues that the same environmental and social scaffolds
that can enhance collective memories can also be manipulated to enhance collective
amnesia. Promoting collective amnesia in this way is a form of cognitive achievement
that can cause a form of epistemic injustice. Specifically, collective amnesia regarding
shared memories undermines the ability of some individual members who were
relying on these memories to assess their own reliability or self-trust (i.e., their
cognitive and affective stance toward their own cognitive capacities).
In their contribution, “The ‘Ontological Complicity’ of Habitus and Field: Bourdieu
as an Externalist,” Nikolaus Fogle and Georg Theiner approach the work of the
French sociologist, Pierre Bourdieu, from the point of view of embodied, extended,
and distributed cognition. They argue that the concepts that form Bourdieu’s central
dyad, habitus and field, are remarkably consonant with externalist views. Habitus is a
form of knowledge that is not only embodied but fundamentally environment-
dependent, and field is a distributed network of cognitively active positions that
serves not only as a repository of social knowledge, but also as an external template
for individual schemes of perception and action. The aim of Fogle and Theiner’s
comparative analysis is not to merely show that Bourdieu’s concepts are compatible
with cognitive and epistemological externalism, however. They further demonstrate
that the resources of Bourdieu’s theoretical framework can prove particularly useful
for developing externalist accounts of culture and society—two areas that are signifi-
cantly underexplored within mainstream debates in analytic philosophy.
In “Mandevillian Intelligence: From Individual Vice to Collective Virtue,” Paul
Smart explores collective knowledge from the point of view of “Mandevillian
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 23/6/2018, SPi

 . . , . , . , . . , . 

Intelligence.” It is commonly supposed that the best way to increase the epistemic
properties of a collective is to increase the epistemic properties of its members. Smart
introduces the concept of Mandevillian intelligence in order to call this intuition into
question. Mandevillian intelligence refers to a specific form of collective intelligence in
which individual-level cognitive and epistemic vices, such as limitations in attentional
capacity, cognitive shortcomings (e.g., forgetting) and cognitive biases (e.g., confirm-
ation bias), are seen to be causally relevant to the expression of intelligent behaviour at
the collective level.
Finally, in “Solving the Frame Problem Socially,” Harry Halpin approaches the
practical applications of socially extended knowledge by focusing on a classical
problem from artificial intelligence known as the ‘Frame Problem’: How can any
knowledge representation system model a changing world in order to make decisions
on the basis of what is contextually relevant while ignoring all else? On the Internet,
this version of the frame problem is currently being solved socially by relying on the
collective behavior of other agents to select what parts of the world are relevant. This
social solution to the technical problem of knowledge representation depends on
virtuous cycles of searching for content on the Web using search engines, collabora-
tive tagging systems, and social media. In this way, Halpin shows, knowledge is co-
created socially with other agents by virtue of an Internet-enabled technological
scaffolding. On this basis it is possible to argue that the locus of cognitive ability is
not a lone individual, but a supra-individual subject.
We believe that our project, enhanced by the outstanding contributions of our
international network, has helped position the topics of technologically and socially
extended knowledge at the leading edge of contemporary philosophical enquiry. The
topics themselves are of great conceptual interest, and wider interdisciplinary per-
spectives suggest many connections with social concerns and policy-making. All this
invites us to take both our socio-epistemic networks and our best present and future
technologies very seriously indeed, as they will increasingly help constitute who and
what we are.

References
Barnier, A. J., Sutton, J., Harris, C. B., and Wilson, R. A. (2008). “A conceptual and empirical
framework for the social distribution of cognition: The case of memory.” Cognitive Systems
Research, 9(1–2), 33–51. doi:10.1016/j.cogsys.2007.07.002.
Carter, J. A. (2015). “Group Knowledge and Epistemic Defeat.” Ergo, 2(28), 711–35.
Carter, J. A., and Czarnecki, B. (2016). “Extended Knowledge-How.” Erkenntnis, 81(2),
259–73.
Carter, J. A., Kallestrup, J., Palermos, S. O., and Pritchard, D. (2014). “Varieties of External-
ism.” Philosophical Issues. A Supplement to Nous, 24(1), 63–109.
Carter, J. A., Kallestrup, J., Palermos, S. O., and Pritchard, D. (2014). “Extended Knowledge.”
Philosophical Issues, 42(1), 1–482.
Carter, J. A., Clark, A., Kallestrup, J., Palermos, S. O., and Pritchard, D. H. (2016). Special issue
of American Philosophical Quarterly, “Varieties of Externalism: Epistemic, Content,
Vehicle.” American Philosophical Quarterly, 53(2).
Carter, J. A., and Palermos, S. O. (2014). “Active Externalism and Epistemic Internalism.”
Erkenntnis, 80(4), 753–72. doi:10.1007/s10670-014-9670-5.
Discovering Diverse Content Through
Random Scribd Documents
The Project Gutenberg eBook of Voyages to
the Moon and the Sun
 This ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United
States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with
almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away
or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License
included with this ebook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you
are not located in the United States, you will have to check the
laws of the country where you are located before using this
eBook.

Title: Voyages to the Moon and the Sun

Author: Cyrano de Bergerac

Translator: Richard Aldington

Release date: July 10, 2024 [eBook #74000]

Language: English

Original publication: London: George Routledge & Sons Ltd,

1923

Credits: Greg Weeks, Mary Meehan and the Online Distributed

Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This book
was produced from images made available by the
HathiTrust Digital Library.)

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK VOYAGES TO THE

MOON AND THE SUN ***
VOYAGES TO THE MOON AND
THE SUN

By CYRANO DE BERGERAC

Translated by
RICHARD ALDINGTON

With an Introduction and Notes

LONDON
GEORGE ROUTLEDGE & SONS LTD.
NEW YORK: E. P. DUTTON & CO.

PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN BY

THE EDINBURGH PRESS, 9 AND 11 YOUNG STREET,
EDINBURGH

Broadway Translations
 "Age cannot wither her, nor custom stale
Her infinite variety."

À Frédéric Lachèvre

TÉMOINAGE D'ADMIRATION ET DE RECONNAISSANCE

 CONTENTS
Introduction
The Legend of Cyrano
The Life of Cyrano
Cyrano's Friends
The Libertin Question
The Works of Cyrano

Voyage to the Moon

Voyage to the Sun

Appendices
Extracts from Godwin, D'Urfey, and Swift
Bibliography
Genealogy
Coat of Arms

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
Portrait of Cyrano
Signature of Cyrano
Title-page to Lovell's Translation
Cyrano's First Attempt
Frontispiece to Lovell's Translation
Cyrano's Flight to the Sun
The Parliament of Birds
Gonzales' Voyage to the Moon
Cyrano's Coat of Arms

CYRANO DE BERGERAC
 I
THE LEGEND OF CYRANO
The legend of Cyrano de Bergerac began, one might say, during his
life; but it was strongly founded by his friend Henry Le Bret who
edited The Voyage to the Moon with an introduction, in 1657, two
years after Cyrano's death. The 'Préface' of Le Bret is one of the
chief sources of information about Cyrano. It is no discredit to Le
Bret that he drew as favourable a portrait of his friend as he could,
but we cannot accept literally everything he says and we are forced
to read between the lines of his panegyric. Le Bret is largely
responsible for the moral legend of Cyrano. He says:
"In fine, Reader, he always passed for a man of singular rare wit; to
which he added such good fortune on the side of the senses that he
always controlled them as he willed; in so much that he rarely drank
wine because (said he) excess of drink brutalizes, and as much care
is needed with it as with arsenic (with this he was wont to compare
it) for everything is to be feared from this poison, whatever care is
used; even if nothing were to be dreaded but what the vulgar call
qui pro quo, which makes it always dangerous. He was no less
moderate in his eating, from which he banished ragoûts as much as
he could in the belief that the simplest and least complicated living is
the best; which he supported by the example of modern men, who
live so short a time compared with those of the earliest ages, who
appear to have lived so long because of the simplicity of their food.
"He added to these two qualities so great a restraint towards the fair
sex that it may be said he never departed from the respect owed it
by ours; and with all this he had so great an aversion from self-
interest that he could never imagine what it was to possess private
property, his own belonging less to him than to such of his
acquaintance as needed it. And so Heaven, which is not unmindful,
willed that among the large number of friends he had during his life
some should love him until death and a few even beyond death."[1]
It will be seen later that many of these virtues were probably
necessities arising from an unheroic cause; but this moral character
given by Le Bret was very useful to the 19th-century builders of the
Cyrano legend.
Other 17th-century writers give a very different impression of Cyrano
de Bergerac: where Le Bret saw a noble, almost austere genius, they
went to the opposite extreme and saw a madman. An anecdote in
the Historiettes of Tallemant des Réaux gives us another Cyrano:
"A madman named Cyrano wrote a play called The Death of
Agrippina where Sejanus says horrible things against the Gods. The
play was pure balderdash (un vray galimathias).[2] Sercy, who
published it, told Boisrobert that he sold out the edition in a
twinkling. 'You surprise me', said Boisrobert. 'Ah, Monsieur', replied
the bookseller, 'it has such splendid impieties'."[3]
The implication that the success of the play was due to its
"impieties" is repeated in an anecdote of the Menagiana quoted by
Lacroix, to the following effect: When the pious people heard there
were impieties in The Death of Agrippina, they went prepared to hiss
it; they passed over in silence all the tirades against the Gods which
had caused the rumour, but when Sejanus said:
"Frappons, voilà l'hostie",[4]
they interrupted the actor with whistling, booing and shouts of:
"Ah! the rascal! Ah! The atheist! Hear how he speaks of the holy
sacrament!"
I cannot find this anecdote in my own copy of the Menagiana, but
since my edition is 1693 and Lacroix quotes that of 1715, I presume
his is an addition. In my edition I find another anecdote of Cyrano
which I give here both for its rarity and because it shows 17th-
century contempt for Cyrano at its most virulent:
"What wretched works are those of Cyrano de Bergerac! He studied
at the Collège de Beauvais in the time of Principal Grangier. They say
he was still in his 'rhetoric' when he wrote The Pedant Outwitted
against his head-master. There are a few passable things in this play
but all the rest is very flat. When he wrote his Voyage to the Moon I
think he had one quarter of the moon in his head. The first public
sign he gave of his madness was to go to mass in the morning in
trunk hose and a night cap without his doublet. He had not one sou
when he fell ill of the disease from which he died and if M. de
Sainte-Marthe had not charitably supplied all his necessities he
would have died in the poor-house."[5]
More 17th-century anecdotes of Cyrano will be found in the Life;
those cited will at least show the early tendency to attach anecdotes
to him and the curious conflict of contemporary opinion. During the
second half of the 17th century Cyrano remained popular and his
works were frequently reprinted. The 18th century saw a great
decline in reputation and in editions; Voltaire repeated the
accusation: "A madman!" No edition of Cyrano's works appeared in
Paris between 1699 and 1855: the last of them before the revival of
the 19th century was the Amsterdam edition of 1761. For a century
there was no edition of Cyrano. He dropped out of sight almost
entirely; but in the 19th century he was destined to be revived as an
increasingly legendary figure, culminating in the heroic apotheosis of
Rostand's Cyrano de Bergerac.
Strangely enough the revival began in England in 1820 with an
article in the Retrospective Review.[6] This article shows some
acquaintance with Cyrano's originals as well as with the translation
reviewed. The anonymous writer says:
"Cyrano de Bergerac is a marvellously strange writer—his character,
too, was out of the common way. His chief passion appears to have
been duelling; and, from the numerous affairs of honour in which he
was concerned in a very short life and the bravery he displayed on
those occasions, he acquired the cognomen of 'The Intrepid'. His
friend Le Bret says he was engaged in no less than one hundred
duels for his friends, and not one on his own account. Others
however say, that, happening to have a nose somewhat awry,
whoever was so unfortunate or so rash as to laugh at it, was sure to
be called upon to answer its intrepid owner in the field. But however
this may be, it is indisputable that Cyrano was a distinguished
monomachist and a most eccentric writer."[7]
Seventeen years later that amiable man of letters, Charles Nodier,
resuscitated Cyrano in his Bonaventure Desperiers et Cyrano de
Bergerac. Before this Nodier had incidentally defended Cyrano in his
Bibliographie des Fous:
"As to this book (The Voyage to the Moon), which he wrote when he
was already mad (according to Voltaire), would you not be
astonished if you were told that it contained more profound
perceptions, more ingenious foresight, more anticipations in that
science whose confused elements Descartes scarcely sorted out,
than the large volume written by Voltaire under the supervision of
the Marquis du Châtelet? Cyrano used his genius like a hot-head, but
there is nothing in it which resembles a madman."[8]
Nodier is responsible for that portion of the Cyrano legend which
makes him an innovator, plagiarized from, and persecuted to an
early grave.
"It seems that a man who opened up so many paths to talent and
who went so far in all the paths he opened, ought to have left a
name in any literature....
"There was once a wooden horse which bore in its flanks all the
conquerors of Ilion, yet had no part in the triumph. This begins like
a fairy-tale ... and yet it is true.
"Poor wooden horse! Poor Cyrano!"[9]
But, if Charles Nodier carried on the legend, he did little more than
open the way for Theophile Gautier, whose famous Grotesque is
filled with every conceivable error of fact and yet is obviously one of
Rostand's chief sources. Les Grotesques appeared in 1844 and
contained ten pseudo-biographical sketches of "romantic"
personalities in French literature chiefly of the 17th century. The
book itself is an interesting by-product of the romantic movement,
but here we are only concerned with the sixth sketch, Cyrano de
Bergerac. This opens with a fantastic divagation upon noses,
perhaps the most exaggerated development of the legendary
Cyranesque appendage. If the reader will examine Cyrano's
portraits, without prejudice and with particular attention to the nose,
he will scarcely be prepared for this outburst:
"This incredible nose is settled in a three-quarter face [portrait], the
smaller side of which it covers entirely; it forms in the middle a
mountain which in my opinion must be the highest mountain in the
world after the Himalayas; then it descends rapidly towards the
mouth, which it largely obumbrates, like a tapir's snout or the
rostrum of a bird of prey; at the extremity it is divided by a line very
similar to, though more pronounced than, the furrow which cuts the
cherry lip of Anne of Austria, the white queen with the long ivory
hands. This makes two distinct noses in one face, which is more
than custom allows, ... the portraits of Saint Vincent de Paul and the
deacon Paris will show you the best characterized types of this sort
of structure; but Cyrano's nose is less doughy, less puffy in contour;
it has more bones and cartilage, more flats and high-lights, it is
more heroic."
 Cyrano de Bergerac.

We then learn that Cyrano was a wonderful duellist, that he

revenged any insult to his nose with a challenge; after more
disquisition on noses we read that Cyrano was "born in 1620, in the
castle of Bergerac, in Périgord"[10], that he was unable to endure
the pedantry of his schoolmaster and so that good country
gentleman, his father, allowed him to go to Paris, where at eighteen
he threw himself into fashionable life with the greatest success.
Then comes a highly-coloured picture of the contrast between life in
Paris in 1638 and the Bergerac family in their "tranquil and discreet
house, sober and cold, well ordered and silent, almost always half-
asleep in the shadow of its pallid walnut trees between the church
and the cemetery." This is followed by a defence of Cyrano against
the charge of atheism with a quotation from The Death of Agrippina.
Next we hear that this Gascon gentleman joined the Gascon
company of guards with Le Bret and of his numerous prowesses with
the sword, and this slides into a description of Cyrano's early
slashing style, with quotations from The Pedant Outwitted and the
story of the actor whom Cyrano forbade to play. This is followed by
several pages of excited panegyric, paraphrased from Le Bret; we
get Cyrano's wounds, his love of study, his disinterestedness, his
love of freedom and scorn of serving les grands, his subsequent
service with the duc d'Arpajon, the falling timber on his head and his
death; then we hear of his simple habits, his brilliant friendships and
his study under Gassendi. The essay ends with several pages,
dealing with Molière's famous plagiarism from The Pedant Outwitted
and containing a most exaggerated account of Cyrano's writings,
extremely loose in expression, showing that Gautier can have had
but a superficial acquaintance with Cyrano's books.
If this essay of Gautier's were meant as biography and criticism, one
can only say that it is likely to be misleading; if as fiction, that the
form is not well chosen. Nevertheless, this and Nodier's article
stimulated curiosity in Cyrano sufficiently to cause his works to be
reprinted in 1855. Lacroix in 1858 issued another edition and wrote
an enthusiastic preface (from the point of view of an ardent free-
thinker), making Cyrano a great predecessor of the 18th-century
philosophes and adding more legend.
After this, the legend of Cyrano smouldered for some forty years and
then broke out in a final conflagration in 1897, with Edmond
Rostand's Cyrano de Bergerac. Everything picturesque which fancy
and rumour had attached to the name of Cyrano during the
centuries was taken up by Rostand, exaggerated, idealised almost to
infinity—and the world believed, and doubtless still believes, that this
is the "real" Cyrano de Bergerac. Strangely, Rostand apparently
shared this illusion; for a French savant, M. Emile Magne, wrote a
pamphlet pointing out some of Rostand's worst errors, and Rostand
replied with a letter, claiming that his play was historically correct.
Rostand's play is a pleasing, if belated, specimen of the French
romantic drama; its dramatic quality is undeniable, its appeal to the
sentiments irresistible, its verse skilfully handled; it is
characteristically, delightfully, absurdly French; it deserved its
popularity. A man who cannot enjoy Rostand's Cyrano has taste too
fastidious for his own good. But when he has watched the heroic
lover of Roxanne fight his duels to the accompaniment of a ballade,
promenade his huge nose about the stage, exhibit the remarkable
delicacy of his sentiments and finally die a Gascon death—"mon
Panache!"—this imaginary spectator must not tell us that this is "the
real" Cyrano de Bergerac. It is an amusing Cyrano one would prefer
not to lose; but Rostand's invention has nothing to do with the man
who wrote the tragedy of The Death of Agrippina and The Voyages
to the Sun and Moon; this is not the young man who enlisted in M.
de Casteljaloux's company of guards; this is not the follower of
Gassendi and Rohault; and this delicate lover is—alas!—not that
Savinien de Cyrano, self-styled de Bergerac, who died miserably in
the prime of his age not so much from the effects of the falling piece
of timber as probably of venereal disease.
 II
THE LIFE OF CYRANO DE BERGERAC
The family of Cyrano was not Gascon and was not noble. The first
Cyrano of whom anything was known in France is Savinien I de
Cyrano, of Sardinian origin, bourgeois of Paris and a merchant of
fish. Doubtless the prejudice of noble birth is antiquated, yet when
one has been brought up on Rostand's Cyrano the discovery is a
shock, rather like finding that Sir Philip Sidney's grandfather was a
London fishmonger. But this is only the first of the disagreeable
surprises modern investigators prepare for us.
This Savinien, grandfather of the poet, became notary and
'secrétaire du Roy' in 1571. He was wealthy, he owned a large house
in the rue des Prouvaires, various annuities, the fiefs of
Boiboisseaux, Mauvières, and Bergerac, the last two bought in 1582.
These purchases represent a familiar scene in the eternal social
comedy of the rise and fall of families; the genuine old de Bergerac
family had disappeared but their memory lingered on and no
member of the Cyrano family ventured to call himself de Bergerac at
Bergerac. Indeed the poet was the only member of the family who
used the name either during the fifty-four years they possessed the
fief or afterwards. In any case this Bergerac is not the Dordogne or
Gascon Bergerac but a little estate not very far from Paris in the
modern department of Seine et Oise.[11] So much for the noble
Gascon of Gautier and Rostand.
This Savinien I de Cyrano married Anne Le Maire; their eldest son,
Abel I de Cyrano, 'avocat au Parlement de Paris,' married Espérance
Bellenger on the third of September 1612.[12] An inventory of their
goods shows that Cyrano's father was an educated man who read
Greek, Latin, and Italian. Abel de Cyrano had six children; the eldest
surviving son was Savinien II, the poet, baptised on the sixth of
March 1619 in Paris.
In 1622 Abel de Cyrano left Paris for his house at Mauvières, where
young Savinien de Cyrano remained "until he was old enough to
read". He was then sent to a small private school kept by a country
parson, where he met his lifelong friend and posthumous panegyrist,
Henry Le Bret. Savinien did not like his tutor; and this is not the first
or the last time in history when there has existed a mutual hatred
between a pert boy of talent and some plodding pedagogue. The
boy complained so continually to his father that he was taken away
from the parson and sent to the Collège de Beauvais in Paris.
These meagre details are all we know positively of Cyrano's
childhood except that his godmother left him six hundred livres in
1628. How much of the rebelliousness of his temper in later years
was due to hatred of this pedagogical parson is a matter of pure
conjecture, but Cyrano's dislike of pedants and priests might
plausibly be attributed at least in part to this man's clumsy usage.
We may also surmise that access to his father's extensive library
gave him that precocity for which he was remarkable, and that the
years of childhood spent at Mauvières created in him a genuine love
of nature. Numerous passages might be quoted from his writings to
show that he really liked out-of-doors life, enjoyed the beauty of the
country, and felt that kinship with wild living things—animals, birds,
plants—which is supposed to be a wholly modern sentiment. This
sentiment may be seen in the Letters, expressed with a good deal of
affectation; but unmistakably in those pages of The Voyage to the
Sun which describe the talking birds and trees.
The head-master of Beauvais was at that time Jean Grangier,
described by some as an excellent pedagogue, by others as brutal,
superstitious, violent, and vicious. Apparently he was one of those
pedagogues who, in Ben Jonson's words, "swept their livings from
the posteriors of little children"; and therefore was very unpopular
with Cyrano, who made him the hero of The Pedant Outwitted.
Flogging will always drive a sensitive and high-spirited boy to revolt;
and when we find a truculent and sometimes offensive mood of
revolt a main feature of Cyrano's work, we should remember before
condemning him that a large portion of his childhood was passed
under the birch of two bigoted pedants.
Cyrano left Beauvais in 1637, when he was eighteen. In the
preceding year Abel de Cyrano had sold the fiefs of Mauvières, and
Bergerac and had returned to Paris. This sale of land only fifty-four
years after the purchase by the first Savinien de Cyrano shows how
rapidly the affairs of the family declined financially. It would be
interesting to know more of Cyrano's life in the period between his
leaving school and joining the guards. Le Bret tells us that "at the
age when nature is most easily corrupted", and when Cyrano "had
liberty to do as he chose", he (Le Bret) stopped him "on a dangerous
incline". It will easily be conjectured that the change from a flogging
school to complete liberty in the Paris of 1637 would not incline a
precocious youth to the monastic virtues. Many fantastic pictures of
Paris under Louis XIII have been drawn by novelists and essayists;
whether it were quite as picturesque as they make out may be
doubted, but that its taverns were filled with riot, excitement and
debauch is certain; and Cyrano frequented the taverns. The famous
Pomme de Pin, the Croix de Lorraine, the Boisselière, the Pressoir
d'Or, and a dozen other taverns were crowded with heterogeneous
sets of courtiers, gentlemen, gossips, poets, atheists, duellists,
rogues of all sorts, talking, laughing, drinking, writing, whoring,
gambling and brawling. From Gaston d'Orléans, the King's brother,
downwards, the greater part of the nobility, gentry and the learned
at some time of their lives frequented these commodious taverns,
rubbed shoulders with knaves and bawds and poets and held high
carouse.

"Mordieu! comme il pleut là dehors!

Faisons pleuvoir dans nostre corps
Du vin, tu l'entens sans le dire,
Et c'est là le vray mot pour rire;
Chantons, rions, menons du bruit,
 Beuvons ici toute la nuit,
Tant que demain la belle Aurore
Nous trouve tous à table encore."[13]

Into that society of revellers, unscrupulous, heedless, coarse,

irreligious, but brave, witty, chivalrous, talented and merry, came a
young man of eighteen, the owner of a curious nose "shaped like a
parrot's beak", talented, witty and brave himself, already a brilliant
swordsman, scatter-brained, vain with all the vanity of young men in
Latin countries, eager for knowledge but filled with hatred for the
theology and pedantry of his early masters. Imagine the London of
James the First's reign so vividly and delightfully sketched in The
Fortunes of Nigel, adding to it that freedom of speech, morals and
speculation which Scott largely left out; transfer it to the turbulent
Paris of 1637 and throw into that milieu not a sober Scotch laird, but
a hot-headed young Frenchman. Is it not almost hypocritical to
expect that he would do anything different from what he apparently
did do: Drink, gamble, blaspheme, whore, talk atheism, play mad
pranks and slit men's throats in duels?
From this wild cabaret life Cyrano was rescued by Le Bret just about
the time when Abel de Cyrano threatened seriously to cut off
supplies. At nineteen Cyrano entered the company of guards
commanded by the "triple Gascon", M. de Carbon de Casteljaloux.
Cyrano de Bergerac was a good soldier, but that does not mean he
was free from the ordinary vices of soldiers. If the "dangerous
incline" from which Le Bret rescued his friend was gambling, he
chose a curious remedy; for gambling is inevitably one means of
dispelling the crushing ennui of military life. Another, almost
universal, military amusement is drinking; one would not expect to
find teetotallers among the Gascon guard. It seems probable that
the "dangerous incline" was atheism or a serious love affair; for the
military life is dulling to the affections and fatal to thought. Certainly,
the mess and guard-room of M. de Carbon de Casteljaloux's
company would not greatly differ from a noisy cabaret. One hardly
sees what moral advantages were gained by the change, except that
military discipline and comradeship probably steadied Cyrano if they
failed to correct the extravagance of his character and behaviour.
Casteljaloux's company consisted almost entirely of Gascons, and
this fact has helped to propagate the myth of Cyrano's noble birth;
and doubtless he assumed the Gascon-sounding name of de
Bergerac to increase the illusion. But he must have possessed some
other merit than that of an assumed name to enable him to enter
the guards; this was of course his swordsmanship.
Duelling in France in the first half of the 17th century was more than
a fashionable mania, it was a real danger to the state. The fashion
was at its height in the reigns of Henry IV and Louis XIII. During
eight years of the former reign no less than two thousand gentlemen
lost their lives in duels. Even the great Cardinal Richelieu only
succeeded in diminishing, not in crushing the habit. The duelling in
Rostand's Cyrano is the most accurate part of the play; indeed it
would be difficult to exaggerate the fantastic nature of these duels.
Men fought for the merest trifles; not so much for honour as for the
love of fighting, of prestige and notoriety. Successful duelling was
then a sure means to those commonly desired ends. The thirst for
"monomachy" was so ardent that the seconds were not content to
regulate the combat but must needs take part in it; so that a girl's
ribbon might be the pretext for six men to pull out their rapiers in
mortal combat, with the result perhaps of several wounds and more
than one death. Cyrano de Bergerac was a brilliant swordsman, a
talent which gave him a position comparable to that of an aeroplane
"ace" during the European war. The stories told of his duelling sound
fabulous and are probably exaggerated, but certainly have a
foundation in fact. Le Bret tells us:
"Duels, which at that time seemed the unique and most rapid means
of becoming known, in a few days rendered him so famous that the
Gascons, who composed nearly the whole company, considered him
the demon of courage and credited him with as many duels as he
had been with them days."
The most remarkable thing about these duels, and a point very
much in Cyrano's favour, was that he fought over a hundred as
second to other men and not on his own account. He was no
Bobadil. Brun tries to argue that Cyrano must have fought on his
own account, but even M. Lachèvre, who is hostile to Cyrano, denies
it. Moreover, we have Cyrano's own declaration: "I have been
everybody's second."
Casteljaloux's company was ordered for active service in 1639. The
company was besieged in Mouzon by the Croats of the Imperial
Army. Cyrano has described part of the siege in the twenty-fourth of
his Lettres Diverses. The garrison was short of provisions and during
one of the numerous sorties Cyrano was shot through the body. He
had not recovered when the garrison was relieved by Chatillon on
the twenty-first of June 1639. Next year Cyrano was again on active
service. He was wounded a second time by a sword-thrust in the
throat at the siege of Arras, sometime before the ninth of August
1640. He had served this campaign in Conti's gendarmes.
Two severe wounds in fourteen months are "cooling cards" even to a
pseudo-Gascon. Cyrano determined to retire from the service.
"The hardships he suffered during these two sieges," says Le Bret,
"the inconveniences resulting from two severe wounds, the frequent
duels forced upon him by his reputation for courage and skill, which
compelled him to act as second more than one hundred times (for
he never had a quarrel on his own account), the small hope he had
of preferment, from the lack of a patron, to whom his free genius
was incapable of submitting, and finally his great love of learning,
caused him to renounce the occupation of war which demands
everything of a man and makes him as much an enemy of literature
as literature makes him a lover of peace."
Cyrano, then, returned to his studies. Hitherto he had been
unfortunate in his instructors, but he now made the acquaintance of
several scholars and men of letters who had a strong influence on
him, whose ideas he adopted and copied in his works. The
celebrated Gassendi, who revived the philosophy of Epicurus and
opposed both the Aristotelians and Descartes, came to Paris and
lectured to a small number of selected students. Niceron makes the
unlikely assertion that Cyrano forced his way into this learned society
at the sword's point. It is certain that Cyrano sat at Gassendi's feet
and picked up from his lectures those fragments of Epicurean
physics he afterwards scattered through his works. There most
probably he met Molière, Rohault, Bernier, Chapelle and the younger
La Mothe Le Vayer. Cyrano was therefore a member of a
distinguished literary group which contained one eminent
philosopher and a dramatist of supreme genius.
Philosophy and the society of men of letters did not cause Cyrano to
abandon his sword. Two documents are extant, dated October 1641,
showing Cyrano's arrangements to take lessons in dancing and
fencing. It is in these years 1641-43 that he began seriously to write
and at the same time performed his most famous feats with the
sword.
The battle of the Porte de Nesle, more authentic and even more
heroic than the feats of Horatius celebrated by Lord Macaulay, has
been related by every writer on Cyrano, from Le Bret to Rostand,
from Gautier to M. Emile Magne. What happened, as far as one can
make out, was this. A friend of Cyrano's, the Chevalier de Lignières,
had been rash enough to banter the conjugal infelicities of a great
lord who, sensible of the affront to his person and rank, hired a set
of fellows to fall upon Lignières and to crop his ears in the public
highway. Lignières heard of this, took refuge with Cyrano and
remained with him until night, when they set out together for
Lignières's home with Cyrano as escort and two officers of Conti's
regiment as witnesses, in the rear. At the Porte de Nesle the bravi
were ambushed to catch Lignières on his way to the Faubourg Saint-
Germain; Le Bret says there were a hundred of them. In any event
there was a crowd. Incredible as it seems, the fact is well attested
that Cyrano attacked them all single-handed, killed two, wounded
seven and put the rest to flight.[14]
The battle of Brioché's monkey is less creditable to Cyrano and far
less authentic. The evidence is the unreliable one of an anonymous
work, Combat de Cyrano de Bergerac avec le Singe de Brioché, au
Bout du Pont-Neuf, almost certainly written by Dassoucy, a friend
with whom Cyrano had quarrelled. Dassoucy fled to Italy when the
pamphlet was published. The gist of the pamphlet is as follows:
One Brioché exhibited a marionette show near one end of the Pont-
Neuf. Among the troup was a live monkey.
Cyrano came along, and some thirty or forty lackeys, waiting for the
puppet show, began to hustle him and to make fun of his singular
appearance; one of them actually flipped him on the end of his nose.
Out came that deadly rapier in a flash, and the intrepid little "fiery
whoreson," rushed at them, driving the whole mob of them before
him. Brioché's monkey, "making a leg" for a sou, got in Cyrano's way
and the gallant swordsman, not unnaturally mistaking it for one of
the rabble, pierced it effectually with his rapier. Brioché brought an
action against Cyrano to recover fifty pistoles damages.
"Bergerac defended himself like Bergerac, that is, with facetious
writings and grotesque jokes. He told the judge he would pay
Brioché like a poet, or 'with monkey's money' (i.e. laugh at him);
that coins were an article of furniture unknown to Phœbus. He
vowed he would immortalise the dead beast in an Apollonian
epitaph."
It is possible that Dassoucy was merely parodying the battle of the
Porte de Nesle; none of the facetious writings referred to is extant;
but they may have perished with the elegy Le Bret saw Cyrano
writing in the guard-room and the Story of the Spark and Cyrano's
Lyric Poems.
The third anecdote attached to this period relates to the actor
Mondory or Montfleury, the latter of whom is satirised in Cyrano's
letter Against a Fat Man. The 1695 edition of the Menagiana gives
the story as follows:
"Bergerac was a great sword-clanker. His nose, which was very ugly,
was the cause of his killing at least ten people. He quarrelled with
Montdory, the comedian, and strictly forbade him to appear on the
stage. 'I forbid you to appear for a month', said he. Two days later
Bergerac was at the play. Montdory appeared and began to act his
part as usual; Bergerac shouted to him from the middle of the pit,
with threats if he did not leave, and for fear of worse Montdory
retired."[15]
The year 1645 in several respects opens a new phase in Cyrano's
life. His mother was dead, he began to suffer from poverty—due to
gambling it is said—and contracted a disease. There is a mystery
about the death of Cyrano de Bergerac and the "maladie" which
preceded it. M. Lachèvre has discovered a document showing the
payment of four hundred livres to a barber-chirurgeon by Cyrano
and, from circumstantial evidence we need not repeat, M. Lachèvre
asserts that this was venereal disease. If so, the moral philosopher
created by Le Bret disappears as completely as the delicate lover
invented by Rostand.
It is a remarkable fact that Cyrano did not make a serious
appearance in print until the year before his death, 1654. He wrote
earlier and published prefaces and commendatory poems; he
scribbled a few pamphlets and libels during the Fronde; but his
reputation as a writer during his lifetime must have been based on
the circulation of his writings in manuscript. The letters were not
published until 1654, but they must have been written much earlier;
The Pedant Outwitted does not seem to have been played, and The
Voyage to the Moon was circulated in manuscript for some years
before it was published.
The fact is we know very little about the last ten years of Cyrano's
life. Abel de Cyrano died in January 1648 and the poet's share of the
inheritance rescued him at least for a time from the poverty into
which he had fallen. In February 1649 there appeared an anti-
Mazarin pamphlet in verse, entitled Le Ministre d'Etat Flambé, signed
D. B. This was followed by several prose pamphlets directed against
Mazarin: Le Gazetier des Interressé, La Sybille Moderne ou l'Oracle
du Temps, Le Conseiller fidèle. Some have denied that these were
Cyrano's work; others are convinced to the contrary. If he did write
them he soon changed his political opinions; for in 1651 he
published his pro-Mazarin Contre les Frondeurs. One biographer
thinks Cyrano was bribed by Mazarin to change his politics; another
biographer thinks that since Cyrano undoubtedly wrote for Mazarin
he could never have written against him.
There is a legend that about this time Cyrano visited England, but
there is no confirmation of this.
Hitherto Cyrano had been too independent to enter the service of
any nobleman. We have noticed his refusal of the offers made him
by Marshal Gassion. Subjection to the whims of some wealthy
person of note was a misery endured by many authors of the 17th
century; Cyrano de Bergerac avoided it as long as he could, but
about the end of 1652 he entered the service of the duc d'Arpajon.
Saint-Simon in his usual contemptuous way calls this nobleman "Un
bonhomme"; he was a good soldier, religious, vain and probably not
very intelligent. Under his patronage Cyrano's works were printed in
two handsome quartos in 1654. They contained The Death of
Agrippina, The Pedant Outwitted, and The Letters. There was a
dedication to the duke and a charming sonnet to his daughter. The
success of these writings was considerable and their popular vogue
lasted at least half a century.
The death of Cyrano de Bergerac is surrounded with mystery. He
was only thirty-five when he died. Was this early death the result of
a disease, as M. Lachèvre asserts; or was it, as other commentators
say, the result of a blow on the head from a falling beam? If he were
hit by a piece of timber, was this an accident, or was it revenge? Had
Cyrano's very free philosophical speculations anything to do with it?
It is impossible to answer these questions definitely; each
commentator has replied to them according to his own prejudices.
The accident, if there were an accident, happened early in 1654. For
some unknown reason Cyrano was turned out of the Hôtel d'Arpajon
about this time. In June 1654 Cyrano was received into the house of
M. des Bois Clairs, with whom he remained for fourteen months until
a few days before his death. He then begged to be moved to a
house at Sannois, belonging to his cousin Pierre de Cyrano, where
he died on the 28th of July 1655. He was not buried in the convent
of the Filles de la Croix as the reference books say (this was his
brother Abel), but in the church of Sannois. He was converted to
Christianity on his death-bed, presumably by his sister, who was a
nun, and his friend Le Bret, the canon. A document is in existence
stating that "Savinien de Cyrano, escuier, sieur de Bergerac," died a
good Christian; it is dated the 28th of July 1655, and signed by the
parish priest, who owned the curious name of Cochon. That Cyrano,
like most of his contemporaries, yielded to a death-bed repentance
is probably true; it is equally true that he spent most of his life as a
free-thinker.
 III
CYRANO'S FRIENDS
Among Cyrano's military friends were two senior officers, M. de
Bourgogne (mestre de camp of the Prince de Conti's infantry) and
Marshal Gassion. They of course would know him simply as a brave
soldier in a company of dare-devils. More intimate soldier friends, of
a rank approaching his own, were Cavoye, brother of the celebrated
Cavoye killed at Lens; Hector de Brisailles, ensign in the Gendarmes
de Son Altesse Royale; Saint Gilles, captain in the same regiment;
Chasteaufort, whom Cyrano may have parodied in The Pedant
Outwitted. He also knew Le Bret's brother, a captain in Conti's
regiment; Duret de Montchenin and de Zeddé "braves de la plus
haute classe", and de Chavagne.
Le Bret also mentions the Comte de Brienne, M. des Billettes, M. de
Morlière.
The Comte de Brienne was the son of Louis XIII's minister; he was a
secretary of state, then an Oratorian; and he died mad. Gilles Fileau
des Billettes, brother of the Abbé de la Chaise, was "one of the most
learned men of his day." Adrien de Morlière was a famous
genealogist. Longueville-Gontier, also mentioned by Le Bret, was a
"Conseiller au Parlement". Cyrano appears to have been friendly with
the translator, Michel de Marolles, who has recorded in his Mémoires
the fact that Cyrano sent him copies of The Death of Agrippina and
The Voyage to the Moon.
After these respectable gentlemen we come to a more varied group
of Cyrano's friends, most of whom are not mentioned by Le Bret, but
who interest us more. Some of them were perhaps picked up in
taverns; others he met in the course of his studies; others were
congenial men of letters.
Three especially influenced Cyrano in his serious studies, particularly
in philosophy and physics, and confirmed his natural tendency
towards rationalism and scepticism by furnishing him with the
knowledge and arguments he lacked. Chief among these was the
celebrated Gassendi, who was born in 1592 and died in the same
year as Cyrano, 1655. Gassendi was trained as an Aristotelian, but
drew away from the school and followed with special interest the
researches of Galileo and Kepler. He opposed Descartes. He is
principally remembered for his revival of Epicurus, of the Epicurean
physics and morals, and of Lucretius. Three translations of Lucretius
were made as a result of his influence, one by Molière, one by
Chapelle, one by Dehénault (all three friends of Cyrano) and,
remarkably enough, all three of these translations have disappeared.
Gassendi exerted a considerable influence over all the intellectual
freethinkers of his age, and Cyrano de Bergerac was especially
indebted to him. Gassendi's exposition of the Epicurean theory of
atoms, his own ideas about "calor vitalis" and "anima mundi", will be
found freely copied in The Voyages; while Gassendi's favourite
principle "nihil in intellectu quod non prius fuerit in sensu" made a
deep impression upon Cyrano's mind.
Gassendi's lessons in physics were supported in Cyrano's memory by
his friendship with Jacques Rohault (1620-75). Rohault was a
mathematician, a pupil of Gassendi, but strongly influenced by
Descartes. He wrote a treatise on physics which has so much in
common with the fragments of Cyrano's treatise and the ideas
expressed in The Voyages that at one time Rohault was supposed to
have plagiarised from Cyrano. It is now almost conclusively proved
that the opposite is true.
It is difficult to say what relations Cyrano had with the elder La
Mothe Le Vayer (1583-1672). We know that he met his son at
Gassendi's lectures. Old Le Vayer was a famous sceptic and in many
ways a remarkable personality. Like many sceptics he lived to be
immensely old, was highly respected for his erudition and, though he
never seems to have been worried by the clergy, was the reverse of
orthodox. His position in 17th-century Paris is interesting; he was
Welcome to our website – the ideal destination for book lovers and
knowledge seekers. With a mission to inspire endlessly, we offer a
vast collection of books, ranging from classic literary works to
specialized publications, self-development books, and children's
literature. Each book is a new journey of discovery, expanding
knowledge and enriching the soul of the reade

Our website is not just a platform for buying books, but a bridge
connecting readers to the timeless values of culture and wisdom. With
an elegant, user-friendly interface and an intelligent search system,
we are committed to providing a quick and convenient shopping
experience. Additionally, our special promotions and home delivery
services ensure that you save time and fully enjoy the joy of reading.

Let us accompany you on the journey of exploring knowledge and

personal growth!

ebookmass.com