Napoleonic Friendship by Brian Joseph Martin

Author:Brian Joseph Martin
Language: ru
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Europe, French Literature - 19th Century - History and Criticism, History, Napoleon - Relations With Soldiers, Male Friendship, Military - 19th Century, Male Friendship in Literature, Military - France - History - 19th Century, General, French Literature, Literary Criticism, Soldiers - France - History - 19th Century, Western, Military, Soldiers, France - History, Male Friendship - France - History - 19th Century, France, Sociology, Homosexuality in Literature, European
ISBN: 9781584659440
Publisher: UPNE
Published: 2010-01-01T18:30:00+00:00

CHAPTER 8

Military Daddies & Veteran Rogues

Balzac’s Major Genestas and Colonel Bridau

In the lamplight of a country barn, an old veteran listened to his buddy’s tall tales. For almost fifteen years following Napoleon’s defeat in 1815, these two veteran friends had shared the same home, meager pension, and rural life in an isolated Alpine village. One brawny and quiet, the other animated and social, they are a handsome and complementary pair. Huddled around them and seated on bales of hay, a small crowd of old farmers and knitting widows listens carefully to their tales of Napoleon on campaign, the desert heat in Egypt, and the deadly snow in Russia. High in the loft above them, discreetly hidden in the hay, another Napoleonic pair listens in. A military major and a country doctor, they are careful not to disturb the gathering below. Like the storyteller and his mate, the major had served with Napoleon in the Egyptian and Russian Campaigns, while his friend the country doctor has led a different campaign, tending to the orphans and villagers of this Alpine valley where he is affectionately known as the Napoleon of the people. Though they have just met, these Napoleonic friends quickly become an intimate pair, confiding in one another their combat trauma, tending to each other’s emotional wounds, and raising a son amid this extended family in their remote mountain village.

In addition to its focus on political and rural life, Balzac’s The Country Doctor (1833) centers on two military pairs: the elderly veterans Gondrin and Goguelat and the Napoleonic friends Genestas and Benassis.1 Like Balzac’s earlier military texts, this novel honors the mutual support and survival of Napoleonic veterans, pairs, and friends. But in its celebration of both filial and symbolic paternity, the novel also documents the formation of veteran families. Rooted in Napoleon’s paternal relationship to his soldiers and their fraternal relationships with each other, these veteran families constitute a new form of male military association, affection, and support during the Restoration and July Monarchy.

Balzac’s The Country Doctor (1833)

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