Balcony Scene from Cyrano de Bergerac
by Steven Monte, translated from Edmond Rosand
CYRANO, pulling Christian under the balcony and taking his place
Let me do the talking now. Shh!
ROXANE
Are you all right?
Your words seem hesitant. Why?
CYRANO
Because it’s night.
They’re tapping in this darkness, searching for your ear.
ROXANE
But mine have no such obstacle, it would appear.
CYRANO
Because they find me instantly? But that makes sense.
After all, I take them to heart through every sense.
And my heart’s big, Roxane; your ear is petite.
Besides, your words descend; they fall and pick up speed.
Mine need more time because they’re coming from below.
ROXANE
They’ve been coming fast the last minute or so!
CYRANO
They must be getting used to jumping higher tonight!
ROXANE
Am I addressing you from so lofty a height?
CYRANO
Yes, and if you were to let a hard word fall from there, you’d crush
me! You could murder me with puffs of air!
ROXANE, making a movement
I’ll come down.
CYRANO, urgently
No!
ROXANE
Climb the bench, then. Come up here!
CYRANO, stepping back into the shadows
No!
ROXANE
But . . . why not?
CYRANO, increasingly overcome with emotion
Tonight so much is coming clear.
You and I should take this time to talk with each other
under the cover of the evening.
ROXANE
Why the cover?
CYRANO
It is amazing. We can barely see each other.
You see the blackness of a dragging cloak at best
and I can only see the whiteness of your dress.
I’m a shadow; you’re a patch of light! … I can’t express
what all this means… I never thought it could occur.
And if I have been eloquent before…
ROXANE
Yes, you were!
CYRANO
Till now, there have been things I would never allow
myself to speak of.
ROXANE
Why is that?
CYRANO
Because till now
I’ve always spoken through the…
ROXANE
Through?
CYRANO
…the vertigo
you give to everyone. I feel I’m letting go
for the first time tonight and saying what I’ve meant.
ROXANE
It’s true that your voice sounds completely different.
CYRANO
The night’s protecting me—and so I dare to try
to be myself… and dare to tell you… Where was I?
Pardon me… All I have held back is breaking through…
and it is overwhelming! … and it is all so new!
ROXANE
New?
CYRANO
Yes, new… to overcome anxieties
of being laughed at. In that respect, to feel at ease.
ROXANE
Laughed at for what?
CYRANO
For… for outbursts like these!
I always hide my heart in my wit out of fear.
I go to gather stars, but stop and fall back here
to gather little phrases into a bouquet.
ROXANE
Those phrases have their charm.
CYRANO
Let’s put aside that play
tonight at least!
ROXANE
You’ve never spoken in this way!
CYRANO
Instead of Cupid’s arrows, flames, and sufferings,
we would do better to appeal to… fresher things.
Rather than sipping our affection from some old
stale pool of feelings, out of thimbles made of gold,
if only we’d allow our inmost souls to sing
quenching our thirst by drinking deeply from love’s spring!
ROXANE
And wit?
CYRANO
At first I used it so you’d stay, but somehow
continuing like that would be an insult now.
This night, these fragrances, this hour would be marred
if we spoke like courtiers or someone’s calling card.
A glance at the stars in the sky should be enough
to dissuade us from artificial things in love.
For all our alchemy, I fear that feelings may
evaporate or simply slowly drift away,
that the soul empties out, and that too much appealing
to finer sentiments refines away true feeling.
ROXANE
And wit?
CYRANO
In love, at least, I hate it! It seems wrong,
when love is real, to spar with words for very long.
Inevitably, after all, the moment arrives
—and I pity those who won’t feel this in their lives—
when we must sense a love to which words hardly add
and every pretty word we utter makes us sad.
ROXANE
And if this moment has arrived, as you suppose,
what words can you use?
CYRANO
All those, all those, all those
that come to me: I’d gather them into a heap
instead of a bouquet. I love you; I could weep
I love you so much… to the point where I’m unwell.
Your name is hanging in my heart like a bell,
and all the time, Roxane, I know I’m trembling
since all the time the bell is ringing out its ring!
I can recall so many things you do and say:
I know that, last year, on the seventeenth of May,
to go out early, you changed how you wore your hair…
Your hair is like a guiding light—it’s always there—
and when I have to turn away from it—like one
who has been gazing so intently at the sun
that now the whole world seems a kind of reddish thing—
I still perceive a tinge of gold on everything.
ROXANE, in a quavering voice
Yes, that is love…
CYRANO
Whatever’s overwhelming me,
this jealous, merciless emotion, has to be
a kind of love. For it contains the violence
and melancholy of it, and hasn’t any sense
of selfishness: I’d trade my happiness for yours!
—Even if you would never come to know its source,
as long as, from a distance, I could sometimes see
the tiny happiness brought to the world by me!
Whenever our eyes meet, Roxane, my head is spinning
and yet I feel a kind of strength. Are you beginning
to understand? To grasp the full sense of my meaning?
My soul is rising. Can you sense it as you’re leaning
over the balcony? Can all of this be true?
I’m saying this. And you are listening… me… you…
It’s too much! In the most unbridled of my dreams
I didn’t dream this! All that’s left for me, it seems,
is to die, Roxane! Because of what I’m saying now—
because of these words—your soul is trembling on this bough!
You’re trembling like the leaves the moonlight passes through!
You’re trembling. For whether or not you wished me to,
I can feel the shaking of your hands through this tree
descending through its jasmine branches down to me!
ROXANE
Yes, I am trembling and I’m crying and I’m yours!
I’m dizzy! …
CYRANO
I could die now, Roxane: all the pores
of your soul are open—and I’m the cause of this!
There’s only one more thing I could ask for…
CHRISTIAN
A kiss!
ROXANE
What?
CYRANO
I…
ROXANE
You could ask for…?
CYRANO, to Christian
Show some tact!
CHRISTIAN
She’s dizzy; I have to take advantage of that fact!
CYRANO, to Roxane
I asked for… I asked you for a kiss. That is true.
But now I can see that I was too bold with you.
ROXANE, a little disappointed
You don’t and won’t insist on it, then?
CYRANO
No, I do,
but not insistently! It’s just… your modesty…
The kiss I asked you for… Don’t offer it to me!
CHRISTIAN, tugging at Cyrano’s cloak
Why not?
CYRANO
Be quiet, Christian!
ROXANE, leaning forward
What did you just say?
CYRANO
I scolded myself for getting carried away.
I said, “Be quiet, Christian!” … Someone’s coming this way! [Roxane goes inside and closes the glass doors.]
CHRISTIAN
Get me that kiss!
CYRANO
No!
CHRISTIAN
It’s going to happen…
CYRANO
True.
Sooner or later, it will happen to you two:
your mouths will be drawn toward the moment of your bliss
because of your moustache and because of her lips.
I’d rather it were…
ROXANE, coming out onto the balcony
Are you down there in the street?
We were speaking of… of… of a…
CYRANO
Kiss. The word is sweet.
And what will kissing do if the word burns so much?
Now you are hesitating. Why? It’s just a touch.
You shouldn’t make it out to be some fearful thing.
Already you have freed yourself from bantering,
allowing yourself to drift almost past your fears—
from smiles to sighs, then all the way from sighs to tears!
Let yourself drift over to that unconsciousness:
it only takes a shiver to cross into a kiss!
ROXANE
Oh stop! Stop speaking now!
CYRANO
What’s a kiss at its core?
A vow made at close range; a promise that is more
precise; a confession that wants to be sealed “true”;
a dot on the “i” in the phrase “in love with you”;
a secret that the mouth takes in, not the ear;
an instant that’s infinite, in which one can hear
a hum like bees; a peerless flower’s hues and smells;
a way of breathing something from the heart of someone else
and tasting on the lips a part of someone’s soul!
ROXANE
Stop!
CYRANO
Kisses, Roxane, are so noble and so whole
the Queen of France once let an English lord forego
propriety and kiss her! The queen!
ROXANE
If that is so…
CYRANO, becoming more impassioned
And I am like Buckingham, for I have suffered through
my pains in silence, and I love the queen in you.
I’m faithful, sad…
ROXANE
And you resemble him a lot
in your beauty.
CYRANO, aside, abruptly sobered
True. I’m handsome. I almost forgot.
ROXANE
So cull this flower without parallel with me!
CYRANO, pushing Christian toward the balcony
Climb!
ROXANE
This hum…
CYRANO
Climb!
ROXANE
This instant of infinity…
CYRANO
Climb!
CHRISTIAN, hesitating
Somehow now it almost seems to me a crime.
ROXANE
This secret…
CYRANO, pushing Christian
Climb!
ABOUT THE CREATOR
Steven Monte is an English professor at CUNY. His scholarly writing is on Renaissance, Romantic, and modern poetry, including his books The Secret Architecture of Shakespeare’s Sonnets (2021) and Victor Hugo: Selected Poetry in French and English (2001, 2002). He has also published verse translations and his own poetry in a variety of journals, including The Paris Review, The Boston Review, Literary Imagination, Think, and TriQuarterly. He lives and runs marathons in New York City.