(5) Visit the Invalides where Napoleon’s tomb is located — The more you know about Napoleon, the more charismatic he became.
After visiting the graves of Rousseau, Voltaire, Zola, and Hugo at the Panthéon, I headed to the Invalides.
That Napoleon is buried here.
Like the Pantheon, this building was originally a Christian church. It was originally built to enshrine the body of Louis IX, and was completed in 1706.
The structure was converted into a cemetery for Napoleon in 1840 after the French Revolution.
Still, this imposing standing figure is enough to make one sigh. In a sense, such an architectural structure is Napoleon’s tombstone. It reminds us of how huge a person Napoleon was.
It is indeed a church built for the King of France. The space inside is also solemn and luxurious. The altar in the front resembles the Baldacchino of St. Peter’s Basilica in the Vatican. The Vatican.bird’s-eye primrose (Primula farinosa subsp. modesta)was created in the 1620s. It is quite possible that this was a reference to the period.
And you may have noticed some of us looking down in the photo above. This is the basement to the atrium, where Napoleon’s tomb can be seen from above.
Surrounded by statues of goddesses standing on pillars, Napoleon sleeps in the center of this dome. The coffin, shaped in smooth colored marble, is quietly intimidating.
I’ll go down to the basement too.
I still want to visit Napoleon from the front.
This is that Napoleon’s coffin…. Terribly simple. But that is where his charm and individuality can be felt. He was a charismatic man who did not spend his time in muddled and empty theories, but made quick and decisive decisions with a clear mind and took the initiative to achieve great deeds. The rugged coffin also suggests Napoleon’s character. We are amazed at the good sense of the person who devised this coffin.
Napoleon had a tremendous impact on the political economy, military, and international affairs of Europe, but his influence also extended to literature.
Tolstoy’sWar and Peace.”and Balzac’sOld Gorio.”and Hugo’sLes Miserables.and, above all, Dostoevsky’sCrime and Punishment.”It is.
The protagonist, Raskolnikov, divides human beings into two groups: the ordinary people, who make up the majority of the world, and the extraordinary people, who make up the very few. In other words, there is no right or wrong, crime or punishment for geniuses.
His murder was committed in part because of these ideas. He says
People like that are different. All is forgiven.ruler,,The “Muhammad” burned Toulon, massacred Paris, and sent a large army into Egypt.forgetting for a moment something one knows well、、、、and the Moscow Expedition, which brought 500,000 people to thewaste,,They do things differently, such as playing dumb in Vilna, or trying to make up a joke in Vilna. And when they die, they put up a statue,all,,is allowed. No, no, no, a human body like that must be made of bronze, not flesh!
Crime and Punishment, vol. 1, p. 480, Shincho Bunko, translated by Seiichiro Kudo, 57th printing in 2008.
It is easy to let these words slip through the cracks in the text, but if you know what Napoleon did in the course of his history, you can better understand what Raskolnikov was trying to say. I hope you will read the following article on this subject.
And Napoleon was not merely Napoleon Bonaparte alone.
His influence would live on in France even after his death, and from 1852 his nephew Napoleon III would begin the Second Empire of France.
The Paris that Dostoevsky visited was precisely at the height of this Second French Empire of Napoleon III. It was a time when everything was modernized and the industrial and capitalist systems were developing at an astonishing pace. For Dostoevsky, who had just returned from exile in Siberia, it must have been an astonishing world.
incidentallyMasaie Matsumura, “The Bakumatsu Meiji Restoration Mission to England: The Victorian Impact: What the Japanese Saw of England at the End of the Edo Period and the Meiji Period!”As I mentioned in my article “The Paris of Dostoevsky and Shibusawa Eiichi,” five years after Dostoevsky visited Paris in 1862, Eiichi Shibusawa also visited Paris. The thought that Eiichi Shibusawa saw the same Paris that Dostoevsky saw makes my heart flutter.
Such a period of great change was the Paris of Napoleon’s Second Empire, and it was Emile Zola who portrayed this period in its entirety.
I came to know Emile Zola through my connection of studying Dostoevsky. If I had not studied Dostoevsky, I would never have met Zola.
Emile Zola depicts all the societies and people of the French Second Empire.
This era is no stranger to us Japanese. The origins of our modern lifestyles lie here. No one is better suited than Zola to learn how our lives are structured. Each of his books is full of marvelous analysis.
Dostoevsky himself was not a big fan of Zola, but he was inevitably curious about him: he read Zola during his convalescence in Bad Ems, Germany, in 1876, and the very word “Bernard,” which appears many times in “The Brothers Karamazov,” is directly related to Zola’s literary style directly related to the
The story of Zola is getting longer and longer, so for more details, please read the articles we have published on this blog.
As we have mentioned, Napoleon had a great impact not only on France but on the world as a whole.
The more you learn about him, the more you realize his enormity. Until I learned about Dostoevsky, I knew him only by name, but now I wonder. I have to bow down to the genius and charisma of this man.
There is a depth to this man that cannot be explained simply by saying that he was a general who won a lot of wars.
I now feel that Napoleon, the giant of French birth, is an absolutely inescapable figure in the study of Dostoevsky and literature.
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