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Updated review with notes on a few available English translations.


This is the most beautiful and most heartbreaking love story ever. I have watched the movie with Gérard Depardieu in the title role a million times, I have seen stage performances of it. It never fails to make me laugh and turn me into a sobbing mess by the last line.

Cyrano is the best swordsman of Paris; he is also the city’s greatest poet. He is as grand in deeds as he is in words, refuses prestige and the limelight, preferring to keep to himself with his poems and the regiment he leads for company. He also feels doomed to be forever alone because he has a really, really big nose: he has loved his lovely cousin Roxane from afar for years, but has never dared to declare himself for fear that she will find his appearance ridiculous.

Roxane is beautiful, elegant and witty, but she is shallow: she is in love with the Baron Christian de Neuvillette, who is handsome, but lacks the eloquence to woo her the way she wants to be wooed. So Cyrano hatches a plan: he will write Roxane beautiful poetry, expressing the passionate feelings he arbours for her, and Christian will deliver the love notes and reap the rewards.

The speeches in this play are breathtaking with spirit, humour and wit. The original French version has an almost musical rhythm to every line. The characters are larger than life, passionate and deeply human: all three main characters are absolutely bad-asses in their own way.

This play is a pure delight, to be read and re-read again and again and I cannot recommend it enough.

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Thoughts about a few English translations. Feel free to skip.

French is my first language so when a book is originally written in French, I read the original. Having read a few books both in English and in French (namely Du Maurier and Kerouac, of all things), I am all too aware of how easily you can lose subtle things in the translation process and how that can often result in reading a book that simply doesn't carry the same flavor as the original. "Cyrano" was written in alexandrine verses, which is probably a terrifying prospect for any translator, especially if you want to keep the tone intact. This is a play about love, passion, sacrifice and strong characters: if the translator can't carry those things in his version, it just doesn't work. So out of curiosity and stubbornness, I combed bookstores for not one but THREE different English translations of my favorite play to try and figure out which one comes closest to Rostand's original words. Bear in mind that I have read and seen "Cyrano" a hundred time and basically know most of it by heart.

Everybody recommended the Brian Hooker version, which I ended up finding a little bland, despite it being regarded as the "standard" English version. Hooker was himself a poet, and he tried to keep things as lyrical as he could, but the speeches don't read as fluidly as I had hoped.

Then I read Carol Clark's version: she provides a really interesting introduction and notes on translation (oh, Penguin Classics editions and all your scholarly extra material, how I love thee!) which digs into the various challenges of preserving the energy and spirit of the play. That version was more dynamic than the Hooker translation, but a few turns of phrases felt like snags in an otherwise smooth ride. Good, but not quite right.

I then realized that Anthony Burgess (yes, THE Anthony Burgess) had also translated "Cyrano", and adapted it for the modern stage. I hunted that version down because Burgess is a wizard with words and I just had to see how he worked with Rostand's. In his introduction, he mentions that part of the difficulty in translating this play has to do with the fundamental difference between translating a poem and translating a play, which is invariably meant to be spoken out loud and performed by actors. Sure, you have to respect the original work, but you also have to think of the actors and the audience: they need to understand what's going on, and they need to have the proper reactions. He points out that Rostand's play has many comedic elements in French, that the Hooker translation, which sticks very faithfully to the original words, doesn't convey - hence why it reads a bit dryly. Cyrano is a witty man who makes fun of his adversaries and what sounds ironic in French will not necessarily sound ironic in English; you need to shift ever so slightly to convey the right vibe.

In my opinion, Burgess' version is the best English translation, because its the one that "feels" the most like the original. The rhythm and delivery are preserved, as are the shift from funny to poignant and romantic.