The Death of Napoleon by Simon Leys
For the first time, he began to see himself as he really was, naked and defenseless at the center of a universal debacle, buffeted this way and that by events, threatened on every side by an all-pervasive decay, sinking slowly into the quick-sands of failed resolutions, and finally disappearing into the ultimate morass against which no honor could prevail - Simon Leys, The Death of Napoleon
Such lyrical, precise language, a cross between extended prose poem and
novelistic meditation on the nature of identity, glory and history, both
whimsically light and philosophically deep. Such graceful fiction from
scholar/essayist/sinologist/quirky renaissance man Simon Leys (1935-2014).
"What a pleasure to read a real writer. The Death of Napoleon is
utterly satisfying sentence by sentence and scene by scene, but it is also
compulsively readable." These are the words of renowned literary critic
Gabriel Josipovici, words with which I wholeheartedly agree. And to underscore
my agreement, I’ll serve up a few slices of Leys poetic, that is, three quotes
from scenes in Chapter One that chronicle Napoleon’s voyage on
board a ship carrying the world-famous emperor from St. Helena back to his
beloved France. And, yes, of course, this is imaginative alternate history.
A snippet of the author’s description of the ship’s cook: “He was tall, but a
good half century spend over stoves in low-ceilinged galleys had broken him up
into several angular segments, like a half-folded pocket rule. Without really
being fat, his body swelled out arbitrarily in places, giving him the shape of
a semi-deflated balloon. His face was split by a huge gaping mouth; in this
grotto, as black and dirty as the maw of his stove, there emerged one or two
teeth, like slimy rocks protruding at low tide. The ruined state of his teeth
made his speech, already bizarre, all the harder to understand, endowing his
rare utterances with a kind of oracular force – as befits a black cook on a sailing
ship who, to be true to type, must naturally have a smattering of occult
sciences.” Wow! I mean, Super-Wow! -- exquisite visual images; expressive vivid
metaphors.
“Every evening, crushed by the fatigue of the day’s work, Napoleon would escape
for a moment from the stuffy atmosphere of the forecastle and lean against the
bulwark in the bows to watch the first stars come out. The softness of the
tropical azure giving way slowly to the velvet of night, and the glittering of
the lonely stars which seem so close to us when they begin to shine in the
dusk, left him perfectly cold.” If you have never had an opportunity to stand
on the deck of a ship at sea and watch tropical azure give way slowly to the
velvet of night, here is your opportunity to not only experience via your
imagination but to join Napoleon in doing so.
Napoleon assumes the identity of a cabin boy by the name of Eugène in order to
escape from St. Helena. At one point we read of Napoleon’s self-reflection:
“During this time in limbo, and until the day when Napoleon’s sun would rise
again, he had to survive by relying upon wretched Eugène's purely physical
existence. Only the slenderest thread was leading him back toward the
hypothetical dawn of his future. So far, at every stage of his journey, a new,
unknown messenger had emerged from the shadows to show him the route to
follow.” Again, on one level Simon Leys’ slim novel is a meditation on the
nature of time and identity. And what an identity! After all, he is Napoleon.
Thank you, New York Review Books (NYRB) for reprinting this
slim classic. And thanks to Patricia Clancy for joining Mr. Leys in translating
from the French into English. 130 pages of large font – this novella can be
read in three hours. Treat yourself to a day of literary ecstasy. I have four
times over and counting, but then again, when it comes to ecstasy I admit that
I have never observed moderation.
https://www.librarything.com/work/389778/reviews/
Jiǎ Yǐ Bǐng Dīng (2015) - Tribute to
Professor Simon Leys (Pierre Ryckmans)
