'Rome complex' feeding other streams of the Napoleonic conscious and
unconscious. Britain is now the new Carthage that must be destroyed and
Russia is the Parthia - the powerful military neighbour on the borders of
putative empire that must be conquered or conciliated. Moreover, the
Pope, with whom he concluded the Concordat, is the true prince (or
emperor) of Rome and so stands as an obstacle and reproach to
Napoleon's imperial ambitions. As these ambitions came to fruition, they
inexorably widened the gap between the rational and the irrational in
Napoleon, between the classical and the Romantic, and between the art of
the possible and the realm of fantasy.
marcin
(Marcin)
#1