If there is a God, Cardinal de Richelieu
will have much to answer for.
If not...well, he had a successful life
If not...well, he had a successful life
Pope Urban VIII,
upon learning of Cardinal Richelieu's death
Hubris, exacerbated pride - an old trope of which art never seems to tire: its critique, its analysis, its exaltation. Hubris is what comes to mind when at the end of a piano excerpt music Professor Craig Wright exclaims: 'How long did it take old Chopin to think that up, do you suppose? Two seconds? Three seconds of white-hot inspiration? I'm sixty-four years old and I haven't had one second of genius in my entire life.'
Of course, I think, I'm twenty-five years old and I haven't had one either. I am Napoleon III. My talents fall short of my ambitions. I am incessantly dominated by and hopelessly sensitive to the tide of public approval. I lack an overall strategic plan and a vision of what I wish to accomplish. I am undecided and conflicted and at the mercy of aggrieving, unremitting whims.
Confidence is the prerequisite, it seems, of any great man. But is confidence an intellectual or emotional affair? I am in awe at Hitler's relentless determination to achieve power. Despite spending his youth as a tramp, despite the failing of a premature putsch, despite a comprehensive majority always eluding him (at least for as long as elections were unadulterated), he soldiered on, he remained convinced he was on the right track. But he was a fanatic. How could a sane and thinking person ever turn self-righteousness into self-determination? I am Rodion Romanovich Raskolnikov - appalled at my inability to bridge the gap between my skill (or lack thereof), my philosophy and my ambition.
More intriguing figures are those of the original Napoleon, Richelieu and Otto von Bismark. Perhaps raw power (both political and military) may ferment into self-assurance just as effectively as the thundering of a fanatic's mind. How tragic to be devoured by an unfulfilled, yet burning sense of mission. Napoleon III was a revolutionary without a revolution. Was this an inherent consequence of his biology? An accident of history? Is it possible for deliberate thought to reign over the herd of sorrows and shape one's personality, one's choices and ultimately - one's achievements?
Then again, as Henry Kissinger would put it, what's one more high hope and ideal lost to the 'fragility of human foresight'? We can't all be Great Men.
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Then again, as Henry Kissinger would put it, what's one more high hope and ideal lost to the 'fragility of human foresight'? We can't all be Great Men.
