Books: Road to St. Helena

ONCE THERE WAS A MAN NAPOLEON—Joseph Delteil—Translated by Lewis Galantiere—Covici, Friede ($3).

Author Joseph Delteil has not written an ordinary biography of Napoleon. After you read this book you may well doubt whether Author Delteil could write an ordinary book about anything. Once There Was a Man Napoleon is a sometimes thundering, sometimes blustering, sometimes mellifluous narrative poem written in prose (it reads as if it had been exceedingly well translated). The hero is not so much the man as the idea, Napoleon. Not that Author Delteil warps the facts of history; but he gives them an original and Delteilish emphasis. Napoleon’s driving dream, he says, was to outstrip Alexander, to conquer the East. “From the cradle to the grave he was impelled by one secret devouring thought: India.” Europe kept getting in his way, but that was an accident. “What a man does in life is but a sketch—sometimes even the contrary—of what he dreams. We dream red and live grey, alas! The red dream alone is my passion. I have not beard enough to be an historian.”

Author Delteil is only 35, but he is already high in reputation in his native France. An early book of verse won a prize from the French Academy; his Jeanne D’Arc won the Femina Vie Heureuse prize. A great Rabelaisian scholar, he is a hard worker, socially timid. Says he: “I am a citizen of the world, and a man of flesh and blood. To write is to make love. I place the senses higher than the brain. I should like all my books to provide the same pleasure as a woman gives. I have five senses and I use them all.” Other books: Sur La Fleuve Amour (The River Amour), Cholera, Les Cinq Sens.