Leys leave finally the unanswered question, of do we have the ability to control our own identity. Unfortunately, Napoleon chooses what defines him. He could have settled into bourgeois prosperity and lived happily with the Ostrich however he let ambition and the desire for power and strength carry him away to the very end, when in reality at the end of the text, that was not was important. For what is then Leys intention of the whole novella? It is quite initially what Paul expressed in the opening. “ What a pity to see a mind as great as Napoleon’s devoted to trivial things such as empires, historic events, the thundering of cannons and of men; he believed in glory, in posterity, in Caesar, nations in turmoil and other trifles absorbed all his attention.. How could he fail to see that what really mattered was something else entirely?” Napoleon, obsessed with power and glory was missing the point, and in the end wasn’t even beneficial as the myth of Napoleon was the only thing Napoleon related. The things are mere trifles compared to what truly matters namely love and compassion. The virtues of living.
Use one or more of the passages selected as the basis for a discussion of The Death of Napoleon.
THIS QUESTION IS CONTINUED ON PAGE 15
1.
Against
the sky, between the clouds, he can see him once again on his
white horse, reviewing the front line of his troops, while the
long row of busbies and rifles begins to waver and sway like a
wheatfield under the wind, and a thousand voices, hoarse with
fever and smoke, roar in unison, “Long live the Emperor!”
But he quickly looks down again; his mobile features become
almost repulsive as he adds, scarcely moving his lips, “Between
you and me, Napoleon was a vampire. It was our blood that
kept him going. You should have seen him in the evenings after
a battle. The toughest veterans of the Guard were crying from
sheer exhaustion, but there he was, passing among us, fresh
as a daisy; he would look at the dead and wounded, wading
through the blood. That’s where his energy came from. Take
me, for instance – he’s gouged out my eye and bitten off my leg.
Look, I can see that you are a man of the world. You, you’re not
one of those tourists full of warm tea and gherkin sandwiches.
Perhaps you’ve been a soldier, too? Well then, I’ll show you
my war wounds! I don’t show them to just anyone, you know!
There are always English tourists who would gladly pay extra,
just to have a look, but they haven’t got a hope! It’s none of
their business! But between the two of us, it’s quite different.
You and I, we speak the same language – no need to stand on
ceremony.”
As he finishes his patter, he begins to unwrap his stump
from the empty trouser leg, which was furled around itself
and secured with a large rusty safety pin. He performs the
unswaddling like a professional, with quick, precise gestures.
The whole routine has something ritualistic and vaguely
obscene about it. But at the end of it, when he raises his head,
he realises that his customer has already left some time ago and
is heading downhill towards the village. “Hey, friend! Don’t
go yet! Wait a minute!”
Hopping on his crutch, he immediately gives chase.
Napoleon has nearly reached the village when he finally catches
up with him, grabbing him by his coat-tails in a last desperate
lunge.
* * *
2.
The strange brotherhood slowly dispersed through the park;
two of its members passed in front of Napoleon without seeing
him, but in the shadows Napoleon himself began to tremble
violently as he recognised their clothing at last. The key to the
mystery came to him in a flash – and this normally fearless man
felt himself for a moment transfixed with terror. Was it really
possible that the medical officer had planned to trap him like
this? Was he really capable of such a dreadful scheme?
One of the walkers came and sat on the same bench as
Napoleon but did not look at him. Like his companions, he was
wearing some sort of shabby fancy dress, improvised from bits
and pieces, a patched-up mixture of cheap finery and rags which
attempted to reproduce the classical dress of Napoleon in the
field, as it was always pictured in the popular imagination: grey
frock coat, white waistcoat and trousers, grand cordon around
his neck, riding books*; a wooden sword completed the outfit.
As for the famous little hat, it was made of thick paper, fairly
carefully sewn and stuck together, and daubed with Indian ink.
Napoleon stared at him, hypnotised: under the grotesque
disguise, a frightful thing to behold, the pale face bore the
stamp of pensive nobility; the thin lips indicated inflexible
resolve; under the paper hat, the staring eyes, accentuated by
a drooping lock of hair, probed the depths of the night. It was
as if, through the years, the relentless effort of thought – or
rather of the single obsession that had taken the place of bygone
thoughts – had succeeded in slowly modifying the features of
his physical exterior to make it conform to the strict likeness of
the Emperor. This miserable wreck presented an image of his
model a thousand times more faithful, more worthy and more
convincing than the unlikely bald fruiterer who, seated beside
him, was examining him with such amazement.
* * *
* The passage is printed according to the original text; however,
‘boots’ is what is intended by the author.
There is a cool hand on his forehead. The Ostrich bends over
his with infinite tenderness. His tense, knotted brain relaxes a
little and his tongue loosens: “. . . Name? . . . Name?”
He is appalled to hear himself saying at last, “What is my
name?” but it is too late to try again. Where would he find the
strength to correct his mistake, to rephrase it, to link the heavy
words together one after the other like a train, what-is-yourname,
and send the convoy off again towards the light that has
now vanished?
The Ostrich bends down to his pillow and whispers,
“Eugène, your name is Eugène . . . ” When he hears these words
he gives a sudden desperate start, which she misinterprets, for
she immediately adds even more softly and closer to his ear,
as if it were a secret, “Napoleon, you are my Napoleon.” The
sweetness of these last words cuts him to the heart, it is the
finish, he falls backwards. As he sinks even farther, he is still
holding her hand, and for a moment longer he can feel her cool
soft hand in his. Then soon this last link slips from his grasp.
After whirling down through dull blue-green depths, at last
he begins to fall more slowly, and now he is floating, almost
still. The night is nearly over and a grey dawn is breaking
beneath his eyelids. Far away, and muffled by distance, drums
are rolling and fifes are playing their shrill notes. The regiments
are marching to the front line; the din of men and stamping
horses increases. The sound of the fifes is as sharp as earlymorning
air – and all the while, those drums keep beating. From
time to time, quite close, can be heard the snorting of a restive
horse, the tinkling of a harness, brief commands reverberating
over the serried ranks.
And now a huge red sun emerges out of the mist, the sun
that shines on victory mornings. It rises in the sky, a sky bright
with rainbow-coloured clouds.
How vast the plain is! It is vaster than all the plains on
earth, pale and shifting; it is the boundless sea, the sea without
memory! And with his arm extended in a broad sweeping
gesture, pointing to the day-star as it rises, Nigger-Nicholas
exults in his innocent triumph.
* * *
1.
Closing his eyes, he abandons himself to the flow of his
memories, and begins to relive the whole ordeal, as it happened,
from dawn to dusk. “It was raining on that day, it was pissing
down . . .” And in spite of the peaceful sunshine and the pure
song of an invisible lark piercing higher and higher into the
blue sky, like a medium in a trace he summons up and brings
to life the real spirit of the plain. Before Napoleon’s very eyes,
the false decor of pastoral calm, with its fields and cows and
plough on the horizon, parts like a naïvely painted country scene
on a theatre curtain, revealing the sombre truth that is always
there, hidden behind the veil of appearances.
. . . In a murky twilight, under a low sky, men, horses and
cannon are once more bogged down in the mud. Across the
sodden fields comes the loud rumble of regiments on the move,
while the muffled boom of cannon can be heard in the distance.
The men have been marching all night to meet their fate, weary
as beasts of burden; here and there in the grass, a few are already
dead, their eyes wide open with astonishment.
Yet when did this vision, which at first seemed so
overwhelmingly true in every detail, suddenly become confused
and begin to fall apart? Napoleon again experiences the same
dizziness that he had felt in the unfamiliar bedroom. Edmond
the Veteran foams at the mouth and screams and whirls around
on his crutch like one possessed, as he goes through all the
torments of that incredible day. Under this hail of words,
Napoleon is horrified to discover the image of another
Waterloo, which is more and more difficult to reconcile with
his own memory and sense of logic. He can no longer find a
single landmark on the plain; even as he stares at it, the scene
becomes weirdly distorted. Edmond the Veteran’s incantation
is drawing him into a whirlwind where his reason falters and
is about to be swallowed up. He struggles to break free; with
one final effort, he suddenly resists and interrupts his relentless
guide: “No, no! It’s not the grenadiers who are holding Belle-
Alliance, it’s the dragoons! . . .”
* * *
2.
‘I’d rather
starve,’ he always used to say, ‘than desert the Emperor.’ He
really believed that the Emperor would return. There were a
few of them, real fanatics who never gave up, but what good
people! Talking of starving – I can tell you, that’s just what
happened to him, or near enough. Selling pumpkins won’t keep
a man, specially in times like these which are so difficult for
people who refuse to knuckle under. Besides, to be frank, he
wasn’t cut out for business. And of course, he had to devote
himself to his real mission in life, as he used to call it. Politics
took up all his time and energy. It was the same for his friends.
You’ll meet them, I’ll introduce you. There’s the medical
officer, Dr Lambert-Laruelle, Sergeant Maurice and the others.
They’re always at the café, Les Trois Boules. To look at them,
you’d think they were men of leisure playing their usual game
of cards. Between you and me, I think they were plotting
something. But I’m a woman and a soldier’s wife. I know
better than to poke my nose where it’s not wanted. Truchaut
wasn’t one to talk, and I certainly wouldn’t have tried to worm
information out of him. When he came home from Les Trois
Boules looking worried, I wouldn’t have dared speak to him
about the business and bother him with my petty worries about
monthly bills, settlement dates and so on. Although, heaven
knows there were times when it would have been such a relief
to confide in him and tell him all my business problems. You
see, I’m the one who looks after the business. It’s just a small
concern that I began from nothing: my cousins are farmers in
Avignon. They send their fruit to Paris and we try to sell it where
we can. In theory, it should work, but what can I do, there’s no
one but me to run the whole thing; I had no experience, and I
can’t really cope on my own.
* * *
While he appreciated the Ostrich’s devotion, Napoleon was
worried by the new turn his situation seemed to be taking.
His indomitable will, which the worst misfortunes could not
have shaken, had imperceptibly been diverted towards domestic
joys and small-time prosperity. This unexpected success, trifling
though it was, nevertheless brought with it a kind of ease which
he could not entirely ignore. It was beginning to transform the
ground beneath his feet into a soft, shifting terrain where his
resolution could become weak and slowly sink without trace.
The more business improved and the Ostrich filled his life
with touching new comforts, the less he resembled the real
Napoleon.
Every time he went to the barber’s, he stared into the double
mirror and was horrified yet fascinated to see how his original
features were disappearing little by little and being replaced by
those of a stranger he despised and hated, and who inspired in
him a growing feeling of disgust. He had put on a lot of weight
and was now completely bald. If he had looked like this when
he met Bommel (Justin), how could the sergeant ever have
recognised him? And – not so long ago – the medical officer
himself? When, after finalising a particularly clever deal, he
heard himself being congratulated by some broker in colonial
goods who paid tribute to his brilliant business acumen, a
burning lust for action ran through him – oh! to start again
from scratch, to break free at once from this warm morass that
threatened to engulf him!
Yet the medical officer’s prophetic jibe, advising him to be
content with making his fortune in watermelons, still rang in
his ears, and the memory of that twilight visit to Dr Quinton’s
asylum hung over him like an imminent threat. Besides, this
threat was quite real, as he was soon to find out.
He had made a tentative attempt – rather an awkward one, it
is true – to get the Ostrich to share in his secret.
The result of this approach was disastrous. At first, she
did not understand anything; then, when she finally made
out what he seemed to be aiming at, a heart-rending look of
astonishment and terror spread over her face. Napoleon realised
how distressed she was and did his best to beat a retreat, making
a laborious effort to change the subject of their conversation.
She pretended to follow what he was saying, fighting hard not
to burst into tears.
* * *
raises all sorts of questions in natural ways: how much are we defined by those around us; is there such a quality as 'greatness', what is genius etc etc. There is a sly wit throughout and although some might mistake its brevity for slightness, there is an awful lot going on. This book very much humanises Napoleon, and the way in which it explores the terror that the loss of identity brings upon him is very successful.
by
metc94 (student)
