3.5

When I’d read the excellent and lyrical GR reviews of this novel, I thought the book sounded like it’d be for me. Now that I’ve finally read it, I think it might not be. I wondered about this in the early pages, but continued on as it’s so well-written. Also, I was reading with a group and the daily pages were very manageable. A schedule, especially for a book I might otherwise put aside for “later,” works well for me.

In the beginning I felt I was reading an advice piece— self-help, as one of the reading participants said—and aphorisms are not something I necessarily enjoy. But that’s only at the start and, even so, it’s beautifully written and insightful. The novel is written in the form of a letter (to Hadrian’s successor Marcus Aurelius) and I never believed in the book-as-letter, unless Hadrian is writing it for posterity and that doesn't seem to be the case.

Though you don’t need to be a student of Roman history to enjoy this, it would’ve helped me if I had been, especially when Hadrian’s running through his accomplishments or invoking the past. Successful historical novels are said to wear their historical details lightly, which I found both true and not true of this work.

The writing is so good that many times I felt it was Hadrian writing, though at other times I got pulled out of Hadrian’s head, knowing it was Yourcenar’s (which of course would be true for any writer of any work). I especially felt this way with the predictions and foreshadowing, though that’s also unfair as Hadrian was a student of history and could see trends just as well as historians today. The ending is especially beautiful, but I know I didn't get as much out of the whole as others in the group did.

Intriguing and perceptive notes can be found in Yourcenar’s Reflections on the Composition... at the end of the book. Some of these I enjoyed greatly, stopping for my own reflections. With some of them I felt my failures as a reader being targeted: “The utter fatuity of those who say to you, ‘By Hadrian you mean yourself!’” I’d never say that to her, but I’m guilty of thinking it. But don’t mind me: I’m a barbarian.

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 simply 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.

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.

Interesting, erudite and quite easy reading, offering a marvellous take on the ancien Roman world. Yourcenar in essence does an experiment in empathy, by looking at the world through the eyes of a Roman emperor. Although we like to think the Roman world was very akin to ours, in fact she perfectly illustrates it wasn't: while reading these memoirs I was impressed by how different Hadrian looked at life as we do now (not everything of course). In this sense this is an impressive work.

But there are some flaws: the picture we get of Hadrian is rather flattering, he only had good intentions and presumedly abhorred power politics; I find this hard to believe. But of course these are so called memoires, they HAVE to be apologetic. There also are many anachronisms, especially when Hadrian reflects about the future, and expresses the expectation that one day christans and barbarians would come to rule the world.

Six stars for writing and erudition
but three stars as a novel.

It is impossible to write my favorite passages here because there were so many, it will take hours.

Perhaps the reading condition afforded by life nowadays prevented me from enjoying this novel as I should have enjoyed it. I mostly enjoyed the author's erudition (conveyed as if by Hadrian), but I also like to be immersed in it when reading a novel, which didn't happen with this one.