Summer Reading
I didn't see Stanley Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange for more than 10 years after it's release. The advertisements put me off - scared me off - to be honest. I was too young to see it without an adult. Having become in the meantime a cult movie I was dismayed that it refused to just go away. By then, a legacy of relentlessly negative reviews - and it's controversial subject matter - gave it a new lease on life for another generation. Contrary-wise, I decided anything that bad had to be good. I saw it in a theater. I don't know how many times I wanted to get up and walk out. Nobody I know knows I'm watching and nobody will know it was a total disaster.
Somewhat later in life it dawned on me that what Alex calls his "droogs" is the Russian word for friends: друг. That is, after I learned to read Russian. Learning to read Cyrillic Russian helped me appreciate the art of 20th century Constructivism. Reflexively, to check my notion, I looked-up “friend” in a Russian-English lexicon. I won't say my discovery completely revised my dim estimate of Stanley Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange, however, it did lend Alex's character a much-needed touch of book learning. It gave Alex a handle on his character one could grasp. 'Turns out he's better-educated than many in the audience!
The question – for me - then became one of, 'Did Anthony Burgess intend “droog” as a literary trope on the Russian word for friend?' It seemed obvious, but where literary double entendre is concerned, proceed with caution. The allusion to our (former) Cold War adversaries would make respectable the use of a foreign word that so closely resembles "drug," as in the English word for narcotics, and which in itself was another of Alex's vices, as we may presume. With help from the local public library, I borrowed by inter-library loan a copy from a university in the area. I cannot remember if I found the answer I was looking for. Anthony Burgess' A Clockwork Orange is the most unreadable book I've ever opened.
It's not merely hard to read; it is written so as to aggressively menace the reader's sensibility. The police term for felony intimidation – threat – is relevant, even if a fiction in this instance. I understand that's the writer's intention. But why? At that point I had to admit I was interested, “hooked.” Hanging in the balance was the decision to either drop A Clockwork Orange, and the whole problem finally goes away, or go along with it. For biographical context, I inquired what else has Burgess has published? What interested me about Burgess is his playing the part of misunderstood adolescent. Is Alex a Hollywood rebel-without-a-cause, or a Hamlet, playing the madman? At the very least, I determined to discover that Burgess doesn't write like A Clockwork Orange all the time.
I returned the library book and opened a case on Burgess. We literary sleuths have methods of finding things out. These methods to which I allude are destructive and must not be used on anything for which one does not have - in hand - clear title to own. Nonetheless, sometimes to discover the truth the evidence will be damaged in the process. I can read any book. The trick is to keep reading. Never read the same sentence twice. Don't get stuck. It's the trick of the culprit to throw-off investigation. If I don't “get it,” simply strike the sentence through (black marker in-hand), and move on to the next sentence. It all makes sense in the end. No single sentence ever tells the whole story. And - shock - having read the entire page, the page is ripped (by my method) from book, crumbled, and tossed in the waste basket.
Standing out from his many interesting titles, "Napoleon Symphony," caught my eye. Never a Napoleon follower, myself, written by Burgess it promised to be good fun at Napoleon's expense. I wasn't wrong. At this point, I have not yet finished the book, having ripped through only 58 pages, and yet I would recommend it. I can't wait to give it rave reviews, that I may thus cross the Rubicon, and return to reading (not writing), which is my preferred part.
Incidentally, although I do indeed destroy books studying them this way, it not a material loss. The cheap paperback I bought used and was printed in 8 point type is almost unreadable. I can read it, alright. I refuse to do so. It's too much strain on my eyesight. I can't read type that small without reading glasses, anyway, but what then, when I can't read even with reading spectacles? I won't willingly watch myself ruin what's left. We have an alternative. We shall photograph the pages and read each one-by-one on the computer - like microfiche - at 600+ magnification.
That answers the material damages objection. There's not enough time, given I haven't even finished reading the book (but), if I wanted to, I might knock-off copies of the complete set of picture files for others to read (or), they might be converted to digital text for re-printing. The book burners would have a hard time keeping up with us, given that pitch of reproductive capacity. The whole book fits on a storage media chip about the size of the finger nail of the ring finger of my left hand. With storage capacity to spare!
Napoleon Symphony starts with a dedication to Stanley Kubrick. A lucky guess, if I do say so myself; not so much to brag, as to confirm that I am on the true compass course. Burgess probably regrets Kubrick made a movie out of his worst book. The theme of the present book - that of Napoleon - would have been much more to the director's calling, that is, a maker of visually stunning works of cinematic art.
Art is what Burgess had in mind when he wrote Napoleon Symphony, notwithstanding the “Symphony” in the title, because a symphony it's not. If Bonaparte is the Beethoven of the battlefield, then Beethoven is the Bonaparte of the -concert hall? Not quite; Burgess may hear cannons firing in Beethoven's orchestral music. His writing is more like painting. It's VERY visual (not acoustic). It's messy, splashy, visceral. And Burgess' narrative painting is not to be classified as a painter of historically precise battlefield scenes. Think, rather, a painter such as J.M.W. Turner, and his taking pleasure along with his liberties in an almost abstract melting of form and content. In the typical William Turner painting, at the end of the day, one man-o-war wins the battle in a blaze of glory, and one goes down like the sun, also ablaze in all it's glory, each a metaphor for the other.
Like much of the tentative, early abstract expressionist art - particularly the Americans - the effect can be viscerally disgusting. Sartre had a word for it: nausea. Scholars of art delicately refer to such specimens as "non-digest." Add to 'undigested' the politic term 'regurgitated,' and, although I believe the current word is "reflux" (to be socially correct), you get a brief - and sharp - first impression of Anthony Burgess' Napoleon. That's the worst of it. If I can keep from puking it'll be a book to remember. I wonder why nobody's talking about it? In a tender-er age it would have been censored, if not for the graphic stream-of-consciousness sexuality, then for its politics.
Burgess seems to find the French Revolution amusing. He's diplomatic about it. He doesn't paint Napoleon a clown. Unquestionably, it's satire; English-style Commedia Della Arte. I might not have got the joke at all if I'd not seen The Time Bandits, by the Monty Python comedy troupe, referring specifically to the caricature of Bonaparte scene in the movie. As a quick synopsis, Napoleon makes war as he makes love. And, to complete the symmetry, he makes love the way he wages war. The victory is everything. And then it's over. Burgess isn't above prurient imagining what Josephine thought in bed. It will satisfy fans of romance paperbacks.
But hush, now, we're in the presence of greatness:
“Shed then the tyrant's blood that blood be shed no more.”
A shadow of doubt crept over my mind that Burgess did not write the line. Perhaps he's playing with the reader - by withholding attribution - to test the reader's erudition. The quote was duly fact checked by me using AI search for possible original. Indeed, as the search results acclaim, it is probably by an unknown contemporary of Shakespeare (so it said), but with no specific name offered. Satisfied the line was in fact written by Burgess, I smirked at the apparent joke. It's an excellent parody of the sort of Jacobin sentiment that brought about The Terror. As the AI adds, it's a fine example (whoever wrote it) of Iambic pentameter - like a drum beat – accompanying the condemned as they march to the Guillotine. Bravo!
Burgess wrote Napoleon Symphony like a film director. That, too, is an apparent homage to Stanley Kubrick, like returning the compliment. The reader will read two pages of witty, often sarcastic narrative repartee, turn the page, and by a quirk of the printer's art, plow through a formless mass of stream-of-consciousness daydream narrative, but whose? Napoleon's daydreaming is whose! With little more to go on other than the reader's own inferences, we jump from descriptions of the gritty reality of the battlefield, to daydreaming by our hero of making love to Josephine, to reminiscences of Paris soirées, and back to quarrels with his staff at the end of which Napoleon always has the last word. With the release of Napoleon Symphony, Burgess answers the conjecture, should it be made into a movie? No, because it's already been done!
The following text from the book is properly formatted with punctuation in the original. For my own convenience I dictated it into digital file for reproduction. That had the effect of removing all punctuation marks. I thought to restore the punctuation for accuracy, but for truth's sake, declined. The effect on the reader is much more aesthetic (as stream-of-conscious narratives go) than tick-marked, as in the original, and according to printers' rules. See if you agree:
...Germinal in the year four but in this opening of our own year one the seed throbs and frets in frustration haha how I should love to believe that what you have already of mine is at work deep within you Albenga is on the coast halfway between Nice or Niza and Genoa or Genova and I am busy with maps and protractor and chief of staff looking up that volume on Piedmont and it's topography I swear I caught the scent of your body from it it is strange and magical that about those dull tomes with which I encumbered our so short honeymoon your glow and odor should hover oh how I slather at the thought of you hunger to chew your very toes too much your Delta of silk in the valley of bliss now but a delirious memory and a long promise oh to fill you again with myself as I am filled now to overflowing with your sweetness the bees I swear will buzz around me when we reach the honey lands it is cold here and the troops grumble still kiss after kiss after kiss begins to abrade the crystal of your portrait
...The days of the minuet are over these are the days of the waltz
...I want all divisional commanders to put the hour on their messages as well as the date speed timing no more minuets Augereau knows all about the waltz we'll waltz them back to Vienna but first knock Piedmont off the dance floor
...And he took his love's miniature from his inner pocket to kiss against a background of bivouac fires the fried bacon reek of cannon smoke fading raising it to his lips he nearly staggered Marmont was concerned
look, Marmont, the glass is broken
Well then (smiling) our first task in Milan must be to
no no no it means she is very sick or very unfaithful oh God God God
...Bonaparte sat down on a magnificent uncomfortable chair he noted a quick irrelevance mouse dirt under the escritoire