Napoleon Symphony, by Anthony Burgess

Napoleon Symphony, by Anthony Burgess

 I’ve long been a fan of Burgess, and have read most of his fiction.  His work is always educational.   I used to keep a dictionary at my side; now I use Google and Wikipedia, even better.  They are especially useful with historical fiction.  If I’m ever in doubt as to whether a character or an event is historical or fictional, the internet provides a speedy answer.   With Burgess, you have to decide which things to look up, and which to let remain not understood. lf I looked up every word or reference I wasn’t sure of, I’d lose the thread of the plot line and probably never finish the book.  And I’m fairly well educated and well read.  Needless to say, Burgess is not for the unambitious reader. 

Napoleon Symphony is a historical fictional account about Napoleon Bonaparte, his rise to power, his majestic conquests, his colossal defeats, and his ultimate demise.  The reader’s education begins with the first sentence, “Tallien pressed his old royal watch and it chimed a new republican nine.”  Who was Tallien, real or fictional?  What’s a republican nine?  Jean-Lambert Tallien was real, an important player in the years that followed the storming of the Bastille in 1789.  The republican nine was real too.  In 1793 the French leaders declared a new calendar, with year I (why did they choose Roman numerals?) as 1792.  The twelve months were each 30 days long and were given new, French names such as Ventose, meaning windy, for February, and Thermidor, meaning hot, for July.   Each month consisted of three weeks, each ten days long.  The day was divided into ten long hours, which were each divided into 100 minutes, each consisting of 100 seconds.  So the “new republican nine” would have been about 9:30 pm.  I had never before heard of all that.  It ended in 1805 when they reverted to the old timekeeping standard, I suppose because that’s what the rest of the world was still using.  So that’s the lesson from the first sentence.  Not every sentence is as rich as that, but many are, and the reader who takes time to look things up will come away with a newly buttressed education.  

Burgess was a lover of music.  He supposedly stated that he would rather be known as a composer who also wrote books, than the other way around.  The book’s subtitle is “A novel in four movements.”  It appears in four sections, reflecting different phases of Napoleon’s life.  Interspersed in the story are various pieces of verse, some of which I found annoying.  Maybe I’m not sufficiently educated to ‘get’ the significance and relevance of these pieces of verse, but there you go.  Burgess also has an annoying way of inserting foreign language--not just words or phrases, but one or more whole sentences--without also giving an accompanying translation.  Just who is he writing for?  If he’s trying to impress me with his erudition, no need.  I was already thoroughly impressed by the part written in English.  The unfamiliar foreign language is just aggravating.

Still, I’m a big fan and fond of this book.  Historian Dan Carlin says the more we know abut a civilization or society or period in history, the more complex it appears.   If we know very little it can seem deceptively simple.  This book provides facts and speculation that greatly enrich, and complicate, our understanding of Napoleon, a character who deserves to be acknowledged as much more than simply “the little general.”