Last year's Ridley Scott film on Napoleon inevitably triggered memories of Kubrick's ill-fated epic, abandoned half a century earlier. The film's reported comedic traits and preoccupation with Napoleon's sex life was a feature of Anthony Burgess's script which following Kubric's rejection metamorphosed into Burgess's much under-rated, comic but unfunny novel.
The inside of the dust cover of Napoleon Symphony describes Napoleon as
inspired general, starry eyed lover, laughable cuckold, evangelising republican, great emperor, bloody tyrant, wretched invalid exile, mythic hero.
Several years ago I came across a file in the Anthony Burgess Centre in Manchester containing a large number of reviews of the novel, including one from Playboy which described it as "his best novel yet", a view endorsed by Robert K. Morris in the Nation (2).
The novel was written in the early years of UK membership of what was then known as the "Common Market", and one reviewer who took this theme was Ronald Blythe, self taught Suffolk writer, author of Akenfield and collaborator with Benjamin Britten and E.M. Forster. Blythe saw the book as profoundly anti-Napoleon and anti Common Market, which views he endorsed:
What Wellington (and de Gaulle) prevented, Heath arranged.
In those days of course the main opposition to UK membership of the European Union came from the Left, which is why the then Labour Prime Minister, Harold Wilson, called a referendum to try to keep the party together, and Blythe was a life-long Labour voter.
One American reviewer wrote on the same theme:
was a "humbled" Britain's entry into Europe's Common Market a belated fulfillment of Napoleon's long-ago war aims? Such a possibility is the final irony in Anthony Burgess's latest extravaganza. (3)
Time Magazine picked up Burgess's pessimism about England and vision of the Anglosphere, including the United States, all united under a constitutional monerchy.
It may sound positively Napoleonic, but it has vision, the vision of a bold artist who has yet to meet his Waterloo.
The novelist Kay Dick clearly did not care for Burgess, whom she rather snobbishly described as "that proverbial bright grammar school sixth former .. yet never quite beyond that sixth form humour." He was "the best barker in the English literary scene", and "a wizard with words, knows them all, uses them as often as he can" and "like his hero, Napoleon, he does not care for women to think." (4)
A number of other reviewers picked up on Burgess's treatment of Napoleon's sexuality and his relations with women. For one American writer the book was "a randy tomcat's view of the Corsican Ogre" and another saw Burgess's Napoleon as "entirely baffled by women" (5) One reviewer saw
a bad lover, as quick in sex as he is in battle..(6)and another concluded:
Burgess has given us a Napoleon we've never known before. Invincible, crusading, charming, humble, to be sure. Also gross, profane, plagued with heartburn, flatulence, bad breath.. premature ejaculation and, obviously, self-doubt. (7)
Many reviewers made much of Burgess's Joycean love of language and music, his rather self-indulgent cleverness, and his encyclopedic knowledge and cerebrality. As for the portrait of Napoleon, a number of reviewers saw that beyond the earthy, priapic conqueror Burgess was portraying a more complex figure, the rational, Enlightenment ruler who was ultimately defeated by the English who failed to see the light, and by Slavic and German mysticism and nascent German nationalism.
Even his last ingenious construct, the great garden on Saint Helena, is uprooted by a nature drawn like the Greek fate to opposing his grandiose schemes. (8)
Victoria Glendinning's summary of Burgess's Napoleon seems very apt
.. a violent amalgam of intellect and physicality, a 'machine on top of an animal.' The machine part of him juggles with states, statesmen, school textbooks, regiments, rulers, sisters-in-law and the map of Europe. Under the brain machine his body throbs and aches. He lusts lyrically after his whorish Josephine, who dislikes his bad breath and his perfunctory performances.(9)"
Finally a reminder that the book itself was ostensibly based on Beethoven's Eroica Symphony. Its four movements were set in Egypt and Italy, Paris, Moscow and St Helena. For some reviewers it was more noise than symphony, although at least one felt that Burgess like Napoleon and Beethoven had proved that he too was a man of vision, and the Financial Times review concluded that the novel would be relished by admirers of all three! (10)
For a recent review see The Great Napoleonic Novel: "It's a sin to want to die for a nation."
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1. Ed Powers writing in Cleveland Press July 26th 1974.
2. The Nation , Aug 3rd 1974.
3. Roderick Nordell Christian Science Monitor May 29th 1974
4.The Scotsman 12 October 1974.
5. Charles A. Brady, Buffalo Evening News June 29th 1974; Martin Washburn, Village Voice July 4th 1974.
6. Newsweek May 27th 1974.
7. Rod Cockshutt, News and Observer North Carolina, June 16th 1974.
8. Mark Mirsky Washington Post May 26th 1974
9. New Statesman 27th September, 1974.
10. John D. Gates. No other identification. Isobel Murray Financial Times 26th September 1974
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