Word: cyrano
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...17th century, Christian persuaded Cyrano to write tender love letters for him to give to Roxane -- risky since Cyrano was also smitten with the lady. Today those who want to send a moving missive but fear they lack the requisite communications skills can order a love letter by phone, fax or mail from Love Letters Ink, a Los Angeles company for those suffering from lover's block. Founded four years ago by Martine Greber, Love Letters has written more than 25,000 letters for customers worldwide. The catalog offers selections for < lovers, friends and even in-laws, and features headings...
...buzz today about discontent, about social gloom and political drift, a crisis of faith in the future and a fading sense of national identity? An identity crisis -- in France? It sounds as unlikely as the notion of Cyrano de Bergerac fumbling his sword or groping for the mot juste. In his 1983 book The Europeans, the Italian journalist Luigi Barzini, a seasoned and mordant observer of the Continental scene, cites Edmond Rostand's fictional Cyrano as the quintessence of French character, at least as outsiders exaggerate it: the boastful, cocksure Gascon whose fellow provincials are defined in Rostand's play...
...Fifth Republic's outset, the living embodiments of sophisticated Frenchness to much of the world were the film stars Yves Montand and Simone Signoret -- the former a native Italian from a town near Florence, the latter born in Germany to an Austrian-Polish-Jew ish father. As Cyrano himself might have crowed, in a slightly different context, Vive la difference...
...have been the man of the hour at last week's Academy Awards (his Dances with Wolves walked off with seven Oscars), but it was one of the evening's losers who provided the award season's biggest flap. Gerard Depardieu, who was nominated for Best Actor for Cyrano de Bergerac, was a no- show at the ceremony. Even so, he was at the center of a fire storm over comments about his wild days as a youth...
...fact, Depardieu was always a long shot for the Oscar; no one has ever won a Best Actor award for a non-English-speaking role. And though Cyrano itself lost the Best Foreign Film award to a dark horse, such upsets are common. Still, a cultural chasm remains. Rosemary Dempsey of the National Organization for Women claims that the French reaction "trivializes the whole issue of violence against women." French author Marguerite Duras, asked about Depardieu's remarks, said dismissively, "When I was 8 1/2, I stole an apple from the garden." Depardieu, meanwhile, was on the island of Mauritius...