STENDHAL'S NAPOLEON

New Zealand Listener, Volume 37, Issue 953, 15 November 1957, Page 13

STENDHAL'S NAPOLEON

A LIFE OF NAPOLEON, by Stendhal; Rodale Press, English price 17/6. HE chief attractions of this book are its subject, and the fact that it is written by a great novelist. But a great (continued on next page)

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(continued from previous page) novelist is not necessarily an able biographer. Stendhal set himself the task of refuting a slander, or confounding the strictures on Bonaparte contained in Madame de Staél’s Considerations sur les principaux événements de Ja Revolution francaise, He is at pains to dispel the suspicion that General Pichegru was murdered by Napoleon’s order; he defends the seizure and execution of the Duke d’Enghien; and the shooting of Turkish prisoners at Jaffa, but admits elsewhere that his hero "was always afraid of the masses, and never had a plan." Certain strange pronouncements suggest that Stendhal’s political judgment was not of the soundest. For example, "Apart from these two deteriorating conditions (Napoleon’s failure to encourage republican virtues or found ‘schools for administrators) French administration was something that will never be improved. upon." "Nothing could be wiser than the projectedewar with Russia." Signs of Stendhal’s genius appear in his account of Napoleon’s return from Elba, after which event the narrative ends. Never properly revised, the book is fragmentary and discursive. The lavish praise bestowed upon Napoleon in some chapters is not compatible with certain condemnatory statements made _ in others. The reason for this inconsistency may perhaps be found in the author’s own prefatory announcement that "There are some two or three hundred authors of this Life. . . The editor has done no more than make a_ collection of those sentences which seemed to him to be to the point."

R.M.

Burdon