Sebastien's Reviews > Mémoires d'Hadrien

Incredible read. Yourcenar writes from the 1st person inside the mind of 2nd century Roman emperor Hadrian. We are in the driver's seat of his mind, seeing his thoughts and experiencing the 2nd century Roman world through his eyes.

Yourcenar explores the man with subtlety and nuance, exposing a deep and interesting psychological portrait, all the little details add up to create an amazingly intimate experience connecting the reader to this emperor. Of course there is a lot of speculation and artistic license, but she did a lot of research for this (far as I can tell), and merely as an artistic endeavor (regardless of historical aspects) this book is a phenomenal accomplishment. The psychological explorations are fantastic and her interpretation of how Hadrian may have seen and experienced the world is both believable and interesting, she inhabits this man. This aspect is a totemic achievement in regards to artistry and degree of difficulty, if you had told me this book was written by him I'd be like "Cool! sounds legit to me! amazing this guy's memoirs made it all the way down to us given that we have like less than 1% of the writings from that era surviving to our times" (although tbh, I don't think Hadrian would have been such a good writer, there is such a 20th century elite intellectual writer quality to this so there are a few tells that might have given it away hehe. The exploring and writing about emotions, personal psychology, intimate details strikes me as a much more modern phenomenon, at least on average because I'm sure there are exceptions. Don't quote me on that though that is just my sense of things as a lay person without deep grounding in literary history). But whether it is accurate and true to life in a way doesn't matter to me, it was a vehicle to bring us a psychological exploration of a man with great power and influence and also this device served as a vessel to explore and travel the 2nd century Roman world. In this she succeeds.

There is a lot of contemplation, philosophical meanderings that Hadrian explores. I enjoyed this a lot. Others might find it annoying, but to me it added to the portrait and felt incredibly real and believable.

I was particularly struck by how she imagined Hadrian dealing with chronic illness/health issues. I honestly have to suspect Yourcenar went through some of her own serious health issues, because her understanding of this issue, and her exploration of human psychology under health duress is so on point and captures the smallest and most intimate truths of these experiences. I have a hard time imagining someone who hasn't experienced these truths would be able to capture and explore them with this level of understanding. Anyways, I loved those sections.

Her notes at the end of the book are great too, loved reading about her process and experience in writing and researching this book. It's always interesting to learn about a creator's methodology, process, experience in the creation of their work. I found particularly incisive her comments about the pitfalls of trying to write and "know" another human being. It is an impossible task. Neither can one TRULY know oneself (I concede there are degrees). But as she explains she couldn't recreate a "true" autobiography of herself either, it would be just as difficult as writing this work on Hadrian. But that is part of the fun of such an experiment as this, it is imagination, conjecture, exploration of the human spirit projected from the prism of one's own experience, time, culture, psychology, feelings, etc. I also liked her point that there will always be this gulf in both one's ability to understand oneself and ability to understand others; they are similar phenomenons. Along the lines of understanding others she uses the example that her father is just as unknown to her as Hadrian is, even though 18 centuries separate these two people. It was a point that struck me:

"Tout nous échappe, et tous, et nous-mêmes. La vie de mon père m’est plus inconnue que celle d’Hadrien. Ma propre existence, si j’avais à l’écrire, serait reconstituée par moi du dehors, péniblement, comme celle d’un autre. J’aurais à m’adresser à des lettres, aux souvenirs d’autrui, pour fixer ces flottantes mémoires. Ce ne sont jamais que des murs écroulés, des pans d’ombres. » Et ailleurs, parlant de son père : « Je ne suis pas plus Michel que je ne suis Zénon ou Hadrien. Comme tout romancier, j’ai essayé de le reconstituer à partir de ma substance, mais c’est une substance indifférenciée."