Memoires of hadrian2/19/2023 ![]() ![]() In novels, historical precision is not essential, but nevertheless in Memoirs of Hadrian factuality is comfortingly present. Fortunately she provides a tone of unpretentious erudition. Marguerite Yourcenar has done very careful and extensive research for this book. Like Robert Graves ( I, Claudius – 1934) and Herman Broch, ( Death of Virgil – 1945), Yourcenar has had a great influence on later authors like Mary Renault, Colleen McCullough, Leon Uris, and Herman Wouk. It is more factual and far less fanciful than earlier historical novels like those of Walter Scott ( Ivanhoe), Victor Hugo ( Hunchback of Notre Dame), Gustave Flaubert ( Salambo), and Alexander Dumas, ( Three Musketeers).Īs a philosophical novel, it follows several slightly earlier works such as Walter Pater’s Marius the Epicurean and Ernest Renan’s, Life of Jesus. ![]() Memoirs of Hadrian is more than merely an historical novel. The first person singular that she employs for Hadrian also causes an internal and personal effect. Yourcenar’s use of these two forms creates an effect both intimate and honest. It makes him real to the modern reader.Ī memoir in an epistolary form was used by earlier French authors Choderlos de Laclos ( Les Liaisons Dangereuses), and Montesquieu ( Persian Letters). Her sensitive fiction allows her to expand and enter Hadrian’s psyche. In the 20th century, the novel form seemed to her most appropriate. Yourcenar in her notes writes that in the 16th century her work might rather be set as an essay, and perhaps as a play during the 17th or 18th centuries. His memorable novel of free association, a deliciously constructed multilevel remembrance that contained enormously insightful commentary, must have influenced Yourcenar. Proust, a more recent French forbearer, also sought better to know himself and the world around him. Yourcenar’s literary ancestor, Michel de Montaigne’s motto was, “que sais-je?” (What do I know?). Yourcenar’s exquisite skill allows us to clearly understand Hadrian who is concerned with the judgment of posterity, welfare of heirs, condition of the world, and who especially tries to learn more about himself.Ĭertainly this book follows the concept of self-examination. His basic inner thoughts are closer to ours than we might expect. In any case, we need not be an enlightened Aristotelian monarch nor match the talented and poetic Marguerite Yourcenar to empathize with the aging Hadrian, (Publius Aelius Hadrianus). But if we could, a memoir like the one written for Hadrian would be a fine model. Alas, for most of us that day will never be. It says much to us who must die sooner or, (as we hope), later and who are reviewing and contemplating his or her own life and who might intend to write an accounting some day when, as they say, if one can get around to it. The book has an immediate and forceful impact for many of us. I found this an extraordinary book, ingenious, intellectual, interesting, and in many ways, beautiful. We have spent the last few weeks reading the remarkable novel, Memoirs of Hadrian. ![]()
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