Memoirs of Hadrian

by Marguerite Yourcenar (Translator)

Other authorsGrace Frick (Translator)
Paperback, 1963

Status

Available

Call number

843.912

Collection

Publication

Farrar, Straus and Giroux (1963), Edition: First Edition, Paperback, 408 pages

Description

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.

Media reviews

Lecturalia
'La mayoría de los hombres gusta resumir su vida en una fórmula, a veces jactanciosa o quejumbrosa, casi siempre recriminatoria; el recuerdo les fabrica, complaciente, una existencia explicable y clara. Mi vida tiene contornos menos definidos. Como suele suceder, lo que no fui es quizá lo que
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más ajustadamente la define: buen soldado pero en modo alguno hombre de guerra; aficionado al arte, pero no ese artista que Nerón creyó ser al morir; capaz de cometer crímenes, pero no abrumado por ellos. Pienso a veces que los grandes hombres se caracterizan precisamente por su posición extrema; su heroísmo está en mantenerse en ella toda la vida. Son nuestros polos o nuestros antípodas'.
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User reviews

LibraryThing member baswood
Published in 1951 after more than 26 years in conception Yourcenar's book is a tour de force. It takes the form of imagining that Roman Emperor Hadrien (Hadrian) 76AD - 138AD had written a letter to his chosen successor giving him the benefit of his experiences of over 20 years in power. It
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therefore takes the form of an autobiography as it included his rise to power and his thoughts on the state of the Empire. It could be compared to the memoirs of a contemporary politician, especially as Yourcenar tries to put into words the thoughts of the Emperor. It is a sympathetic portrait, but not a panegyric, but the reader does see events from Hadrians point of view.

Hadrian towards the end of his reign campaigned against a Jewish rebellion in what is known as the Bar Kokhba revolt. He was approaching 60 and the the tribulations of living in an army encampment during a long siege had an effect on his health and by the time he got back to Rome he was an ill man. He started writing his letter and nearly finished it on his death bed: his last words are 'Tâchons d'entrer dans la mort les yeux ouverts...........' His letter tells us the story of his life in chronological sequence, starting with his early upbringing in the Roman Province of Spain, the death of his parents and his schooling in Rome. His tutor had considerable political influence and the intelligent and able Hadrian found himself conscripted into the entourage of the Emperor Trajan. He campaigned with Trajan and numbered among his chosen acolytes, forming a lasting friendship with Plotine; Trajans influential wife. When Trajan died campaigning till the last, he had not got round to publicly naming Hadrian as his successor and there was a sort of palace coup back in Rome to ensure the enemies of Hadrian were summarily despatched. Trajan had looked forward to coming back to Rome as a conquering hero, but Hadrian typically refused all honoured titles on his triumphant entry into the city.

Hadrian was a different animal to Trajan who was a man who had lived to conquer the known world. Hadrian saw the advantages of consolidation, of drawing back to defensible borders and negotiating peace with the barbarians. He wanted to celebrate the glory and the artistic achievements of the Roman world and make some improvements. He had become disgusted by the atrocities committed by both sides in the wars and wanted to achieve a lasting peace. He was secure in his position as Emperor and sought to make changes: changes that we might think progressive, for example improving the financial position of women and putting an end to some of the atrocities committed against the slaves. Writing about these to his chosen successor with his thoughts on progress for the Empire was of course an attempt at laying down a blueprint for the future.

The letter is much more than a guide to his successor because Hadrian clearly wanted to give his side to the story of his life. He was passionate about the classical civilisation of Greece, the fount of all knowledge and artistic creation; he seems to have wanted to make Rome more like Greece particularly Athenian Greece. During his 20 years as Emperor he spent eight of those outside Rome, he loved to travel mixing business with pleasure fascinated by ancient Greece and ancient Egypt. In Greece he met and fell in love with Antinous a fourteen year old Greek boy who became his lover and constant companion for six years. This was perfectly acceptable in Roman times and Yourcenar has Hadrian writing candidly about the love of his life. Antinous committed suicide when he was 20 and the idyllic relationship was over, but Hadrian never got over it. He made statues, he had the body mummified in the Egyptian tradition and even built a city in his honour. Hadrian wonders what part he played in Antinous suicide, because the pair had sought the wisdom of a soothsayer and the prognostication had not been good; so did Antinous sacrifice himself for Hadrian? did he fear that Hadrian was losing interest in him? What is clear is that Hadrian saw himself as protector of the Roman Empire and his love affair with Antinous and ancient Greece was proving a distraction, even if he could not admit to that himself. Hadrian unflinchingly sets this all out in his letter as a mixture of golden memories and some regrets. He is proud of some of his achievements and is in conflict about others. In the final short chapter on his death bed he thinks about the past and the human condition, it is a touching portrait.

Yourcenar put off writing her book until she felt mature enough to do justice to her subject. There are a series of extracts from her notebooks included at the end of the book containing information pertinent to her methods of working and notes on her research. She took pains to make the book as historically accurate as possible. Of course she did not know Hadrians thought process, but this is the art of the novelist to convince her readers that he could have thought along these lines. In my opinion she does an excellent job of creating the milieu of Rome and the empire, at the beginning of the second century; in some parts it feels like a travelogue around an ancient civilisation, however it is the characterisation of Hadrian that is the crowning achievement. We have evidence that Hadrian was a lover of the arts and a poet himself and there are other commentaries about him. Yourcenar has taken the opening line from one of his poems written at the end of his life: Animula, vagula, blandula as the title of her first chapter; her translation of the poem is:

Little soul, gentle and drifting, guest and companion of my body, now you will dwell below in pallid places, stark and bare; there you will abandon your play of yore. But one moment still, let us gaze together on these familiar shores, on these objects which doubtless we shall not see again… Let us try, if we can, to enter into death with open eyes…

A moving portrait of a grand homme and an excellent book and one in which for the most part Yourcenar avoids the trap of putting 20th century contemporary thoughts into the head of a Roman Emperor. A five star read.
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LibraryThing member Welshwoman
Yourcenar's masterpiece. This is the second edition of the book in my library as the first fell to pieces after so many readings.
LibraryThing member jwhenderson
In 1951 Jules Romains, commenting on the most recent work by Marguerite Yourcenar, said that she had a writing style "of near constant perfection and felicity". He was referring to her novel, Memoirs of Hadrian, and more than fifty years later all I can do is concur and add a few more superlatives
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to describe my reaction to Yourcenar's novel. She captures the spirit of one of the truly great Roman emperors. Hadrian was a builder, a dreamer and a spiritual man with a particular eye for youthful male beauty. All this and more is expressed in the flawless prose of Ms. Yourcenar. With her other works, especially The Abyss, Alexis, Coup de Grace and Fires, she created an oeuvre that is a reader's delight. One of my favorite authors.
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LibraryThing member Widsith
Near the beginning of this book, in one of its many lyrical and precise descriptive passages, Hadrian writes about his intimations of mortality.

Comme le voyageur qui navigue entre les îles de l'Archipel voit la buée lumineuse se lever vers le soir, et découvre peu à peu la ligne du rivage, je
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commence à apercevoir le profil de ma mort. (‘As the traveller navigating between the islands of the Archipelago sees the luminous mist rise towards the evening, and discovers, little by little, the line of the shore, so I begin to notice the contours of my death.’)

The passage sets out perfectly both the book's theme - mortality - and its method - a melancholy prose style whose brilliance can sometimes take your breath away.

I was hugely impressed by Mémoires d'Hadrien. Purporting to be the memoirs of the Roman emperor, Yourcenar's book pulls off the narrative voice so well that you sometimes have to remind yourself that it's fiction; every sentence seems heavy with the wise sadness of someone who has lived for a long time and through many momentous events.

The novel took more than 20 years to write and the quality shows in every line, every phrase. It’s not a perfect book, perhaps – although it’s short, it is dense (like the book Alice’s sister was reading, it contains no pictures or conversations), and I found it dragged slightly in the back end – but that’s perhaps because I was reading it in French, which isn’t my native language.

Though the book is a life story, it is also tightly-controlled. This is not a sprawling epic, but a thematic portrait of a man at the end of his life dwelling mostly on those experiences which have come to preoccupy him – primarily his own impending death and the moments of love which – just perhaps – will have made it all worthwhile.

For Hadrian, in Yourcenar's conception of him, love and death are closely intertwined. Perhaps that is why he can't leave either of them alone. Architecture sets him off: his passages on the immortality of buildings represent a great meditation on architecture to be set beside that of Hugo in Notre-Dame de Paris.

Ces murs que j'étaie sont encore chauds du contact de corps disparus; des mains qui n'existent pas encore caresseront ces fûts de colonnes. (‘These walls that I prop up are still warm from contact with bodies that have disappeared; hands which do not yet exist will caress the trunks of these columns.’)

Ideas of death being transcended through architecture are followed by sketches of deaths variously from old age, natural disaster, war, and suicide. Hadrian does not draw conclusions from this catalogue of mortality, but the reader is well able to if he or she wishes. There is also an interesting section where Hadrian reflects on his own deification: as emperor, the people consider him literally to be a god, something which, characteristically, he tries to find useful:

Loin de voir dans ces marques d’adoration un danger de folie ou de prépotence pour l’homme qui les accepte, j’y découvrais un frein, l’obligation de se dessiner d’après quelque modèle éternel, d’associer à la puissance humaine une part de suprême sapience. Être dieu oblige en somme à plus de vertus qu’être empereur. (‘Far from seeing in these signs of adoration a risk of madness or authoritarianism for the man who accepts them, I discovered in them a brake – the obligation to model oneself on some eternal prototype, to join to human power an element of supreme wisdom. Being a god, in short, calls for more virtues than being an emperor.’)

Part of the impetus for the novel, Yourcenar has said, was a fascination with this period of history when belief in the Olympian gods had disappeared but before Christianity had really emerged – a brief moment, in Flaubert’s phrase, when man alone existed. This book evokes the idea perfectly.

There is a looming sense of disaster in all this brooding on death, a disaster which finally comes with the fate of Hadrian’s beloved Antinous. There is something exceptionally artful in the way that Antinous’s story takes up only a small part of the novel, while the ramifications are yet so infused in every sentence Hadrian writes. Yourcenar – or Hadrian – is coy about the physical side of their relationship, but the book is full of brilliant and perceptive comments on love as an emotion.

Mais le poids de l'amour, comme celui d'un bras tendrement posé au travers d'une poitrine, devenait peu à peu lourd à porter. (‘But the weight of love, like that of an arm draped tenderly across one’s chest, becomes little by little heavy to bear.’)

It’s in this character of Antinous that the themes of death and love become united – and the reason, perhaps, that they are so united in Hadrian’s mind. It’s a union which means Hadrian is reluctant to ignore death or pass over its unsavoury features: he’s determined to consider it as fully as he can, and understand what he himself is facing.

Cette mort serait vaine si je n'avais pas le courage de la regarder en face, de m'attacher à ces réalités du froid, du silence, du sang coagulé, des membres inertes, que l'homme recouvre si vite de terre [...]. (‘This death would be in vain if I did not have the courge to look at it head-on, to concentrate on these realities of cold, of silence, of coagulated blood, of inert limbs, that man recovers so quickly from the earth.’)

In a way the whole book is an attempt to do this, only somehow it’s not half as depressing as I just made it sound. On the contrary, it’s life-affirming, moving and thought-provoking – and built from a prose style which, on occasion, looks something like genius.
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LibraryThing member HadriantheBlind
This is something extraordinary. If I was told this was the actual memoirs of the emperor, I would have believed it.

This is a remarkable book, both for the exquisite and well-crafted writing style, but for the depth and solidity of the research, and how multifaceted and fascinating the character
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of Hadrian is. It seems I have known him all my life, and I wanted to talk to him about his 'grave Aurelius', only to remember that both have long passed.

Recommended for those who love books, and talking to the elderly and listening to their lives.
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LibraryThing member richardderus
Wonderful book. Excellent edition, hardcover with photographic illustrations. I love the notes by Yourcenar on how she worte the book. This isn't history, but his story (ooof, bad pun). I've recommended this book many times over the years since I first read it in the 1970s, and few close friends
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have failed to enjoy it. Finding this edition for $1 at Half Price Books was a thrill! Guess that makes me a book nerd.
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LibraryThing member John
Yourcenar began first writing this book in the period 1924-1929; she destroyed all those manuscripts; she abandoned and then returned to the theme, on and off, for the next 20 years or so and then she was seized by it, began writing, and published the book, in French, in 1951. She wanted to write
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not a standard biography of history of Hadrian, but rather, as much as possible, to explore his world through his eyes and his thoughts. This is an ambitious undertaking: how does one remain true to what the historical figure did say/do, or might have said/done, when all historical knowledge (except, e.g. for very straight-forward things such as the date of a specific battle) is filtered through the lens of perhaps self-serving memoirs or subsequent telling or descriptions or impressions, all of which themselves are coloured by the biases, weaknesses, or political motivations of the witnesses? How to neutralize the effect of the writer’s knowledge of subsequent historical events? How to account for the writer’s own biases? These are challenges any writer of this type of historical novel would face; Yourcenar is well aware of them (as she attests in notes at the back of the book) but I think she, by and large, manages the challenges well, although she does in places give a little more reign to her subsequent knowledge. As Yourcenar herself put it: “One foot in scholarship, the other in magic arts, or, more accurately and without metaphor, absorption in that sympathetic magic, which operates when one transports oneself, in thought, into another’s body and soul.”

The book tracks Hadrian’s life and accomplishments, as known to history, closely. And I think the best we can say is that Yourcenar constructs very plausible scenarios and philosophies for the thrust of Hadrian’s thinking, his hopes, his fears, his evolving sense of life and politics as he ages and faces his physical weakening and his death (he died at 62).

There are many themes and lines of enquiry and investigation and contemplation in this novel. For instance, what does it mean to be a man, with all of a man’s weaknesses and prejudices and strengths and desires and needs, and then to become venerated as godly with the power of life and death over people; for some that way lies madness, for others, such as Hadrian, a strong sense of duty and self-awareness as a Stoic and Epicurean philosopher, provided sufficient ballast to let him maintain an even keel. Except for the Second Roman-Jewish War, Hadrian’s reign (AD 117-138) was marked by peace; his efforts were much more directed to strengthening the borders of the empire, eschewing military adventure and glory, and a preference for negotiation as opposed to conflict.

Hadrian evinces a fatalism concerning the passage of time and the inevitability of change in the lives of people, states and empires, he takes very much the long view in considering history. In Yourcenar’s words, Hadrian is thankful to the gods, “ for they had allowed me to live in a period when my allotted task consisted of prudent reorganization of a world, and not of extracting matter, still unformed, from chaos, or of lying upon a corpse in the effort to revive it. I enjoyed the thought that our past was long enough to provide us with great examples, but not so heavy as to crush us under their weight; that our technical developments had advanced to the point of facilitating hygiene in the cities and prosperity for the population, though not to the degree of encumbering man with useless acquisition; that our arts like trees grown weary with the abundance of their bearing, were still able to produce a few choice fruits. I was glad that our venerable, almost formless religions, drained of all intransigence and purged of savage rites, linked us mysteriously to the most ancient secrets of man and of earth, not forbidding us, however, a secular explanation of facts and a rational view of human conduct. It was, in sum, pleasing to me that even these words, Humanity, Liberty, Happiness, had not yet lost their value by too much misuse.”

An erudite, thoughtful, book with much to provide for further thinking and pondering.
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LibraryThing member languagehat
A fine novel about the emperor Hadrian, which too many people quote as if it were history.
LibraryThing member UnChatNoir
Wonderful book.

I've already read it twice (Croatian and English translation) since I've first picked it up last September, and no doubt will I read it again few more times.

Since I am bad at writing, I feel like I would have done great injustice to this book if I were to review it, so I can only
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higly recommend it.

Definitively one of my all-time favourites, and best motivation for me to finally start learning French.
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LibraryThing member brakketh
I am very impressed. This novel felt like reading Plutarch or his ilk. Yourcenar creates a fully formed character of Hadrian who is worthy of sympathy and whose faults can be seen even if he cannot see them.
LibraryThing member ursula
Memoirs of Hadrian is exactly what the title promises - a fictional version of Hadrian's thoughts as he reflects on his life. He is in poor health and writing to Marcus Aurelius, who will eventually also become Emperor of Rome. Hadrian is clearly considering his own legacy, but also the larger
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issues, such as the fate of Rome overall. His musing leads him to talk about his predecessors and what he sees as their strengths and weaknesses and to consider the path Rome is currently treading.

That might sound boring or dry but it isn't, for a couple of reasons. First off, Hadrian had an interesting life in interesting times, and he is looking at it all from the perspective of one who is coming to the end. Additionally, he is candid about his personal entanglements and failings, not just his public ones. He is married, but doesn't seem to have ever really liked his wife much. Instead, the great love affair of his life is with a young man, Antinous. This relationship is also the source of his deepest regrets.

Yourcenar manages to make Hadrian both relatable and larger than life, which hardly seems possible. But that's what makes this books so interesting, in my opinion - the contradictions that the author manages to balance so skillfully. Hadrian is in some ways a forward-thinker for his time (this is in large part how he kept the Empire peaceful during his reign), and in others quite in step with his contemporaries. The temptation to modernize a character's thoughts when writing historical fiction must be almost overwhelming, but Yourcenar practices restraint and creates a believable portrait of an emperor.

Much of what was enjoyable to me wasn't even about Rome specifically, though. I think we would all aspire to be as philosophical, rational and realistic as Hadrian is as he considers his life. The beauty of the book is that Yourcenar makes being so seem possible.

Recommended for: philosophers, people interested in political science, anyone feeling their mortality.

Quote: "We speak of glory, that fine word which swells the heart, but there is willful confusion between it and immortality, as if the mere trace of a person were the same thing as his presence."
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LibraryThing member nosajeel
This is meant to be one of the greatest historical novels ever written and I had been looking forward to reading it for a while. Unfortunately, I was disappointed, although the problems were more with my taste in books than any objective shortcoming. I would have been happier re-reading I,
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Claudius, Claudius the God or Kingdom of the Wicked all of which bring a greater sense of irony to the enterprise.

The book is in the form of a first person memoir by Hadrian, dictated on his deathbed as a letter to one of his chosen successors, Marcus Aurelius. It was published in France in 1951 and has been successful ever since.

Hadrian's life lends itself to the novel form because it is so thinly and poorly sourced that it is difficult for a biographer to tackle (the shortcoming of Anthony Everitt's biography). Marguerite Yourcenar tells it reasonably well. As she explains in the afterword, she chose this time and place because it was after the Roman gods were no longer believed in but before Christianity. Hadrian was a Hellenophile who brought a certain amount of peace and consolidation to the borders of the Empire as well as stability to the succession and significant building in Rome.

The aspect that were less to my taste were that much of it was meditative ruminations on the nature of love, art, power, etc. I admit this might reflect my own limitations more than it does the author's.
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LibraryThing member Miguelnunonave
Very good book. Brilliant how the author managed to make a long-dead Roman emperor "alive" again and make us actually feel that we are transported to such a remote time. The monologue perspective did not bother me at all - on the contrary - I find it essential to the book's originality.
LibraryThing member jasonlf
This is meant to be one of the greatest historical novels ever written and I had been looking forward to reading it for a while. Unfortunately, I was disappointed, although the problems were more with my taste in books than any objective shortcoming. I would have been happier re-reading I,
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Claudius, Claudius the God or Kingdom of the Wicked all of which bring a greater sense of irony to the enterprise.

The book is in the form of a first person memoir by Hadrian, dictated on his deathbed as a letter to one of his chosen successors, Marcus Aurelius. It was published in France in 1951 and has been successful ever since.

Hadrian's life lends itself to the novel form because it is so thinly and poorly sourced that it is difficult for a biographer to tackle (the shortcoming of Anthony Everitt's biography). Marguerite Yourcenar tells it reasonably well. As she explains in the afterword, she chose this time and place because it was after the Roman gods were no longer believed in but before Christianity. Hadrian was a Hellenophile who brought a certain amount of peace and consolidation to the borders of the Empire as well as stability to the succession and significant building in Rome.

The aspect that were less to my taste were that much of it was meditative ruminations on the nature of love, art, power, etc. I admit this might reflect my own limitations more than it does the author's.
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LibraryThing member Peppuzzo
I really should have listened to the Labisi, my old literature teacher, when she ordered me to read this book. The "presumed" auto-biography of Adriano, great Roman empiror, in the form of a letter to Marco Aurelio, his designated successor. Adriano is a character of great complexity, and his life
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unfolds without a clear purpose or direction.

Despite his victory on the war of Judea (he finally destroyed Judea, killed 600.000 zelots and founded Palestina), he did not manage to eradicate judaism and christianity; as a result, instead of orgiastically enjoying ourselves in peace, we fight religious war and condemn writers and movie-makers for their art.
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LibraryThing member Erythrina
Wonderful book.

I've already read it twice (Croatian and English translation) since I've first picked it up last September, and no doubt will I read it again few more times.

Since I am bad at writing, I feel like I would have done great injustice to this book if I were to review it, so I can only
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higly recommend it.

Definitively one of my all-time favourites, and best motivation for me to finally start learning French.
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LibraryThing member beabatllori
First of all, picking this book up right now - huge mistake. It's the sort of book that calls for reading every sentence twice. Though the kick-ass translation by Julio Cortázar did help with that, my brain has been too scattered lately to treat this book properly. It's a shame, really.

Memoires
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d'Hadrian is intended as a philosophical reflection on both history and individual human nature. Yourcenar covers just about every major issue you can think of - politics, sexuality and sensuality, mankind's relationship with culture, immortality. Of course, Hadrian comes across as a brilliant, sensible and cultivated man, so much that some of his opinions are suspiciously modern, even prophetic. I know, I know, Hadrian is more a literary device than anything else, and that's not the point and I should pretend like I didn't care. The truth is, his meditations are so engrossing in every other respect, I did forgive him - but I had to make an effort not to care.

I was heartbroken over (hardly a spoiler, but oh well Antinous's suicide. Not because he killed himself, but rather because he did so as a statement, motivated by neglect and by a fear of feeling abandoned and growing old. He both wanted to punish Hadrian and sacrifice himself for him. And Hadrian was smart enough to understand that when it happened, but not smart enough to actually see it coming. How sad it must be, having to live with that knowledge.).

All in all, a very good read. Probably a masterpiece. I actually feel guilty that I didn't read it properly - then it may have gotten a 5th star.
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LibraryThing member amerynth
Marguerite Yourcenar's book "Memoirs of Hadrian" is definitely one of those novels that I can appreciate without having enjoyed.

It is very clear how much work Yourcenar book into the book, in which Hadrian, a Roman emperor tells his life story via a letter. It clearly has been meticulously
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researched and fills in the gaps on Hadrian's life quite well.

I found the book deadly boring though... probably because this time period really doesn't interest me in the slightest and I didn't find the ins and outs of Roman politics at all interesting. For the right audience, I can see how this would be a terrific book.
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LibraryThing member JBreedlove
An interesting book written through the eyes of the Roman Emperor Hadrian. Some interesting insights about the time and a little history as well. The second century was more wide open than I would have thought. Before the Christians took over. Very well researched.
LibraryThing member ablueidol
It may well be a great imagined autobiography but a page turner it is not. Gave up halfway through, hearing one voice makes it flat and the lack of any dramatic tension slow. Compare this to I Claudius and you see the gap for the reader. What would work if this was read by an actor such as Derek
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Jacobi or Patrick Stewart as part of a radio/audio book
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LibraryThing member annbury
Not a bad book. but it needed a map and a lot more footnotes.
I found some of the going very hard. The book could have done with a direction to read the author's comments first.
LibraryThing member Zumbanista
I gave up on this highly acclaimed novel of the life of Emperor Hadrian. I’m sure it deserves its reputation but I wasn’t in the mood for a rambling philosophical essay. I gave up before the 50-page mark and feel bad that the writing style didn’t appeal to me. I’m likely the poorer for
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throwing in the towel, but there’s so many other books waiting to be read.
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LibraryThing member pbjwelch
A truly beautiful book, read by me because I wanted to read an excellent biography (or autobiography) and this was the book that was continuously recommended. I'm not particularly interested in early Roman history but I found myself reading slower and slower (a good sign as I tend to speed-read
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when there's little more than plot), and moreover, resting the book when I wanted to think about a passage. In short, while a wonderful insight into the life and musings of an early Roman emperor, Yourcenar's biography is far more. Written as a memoir in the first person, rather than a biography, allowed Yourcenar to step into the role of Hadrian, something she cultivated for the thirty years of research she put into this work. (Conceived in the period of 1924-1929, she completed the work in 1950.) Hadrian's reminiscences (through Yourcenar's words) cover religion, love, death, the early Christian church, marriage, the Jerusalem rebellions, the conquest of Asia Minor, the building of cities and temples, politics, art, poetry....the span of a life from a difficult childhood in Spain through his death around age 60. It is a book I plan to return to again.
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LibraryThing member annbury
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.
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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.
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LibraryThing member adrianburke
Remarkable. Some of the insights will last me a lifetime.

Language

Original publication date

1951

Physical description

408 p.; 8.7 inches

ISBN

0374503486 / 9780374503482

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