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Cyrano distills the most radical ideas of his time into a potent literary liqueur.
--
Donald Webb in "The Time Traveler from The Other World" (2003) the introduction to his translation of L’Autre Monde ou les états et empires de la lune.

 

Cyrano de Bergerac

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Valvert: Villain, clod-poll, flat-foot, refuse of the earth!
Cyrano: [taking off his hat and bowing as if the Vicomte had been introducing himself] Ah? ... And mine, Cyrano-Savinien-Hercule of Bergerac!
Valvert: [exasperated] Buffoon!
Cyrano: [giving a sudden cry, as if seized with a cramp] A?! ...
Valvert: [who had started toward the back, turning] What is he saying now?
Cyrano: [screwing his face as if in pain] It must have leave to stir ... it has a cramp! It is bad for it to be kept still so long!
Valvert: What is the matter?
Cyrano: My rapier prickles like a foot asleep!
Valvert: [drawing] So be it!
Cyrano: I shall give you a charming little hurt!
Valvert: [contemptous] Poet!
Cyrano: Yes, a poet, ... and, to such an extent, that while we fence, I will, hop!, extempore, compose you a ballade!
Valvert: A ballade?
Cyrano: I fear you do not know what that is.
Valvert: But ...
Cyrano: [as if saying a lesson] The ballade is composed of three stanzas of eight lines each ...
Valvert: [stamps with his feet] Oh!
Cyrano: [continuing] And an envoi of four.
Valvert: You ...
Cyrano: I will with the same breath fight you and compose one. And, at the last line, I will hit you.

 

Edmond Rostand

 

He had a great capacity to arouse irrational hatred obviously, and that's because his ideas were radical in the most extreme sense of the word "radical." His ideas have something to offend everybody, and he ended up becoming the only heretic in American history whose books were literally burned by the government.
Timothy Leary spent five years in prison for unorthodox scientific ideas. Ezra Pound spent 13 years in a nuthouse for unorthodox political and economic ideas. Their books were not burned.
Reich was not only thrown in prison, but they chopped up all the scientific equipment in his laboratory with axes and burned all of his books in an incinerator. Now that interests me as a civil liberties issue.
When I started studying Reich's works, I went through a period of enthusiasm, followed by a period of skepticism, followed by a period of just continued interest, but I think a lot of his ideas probably were sound. A lot probably were unsound. And, I'm not a Reichian in the sense of somebody who thinks he was the greatest scientist who ever lived and discovered the basic secrets of psychology, physics and everything else, all in one lifetime. But I think he has enough sound ideas that his unpopular ideas deserve further investigation.

 

Wilhelm Reich

 

The Communist revolution is the most radical rupture with traditional property relations; no wonder that its development involves the most radical rupture with traditional ideas.

 

Karl Marx

 

I suspect that the playwright Edmond Rostand accurately portrays his ability as a swordsman; Cyrano was something of a legend in his own time.

 

Cyrano de Bergerac

 

Ideas are dangerous, but the man to whom they are least dangerous is the man of ideas. He is acquainted with ideas, and moves among them like a lion-tamer. Ideas are dangerous, but the man to whom they are most dangerous is the man of no ideas. The man of no ideas will find the first idea fly to his head like wine to the head of a teetotaller. It is a common error, I think, among the Radical idealists of my own party and period to suggest that financiers and business men are a danger to the empire because they are so sordid or so materialistic. The truth is that financiers and business men are a danger to the empire because they can be sentimental about any sentiment, and idealistic about any ideal, any ideal that they find lying about, just as a boy who has not known much of women is apt too easily to take a woman for the woman, so these practical men, unaccustomed to causes, are always inclined to think that if a thing is proved to be an ideal it is proved to be the ideal.

 

Gilbert Keith Chesterton