What does "Napoleon in rags" actually mean-i.e., what does it refer to!
Question: In Like a Rolling Stone, he sings "you used to be so amused at Napoleon in rags, and the language that he used"-but I don't get the significance of it. Who/what is this person/thing/reference? I've listed to this song a gazillion times, but I've just really started thinking about this particular bit, and now I'm fixated on it.
Answers: In Like a Rolling Stone, he sings "you used to be so amused at Napoleon in rags, and the language that he used"-but I don't get the significance of it. Who/what is this person/thing/reference? I've listed to this song a gazillion times, but I've just really started thinking about this particular bit, and now I'm fixated on it.
I read somewhere years ago that "Napoleon in rags" refered (specifically) to Andy Warhol and (more generally) the assorted Factory hangers-on. It was to do with the 60s
art-house trappings of style triumphing over content and Warhol and his friends attempting to conscoiusly generate a subculture incorporating art (his own work), films (his own and his 'in-house' actors like edie sedgewick etc.) and music (exploding plastic inevitable/velvet underground).
Hope this helps you out
rags were, in Napoleon's day, fine cloth.
rag bond was the most exquisite paper on earth.
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it's like you used to be delighted at great things hiding beneath the not-so swell stuff and how it came to be...
Napoleon Bonaparte (1768-1821) was a French military commander who conquered much of Europe and made himself Emperor of France. From 1796 to 1810, his armies conquered Italy, Egypt, Spain, Austria, Prussia and Portugal. With all Europe united against him and his wars against Russia and England faltering, his final defeat came at Waterloo in 1815. He died in exile.
As to why one should be amused by the language the French Emperor used, this is a reference to the fact that as a boy Napoleon was mocked because of his Corsican pronunciation, that being his first language. This is illustrated in the 1927 silent film written and directed by Abel Gance, Napoléon: in one scene his fellow schoolboys laugh at the way he says his name in his native Corsican way. It is said that Napoleon, who could not suffer ridicule or slights, declared at an early age that he would have his "revenge on the French people." Considering the great loss of lives during the Napoleonic Wars, and the loss of national prestige following them, this comment seems rather prescient, despite the fact that France considers Napoleon a hero. [Merci beaucoup à D. Janacek Hendy.]
a bum that cursed alot!
Wow, I have always looked at it the other way; that the "napoleon in rags" was a fake, someone idolized but it was all pretension and at the end of it all his line was just a load of bull. The object of the song bit that line and look where it lead. Nowhere.