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jasonfurman 's review for:
Memoirs of Hadrian
by Marguerite Yourcenar
This is meant to be one of the greatest historical novels ever written and I had been looking forward to reading it for a while. Unfortunately, I was disappointed, although the problems were more with my taste in books than any objective shortcoming. I would have been happier re-reading I, Claudius, Claudius the God or Kingdom of the Wicked all of which bring a greater sense of irony to the enterprise.
The book is in the form of a first person memoir by Hadrian, dictated on his deathbed as a letter to one of his chosen successors, Marcus Aurelius. It was published in France in 1951 and has been successful ever since.
Hadrian's life lends itself to the novel form because it is so thinly and poorly sourced that it is difficult for a biographer to tackle (the shortcoming of Anthony Everitt's biography). Marguerite Yourcenar tells it reasonably well. As she explains in the afterword, she chose this time and place because it was after the Roman gods were no longer believed in but before Christianity. Hadrian was a Hellenophile who brought a certain amount of peace and consolidation to the borders of the Empire as well as stability to the succession and significant building in Rome.
The aspect that were less to my taste were that much of it was meditative ruminations on the nature of love, art, power, etc. I admit this might reflect my own limitations more than it does the author's.
The book is in the form of a first person memoir by Hadrian, dictated on his deathbed as a letter to one of his chosen successors, Marcus Aurelius. It was published in France in 1951 and has been successful ever since.
Hadrian's life lends itself to the novel form because it is so thinly and poorly sourced that it is difficult for a biographer to tackle (the shortcoming of Anthony Everitt's biography). Marguerite Yourcenar tells it reasonably well. As she explains in the afterword, she chose this time and place because it was after the Roman gods were no longer believed in but before Christianity. Hadrian was a Hellenophile who brought a certain amount of peace and consolidation to the borders of the Empire as well as stability to the succession and significant building in Rome.
The aspect that were less to my taste were that much of it was meditative ruminations on the nature of love, art, power, etc. I admit this might reflect my own limitations more than it does the author's.