Word: napoleonism
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...bored by him," Victor Hugo once remarked of Napoleon. But the French certainly do not share that feeling. Despite devaluation of the franc, France this week celebrates the 200th anniversary of Bonaparte's birth, gripped by an unprecedented outbreak of Napoleonomania. Traveling by ship and plane to Napoleon's Corsican hometown of Ajaccio (pop. 50,000), more than 200,000 tourists will enjoy fireworks and street dancing, hear President Georges Pompidou deliver the bicentennial address and watch 3,500 French légionnaires, dressed as the Emperor's grognards (grumpy veterans), parade through the spruced-up city...
...Ajaccio festivities are the peak of the celebrations. But every day in 1969 is a Nappy birthday, marked by Napoleonic exhibitions, costume parades, festivals, commemorative ceremonies, solemn Masses or pilgrimages. In one recent week, six major Napoleonic art shows opened in Paris and the suburbs alone. French TV has scheduled no fewer than 80 programs about the Emperor. Some 100 books on Napoleon will be published during the year. Paul Ferrandi, director of Corsica House in Paris, says: "Next to Jesus Christ, Napoleon Bonaparte is the most written-about subject in the world...
Caught by photographers behind a large volume on the life of Napoleon, vacationing Georges Pompidou, President of France, explained that he was doing research for his speech this month at the bicentennial celebration of the Emperor's birth in Ajaccio, Corsica. The President was taking a long weekend with his wife and son at Pointe de 1'Ar-couest on the Brittany coast, his first real breather since assuming office. According to Paris Match, it was practically a second honeymoon: "Hand in hand, they run among the rocks, they go for cruises, and, like all vacationers, they return...
...reversed the master by ushering in a new school of romantic pageantry. Like David, Gros became caught up in the whirlwind of contemporary politics. Through Josephine, he met Bonaparte in 1796, was given a role in the French army's confiscation of Italian art treasures, then taken into Napoleon's entourage...
Part of his franchise was to see his master in the most majestic terms, and Bonaparte Visiting the Pest-Ridden of Jaffa, showing the conqueror touching the sores of a hapless victim of the plague, was clearly intended to portray Napoleon as the modern hero sans pareil. But the picture is redeemed by the sharply observed bodies of the stricken. David would probably have laid the scene in a bare hospital room, and Gros considered just that. But feeling the need tor a more theatrical setting for his hero, he conceived of a Moorish courtyard looking out on the ramparts...