Take a photo of a barcode or cover
vaticerratic 's review for:
Mémoires d'Hadrien
by Marguerite Yourcenar
Mémoires d'Hadrien (Memoirs of Hadrian) by Marguerite Yourcenar
1951
**Not putting stars on my reviews**
Meticulously researched faux autobiography of Roman emperor Hadrian. Very meditative; ornate style.
What I’ll cop to liking:
-Did a good job of making this character, from a remote time and place, feel relatable and not exotic. He thought through things in a way that I might myself
-Becomes exciting at a few moments: when everyone is waiting for Emperor Trajan to announce an heir; when we’re waiting for Antinous’s death; when Hadrian himself is picking a successor
-Cleverly executed conceit. I read that Yourcenar wanted to write this book in part to vindicate Hadrian, a famous pederast who had long been dismissed as a pervert (Yourcenar was a lesbian, so it’s personally important for her). For her, he’s a great emperor. What I admired about the construction of the book was that, towards the end, Hadrian explains he’s justifying himself to the text’s addressee, emperor in waiting Marcus Aurelius, since he knows that Marcus Aurelius is an ascetic and that Hadrian’s lifestyle looks dissolute and opulent. It’s an elegant alibi for Yourcenar’s own project–championing Hadrian–within the premise of the fiction
If you pared it down, it would be great. In the end, it was a painful read b/c:
-Lotta unnecessary wonky detail about Roman statecraft. Someone at book club said the original draft was 1000s of pages. Editing it down to this must’ve already been hard, but it still needed more. Often aimless
-Overwritten, plodding style. My least favorite were these classical rhetorical structures where he would give a heading at the start of paragraphs and then list examples. The structure overall was too paratactical for me–within a chapter, paragraphs would relate to each other not as thoughts that flowed but as items in a list
-Philosophically tedious–a problem, because a lot of it is philosophizing. In the text, Hadrian declares himself a pragmatist uninterested in abstractions. He still likes to think about things, but he’s uninterested in the rigor you need to get to anything very interesting. The result: a lot of hot air
1951
**Not putting stars on my reviews**
Meticulously researched faux autobiography of Roman emperor Hadrian. Very meditative; ornate style.
What I’ll cop to liking:
-Did a good job of making this character, from a remote time and place, feel relatable and not exotic. He thought through things in a way that I might myself
-Becomes exciting at a few moments: when everyone is waiting for Emperor Trajan to announce an heir; when we’re waiting for Antinous’s death; when Hadrian himself is picking a successor
-Cleverly executed conceit. I read that Yourcenar wanted to write this book in part to vindicate Hadrian, a famous pederast who had long been dismissed as a pervert (Yourcenar was a lesbian, so it’s personally important for her). For her, he’s a great emperor. What I admired about the construction of the book was that, towards the end, Hadrian explains he’s justifying himself to the text’s addressee, emperor in waiting Marcus Aurelius, since he knows that Marcus Aurelius is an ascetic and that Hadrian’s lifestyle looks dissolute and opulent. It’s an elegant alibi for Yourcenar’s own project–championing Hadrian–within the premise of the fiction
If you pared it down, it would be great. In the end, it was a painful read b/c:
-Lotta unnecessary wonky detail about Roman statecraft. Someone at book club said the original draft was 1000s of pages. Editing it down to this must’ve already been hard, but it still needed more. Often aimless
-Overwritten, plodding style. My least favorite were these classical rhetorical structures where he would give a heading at the start of paragraphs and then list examples. The structure overall was too paratactical for me–within a chapter, paragraphs would relate to each other not as thoughts that flowed but as items in a list
-Philosophically tedious–a problem, because a lot of it is philosophizing. In the text, Hadrian declares himself a pragmatist uninterested in abstractions. He still likes to think about things, but he’s uninterested in the rigor you need to get to anything very interesting. The result: a lot of hot air