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4.12 AVERAGE
4.12 AVERAGE
"Los hombres más opacos emiten un resplandor... Y pocos hay que no puedan enseñarnos alguna cosa. Nuestro gran error está en tratar de obtener de cada uno en particular las virtudes que no posee, descuidando cultivar aquellas que posee." -Emperador Adriano.
Una novela muy interesante que nos pone como protagonista a Adriano, uno de los considerados "cinco buenos emperadores romanos". La autora magistralmente nos lleva en un viaje donde, además de las memorias del protagonista, nos permite conocer el contexto político social del imperio romano del siglo II D.C.
Uno consideraría que ser emperador romano era una tarea sencilla, ya que con todo el poder en las manos lo único que se tiene que hacer es disfrutar de los placeres del mismo. Sin embargo, en ésta obra me queda claro lo abrumadora de esa tarea. Todas las tareas y responsabilidades de los emperadores resultan abrumadoras. Y eso es lo que me queda de éste libro: un gran poder conlleva una gran responsabilidad.
Una novela muy interesante que nos pone como protagonista a Adriano, uno de los considerados "cinco buenos emperadores romanos". La autora magistralmente nos lleva en un viaje donde, además de las memorias del protagonista, nos permite conocer el contexto político social del imperio romano del siglo II D.C.
Uno consideraría que ser emperador romano era una tarea sencilla, ya que con todo el poder en las manos lo único que se tiene que hacer es disfrutar de los placeres del mismo. Sin embargo, en ésta obra me queda claro lo abrumadora de esa tarea. Todas las tareas y responsabilidades de los emperadores resultan abrumadoras. Y eso es lo que me queda de éste libro: un gran poder conlleva una gran responsabilidad.
Neither as glorious as Trajan, nor as sophic as Aurelius. Possessed of less patience than Antoninus. Yet of a uniquely cosmopolitan and romantic nature. Hadrian’s character and personal life is perhaps the most complex of the “Five Good Emperors”.
Yourcenar’s reconstruction of this colossus in “Memoirs of Hadrian” is both ambitious and contemplative. Its prose is vividly imaginative, and invokes a deep sense of ephemeral wistfulness for the failings of even the most capable personae.
Though I personally enjoyed the frequent departures to far flung provinces and Hadrian’s meditations on his decisions, the characterization of Antinoös and Hadrian’s love for the youth is perhaps the most captivating and exceptionally written portion of the entire work - meriting great praise for its humanization of the vulnerabilities of even a god-emperor.
In the words of Hadrian retold “I was god, to put it simply, because I was man.”
9/10
Yourcenar’s reconstruction of this colossus in “Memoirs of Hadrian” is both ambitious and contemplative. Its prose is vividly imaginative, and invokes a deep sense of ephemeral wistfulness for the failings of even the most capable personae.
Though I personally enjoyed the frequent departures to far flung provinces and Hadrian’s meditations on his decisions, the characterization of Antinoös and Hadrian’s love for the youth is perhaps the most captivating and exceptionally written portion of the entire work - meriting great praise for its humanization of the vulnerabilities of even a god-emperor.
In the words of Hadrian retold “I was god, to put it simply, because I was man.”
9/10
Uf. Madre mía, qué densidad.
Me reservo las valoraciones de una estrella para los libros que me han parecido realmente malos. Memorias de Adriano no me ha parecido malo. Me ha parecido denso, una lectura que se me ha atragantado en exceso. Una misiva de 300 páginas es un desafío de lectura como pocas, ya que no intercala diálogos ni nada que se le parezca.
Lo que sí intercala y es donde más problemas he tenido ha sido en la estructura. Las memorias siguen vagamente la vida de Adriano, pero se va entremezclando con tantos sucesos, con tantas reflexiones filosóficas, con tantos nombres que se hace cuesta arriba. Es más, ha sido tan complicado que no soy capaz ni de sacarle conclusiones. Mi enhorabuena a eruditos que sean capaces de leerlo y disfrutarlo y sacarle el jugo.
Me reservo las valoraciones de una estrella para los libros que me han parecido realmente malos. Memorias de Adriano no me ha parecido malo. Me ha parecido denso, una lectura que se me ha atragantado en exceso. Una misiva de 300 páginas es un desafío de lectura como pocas, ya que no intercala diálogos ni nada que se le parezca.
Lo que sí intercala y es donde más problemas he tenido ha sido en la estructura. Las memorias siguen vagamente la vida de Adriano, pero se va entremezclando con tantos sucesos, con tantas reflexiones filosóficas, con tantos nombres que se hace cuesta arriba. Es más, ha sido tan complicado que no soy capaz ni de sacarle conclusiones. Mi enhorabuena a eruditos que sean capaces de leerlo y disfrutarlo y sacarle el jugo.
challenging
informative
reflective
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
N/A
Loveable characters:
N/A
Diverse cast of characters:
N/A
Flaws of characters a main focus:
N/A
An Ode
Hadrian. Born and bred from seventy-six to one-thirty-eight,
Man, Roman, Emperor from one-seventeen to one-thirty-eight,
Fictionalized in historical form from nineteen-twenty-four to nineteen-fifty-one,
By Woman, French, Writer, from nineteen-o’-three to nineteen-eighty-seven
Near two millennia separate life and chronicle, the event from the research
The Empire caked in so much study, so much praise, so much distortion,
So much misuse, so much inheritance of both thought and form.
You are one of many, Hadrian, chosen here by virtue of the crossroads
The intersection of your life with the death of Roman Gods
And the struggles of Christianity. Nothing more. Nothing less.
Within this theological miasma you have yourself, your youth
With its glorious physicality, its flights of poetic fancy, its
Slow dissolve into the machinations of power hid behind robes
and other panderings at officiated strivings. You came, you saw,
you succeeded in the name of Greece and the sense of restraint
of one with the broadest stretch of conquered stretch of land
The Romans ever did see. All for you to travel upon in your fervency,
your desire for aesthetic in all variations available to the landscape.
And so you continued on in contented ruling and contented dabbling
In realms of indulgence rich in form and thought, spread wide for your perusal.
Are you happy, Hadrian? By this clemency, this audacity
To reinterpret your mind and all its efforts,
Your fate well suited to its Age, where self-awareness
Was afforded expression on the widest field at your world’s disposal.
An Empire, no less. Upon which the author has seen fit
To grant you interests in a multitude of thoughtful meanderings
Of Art, Culture, Philosophy, love of the flesh and thrill of the hunt,
The Desire for Discovery framed within the Contentment of a Conqueror
Connoisseur and Creator on a scale unmatched in these later days
Hemmed in by respect of the Other, the facile flow of Knowledge.
I view you, Hadrian, as the flesh views the bones,
Acquiescence to the vibrancy of your influence,
Contrariness to the limits seemingly imposed
By your calcified structures, an inevitability of life
That I choose not to fear, but to utilize.
Your generosity, your restraint, your insight,
Inextricably mixed with your nationalism, your colonialism,
The assurance that a wave of your hand would raise a city,
Your ostentatious contemplation of your self as a god.
You have many followers here, subsumed in your fair and foul.
Would it make you angry, Hadrian, if I stripped your sensibilities,
Of all its high flown phrases, its prettied up pretenses toward civilization,
And simply termed it white savior complex? Remember,
I base this on not a lifelong contemplation of your history,
But on a fiction, drawn up by a woman no less,
One of those you easily consigned to the label of Other
Amongst the Jews, the Orientals, the Christians, the Slaves,
The Barbarians. Would anything less than a swallowing in entirety
Of your triumphs, your feats, your biases that grew in comfort
Among the profound insight that I admit to admiring, enrage?
You are dead and gone, Hadrian. You were content
In viewing your one life, your one culture, as perfection,
And were fortunate to find favor with the future,
Enough to be addressed eighteen hundred seventy-five years
Here, in this casual form, after your death.
Where is the rest of your world? Where else does the modern sense
Find such material, such scholarship, such vaulted musings,
Such ease of access by way of a field long cherished by
The ivory towers filled with those that mirror your thoughts,
Your self-satisfied ignorance in things beyond your ken.
Your proud Rome is split and sundered, and survives
In the very forms of insidious servitude your self of fiction despised.
The worth of your beloved Greece lies solely in its ancient past,
The modern times speak of Homer and leave the actual country
To crippling debt and moral ruin. You would cry, I think,
And rage, and scream, belying all your talk of peace
With self and soul listed in this fictional pages,
If you were here to see it. The current Age has no patience
For your encapsulated philosophizing, your conquering streak,
Your yearning to imprint yourself on the widest stage of remembrance.
And yet. I delight in this prose of your life, constrained as it is
By the breach of centuries, the warp of fiction, the woof of translation.
I find worth in your thoughts, mongering as they are
In brutal horrors and easy conscience of a ruler of ages past,
The sort of being that, in my world, would reap untold retribution.
Never again shall humanity look upon the likes of you, and yet,
I find it hard to say good riddance. The road to hell
Is paved in well-intentioned displays of power unrestricted
By any ramification, any force demanding reconciliation of the soul,
And yet, I find it difficult to picture you on such a path.
For you loved, once, and found yourself a fool in losing it.
For you ruled, once, and found your efforts as so much sand.
For you ran, and sprang, in a faithful body that at last betrayed you
And sunk your once sensuous musings into a clot of corporal decay.
For you lived, once, and strewed great spreads of land with your design,
Sought to elevate as you saw fit the ruins of both build and thought.
For you soldiered many times, and many times you favored peace.
For you died, once, as all humanity does, and made such a life
For the histories to laud you evermore as one of the good.
And of course, this is a work of fiction. So what do I know.
And so, I leave you this ode, a mix of little praise and heavy caution,
Grudging admiration and audacious critique. The profile of your death
Is not mine to make, not with my veins of cynical forbearance,
And lack of interest. You were born, Hadrian, and through fate and fortune
Found yourself in a seat of power, made your mark on land and record
By all the skills vested by culture and self-interest. And thus the world,
Remembers as such, as time melds history with embellishment,
And those of the past seep into the newfangled forms of the future.
You came, you saw, and now you sleep, to be brought forth
In all your good, and all your ill, by minds who see fit to do so.
For better or for worse, Hadrian,
Publius Aeilus Traianus Hadrianus Augustus,
You are known.
Hadrian. Born and bred from seventy-six to one-thirty-eight,
Man, Roman, Emperor from one-seventeen to one-thirty-eight,
Fictionalized in historical form from nineteen-twenty-four to nineteen-fifty-one,
By Woman, French, Writer, from nineteen-o’-three to nineteen-eighty-seven
Near two millennia separate life and chronicle, the event from the research
The Empire caked in so much study, so much praise, so much distortion,
So much misuse, so much inheritance of both thought and form.
You are one of many, Hadrian, chosen here by virtue of the crossroads
The intersection of your life with the death of Roman Gods
And the struggles of Christianity. Nothing more. Nothing less.
Within this theological miasma you have yourself, your youth
With its glorious physicality, its flights of poetic fancy, its
Slow dissolve into the machinations of power hid behind robes
and other panderings at officiated strivings. You came, you saw,
you succeeded in the name of Greece and the sense of restraint
of one with the broadest stretch of conquered stretch of land
The Romans ever did see. All for you to travel upon in your fervency,
your desire for aesthetic in all variations available to the landscape.
And so you continued on in contented ruling and contented dabbling
In realms of indulgence rich in form and thought, spread wide for your perusal.
Are you happy, Hadrian? By this clemency, this audacity
To reinterpret your mind and all its efforts,
Your fate well suited to its Age, where self-awareness
Was afforded expression on the widest field at your world’s disposal.
An Empire, no less. Upon which the author has seen fit
To grant you interests in a multitude of thoughtful meanderings
Of Art, Culture, Philosophy, love of the flesh and thrill of the hunt,
The Desire for Discovery framed within the Contentment of a Conqueror
Connoisseur and Creator on a scale unmatched in these later days
Hemmed in by respect of the Other, the facile flow of Knowledge.
I view you, Hadrian, as the flesh views the bones,
Acquiescence to the vibrancy of your influence,
Contrariness to the limits seemingly imposed
By your calcified structures, an inevitability of life
That I choose not to fear, but to utilize.
Your generosity, your restraint, your insight,
Inextricably mixed with your nationalism, your colonialism,
The assurance that a wave of your hand would raise a city,
Your ostentatious contemplation of your self as a god.
You have many followers here, subsumed in your fair and foul.
Would it make you angry, Hadrian, if I stripped your sensibilities,
Of all its high flown phrases, its prettied up pretenses toward civilization,
And simply termed it white savior complex? Remember,
I base this on not a lifelong contemplation of your history,
But on a fiction, drawn up by a woman no less,
One of those you easily consigned to the label of Other
Amongst the Jews, the Orientals, the Christians, the Slaves,
The Barbarians. Would anything less than a swallowing in entirety
Of your triumphs, your feats, your biases that grew in comfort
Among the profound insight that I admit to admiring, enrage?
You are dead and gone, Hadrian. You were content
In viewing your one life, your one culture, as perfection,
And were fortunate to find favor with the future,
Enough to be addressed eighteen hundred seventy-five years
Here, in this casual form, after your death.
Where is the rest of your world? Where else does the modern sense
Find such material, such scholarship, such vaulted musings,
Such ease of access by way of a field long cherished by
The ivory towers filled with those that mirror your thoughts,
Your self-satisfied ignorance in things beyond your ken.
Your proud Rome is split and sundered, and survives
In the very forms of insidious servitude your self of fiction despised.
The worth of your beloved Greece lies solely in its ancient past,
The modern times speak of Homer and leave the actual country
To crippling debt and moral ruin. You would cry, I think,
And rage, and scream, belying all your talk of peace
With self and soul listed in this fictional pages,
If you were here to see it. The current Age has no patience
For your encapsulated philosophizing, your conquering streak,
Your yearning to imprint yourself on the widest stage of remembrance.
And yet. I delight in this prose of your life, constrained as it is
By the breach of centuries, the warp of fiction, the woof of translation.
I find worth in your thoughts, mongering as they are
In brutal horrors and easy conscience of a ruler of ages past,
The sort of being that, in my world, would reap untold retribution.
Never again shall humanity look upon the likes of you, and yet,
I find it hard to say good riddance. The road to hell
Is paved in well-intentioned displays of power unrestricted
By any ramification, any force demanding reconciliation of the soul,
And yet, I find it difficult to picture you on such a path.
For you loved, once, and found yourself a fool in losing it.
For you ruled, once, and found your efforts as so much sand.
For you ran, and sprang, in a faithful body that at last betrayed you
And sunk your once sensuous musings into a clot of corporal decay.
For you lived, once, and strewed great spreads of land with your design,
Sought to elevate as you saw fit the ruins of both build and thought.
For you soldiered many times, and many times you favored peace.
For you died, once, as all humanity does, and made such a life
For the histories to laud you evermore as one of the good.
And of course, this is a work of fiction. So what do I know.
And so, I leave you this ode, a mix of little praise and heavy caution,
Grudging admiration and audacious critique. The profile of your death
Is not mine to make, not with my veins of cynical forbearance,
And lack of interest. You were born, Hadrian, and through fate and fortune
Found yourself in a seat of power, made your mark on land and record
By all the skills vested by culture and self-interest. And thus the world,
Remembers as such, as time melds history with embellishment,
And those of the past seep into the newfangled forms of the future.
You came, you saw, and now you sleep, to be brought forth
In all your good, and all your ill, by minds who see fit to do so.
For better or for worse, Hadrian,
Publius Aeilus Traianus Hadrianus Augustus,
You are known.
Astonishing endeavour by Belgian author Marguerite Yourcenar (1903-1987) to capture life through the eyes of the 60-year-old terminally ill Roman Emperor Hadrian (76-138). Mémoires d’Hadrien is crafted as a letter to Marcus Aurelius, his adopted grandson and successor, in which he reflects on his ambitions to bring peace to a war-hungry empire, his passion for Greece, and his shortcomings and deteriorating health. Along the way, Hadrian describes daily political affairs in ancient Rome, including the Empire’s approach to Christian and Jewish groups.
Yourcenar’s Hadrian comes across as resigned, accepting his place and fate. (How could one not think of [b:The Death of Ivan Ilyich|29410489|The Death of Ivan Ilyich|Leo Tolstoy|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1457022930l/29410489._SX50_.jpg|234915] here?) I am in awe of the considerable research the author undertook to develop this novel. In this respect, she set the tone for later authors such as Pat Barker ([b:The Silence of the Girls|41728452|The Silence of the Girls|Pat Barker|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1538246577l/41728452._SY75_.jpg|59693763]).
Yourcenar’s Hadrian comes across as resigned, accepting his place and fate. (How could one not think of [b:The Death of Ivan Ilyich|29410489|The Death of Ivan Ilyich|Leo Tolstoy|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1457022930l/29410489._SX50_.jpg|234915] here?) I am in awe of the considerable research the author undertook to develop this novel. In this respect, she set the tone for later authors such as Pat Barker ([b:The Silence of the Girls|41728452|The Silence of the Girls|Pat Barker|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1538246577l/41728452._SY75_.jpg|59693763]).
Une chance analogue à celle de certains jardiniers m’a été départie : tout ce que j’ai essayé d’implanter dans l’imagination humaine y a pris racine. Le culte d’Antinoüs semblait la plus folle de mes entreprises, le débordement d’une douleur qui ne concernait que moi seul. Mais notre époque est avide de dieux ; elle préfère les plus ardents, les plus tristes, ceux qui mèlent au vin de la vie un miel amer d’outre-tombe.
Qualche considerazione sparsa:
- È il genere di libro da leggere con un gruppo di lettura. Non sono riuscito a trattenermi dal commentarlo con un'amica, anche se lei Adriano l'ha abbandonato. Probabilmente l'ho irritata molto.
- Mi chiedo che impressione ne avrei avuto se l'avessi letto in quinta liceo, quando alcuni dei nomi citati potevano avere qualche significato. Sono andato a ripescare gli appunti di Latino, ma di Adriano non ho trovato niente. Quindi è probabile che leggerlo quattro (!) anni fa non avrebbe fatto la differenza.
- Tre stelline, il voto medio, l'"ok", mi sembra un po' un'offesa per un libro che in genere o si ama o si odia. All'inizio ero scoraggiato e non credevo di farcela, ma con un cambio di prospettiva e un po' di pazienza, rileggendo dove necessario per cercare di tenere il filo, sono arrivato alla fine in tempi piuttosto brevi. Il punto è che a fine lettura mi resta poco: alcune riflessioni, aneddoti particolari (l'uccisione di un leone, la morte di un bambino, il suicidio di un medico), la nomina di imperatore, tutta la parte di Antinoo, la nomina del successore, ma come picchi qua e là in un mare di memorie in cui la mia mente ogni tanto si sconnetteva, non nell'insieme.
- Alla fine del libro ci sono, in quest'ordine, i Taccuini di appunti, in cui l'autrice mi è sembrata a tratti spocchiosa, una nota, che ho finito per saltare in parte visto che consisteva perlopiù in una lista di fonti, e un saggio della traduttrice, che al contrario dei Taccuini mi ha fatto provare simpatia per l'autrice.
- È il genere di libro da leggere con un gruppo di lettura. Non sono riuscito a trattenermi dal commentarlo con un'amica, anche se lei Adriano l'ha abbandonato. Probabilmente l'ho irritata molto.
- Mi chiedo che impressione ne avrei avuto se l'avessi letto in quinta liceo, quando alcuni dei nomi citati potevano avere qualche significato. Sono andato a ripescare gli appunti di Latino, ma di Adriano non ho trovato niente. Quindi è probabile che leggerlo quattro (!) anni fa non avrebbe fatto la differenza.
- Tre stelline, il voto medio, l'"ok", mi sembra un po' un'offesa per un libro che in genere o si ama o si odia. All'inizio ero scoraggiato e non credevo di farcela, ma con un cambio di prospettiva e un po' di pazienza, rileggendo dove necessario per cercare di tenere il filo, sono arrivato alla fine in tempi piuttosto brevi. Il punto è che a fine lettura mi resta poco: alcune riflessioni, aneddoti particolari (l'uccisione di un leone, la morte di un bambino, il suicidio di un medico), la nomina di imperatore, tutta la parte di Antinoo, la nomina del successore, ma come picchi qua e là in un mare di memorie in cui la mia mente ogni tanto si sconnetteva, non nell'insieme.
- Alla fine del libro ci sono, in quest'ordine, i Taccuini di appunti, in cui l'autrice mi è sembrata a tratti spocchiosa, una nota, che ho finito per saltare in parte visto che consisteva perlopiù in una lista di fonti, e un saggio della traduttrice, che al contrario dei Taccuini mi ha fatto provare simpatia per l'autrice.
adventurous
inspiring
reflective
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
Li esse livro durante minhas férias de verão, enquanto estava em viagem, foi um ótimo companheiro. Terminei o livro dias após chegar em casa e retornar a rotina comum, uma ótima forma de terminar o livro, ao reduzir o ritmo e as esperanças (risos).
Apesar de ser uma ficção, Adriano foi meu mentor e amigo durante esses dias, como um homem mais velho cheio de experiências para ensinar sobre a vida. Ao mesmo tempo que me identifiquei muitas vezes com sua personalidade e reflexões, me senti acolhida em minha juventude em criar expectativas mais realistas sobre o futuro. Acompanhamos Adriano refletindo sobre sua trajetória de vida, amores, arrependimentos e visões de mundo. O que mais me pegou foi sua evolução de olhar sobre a história humana, primeiro sobre uma ideia linear e evolutiva e depois, com a experiência, entendo-a como um movimento cíclico com padrões que se repetem. O valor da arte e seu poder em prolongar a vida daqueles que amamos e admiramos. O lugar do ego, que às vezes é maior que o coração que entregamos a quem mais amamos.
Com certeza, entrou na minha lista de livros favoritos.
Apesar de ser uma ficção, Adriano foi meu mentor e amigo durante esses dias, como um homem mais velho cheio de experiências para ensinar sobre a vida. Ao mesmo tempo que me identifiquei muitas vezes com sua personalidade e reflexões, me senti acolhida em minha juventude em criar expectativas mais realistas sobre o futuro. Acompanhamos Adriano refletindo sobre sua trajetória de vida, amores, arrependimentos e visões de mundo. O que mais me pegou foi sua evolução de olhar sobre a história humana, primeiro sobre uma ideia linear e evolutiva e depois, com a experiência, entendo-a como um movimento cíclico com padrões que se repetem. O valor da arte e seu poder em prolongar a vida daqueles que amamos e admiramos. O lugar do ego, que às vezes é maior que o coração que entregamos a quem mais amamos.
Com certeza, entrou na minha lista de livros favoritos.
A sometimes difficult and ponderous read, but magnificent nonetheless. Yourcenar devoted long years of her life to copious historical research about Hadrian and the time period, embellishing only a little. In writing these memoirs, she creates a believable account of the man's life and his inner monologue. I struggled about midway through under the weight of the long, deliberate prose but found my footing again reading out loud. Although some sections are meandering (as one might expect any person's life to be at times), others grab the reader completely. Thanks to Yourcenar's meticulous research and writing -- and the excellent translation by Frick -- I felt transported to another world. I feel I know this ancient man now, his world and how he lived. That in itself is a wonderful achievement.
“It is in Latin that I have administered the empire; my epitaph will be carved in Latin on the walls of my mausoleum beside the Tiber; but it is in Greek that I shall have thought and lived.”
“‘Just when the gods had ceased to be, and the Christ had not yet come, there was a unique moment in history, between Cicero and Marcus Aurelius, when man stood alone.’”
Hadrian has always been one of my favorite Roman emperors, so a big thank you to a dear friend for choosing this for my Yule book exchange! It was a well-timed choice, as this book has been on my TBR since… 2012. I am glad I read this now and not a decade earlier, though; like Yourcenar writes in her postscript, this book requires a certain maturity of perspective to appreciate. I definitely have gotten more out of it now than I would have if I read it as a teenager. Yes, this is a fictional collection of memoirs from Hadrian’s perspective, but Yourcenar has masterfully imbued it with all sorts of complex thoughts and meanings that will take me a lot of time to digest and fully appreciate. Perhaps I should even re-read this in a decade or two.
First of all, major kudos to Yourcenar’s prose and another to Grace Frick’s powerful translation! I can’t even imagine what a powerful duo those two must have been. I hardly felt that I was reading a translation, such was the beauty of the language at times. For a while, in picking up this book, I was fully able to immerse myself in the 2nd century CE, there along with Hadrian. The style of the writing is told in snippets and anecdotes that don’t really follow any coherent structure, except perhaps vaguely chronological. At first, this made it hard to really get into the book, but once you do, it’s like spending time talking with an old friend—Hadrian’s words become tangible.
The amount of detail that Yourcenar includes in this novel is astounding. Her research—and how long it must have taken, how many objects handled and sights seen!—is incredibly impressive. I daresay that most modern novelists scarcely approach a tenth of the efforts she put into this work. Having studied classics, a lot of Hadrian’s life wasn’t news to me, but even so I learned a lot of things just by reading this book.
Yourcenar also skillfully includes ambiguities, rumors, and complete guesses in the narrative as appropriate—of course, not without reservations. All of these add up to make an entirely convincing narrative that places the reader squarely in Hadrian’s world. What’s not to love? I could stand there on the balcony with him, while he looks at the stars and muses about the eternity of Rome and the universe. She does also give Hadrian a prophetic voice at times, which takes care to be vague and unclear; but even so, these portents looking toward the future pushed me ever so slightly out of Hadrian’s time and forced me to consider him with modern eyes. It’s a testament to the writing that for most of the book I didn’t experience that, so it was strange when I was placed squarely back into my own time. But this is a minor quibble at best.
On the surface, the memoirs are written from Hadrian’s perspective and addressed to a young Marcus Aurelius, another one of my favorites. I thought it was a clever way to frame the story—at this point, he has chosen his successor, Antoninus Pius, who is contractually obligated to adopt the young Marcus Aurelius and Lucius Verus, who will eventually be co-emperors. Marcus Aurelius was also a deeply philosophical and contemplative sort, so the decision to have Hadrian musing to him about his reflections on life, death, the universe—it was certainly a good choice.
I also loved seeing the ‘side characters’, if you can call them that, in the novel, whether it was meeting Plotina or seeing Trajan’s slow decline towards his death or observing Hadrian watching Marcus Aurelius and Lucius Verus grow up. The side characters were sufficiently fleshed out and made personable by Yourcenar, which is hardly an easy feat; in the postscript, she says some figures were invented, but many were composed of various names and personae that we do know existed around Hadrian’s intimate circle. I am impressed at how much research material she had at her disposal in the 1950s, enough to paint this picture of Hadrian and more. I suppose it is usually the case that we have all the information we really need, but most people are not looking in the right places or giving enough attention to get at these complex insights.
Thus far I’ve waxed on and on about how great the novel is and how masterful Yourcenar is; let there be no doubt about those two things. This novel is a modern classic and deserves to be more well known than it is among contemporary readers! I would also like to take a moment to reflect on Yourcenar’s reflections in writing the novel, though—I am grateful my edition had this postscript at the end. Yourcenar began the project between the ages of 20 and 25, which is incredibly impressive. I can’t imagine taking upon such an undertaking now, let alone thinking I’m capable. But of course, those early attempts weren’t satisfactory, and Yourcenar burned the drafts and forgot about it for a while; she had an on-and-off relationship with the project for a while, and WWII happened in between, but eventually after the war she got back to earnestly working on this project that would just not leave her alone. I’m very glad she did!
I’m certainly no writer, but it feels like some writers are born to tell certain stories—no doubt Yourcenar was meant to write this one. Being able to witness her early struggles and feelings of insufficiency in writing this incredible work was almost as moving as the novel itself; it heightened my appreciation for her efforts all the more. Her descriptions of various sights and objects as she researched for this novel were also intriguing; I do so wish to go back to Italy and explore more of these places someday. It’s incredible how much we still have from that time—I remember feeling that sense of awe looking upon the Pantheon, which is one of my favorite buildings in Rome. When I came to the scene of Hadrian dedicating it in the novel, it was immediately touching and brought me back to that moment. The Pantheon has no doubt undergone a lot of change, but we can still see Marcus Agrippa’s inscription out front and see the classic ocular dome—it’s a marvel, and I’ll never tire of it.
I’m starting to wax on and reminisce now myself, so it’s time for this review to come to an end… in short, this is a fantastic book, and I’m glad I took the time to really savor it and spend these past few weeks with Hadrian. I would heartily recommend this book to anyone who has a love and appreciation for the classics, Hadrian, ancient monuments, or really, anyone who enjoys thoughtful contemplation.