On the Banishment and Death of Napoleon

An Exercise in Ekphrasis, the Use of Visual Art as a Literary Device

Have you been enjoying country walks, marvelling at the change of season? Itching to get the first chapter of that book you’ve been meaning to write out of your head and into your work file? Could the constraint of ekphrasis unlock your creative power and liberate your writing about landscape and place?

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Napoleon Bonaparte

Napoleon Bonaparte became the focus for my research during the first year of my Masters Degree in Creative Writing. I never studied this period of history at school and knew little about the circumstances of his rise to power and subsequent defeat.

Life Writing and Place Writing often interweave and although I remembered that Napoleon was banished to a remote island prison to live out the rest of his years, I knew little of the detail. I was fascinated by the idea of it, reminding me of other places such as Devil’s Island in French Guiana, Robben Island in South Africa, and the infamous Alcatraz in the USA.

I wanted to know more about St Helena, Bonaparte’s destination—its location, the topography, flora and fauna. I wanted to know under what circumstances he was detained. To find answers to these questions I spent many hours in the British Library, reading Napoleon’s correspondence, scanning newspaper records and various first-hand accounts of his life. There were many interesting details— about his conversations with women, about his accommodation in the field of battle, about his living quarters in exile, and about his medical history.

An Island Prison

Ten miles long and 5 miles wide, St Helena is a British territory, a rocky outcrop in the South Atlantic 4,000 miles away from mainland UK. Significantly, it sits in the ocean 4,400 miles distant from France and roughly 2000 miles from America’s east coast. Napoleon was taken there in 1815 after defeat at the Battle of Waterloo. He died there in 1821.

A Creative Writing Masters Dissertation

I gathered a quantity of primary and secondary research, more than enough material to draft my dissertation. But how would I turn this into more than simply an historic record? I felt I’d got close to the man—I’d seen his handwriting, read his most intimate letters…

I decided to write to him, to communicate across time, to imagine that he would open my letter, and that he would understand it. Finally, I submitted a 5000 word ‘Letter to Napoleon’ which formed the major part of my dissertation.

An Exercise in Ekphrasis

Today as my starting point, I’m using the watercolour above dated 1820 and titled ‘Napoleon’s Exile on Saint Helena’; it’s by Franz Josef Sandman (1805 - 1856) and currently resides in the Musée National du Château de Malmaison in the western suburbs of Paris, France. As you may know, ekphrasis is a form of writing, a poetic device, that offers an opportunity to create new work in response to a work of art using observation, conversation, research, and imagination.

Here’s my ekphrastic response to Sandman’s watercolour:

Part 1:

I see you. To be accurate, the back of you through my vintage brass telescope as you stand on a rocky promontory in your green-tailed military uniform, arms folded, looking out to a metallic sea. Your longing is palpable. That ship on the horizon, in the briny swell, it’s impossibly distant; it sails without you and always will. Through time and space, hundreds of years and thousands of miles, I observe you on this remote speck of terra firma in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. This is your prison. It will be your grave. Ironic that your life began on an island, a tear drop in the Mediterranean.

Boredom batters your spirit while waves buffet the cliffs. Yet you rise each day with purpose—perhaps you’ll draft a section of your memoir, change the plot of your romance novella, begin a new short story. Sad to say, I wager the Prince Regent, though a fervent patron of the arts, will not sanction publication, not any of your words, not during your lifetime.

Dark damp wind-swept winters are the enemy, as much of an enemy for you now as the armies you fought in the past. You take up your pen in candlelight, concentrate for an hour. You select a book from the library shelves, written in French, but you cast it to the floor in disgust—it has been read a hundred times.

Hot food is brought to your room on a tray, salt beef from England and rice from Bengal—it brings a brief moment of pleasure—helped down by more than one glass of Cognac. You know something of hunger, you inflicted starvation on thousands—they ate human corpses in their final desperate days, even children. You have enemies here in your isolation. Your doctor advises small doses of arsenic as homeopathic insurance against your own murder. But, you know—it kills rats.

Part 2:

You lived fifty-two years; your blood has run cold, you lie stiff in a cot. A lozenge of earth has been removed, ready to take your coffin without ceremony. Finally, your body is consigned to the grave.

Ah! But not finally.

Years later, as if resurrected, your form is dug up, surprisingly well preserved they said, to be repatriated to France. To Paris, Les Invalides, where a mighty red and green granite sarcophagus awaits your remains.

People say the monument is somewhat pleasing to the eye and many visit and stare, imagining you inside, commenting on who you once were.

I see you. To be accurate, I see the painted figure of you in a cocked hat, white breeches, and calf-hugging boots. I see you on the rocky promontory. No future. Only dreams. You clutch your stomach, wince with toothache, yet doggedly continue to inspect a restless metallic sea.

Join the conversation and share your ekphrastic experiments in the comments. What painting speaks to your sense of place? Let’s build our craft together.

Reflection

If I were to develop this piece of ekphrastic writing I would dig deeper into the effects of place on the psyche, specifically how rock becomes prison, how a rough Atlantic sea becomes jailor. I’d put myself in Napoleon’s shoes (or boots!). How would I react to confinement in a foreign land, an unfamiliar environment, where nothing is in my control? All this, in contrast to how St Helena is viewed today, much appreciated for its remoteness and unspoilt nature, visited by adventure seekers who hike the rocky paths and dive with sharks and rays.

Researching archives releases enormous potential. With many archives online it’s possible to search by topic and theme from almost anywhere in the world. Miles and miles of original material—sound, image, text, maps—all available at our fingertips; a treasury for you to mine for your creative writing projects. Life writing often goes arm in arm with Place Writing so don’t be afraid to include people, real or imagined. Biographical research is just as valuable as other types of place-based research.

I have to admit, I became a little obsessed with Napoleon, learning about his rise to power and his ability to force change in a turbulent political period, but spending time with him, staring at his image, at his signature. The more I became familiar with him, the more comfortable I felt about writing. Paralysing fear dropped away as one piece of research lead to another, it was possible to make links. Historical data tied with what I’d gleaned from reading Tolstoy’s novel War and Peace. Suddenly truth and fiction merged and this was where the magic happened and writing takes an unexpected turn.

Unlock Your Creativity

However, you don’t need to undertake hours of research. Using ekphrasis you can produce a piece of writing direct from observation. Here are five steps to unlock your creativity:-

1. Identify a painting you find interesting—a landscape or seascape. It’s a more visceral experience to see a painting in real life but I found Sandman’s watercolour online. Most art galleries, such as London’s Royal Academy, have collections online.

2. Spend ten minutes looking, allowing ideas to come and go.

3. Jot down some notes. How do you feel about the painting? Where has it taken you? Respond to what you see.

4. Leave some time between your experience with the painting, perhaps a day or two.

5. Refer to your notes and write your first draft.

This exercise enables you to bypass the inner critic. It can provide a smooth easy flow of words, a bit like a stream of consciousness. Feel free to layer all sorts of ideas over the subject matter. You might focus on environmental concerns, or turn inward to contrast the physical setting in which you view the work with your emotional response to it. You might think about the artist, imagine how they engaged with the subject, where they were when they created the painting, their struggle with the creative process.

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Notes, Credits, and Links

• Image of painting by Franz Josef Sandman in public domain.

• The British Library is the UK’s national library holding over 170 million items. It’s open to all and free to use. You cannot borrow books and documents to take out but you can place an order and study them in the reading rooms. As well as texts, there are comprehensive map, photograph and sound archives. In the welcoming public spaces you can rest, have coffee, and they often have small exhibitions which are also free.

• For online access to Napoleon’s correspondence see ‘Napoleonica, les archives’.

• Napoleon wrote Clisson et Eugénie, a romantic novella, in 1795, probably while he was in Paris, certainly during a time when his career was on the up. Although it’s a fictionalised account of a soldier and his lover, it is thought that it paralleled Bonaparte’s own relationship with Eugénie Désirée Clary. The original papers were scattered but they have since been gathered together and, for the first time, Napoleon’s novella was published in 2009.

• The Royal Academy is actively adding to their online catalogue. You can search the collection here.