From the introduction
Perhaps I should explain in a few words the reasons which tempted me to translate this seemingly ephemeral political brochure, this pamphlet which has all the characteristics of passionate and unjust — consciously and deliberately unjust — agitational literature.
First of all, because it is one of the most apt documents of French prose. The reader of Atala and René , enchanted by the suggestive moods, the magnificent images of nature, which this great poet of prose spreads, will here get to know another Chateaubriand: a brilliant polemicist, a party leader with devastating eloquence, a "journalist" in a grand style, who quickly seizes the needs of the moment. And since politics absorbed more than half of this writer's life, and almost none of his artistic concepts is free from agitational motives, our knowledge of Chateaubriand would be very incomplete if we did not get to know him as a political writer.
While his other fleeting political writings may only interest the French, as a document of a breakthrough moment in their history, this brochure will be absorbed by every Pole with the liveliest interest. Bonaparte, Napoleon, is a living piece of Polish history. We know him, we know him intimately, but we know him in the form of a somewhat legendary apotheosis; it will be interesting for us to get to know this document - biased, of course - but revealing to us, as it were, a little of the background of that glorious reign. It is not a judgment of history on Napoleon, nor even a judgment of Chateaubriand himself; it was written at a time when it was not about judgment, but about action.
Boy
Information about the book
Circulation: 25 numbered copies
Binding handmade by Magdalena Bulanda in half leather, with case.
Book sets in the Didot font, a font cut by Michael Vibert for Pierre Didot around 1811. First used in the book "Petit Carême" by Jean-Baptiste Massillon in Paris in 1812.
Volume: 116 pages printed on Zuber Rider cotton paper.
Size: 160x220mm
