Wandering Along the Path: Right Speech

As a kid I devoured French romantic novels.  I adored Victor Hugo (still do), especially Les Miserables and The Hunchback of Notre Dame.  I also loved Alexandre Dumas and his tales "The Three Muskateers", "The Man in the Iron Mask" and "The Count of Monte Christo".  I read them over and over.  I also worshiped "Cyrano de Bergerac" by Edmund Rostand, and a movie version came out that I think I saw, with Jose Ferrer as Cyrano.  I own a French film of the play with Gerard Depardieu. 

I identified with Cyrano because he wasn't a good looking person, but was a verbal wit, smart, and full of heart.  I saw myself along those lines.  I already knew I wasn't going to grow up to be Roxanne.  And I wasn't going to get the guys she did.  Because even Cyrano wanted beauty, not wit.  It was an object lesson.  Sure, in the end she says it was his words she fell in love with.  But let's face it, her devotion to words was never even tested really.  The package was a gorgeous guy and the poetry the coup de grace, so the actual percentage of hormones to literary elevation is suspicious, to say the least.

How powerful are words?  Well, I've lived my life believing in them, as I've taught English and literature and written all my life.  The play "Cyrano" would have us trusting that a swordsman with words was deeper and finer than the ordinary person.  The shy and tongue tied may love, but without the glory of transcendence.  But we all have met wordsmiths who are deceitful and manipulative.  The "used car salesman" syndrome.  In my generation we were warned about the guy who could charm our pants off. 

So much as I still love the language of the play, I doubt that the message is particularly useful.  It's meant to have us see beyond superficial beauty, yet even the mighty Cyrano falls for prettiness.  Had he grown up, picked a Jane Eyre type librarian, he might have been truly happy, but his love is possible only as a dream.  It's Romeo and Juliet for adolescents.  Enjoy the lines, but beware what it appears to teach us.  Language itself is a lure of beauty, not necessarily substance.