Reflections on the “Notes pour une vie de Napoléon”

This article shows how the archival dossier “Notes pour une vie de Napoléon” is not only relevant for its autobiographical qualities—Ponge questioning his vocation—but also for its poetic qualities: the notes on the “great man” lead to a meditation on the proper place of man in nature, which anticipates one of the preoccupations of the Parti pris des choses project, as well as to a questioning of glory, which would result in Pour un Malherbe.