A Review of 'Memoirs of Hadrian'
"against a background of immutable ebony"
A slender and capacious book, like the shadow of a flame on sunlit marble.
In the years around the Second World War, Margurite Yourcenar found, through study, obsession and spiritual refinement, a method to travel through time. Thus the book; the mirror of a shadowless man and his true love, and of an Empire, and an Age.
Yourcenars Odyssey
The final part of 'Memoirs of Hadrian', contains a compressed chapter of notes Yourcenar made about, and during, its creation. This alone would make a grand saga, (which is probably why she included it). Here are some very extremely compressed and cut-down highlights;
1924 - Yourcenar concieves of 'Memoirs', gets some way along, then burns the pages as the work isn't good enough. (The first of many such forgettings).
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Next- Flauberts quote is discovered;
"The melancholy of the antique world seems to me more profound than that of the moderns, all of whom more or less imply that beyond the dark void lies immortality. But for the ancients that “black hole” was infinity itself; their dreams loom and vanish against a background of immutable ebony. No crying out, no convulsions — nothing but the fixity of a pensive gaze. With the gods gone, and Christ not yet come, there was a unique moment, from Cicero to Marcus Aurelius, when man stood alone."
Probably not entirely true but sounds cool as shit. Its curious that Flaubert is also someone who re-wrote the same book many many times. He re-did his 'Temptation of St Anthony' before every other major work.
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1934 to 1936 - Yourcenar re-starts and abandons the project again and again. Only one sentance was retained of the 1934 edition.
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1939 - Project abandoned. Despair. Off to America.
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1947 - In the U.S.. Burn the notes again.
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1948 - a trunk of old possessions and letters arrives from Switzerland. While going through them, Yourcenar runs into a letter; "My dear Mark...." Who is this 'Mark'? Wait! its the Hadrian book!. Re-commits to writing it (again).
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1848 to 1951 - re-making the book, but also writing vast sections every night 'in almost automatic fashion' and
"the result of those long self-induced visions whereby I could place myself intimately within another period of time. The merest word, the slightest gesture, the least perceptible implications were noted down; scenes now summed up in a line or two, in the book as it is, passed before me in the fullest detail, and as if in slow motion. Added all together, these accounts would have afforded material for a volume of several thousand pages, but each morning I would burn all the work of the night before."
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1951 - 'Memoirs of Hadrian' are published.
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There is much more, in detail, depth, and philosophy, than I have sketched out above. The book that finally was born, is a crystallisation, combination and perhaps last cannibal embryo, of a book that was being researched, written, burnt, re-written, burnt a bit more, forgotten, remembered, re-made, for about 26 years. Consequential years; 1924 to 1951, from the death of an old world through utter catastrophe, to the birth of a new. Triply consequential for Yourcenar; she changed a lot.
This might be what makes 'Memoirs' feel more like a mirror into a living time, and a living soul, than any other book I have read. I feel like I met Hadrian.
(And yes Yourcenar may well have, accidentally or deliberately, crossed paths with those other pre-and-during WWII female historical writers; Rebecca West, (Black Lamb, Grey Falcon), and Naomi Mitcheson, (Corn King and Spring Queen), who were also writing increadible defining works about the same time - what the _hell_ was going on with women in the pre-war world? Was there really such an explosion of talent as it seems to me?)
Hadrian
He is the flame and the shadow of the flame; a god of 'civitas', a bringer of peace, defender of civilisation, reformer, liberaliser, a man who set a boundary to eternal expansion. A compelling, brilliant, charming, dark and self-deceiving man.
So much of what happens around him takes place in a gilded shadow which is in part, simply the darkness of the Ancient world, particularly its sexual politics, and is in much of the rest, the necessary darkness of Imperial power. A truly decent kind, compassionate and forgiving man would not have survived for long as Emperor. You must be half a cunt to do the job.
Really, if you are going to be ruled by a sexually predatory, occasionally mass-murdering (when necessary), assassinating, (minimally, probably), occasionally vindictive, (now and then), terrifying, (in the most gentle, kind and _civilised_ way), highly-intelligent, hyper-manipulative, high-arts loving general (for a Roman Emperor) peacenick, you would really want to be ruled by Hadrian. (At least by this Hadrian). He is sane, rational, reasonable, almost never makes political mistakes, reforms and repairs things everywhere he goes, fixes systems, ensures stability and growth, builds cities, loves poetry and the arts, governs without terror; he is a chill Napoleon.
And yet. The most beautiful darkness wavers around him.
He is probably lying to us about at least some things; either as a consequence of lying to himself, or a more simple deception. (Yourcenar claims in her notes that there were moments when she 'allowed' the Emperor to lie to her.) A few necessary assassinations here and there, perhaps some intrigue with the late Emperors wife.
It would be wonderful and frightening to meet Hadrian in person, here is a fascinating man who focuses on you utterly, disarms you, charms you, subtly excavates you, makes what use of you he can, gently amends you problems and sets you aside, He has the legal and material power to kill you and everyone you love, and everyone they love, and honestly, you can burn the city too.
He swims in liquid power like a shark in saltwater, but, even for this sensitive and self-aware genius, that power alters him and warps his world, his reality, in ways even the master cannot see.
Its the subtlety of his mind that attracts. A different story would be a more classic, punchy, and obvious fall into decadence, then rage and paranoia, of a man made, (or who made himself), Emperor of the known world. What we get with Hadrian is not that, but an alteration, a shift, as if through a lens warping. The subtlety of the mind experiencing that shift, and the fact that he may be unconsciously and directly lying both to us, but first, himself, is what makes it tantalising. Because, if he were sitting next to you, Hadrian could explain and excuse everything he does, and you would believe him.
What is Reality to such a mind, on such a throne?
The Murder of a Hawk
T.H. White, the writer of 'The Sword in the Stone', wrote a book in which he tries to raise and train an hawk in the medieval style, using the methods of a medieval hawk-raising manual.
Its something of a horror story. He has no metis, no actual practical experience of the animal he is trying to train, and day by day, piece by piece, things go horribly, utterly wrong - he accidentally destroys the animal behaviourally, creating something that cannot be used for hawking, but that cannot perhaps live in the wild. Even his constant petting of the hawks head rubs away its natural feather-oil and produces an unpleasant mess. The end is a screeching prisoner that must be murdered or kept forever.
The core of the book, and of Hadrians story, is his relationship with Antinous, a greek, boy really, who he meets on the cusp of manhood, and essentially takes, keeping him until Antinous commits suicide before the age of 20.
Hadraia’s relationship with Antinous, the love of his life, reminded me a lot of this book by T.H.White
This gets more and more discomforting the more you think about the actual ages of Antinous and Hadrian when they first met, and about the fact that this is Hadrians One True Love.
Truly, this exquisitely controlled and comprehensive man, allows no chaos in his life, almost never loses control, except for this one soul, and the event of his death. Here, for the first, last and only time, Hadrian utterly loses his shit, and loses himself.
Being the Emperor Hadrian, his vast exhalation of grief also takes the form of building an entirely new city named after his beloved where his beloved will be worshipped as a god, creating a Cult of Antinous, a new religion, or aspect of one, in which the deified boy will be worshipped across the empire, ordering statues and presumably paintings of Antinous, making more statues of Antinous, making more statues of Antinous and having those hollowed out so they can be carried around with Hadrian and set up wherever he currently is (the guy travels a lot). Also; more statues of Antinous, maybe some songs and a poem cycle as well.
What is love then? If the vastness of grief is a true indicator of the depth of love, then Hadrian was certainly in love.
Still, he destroyed that boy. Picked up around 12 or 13 by the ruler of the known world. Carted around with him. Adored. Not that smart, but with a near-religious devotion to his Emperor. His final suicide comes in the form of a magical ritual which, the story suggests, was meant to be a gift of life to the man-god Hadrian.
Antinous had no way out and perhaps couldn't imagine or conceive of wanting a way out. The psychological, political, intellectual and even spiritual, (Hadrian is a god*), domination of the Emperor is so total that he warps reality around him. But it seems not everything can be so warped without breaking. Even if Antinous is not precisely a victim in the 21C Western sense, he is certainly a sacrifice.
(Hadrian; “Of course I’m not actually a god.. (I kind of am though).
Such men we cannot strongly judge, (though I just did). The gap between us, in power, psychology and distant time, is just too great.
But aren't those gaps exactly what Yourcanar was trying to leap across? She worked 25 years to put is in that room. Why then, if not to judge? Perhaps simply to see, to know. An advanced, expansive, slave-empire, bound, (which may have killed it), a high culture of subtlety and luxury described.
Just as the Emperor can never know what a slave knows every day, (Hadrian himself tells us this), there must be sights that can only be seen from the pinnacle.
(The next time someone asks me for my religious/philosophical affiliation I will just say that 'my dreams loom and vanish against a background of immutable ebony').
Still feel quite negatively about Hadrian because of what he did in Judea, but the book does sound very good!