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A review by rponzo
Memoirs of Hadrian by Marguerite Yourcenar
3.0
Yo, Hadrian
When I learned the author spent over twenty years writing this book, I stopped feeling guilty that I took so long to finish it.
Hadrian, as I vaguely remember from Architecture school expands the Roman empire all the way to England.
At the beginning I really loved it. The emperor Hadrian is writing an end of life letter to his young protégé. He writes beautiful reflections about life and human relationships:
"Already certain portions of my life are like dismantled rooms of a palace too vast for an impoverished owner to occupy in its entirety. I can no hunt no longer...." (p.5)
But then, it is immersion in wars, invasions. Strange sounding lands, but many are not so strange, Alexandria, Jerusalem.
Hadrian's tactics of invasion and visionary leadership are just barely enough to keep me engaged. “…the clear-sightedness of Tiberius, without his harshness; the learning of Claudius, without his weakness; Nero’s taste for the arts, but stripped of all foolish vanity; the kindness of Titus, stopping short of his sentimentality; Vespian’s thrift, but not his absurd miserleness." (p. 167)
There is political good press of how he tried to be fair to slaves. There is love for other men.
The illustrations are weak black and white photos of old sculptures and murals.
I kept with it. When Hadrian’s beloved Antonius dies tragically, it becomes absorbing. Hadrian repeats sadly over and over A. is dead, A. is dead. Being an emperor, he can build cities and monuments and statues to this lost icon. It is a painful account, told from decades later. For me, this is when the narrative becomes a wide river and you can relax and experience it. Human sadness is the same now as then. In this way, the book is depressing because there is no peace in the middle east, not then when Hadrian fights wars with the Jewish tribes, or now.
In summary, I liked this book, but I found parts of it a bit slow going. Still, there were always great sentences to sustain:
"From time to time a servant would dip a great jar of porous clay into the cooling waters; even the most limpid verse lacked the sparkle of that clear stream." (p155)
When I learned the author spent over twenty years writing this book, I stopped feeling guilty that I took so long to finish it.
Hadrian, as I vaguely remember from Architecture school expands the Roman empire all the way to England.
At the beginning I really loved it. The emperor Hadrian is writing an end of life letter to his young protégé. He writes beautiful reflections about life and human relationships:
"Already certain portions of my life are like dismantled rooms of a palace too vast for an impoverished owner to occupy in its entirety. I can no hunt no longer...." (p.5)
But then, it is immersion in wars, invasions. Strange sounding lands, but many are not so strange, Alexandria, Jerusalem.
Hadrian's tactics of invasion and visionary leadership are just barely enough to keep me engaged. “…the clear-sightedness of Tiberius, without his harshness; the learning of Claudius, without his weakness; Nero’s taste for the arts, but stripped of all foolish vanity; the kindness of Titus, stopping short of his sentimentality; Vespian’s thrift, but not his absurd miserleness." (p. 167)
There is political good press of how he tried to be fair to slaves. There is love for other men.
The illustrations are weak black and white photos of old sculptures and murals.
I kept with it. When Hadrian’s beloved Antonius dies tragically, it becomes absorbing. Hadrian repeats sadly over and over A. is dead, A. is dead. Being an emperor, he can build cities and monuments and statues to this lost icon. It is a painful account, told from decades later. For me, this is when the narrative becomes a wide river and you can relax and experience it. Human sadness is the same now as then. In this way, the book is depressing because there is no peace in the middle east, not then when Hadrian fights wars with the Jewish tribes, or now.
In summary, I liked this book, but I found parts of it a bit slow going. Still, there were always great sentences to sustain:
"From time to time a servant would dip a great jar of porous clay into the cooling waters; even the most limpid verse lacked the sparkle of that clear stream." (p155)