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Ten Years' Exile (Paperback, New edition)
Loot Price: R420
Discovery Miles 4 200
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Ten Years' Exile (Paperback, New edition)
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Loot Price R420
Discovery Miles 4 200
Expected to ship within 12 - 17 working days
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Donate to Against Period Poverty
Total price: R440
Discovery Miles: 4 400
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In 1802 Napoleon decided that there was no room in France for both
himself and Madame de Stael, and he therefore sent into exile the
woman whose intelligent liberal views were potentially dangerous
for him. At first she was banished from Paris, and later, after the
suppression of her book on Germany, from France. She began to write
her memoirs, and was so carefully watched by Napoleon's agents that
she even had to change the names of many people she mentioned,
substituting English for French names in the manuscript. She stayed
in Switzerland, travelled through Germany and Austria, and later
through Poland into Russia. After she had stayed in Kiev, Moscow
and St Petersburg, Napoleon began his ill-fated expedition to
Russia. She left the country in haste for Sweden, and it was there
that much of this book was written. In his introduction to it her
eldest son, Auguste, explains how he edited the manuscript and
draws attention to the fact that his mother's remarks about
Napoleon were extremely bitter because they were written when the
author had been suffering most deeply from censorship and exile.
The modern reader may be intrigued by other aspects of this book,
including Madame de Stael's analysis of Bonaparte's psychological
make-up, but most of all perhaps by her description of her stay in
Russia, after a long wait for a passport, and by her remarks about
the Imperial family and the Russian character in general. The
quality of the writing is personal, straightforward and readable,
as in all her other books. The reader can almost hear her
discussing Napoleon with the Tsar Alexander, and is taken with her
on a conducted tour of the Kremlin, the city streets of Moscow and
the Russian countryside. Her remarks about Russia are often
relevant today: "What characterizes this people, is something
gigantic of all kinds: ordinary dimensions are not at all
applicable to it". And, at the other end of the scale, "What the
English call comforts are hardly to be met with in Russia".
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