Monday, December 3, 2012
The Daily Campus, Page 7
Focus
Letterman, Hoffman, Napoleon’s coded Kremlin letter sold for $243,500 Zeppelin honored by Obama
AP
Auction house associate Jean-Christophe Chataigniera holds up a letter dictated and signed by Napoleon in secret code that declares his intentions “to blow up the Kremlin” during his ill-fated Russian campaign is displayed in Fontainebleau, outside Paris.
FONTAINEBLEAU, France (AP) — A secret code letter sent by French emperor Napoleon boasting that his multinational forces would blow up Moscow’s Kremlin has sold at auction Sunday for €187,500 ($243,500) — 10 times its estimated presale price. A Paris museum, the Museum of Letters and Manuscripts, was finalizing its purchase of the Oct. 20, 1812, document with elegantly calligraphic ciphers. The sale price, which includes fees, far outstripped the pre-sale estimate of €15,000 ($19,500), according to Fontainebleau Auction House south of Paris. Experts say the letter is unique, written in a numeric code that Napoleon often used to throw off would-be interceptors — notably when he was conveying battle plans. The letter’s content also revealed the strains on Napoleon of his calamitous Russian invasion. “At three o’clock in the morning, on the 22nd I am going to blow up the Kremlin,”
the letter said, laying out his route of retreat and urging his minions to send rations to the towns to the west. “My cavalry is in tatters, many horses are dying.” Napoleon’s prolific correspondence has drawn aficionados from around the world in places like the U.S., Britain, Japan and Russia. Interest appears to be rising as museums like the Museum of Letters and Manuscripts prepare to mark the bicentennial of Napoleon’s final defeat at Waterloo in 1815. The Kremlin letter was but one piece in the vast auction Sunday. A 310-page manuscript for the “Essay on countryside fortification,” which Napoleon wrote while exiled on the remote island of Saint Helena in 1818-1919, was also bought by the Paris museum — for €375,000 ($487,000), including fees. Gerard Lheritier, director of the Paris museum, said it already has at least 1,500 letters, manuscripts or other writings linked to Napoleon Bonaparte. It recently
acquired one from Japan that Napoleon had written to the Empress Josephine; it fetched €600,000-€700,000, he said. “We have many letters that are much more important” than the Kremlin one, Lheritier said by phone. He was unfazed that the price was far above the presale estimate, and speculated that the letter could have fetched €250,000 ($325,000). “This is a nice letter because it’s in code, and he’s going to blow up the Kremlin — so it’s appealing,” he said. Vladimir Hofmann, a French artist of Russian descent who with his brother Andre also bid Sunday, said they’d wanted to purchase the letter for Russia’s famed Hermitage museum. “Why? You know, it’s a question of perhaps nostalgia, perhaps patriotism, to return the thing — very important for Russia and for Russian people — to them,” Vladimir Hofmann said. Referring to such Russian interest in the letter, Lheritier said with a chuckle: “I prefer that it stays in France.”
WASHINGTON (AP) — David Letterman’s “stupid human tricks” and Top 10 lists are being vaulted into the ranks of cultural acclaim as the late-night comedian receives this year’s Kennedy Center Honors with rock band Led Zeppelin and three other artists. Stars from New York, Hollywood and the music world joined President Barack Obama at the White House on Sunday night to salute the comedian, the band, and their fellow recipients: Actor Dustin Hoffman, Chicago bluesman Buddy Guy and ballerina Natalia Makarova. The honors are the nation’s highest award for those who influenced American culture through the arts. The recipients will be saluted by fellow performers in a show to be broadcast Dec. 26 on CBS. Obama elicited laughs from his guests when he described the honorees as “some extraordinary people who have no business being on the same stage together.” Noting that Guy made his first guitar strings using the wire from a window screen, he quipped, “That worked until his parents started wondering how all the mosquitoes were getting in.” The president thanked the members of Led Zeppelin for behaving themselves at the White House given their history of “hotel rooms trashed and mayhem all around.” “It’s fitting that we’re doing this in a room with windows that are about three inches thick and Secret Service all around,” he said to laughter from the diverse group of artists. Obama went on to note Letterman’s humble beginnings as an Indianapolis weatherman, who once reported the city was being pelted by hail ‘the size of canned hams.’” “It’s one of the highlights of
AP
2012 Kennedy Center Honoree Natalia Makarova, front row, second right, reacts to all the photos being taken during a group photo after the State Department Dinner Dec. 1.
his career,” he said. All kidding aside, Obama described all of the honorees as artists who “inspired us to see things in a new way, to hear things differently, to discover something within us or to appreciate how much beauty there is in the world.” “It’s that unique power that makes the arts so important,” he added. Later on the red carpet, Letterman said he was thrilled by the recognition. “It supersedes everything, honestly,” he said. “I haven’t won that many awards.” Meryl Streep first introduced the honorees Saturday during a formal dinner at the U.S. State Department hosted by Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and attended by celebrities including comedians Stephen Colbert and Jimmy Kimmel, and Letterman’s longtime band leader, Paul Shaffer. Clinton noted the ballerina Makarova “risked everything to have the freedom to dance the way she wanted to dance”
when she defected from the Soviet Union in 1970. Makarova quickly made her debut with the American Ballet Theatre and later was the first exiled artist to return to the Soviet Union before its fall to dance with the Kirov Ballet. Clinton also took special note of Letterman, saying he must be wondering what he’s doing in a crowd of talented artists and musicians. “Dave and I have a history,” she said. “I have been a guest on his show several times, and if you include references to my pant suits, I’m on at least once a week.” The crowd gave Clinton a standing ovation as she hosted her final salute to the nation’s artists as secretary of state. Kennedy Center Chairman David Rubenstein gave her a subtle nudge to run for president in 2016, saying there’s another room at the State Department to name after a secretary who later becomes president.