but also inevitable: Rostand himself warned against limiting the meaning of the word to a dictionary definition, as though to do so would be to imprison a sentiment the essence of which is to insist on absolute freedom from convention.

In his speech to the Académie française in 1903, Rostand described panache, rather mystically, as “nothing more than a grace.” “It is not greatness,” he said, “but something added on to greatness, and which moves above it.” Panache is not just physical courage in the face of danger; it includes a verbal assertiveness in the face of possible death. “To joke in the face of danger is the supreme form of polite-ness,” Rostand said. Hence panache is “the wit of bravura”—not bravura alone (which might be perfectly stupid), but the expression in language of that bravura and indeed language as an expression of bravura: “It is courage that so dominates a particular situation, that it finds just what to say.”

Panache thus describes the remarkable alliance of physical courage and verbal acuity that Cyrano so dramatically displays in act one, scene iv, where he engages in a duel while simultaneously composing a ballad. There is fundamentally here no difference between the sword and the word. Nobility of action and elegance in language—this is the rather aristocratic ideal that Rostand wishes to resurrect. (To the extent that it is related to linguistic brilliance, panache, we might note in passing, is a literary-artistic ideal; Cyrano is in part a portrait of the artist, the one who struggles against the vulgarity of the world and the baseness of language, and who redeems it through a winning phrase.)

A code of ethics, dictating behavior and speech in given situations, panache is akin to the concept of honor in Golden Age Spain. Like honor, panache represents a law of conduct that must remain inviolate, “unblemished and unbent,” and that not only explains the life of sacrifice that Cyrano has lived, but redeems that life. In a period of fin-de-siècle decadence, the audience at the Theatre de la Porte-Saint-Martin might well have found seductive this new and rather dashing version of morality. There is evidence that Rostand envisioned Cyrano as a figure to be emulated. Invited back to his Paris secondary school, the Lycée Stanislas, he encouraged the pupils (in rhymed verse, of course) to aspire to the ideal of panache (“empanachez-vous!”). Cyrano’s sacrifices, his refusal to be morally tainted or compromised (see his famous “No thank you!” speech in act two, scene viii; pp. 68-69) make for great theater but also seem to belong to a credo, or seek to impart a lesson. And Rostand indeed conceived of the theater as a privileged space in which the spirit of the people might be lifted up, morally elevated through a collective communion in common values. In his reception speech to the Académie française, Rostand said: “It is good that once in a while a people should once again hear the sound of its own enthusiasm.... It is really only now in the theater that souls, side by side, can feel like they have wings.”

Panache is supposed to be that common value around which we can all rally. It defines Cyrano, who, to the exclusion of all else, is equal parts courage and wit. Yet as stirring as are Cyrano’s performances, in deed as in word, it is worthwhile examining the play to see just what panache—the clamor of language and the bluster of sword-play—might serve to occlude. What precisely must be sacrificed if the ideal of panache is to be always honored? In Cyrano’s case, what is sacrificed is nothing less than his sexuality. That Rostand wants us to understand this seems evident from the blaring symbolism of the last line of the play, which contains a rhetorically remarkable use of the word panache: “Mon panache,” in French: You don’t need to be a Freudian to get the point.

CYRANO: ... Spite of your worst, something will still be left me to take whither I go... and to-night when I enter God’s house, in saluting, broadly will I sweep the azure threshold with what despite of all I carry forth unblemished and unbent... [He starts forward, with lifted sword] ... and that is ... [The sword falls from his hands, he staggers, drops in the arms of Le Bret and Ragueneau.]

ROXANE: ... That is? ...

CYRANO: ... My plume!

And the point is this: The ideal in Cyrano—panache, sacrifice, wit, elegance—is shadowed at every moment by its opposite—the material, the down-to-earth, the