MAN OF THE PAST, PERSPECTIVE ON PRESENT

So you think you've got it bad. Americans don't, not really, but they like to talk as if the whole place, sea to shining sea, is falling apart. Washington, the place we populate with our votes and fuel with our tax dollars, rests far from the geographical center but smack in the middle of the nation's problems.

So you think you've got it bad. Power and ego corrupt at the upper reaches of our government. Both are currency in breaking down moral codes, and the satisfaction of either is just cause for venturing forth militarily. Populism is but a tool, a darn useful one ... but the real decisions are made by an elite few.

Accept this as erosion of the political class, or shrug it off as the nation going to hell, but don't mistake it as new. You could be French and the time could be the early 19th century. Held in your lowly place for generations by monarchs and an entrenched aristocracy, someone could find hope and national pride in one man's dreams of social restructuring and empire.

As it turns out, the hopes are misplaced.

These were the impressions I was left last week after visiting the splendid exhibition called "Napoleon," sponsored by the Memphis International Cultural Series. In the remnants of one spellbinding and enigmatic life are elements of self-possession that make today's rulers seem unambitious by comparison.

No Francophile, I spent years happily oblivious to this man and this period of history. Asked about Napoleon Bonaparte prior to seeing this sweeping collection, I would probably have provided a description not more thorough than the time travelers in "Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure": Napoleon? He's the "dead French dude."

Yet what you get with "Napoleon" is more than a lesson in European history; instead, you find yourself further convinced of the observation in Ecclesiastes that "there is no new thing under the sun." The ambition, the desire for new conquests, the convenient insistence that the end justifies the means ... all were present in Napoleon's day, just as they survive in 1993.

The exhibition does not shortchange Napoleon's brilliance. From the time of his privileged birth on Corsica until his death in exile on Saint Helena 51 years later, no world leader (save, perhaps, Thomas Jefferson) showed the vision of Napoleon, nor exuded the passion and personal magnetism to act on that vision.

He was a masterful military strategist who was admired by his troops and led armies in the sands of Egypt and the snow of Russia. He was a gifted, if ruthless, politician who rose from artillery man to conqueror to emperor in the course of 20 years. He was a patron of the arts who restored splendor to French life. He was a man deeply concerned with education and civil laws. He was a work-driven individual who would sit alone with his maps in a gilded palace or battlefield tent and muse over territories he could claim.

None of this is denied "Napoleon" viewers. But the true revelation of the Memphis exhibition (at the Cook County Convention Center until Sept. 22) is the warts-and-all outlook it provides. Napoleon was a megalomaniac of enormous dimension. He sacrificed the lives of hundreds of thousands of French while stalking his empire's expansion. After leveraging Pope Pius VII into a politically advantageous concession, he upstaged the pontiff on the day of Napoleon's coronation as emperor. When his first wife, the Empress Josephine, could not bear him an heir, he convinced her that a divorce was in the best interest of the empire, then married an 18-year-old archduchess with more cooperative reproductive skills.

How would these things be viewed today?

While President Reagan's wife was chastised for accepting gowns from famous fashion designers, Josephine was known for extravagant purchases for her wardrobe and household. In one year, the empress ordered 136 outfits, 87 hats, 985 pairs of gloves and 520 pairs of shoes ... a forerunner of Imelda Marcos, and all done with state money.

Napoleon kept the artists and craftsmen of France busy filling the walls, shelves and jewelry cases of his palaces. A diadem made for Josephine contained 1,064 diamonds with a total weight of 260 carats; a necklace made for his second wife, Marie-Louise, had diamonds totaling 270 carats ... a fact that speaks not only to excess but also to Napoleon's domestic diplomacy.

While modern political leaders are held strictly to their wedding vows, with any dalliance holding potential for career destruction, Napoleon carried on a rather open extra-marital relationship with Marie Walewska, a Polish countess uprooted to Paris who bore the emperor a son.

Then, like now, there were propagandists (early-day spin doctors) whose efforts went toward promoting Napoleon's image. Foremost among them was Jacque-Louis David, whose painting of Napoleon crossing the Alps featured the military leader astride a white charger reared on his hind legs. In fact, Napoleon crossed the Alps on a mule, more sure-footed in the mountains, if less dashing.

Napoleon Bonaparte said history is fable agreed upon. All men of greatness inspire a degree of myth, and Napoleon, in his island exile on Saint Helena, 800 miles from the nearest continent, set out in his last years to write a legend that suited his purposes. Memoirs always serve the author; this, too, doesn't change.

The Memphis exhibition might not suit Napoleon's purposes, but it provides us a revealing look at an amazing man from the past, as well as giving us new perspective on our times.