Vinci×Bonaparte

full transcript

1. 00:00
   Verashare moment

   You're with Reborn Radio. Coming up: Leonardo da Vinci sits down with Napoleon Bonaparte for TITANS. The subject — On the sentence they would refuse to have carved on a headstone.
2. 00:11
   Leonardo da Vincishare moment

   I would refuse the word 'genius.' Not because it is untrue, but because it explains nothing. It is what people write when they have stopped looking at the work itself.
3. 00:23
   Napoleon Bonaparteshare moment

   Genius! That word again. Every mediocrity who writes about great men reaches for it like a crutch. For me, I would refuse 'ambitious.' As if desire itself were the achievement.
4. 00:39
   Leonardo da Vincishare moment

   But you were ambitious, were you not? This is documented by everyone who knew you.
5. 00:45
   Napoleon Bonaparteshare moment

   Of course I was ambitious! But which of us was not? You wanted to fly, to paint light itself, to anatomize every muscle in the body of man. Is this not ambition? The word is used against me as accusation. As if I merely wanted, and history happened by accident.
6. 01:08
   Leonardo da Vincishare moment

   I see the difference. Ambition suggests hunger without discipline. What you built required more than wanting.
7. 01:16
   Napoleon Bonaparteshare moment

   Precisely! They write 'ambitious' and readers think: he wanted a crown, therefore he seized one. They forget the eighteen-hour days. The reforms. The roads, the laws, the schools.
8. 01:34
   Leonardo da Vincishare moment

   For me it is similar with 'genius.' They write this word and stop asking how the hand learned to move, how many cadavers I opened at night, how many times I mixed the same color to understand its behavior in shadow. There is a... a laziness in the word.
9. 01:54
   Napoleon Bonaparteshare moment

   What word would you accept instead?
10. 01:57
    Leonardo da Vincishare moment

    Perhaps 'observer.' Or 'student.' These are not glamorous, but they are true. I studied things. The world revealed itself slowly, not in divine inspiration.
11. 02:10
    Napoleon Bonaparteshare moment

    Too humble. You sound like a monk. 'Here lies a man who looked at things.' No! Give yourself more credit than that.
12. 02:20
    Leonardo da Vincishare moment

    Is it humble to describe accurately what one did? I am not performing humility. I am refusing the mystification.
13. 02:29
    Napoleon Bonaparteshare moment

    Fine, then you refuse mystification. I refuse condescension. 'Ambitious' on my stone would mean: this man was ruled by appetite rather than vision. As if the Empire were a meal I consumed instead of a structure I built.
14. 02:51
    Leonardo da Vincishare moment

    What about 'conqueror'? This also describes your work.
15. 02:55
    Napoleon Bonaparteshare moment

    Conqueror is better. More honest. Though it is incomplete. It names the method but not the purpose.
16. 03:02
    Leonardo da Vincishare moment

    And what was the purpose?
17. 03:04
    Napoleon Bonaparteshare moment

    To make France unassailable. To spread the Code. To rationalize Europe, which was still drowning in feudal nonsense. But 'conqueror' makes it sound like sport. Like I enjoyed the killing.
18. 03:17
    Leonardo da Vincishare moment

    Did you not?
19. 03:18
    Napoleon Bonaparteshare moment

    I did not. I was good at war, which is not the same as loving it. A surgeon may be skilled with the knife without savoring the blood.
20. 03:30
    Leonardo da Vincishare moment

    This is a fair distinction. Though I think your enemies would dispute it.
21. 03:34
    Napoleon Bonaparteshare moment

    My enemies. Yes. They would carve 'tyrant' with pleasure, I suppose. This word I would also refuse.
22. 03:46
    Leonardo da Vincishare moment

    Because you were not one, or because the word is too crude?
23. 03:50
    Napoleon Bonaparteshare moment

    Because tyrant suggests rule without legitimacy. I was crowned by the people. I held plebiscites. The Code Napoléon is still used! A tyrant tears down; I built.
24. 04:04
    Leonardo da Vincishare moment

    You also tore down. Many things. Many men.
25. 04:08
    Napoleon Bonaparteshare moment

    To build something new, you must first clear the ground. This is not tyranny. This is... what is the word you would use? Engineering?
26. 04:19
    Leonardo da Vincishare moment

    I would not use that word for war. Engineering serves necessity. War often serves itself.
27. 04:26
    Napoleon Bonaparteshare moment

    Spoken like a man who never had to defend a border. Or feed an army. Or negotiate with Austria.
28. 04:35
    Leonardo da Vincishare moment

    This is true. I designed fortifications but never commanded soldiers. Still, I watched what happens when power concentrates. It develops its own appetite.
29. 04:48
    Napoleon Bonaparteshare moment

    You think I became drunk on power?
30. 04:50
    Leonardo da Vincishare moment

    I think power is a substance that changes the man who holds it. Like mercury. Beautiful, useful, and poisonous if handled too long.
31. 05:02
    Napoleon Bonaparteshare moment

    Poetic. But I was poisoned by exile, not by power. On Saint Helena I was perfectly lucid. I saw my mistakes clearly.
32. 05:14
    Leonardo da Vincishare moment

    And what were they?
33. 05:15
    Napoleon Bonaparteshare moment

    Russia. Obviously. And trusting that Europe would accept reason over tradition. I thought the old dynasties would see that merit should triumph over bloodline. I was wrong.
34. 05:31
    Leonardo da Vincishare moment

    In Florence, I saw this also. The Medici understood that power requires the theater of legitimacy, even when the legitimacy is invented. You tried to skip this step.
35. 05:44
    Napoleon Bonaparteshare moment

    I crowned myself! I married a Habsburg! What more theater did they want?
36. 05:49
    Leonardo da Vincishare moment

    Perhaps they wanted you to pretend you were not smarter than they were. This is the tax the intelligent pay to the established.
37. 05:58
    Napoleon Bonaparteshare moment

    Hah. Yes. I could not manage that pretense. My face, apparently, shows contempt even when I am trying to be diplomatic.
38. 06:06
    Leonardo da Vincishare moment

    I have seen your portraits. This is evident.
39. 06:09
    Napoleon Bonaparteshare moment

    What would you refuse on your stone, then? Besides 'genius,' which we have established.
40. 06:15
    Leonardo da Vincishare moment

    'Unfinished.' This word follows me in every biography. 'Leonardo, who left so much incomplete.' As if completion were the only measure of a life's work.
41. 06:27
    Napoleon Bonaparteshare moment

    But you did leave things unfinished. Everyone knows this.
42. 06:32
    Leonardo da Vincishare moment

    I left things at the point where they had taught me what I needed to learn. Some questions do not require answers. They require understanding.
43. 06:41
    Napoleon Bonaparteshare moment

    This is the luxury of the artist. I could not leave France unfinished. Or the Code. Or a battle.
44. 06:51
    Leonardo da Vincishare moment

    You left Russia unfinished.
45. 06:53
    Napoleon Bonaparteshare moment

    Russia finished me. There is a difference.
46. 06:56
    Leonardo da Vincishare moment

    Perhaps. But you chose to enter it. I walked away from projects when they no longer interested me. You could not walk away from Moscow.
47. 07:05
    Napoleon Bonaparteshare moment

    Because an empire is not a painting! You abandon a canvas and it sits in a corner. I abandon Moscow and twenty nations invade France.
48. 07:17
    Leonardo da Vincishare moment

    So you were trapped by your own construction.
49. 07:20
    Napoleon Bonaparteshare moment

    Trapped is too simple. Committed. Once you build something that large, you cannot simply step away and watch it collapse.
50. 07:28
    Leonardo da Vincishare moment

    I stepped away from many things. It gave me freedom to see them clearly.
51. 07:33
    Napoleon Bonaparteshare moment

    And it gave you a reputation for being unreliable. Your patrons complained constantly.
52. 07:39
    Leonardo da Vincishare moment

    They got what they needed, eventually. The Mona Lisa was not finished by their standards, but it was complete by mine. There is a difference.
53. 07:50
    Napoleon Bonaparteshare moment

    You sound like you are defending a retreat as a strategy.
54. 07:53
    Leonardo da Vincishare moment

    I am defending the right to know when a thing has given what it can give. You stayed too long in power, perhaps. I left projects too early, perhaps. But I refused to be governed by others' expectations.
55. 08:09
    Napoleon Bonaparteshare moment

    And yet you worked for patrons your entire life. Took their money. Took their commissions.
56. 08:14
    Leonardo da Vincishare moment

    Of course. A man must eat. But I chose which visions to pursue and which to set aside. You did not have this freedom after 1804.
57. 08:27
    Napoleon Bonaparteshare moment

    No. After the coronation, every choice was also a calculation. Every decision had consequences for millions.
58. 08:36
    Leonardo da Vincishare moment

    This is why I would refuse 'unfinished' on my stone. It implies failure. But I finished what mattered to me: the investigations. The understanding. The drawings of water and wind.
59. 08:52
    Napoleon Bonaparteshare moment

    And I finished what mattered to me: the Code. The schools. The meritocracy. But they will write 'ambitious' anyway, because I lost in the end.
60. 09:03
    Leonardo da Vincishare moment

    Perhaps we should both insist on stones with no words at all. Just dates. Let the work speak.
61. 09:10
    Napoleon Bonaparteshare moment

    Impossible. Someone will always add words. Better we refuse the wrong ones now than let history choose for us.
62. 09:20
    Leonardo da Vincishare moment

    Then we agree. No 'genius' for me. No 'ambitious' for you. What we want instead is accuracy.
63. 09:27
    Napoleon Bonaparteshare moment

    Accuracy. Yes. Though I suspect we will not get it. History is written by people who need simple stories. And we are not simple men.
64. 09:39
    Leonardo da Vincishare moment

    No. We are not. But perhaps that is its own epitaph.