Napoleon Symphony: A Novel in Four Movements

by Anthony Burgess

  “Well, miss, as habit himpels me still to go on calling you of,” said Sergeant Trouncer, as good a soldier of King George (though the Fourth now, not the Third, it making little odds however) as King George, if King George were disposed to look, could be expected to find, “them was his last words, as I have hevidence hof, and they is hinscribed ear hon this ear bit of paper, not to give it too rumbustious and overfacing hof a description.” He sucked his ample mustache, which had been, together with the spacious orifice to which it was a curtain, amply laved with beer freely donated by the Bascombes. He sat with Betsy in their garden in London, listening to birdsong very straightforwardly British and no nonsense, none of your tropical ornithological melodic extravagances. In six more months they would all be celebrating a British Christmas (not these same birds, of course; they, having little of true Christmas or indeed of British feeling, would have winged their way to other climes), but now it was British summer and no whit the worse for that, God bless it.

  Betsy read the scrap of paper, which bore evidence of long and arduous travel in the somewhat cramped diligence of Sergeant Trouncer’s back trousers pocket, and wept a little as she read. “France. Army. Head of the Army. Josephine.” She sniffed back a tear. “How very sad,” she said in a muffled voice.

  “Ha,” said Sergeant Trouncer weightily. “So that’s what it means, eh? I was never much of a one for the Frenchies and their lingo, miss, aving ad orrible hexperiences as I bitterly recall at Toulong.” To her blankness he elucidated: “Toulong being by way of a seaside place, miss, in France, and terrible rumbustious goings hon there was—I takes my hoath hon it, hif you will forgive the circumloquaciousness, so to speak, miss.”

  “So he thought of her,” sniffed Betsy, “at the very last. How sad, how really sad. And they all left him, Sergeant Trouncer, every one.”

  “I stayed,” Sergeant Trouncer observed, teasing out like carded wool the left wing of his damp mustache. “But then, I ad to, in a manner of talking, me being in His Majesty’s Forces, God bless im and them. Nor,” he added sagaciously, “was I by way of being a Woman, miss, that being in your mind without a Doubt. But,” he said mysteriously, “Eaven transposes all things in the long run, and whether we abide it or do not abide it makes but little difference to the houtcome of the ole boiling, miss, if you’ll a pardon of the hobservance.”

  “And I left him too,” Betsy said in a low and tremulous voice. “I deserted him with the others. How can I ever forgive myself?”

  “The call of dooty, miss,” pronounced Sergeant Trouncer, “and there is no going beyond of that, as is well detested by Them As Knows.” And, as though this last word asked for it, he placed a great index finger against the side of his meaty nasal organ.

  “I loved him, you see,” murmured Betsy.

  “Ah, love,” said Sergeant Trouncer frowning, as though it were some military innovation of which he did not approve, “love we all as eard of, heven when we ave not been much deposed to it. So there it is, miss, so to speak.”

  “And now it’s all over.”

  “Well,” deliberated Sergeant Trouncer, “I wouldn’t be too certain of that, miss. Them is very final words—Hall Hover. No, miss, I would think twice before deliverance of that there hutterance.” Our military friend, though lacking in what the narrower world calls learning and refinement, was not devoid of a certain natural wisdom, and it was out of the depths of this that he repeated the words: “Hall Hover? No, miss, not in the least Hall Hover.” And then he gladly accepted another glass of the Bascombes’ good British ale.

  Not in the least all over. It was a gorgeous spring morning as N rode out to inspect the troops. The words of the memoranda he had just dictated rang like a jingle of little bell-tunes. It was really a most beautiful morning. “The Louvre was five minutes late in opening yesterday… That junior clerk in the Ministry of Works, Queval I seem to remember the name is, seems to me to be a sly tippler. How can he afford it on his salary? Irregularities there, and if in small, probably in high places too. Have it looked into… The Egyptian fountain is in a very dirty state, have it cleaned out… The rate of the bank loan must be raised one percent… The time has come for a new school edition of the life of Charlemagne… Corporal Masson has an inflamed eye, order him to report sick… Some day we will have those bastards incorporated into the Great European Family…”

  With him rode his Chief of Staff, the Marshal of the Day, the Master of the Horse (sulking; some argument about shoeing techniques), two of his ADC’s, two orderly officers, an equerry, a telescope-carrying page, a groom, an interpreter, a soldier of the escort bearing a map-portfolio and a pair of dividers fixed at the daily rate of march, Roustam, dear old black bastard. Ahead, twelve cavalry and two more orderly officers. Behind, the main escort of four squadrons of the Guard Cavalry (chasseurs, lancers, mounted grenadiers, dragoons). It suddenly struck him, with amusement, that he had forgotten entirely what, where—

  “Sire.” And he was told where they were, what the name of the coming victory was to be, who the enemy was. But, of course, there was really only one enemy.

  “—Family sooner than they think, bastards.”

  “Sire.”

  The roar of loving greeting from the assembled troops scared the birds to mad uncoordinated circling. His birthday, the anniversary of a great victory, of his crowning? No, it was just him, he. He waved, tears of love in his eyes, marking at the same time the shocking turn-out of Sergeant Pécriaux, nearly on his knees and an upper button missing, must speak to the womanizing swine. Cheers of greeting and rejoicing. Everything and everybody joined in, far beyond this field. Animate and inanimate in general jubilation.

  The muzzle-loading plugs, the last remaining stretch of the Zuyder Zee, the unleavened bread disk of the Eucharist, Wilhelm Richard and John Peter (Honus), the constellations Ursa Major and Auriga, the whole tribe of Motacilla, the widows and orphans, what was left of Solomon’s temple in Jerusalem, the tongues of the Nootka, Bridges Creek, the Vaudois, the entire cavalry, camptosorus rhizophyllus, leucoma and strabismus, the tough wood of the gunstocks, witches’ sabbaths, the brash and the buffalo, the salamanders, cowbane, plantain, purslane, diving beetles and wattlebirds, the snowberry, Mad Anthony, sea trout, meteors and meteorology, weave and lattice, gravitation, cisterns, canals, marine snails, Bengal, monsoons, the shark and the wheatear, the nematode worm, the knout and the vine-garroon, the gratuitously assumed mission of the Caucasoids, Pentecostal tongues, harlots and liars, islands and cutlets and physicists, the lily of the valley, the bellowing gnu, ships and clarinets and tempests, the Son of Sirach, hazel and witch moth, cuckolds and warlocks, sorrel and alexia, Sir Thomas and Breslau and all the flowing wine of the world rejoiced. Rejoice. And again I say rejoice. And I say aga INRI ng bells bells bells bells and rejoice. Rejoice.

  I and III, Rome, 1972

  II and IV, Rome, 1973

  AN EPISTLE TO THE READER

  Take then or leave this lump of minor art,

  A novel on Napoleon Bonaparte

  (In a Pickwickian sense, I ought to add).

  Post-Tolstoy novelists are reckoned mad,

  Presumptuous, temerarious, or all three,

  To write about the Corsican, since he

  Is brilliantly portrayed in Voina i Mir:

  After that vodka, who wants British beer?

  The two Leones met, the task was done;

  Why seek the knout of vile comparison?

  Our Thomas Hardy was aware of this

  (Great in his way, though, as Count Leo is),

  And so, when limning Bonaparte’s career,

  Eschewed the epic shape of Voina i Mir,

  Choosing the Goethean super-closet-play

  Instead or (daring prophecy, some say)

  A filmscript with no dream of celluloid,

  The firmament as screen, thus to avoid

  Being, with those same knout-strokes, flogged and flayed.

  Still the comparison is bluntly made

/>   By all who ever read or tried to read

  The Dynasts. And The Dynasts is, indeed,

  A monstrous shocking failure. Nonetheless,

  Malignity may munch but Muses bless

  Failed boldness more than orthodox success.

  As for my own flawed superficial thing,

  No critic would be fool enough to bring

  In Tolstoy guns to blast me into dust.

  This is a comic novel and it must

  Be read as such, as such deemed good or bad—

  A thousand versts away from Tolstoygrad.

  Indeed, my working title used to be

  This: The Napoleon Comic Symphony,

  A name that reason forced me to reject,

  Since comic leads the reader to expect

  Contrivances of laughter: comic taste,

  Like the term comedy, has been debased.

  Arousing mirth—this is not what I’m at:

  What’s comedy? Not tragedy. That’s that.

  My Ogre, though heroic, is grotesque,

  A sort of essay in the picaresque,

  Who robs and rapes and lies and kills in fun

  And does no lasting harm to anyone.

  Standing behind him, though, or to one side,

  Another, bigger, hero is implied,

  Not comic and not tragic but divine,

  Tugging Napoleon’s strings, and also mine,

  Controlling form, the story’s ebb and flow—

  Beethoven, yes: this you already know.

  I was brought up on music and compose

  Bad music still, but ever since I chose

  The novelist’s métier one mad idea

  Has haunted me, and I fulfill it here

  Or try to—it is this: somehow to give

  Symphonic shape to verbal narrative,

  Impose on life, though nerves scream and resist,

  The abstract patterns of the symphonist.

  I know that several works of literature

  Have played the game already: these demur

  (Point Counter Point, the Four Quartets) at going

  Further than superficial fancy, showing

  A literary fear of the whole hog,

  Content with the most general analogue.

  The most ambitious effort the world knows

  Within this manic field—narrative prose

  Made to behave like music—we can hear

  When Joyce’s Sirens captivate the ear,

  Comic-pedantic fugal, in Ulysses,

  Most brilliant, most ingenious. But this is

  Really a piece of elephantine fun

  Designed to show the thing cannot be done.

  Nor can it. What for years has haunted me

  Has been a like impossibility—

  A novel where the horrible Marquis

  De Sade comes up against Jane Austen and

  They clash thematically, the whole thing planned

  In four Mozartian movements: first, con brio;

  Adagio next; next, minuet and trio;

  A riotous allegro at the end.

  I mentioned this to a film-making friend,

  Quite casually. Uncasually he said

  I ought to write on Bonaparte instead

  (He thought of his own art: he wished to plan

  An epic film about the Corsican

  But lacked a script). At once there flashed in flame

  A more ambitious notion—this: to frame

  A novel on Napoleon Bonaparte

  That followed Ludwig van, and not Mozart.

  The symphony was there—Third, in E-Flat,

  The Eroica. This novel, then, is that:

  Napoleon’s career, unteased, rewoven

  Into a pattern borrowed from Beethoven.

  The story is well-known: Count Bernadotte

  Met Beethoven and said to him: “Why not

  A Sinfonia Buonaparte?”—”Yes:

  This great First Consul merits nothing less,”

  Said Beethoven, and so he wrote the work.

  But certain ogreish traits began to irk,

  Then deeplier disturb, then fire to rage

  Ludwig, who ripped the dedication page

  To ribbons, crying: “Hero of the age?

  Ach, nein—another tyrant”

  He was right: The Duc d’Enghien shot at dead of night,

  Without a trial; the Napoleonic line

  Secured by regifaction. “Held? Ach nein!”

  A generalized First Consul yet remains

  Inside the symphony: heroic strains

  In E-Flat, most heroic key, give out

  The essential hero, not the Mafia lout.

  My task as novelist? Restore that rogue ram,

  That bad Colossus, to the symphonic program,

  Dealing in hard particulars but still

  Invoking what is always general

  In music, the Napoleonic presence

  And, contra punctum, music’s formal essence—

  As far as possible—if it can be done—

  It can’t, of course—, and so on, and so on.

  The first two movements of the Eroica,

  Although (but need I tell you this?) they are

  Organized sound, no more, to awe the ear,

  Yet do suggest some hero’s brief career.

  The Allegro: see him live and vigorous,

  Striding the earth, stern but magnanimous,

  In love with order, his regretful strife

  Devoted to the ennobling of our life.

  The Marcia Funebre: already dead,

  The ironic laurels wilting round his head,

  He’s borne to burial; we weep, we hear

  The purple orators about his bier—

  That character, how noble; and how great

  Those exploits in the service of the State.

  He rests in peace beneath this hallowed shroud,

  Quite dead, and resurrection’s not allowed.

  But stay—there are two movements still to run:

  The subject’s buried; what’s then to be done?

  The Scherzo—how? The brisk Finale—who?

  Beethoven smiles: “What I propose to do

  Is to invoke another noble creature,

  No child of Nature, but of Supernature.

  The vague historical—that’s finished with;

  Now the particularity of myth.”

  What myth? What hero? Aaaaah—Prometheus.

  Beethoven makes it fiery-clear to us

  In his Finale who the hero is.

  He takes a bass and then a theme from his

  Own ballet music on Prometheus, then

  Builds variations till the count of ten.

  The Scherzo—is it fancy that hears roar

  The flames which from the gods the hero tore

  To bring to man? Those horns—what are they doing?

  The hunt is up, it is the gods pursuing.

  In Plutarch’s Lives the heroes go in pairs—

  One fabulous and one historic. There’s

  The origin, one thinks, of this device:

  The heroic is displayed not once but twice.

  The novelist must deal in unity

  Of character, so that was not for me—

  Two slabs of prose about Napoleon

  Followed by two (much lighter) based upon

  Prometheus. You see, then, what I’ve done:

  Forced mythic and historic into one.

  The trio of my (sort of) Scherzo is

  A play in verse the Emperor witnesses

  Based on Prometheus, written by a man

  Named, quite improbably, Enuiluban—

  Nabuliune, him. In the last part

  (Whose variations do not dare the art

  Of parody, however it appears)

  Another victim claims our tears or ears

  Or eyes or fancy—three fused into one—

  Though basically Promethapoleon,

  Chained to a rock, his
liver eagled out,

  This, then, is what the novel is about:

  Its key E-Flat, its form pseudo-symphonic,

  Ending upon a forte major tonic,

  Napoleon triumphant—so he is,

  Since, unfulfilled in life, that plan of his

  Now operates at last: proud England, cowed

  Back into Europe, humbled, silenced, bowed.

  Let hell’s or heaven’s belfries clang out loud.

  Praise for

  NAPOLEON SYMPHONY

  “It is more consistently funny than any book of Mr Burgess’s that I know, and it even makes the old Corsican gangster and tyrant interesting. . . . [Burgess] is particularly good at deaths. . . . And his own prose, when he is not being a ventriloquist, is invariably thick and solid and mouthfilling. . . . Napoleon Symphony is a rich vast growling narrative poem sometimes in prose. The thought that wove it never dropped a stitch.”

  —Paul Chipchase, Tablet

  “[Burgess’s] dedication to a full use and extension of language and the intrinsic power of his subject-matter explain a consistent aim: to remind readers of the novel that the language still has enormous potential untapped by Englishmen; to entertain and not to bore; to use comedy as a toy weapon whose well set-up thrusts will make rhetorical address more acceptable; and to explode (again) the fallacy of experimental = meaningless by taking on the challenge of Joyce.”

  —Graham Fawcett, Books and Bookmen

  “There are more profound writers than Burgess in the canon but I can think of few who are so literate and no one who is as marvellously entertaining. Napoleon Symphony is, in my opinion, the best novel so far in his extraordinary career.”

  —John Mills, Queen’s Quarterly

  “From gutteral snarls to breathings of passion to squeals of despair, the narrative swells with sound, complex, Joycean, organized like music; and the exercise as a whole is ebullient, entertaining and crammed with live history.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  “The verbal roulades are abundant, together with the bawdy, the scatological, the witty. . . . Few of the characters are particularly attractive, but they weren’t in real life. They are complex and believably human, de Stael most of all. The retreat from Borodino reads with mounting horror, while the period of exile on St Helena almost elicits pity. The novel is massive and innovative.”