Memoirs of Hadrian

Memories of Hadrian, a long testamentary letter to the future emperor and philosopher Marcus Aurelius (120 - 180), seemed to me (both upon the first reading and now) a painful meditation on the encroachment of destruction and nothingness in people and things. But especially in people. Time is unforgiving. Everything degrades: the skin, the color of the eyes, the voice. On the walls of the temples, insignificant cracks appear at first, which gradually widen and reduce the edifices to dust. This acute perception of nothingness orders the lines of Emperor Hadrian (76 - 138).

Some have noted that Marguerite Yourcenar's novel has no action (Hadrian was not a great conqueror, a fearless warrior, he participated in few wars), that the plot is minimal (the accession to power, upon the suspicious death of Trajan, with the help of Empress Plotina, the intrigues, the love for Antinous, the unexpected death of Antinous), but there is an action of ideas and experiences and this maintains our interest. Hadrian defines himself as a "Ulysses without any other Ithaca but the one within him".

There is a scene that impressed me even now. In the Persian Gulf, on the edge of the sea, Emperor Trajan bursts into a long-lasting cry. He understands that he will not be able to conquer all of Asia. He understands that his empire is just a point in the universe. He understands that man's powers are limited. He understands that he is mortal. Hadrian will begin his reign precisely with this conclusion...

I have met readers and writers who did not like the novel. I will only name Gore Vidal (the author of Julian) and George Steiner. Both accused the author that Hadrian speaks in their language and not that of the emperor. That Hadrian is, in fact, Marguerite Yourcenar. We can understand Gore Vidal (he was marked by a very natural envy), George Steiner, less or not at all. After all, Steiner should have appreciated the sumptuous style of the prose writer, but also her erudition.

“Memoirs of Hadrian” is a truly remarkable work. Written as a deathbed letter to Marcus Aurelius, it offers a poetic and elegiac account of the life of one of Rome’s “Five Good Emperors”. Hadrian, more interested in the cultural flourishing of his Empire than in expansion, spent much of his life in travels and exploration. While armed conflict marked his reign, it is not what he is most remembered for. Instead, history knows him as a philosopher and a moderate ruler who strived to preserve peace and leave an ordered realm to his successor.

Yourcenar delves deep into Hadrian’s inner thoughts, but the book can be somewhat confusing without a solid background in the history of his reign. I, being more familiar with the Republic and early Empire, had to consult Wikipedia a few times. What stands out in her interpretation is Hadrian’s profound understanding of the transient nature of his Empire and the world. He knew Rome’s end was inevitable, yet chose to focus on making the most of his time as ruler.

Having recently read John Williams’ “Augustus”, I couldn't help but compare the two. While Yourcenar’s prose is beautiful and her story detailed, I was more captivated by Williams’ polyphonic novel. The period of Hadrian’s life is fascinating, as it is a time of transition. The Mystery cults are waning, and Christianity, though gaining momentum, is still a fringe religion. Yourcenar focuses on aspects like Hadrian’s relationship with Antinous, rather than famous historical events. This is an interesting speculation, but I craved more details about known events. However, I realize this was not her intention. I wanted more emotion, and aside from the passages about Antinous’ death, Hadrian seems almost always even-tempered.

That said, the writing is simply gorgeous. It is rich and delectable, like a delicious caramel. As Candi’s review aptly points out, it is a book to be savored slowly. Reading a man’s reflections on his life should be done without haste, noting the flaws but allowing them to be gently washed over by the flow of words. Bittersweet, philosophical, and lush, this is a book I will surely read again.

Pallidula, rigida, nudula,

Nec, ut soles, dabis iocos...

Colourless, unbending, and bare

Your usual distractions no more shall be there...

A professor once delivered a lecture on the second century CE of Rome. His argument was that the writers of that era were “filled” with melancholy. Huh? I thought. I truly didn't believe it.

In the previous century, writers such as Virgil, Catullus, and Horace wrote about the glorious deeds of the Augustan period. Those were exciting times. By the time of Emperor Trajan, Rome had conquered most of the “known” world. Beyond the borders, the barbarians were lurking, waiting.

In the second century, writers like Suetonius, Tacitus, and Juvenal were filled with melancolia. The great days were over. As Yourcenar states, the days of the ancient gods had passed, and before the Christian god would take over, there was a period when man was the center. This was the era of Hadrian (emperor 117-138 CE) and later, Marcus Aurelius (emperor 161-180 CE). The two of them would be part of what historians would call the five good emperors, and they would be the last.

“Memoirs of Hadrian” is a long, thoughtful letter to a younger Marcus Aurelius. In essence, it's a piece about dying, the meaning of life, and the joys and hardships of a man who ruled for 21 years. Most of his rule was peaceful. He had no desire to expand like his predecessors. However, near the end, when there was unrest in Palestine (it never changes, does it?), he saw those barbarians at the doorstep. All he hoped was that some of the books and art would survive. The people? That's debatable. His most famous structure was the wall in Britain to keep out the barbarians.

Hadrian was a hellenophile, a lover of the Greeks. Athens was his “home town.” He highly esteemed the Greek civilization but was always cautious not to make it too obvious. After all, he was a Roman emperor born in Italica, Spain. He married a Spanish woman but had no children. Rome was his lungs, Athens his heart.

Hadrian rejected most of the honors that previous emperors craved. He built the Pantheon in Rome, to honor all gods with man at its center. It was round. He also built a library to be filled with books, especially Greek ones. He felt there were few Romans alive worthy of the past. He had his prejudices.

Of course, these are Marguerite Yourcenar’s words. Hadrian left a few things, a poem, and a sort of biography by Diodorus. In Yourcenar’s detailed biography and reflections, we can see where these ideas originated. She began the book in her twenties, abandoning it until she was in her fifties. She needed time and experience.

Hadrian’s true love was Antinoos, a young Greek youth. Antinoos never wanted to grow old and thus killed himself at twenty. Hadrian built a city just in his memory. But now it is nothing but sand.

Sand, the measure of time. Of growing older and having so many die before you. An emperor. He should have it all. But like all of us, time waits for no one. Enjoy what you have before it's all gone.

If that isn't melancholy, what is? I stand corrected, my professor was right. Or maybe he read this book? It's a great read on being human.

Original read in 1986: An enjoyable and introspective look at an amazing person.

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I offer you here, in guise of corrective, a recital stripped of preconceived ideas and of mere abstract principles; it is drawn wholly from the experience of one man, who is myself.

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While perhaps not the best, Memoirs of Hadrian stands out as the most meticulously researched novel I have ever encountered. In fact, the amount of research invested in this work is so extensive that it seems almost insincere to label it simply as a novel. What makes it novelistic has little to do with fiction, as the narrative adheres tenaciously to the facts. Instead, it lies more in the book's aesthetic allure. Yourcenar's intention was to capture, through painstaking research and intense acts of the imagination, what it would have been like to be a Roman Emperor, and she achieved this with great success.
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This book also has the distinction of being one of those rare works that are both sophisticated and accessible. It is not a convoluted literary puzzle waiting to be solved, nor is it a tiresome chore for only the most dedicated aficionados. Instead, it is a straightforward work of art that can be enjoyed by both the avid reader and the newcomer alike.
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The main strengths of this book lie in the elegance of its prose and the weightiness of its tone. Yourcenar, whose French was translated into English by her lover, Grace Frisk, with some assistance from herself, writes in a stately Latinate style that often recalls Gibbon. The prose is uniformly excellent, and some passages can fairly be described as genius. However, the tone that Yourcenar creates is perhaps even more impressive. That a French woman living in the twentieth century could so fully and powerfully evoke the demeanor of a Roman Emperor, sick and weary, burdened by age, speaks to the power of the dramatic imagination. Actors need only represent the mannerisms and physical movements of their characters, but novelists must capture the very essence of their characters' personalities.
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Nevertheless, I do believe that this book has some flaws. The events of Hadrian's life are often recounted in a summary and general manner, with too few details for the reader's mind to latch onto. The tales of Hadrian's exploits, while beautifully told, seldom conjure up vivid mental images. Another minor complaint is the frequency with which Yourcenar has Hadrian 'prophesying' accurately about the future. It feels contrived and manages to shatter the illusion, as Hadrian's predictions are so precise that they make the reader aware that it is Yourcenar writing in the twentieth century, not Hadrian in the second.


I also think that, because this book is so accessible, it may not be as rewarding to reread. This may be an unpopular opinion, but I believe that I gleaned most of what there was to offer from this book on the first reading. Then again, perhaps the translation, however expertly done, is somewhat stiff and unyielding compared to the original French text. Ambiguities are often lost in translation. Nevertheless, I think that the spirit of the project - to create a novel that is scrupulously true to reality - is, by its very nature, opposed to ambiguities. If the book could be interpreted in more than one way, wouldn't Yourcenar have failed in her task?
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Yourcenar said that she was particularly interested in this time period because it was a brief interlude when the old Roman gods were no longer taken seriously, and Christianity had yet to be adopted. Humanity, so to speak, was alone. This may be true enough, but I cannot help but notice another motivation. Yourcenar was writing this book over several decades, conceiving the idea in the early 1920s and publishing it in 1951. She was, in short, a French woman living through the two world wars, a time of extraordinary destruction, when Europe was in a state of perpetual chaos and upheaval.
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This, I believe, is the key to the main theme of the book: permanence. The works of humanity are doomed to oblivion, and even the massive stone edifices erected in honor of emperors are fated to disappear one day. Hadrian is acutely aware of this and speaks of it repeatedly. His doomed affair with Antinous drives this point home most poignantly. Love is insatiable; it stops at nothing, not even time. But people are mortal, and love, whether due to a change of heart or death, will eventually pass away. This is, for Hadrian - and I think for Yourcenar - the ultimate tragedy of human life: that the passage of time will consume us all. Hadrian battles this tragedy by deifying his beloved, erecting statues in Antinous's likeness and incorporating him into religious rites, thereby immortalizing some aspect of the boy for millennia to come. And Yourcenar combats this tragedy by conducting meticulous research, imaginatively reconstructing the life of a great statesman, and producing this wonderful book. So, at its core, the Memoirs of Hadrian is very much like the cult of Antinous: a fight against the ravages of time, a desperate attempt at permanence.


Permance, Yourcenar, you may never achieve; but you will be remembered.

Through the mists of time, the clouds lift, but only partly. They always remain overcast, never giving up their deep secrets. And the myths will continue. Such is history, and such was the Roman Emperor Hadrian of the second century. He was no Julius Caesar, but then who was? Still, he was a very capable man. Born in Italica, which 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 adopted the young man. Sent to Rome for an education by his family at 12, with a trusted guardian as his father had just expired at 40. The future ruler showed promise, studied hard and did well. In the army, he was fearless against the enemy, maybe even reckless, and his men always cheered him. As a civilian too, he was a good magistrate in Rome. But like many men of his age, he spent his money foolishly, loving both men and women and going into debt, which annoyed Trajan greatly.

The tough old soldier Emperor was more comfortable leading his conquering army than playing the politician in the capital, and it would be the same for Hadrian. A crisis appeared when the dying, feeble ruler was in no hurry to officially name his successor. Maybe this would insure his demise. He was too busy planning and fighting a war in faraway Mesopotamia, dreaming of future conquests for his glory. It was a bloody conflict that could not be won. The Empress Pompeia Plotina, a close friend of Hadrian, helped him to be declared Emperor at the passing of his cousin. Hadrian was not a lover of women. He had a few who were instrumental in his rise to power, strangely including 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 wanted peace. His Empire needed it badly. An inveterate reader and lover of the Arts, he fixed the economy, reformed the law and the army, and brought back wealth to its ignored citizens. Yet he would lead the Romans in war as he did in Palestine, suffering countless thousands of casualties against the Jewish uprising. In Asia Minor, what is now Turkey, he met a Greek boy Antinous in Claudiopolis, in the Roman province of Bithynia. Sent to Rome to receive schooling, this attractive child grew up and became the love of Hadrian's life. Years later, the returning handsome teenager traveled with the Emperor, and they became constant companions. But in Egypt on the Nile River, a mystery happened. The lifeless body of Antinous, 19, was found, an apparent drowning, or was it murder, suicide, or an accident? We will never learn the truth. For the rest of his days, the melancholic Emperor mourned. Numerous statues were made, a magnificent new city, Antinoopolis, was built by the river near where the boy died. An ardent cult began to worship him, games were played for his memory, and he was deified also by Hadrian. But he, Antinous, would still be gone forever. An ailing Hadrian, in his last few months, saw that everything he had done would vanish as the desert sands shift, so too does the hearts of men. All is vanity. This is a terrific historical novel, one of the best if not the greatest ever written. It gives you an idea of what the Roman Empire was like at its summit. Well worth reading for those interested.

Le Memorie is a wonderful palimpsest where the tone, color, and nuance of the narration change time and again.

The first chapter seems so authentically "Adrianic" that I constantly have to remind myself that we are reading it with a sensibility much closer to that of Y than to that of Adriano. When Adriano speaks of the barbarians, he has truly known and fought them, while we have only read about them.

But this is where the charm of the book lies. The author's skill in making all these threads (memories, modern sensibility, historical experience, classical atmosphere, etc.) coexist without being noticed in the background. At the same time, it produces a wonderful biographical novel that can be read regardless of historical knowledge. Just as one can look at the Sistine Chapel without having studied art history or listen to Don Giovanni without knowing anything about Mozart.

Adriano/Yourcenar (I can't tell if it's a two-handed autobiography) is weaving a plot in which fine and almost imperceptible threads are his thoughts and sensations, intertwined with others that are more substantial and material, which are his actions. A plot that engages me and is a continuous reference to the different registers of the book.

(The memories of Adriano were the subject of a memorable reading group on Acoso, about ten years ago. I reproduce some scattered thoughts.)

POWER

The description of the internal struggles for power, Trajan's cupio dissolvi, his (Adriano's) declaration for a peace even at the cost of moving the borders, in the second chapter, is a stop on the verge of power. (Re)Enjoy it before the conquest. So far, Adriano has been circling around us, gradually building for us an attractive image of himself, in which the desire for power was felt but not declared. Power erupts at the end of the chapter, and Adriano says it clearly, I wanted it, I desired it, because it defined me.

He tries to temper this affirmation by saying that he wants it to feel useful again. The intoxicating feeling that power gives, I have never experienced it, not even when - in my small way - I had absolute power.... Adriano describes it as a vertigo, even more totalizing than love. It inhabits you and you are no longer in control of yourself.

DISTURBING SENTENCES

"Like the traveler who sails among the islands of the Archipelago and sees the luminous vapors rise at night and gradually discovers the line of the coast, so I begin to glimpse the profile of my death." I discovered, reading the notes, that this image is all that Y. has saved from the second and third rewritings. It is so polished and well-sculpted that it evokes a classical Roman sculpture.

"I have read more or less everything that has been written by our historians, our poets, even our storytellers...." Ah, to be able to say that with Adriano!

"As far as I am concerned, at twenty I was almost as I am now, but I was without substance." I recognize myself in that. Without having become empress. That is, as I continue reading, Adriano places himself in "his" history, the narration is engaging, one feels the desire to build one's own image for posterity, establishing a mood that gives the there.... but it is not really Adriano, it is Yourcenar. And in the face of these sentences, the author emerges. So good that she makes us forget, except for a brief appearance in a line, in a word.

TOO MODERN?

I let myself go with the fluidity of the narrative until a thought that is a bit too modern gets in the way of the reading, for which I go back and reread, underline, annotate my doubts.

For example: "Peace was my goal, not my idol" (although I can understand that, in hindsight, one could write such a thing. Or "Those future metropolises will reproduce Rome" (the reference is to the European metropolises, but it is so risky, since Lutetia/Paris was a village, and in England - as Toto says in a memorable line - people still lived in trees like monkeys).

Finally, about women: here, in my opinion, Y betrays her own thought much more than that of Adriano, the intolerance of the female condition on the one hand, and a rather monolithic judgment on her own kind.

ANTINOUS

Whether Adriano really loved Antinous, we will never know. In the memories of Adriano/Yourcenar, what emerges is that Adriano loves himself above all else, and in some moments, he even seems to have a split and lose that extreme and most refined lucidity that characterizes him, to exalt himself in the cult of personality and the honors that are paid to him.

He meets Antinous when he is a boy, bitter and beardless, and "loves" him (loves in the sense that he notices him, appreciates him) precisely for this. For that soft line of the cheek (not for the depth of his feelings), for his lithe body. He falls in love with him for what he is and immediately begins the typical process of the "dominant" lovers: to transform the other so that he resembles him as much as possible. He wants him to experience the same things as him.

Later, Adriano gives us his own reading of that love, to which - posthumously - he dedicated temples and cities. He had Antinous immortalized in statues and coins, bas-reliefs and paintings. This is the victory, if one can speak of victory, of Antinous. He chose to leave the scene to remain immortal.

It is typical of lovers to shift the attention of their obsession from the focal point - which would not be tolerated (Adriano would not have tolerated a jealous, clingy, or effeminate lover) - to one that is more noble, or that appears so. Antinous chooses beauty. Whether he chooses it out of propensity or because it is a nobler cause than many others, we don't know. He didn't let us know.

He doesn't wait to grow old, doesn't wait to become a pimp (a term used by Adriano), or an old relic, or an eminent Roman. None of these many positions would be at the same level as that of the emperor's favorite. In love, the one who leaves first wins, and Antinous leaves in such a way that he will never return.

Superb historical reconstruction novel, the psychological portrait of the emperor being reconstituted according to the books he had in his library. Or rather "would have had in his library" because Hadrian's collection of books has not been preserved to our days.

Beyond the detailed rendering of life in the 2nd century and the political intrigues in Rome, remarkable for an author is the particularly sensitive way she describes the homosexual experiences between Hadrian and the young Bithynian Antinous. An aspect that probably raised controversy in 1951 when these historical fiction memoirs were published.

An extremely successful book, and the fact that the Romanian translation belongs to the erudite Mihail Gramatopol increases the value of the Humanitas edition. This novel offers a captivating look into the past, allowing readers to immerse themselves in the complex world of Hadrian and his times. The author's attention to detail and her ability to bring the characters to life make this a must-read for lovers of historical fiction.

After the deprivations of the soldierly life, unexpectedly he is named emperor of Rome. Rather than fame and fortune, he not only is provided with vast power but also the power to carry out his dreams. By enduring and surviving battles, he has witnessed how this ever-expanding domain can be managed for its own benefits and those of his people. Without the suffocation of ego and the need to be seen and validated through the eyes of others, he can execute his plans. Rome is to shift from expansion to the protection of borders as they stand. Conquering will no longer be regarded as progress. Greed and power will no longer dictate the lives of Rome's people. He will do his best to eliminate or at least reduce court intrigue. The quality of people's lives will rise above mere survival and the crushing hold of the rich and powerful.

He tells this as an old man in a letter, filled with as many of his defects and failures as victories, to the younger man who will eventually replace him. This is not so much a confession as a gift of an extraordinary man and mind.

Yourcenar presents this intertwined biography with fiction in clear and polished prose. A style that is both eloquent and succinct. In the early stages, the camera is not zoomed in closely, but as a reader, I felt closer. It was the closest I had ever been in a book to being within a character's mind. His thoughts inhabited mine, and mine his. Lines shifted and then disappeared. It was more than an escape to a different time and being a different person. This is what fiction aims for, and in my experience, Yourcenar has come closest.

As we move into the battle scenes of the pre-emperor Hadrian's wanderings, the camera appears and backs away a moderate distance in this first-person account. Possibly the larger scope was necessary, but for me, it was more disappointing than jarring.

This did not account for the loss of two stars. The camera did not capture their shedding, the fading glow of starlight. The dimming occurred within the breathless perfection of Yourcenar's prose. Can something be too beautiful? Can it go beyond our perceptions and sensual limits? But what if beauty is the steady sheen of a transparent glacial sheet of ice, showing no permutations, shrills, edges, or scrapes? Its uniformity and consistency, if stretched too far and becoming the whole, can eventually turn into a deterrent. I believe Yourcenay may have seen this as a goal. If so, it was well accomplished. As a reader, I needed more bends and breaks to accentuate the bleed of the content without sacrificing the polish of the prose. The tempo and rhythm begged to vary as required by the story's events. Cringe and callous needed to penetrate the celibate style in places where showing them through changes of tone and verbiage, even if infrequent, would add potency, where I might cut my hand turning a page.

Beauty can lull if not varied. Despite moving much closer within Hadrian's mind in the last part, by then I was worn out by the pristine sheen and gloss. Ongoing perfection is, for me, an imperfection in itself. I never considered this problem, at least in literature. Someday I will re-read this book, which is so highly regarded by so many GR reviewers whom I respect, to see if I missed the treads and rifts that a good cleaning of my eye glasses might have helped me notice.