Book: Memoirs of Hadrian by Marguerite Yourcenar

“It is difficult to remain an emperor in the presence of a physician,” the emperor Hadrian tells us in Memoirs of Hadrian, a fictionalised retelling by Marguerite Yourcenar. It is a book famed for its imaginative recreation of Roman antiquity, not just through a correct inventory of objects but by conveying the mental landscape of the period. For her learning, Yourcenar was the first woman elected to the Académie Francaise. Scholars though can be worthy and mind-numbing. What it incredible here is the book’s adherence to Kafka’s exhortation it must “be an ice axe to break the sea frozen inside us,” must move us to pity, love or admiration.

The emperor Hadrian is dying, and has decided to instruct young Marcus Aurelius, who will be king, of his life. From the premise comes the essential arc of the story: an ambitious and insatiable youth, a lover of beauty trying to earn the favour of the emperor, a content young king, hunting, governing, and sleeping under the stars in various faraway Roman colonies, to the aged emperor, “a mass of humours, a sorry mixture of blood and lymph,” unable to think of himself as a king in the presence of his physician.

Yourcenar tells us she was fascinated by Hadrian’s period, which came after the time when Roman gods were no longer believed in, but before the establishment of Christianity, which is here dismissed as a troublesome Jewish cult. Without the prospect of myth or redemption, Hadrian’s mature outlook is essentially melancholy, the presence of life tempered by the awareness of death, after which there is nothing. Japanese literature identifies this cultural trope as “mono no aware,” a gentle awareness of the passing of things, especially youth and beauty, a sadness which heightens our appreciation of them. In this world-view, religion is a denial of nature, a promissory note of a place beyond death that cannot be redeemed.

This naturalism permeates Memoirs of Hadrian throughout and is its most moving aspect. The chapter on Hadrian’s grief at the death of his young companion Antinous at 20 is the emotional centerpiece of the book and deeply affecting. Mémoires d’Hadrien was published in 1951 in France, and translated a few years later by Yourcenar’s collaborator and partner Grace Frick. It still works.

Some passages convey the flavour of the book.

Attianus had been right in his conjectures: the virgin gold of respect would be too soft without some alloy of fear. The murder of four men of consular rank was received as was the story of the forged will: the honest and pure of heart refused to believe that I was implicated; the cynics supposed the worst, but admired me only the more. As soon as it was known that my resentment had suddenly come to an end Rome grew calm; each person’s joy in his own security caused the dead to be promptly forgotten. My clemency was matter for astonishment because it was deemed deliberate and voluntary, chosen each morning in preference to a violence which would have been equally natural to me; my simplicity was praised because it was thought that calculation figured therein. Trajan had had most of the virtues of the average man, but my qualities were more unexpected; one step further and they would have been regarded as a refinement of vice itself. I was the same man as before, but what had previously been despised now passed for sublime: my extreme courtesy, considered by the unsubtle a form of weakness, or even of cowardice, seemed now the smooth and polished sheath of force. They extolled my patience with petitioners, my frequent visits to the sick in the military hospitals, and my friendly familiarity with the discharged veterans. Nothing in all that differed from the manner in which I had treated my servants and tenant farmers my whole life long. Each of us has more virtues than he is credited with, but success alone brings them to view, perhaps because then we may be expected to cease practicing them. Human beings betray their worst failings when they marvel to find that a world ruler is neither foolishly indolent, presumptuous, nor cruel.

and this:

Arrian wrote me thus:

“I have completed the circumnavigation of the Black Sea, in conformity with the orders received…

On the northern shore of that inhospitable sea we touched upon a small island of great import in legend, the isle of Achilles. As you know, Thetis is supposed to have brought her son to be reared on this islet shrouded in mist; each evening she would rise from the depths of the sea and would come to talk with her child on the strand. Nowadays the place is uninhabited; only a few goats graze there. It has a temple to Achilles. Terns, gulls, and petrels, all kinds of sea birds frequent this sanctuary, and its porch is cooled by the continual fanning of their wings still moist from the sea. But this isle of Achilles is also, as it should be, the isle of Patroclus, and the innumerable votive offerings which decorate the temple walls are dedicated sometimes to Achilles and sometimes to his friend, for of course whoever loves Achilles cherishes and venerates Patroclus’ memory. Achilles himself appears in dream to the navigators who visit these parts: he protects them and warns them of the sea’s dangers, as Castor and Pollux do elsewhere. And the shade of Patroclus appears at Achilles’ side.

I report these things to you because I think them worthy to be known, and because those who told them to me have experienced them themselves, or have learned them from credible witnesses… . Achilles sometimes seems to me the greatest of men in his courage, his fortitude, his learning and intelligence coupled with bodily skill, and his ardent love for his young companion. And nothing in him seems to me nobler than the despair which made him despise life and long for death when he had lost his beloved.”

I laid down the voluminous report of the governor of Armenia Minor, admiral of the expeditionary fleet. As always Arrian has worked well. But this time he is doing more than that: he offers me a gift which I need if I am to die in peace; he sends me a picture of my life as I should have wished it to be. Arrian knows that what counts is something which will not figure in official biographies and which is not written on tombs; he knows also that the passing of time only adds one more bewilderment to grief. As seen by him the adventure of my existence takes on meaning and achieves a form, as in a poem; that unique affection frees itself from remorse, impatience, and vain obsessions as from so much smoke, or so much dust; sorrow is decanted and despair runs pure. Arrian opens to me the vast empyrean of heroes and friends, judging me not too unworthy of it.