Agnes C. Laut - "Canada: the Empire of the North"

Pedro Sarmiento de Gamboa - "History of the Incas"

James MacPherson - "Fragments Of Ancient Poetry"

Maria Edgeworth - "The Life And Letters Of Maria Edgeworth, Vol. 1"

Annual Bibliography of Commonwealth Literature 2007
This paper argues that discourses of love in Ghanaian market literature for youth offer a view into complex negotiations of agency and empowerment. Drawing on Deborah Durham's notion of youth as "social `shifters'" and Francis Nyamnjoh's conception of the "interconnectedness" of agency, I take Ghanaian market literature as one specific case of how African literature for youth foregrounds questions of continuity and change as African societies enter into increasingly complex global relations. In this literature for youth, received notions of love, often constructed out of impressions from American pop and hip hop music, carry new notions of agency that compete with existing "domesticated" forms. Authors like Ike Tandoh and Evelyn Tay employ discourses of love to offer youth alternative avenues for empowerment in a context of socio-economic disenfranchizement. In a creative process of "straddling", this writing both reveals and reproduces the contradictions that obtain in youth configurations of agency.

Napoleon the Little

V >> Victor Hugo >> Napoleon the Little




Let us add that at this moment, France--strange to say, but none the
less true--knows not what took place on the 2nd of December and
subsequently, or knows it imperfectly; and this is her excuse. However,
thanks to several generous and courageous publications, the facts are
beginning to creep out. This book is intended to bring some of those
facts forward, and, if it please God, to present them in their true
light. It is important that people should know who and what this M.
Bonaparte is. At the present moment, thanks to the suppression of the
platform, thanks to the suppression of the press, thanks to the
suppression of speech, of liberty, and of truth,--a suppression which
has had for one result the permitting M. Bonaparte to do everything,
but which has had at the same time the effect of nullifying all his
measures without exception, including the indescribable ballot of the
20th of December,--thanks, we say, to this stifling of all complaints
and of all light, no man, no fact wears its true aspect or bears its
true name. M. Bonaparte's crime is not a crime, it is called a
necessity; M. Bonaparte's ambuscade is not an ambuscade, it is called a
defence of public order; M. Bonaparte's robberies are not robberies,
they are called measures of state; M. Bonaparte's murders are not
murders, they are called public safety; M. Bonaparte's accomplices are
not malefactors, they are called magistrates, senators, and councillors
of state; M. Bonaparte's adversaries are not the soldiers of the law
and of right, they are called Jacquerie, demagogues, communists. In the
eyes of France, in the eyes of Europe, the 2nd of December is still
masked. This book is a hand issuing from the darkness, and tearing that
mask away.

Now, we propose to scrutinize this triumph of order, to depict this
government so vigorous, so firm, so well-based, so strong, having on
its side a crowd of paltry youths, who have more ambition than boots,
dandies and beggars; sustained on the Bourse by Fould the Jew, and in
the Church by Montalembert the Catholic; esteemed by women who would
fain pass for maids, by men who want to be prefects; resting on a
coalition of prostitutions; giving fetes; making cardinals; wearing
white neck-cloths and yellow kid gloves, like Morny, newly varnished
like Maupas, freshly brushed like Persigny,--rich, elegant, clean,
gilded, joyous, and born in a pool of blood!

Yes, men will awaken!

Yes, men will arouse from that torpor which, to such a people, is
shame; and when France does awaken, when she does open her eyes, when
she does distinguish, when she does see that which is before her and
beside her, she will recoil with a terrible shudder from the monstrous
crime which dared to espouse her in the darkness, and of which she has
shared the bed.

Then will the supreme hour strike!

The sceptics smile and insist; they say:

"Hope for nothing. This government, you say, is the shame of France. Be
it so, but this same shame is quoted on the Bourse. Hope for nothing.
You are poets and dreamers if you hope. Why, look about you: the
tribune, the press, intelligence, speech, thought, all that was
liberty, has vanished. Yesterday, these things were in motion, alive;
to-day, they are petrified. Well, people are satisfied with this
petrification, they accommodate themselves to it, make the most of it,
conduct business on it, and live as usual. Society goes on, and plenty
of worthy folk are well pleased with this state of things. Why do you
want to change it, to put an end to it? Don't deceive yourselves, it is
all solid, all firm; it is the present and the future."

We are in Russia. The Neva is frozen over. Houses are built on the ice,
and heavy chariots roll over it. It is no longer water, but rock. The
people go to and fro upon this marble which was once a river. A town is
run up, streets are marked out, shops opened; people buy, sell, eat,
drink, sleep, light fires on what once was water. You can do whatever
you please there. Fear nothing. Laugh, dance; it is more solid than
_terra firma_. Why, it rings beneath the foot, like granite. Long
live winter! Long live the ice! This will last till doomsday! And look
at the sky: is it day? is it night? what is it? A pale, misty light
steals over the snow; one would say that the sun is dying!

No, thou art not dying, O liberty! One of these days, at the moment
when thou art least expected, at the very hour when they shall have
most utterly forgotten thee, thou wilt rise!--O dazzling vision! the
star-like face will suddenly be seen issuing from the earth,
resplendent on the horizon! Over all that snow, over all that ice, over
that hard, white plain, over that water become rock, over all that
wretched winter, thou wilt cast thy arrow of gold, thy ardent and
effulgent ray! light, heat, life! And then, listen! hear you that dull
sound? hear you that crashing noise, all-pervading and formidable? 'Tis
the breaking up of the ice! 'tis the melting of the Neva! 'tis the
river resuming its course! 'tis the water, living, joyous, and
terrible, heaving up the hideous, dead ice, and crushing it.--'Twas
granite, said you; see, it splinters like glass! 'tis the breaking up
of the ice, I tell you: 'tis the truth returning, 'tis progress
recommencing, 'tis mankind resuming its march, and uprooting, carrying
off, mingling, crushing and drowning in its waves, like the wretched
furniture of a submerged hovel, not only the brand-new empire of Louis
Bonaparte, but all the structures and all the work of the eternal
antique despotism! Look on these things as they are passing. They are
vanishing for ever. You will never behold them again. That book, half
submerged, is the old code of iniquity; that sinking framework is the
throne; that other framework, floating off, is the scaffold!

And for this immense engulfment, this supreme victory of life over
death, what was needed? One glance from thee, O sun! one of thy rays, O
liberty!




V

BIOGRAPHY


Charles-Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte, born at Paris, on April 20, 1808, is
the son of Hortense de Beauharnais, who was married by the Emperor
to Louis-Napoleon, King of Holland. In 1831, taking part in the
insurrections in Italy, where his elder brother was killed, Louis
Bonaparte attempted to overthrow the Papacy. On the 30th of October,
1836, he attempted to overthrow Louis Philippe. He failed at Strasburg,
and, being pardoned by the King, he embarked for America, leaving his
accomplices behind him to be tried. On the 11th of November he wrote:
"The King, _in his clemency_, has ordered me taken to America;" he
declared himself "keenly affected by the King's _generosity_," adding:
"Certainly, we were all culpable towards the government in taking up
arms against it, but _the greatest culprit was myself_;" and he
concluded thus: "I was _guilty_ towards the government, and the
government has been _generous_ to me."[1] He returned from America, and
went to Switzerland, got himself appointed captain of artillery at
Berne, and a citizen of Salenstein, in Thurgovia; equally avoiding,
amid the diplomatic complications occasioned by his presence, to call
himself a Frenchman, or to avow himself a Swiss, and contenting
himself, in order to satisfy the French government, with stating in a
letter, dated the 20th of August, 1838, that he lived "almost alone,"
in the house "where his mother died," and that it was "his firm
determination to remain quiet."

[1] A letter read at the Court of Assize by the advocate Parquin,
who, after reading it, exclaimed: "Among the numerous faults of
Louis-Napoleon, we may not, at least, include ingratitude."

On the 6th of August, 1840 he disembarked at Boulogne, parodying the
disembarkation at Cannes, with the _petit chapeau_ on his head,[2]
carrying a gilt eagle on the end of a flag-staff, and a live eagle in
a cage, proclamations galore, and sixty valets, cooks, and grooms,
disguised as French soldiers with uniforms bought at the Temple, and
buttons of the 42nd Regiment of the Line, made in London. He scatters
money among the passers-by in the streets of Boulogne, sticks his hat
on the point of his sword, and himself cries, "Vive l'Empereur!" fires
a pistol shot at an officer,[3] which hits a soldier and knocks out
three of his teeth, and finally runs away. He is taken into custody;
there are found on his person 500,000 francs, in gold and
bank-notes;[4] the procureur-general, Franck-Carre, says to him in
the Court of Peers: "You have been tampering with the soldiers, and
distributing money to purchase treason." The peers sentenced him to
perpetual imprisonment. He was confined at Ham. There his mind seemed
to take refuge within itself and to mature: he wrote and published some
books, instinct, notwithstanding a certain ignorance of France and of
the age, with democracy and with progress: "The Extinction of
Pauperism," "An Analysis of the Sugar Question," "Napoleonic Ideas," in
which he made the Emperor a "humanitarian." In a treatise entitled
"Historical Fragments," he wrote thus: "I am a citizen before I am a
Bonaparte." Already in 1852, in his book "Political Reveries," he had
declared himself a republican. After five years of captivity, he
escaped from the prison of Ham, disguised as a mason, and took refuge
in England.

[2] Court of Peers. Attempt of the 6th August, 1840, page 140,
evidence of Geoffroy, grenadier.

[3] Captain Col. Puygellier, who had said to him: "You are a
conspirator and a traitor."

[4] Court of Peers. Evidence of the witness Adam, Mayor of
Boulogne.

February arrived; he hailed the Republic, took his seat as a
representative of the people in the Constituent Assembly, mounted the
tribune on the 21st of September, 1848, and said: "All my life shall
be devoted to strengthening the Republic;" published a manifesto which
may be summed up in two lines: liberty, progress, democracy, amnesty,
abolition of the decrees of proscription and banishment; was elected
President by 5,500,000 votes, solemnly swore allegiance to the
Constitution on the 20th of December, 1848, and on the 2nd of December,
1851, shattered that Constitution. In the interval he had destroyed
the Roman republic, and had restored in 1849 that Papacy which in 1831
he had essayed to overthrow. He had, besides, taken nobody knows how
great a share in the obscure affair of the lottery of the gold ingots.
A few weeks previous to the _coup d'etat_, this bag of gold became
transparent, and there was visible within it a hand greatly resembling
his. On December 2, and the following days, he, the executive power,
assailed the legislative power, arrested the representatives, drove
out the assembly, dissolved the Council of State, expelled the high
court of justice, suppressed the laws, took 25,000,000 francs from
the bank, gorged the army with gold, swept the streets of Paris with
grape-shot, and terrorized France. Since then, he has proscribed
eighty-four representatives of the people; stolen from the Princes of
Orleans the property of their father, Louis Philippe, to whom he owed
his life; decreed despotism in fifty-eight articles, under the name of
Constitution; throttled the Republic; made the sword of France a gag
in the mouth of liberty; pawned the railways; picked the pockets of
the people; regulated the budget by ukase; transported to Africa and
Cayenne ten thousand democrats; banished to Belgium, Spain, Piedmont,
Switzerland, and England forty thousand republicans, brought grief to
every heart and the blush of shame to every brow.

Louis Bonaparte thinks that he is mounting the steps of a throne; he
does not perceive that he is mounting those of a scaffold.




VI

PORTRAIT


Louis Bonaparte is a man of middle height, cold, pale, slow in his
movements, having the air of a person not quite awake. He has
published, as we have mentioned before, a moderately esteemed treatise
on artillery, and is thought to be acquainted with the handling of
cannon. He is a good horseman. He speaks drawlingly, with a slight
German accent. His histrionic abilities were displayed at the Eglinton
tournament. He has a heavy moustache, covering his smile, like that of
the Duke of Alva, and a lifeless eye like that of Charles IX.

Judging him apart from what he calls his "necessary acts," or his
"great deeds," he is a vulgar, commonplace personage, puerile,
theatrical, and vain. Those persons who are invited to St. Cloud, in
the summer, receive with the invitation an order to bring a morning
toilette and an evening toilette. He loves finery, display, feathers,
embroidery, tinsel and spangles, big words, and grand titles,--everything
that makes a noise and glitter, all the glassware of power. In his
capacity of cousin to the battle of Austerlitz, he dresses as a
general. He cares little about being despised; he contents himself with
the appearance of respect.

This man would tarnish the background of history; he absolutely sullies
its foreground. Europe smiled when, glancing at Haiti, she saw this
white Soulouque appear. But there is now in Europe, in every
intelligent mind, abroad as at home, a profound stupor, a feeling, as
it were, of personal insult; for the European continent, whether it
will or no, is responsible for France, and whatever abases France
humiliates Europe.

Before the 2nd of December, the leaders of the Right used freely to say
of Louis Bonaparte: "_He is an idiot._" They were mistaken. To be sure
that brain of his is awry, and has gaps in it, but one can discern here
and there thoughts consecutive and concatenate. It is a book whence
pages have been torn. Louis Napoleon has a fixed idea; but a fixed idea
is not idiocy; he knows what he wants, and he goes straight to it;
through justice, through law, through reason, through honour, through
humanity, it may be, but straight on none the less.

He is not an idiot. He is a man of another age than our own. He seems
absurd and mad, because he is out of his place and time. Transport him
to Spain in the 16th century, and Philip II would recognise him; to
England, and Henry VIII would smile on him; to Italy, and Caesar Borgia
would jump on his neck. Or even, confine yourself to setting him
outside the pale of European civilization,--place him, in 1817, at
Janina, and Ali-Tepeleni would grasp him by the hand.

There is in him something of the Middle Ages, and of the Lower Empire.
That which he does would have seemed perfectly simple and natural to
Michael Ducas, to Romanus Diogenes, to Nicephorus Botoniates, to the
Eunuch Narses, to the Vandal Stilico, to Mahomet II, to Alexander VI,
to Ezzelino of Padua, as it seems perfectly simple and natural to
himself. But he forgets, or knows not, that in the age wherein we live,
his actions will have to traverse the great streams of human morality,
set free by three centuries of literature and by the French Revolution;
and that in this medium, his actions will wear their true aspect, and
appear what they really are--hideous.

His partisans--he has some--complacently compare him with his uncle,
the first Bonaparte. They say: "The one accomplished the 18th Brumaire,
the other the 2nd of December: they are two ambitious men." The first
Bonaparte aimed to reconstruct the Empire of the West, to make Europe
his vassal, to dominate the continent by his power, and to dazzle it by
his grandeur; to take an arm-chair himself, and give footstools to the
kings; to cause history to say: "Nimrod, Cyrus, Alexander, Hannibal,
Caesar, Charlemagne, Napoleon;" to be a master of the world. And so he
was. It was for that that he accomplished the 18th Brumaire. This
fellow would fain have horses and women, be called _Monseigneur_, and
live luxuriously. It was for this that he accomplished the 2nd of
December. Yes: they are both ambitious; the comparison is just.

Let us add, that, like the first Bonaparte, the second also aims to be
emperor. But that which somewhat impairs the force of the comparison
is, that there is perhaps, a slight difference between conquering an
empire and pilfering it.

However this may be, that which is certain and which cannot be veiled,
even by the dazzling curtain of glory and of misfortune on which are
inscribed: Arcola, Lodi, the Pyramids, Eylau, Friedland, St.
Helena--that which is certain, we repeat, is that the 18th Brumaire was
a crime, of which the 2nd of December has aggravated the stain on the
memory of Napoleon.

M. Louis Bonaparte does not object to have it whispered that he is a
socialist. He feels that this gives him a sort of vague field which
ambition may exploit. As we have already said, when he was in prison,
he passed his time in acquiring a quasi-reputation as a democrat. One
fact will describe him. When, being at Ham, he published his book "On
the Extinction of Pauperism," a book having apparently for its sole and
exclusive aim, to probe the wound of the poverty of the common people,
and to suggest the remedy, he sent the book to one of his friends with
this note, which we have ourselves seen: "Read this book on pauperism,
and tell me if you think it is calculated _to do me good_."

The great talent of M. Louis Bonaparte is silence. Before the 2nd of
December, he had a council of ministers who, being responsible,
imagined that they were of some consequence. The President presided.
Never, or scarcely ever, did he take part in their discussions. While
MM. Odillon Barrot, Passy, Tocqueville, Dufaure, or Faucher were
speaking, _he occupied himself_, says one of these ministers, _in
constructing, with intense earnestness, paper dolls, or in drawing
men's heads on the documents before him_.

To feign death, that is his art. He remains mute and motionless,
looking in the opposite direction from his object, until the hour for
action comes; then he turns his head, and leaps upon his prey. His
policy appears to you abruptly, at some unexpected turning, pistol in
hand, like a thief. Up to that point, there is the least possible
movement. For one moment, in the course of the three years that have
just passed, he was seen face to face with Changarnier, who also, on
his part, had a scheme in view. "Ibant obscuri," as Virgil says. France
observed, with a certain anxiety, these two men. What was in their
minds? Did not the one dream of Cromwell, the other of Monk? Men asked
one another these questions as they looked on the two men. In both of
them, there was the same attitude of mystery, the same policy of
immobility. Bonaparte said not a word, Changarnier made not a gesture;
this one did not stir, that one did not breathe; they seemed to be
playing the game of which should be the most statuesque.

This silence of his, Louis Bonaparte sometimes breaks; but then he does
not speak, he lies. This man lies as other men breathe. He announces an
honest intention; be on your guard: he makes an assertion, distrust
him: he takes an oath, tremble.

Machiavel made small men; Louis Bonaparte is one of them.

To announce an enormity against which the world protests, to disavow it
with indignation, to swear by all the gods, to declare himself an
honest man,--and then, at the moment when people are reassured, and
laugh at the enormity in question, to execute it. This was his course
with respect to the _coup d'etat_, with respect to the decrees of
proscription, with respect to the spoliation of the Princes of
Orleans;--and so it will be with the invasion of Belgium, and of
Switzerland, and with everything else. It is his way; you may think
what you please of it; he employs it; he finds it effective; it is
his affair. He will have to settle the matter with history.

You are of his familiar circle; he hints at a project, which seems to
you, not immoral,--one does not scrutinize so closely,--but insane and
dangerous, and dangerous to himself; you raise objections; he listens,
makes no reply, sometimes gives way for a day or two, then resumes his
project, and carries out his will.

There is in his table, in his office at the Elysee, a drawer,
frequently half open. He takes thence a paper; reads it to a minister;
it is a decree. The minister assents or dissents. If he dissents, Louis
Bonaparte throws the paper back into the drawer, where there are many
other papers, the dreams of an omnipotent man, shuts the drawer, takes
out the key, and leaves the room without saying a word. The minister
bows and retires, delighted with the deference which has been paid to
his opinion. Next morning the decree is in the _Moniteur_.

Sometimes with the minister's signature.

Thanks to this _modus operandi_, he has always in his service the
unforeseen, a mighty weapon, and encountering in himself no internal
obstacle in that which is known to other men as conscience, he pursues
his design, through no matter what, no matter how, and attains his
goal.

He draws back sometimes, not before the moral effect of his acts, but
before their material effect. The decrees of expulsion of eighty-four
representatives of the people, published on January 6 in the
_Moniteur_, revolted public sentiment. Fast bound as France was,
the shudder was perceptible. The 2nd of December was not long past;
there was danger in popular excitement. Louis Bonaparte understood
this. Next day a second decree of expulsion was to have appeared,
containing eight hundred names. Louis Bonaparte had the proof brought
to him from the _Moniteur_; the list occupied fourteen columns of
the official journal. He crumpled the proof, threw it into the fire,
and the decree did not appear. The proscriptions proceeded without a
decree.

In his enterprises, he needs aids and collaborators; he needs what he
calls "men." Diogenes sought them with a lantern, he seeks them with a
banknote in his hand. And finds them. There are certain sides of human
nature which produce a particular species of persons, of whom he is the
centre, and who group around him _ex necessitate_, in obedience to
that mysterious law of gravitation which regulates the moral being no
less than the cosmic atom. To undertake "the act of the 2nd of
December,"--to execute it, and to complete it, he needed these men, and
he had them. Now he is surrounded by them; these men form his retinue,
his court, mingling their radiance with his. At certain epochs of
history, there are pleiades of great men; at other epochs, there are
pleiades of vagabonds.

But do not confound the epoch, the moment of Louis Bonaparte, with the
19th century: the toadstool sprouts at the foot of the oak, but it is
not the oak.

M. Louis Bonaparte has succeeded. He has with him henceforth money,
speculation, the Bourse, the Bank, the counting-room, the strong-box,
and all those men who pass so readily from one side to the other, when
all they have to straddle is shame. He made of M. Changarnier a dupe,
of M. Thiers a stop-gap, of M. de Montalembert an accomplice, of power
a cavern, of the budget his farm. They are coining at the Mint a medal,
called the medal of the 2nd of December, in honour of the manner in
which he keeps his oaths. The frigate _La Constitution_ has been
debaptized, and is now called _L'Elysee_. He can, when he chooses,
be crowned by M. Sibour,[1] and exchange the couch of the Elysee for
the state bed of the Tuileries. Meanwhile, for the last seven months,
he has been displaying himself; he has harangued, triumphed, presided
at banquets, given balls, danced, reigned, turned himself about in all
directions; he has paraded himself, in all his ugliness, in a box at
the Opera; he has had himself dubbed Prince-President; he has
distributed standards to the army, and crosses of honour to the
commissioners of police. When there was occasion to select a symbol, he
effaced himself and chose the eagle; modesty of a sparrow-hawk!

[1] The Archbishop of Paris.




VII

IN CONTINUATION OF THE PANEGYRICS


He has succeeded. The result is that he has plenty of apotheoses. Of
panegyrists he has more than Trajan. One thing, however, has struck me,
which is, that among all the qualities that have been discovered in him
since the 2nd of December, among all the eulogies that have been
addressed to him, there is not one word outside of this circle:
adroitness, coolness, daring, address, an affair admirably prepared and
conducted, moment well chosen, secret well kept, measures well taken.
False keys well made--that's the whole story. When these things have
been said, all has been said, except a phrase or two about "clemency;"
and yet no one extols the magnanimity of Mandrin, who, sometimes, did
not take all the traveller's money, and of Jean l'Ecorcheur, who,
sometimes, did not kill all travellers.

In endowing M. Bonaparte with twelve millions of francs, and four
millions more for keeping up the chateaux, the Senate--endowed by M.
Bonaparte with a million--felicitated M. Bonaparte upon "having saved
society," much as a character in a comedy congratulates another on
having "saved the money-box."

For myself, I am still seeking in the glorification of M. Bonaparte by
his most ardent apologists, any praise that would not exactly befit
Cartouche or Poulailler, after a good stroke of business; and I blush
sometimes for the French language, and for the name of Napoleon, at the
terms, really over-raw, and too thinly veiled, and too appropriate to
the facts, in which the magistracy and clergy felicitate this man on
having stolen the power of the State by burglarising the Constitution,
and on having, by night, evaded his oath.

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