The Imperial Urge - Rated R post

Congratulations Erin Miller! You've just won a special postcard prize, with original artwork by myself, in recognition of your guess of Ellen White. While Napoleon's nephew was in power in France,  Ellen White wrote this classic paragraph about masturbation:

Children who practice self-indulgence [masturbation] previous to puberty, or the period of merging into manhood or womanhood, must pay the penalty of nature's violated laws at that critical period. Many sink into an early grave, while others have sufficient force of constitution to pass this ordeal. If the practice is continued from the age of fifteen and upward, nature will protest against the abuse she has suffered, and continues to suffer, and will make them pay the penalty for the transgression of her laws, especially from the ages of thirty to forty-five, by numerous pains in the system, and various diseases, such as affection of the liver and lungs, neuralgia, rheumatism, affection of the spine, diseased kidneys, and cancerous humors. Some of nature's fine machinery gives way, leaving a heavier task for the remaining to perform, which disorders nature's fine arrangement, and there is often a sudden breaking down of the constitution; and death is the result. (Solemn Appeal, 1870, p. 63)

It wasn't just White who made this connection, and her views were commonplace among doctors and states in the west. France's governments of this period attempted to explain their military failures and falling birthrates by arguing that masculinity was in decline and masturbation was sapping French heredity. White, in the prize-creating quote from the last post, identifies Napoleon's defining traits (thanks to evil advisors) as his love for conquest and a career of strife and bloodshed (instead of his puny height - which is a myth), which seems pretty accurate to me. Feeling the Imperial urge, Napoleon decided to try and make Europe his empire, much like Hitler would do in the 20th century. A few years after Napoleon had been Emperor (handy mini 

political timeline of French 19th century above), he decided to commemorate one of his

 biggest victories against combined European opponents (Austerlitz) by building a giant Penis in the Place Vendome to show how Imperical he was (right, with some dude). Melting down all of the cannon of the defeated armies he modeled it on the Romen Emperor Trajan's column, with Napoleon on top wearing a toga. The space where he put it used to hold a statue of Louis XIV, and the buildings are still today foundationally as they were in the time of the Sun King. 

Symbols in France, as everywhere, have been incredibly important tools in political struggles and propaganda. Every political party at every moment has its favorite stories from history which prove their legitimacy, their pet colors, flags and songs. For example, during the 1830 

revolution, school boys at Lycee Henry IV decided to prove that they were part of the new movement by demanding that the recess be a drum roll to show they were modern and patriotic, and not a bell, which represented the church and tradition. These are the same kind of debates that got people into screaming matches over how many breasts the French embodiment of liberty should be showing (left - "Crazy Commie Whore!"; right - "That's a good girl"). 

The Vendome erection ebbed and flowed in the changes of power in between Napoleon's fall and the Commune. When his time in the sun was finished the new kings of the restoration melted down his statue and built a statue of another king with it. But Napoleon III desperately wanted to live up to the demand of Viagra-powered monuments, and so he put the toga-Napoleon back on top. It was the Imperial Urge that drove him to try to put a puppet  on the throne of a Mexican colony, run an impressive police state and try to avoid revolution. When the pressures were too great, he tried to distract attention from his slipping grasp on power by starting another war with Germany, and the massive defeat ended his government.

I spent last weekend with Dad and Dan seeing tons of art - six museums in three and a half days, and, considering that two of them were the Louvre and the Musee D'Orsay, this is a lot. Our hotel was also about 2 blocks from the Vendome Column. On Friday, we hit the Musee Picasso. My favorite picture this time was Picasso’s Massacre in Korea (1951, above). I hadn’t noticed before and it united several things I had been thinking about. First it is a critique of Cold War American intervention. And second, it is after Goya's Third of May 1808 (below),

 a damning indictment of Napoleon's invasion of Spain. And at the same time that America was entering it’s civil war, and Ellen White was writing A Solemn Appeal, Napoleon III was feeling the need to live up to his uncle's Imperial urges. But after things went south, he bailed on his Mexican puppet ruler of Mexico after the American’s had enforced the Monroe Doctine and told him to get out. Napoleon III pulled his supportive military rug out from under Maximilian’s feet and then the Mexican Revolution killed him (Cinco de Mayo). And, after Goya's painting, Manet decided to take the subject up in a similar manner. Since the death of Maximilian was clearly the fault of Napoleon III and his excessive military zeal, Manet puts the 

likeness of the Emperor on the face of the casual officer behind the firing squad (above). No wonder also that since Manet was the only major Impressionist painter to visit Paris during the Commune, and during

Bloody Week at that, he decided to use the some of the same figures in his sketch on Versailles troops executing Communards (right). Even though the government had changed the urge was the same. With its overlapping references, Picasso’s painting displays the continuity of Empire. 

One of the Commune’s most wonderful symbolic actions, then, was its determination to destroy

 the Vendome Column. Led by the realist painter Courbet (whose awkward coversation inducing Origin of the World is at Orsay, and below), the Communards demolished the Column and then took photos celebrating the occasion.

Courbet had first tried to get the new Republic to permit this act, arguing that “inasmuch as the Vendôme column is a monument devoid of all artistic value, tending to perpetuate by its expression the ideas of war and conquest of the past imperial dynasty, which are reproved by a republican nation's sentiment, citizen Courbet expresses the wish that the National Defense government will authorise him to disassemble this column." 

His plan was rejected by the new Third Republic, but embraced by the exuberant if disorganized Commune leadership.  April 12, 1871, they pulled the column down with great celebration. 

And imagine the political meaning of the new Third Republic’s desire to rebuild it. The new democracy being founded in France found time within its early years to express shock and outrage at the leveling of a symbol of Napoleonic empire and imperial aggression. This is the personality of a government who so desperately wanted to begin their existence with a military victory. Rebuilt, with extra iron, and still there today. When they decided to reerect it they forced Courbet to pay the expense out of his own pockets, which, unfortunately were empty and so he absconded to Switzerland. He ended up paying off the debt in yearly instalments for the next 30+ years (until he was 91). At the same time, France and other European empires were dividing up Africa on a map and putting resistance to quick death (thanks to quinine and the maxim gun). And their mutual resentment over miscommunication over who owned what piece of another continent was one of the main causes of World War I. 

With all due respect to Ellen White, at at the risk of incredible oversimplification, I think it would have been better if all those Emperors past and present had ignored her advice and looked at more of Courbet's paintings.