The Shadow of the Eagle

 The Shadow of the Eagle - Arturo Pérez-Reverte

 
The Shadow of the Eagle by Arturo Pérez-Reverte. I have read this book. It is short. I bought it on a whim at a book fair. I had read promotional material about this author, but none of his books had caught my attention. One day, while strolling through the fair, I saw this one, and upon reading the back cover, I saw that the author had written a story based on real events. 

That is how I came to buy it. I didn't think it was a big deal, but it's not bad either. There are parts that use a rather childish language, more than anything for an armed conflict. Some sentence endings, such as using phrases like "...and all that", didn't appeal to me either. He writes in an easy-to-read language, and tries to get into the skin of ordinary soldiers with their vulgar language, and does the same with those of a professional rank and a more elaborate language. And there are passages that seem amusing, but when you think about it, in the middle of a war of the magnitude presented by Napoleon's campaigns, they would not be possible, but small ups and downs of daily life in the thick of war are possible. In one part, he places a lot of emphasis on talking about "the valiant Spaniards"—although he uses other synonyms; I don't know if it was really like that, or if other peoples were also, or even more, courageous than the Spaniards during the Napoleonic Wars, although I figure it must have been difficult to recount an act of cowardice (or not, depending on how you look at it) by Spanish forces. And I think he used that resource to balance the story out a bit, although I didn't notice the same fervor when he narrates the group that goes to support them, which happens to be French. One of the last chapters felt a bit out of place, when he narrates through Napoleon speaking himself, but it was necessary to be able to introduce those comments about the Spaniards at another moment of the Napoleonic Wars. Description is also lacking, or at least talking about the criminal side of war (if anyone doesn't take the whole thing as criminal), but given the tone in which he narrates the event, it would be superfluous and out of place. The book I read is published by Punto de Lectura, whose website is www.puntodelectura.com/ and goes straight to the book at www.puntodelectura.com/libro/la-sombra-del-aguila/1055/, although the cover illustration of the one I have is different from the one published on the web; my edition has (a painting) called The Sentinel, Grenadier of the Imperial Guard, 1st Empire (detail). The artwork on the cover is also known as The Grenadier and is an oil painting by Jean-Baptiste-Edouard Detaille (1848–1912). The edition I own includes some black-and-white interior graphics that make the reading more enjoyable.
A couple of remarks to finish this review. I liked how he inserted a phrase, nearing the end of the book, which literally reads: "Officers and soldiers deserted the fast way, meaning by shooting themselves..." (p. 165).

At one point he says: "Anyway. Whether by chance, or because the hussars saw something strange in the situation and transmitted their suspicions, from then on we found ourselves much more closely watched. They stopped assigning us missions that took us away from the main body of the troops, and the 326th was always kept among other frog-eater units, making any new attempt to defect to the enemy impossible." To which I add as a personal comment, it could also be to make impossible any hint of acting as "heroes" once again and making an advance on the enemy without warning.

On several occasions, he alludes to a song about "Something about a waiting woman and a man who fled to the mountains." He is obviously alluding to some song, possibly popular, or at least back in Spain, but one that I am unfamiliar with.

And another thing I am unfamiliar with is what he meant by this: "...the right to that heaven where the brave fags of San Fernando go, who are also poor whiny little soldiers." I get the feeling it refers to some event in the history of Spain, but which one? If it refers to what I just presumed, I can't think of anything else, and since I don't know the history of Spain, I can know and understand very little about that phrase.

Such phrases or fragments, which require prior knowledge in order to be understood, appear on several occasions in the book. The most obvious is a couple of passages where he makes the narrator speak, which someone who doesn't know can take as true everything he says, when practically everything is wrong; that is, by making the speaker sound uneducated, he has him recount various events, but all mixed up, one mixed with another, and wrong. I am copying the excerpt when Murat speaks (p. 128): "—I came, I saw, and I conquered, Sire. Murat wasn't exactly what we understand by a modest guy. As for erudition, he had never gone beyond spelling out, not without effort, the French army's Tactical Cavalry Manual, which wasn't exactly Don Immanuel Kant's Critique of Pure Reason either. 'The basic weapon of the cavalry—the manual began—is divided into two: horse and rider...', and so on for two hundred and fifty pages. As for the came and saw part, Murat had appropriated it from a picture book belonging to his children, something a Greek general, or maybe it was a Roman, had said in front of the walls of Troy when that bitch left her husband to run away with a certain Virgil, after getting inside a wooden horse. Or vice versa. Murat was proud of having retained that phrase, which, along with 'And yet it moves' by that famous Florentine condottiere, General Leonardo da Vinci, inventor of the cannon, constituted the pinnacle of his knowledge of military literature and otherwise."

Actually it should say Immanuel and not Emmanuel, because Kant himself changed his name, but hey, I don't even know if I'm correct with this correction.

Or another part, at the end of Chapter VIII, when he says: "It was Homeric. —Homeric? —Yes. You know, sire: Homer. That one-eyed general who conquered Troy. The one with the elephants."

In other words, it's all wrong. Homer was the author of The Iliad, which recounts part of the Trojan War. The one with the elephants was Hannibal, and that is an event that happened several centuries later. And thus, everything before it, if one is not familiar with it, leads to error. But there is also confusion regarding who is speaking. Because in the last paragraph, the speaker is not the narrator, but a French officer; that is, Murat is speaking.

From what I read, it was the first book by this renowned Spanish author, and it's not bad at all. Anyone who likes this theme can read it to pass the time and learn about this event.

(Originally published on 12-19-2008)