Translated from the French by Grace Frick in collaboration with the author.
2000 (original English translation 1954), 288 p
As it happens, I have read two books in a row about a real-life historical figure presented as if the subject was writing his or her memoirs. The first was Isabelle Allende's Ines of My Soul about Ines Suarez, the conquistadora of Chile, and this second one is Marguerite Yourcenar's Memoirs of Hadrian. Having been left somewhat disappointed by the contrived and rather clunky nature of Allende's book (my review is here), within a few pages of the Yourcenar book I knew that I was in the hands of a master writer. Where with Suarez, I felt as if the events were shaping the narrative, with Yourcenar I felt as she was inhabiting the Emperor Hadrian from the inside out. Perhaps this was a result of the long gestation for this novel- she started writing the first (soon discarded) draft in 1924 when she was in her early twenties, and finished it in 1951 at the age of forty-eight after several false starts. The most striking thing about the book is Hadrian's voice, and as she said in the author's note at the back - cleverly depicted in a reflective chronology-:
Portrait of a voice. If I have chosen to write these Memoirs of Hadrian in the first person it is in order to dispense with any intermediary, in so far as possible, even were that intermediary myself. Surely Hadrian could speak more forcibly and more subtly of his life than could I.
p. 275
However, I must confess that perhaps my ease with Yourcenar's book was that I wasn't coming to it completely ignorant of its main character. I consciously chose not to Google Inez Suarez, but allowed the book to tell me all that I needed to know. Allende's book certainly did that, but that was almost its weakness: it became a rather didactic, fact-driven narrative that made you suspect that Allende still had her notes beside while she was writing. Yourcenar's project could not have been more different. Although I myself have come late to Roman History, many others have not, and most people would have heard of Hadrian's Wall, if nothing else. For myself, I have listened to the whole Mike Duncan History of Rome podcast, and I'm enjoying the LaTrobe University Emperors of Rome podcast series. I had just finished listening to the episodes on Hadrian (Episodes Episode LII - Hadrian the Little Greek to Episode LVII - Little Soul, Little Wanderer, Little Charmer cover Hadrian's life) before reading this book, so I was familiar with Hadrian's life. Hadrian did in fact write a memoir, but it has been lost. This book imagines this lost memoir in the form of a letter written by the elderly Hadrian to his adoptive grandson and eventual successor "Mark" (Marcus Aurelius).
And because Hadrian could assume that his adopted grandson already knew about him, Yourcenar pretty much assumes that you know about Hadrian too. The Hadrian she depicts in this putative 'memoir' is not a man of facts and events, but instead of feelings. She is not out to make an argument about events in Roman history (as Robert Graves did in his depiction of Livia in the I Claudius books- it's interesting that Graves also adopts this fake-memoir narrative frame) but instead to imbue emotions and judgements into the facts. As a result, you probably need to know the bare bones of Hadrian's life for it to make sense, because she's not going to tell you. For example, Hadrian neither confirms nor denies that Trajan's wife Plotina manipulated his nomination as Trajan's successor; we do not learn the events that led to the death of Antinous, his favourite; and the assassinations of enemies that marked the beginning and end of Hadrian's reign are referred to obliquely. Instead, what we have are his reactions to events. We see him as a soldier sickened by the bloodshed and violence of the Sarmatian Wars, leading to his abandonment of Trajan's policy of imperial expansion. We see a man who delights in the architecture and learning of Greece as a form of intellectual fulfilment. Unfamiliar as we are with the forms of love between men in Roman culture, we see a man who bathes the young Antinous in adoration and wonder, while remaining opaque about the sexual side of that relationship. We see a man shattered by grief, who loses all joy in the world around him after Antinous' death, which he comes to understand as a form of sacrifice to him. We see a man increasingly ground down by illness and depression, longing only for death.
Do you need to know about Hadrian before reading this book? I think that perhaps you do, but in some ways it's not about Emperor Hadrian at all; instead its about Hadrian the man (albeit, as an emperor, he's not Every Man). I think that it's a book that as a reader, you would grow into, and I think that an older reader would appreciate it more than a younger reader would. It's certainly a book that would bear re-reading again and again. The text is rather dense, and there are no reported conversations, so in less skilled hands, it could be rather dry. But it's not: it is beautifully written, and I think that it deserves the appellation of "masterpiece". I loved it.
My rating: 10 out of 10
Sourced from: purchased from Readings.
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