whimsicality & capriciousness

The detail as a prototype for situation’s attributive features can be easily found in the use of respective phraseology. One of such details is [PLAMA ‘SPOT’] that from the noticed deficiency becomes the symbolic feature of spoiled honor.

In opposite to the infernal world’s map where there is no place for aspirations and desperation determines the vital verve it is the fairy worlds of imagination displaying the opportunities of exerting impact upon this scenery with one’s own responsibility. That is why here intention gains much more importance. This opposite side of world’s vision can be found in fairy images where one returns to infantile inventiveness that becomes also the playground for experimental exploration of soul. To show semantic derivation caused with referential net of separate utterances one would choose E. Rostand’s legacy especially due to the outspoken conventionality of his plays. Moreover the very events function within these plays as demonstrative examples and pretexts to express rhetoric eloquence. Especially this is peculiar for the temporality and spatiality of such dramas as “Syrano de Bergerac”, where the unique inversion of myth of Don Juan is represented, “The Princess Long” (more known in the translation as “The Princess Dream”) - also inverted myth of Tristan, “Chanticleer” - the ornithological allegory of society with the mythology of solar cult, which revives the genre of “dramas - proverbs”. These texts are interesting also due to the fact that they gave birth to whole subculture due to the very free translations made by T. L Shchepkina – Kupernik. In particular, precisely, because of these translations the image of the Princess Dream appeared, since in the original the heroine is named lointaine ‘distant’ - in the same sense, into which a similar epithet it is used in the known vocal cycle “An die ferne Geliebte” ‘To the Far Beloved’ by L. Beethoven. This subculture gave birth to the special idiolect, which requires the separate study. As it was asserted in the final lines of sonnet A. Alafuzova – in the unique obituary in memoriam to Rostand, «Умей хранить мечту прекрасной / И зацветут зимою розы» [Заборов, 1991, 252] ‘know how to store the dream of excellence /and the roses will bloom in winter’. Meanwhile these once “flourishing” sensations and emotions now have become unavailable without a special commentary.

It can be substantiated best of all with the development of the attitudes of the main heroine of drama toward Bertrand - envoy Geoffroy, represented the 2nd and 3d monologue, first of all, in the dialogues with her alter ego – Sorismonde. While explaining her feelings (scene 3, monologue 2), Melissinde, first of all, shows that she is burdened with her position: «Manteau brodé, stellé, gemmé, toi qui m’écrase / … O somptueux manteau, tu me sembles l’emblème / D’un autre que je porte et qu’on ne peut pas voir / Et qui me pèse encor, quand je t’ai laissé choir!» ‘The embroidered, adorned, strewn by pearls mantle, you press me … O luxurious mantle, you seem me but the emblem of something other, that I bear, that it cannot be seen and that presses me, even when I you discard’. The attitude towards these attributes of social status is revealed through their significance for Geoffroy's love, when they are mentioned again in the monologue (scene 6, monologue 3). It is in connection with them that the heroine speaks out her skepticism concerning love to her as to the woman, but not to the carrier of this status: «Ne m’ayant jamais vue, oh, bien sûr, ce qu’il aime, / C’est la Princesse, en moi!» ‘As he hasn’t seen me ever, he, completely definitely, loves in me the princess (and not myself)’. It explains why there are «ce manteu qui m’est une géhenne» ‘this mantle, which is the hell for me’, «ces cabochons, ces ors, toujours plus lourds» ‘these stones, gold too heavy’. By the way this conjecture remains non-refuted with anything, so that it gives her grounds in her preferences for the part of Bertrand.

Thus the motivation of the last act of the heroine is introduced, when she renounces from wealth and authority. However, relation “person - thing” is not so simple, as it can occur. In the final monologue, returning to the sailors of treasure, she uses the remarkable expressions: «J’arracherai de moi ces lourdes choses vaines! / … Vous pouvez ramasser, amis, car le paiement / De votre amour, c’est la Princesse aimant! / … Je vous jette mon coeur parmi ces pierres pâles!»’ ‘I will reject these heavy vain things! You can gather them, friends, since salary for your love - this is the most enamored princess herself! I throw you my heart among these faded stones!’. In such a way “stones” (cabochons, pierres) are confronted to “heart” so that they do not remain signs of power only. Their sense changes already within the limits of the scene resulting in the motif STONE VS. HEART.

Simultaneously another motif appears – that of the justification of the feeling, which arose according to the relation precisely to Bertrand. It gives grounds to comprehend in another way the leading concept of drama – LOVE. First of all, the discussion deals with that heart itself, which is sacrificed together with the treasures. While saying that the envoy was accepted as the beloved, after causing to himself love (monologue 3, scene 6) «parce que d’abord je l’ai pris pour …» ‘…since at first I took him for …’ – the situation, let us note, analogous that of “Tristan”, – Melissinde refers precisely to the voice of the heart: «Mon coeur, impatient d’un prétexte a saisir, / Désira qu’il le fût, et crut à son désir!» ‘My heart, which impatiently searches for a pretext, does desire that he would be him, and it would believe in its desire!’. Moreover, in regard to Geoffroy the heroine has previously already answered very skeptically (monologue 2, scene 3): «… je trouverai, comme on fait d’autres dames, / Des plaisirs d’ironie a nos distances d’âmes!» ‘I’l find, as it occurs also with other ladies, pleasure in the irony from the remoteness of our souls’, especially because, as it is noted by five lines above, «un mari, ce n’est pas un amant» ‘husband - is not the lover’. Meanwhile further, in the last conversation with Sigizmonde, one additional motif appears that of orgueil PRIDE, which turns to become the important reason of tragic outcome. Melissinde notes that the love to Bertrand has commenced «Parce qu’il a trop bien choisi le messager» ‘since the envoy was selected too successfully’ and continues: «Qu’a frapper l’orgueilleuse, Amour, tu fut rapide!» ‘to punish haughty, Amur, you it was swift!’. But further the same motif gets another sense: «J’ai rêvé d’un amour sublime, j’en veux un: / Si par l’étrangeté mystique il n’est sublime, / Qu’il le soit par l’orgueil partagé d’un grand crime!» ‘I dreamed about the elevated love: if it is not elevated by mysterious remoteness, however, let the pride, divided with the large crime, raise it!’. So the emergent feeling is substituted with other ideas, splitting further the fates of Melissinde and Bertrand. It is worth stressing the observation cast by Melissinde to Bertrand in their sincere communication (monologue 3, scene 7): «… ceux qui sont heureux / Ont tous cette fenêtre ouverte derriere eux …» ‘for those, who are happy, these open windows are always located from behind’. But the open window, through which it is possible to see the flag aboard Geoffroy's ship signaling whether the master is still alive, becomes now the symbol of fate.

In “Syrano de Bergerac” as the external framework the idiom appears that is connected with the motif of the MOON. The 1st act where the hero demonstrates his nature as the source of his intentions, is completed with the remarkable words: «… Paris fuit, nocturne et quasi nébuleux; / Le clair de lune coule aux pentes des toits bleus … / Là-bas, sous des vapeurs en écharpe, la Seine, / Comme un mystérieux et magique miroir, / Tremble …» ‘Paris emanates, being nocturnal and as if misty, the moonlight flows along the slopes of blue roofs… below, crossed by the strips of fogs, the Seine quivers, as if the secret magic mirror’. And the last words in his farewell with the life are uttered to the Moon: «Vous voyez, le rayon de lune vient me prendre!» ‘You see, lunar ray arrived to take me!’.

The upper layer of contents is here obvious: the discussion deals with the lunar mythology, it proceeds about the images, connected with the idea of the Moon as the sovereign of time. Already very idiom of clair de lune is the generally acknowledged “marker” of the culture of the epoch of symbolism and impressionism. However, the deeper semantic roots can be revealed. It is a san inhabitant of Moon that Bergerac introduces himself to his enemy de Guiche detaining him and thus giving time for the betrothal of Roxana with Christian. A very meaningful remark is addressed by him to this enemy: «Ne me deguisez rien!» ‘Do not pull on to me a mask!’. Meanwhile precisely the idiom DEGUISEMENT (`mask') occurs here at determining the entire essence of Syrano. In the following account about the journey to the Moon the remarkable components become observable. It begins with the completely equivocal appeal: «Si vous serriez mon nez, Monsieur, entre vos doigts, / Il jaillirait du lait! … De la Voie Lactée!» ‘If you press up between the fingers my nose, from there will splash milk from the Milky Way!’. Let alone that there is contained the hint to the expression ‘to remain with the nose’, the idiom NOSE is one of the key components in the entire drama. The story is completed with the ambiguous phrase: «… je montais doucement, sans efforts, / Quand je sentis un choc!» (‘I rose smoothly, effortlessly, until have felt the shock!’). Who has felt this shock? As Guiche exclaims, «… je suis ivre!» ‘I am drunk!’. Within this approach the initial idioms of MIROIR TREMBLENT (‘quivering mirror’) and FUITE NEBULEUSE (`misty expiration') in connection with the ideas about the moonlight bring to the fact that it would be possible to designate as ILLUSIVENESS - virtual existence, which occurs the essence of Syrano’s life.

It is about the virtual existence that he speaks in the last monologue, confessing to Roxana the secret of the love: «… ma vie / Ce fut d’être celui qui souffle, – et qu’on oublie! / … Pendant que je restais en bas, dans l’ombre noire, / D’autres montaient cueillir le baiser de la gloire!» ‘… my life - this is the life of a prompter. Which they forget! Thus far I remained below, in the black shadow, the others rose to gather the kiss of glory!’. Here the motif of SHADE corresponds to that of GHOST, SPECTRE. Actually this is the reminiscence of the words, already said to Roxana in the speech addressed to her at night on behalf Christian (monologue 3, scene 6): «Moi, je ne sui qu’une ombre, et vous qu’une clarté!» ‘I’m nothing else but shadow, and you - clarity!’. It is remarkable, that in the translation the reference to the prompter is inserted also in the mouth of Christian (monologue 3, scene 4), although it is absent from the original: «твердить слова любви неловко под суфлера» “to say the words of love is uncomfortable under the breather”. It is in the mode of virtual existence that Bergerac conceives his vocation (monologue 1, scene 5) in the speech addressed to de Brett: «J’ai decidé d’être admirable, en tout, par tout!» ‘I have decided to be admirable in all, through all!’. The motives of MIRACLE and ADMIRATION (preserved with the inner form of the epithet admirable from Lat. mirabilis) concern the virtual world most immediately. In the same key he negotiates with Christian about the method of contact with Roxana (monologue 2, scene 10): «Tu marcheras, j’irai dans l’ombre a ton côté: Je serai ton esprit, tu seras ma beauté» ‘You step, and I will go in the shadow by your side, I will be your spirit, you’ll be my beauty’.

The connection of the idioms TEARS and BLOOD is demonstrative making up an arch of a “roll-call” between the finales of two last monologues. «Sur sa lettre, du sang, des pleurs!» ‘upon this letter, blood, tears’, Roxana exclaims, holding letter allegedly from Christian (recently been killed), written actually by Cyrano. In the finale this motif appears again: to Roxana’s question «Pourqoi vous êtes tu pendant quatorze années, / Puisque sur cette letter où, lui, n’était pour rien, / Ces pleurs etaient de vous?» ‘But why did you keep silence fourteen years, once on this letter from him there was nothing, but these tears were yours?’ there follows Cyrano’s retort «Ce sang était le sien» ‘the blood, it was his’. But TEAR appears again, moreover with another (synonymous) designation and in combination with another idiom - NOSE. In the frank conversation with le Brett (scene 5 monologue 1) Syrano confesses «… ce serait trop laid, / Si le long de ce nez une larme coulait! / Je ne laisserai pas … / La divine beauté des larmes se commettre / Avec tant de laideur grossière» ‘it would be too ugly, if along this nose flowed tear! I will not allow… to interlace the marvelous beauty of tears with this rough deformity’. However, as we see, on the letter this “marvelous beauty of tears” elapses exactly from his eyes on his “deformed” nose.

In “Chantecler” the sense of ornithological allegory is revealed by the words of wiser by the experience of the Dog (act 1, scene 4): «Mefions-nous du coeur des poules – et des foules!» ‘We will not entrust to the heart of hens and crowd!’. It is the motif MOB that proves to take the key position and to introduce further, culminating third monologue with the discussions on the psychology of crowd that has become the vogue just in Rostand’s epoch. After the salvation of the guests of quinea fowl from the hawk by Chantecler at the height of cock-fighting (act 3, scene 4) his beloved pheasant pullet warns him: «… tous veulent qu’on te tue, / Pour se venger sur toi de la peur qu’ils ont eue!» ‘everyone wants that you would be killed to take vengeance upon you for that fear, which they tasted today!’. So the idea of FEAR is introduced as the basic property of MOB. In the same scene Chantecler criticizes the guests of quinea fowl, who personify MOB: «… c’est des coqs fabriqués / Par des négociants aux cerveaux compliqués …» ‘these are the roosters, manufactured by wholesale dealers with the complicated brains’. Such artificiality is confronted with the yearning after nature preceding the flight into the night forest in the final report: «… J’ai besoin / De voir si la Nature existe encore au loin!» ‘I must see whether there is still nature, although far away!’.

In the initial dialogue of Chantecler and the Dog the foundation of their souls’ community is revealed (act 1, scene 4): as Chantecler addresses his friend, «Tu te couches par terre et tu dors au soleil!» ‘Thou liest upon the earth and sleepst under the sun’. Meanwhile just the notions EARTH and SUN are represented further as the two sides of the universe where the rooster appears to become the mediator between them. It is with the glorification of the sun that the monologue of Chantecler begins where he explains to pheasant pullet its vocation (act 1, scene 6): «Rien n’est pareil, / Jamais, sous le soleil, à cause de soleil! / Car Elle change tout!» ‘nothing can remain ever similar to itself under the sun due to the sun! Because it changes everything’. Apparently this solar cult turns to become chthonic cult by love for the earthly creatures: «… un râteau dans un coin, une fleur dans une vase / M’ont fait tomber dans une inguérissable extase» ‘rakes in the angle, flower in the vase make me fall in the incurable ecstasy’. This is why, for Chantecler, the sincere sympathy to the existent reality is the source of the wisdom: «Quand on sait regarder et souffrir, on sait tout» ‘When they know how to contemplate and to suffer, they can everything’. These reflections are summed up in the proverb cited by the old hen: «Ce qui connait le mieux le ciel, c’est l’eau du puits!» What the sky knows best of all, it is water of the wells!’.

Further the thought about the vocation of rooster is developed in the monologue before the pheasant pullet after she has warned him about the conspiracy of night birds (act 2, scene 3).The very shape of body attests the destination to serve to what signifies motif SOUND: «… cambré comme une trompe, m’incurvant / Comme une espèce de cor de chasse vivant, / Je suis fait pour qu’en moi le son tourne …» ‘bend out, as if pipe, extorted as a living specimen of hunting horn, I am made so that the sound would be twirled through me’. Due to the high solar vocation the terrestrial activity of the rooster is justified: «… grattant le gazon de mes griffes, je l’air / De chercher dans le sol …» ‘scratching lawn with my claws, I feel, as if I search for the sun’. To the question of the pheasant pullet «Que cherches-tu?» ‘what do you search for?’, Chantecler gives the answer: «L’endroit où je vais me planter, / Car toujours je me plante au moment de chanter» ‘The place, in which I could take root, since I always take root at the moment, when I make myself to sing’. This unity of the earth and sun in the symbol of “implanted” rooster reveals the secret sense of the singing: «Je chante! … et c’est déjà la moitié du mystere …» ‘I sing – and it is the core of the mystery’. At last, the hymn further follows this cock singing as the manifestation of the great love of the earth for the sun: «Et ce cri qui monte de la Terre, / Ce cri, c’est un tel cri d’amour pour la lumiere, …» ‘And this cry that mounts over the Earth, and this cry, it is the cry of the love to light’. This singing is unselfish: «Je pense à la lumière et non pas à la gloire». The motives of this monologue are repeated in the finale, where they are disputed by the pheasant pullet, whose disbelief leads her to the tragic end in the networks of poacher.

The final exchange of remarks (4, 7) is eloquent where the thought about the need for the symbolic sense of rooster in the universe is asserted: the skeptical statement of pheasant pullet that he is odd and excessive – «Mais tu vois que le jour s’est levé sans ta voix» ‘but you see that the day rises also without your voice’, is responded by Chantecler: «Mon destin est plus sûr que le jour que je vois» ‘my vocation is more clear than that of the day, which I see’. Further the dispute gets strengthened. She: «Mais si tu ne fais pas se lever le matin?» ‘But if you do not raise the morning?’. He: «C’est que je suis le Coq d’un soleil plus lointain!» ‘but precisely I am the rooster of the more distant sun’. Here the motif DISTANT DAWNS appears that has been developed in particular in the famous play of E. Verhaeren. It becomes the decisive argument in the dispute with the partisans of the peace of shadows. This justifies, in particular (in the following proposal), the rare interpretation of nocturnal attributes – «Ces blessures de jour qu’on prend pour des étoiles!» ‘these wounds of day, which assume as the stars’.

Meanwhile the nature of pheasant pullet is demonstrated already in her statement with the first encounter (1, 6): «Le seul coq de mon gout / Serait un coq sans gloire …» ‘Rooster without the glory would be the only rooster on my taste’. It is the motif IGNOMINIOUS (void of glory) that explains further behavior, so that her appeal to Chantecler (following the mentioned expression of the yearning after nature) «Viens dans les bois naifs» ‘come to the naive forests’ shows semantic discordance: the both speak about nature, about the naturalness, but mean the different things. Thus we see that separate fragments of dramatic text constantly change their sense with the changes in intentional prospect for their idea, taking into account the intentions of characters, which are revealed with the development of action.

While using a word a playwright doesn’t merely call the respective thing. He also calls for and brings forth the motif that folds a whole map of the world of images. This conclusion is enables still more rejecting the already mentioned opinion of H.- G. Greimas who wrongly compares words to atoms as well as to the so called component method where one tries to dissolve contents into indivisible elements. Thus one can see that the words of “virtual” character of Syrano change their sense with the degree of the disclosure of the circumstances of his “shady” life, the princess “Dream” changes her intentions and respectively the sense of her ideas together with her attitudes towards Geoffroy, the sense of Chantecler’s singing changes after examinations in the cock-fighting and in the nocturnal forext. Not only the stability of derivative processes and semantic transitions but also the very expansive nature of word collocations in drama revealing constantly renovated position within the infinite referential net makes it ineffective to try to dissolve sense into atomic elementary components. Vice versa it is just the