BOOKS FROM 1900
Edmond Rostand
L'Aiglon
(1900)
At the turn of the century, Edomond Rostand was France's national poet. His lyrical gifts and idealistic vision had captured the public's imagination. In the words of one critic, "he rekindled the sun."
Rostand wrote his masterpiece Cyrano de Bergerac in 1897. Next came L'Aiglon (The Eaglet), which opened in Paris in 1900 to wild acclaim. Sarah Bernhardt interpreted the role of Napoleon's sickly son, the Duke of Reichstadt, who struggles between ambition and his conscience. In New York the same year the American actress Maude Adams played Napoleon II in an English version.
Rostand, elected to the Academie francaise when he was only thirty-three, spent much of his writing life in seclusion in his chateau in the Pyrenees. Not for him the worldly life of Paris. His need for solitude was paramount. "But for its pleasures," he once said, "life would be tolerable."
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