A Voyage to the Moon

Cf. the play of Cyrano de Bergerac, act III., scene xi.: "Or else, mechanic as well as artificer, I could have fashioned a giant grasshopper, with steel joints, which, impelled by successive explosions of saltpetre, would have hopped with me to the azure meadows where graze the starry flocks."

23

Cf., in the play, the fifth of Cyrano's means for scaling the sky: "Since Phoebe, the moon-goddess, when she is at wane, is greedy, O beeves! of your marrow… with that marrow have besmeared myself!"

24

The translator has apparently misread biaisais where the French editions have baissais: i. e., I was descending toward the moon.

25

"That place was," unquestionably, the Garden of Eden, which Cyrano heretically locates in the Moon; and the "Tree" turough which he has fallen, and an "Apple" of which has besmeared his face and recalled him to life, is the Tree of Life, that stood "in the midst of the garden."

This is the first of a series of hiatuses, which occur in all the French editions as well as the English, and which are marked by those stars that Cyrano refers to in the play: "But I intend setting all this down in a book, and the golden stars I have brought back caught in my shaggy mantle, when the book is printed, will be seen serving as asterisks."

Lebret speaks of these gaps in his preface, saying he would have tried to fill them but for fear of mixing his style with Cyrano's: "For the melancholy colour of my style will not let me imitate the gayety of his; nor can my Wit follow the fine flights of his Imagination."

It seems altogether improbable, however, that Cyrano himself left the work thus incomplete, as Lebret would imply. And in fact we can supply from a Manuscript recently acquired (1890) by the Bibliothèque Nationale, a long passage not printed by Lebret (see pp. 60 ff. (#FNanchor_15_44)). There can be little doubt that the passages were deliberately cut out by some one on account of their "heretical" character. It even seems probable, from passages at the beginning of the Voyage to the Sun, that when the work was circulated in Manuscript, Cyrano had been the object of persecution on account of them.

The passages lacking were cut out then but by whom? The usually accepted opinion is that of our English translator, who says the gaps are "occasioned, not by the Negligence of our Witty French Author, but by the accursed Plagiary of some rude Hand, that in his sickness rifted his Trunks and stole his Papers, as he himself complains." M. Brun has suggested, however, and with some plausibility, that Lebret himself was responsible for the omissions; and that he thus continued, after Cyrano's death, his lifelong attempts at reforming and toning down the impolitic, unorthodox notions of his too-independent friend. So Cyrano was conquered once more in his battle with "les Compromis, les Préjugés, les Lâchètes," and finally "la Sottise":

"Je sais bien qu' à la fin vous me mettrez à bas;
N'importe! je me bats, je me bats, je me bats!"

We are proud of printing for the first time in any edition of the Voyage to the Moon, at least a part of what had been cut out; and of being able to indicate for the first time what must have been the substance of the other lost passages, and what is the sense of the fragments preserved.

26

The Apple of the Tree of Life.

27

The translation is not fully adequate here; the French means: "… was fully satisfied, and left me in its place only a slight memory of having lost it."

28

This beautiful Nature-description, the like of which cannot be found in all seventeenth-century French literature outside of Cyrano's works, was apparently his favorite passage, since it is the only one he has used twice. Cf. his Lettre XI., "D'une maison de campagne."

29

In the literal sense, full of delight, delighted.

30

"Quality" = title– as often in the seventeenth century; cf. Shakspere, Henry V.:

"Gentlemen of blood and quality."

31

Probably a long passage has been lost here, in which the "Youth" (the Prophet Elijah, who had "translated" himself hither and become young by eating of the Tree of Life) describes the place where they are as the original Garden of Eden; and tells of the Creation, the Fall, and the Banishment of Adam and Eve. At the beginning of the next paragraph he is still speaking, and telling of Adam's transference from the Moon to the Earth.

32

The woman to the man, from whose side she was taken. Probably only a few words have been omitted at the last hiatus.

33

The supposed situation of the Earthly Paradise.

34

Adam and Eve.

35

We may imagine this a short hiatus, to be filled in as follows: "He suffered a few ages after that, that a holy man, whose name was Enoch, cloyed with the company of men…" etc.

36

Enoch. On his translation, which Cyrano here makes Elijah account for, see Genesis, chapter v.

37

Adam. Cyrano may possibly have confused the Enoch who was translated with another Enoch who was the son of Cain and so grandson of Adam. But it is more probable that he used the word aïeul in its common sense of ancestor; as indeed "grandfather" was used in old English.

38

Cf. the play: "Since smoke by its nature ascends, I could have blown into an appropriate globe a sufficient quantity to ascend with me."

39

"Qu'il prit congé de ses nageoires," = "when he abandoned his floats (or bladders)."

40

Cyrano may here be credited with anticipating the idea of the parachute.

41

Elijah, The passage referred to is lost.

42

Spell the name backward.

43

Ball Cf. Bowling. Cf. also p. 177 (#p_177).