Voyages to the Moon and the Sun

by Cyrano de Bergerac

APPENDIX I

Bishop Godwin—Tom d'Urfey—Swift

To give full extracts from all the books copied by or copied from Cyrano de Bergerac would make a volume. In the notes or the introduction attention has already been called to Cyrano's greater or less indebtedness to Lucian, Rabelais, Sorel, Gassendi, Descartes, Rohault and other writers. His borrowing from Bishop Godwin's Man in the Moon is considerable. This pamphlet is included in the Harleian Miscellany (1810) vol. xi. The hero is a Spaniard, Domingo Gonsales, who manufactures a flying machine, drawn by "gansas," or wild geese, in which he is carried to the moon. There is a certain amount of scientific disquisition upon gravity and a rebuke to those who reject the Copernican system of astronomy; which corresponds with Cyrano's talk with the governor of New France. Other points in common may be tabulated:

1. Gonsales does not feel hungry on his voyage "on account of the purity of the air".

2. He sees the earth turning beneath him.

3. Everything in the moon is larger than in the earth and the people are "generally twice as high as ours"; they "live wonderful long", "a thousand years".

4. They fan themselves rapidly through the air; the "attraction" of the moon's earth is much less than ours.

5. A paragraph about sleep seems to have inspired Cyrano with his beds of flowers and tickling attendants.

6. "Their language is very difficult, since it hath no affinity with any other I ever heard, and consists not so much of words and letters, as tunes and strange sounds, which no letters can express; for there are few words but signify several things.... Yea, many words consist of tunes only without words, by occasion whereof I find a language may be framed, and easily learned, as copious as any other in the world, only of tunes, which is an experiment worth searching after."

This pamphlet was published in England in 1638 and translated into French in 1648.

Tom d'Urfey's Wonders in the Sun or the Kingdom of the Birds (London, 1706) is obviously inspired by Cyrano's Voyages (without acknowledgment). There are characters taken from Cyrano: the main situation is the trial before the court of birds and whole slices of the prose dialogues are simply a translation. Characters are Domingo Gonzales and Diego his man; the Daemon of Socrates; all with leading parts; and King Dove. The other bird-characters are ingenious and Tom's own. Here is an extract from Act I, scene 1:

Daemon: Two thousand Years and upwards since the Death of that Philosopher I've carefully Employ'd in Art's Improvement, I first in Thebes Taught wise Epaminondas, then turning over to the Roman side Espous'd the Party of the younger Cato.

Gonzales: The world admir'd your fame, the Learned Cardan still doted on your Tenets.

Daemon: He had reason. I Taught him many things. Trithmethius too, Cæzar, La Brosse and the occult Agrippa were all my Pupils, beside a new Cabal of Wise young Men, vulgarly called the Rosa-crucian Knights, those were, should I dilate their Virtues fully, the very Keys of the locks of Nature.

Gonzales: Gossendus too in France, and Campanella were under your instruction.

That is almost word for word from the Moon. In the same scene occurs this:

Gonzales: Well, and pray, Sir, your Philosophers, what must they feed on?

Daemon: Steams, luscious Fumes, rich edifying Smoak.

The next scene contains a translation of Cyrano's notion of the dignity of walking on all fours. Acts II and III furnish other parallels; but in Act IV, the trial scene is very closely imitated from Cyrano's trial in the History of the Birds in The Sun. The speech of the prosecution is almost a word for word translation; the sentence is the same and the prisoners are rescued by a parrot named "Cæzar"! (See The Sun.)

It has long been recognised that Gulliver's Travels owes quite as much to Cyrano de Bergerac as to any other book. The resemblance is rather one of general ideas, taken up and exploited by Swift, than of parallel passages. One passage in the Voyage to Lilliput, chapter VI, is taken directly from Cyrano:

"Their notions relating to the duties of parents and children differ extremely from ours. For, since the conjunction of male and female is founded upon the great law of Nature, in order to propagate and continue the species, the Lilliputians will needs have it that men and women are joined together, like other animals, by the motives of concupiscence; and that their tenderness towards their young proceeds from the like natural principle: for which reason they will never allow that a child is under any obligation to his father for begetting him, or to his mother for bringing him into the world, which, considering the miseries of human life, was neither a benefit in itself, nor intended so by his parents, whose thoughts in their love encounters were otherwise employed. Upon these and the like reasoning, their opinion is, that parents are the last of all others to be trusted with the education of their own children: and therefore they have in every town public nurseries, where all parents, except cottagers and labourers, are obliged to send their infants of both sexes to be reared and educated, when they come to the age of twenty moons, at which time they are supposed to have some rudiments of docility." (See The Moon.)

Chapter II of the Voyage to Brobdingnag has a strong likeness to those parts of Cyrano's Moon describing how he was showed by a mountebank. The flashing swords in chapter VII, the king's desire to "propagate the breed" in chapter VIII, even the adventure with the monkey, may have been suggested by Cyrano. As to the "Houyhnhnms", the device of satirising and shaming man by showing him to be inferior in virtues to the very beasts is a favourite one of Cyrano. The scenes with the birds and trees in the Sun and some of the philosophical conversations in the Moon may be referred to for confirmation of this. There can be little doubt that Swift read Cyrano de Bergerac closely and frequently built upon what the French writer had done or took up and developed better the hint of some idea. The unity of Swift's purpose, the even tone of his prose, the strong air of common sense, the Defoe-like illusion of reality, are all in sharp contrast with Cyrano's wandering fancies, varying styles, extravagance and lack of common sense.