Memoirs of Hadrian (French: Mémoires d'Hadrien) is a novel by the Belgian-born French writer Marguerite Yourcenar about the life and death of Roman Emperor Hadrian. First published in France in French in 1951 as Mémoires d'Hadrien, the book was an immediate success, meeting with enormous critical acclaim. Although the historical Hadrian wrote an autobiography, it has been lost.

The book takes the form of a letter to Hadrian's adoptive grandson and eventual successor "Mark" (Marcus Aurelius). The emperor meditates on military triumphs, love of poetry and music, philosophy, and his passion for his lover Antinous, all in a manner similar to Gustave Flaubert's "melancholy of the antique world."

Yourcenar noted in her postscript "Carnet de note" to the original edition, quoting Flaubert, that she had chosen Hadrian as the subject of the novel in part because he had lived at a time when the Roman gods were no longer believed in, but Christianity was not yet established. This intrigued her for what she saw as parallels to her own post-war European world.^[1]

Writing of the Novel[edit]

Yourcenar first thought of the idea for the book between 1924 and 1929. She then worked on various drafts intermittently between 1934 and 1937. The notion of writing the book from the point of view of a dying Hadrian occurred to her after reading a sentence in a draft from 1937 stating: "I begin to discern the profile of my death."^[2]

She did not resume work on the book in earnest until December 1948. She states that while she based her account of Hadrian on the two most principal sources, Historia Augusta and Cassius Dio's Historia Romana, her goal was to reinterpret the past but also strive for historical authenticity.^[3]

Synopsis[edit]

The novel is told in the first person by Hadrian and is framed as a letter to Marcus Aurelius in the first chapter, Animula Vagula Blandula. The other chapters form a loose chronological narrative which he often breaks with various insights and recollections. The story begins with Hadrian, who is around sixty years of age, describing his incurable illness. He therefore wishes to recount important events in his life before his death.

His earliest memories are his boyhood years in Italica. He also talks of his early interest in astrology and his lifelong passion for the arts, culture, and philosophy of Greece; themes which he revisits throughout the book. He visits Athens to study, travels to Rome for the first time, and witnesses the accession of Trajan. He eventually joins the army and participates in the Dacian campaign. Hadrian, who is around thirty years old at the end of the war, describes his successes in the army and his relationship with Trajan who is initially cold towards him. He slowly gains Trajan's favor and secures his position for the throne with the help of Plotina, the emperor's wife, and also by marrying Sabina, Trajan's grandniece.

During his military service, the outcome of the Sarmatian wars strongly affects him due to the appalling bloodshed and atrocities committed. He also begins to question the value of Trajan's policy of military expansion. Trajan, in old age, begins an unsuccessful military campaign in Parthia after his successes over Dacia and Sarmatia. After a major defeat, Trajan hastily names Hadrian as his successor in a will shortly before his death. Following the death of Trajan, he hesitantly has his rivals executed and makes peace with Parthia. He travels frequently throughout the provinces of the Roman Empire while undertaking numerous economic and military reforms, promoting in his words: “humanitas, libertas, felicitas.” During a visit to Britain, he describes the construction of Hadrian's Wall, which represents part of his vision of curbing the military expansion of his predecessor and promoting peace.

Hadrian's administration is a time of peace and happiness which he regards as his "Age of Gold." He attributes this happiness to his love for Antinous, a beautiful Bithynian youth he meets in Nicomedia. He also feels genuinely loved by Antinous compared to the fleeting passions of his youth and the loveless relationship with his wife Sabina. While visiting Egypt, he despairs over the sudden and mysterious death of Antinous who drowns in the Nile. He ultimately believes that Antinous sacrificed himself in order to alter the outcome of troubling portents that both had witnessed earlier. In his grief, he devises the cult of Antinous and makes future plans to dedicate a new city to him in an effort to eternalize his memory.

Hadrian begins reflecting upon his advancing age and his change in temperament, recalling one incident where he accidentally blinds his secretary out of rage. Further troubling him is the outbreak of rebellion in Judea, which forces him to travel and take command of the troops. During an important siege, he despairs over the unraveling of his plans for peace, his ailing heart condition, and later over the rampant destruction in Judea. He states, "Natura deficit, fortuna mutatur, deus omnia cernit. Nature fails us, fortune changes, a god beholds all things from on high…"^[4]

During his final years in Rome and at his villa in Tibur, he ponders his succession and his thoughts turn to a memory of Marcus Aurelius as a virtuous and kind-hearted boy. Hadrian, now in advanced age and very poor health, begins to fear death and contemplates suicide through various means. He finally accepts his fate with resignation, or patientia, while reflecting on his newfound divine status throughout the Empire. Near death, he contemplates what the future may hold for the world, Rome, and for his soul.

Quotations[edit]

"My hunger for power was like the craving for love, which keeps the lover from eating or sleeping, from thinking or even from loving as long as certain rites remain unperformed. The most urgent tasks seemed vain when I was not the free master over decisions affecting the future; I needed to be assured of reigning in order to recapture the desire to serve."^[5]

"Of all our games, love's play is the only one which threatens to unsettle our soul, and is also the only one in which the player has to abandon himself to the body's ecstasy. …Nailed to the beloved body like a slave to a cross, I have learned some secrets of life which are now dimmed in my memory by the operation of that same law which ordained that the convalescent, once cured, ceases to understand the mysterious truths laid bare by illness, and that the prisoner, set free, forgets his torture, or the conqueror, his triumph passed, forgets his glory."^[6]

"Like everyone else I have at my disposal only three means of evaluating human existence: the study of self, which is the most difficult and most dangerous method, but also the most fruitful; the observation of our fellowmen, who usually arrange to hide secrets where none exist; and books, with the particular errors of perspective to which they inevitably give rise."^[7]

References[edit]

^ Yourcenar. Memoirs of Hadrian. English Edition. 2005. p. 319-320.
^ Yourcenar. Reflections on the Composition of Memoirs of Hadrian in Memoirs of Hadrian. English Edition. 2005. p. 319-320.
^ Yourcenar. Reflections on the Composition of Memoirs of Hadrian in Memoirs of Hadrian. English Edition. 2005. p. 326, 329.
^ Yourcenar. Memoirs. 2005. p. 243.
^ Yourcenar. Memoirs. 2005. p. 86.
^ Yourcenar. Memoirs. 2005. p. 12-14.
^ Yourcenar. Memoirs. 2005. p. 21.

External links[edit]

Acocella, Joan (14 February 2005). "Becoming the Emperor". The New Yorker. Retrieved 15 June 2016.
Epstein, Joseph (9 October 2010). "Portrait of Power Embodied in a Roman Emperor". Wall Street Journal. Retrieved 15 June 2016.

----

Memoirs of Hadrian
by
Marguerite Yourcenar,
Grace Frick (Translator)

4.25 · Rating details · 17,245 ratings · 1,404 reviews
Both an exploration of character and a reflection on the meaning of history, Memoirs of Hadrian has received international acclaim since its first publication in France in 1951. In it, Marguerite Yourcenar reimagines the Emperor Hadrian's arduous boyhood, his triumphs and reversals, and finally, as emperor, his gradual reordering of a war-torn world, writing with the imaginative insight of a great writer of the twentieth century while crafting a prose style as elegant and precise as those of the Latin stylists of Hadrian's own era. (less)

Paperback, 347 pages
Published May 18th 2005 by Farrar, Straus and Giroux (first published 1951)

Characters
Antinoüs, Trajan (emperor), Emperor Hadrian, Vibia Sabina

Setting
Rome (Italy)

Athens (Greece)

Alexandria (Egypt)

Literary Awards

Prix Femina Vacaresco (1952)

Write a review

Dec 31, 2009 Kelly rated it it was amazing
Shelves: tres-francais, worlds-lost-dead-and-dying, examined-lives, history, owned, bc-and-just-ad, epistolary, grand-opera, melancholia

There is a word that keeps popping up in my reading. I’d go so far as to say that this word is the underlying descriptor for the majority of my favorite books, in some way. The thing is that I can’t tell you exactly what that word is, nor what it means. In Turkish, the word is hüzün, In Korean, it is maybe something close to han, in French perhaps ennui (though I am far from satisfied with that), and in Japanese, mono no aware. None of these words mean quite the same thing, none has the same connotations, or the same cultural usage, really, but nonetheless they all get at something- something they all peek and pry at from different angles, but do not capture entirely. For me, the meaning of all these words is most exquisitely expressed in a Latin phrase: Lacrimae rerum. It is found in the Aeneid, and my favorite translation of it (which yes of course means I will ignore all others) is “tears of things.” It is said by Aeneas as he gazes at a mural of the Trojan War, overcome with anger and sadness, going to a place beyond either of these emotions to... the “tears of things".

This word.. whatever its meaning, does not exist in English. It needs several words to describe what it means in this language, and I think that some words need to be repeated and said in the right way to convey it in the same way. But it still wouldn’t work. It certainly wouldn’t work in America. America is the anti- this word. America is founded on the promise that everyone should be free to not know what this word means, and moreover that its residents should make it a point to laugh at it when they see it. This word is silly, eye-roll inducing, a “stage”. It is helpful that in the United States, imitations and shadows of it are mostly laughable, thought of as a way to sell black lipstick to 16 year old goth girls or let floppy haired boys think they are James Dean for owning a leather jacket. It doesn’t really have anything to do with that, though. I said I was surprised that Memoirs of Hadrian isn’t considered a part of the canon here. I’m not, really. How could it be? The closest we get to this book is Gatsby and Jay Gatsby’s nouveau riche problems are (mostly) beside the point. Our coming of age novel is Catcher in the Rye. One of the French ones has a title that translates as The Lost Estate. I think the title says enough.

This is not a historical version of The Unbearable Lightness of Being that I’m pitching here. But it does have something to do with time, time and the weight of it. It has something to do with the last time I was in Italy. I wandered off the standard routes into the side streets and came on an idle construction site- a building with its foundations dug out, standing on stilts, shining and new, but idle, the sign said, since the previous March. This was because someone had found the remains of pottery, art and other foundations from the Roman Empire. The national authorities were so backed up with other discoveries of this kind around the country that they hadn’t gotten around to clearing it out, nearly a year and a half later- and this was a site near the center of Rome. It isn’t about the fact that it happened, only, though.

Memoirs of Hadrian is a meditation on finding a pile of pottery shards and deciding what to do with them. Your decision depends very much on what you see in them, or really, more precisely who you see in them. What tale takes shape in your brain- what is relevant to be put down on paper, if you think there’s anything genuine to be found or what genuine means to you, and most of all if perhaps you’d just as well better get on with building your office park, which is after all supported by some stilts right now and won’t (and shouldn’t) wait forever. Yourcenar changed her mind about her particular pile of pottery shards many times. She changed her mind so hard the first time, she burned the remains. Then she did it again, five years later. But she retained one sentence from her 1934 bonfire: "I begin to discern the profile of my death.” With that sentence she had, like a “painter who moves his easel from left to right,” found the proper viewpoint for the book. But pottery shards look different in the light of Europe, 1939. They look even more strange in 1942, in a Yale library next to newspapers whose headlines speak of many, many office parks that need to be rebuilt, and some that never will be, until one thinks of the shards “with something like shame for having ever ventured upon such an undertaking.”

But then a trunk arrives from Switzerland in 1948. It bears letters from old friends, many of whom are now dead... and one letter to someone who has been dead much longer. “Dear Mark,” it begins. Something else escaped Europe’s bonfires, something she hadn’t remembered she’d created at all- the beginning of another letter, from an imagined Hadrian, to his young heir, Marcus Aurelius. Somehow, it survived. And then she thought of something else to do with her pottery shards- perhaps it was time to begin putting them back together. Or better, it was time to tell the young heirs how to put them back together.

But how do you do that? How do you pick up the pieces and go on when you can’t even honestly say you know where they should rightfully go? You may have lived more than thirty years trying to figure it out, immersing yourself in the craft of it until you could do it blind, but you’re just guessing in the end. Aren’t you painting it just a little bit shinier than it was before? Doesn’t everything fit together better than it should? What should you do with this notation from a critic that says there was a crack in it from the very first time he saw it? Do you restore the cracks? Or do you have a responsibility to put the best face you can on it, to present it as the maker would have ideally wanted it to be seen? Don’t the ideas matter more than the reality? Whatever the answers to these things, you have to start with the hardest task: looking the remains in the face.

“Sheltering the flame of my lamp with my hand, I would lightly touch that breast of stone. Such encounters served to complicate memory’s task; I had to put aside like a curtain the pallor of the marble to go back, in so far as possible, from those motionless contours to the living form.. Again I would resume my round; the statue, once interrogated, would relapse into darkness; a few steps away my lamp would reveal another image; these great white figures differed little from ghosts. I reflected bitterly upon those magic passes whereby the Egyptian priests had drawn the soul of the dead youth into the wooden effigies… I had done like them; I had cast a spell over stones which, in their turn, had spellbound me.”

Who is the story of your life for? Why are you creating this memory for someone? Why should one more pottery shard rule someone’s life, for however long? Is it only a decoration for an already grand tomb? Or, perhaps, is it one more way to make your peace with your own point of view before it too, is thrown on the bonfire? Hadrian is at delving into his memory as deeply as he can, and fighting it at the same time. He just wants to leave advice for an heir, and it is advice that is needed more than ever. It is, after all, being left for a young man who is at the most an afterthought- a lucky find after a series of disasters wherein the chosen heirs proved monstrously unworthy or have already died uselessly and horribly from an excess of virtue. He is simply the one left standing in the ashes while an old man is staring his death throes in the face, and, like all his predecessors, finding it difficult to let go.

So what do you do, to tell him all he should know? Someone not of your blood, who you haven’t had the education of, not really. What you can do? You tell him what happened to you- as fairly as you can, with whatever inner battles you need to fight laid open. You tell him a story. You tell him a story with as much as you can bear to tell left in, and let it go on… and on... and on. Make sure he feels the years as you build one temple after another, and fall in love and out again, win one city and watch another fall. Make sure he hears about your errors, your flaws. Especially make sure to destroy the biggest positive myth about you- he must know the way it is, lest he look to myths for support when you are gone and find nothing but air. You may have constructed gods, but he will need to support them and say why they are there, in order for them to live on. You should temper the worst tales about you, but not too much- it is better if find out for himself that you’ve no need to protest your innocence. He must feel your despair, your Spenglerian conviction that the Faustian wintertime has come, that there is nothing more to be done:

“I was beginning to find it natural, if not just, that we should perish. Our literature is nearing exhaustion, our arts are falling asleep. Pancrates is not Homer, nor is Arrian a Xenophon; when I have tried to immortalize Antonious in stone, no Praxiteles has come to hand. Our sciences have been at a standstill… our technical development is inadequate…even our pleasure seekers grow weary of delight… the masses remain wholly ignorant, fierce and cruel when they can be so, and in any case limited and selfish…”

He'll read these words, words from the mouth of a generation so far removed from his own, brought up with such wildly different expectations and knowledge about the world, irrevocably shattered by events that they could not conceive of… It could almost make you laugh with relief to read this and then think of Michelangelo’s angels screaming out of the marble. Then, almost unnecessarily, you can tell him that:

“Life is atrocious, we know. But precisely because I expect little of the human condition, man’s periods of felicity, his partial progress, his efforts to begin over again and to continue, all seem to me like so many prodigies which nearly compensate for the monstrous mass of ills and defeats, of indifference and error. Catastrophe and ruin will come; disorder will triumph, but order will too, from time to time. Peace will again establish itself between two periods of war; the words humanity, liberty, and justice will here and there regain the meaning which we have tried to give them. Not all our books will perish, nor our statues, if broken, lie unrepaired; other domes and other pediments will arise from our domes and pediments; some few men will think and work and feel as we have done, and I venture to count upon such continuations, placed irregularly throughout the centuries, and upon this kind of intermittent immortality.”

That is how you make a memory without burden- to reconcile Catcher and The Lost Estate after all. If you cannot do it, someone else will. To paraphrase Stoppard: we die on the march, but nothing is outside of it and nothing can be lost to it. If a sixteen year old math prodigy does not make calculus known to the world, another man, not long later, will do it. The weight of these statues, these ghosts, is not your obligation. They are there for those who need to look at them and find themselves in their shadows, and that is all. Time can continue to pile down minute by minute, but you are not its prisoner. Merely a welcome guest, who may stay as long as you like. If you do not choose to walk in Time’s garden, your loss will not bring haunting down upon you in another, New, world- there will be enough who choose to stay. Those who do stay will not be unmarked by it, and those who leave will be the same with their choice- we can but choose and choose and choose again. We are what we consistently do. What Time throws up for notice enough times to be remembered.

…There is an epilogue, though. Of course there is. Telling him the essential information to get through the day isn’t enough. Not even telling him a story and setting him free. No- he needs to know why you got up every morning- he needs to know about the lacunae between the temple building and warring in the desert. He has to know why he should listen to you. Digressions, pauses, and footnotes make the man, and the boy you are reading to knows that better than anyone, or he will, by the time he finishes this. So tell him about how heaven is the constellations in the Syrian night, about the wind whispering out of the sands of Judea, about the memory of an old man in a garden in Spain. He needs to know about women you cherished and men you hated. But most of all, most of all, he needs to know about the man you loved, how you loved him, and for how long- how you thought of him more and more as death came close. How Love seemed to be the way your story would end. But it wasn’t. We end with only ourselves. History is in the last line of this book- what Hadrian dies with is why History exists and should exist and we should all remember, and yes, beat on, boats against the current, borne ceaselessly back into the past. (less)

flag 300 likes · Like · 90 comments · see review

Jan 01, 2011 Manny rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: french, history-and-biography, too-sexy-for-maiden-aunts, transcendent-experiences

This book is the fruit of one of the most ambitious literary projects I have ever seen. At the age of twenty, Marguerite Yourcenar conceived the idea of writing the life of the Emperor Hadrian. She spent five years on the task, then destroyed the manuscript and all her notes. Over the next decade and a half, she returned to the idea several times, and each time admitted defeat. Finally, in her early 40s, she arrived at a method she could believe in, which she describes as "half history, half magic": she spent several years systematically transforming herself into a vessel for the long-dead Emperor's spirit. She read every book still in existence that mentioned him or that he might have read. She visited the places he had visited, and touched the statues he had touched. Every night, she tried to imagine that she was Hadrian, and spent hours writing minutely detailed accounts of what he might have seen and felt. She was acutely aware of all the pitfalls involved, and used her considerable skills to efface herself from the process; "she did not want to breathe on the mirror". She compiled tens of thousands of pages of notes and rough drafts, nearly all of which she burned.

The final result, the memoirs Hadrian might have composed on his deathbed but never did, represents the distilled essence of this process, and it is unique in my experience. The language is a beautiful and highly stylised French that feels very much like Latin; the cadences are those of Latin, and every word she uses is originally derived from Latin or Greek. (This effect must be hard to imitate in translation to a non-Romance language). The world-view is, throughout, that of the second century A.D. The illusion that Hadrian is speaking to you directly is extraordinarily compelling.

Hadrian emerges as a great man. With Trajan's conquest of Mesopotamia just before his accession to the throne, the Empire had reached its peak; indeed, it was now clearly over-extended and threatened with collapse. Hadrian's difficult task was to stabilise it to the extent possible and maintain the increasingly uneasy peace, and he succeeded well enough that it survived for several hundred more years after his death. He describes his work with measured passion, neither boasting of his successes nor despairing of his occasional dreadful failures; the Second Jewish War occurred near the end of his reign, resulting in the obliteration of Judea and the dispersal of the entire Jewish race.

He is candid about his private life, and Yourcenar's description of his tragic liaison with Antinoüs is probably the most impressive achievement of the book. Hadrian, who like most of his class was promiscuously bisexual, takes as his lover a fourteen year old boy. The relationship, like everything else in the book, is presented entirely within the context of Hadrian's own culture, and I was able to accept it as such. It's extremely moving; even if you are the absolute ruler of the known world, you are as defenceless against love as everyone else. When Antinoüs kills himself shortly before his twentieth birthday, Hadrian realises too late that he is the love of his life. His Stoic philosophy and his strong sense of duty keep him functioning, but from then on he only longs to be released.

It is fortunate that, every now and then, the world acquires for a brief moment a man like Hadrian or a woman like Yourcenar. Read this book and you will feel inspired to be a better person.(less)

flag 273 likes · Like · 35 comments · see review

Sep 27, 2012 Jeffrey Keeten rated it it was amazing

Recommended to Jeffrey by: knig

Shelves: roman

”I was beginning to find it natural, if not just, that we must perish. Our literature is nearing exhaustion, our arts are falling asleep; Pancrates is not Homer, nor is Arrian a Xenophon; when I have tried to immortalize Antinous in stone no Praxiteles has come to hand, Our sciences have been at a standstill from the times of Aristotle and Archimedes; our technical development is inadequate to the strain of a long war; our technical development is inadequate to the strain of a long war; even our pleasure-lovers grow weary of delight. More civilized ways of living and more liberal thinking in the course of the last century are the work of a very small minority of good minds; the masses remain wholly ignorant, fierce and cruel when they can be so, and in any case limited and selfish; it is safe to wager that they will never change.”

Hadrian

Hadrian ruled from 117-138 and was the 14th Emperor of the Roman Empire. He was the third of five emperors that are referred to as the good emperors. He had good men to follow and also provided a good example of leadership to those that followed in his footsteps. He was the adopted son of Trajan (Roman Emperors seemed to routinely struggle to produce offspring.), and the first controversy of his ascension to power was that Trajan had never officially named him as his successor, but on a deathbed edict signed by Plotina the wife of Trajan, not by the Emperor, Hadrian was named to succeed.

He was uniquely qualified to lead Rome. As a soldier he was able to view the empire from a different perspective than any of the leadership in Rome. He fought courageously, but was discomforted from all the killing that was necessary to put down rebellions or conquer new territory. To Hadrian the warriors, women, and children they were killing were people that could have made good Roman citizens. This experience convinced him to change the policies of his predecessors. As Emperor he stopped the expansion of the empire and spent his time shoring up the relationship of Rome with the people of all the nations that composed the Roman Empire. He wanted everyone to have skin in the game. ”I was determined that even the most wretched, from the slaves who clean the city sewers to the famished barbarians who hover along the frontiers, should have an interest in seeing Rome endure.”

Pantheon

He rebuilt the Pantheon. ”I myself had revised its architectural plans, drawn with too little daring by Apollodorus: utilizing the arts of Greece only as ornamentation, like an added luxury, I had gone back for the basic form of the structure to the primitive, fabled times of Rome and to the round temples of ancient Etruria.” Hadrian was enamored with Greece and brought their philosophies and focus on art back to prominence in Roman thought. He built cities, repaired sculptures and ancient architecture, not just in Italy, but throughout the territories. He wanted his thinking, his beliefs to be felt everywhere. He was the first Emperor to travel to all of the geography of the Roman Empire. Instead of conquest, he built walls, most famously in England, to keep out nations hostile to Rome. He spent more time away from Rome than he did in Rome and improved the feeling towards Rome just by being a presence in areas most disaffected and disenchanted with being part of the Empire.

Hadrian's Wall

Hadrian loved meeting people from different cultures and as a good Roman always wanted to assimilate the best of all humanity. He was a deep thinker who had a broad understanding of philosophies and religions. He liked to take time to think, to fantasize about a new life, a new world, but at the same time found that even entertaining such ideas he was alone among men of his class. ”I played with the idea...To be alone, without possessions, without renown, with none of the advantages of a civilization, to expose oneself among new men and amid fresh hazards...Needless to say it was only a dream, and the briefest dream of all. This liberty that I was inventing ceased to exist upon closer view; I should quickly have rebuilt for myself everything that I had renounced. Furthermore, wherever I went I should only have been a Roman away from Rome. A kind of umbilical cord attached me to the City. Perhaps at that time, in my rank of tribune, I felt still more closely bound to the empire than later as emperor, for the same reason that the thumb joint is less free than the brain. Nevertheless I did have that outlandish dream, at which our ancestors, soberly confined with the Latian fields, would have shuddered; to have harbored the thought, even for a moment, makes me forever different from them.”

Even Emperor’s dream of being someone else.

Marguerite Yourcenar

Yourcenar, as you can tell from the quotes I have shared, tells this story from the first person narrative in the form of a letter to Marcus Aurelius. We are in the mind of Hadrian. We experience the building of his philosophies, the implementation of change he had envisioned while only a tribune, and the compassion and retribution he shows his enemies. We feel the grief, on par with Alexander for Hephaestion, when Hadrian’s very close lover, a Greek youth named Antinous, drowns. Rome was lucky to have him as Emperor during a time when they were struggling to maintain control of an empire that had grown too large. He certainly extended the life of the Roman Empire and put forward concepts, in particular to equality, that were far ahead of their time. This novel is considered a classic of historical fiction and like all good literature I know I will be thinking about it for a long, long time. Highly Recommended!

If you wish to see more of my most recent book and movie reviews, visit http://www.jeffreykeeten.com
I also have a Facebook blogger page at: https://www.facebook.com/JeffreyKeeten (less)

flag 236 likes · Like · 66 comments · see review

May 27, 2018 Luís C. rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: lisbon-book-fairs, favourites, belgium, queer-lgbt, ulisseia, female-writers, reading-the-world, 20th-century, french-lit, 1001-done-books

Convinced that the human being is immortal as an animal species, and finite as an individual being, Adriano, the most powerful man of the Roman Empire, exposes with minute details and beautiful metaphors the essential characteristics of human nature.
Despite having absolute power, he feels incapable of modifying in the least the natural development of his own life. With a lucid mind, full of wisdom and knowledgeable of the desires of human beings of all social conditions; he regrets, old and sick, of the contradiction between his body and his mind.
Reflect, comparing, if it has been worth playing the role of being omnipresent and all powerful, with the immense loneliness that for many periods of his reign he has felt countless times, at night in his rooms; after participating in orgies, official acts, religious ceremonies or deciding the fate of life or death of another human being.
All the earthly joys, the sexual experiences without limit, the trips by all the territory of the empire, the participations in the rites of diverse religions, the birth of a new belief: the Christianity that considers inoffensive for being directed to the poor and slaves; the knowledge of diverse cultures, his admiration for the Greek culture, his successes in front of the military legions, the official banquets, the eternal adulation, the conspiracies, the political assassinations, everything seems to have turned into a bucket full of ashes.
Winner of many military and political battles, he feels very humiliated when his favorite servants must give him constant help to perform the simplest acts of daily life.
The human being who was able to establish throughout the empire, the pax romana; at the end of his life he is unable to achieve his inner peace. A historical novel, which fully shows the permanence and complexity of the human condition over the centuries.

Lisbon Book-Fair 2018 (less)

flag 131 likes · Like · 29 comments · see review

Aug 25, 2015 Henry Avila rated it it was amazing

Through the mists of time, the clouds lift (but only partly, always remain overcast , they never give up their deep secrets), and the myths will continue, such is history, such was the Roman Emperor Hadrian, of the second century, no Julius Caesar but who was? Sill a very capable man born in Italica, what is now Spain, to a Roman family of landowners and Senators, they had left Italy centuries before and prospered. His cousin Emperor Trajan, many years his senior, later adopts the young man, sent to Rome for an education by his family at 12, with a trusted guardian, the father had just expired at 40. The future ruler shows promise, studies hard and does well... in the army he is fearless, against the enemy maybe even reckless, his men always cheer him, as a civilian too, a good magistrate in Rome, though like many men of his age spends his money foolishly, loving both men and women and goes into debt, this annoys Trajan greatly. The tough old soldier Emperor, more comfortable leading his conquering army, than playing the politician in the capital, it would be the same for Hadrian. A crisis appears the dying, feeble ruler is in no hurry to officially name his successor ( maybe this will insure his demise), too busy planning and fighting a war in faraway Mesopotamia ( and dreams of future conquests, for his glory ), a bloody conflict that cannot be won. The Empress Pompeia Plotina, a close friend of Hadrian, helps him to be declared Emperor at the passing of his cousin. Not a lover of women, he had a few that were instrumental in his rise to power, strangely Matilda his mother-in- law, but not his second cousin Sabina, his neglected wife... she hated him but didn't cause any scandals to the grateful Hadrian. And Hadrian wants peace, his Empire needs it badly, an inveterate reader, lover of the Arts, he fixes the economy , reforms the law, the army, brings back wealth to its ignored citizens . Yet he will leads the Romans, in war as he does in Palestine, suffering countless thousands of casualties, against the Jewish uprising... In Asia Minor, what is now Turkey, meeting a Greek boy Antinous, in Claudiopolis, the Roman province of Bithynia...sent to Rome to receive schooling, this attractive child grows up and becomes the love of Hadrian's life. Years later, the returning handsome teenager travels with the Emperor, they become constant companions but in Egypt, on the Nile River, a mystery happens, the lifeless body of Antinous 19, is found an apparent drowning... or murder, suicide, an accident? We will never learn the truth...For the rest of his days the melancholic Emperor mourns, numerous statues made, a magnificent new city built, Antinoopolis by the river near where he, the boy died, an ardent cult begins to worship him, games played for his memory, deified also by Hadrian but he Antinous, will still be gone forever. An ailing Hadrian in his last few months, sees that everything he has done , will vanish as the desert sands shift, so too does the hearts of men, all is vanity... A terrific historical novel, one of the best if not the greatest ever written. This book gives you an idea what the Roman Empire was like at its summit. Well worth reading for those interested... (less)

flag 121 likes · Like · 17 comments · see review

Oct 08, 2017 Fionnuala added it · review of another edition

Shelves: 2017, treasured-reading-experience, art-related

In the notes at the back of this book, Marguerite Yourcenar tells us that in 1941 she stumbled upon some Piranesi engravings in a shop in New York. One of them was a view of the interior of Hadrian’s Villa as it might have looked in the 1740s. I say ‘might have’ because the famous Piranesi had a talent for adding interesting layers to his engravings of the monuments of Rome. What his contemporaries viewed as a pile of crumbling ruins, took on new life in his rendering, imbued with the phantasms of his peculiar imagination.

Yourcenar, who had been researching Hadrian’s life for many years, interprets Piranesi’s version of Hadrian’s Villa as the inside of a human skull upon which strands of vegetation hang like human hair. She recognizes Piranesi’s genius in conveying an hallucinatory echo of the tragic interior world of the Villa’s former owner, the Emperor Hadrian, and she praises Piranesi’s medium-like gifts, his ability to be an extraordinary intermediary between the Villa and the Emperor.

When I had digested her words, it occurred to me that this is exactly how I’d describe her own achievement in this book. Hers too are medium-like gifts; she is an extraordinary intermediary between Hadrian and the reader. We are inside his head, quite an hallucinatory experience.

And there’s a further parallel between the Piranesi engraving and Yourcenar’s book. Piranesi chose to represent the part of the villa known as the Temple of Canope which Hadrian had created as a space to commemorate Antinous, the dead Greek youth he idolized. The statue of Antinous which Hadrian had placed in the centre of that space was no longer there in Piranesi’s time but it is interesting that among the many possible views of Hadrian’s Villa which Piranesi could have selected, he chose the exact site of the missing statue. Antinous dominates Piranesi’s work by his absence - just as he dominated Hadrian’s life by his absence, and Yourcenar’s book in turn.

It seemed fitting to seek out the missing statue though it’s not been an easy task. We know it was a Bacchus but among the many statues of Antinous that exist, several depict him as Bacchus. The large marble known as the Braschi Antinous, now in the Vatican Museums, corresponds best perhaps to Yourcenar’s description of the statue that she believes once stood in Hadrian’s Temple of Canope.
(view spoiler)

Yourcenar mentions the fine Italian marble from which the statue has been delicately chiselled, and the motif of vine leaves circling the slightly bent and sorrowful head which she interprets as a reference to the early harvest of the young man’s life: L’œuvre d'Antonianus a été taillée dans un marbre italien...Elle est d'une délicatesse infinie. Les rinceaux d'une vigne encadrent de la plus souple des arabesques le jeune visage mélancolique et penché : on songe irrésistiblement aux vendanges de la vie brève, à l'atmosphère fruitée d'un soir d'automne..

Yourcenar’s book is itself as beautiful as that block of marble and as delicate as the vine motif.
No one has ever created fictional biography quite like this. (less)

flag 104 likes · Like · 37 comments · see review

Nov 22, 2015 Paul rated it it was amazing

Shelves: historical-fiction

This ought not to work on a number of levels and ought not to be as good as it is. A historical novel about the Romans (there is so much temptation to go into Life of Brian mode at this point), indeed about one of their emperors. Hadrian dominated Marguerite Yourcenar’s life for many years with rewrites, abandonments, acres of notes and thoughts, and an immense amount of research (including travel to places Hadrian had been). The novel is in the form of a letter from Hadrian to his adopted grandson Marcus Aurelius. It is in the first person. Hadrian is in his final illness and is looking back over his life. If you are looking for snappy dialogue then this is not the book for you, nor is there any “action”. It is a series of musings, reflections, philosophizing and making comment as Hadrian works through his life.
The novel is essentially interior and Yourcenar does say why she selected this particular interior to focus on. It stems from a quote she found by Flaubert;
“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”
This seems to have been the attraction of Hadrian. The novel was published in 1951 and there may also be some connection between the post Second World War situation and Hadrian’s time.
Hadrian’s musings are wide ranging and cover love (especially Antinous his teenage lover), administration (managing and empire), war, religion, philosophy (especially Greek), food, marriage, pastimes (hunting et al), politics, friends and enemies, travel and much more. Hadrian is a great liker of things and generally quite positive, not afraid to compromise to get things done.
Yourcenar puts into Hadrian’s mouth all sorts of aphorisms and wise words. For example;
"Men adore and venerate me far too much to love me,"
"Meditation upon death does not teach one how to die."
“Our great mistake is to try to exact from each person virtues which he does not possess, and to neglect the cultivation of those which he has.”
“I am not sure that the discovery of love is necessarily more exquisite than the discovery of poetry.”
“The technique of a great seducer requires a facility and an indifference in passing from one object of affection to another which I could never have; however that may be, my loves have left me more often than I have left them, for I have never been able to understand how one could have enough of any beloved. The desire to count up exactly the riches which each new love brings us, and to see it change, and perhaps watch it grow old, accords ill with multiplicity of conquests.”

There are dozens more like that, usually making the book a joy to read, occasionally irritating or provoking. You can tell this novel has really been polished and honed, worked on over and over again.
This is so good a novel that it is easy to forget this isn’t real history. Mary Beard’s Guardian article explodes some of those myths;
http://www.theguardian.com/books/2008...
This is fiction, but its great stuff and a great novel. I am also interested in reading more by Yourcenar, her life was also very interesting. (less)

flag 87 likes · Like · 11 comments · see review

Nov 15, 2014 Dolors rated it it was amazing

Recommends it for: Lovers of art and history

Shelves: read-in-2014, best-ever

Margerite Yourcenar’s Hadrian is not only the Roman Emperor, citizen of the world and deified ruler, whose heart throbbed at the cadence of Greek poetry, whose resilient physique conquered the barbarian borders of northern Britannia, whose strategic mind enforced groundbreaking laws to regulate the use of slaves and to promote culture in the Pantheon, whose modesty silenced insurgent voices and whose excesses intimidated allied ones.

“I have come to think that great men are characterized by the extreme position which they take, and that heir heroism consists in holding to that extremity throughout their lives. They are our poles, or our antipodes.”

Underneath the imposing greatness of the historical figure that Yourcenar pens with unfaltering dexterity, a moribund man exhales his last breath prostrated on his deathbed and confronts his contradictory selves. Drowned in erotic ambiguity, haunted by idyllic remembrances of platonic love and superfluous infatuation, Hadrian drops the mask of formidable Emperor and shows himself as a vulnerable man plagued by his remorse, aggressive pride and reckless ambition who can’t impede the upcoming dissolution of the world he has so meticulously constructed with obsessive discipline and bloodstained sacrifice.

Combining prodigious refinement with erudite depth, Yourcenar masters the first person narrative and becomes a multifaceted ventriloquist that deconstructs the layers of Hadrian’s overpowering personality while unfolding his intimate ponderings about ageing and death, friendship and true love, art and philosophy, justice and social order with academic rigorousness and aesthetic excellence, creating a dramatic tension that reaches its peak through self-absorbed observation rather than galloping action.

And when the last line is avidly consumed and the confessor meets its nemesis, no historical grandeur or remarkable feat will be imprinted on the reader's ephemeral memory. The intoxicating scent of literary perfection is what will linger in anonymous nostrils, the texture of velvety words is what will invade mental taste buds, and a wave of disarming tenderness and stunned regret will choke the humbled witness of the remnants of two thousand years of magnificence, folly and debatable progress that meander the moors of remote lands that once yielded to one of the greatest men of ancient history.

Hadrian's Wall, November 2014(less)

flag 82 likes · Like · 98 comments · see review

Sep 15, 2013 mark monday rated it it was amazing

Shelves: into-the-past, alpha-team, mind-the-gap, these-fragile-lives

"But books lie, even those that are most sincere. The less adroit, for lack of words and phrases wherein they can enclose life, retain of it but a flat and feeble likeness. Some, like Lucan, make it heavy, and encumber it with a solemnity which it does not possess; others, on the contrary, like Petronius, make life lighter than it is, like a hollow, bouncing ball, easy to toss to and fro in a universe without weight. The poets transport us into a world which is vaster and more beautiful than our own, with more ardor and sweetness, different therefore, and in practice almost uninhabitable. The philosophers, in order to study reality pure, subject it to about the same transformations as fire or pestle make substance undergo: nothing that we have known of a person or of a fact seems to subsist in those ashes or those crystals to which they are reduced. Historians propose to us systems too perfect for explaining the past, with sequence of cause and effect much too exact and clear to have been ever entirely true; they rearrange what is dead, unresisting material, and I know that even Plutarch will never recapture Alexander. The story-tellers and spinners of erotic tales are hardly more than butchers who hang up for sale morsels of meat attractive to flies. I should take little comfort in a world without books, but reality is not to be found in them because it is not there whole."

Reality may not be found in books, but truth can exist there, in some books.

Marguerite Yourcenar imagines the life and perspective of the roman emperor Hadrian, utilizing literally a lifetime of research on her topic. Insofar as the specific activities and people in Hadrian's life are recounted, when the evidence is not there to back up her narrative, she wings it - but in such an elegant way that her own suppositions blend seamlessly with that research (and, happily, she notes each of her additions in her afterward). "Seamless" is a pretty good word to use when describing the entire enterprise. Nothing jars. It is all of a piece. A brilliant book and a thing of beauty.

The seamlessness of its story is also rather besides the point. The author is doing so much more than reimagining certain incidents; she is imagining a whole person. Memoirs of Hadrian is a reconstruction and an ode, a love poem to a man long dead and the means to understanding that man. Hadrian is not the main character in the book, he is the book itself.

And so it reads like an actual memoir - and I'm not sure that that is what I expected. The narrative is one man's life; although there is plenty of excitement and even some suspense, it is a life recounted by a person who knows himself, who wants to explain his life and the things he's learned, but who is not really interested in the kind of storytelling that provides escapist fantasia or thrilling adventure. Although the book is full of enchanting prose that richly illustrates the details of a past world through imagery that is palpable, sublime... I did not find myself really living in ancient Rome, not in the way that I've lived there in more traditional novels or in various television series like Rome or Spartacus or the stagey but ingeniously realized I, Claudius. Rather, I found myself living inside of Hadrian: he is this novel's world. It is an excellent head to live in. His musings and recollections made me muse and recollect; reading Hadrian challenge his own perspective made me challenge my own point of view, my own way of living my life. One would think that contemplating politics and battle, love and beauty, life and death and sickness and fate, on such a potently intellectual level... that this would make for a dry and heavy book. Quite the opposite: I found the effect to be calming, it inspired meditation. Memoirs of Hadrian soothed me.

Not including two afterwords, it is divided into six parts.

ANIMULA VAGULA BLANDULA

The beginning starts at the end. Hadrian takes his own measure and finds himself at times wanting but often satisfied as well.

Meanwhile, I took measure of the novel. I did not know what to make of it. Was this all some sort of idiosyncratic introduction? When would the proper story start, when would the familiar pleasures begin to happen? While I waited, certain things struck me. The joy of moderation. Love-making as a true path to understanding a person. Sleep, precious sleep.

VARIUS MULTIPLEX MULTIFORMIS

Hadrian recounts his early life and the stops & starts on his way to becoming emperor. His relationships with his predecessor, emperor Trajan, and with Trajan's highly impressive wife Plotina. And many other people - personages both major and minor are all rendered equal in Hadrian's musings. The beginning of his lifelong love affair with Greece; a similarly long-lived fascination with cults and the occult, with the world beyond, with signs and wonders. Hadrian the diffidently ambitious young man, the nature-loving warrior, the clear-eyed mystic.

This is where I became enchanted. I realized that this was not truly a novel; Memoirs of Hadrian is a conversation. Despite being the listener, I was an equal part of the conversation. Memoirs of Hadrian told me fascinating stories and I was duly fascinated - but even more, I came to understand a way of looking at the world, at life, at all of its mysteries. The conversation was not a debate and so it did not matter if I agreed or disagreed. Nor was the conversation one between friends around a campfire or lifelong partners retelling tales to each other, comfortably. It was the sort of conversation you have in the beginning of a relationship: you are hearing stories but mainly you are learning about a person; you are learning how to understand them, and so you are learning about yourself as well. How you feel about what they feel. How they think and see and act and move about in the world - and so how you think, and see, and act, and move about in the world. The similarities and the differences and the gaps and bridges in between. I became enchanted, but not just with Hadrian. I became enchanted with the process, with the way I was learning and evaluating and reacting and, above all, how I was moved to constant contemplation. I was enchanted - by Marguerite Yourcenar. By her ability to become Hadrian and to speak to me in his voice.

TELLUS STABILITA

In this lengthy section, Hadrian recounts his goals and challenges and accomplishments as emperor.

This is painful to admit, but I will be frank: I was often bored by this section. Hadrian was a superb emperor, a liberal of the old school, admirable in nearly every way. And so it all became a bit much, this meticulous listing of admirable actions. Just as I am bored when listing my own accomplishments - or, unfortunately, when hearing others list their accomplishments. It doesn't matter that they are excellent achievements and that they say important things about a person and that person's perspective. I will applaud that person. But reading a lengthy resume is rather a chore.

The saving grace for me occurred at the ending of this section: Hadrian and the night, the stars, the mystery and strangeness of the world above and beyond us. Here was the Hadrian I wanted to know.

SAECULUM AUREUM

The beloved youth Antinous: his introduction to Hadrian, their life together, his death, Hadrian's sorrow.

Oh that voluptuous grief! It spawned coinage and cults, temples and cities. I'm familiar with that excessive sadness, that paroxysm, I've seen it and I've felt it. Hadrian became his most real yet when he was at his lowest point. That intensity, that rage, the grief at a life over too soon, that burning need to show the world who that person was, to make the world grieve with you. That inability to express yourself clearly, the feeling that no one can understand your sorrow, not really, not the way you are actually experiencing it. All of this described with passion and delicacy, in language that shimmers, but with the same distance as all else is described. The remove of a memoir written by a thoughtful man. Hadrian describes his excess of emotion meditatively - without excess. That stripping away of drama provided yet another opportunity to step back, to calmly contemplate such terrible things, to better understand others who have experienced the same. Oh Hadrian! Oh, life.

DISCIPLINA AUGUSTA

Hadrian's recounts the autumn of his reign. A bitter uprising in Judea and various thoughts on the nature of religion. Fanaticism is punished and it is given approbation; as always - on matters not relating to Antinous - Hadrian is the most even-handed of men. And at last he introduces the emperors who will follow him - the gentle, decent Antoninus and the s(S)toic, modest Marcus Aurelius.

By this point I knew Hadrian as I know my own hand. I was in a relationship with him, a positive and supportive relationship that had moved beyond and outside of romance into a sort of loving warmth, a complete ease with his viewpoint, a genuine empathy. It was not so much that he could do no wrong - I saw him as I see a true friend. He was a man to me and not a character in a book. I looked up to him but he was no god; he remained mortal through-and-through. At different times in the book Hadrian describes a particularly faithful ally or servant or lieutenant - not in terms of servility but as someone who actually sees him, who sympathizes with him out of understanding and respect, not by command and not with open-mouthed awe. I could be such a person to the Hadrian of this book. Yourcenar somehow, somewhere along the way, made her love for this good emperor a love that I experienced as well.

PATIENTIA

Hadrian wrestles with his sickness, his longing for death. He contemplates the end of things and those things that will continue beyond him. He muses on death itself.

I read much of this book while my friend was dying. I read it in his living room while he slept, bed-bound for weeks at a time, yet not really believing his death was approaching despite all signs to the contrary. I read it at home and at work. I took a long break from the book as well, and then returned to its pages as if meeting up with a sorely-needed friend. I read it in the hospice where I had taken my friend to spend his last days - a beautiful place, a place of contemplation. I read it as he slept there, moaning, hands clenching, legs kicking fitfully. Hadrian and my friend were entirely different but their similarities were deep ones. A fascination with mysticism. An awful loneliness after the loss of their love. And a need to do the right thing - to do right by the world, for the world. They shared those things and they also shared terrible pain at the end, messy and humiliating, an inability to go gently into that good night. I read this last section after my friend had passed on. It was a hard and beautiful thing to read. All men live and love and suffer and all men will die. Some die with eyes closed but others die with eyes open, weary but still curious, still a part of this world, to their very end, and beyond.

Tomorrow I pick up his ashes, his death certificate. They seem like such small things.

His last coherent words to me: "Mark, remember... one book does not make a library!"

Such an odd and funny thing to say. I wonder what he meant. I will probably always wonder.

I miss you already, my friend. Rest a while. I will see you again. (less)

flag 81 likes · Like · 30 comments · see review

Dec 27, 2013 Garima rated it it was amazing

Recommends it for: Everyone

Shelves: favorites, to-re-read, my-2-cents, remember-me-with-words, sing-a-song

I stepped on deck; the sky, still wholly dark, was truly the iron sky of Homer's poems, indifferent to man's woes and joys alike.

But the man looking at the limitless space above him was not indifferent. He knew the woes of his people and joys of his imperium sine fine. He knew he was both human and supremely divine. Hadrian the Good. Hadrian the ‘Almost Wise’.

I didn’t know much about Hadrian. Only his name along with some cursory details occupied a negligible space of my knowledge bank. I didn’t know Marguerite Yourcenar or Grace Frick either. So to read about a Roman Emperor by way of fictional memoirs was an unlikely venture for me. I was curious rather than interested as to what exactly this book has achieved which made several of my friends here to write some really exceptional paean in its honor. And now, here I am adding another voice in telling others that no matter how big or small your library is; it is essentially incomplete without Memoirs of Hadrian.

The traces of a golden era which existed centuries ago can be found among the walls of royal palaces, the colors of timeless paintings and the magnificence of stationary sculptures. They not only tell about the artist’s muse but the artist themselves. But every so often a thick curtain of those very centuries comes in between the creator and the creation. It is then that a need arises of transcending the margins of history books, of crossing the vanished borders, of being a different person altogether. The insight required in depicting a time period other than one is born into and the love required in capturing the beauty of an important individual one has never met becomes the steadfast foundation of an unparalleled wonder. Marguerite Yourcenar has given us one such wonder which would stay by your side both in this lifetime and beyond.

When useless servitude has been alleviated as far as possible, and unnecessary misfortune avoided, there will still remain as a test of man's fortitude that long series of veritable ills, death, old age and incurable sickness, love unrequited and friendship rejected or betrayed, the mediocrity of a life less vast than our projects and duller than our dreams; in short, all the woes caused by the divine nature of things.

Being a dying person and still feeling a sense of tremendous responsibility towards the mankind is a mark of a true leader. Hadrian while on his death bed bequeathed a small package of valuable reflections in the form of a lovely letter to young Marcus Aurelius but behind the salutation of ‘Dear Mark’ one can imagine their own name being addressed. These are the most beautiful and honest thoughts I have ever laid my eyes on. This is how Yourcenar has given us a memorable trip to a glorious world which was and where Hadrian still is. She hasn’t presented her hero in the shining bright light of perfection and righteousness. Hadrian was fallible but he knew how to strike that difficult balance between the different philosophies of life. If his conquests had humility, his losses contained prudent lessons. If he had immense love for his empire, he had deep respect for other cultures. If he cultivated virtues of his men, he mitigated his own vices too. He was not God, but he was Godlike.

With mesmerizing writing, exquisite translation and the portrait of a majestic ruler, everything here is much more than what their title suggest- Hadrian was more than an Emperor, Marguerite was more than a writer, Grace was more than a translator and this book, it is much more than a book.

Hospes Comesque.(less)

flag 79 likes · Like · 63 comments · see review

Sep 02, 2016 Michael Finocchiaro rated it it was amazing

Shelves: historical-fiction, goncourt, fiction, french-20th-c, favorites, read-in-french, novels

This is a gorgeous book by Marguerite Yourcenar with the emperor writing to future emperor-philosopher Marcus Aurelius about his life and the burdens of leadership. Its tone is a perfect balance of nostalgia, regret and pride all mixed together. A true masterpiece that took her ten years to write, it is also very short and a magnificent read. I found that it was very inspirational and was amazed in how this period of Roman history comes alive under Yourcenar's able pen. An incredible read!
It is rather unfortunate that few current political leaders give off such a breath of humanity and maturity. (less)

flag 76 likes · Like · comment · see review

Jul 20, 2012 Sarah (Presto agitato) rated it it was amazing

Shelves: roma-spqr, historical-fiction, favorite-books

This is a book that I don’t think I would have read if it weren’t for Goodreads. I probably would never have even heard of it. Technically, I suppose this obscure novel would be considered “historical fiction,” but that’s misleading. It is that, but it is also biography, philosophy, meditation, poetry.

Hadrian was Emperor of Rome from AD 117 to 138. Marguerite Yourcenar wrote this novel in the form of a memoir, written by Hadrian near the end of his life and addressed to then 17-year old future emperor Marcus Aurelius. Hadrian discusses his public role and his attempts to use diplomacy more than bloodshed. By the standards of the Roman Empire, his reign was considered peaceful (this in spite of a war with the Jews resulting in hundreds of thousands of deaths and the banishment of the Jewish people from Jerusalem).

Most of the emperor’s recollections, however, focus on the personal, even the trivial. He reflects on moderation in diet, his love of hunting, and his admiration for Greek culture. With a reserved tone that belies his depth of feeling, he relates his love for the young Bithynian, Antinous, and his sorrow at Antinous’ death. Hadrian deals with his grief by deifying the youth and creating a cult which long outlasts them both. There must be hundreds of statues of Antinous in the world’s museums today, a testament to an emperor’s attempt to cope with a very personal sorrow.

Antinous

Yourcenar seems to channel this character of antiquity, speaking with an authentic dignity and distance that is not modern in feel. Hadrian speaks to us, but not in a tell-all confessional. In her notes on the writing of the novel, Yourcenar quotes from Flaubert about the period when Hadrian 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.” Her Hadrian is a man of that age, not ours.

The mood of this book is quiet, thoughtful, and peaceful. It evokes the feeling of walking among ancient ruins, with the eerie sensation that comes when other tourists are out of view, as the warm Italian sun gleams off fragments of stone, and for a moment there is a strange perception that the ruins are whole again, with time somehow distorted.

Hadrian's Villa, Tivoli (less)

flag 76 likes · Like · 25 comments · see review

Sep 27, 2007 Paul Bryant rated it it was amazing

Shelves: novels

This is one of those books you don't so much read as worship at the shrine of.

flag 69 likes · Like · 12 comments · see review

Feb 12, 2008 Matt rated it it was amazing

Shelves: historical-fiction, fictions-of-the-big-it, worldly-lit, underrated-lost-classics, femmes, ancients, top-shelf

Gorgeously written, wise and stately. Meditative, deep in a philosophical probing sort of way, moves smoothly and contains a sort of magnificence...the prose is given room to breathe. I have pretty much every reason to believe it's not taking too many liberties with historical accuracy. Yourcenar spent years researching it and getting the details right and it shows.

Her notes on the research and composition at the end are illuminating and tersely eloquent...worth the price of admission in their own respect.

It's virtually unknown...a diamond in the rough. I would quote it at length but I just don't have the copy handy. Highly, insistently, awestruck recommendation for this one....

this is the kind of book which one wants to speak about at great length but I sense that its power is also the type which absorbs perhaps too deeply for simple summary....

Read it and continue to recommend it to your friends. There is much wisdom here, philosophical speculation, psychological insight, historical grandeur and subtle, eloquent, illuminating prose.

Plus, there's some etchings of various Roman sites of antiquity thrown in which are rather breathtaking even when viewed in black and white on the page.

Seriously, if you're reading this....READ THIS GODDAMN BOOK!

***

I thought it would be worth mentioning that I recently picked this book up again by chance (it was given back to me from a friend who'd read it and put it on his bookshelf for maybe 6 months...isn't it funny how sometimes books you borrow end up sort of absorbing into your own collection, adopted unconsciously into the family of your library and vice versa? Do books have a gravitational pull for their rightful owners?) and read it for solace in the evening after the bottom dropped out in a rather important part of my life. It soothed me, it moved me, the stoic (lower case s) wisdom of the man was calming and enlightening. Cleared the mind while enchanting the imagination, like a subtle wine on a summer afternoon.(less)

flag 56 likes · Like · 6 comments · see review

Apr 02, 2015 Sidharth Vardhan rated it it was amazing

Shelves: europe, woman-authors, list-1001, list-501, historical, bio-memoir, bestest, list-world-library, sad-lonely-thinking-of-suicide

“But books lie, even those that are most sincere.”

It is supposed to be historically most accurate novel - I can’t judge about that but I’m willing to take the word of knowledgeable people on that. What is so far more incredible is the way the author managed to make herself invisible in her work – you know how novels have their authors’ personality in them. You can’t normally come out of a novel without having some idea of author’s personality. Narrators of Proust and Celine look like so much like their mirror images; in other cases it is true to a lesser extent – but not in this case. The only thing you will have guessed about Yourcenar by reading MoH, is that she is genius.

If I believed in spirits, I could have asserted that Hadrian’s had possessed Yourcenear. An innocent reader can easily led to believe that is written by someone who if not a king, is a really old man living in ancient Rome.

The narrative is first person – so we enter with a bit of suspicion about the reliability but soon that suspicion is removed. Hadrian is old and looking forward to his inevitable death. I guess different people react differently at that stage – Hadrian has grown a bit distant from his own self – distant enough to look at his own self objectively:

“I have come to speak of myself, at times, in the past tense.”
Another thing which shadow of death does is that it makes king of one of most powerful empires look so much like an ordinary, powerless man.

Not that Hadrian is your regular arrogant kings. Besides the hard qualities of builders, soldiers and generals that you would expect from a Roman king; he has the soft qualities of being knowledgeable, philosophical, lover of arts, at times poetical and perhaps wise; which we associate with people of ancient Greece – and Goodreads. His philosophical reflections and lyrical prose is almost seductive.

Rowling once said, "To a well organised mind, death is but the next best adventure." That is Yourcenar 's Hadrian for you. The narrator impresses on reader’s mind an image of wise old man accepting his inevitable death with a confidence of conviction (rather than arrogance of ignorance as is normally the case) and giving his last lesson (in most lyrical language) to his disciple; perhaps with one hand raised to heavens like in ‘Death of Socrates’.

(view spoiler)

I’ve whole pages of quotes from the book. The following are only a small sample:

“Morals are matter of private agreement; decency is of public concern.”

“We talk much of the dreams of youth. Too often we forget its scheming.”

“To me, who had not yet given first place to anything except to ideas or projects, or at the most to a future image of myself, this simple devotion of man to man seemed prodigious and unfathomable. No one is worthy of it, and I am still unable to account for it.”

“I knew that good like bad becomes a routine, that the temporary tends to endure, that what is external permeates to the inside, and that the mask, given time, comes to be the face itself.”

“I am not sure that the discovery of love is necessarily more exquisite than the discovery of poetry.” (less)

flag 52 likes · Like · 6 comments · see review

May 02, 2017 Margitte rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: 2017-read, biographical-fiction, biography-and-memoir, historical-fiction, reviewed

The statue of Hadrian, the 14th Emperor of the Roman Empire, was brought alive by the French author Marguerite Yourcenar in this novel. She climbed into his thoughts, philosophies and personality and wrote his memoir for him. Hadrian was never a conqueror, but rather a strong leader who brought controversial changes to the Roman laws which made life more bearable and humane for the vast empire.

By allowing Hadrian to be the protagonist of his own letter to Marcus Aurelius, the long forgotten man was recalled from the dead, his life and history revived. Like an archaeologist, the author uncovered the relics from the past that was buried deep in the mind of an emperor who thought differently about humanity, leadership and statesmanship.

Although this novel was published in 1951, it was already finished in the 1940s and became an instant success. Her hope was that Churchill could become the same kind of leader as the humane Hadrian was and bring peace to the world.

Hadrian was Spanish by birth, Roman by descend, Greek by culture, and a peacemaker by principle.

The epistolary-style novel deserves the accolades it received. It is a piece of linguistic art. Philosophical and introspective in style. The translation was brilliant.

An interesting article on Hadrian the emperor can be viewed here: https://www.theguardian.com/books/200... (less)

flag 53 likes · Like · 10 comments · see review

Anne Mills
5.0 out of 5 stars A Jewel of a Book, With Many FacetsReviewed in the United States on March 16, 2017
Format: PaperbackVerified Purchase

This brilliant historical novel tells a fascinating story, in beautiful language, with much wisdom. The novel is formed as an autobiography of the Emperor Hadrian, who ruled Rome from 117CE to 138; he was one of the "Five Good Emperors" who helped bring Roman civilization to its highest point. Hadrian was complicated. Politically, he was a good emperor from a Roman point of view, but other nations (like the Jews) saw him very differently. Personally, he was disciplined and intelligent, but fell passionately in love with a young boy, and could be cruel. The book, framed as a letter to Marcus Aurelius, who succeeded him twenty years after his death, takes Hadrian from his boyhood in Spain to his deathbed in Italy at 62.

The novel is beautifully written, in prose that captures the cadences of classical Roman writing. It is studded with perceptions and insights, as such a memoir would have been; I found myself underlining points as if it were an original text. The story is compelling -- how does it feel to be ruler of the world, and then to lose that which you hold most dear -- and the characters are fully developed. The novel took many years to write, and was based on exhaustive research -- Ms. Yourcenar, in an afterward, discusses what was known and what she made up, but it hangs together as a work of art. A great book, and a great pleasure to read.

41 people found this helpful
Helpful Comment Report abuse

NV
5.0 out of 5 stars Staggeringly goodReviewed in the United States on July 14, 2019
Format: PaperbackVerified Purchase

I'm sure you know to take all aesthetic recommendations with a grain of salt, but I am a fiction writer and a voracious reader and this is hands-down my favorite novel. I love philosophy, history, and fiction, and this book offers a brilliant combination of all three, without reading like typical "historical fiction," which I tend to dislike.

This book is for you if you enjoy:
- the world of Antiquity
- philosophy / philosophical stories
- long, immersive bouts of reading which elicit a fugue-like suspension of disbelief

On the other hand, this book might not be for you if:
- you like fast-paced reads (this isn't a thriller in the vein of Tom Clancy)
- you have a short attention span / prefer to read things a page or two at a time

If you fall into the former category, I suspect you will be blown away by this novel. You will buy several copies, so that you always have a spare on your bookshelf to give to a kindred spirit.

10 people found this helpful
Helpful Comment Report abuse

Milton G.
2.0 out of 5 stars you have to be dedicatedReviewed in the United States on February 2, 2019
Format: PaperbackVerified Purchase

Very interesting insights to Hadrian, but...boy, do you have to be dedicated to wade through this thing. I've been working on it a year and just barely got started. It is very easy to put down, even though I always enjoy the time spent reading it.

9 people found this helpful
Helpful Comment Report abuse

Sean V. Werner
5.0 out of 5 stars If you enjoy classical historyReviewed in the United States on July 17, 2016
Format: PaperbackVerified Purchase

I don't even know where to begin when describing this book. If you enjoy classical history, and you are curious about Hadrian, it is unmatched. The book is written in a style that is analogous to those used by Roman philosophers and historians of the period. It, therefore, seems like you are reading a real first person account of Hadrian's life. It is also an extremely interesting meditation on what it means to be human. I terrific book; one that I will read again.

14 people found this helpful
Helpful Comment Report abuse

Annie Maus
5.0 out of 5 stars Rich in language, rich in contentReviewed in the United States on March 25, 2014
Format: PaperbackVerified Purchase

A jewel of a book, bringing together philosophy, and history as seen through the eyes of an emperor. While not an easy read, it is one of the most satisfying books I've read in a long time. Yourcenar is simply brilliant: the combination of her deep research into the life of Hadrian, with her credible (and very human) interpretation of his thoughts and ideas on statesmanship, art, justice, and philosophy, based on that research, is stunning. It's been a long time since I sat with pen in hand, underlining passages that I found to be beautifully written and worthy of further thought.

14 people found this helpful
Helpful Comment Report abuse

T Stojanovic
5.0 out of 5 stars very goodReviewed in the United States on December 8, 2017
Format: PaperbackVerified Purchase

I've read it a few times because anyone I know who has read it told me it's probably the best book they have ever read. Very interesting, revealing and beautiful.

4 people found this helpful
Helpful Comment Report abuse

Geoff Puterbaugh
5.0 out of 5 stars One of the great books...Reviewed in the United States on November 24, 2008
Format: PaperbackVerified Purchase

This is a great novel, and I might add, a great novel about two men in love with one another....written by a woman.

The love story of Hadrian and Antinous will never die out of human memory, and Marguerite Yourcenar is testimony to that fact.

Other reviewers have already pointed out the superb scholarship that went into the making of this book, the excellent writing, and all the rest.

I only have one question: why are the best tales of male love written by women? It seems to be a very odd situation: in general, men are the most famous writers, but in the niche of male love, we find such writers as Anne Rice, Mary Renault, Marguerite, and now the "gay manga" from Japan -- stories of male love written for girls! By women!

Well, I am puzzled, but I am not about to look a gift-horse in the mouth. This book, along with "The Last of the Wine" and "The Persian Boy," are among the most moving and excellent novels ever written.

Unless, of course, you find history to be a bore.
Read less

12 people found this helpful
Helpful Comment Report abuse

Ron L. Caldwell
5.0 out of 5 stars MasterfulReviewed in the United States on February 13, 2018
Format: PaperbackVerified Purchase

Memoirs of Hadrian is a classic that should be more well-known. Yourcenar really inhabits the mind of the emperor as he passes on his story to his chosen successor. It is a beautiful, poignant work that is meticulously researched. You'll be amazed and mystified by the beauty of the writing.

One person found this helpful
Helpful Comment Report abuse

See all reviews from the United States

Top international reviews

EMR
5.0 out of 5 stars Highly recommended.Reviewed in the United Kingdom on June 11, 2018
Verified Purchase

Oh what a superb book! I can't believe it took me so long to discover it. I was actually in tears at the end. Incidentally this isn't a book for people who want adventure & excitement. It's totally introspective and really gets the reader into Hadrian's thoughts & emotions. Highly recommended.

7 people found this helpful

HelpfulReport abuse

Kindle Customer
5.0 out of 5 stars A memorable read.Reviewed in the United Kingdom on April 15, 2015
Verified Purchase

This book is justifiably renowned. It tells in the first person the life of Emperor Hadrian, the one who organised the building of the famous wall between England and Scotland, among other things. Miss Yourcenar's historical knowledge illuminates the story but not in a dry way. We are privy to Hadrian's thoughts and opinions and he comes over as very much a man of his times but also as a sympathetic charismatic man. One of the other things he was famous for is his great gay love affair with the beautiful young man, Antinous. Hadrian made him immortal by commissioning a multitude of busts and statues of this youth so that hundreds of years later his face is more familiar than that of more famous people of his time. It is made clear that Antinous was not the only gay relationship Hadrian enjoyed but it was the one which made the most impact. In dying young Antinous became immortal as an example of beauty and gay love. This love is described delicately and poignantly. The reader feels as bereft as Hadrian. In the book Hadrian acknowledges that if Antinous had not died when and as he did time might have allowed their love to subside into affectionate friendship...or it might not. The power of the narrative is in this honesty of thought. Lost love cannot be tarnished or grow less...it remains at full power. Hadrian goes on with his life but Antinous never truly leaves him for he can see him in memory and dreams, perfect as he was in life. This is a book you can read again and again. The insight into the Roman world of that time is endlessly fascinating. I recommend this book unreservedly.

8 people found this helpful

HelpfulReport abuse

marinetti
5.0 out of 5 stars Clear & sublimeReviewed in the United Kingdom on January 30, 2019
Verified Purchase

When suddenly, at midnight, you hear
an invisible procession going by
with exquisite music, voices,
don’t mourn your luck that’s failing now,
work gone wrong, your plans
all proving deceptive—don’t mourn them uselessly.
As one long prepared, and graced with courage,
say goodbye to her, the Alexandria that is leaving.
Above all, don’t fool yourself, don’t say
it was a dream, your ears deceived you:
don’t degrade yourself with empty hopes like these.
As one long prepared, and graced with courage,
as is right for you who proved worthy of this kind of city,
go firmly to the window
and listen with deep emotion, but not
with the whining, the pleas of a coward;
listen—your final delectation—to the voices,
to the exquisite music of that strange procession,
and say goodbye to her, to the Alexandria you are losing.
Read less

2 people found this helpful
-----------

Memoirs of Hadrian

Memoirs of Hadrian
	; Cover of the English Language Edition (2005)
Author	Marguerite Yourcenar
Country	France
Language	French
Genre	Historical novel, Philosophical novel
Publisher	Librairie Plon, France
Publication date	1951
Media type	Print (hardback & paperback)
Pages	347 pp (2005 paperback)

Marguerite Yourcenar, Grace Frick

Written in the form of a testamentary letter from the Emperor Hadrian to his successor, the youthful Marcus Aurelius, this work is as extraordinary for its psychological depth as for its accurate reconstruction of the second century of our era. The author describes the book as a meditation upon history, but this meditation is built upon intensive study of the personal and political life of a great and complex character as seen by himself and his contemporaries, both friends and enemies. Marguerite Yourcenar reconstructs Hadrian's arduous early years, his triumphs and reversals, and his gradual reordering of a war-torn world.

$5.27 (USD)

Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Release date: 1963

Format: EPUB

Size: 0.28 MB

Language: English

Pages: 408

Add to Cart

other

[1] Yourcenar. Memoirs of Hadrian. English Edition. 2005. p. 319-320.

[2] Yourcenar. Reflections on the Composition of Memoirs of Hadrian in Memoirs of Hadrian. English Edition. 2005. p. 319-320.

[3] Yourcenar. Reflections on the Composition of Memoirs of Hadrian in Memoirs of Hadrian. English Edition. 2005. p. 326, 329.

[4] Yourcenar. Memoirs. 2005. p. 243.

[5] Yourcenar. Memoirs. 2005. p. 86.

[6] Yourcenar. Memoirs. 2005. p. 12-14.

[7] Yourcenar. Memoirs. 2005. p. 21.

[1]

[2]

[3]

[4]

[5]

[6]

[7]

동아시아의 평화와 화해의 정치학 Scrapbook

2020-04-05