The poet is to memory what the hero is to action.  It is the poet, writer, and storyteller who memorializes the actions of the hero, considers things good and bad, and brings them to future generations.

Despite his military and political accomplishments, Napoleon wanted above all to be a writer.  He wrote memorials, histories, dialogues, even a short novel.  When he wasn’t writing, he talked of writing as when he addressed his troops after Waterloo, “…that I may further serve your glory…I shall write of the great things we have done together.”  Why would a man who so thoroughly directed the course of history want so badly to record it, and even more strangely, to write fiction; to record a world which doesn’t exist?

Napoleon knew that his actions would end, but that the memory of them would continue in the hands of writers and storytellers.  He was ambitious, and not content with the transience of his heroism, he wanted the longevity, nay, the immortality which only the poet can offer.