MEMOIRS OF HADRIAN

Marguerite Yourcenar

 

A critical paper by

Lawrence N. Siegler

 

I

We have spent the last few weeks reading the remarkable novel, Memoirs of Hadrian.  I found this an extraordinary book, ingenious, intellectual, interesting, and in many ways, beautiful.

The book has an immediate and forceful impact for many of us.  It says much to us who must die sooner or, (as we hope), later and who are reviewing and contemplating his or her own life and who might intend to write an accounting some day when, as they say, if one can get around to it. Alas, for most of us that day will never be.  But if we could, a memoir like the one written for Hadrian would be a fine model.

In any case, we need not be an enlightened Aristotelian monarch nor match the talented and poetic Marguerite Yourcenar to empathize with the aging Hadrian, (Publius Aelius Hadrianus).  His basic inner thoughts are closer to ours than we might expect.  Yourcenar’s exquisite skill allows us to clearly understand Hadrian who is concerned with the judgment of posterity, welfare of heirs, condition of the world, and who especially tries to learn more about himself.

Certainly this book follows the concept of self-examination.  Yourcenar’s literary ancestor, Michel de Montaigne’s motto was, “que sais-je?” (What do I know?).  Proust, a more recent French forbearer, also sought better to know himself and the world around him.  His memorable novel of free association, a deliciously constructed multilevel remembrance that contained enormously insightful commentary, must have influenced Yourcenar.

Yourcenar in her notes writes that in the 16th century her work might rather be set as an essay, and perhaps as a play during the 17th or 18th centuries. In the 20th century, the novel form seemed to her most appropriate.  Her sensitive fiction allows her to expand and enter Hadrian’s psyche.  It makes him real to the modern reader.

A memoir in an epistolary form was used by earlier French authors Choderlos de Laclos (Les Liaisons Dangereuses), and Montesquieu  (Persian Letters).  Yourcenar’s use of these two forms creates an effect both intimate and honest.  The first person singular that she employs for Hadrian also causes an internal and personal effect.

Memoirs of Hadrian is more than merely an historical novel.  It is more factual and far less fanciful than earlier historical novels like those of Walter Scott (Ivanhoe), Victor Hugo (Hunchback of Notre Dame), Gustave Flaubert (Salambo), and Alexander Dumas, (Three Musketeers).

As a philosophical novel, it follows several slightly earlier works such as Walter Pater’s Marius the Epicurean and Ernest Renan’s, Life of Jesus.  Like Robert Graves (I, Claudius – 1934) and Herman Broch, (Death of Virgil – 1945), Yourcenar has had a great influence on later authors like Mary Renault, Colleen McCullough, Leon Uris, and Herman Wouk.

Marguerite Yourcenar has done very careful and extensive research for this book.  Fortunately she provides a tone of unpretentious erudition.  In novels, historical precision is not essential, but nevertheless in Memoirs of Hadrian factuality is comfortingly present.  Historians might dispute its details, but in general, Yourcenar created a valid history and a significantly vivid and honest portrait of the Emperor.  As a result, Hadrian’s putative recollections and musings are quite believable.

Hadrian’s opinions and basic ideals are an amalgam of Roman virtues, Greek Philosophy, and Humanism.  Indeed, Western Civilization is still saturated with these concepts.  Historian Arnold Toynbee in Civilization on Trial says, “Whatever chronology might say, Thucydides’ world and my world have proved to be contemporary.”

Hadrian’s values compel us to apply them against our own standards. Discipline, Patience, Strength, Justice, Love, Beauty, Art, and Honesty are concerns with which we still measure the world.  Memoirs of Hadrian then is a moral book, even a philosophical one and it represents one of the best of its genre.

II

 

The actual Meditations of Marcus Aurelius exists today.  Yourcenar carefully used this short set of reflections and comments written some 40 years after Hadrian’s death by Marcus Aurelius shortly before his own death in 180.  The Meditations and Memoirs of Hadrian are so close in spirit that one feels the communication between Hadrian and Aurelius, which this book is meant to be, and is plausible, genuine, and reasonable.

Marcus Aurelius mentions Hadrian in a minor way only a few times in his own text.  Marcus extensively thanks and praises many people in his Meditations, including his immediate predecessor Antoninus Pius but there is no such adulation for Hadrian.  Hadrian willed that the control of Rome go to Aurelius after the death of Pius.  It is interesting in view of what we know about Hadrian’s personal life that Aurelius specifically praises Pius’ abhorrence of pederasty.  Yourcenar adds no insight into Marcus’ neglect of appreciation of Hadrian his benefactor.

Yourcenar works hard to create and support an aura of veracity.  We know that Hadrian wrote a number of poems and other items, most lost or in fragments.  People in the book are those that actually lived and interacted with Hadrian such as Phlegon, Arrian, Celer, Fronto, and even Juvenal and Suitonius.  She portrays these characters with attributes derived from various ancient letters, poems, accounts, and inscriptions.  This makes for an enormous verisimilitude and gives the book believable insight into the Hadrian’s life and times.

Yourcenar of course composes Hadrian’s reflections in this book.  Although she tries very carefully to place herself inside of her subject, she cannot but put something of herself into Hadrian expressing his irony, explanations, and philosophy.

This “1st person approach” mostly succeeds but occasionally produces stiff, erudite, and mannered expressions.  Yourcenar uses relatively modern words like bourgeoisie and has Hadrian ponder social problems, such as the great disparity between the rich and poor, not a major concern during his era.  Also his concern about Christianity, its sects and practioners, which Hadrian surely would consider infra dignitatem, are Yourcenar’s.  Hadrian’s comments on nature, divinity, denial, renunciation, and death are, in our time and his, important topics.  Yourcenar has much to say through Hadrian.

Although Yourcenar has inserted her own modern agenda, she seems to be almost at one with the persona of Hadrian.  His intellect, his spirit, philosophy, his sexuality, his dominance and power, his discipline, honesty, love of beauty, and his approach to mankind, all intrigue this author and us as well.

In Yourcenar’s notes regarding the Memoirs, she is furious at critics who considered the reflections as hers personally rather than those of Hadrian. She calls this “utterly fatuous.”   She doesn’t say however, if her own passions and disposition are so different from his.  Is this also utterly fatuous? An insightful, yet unwritten biography might contain the answer.

One learns that Hadrian did institute reforms against the worst elements of slavery, torture, child sacrifice, and the status of women.  He says many cogent things regarding his ardent desire for peace.  He also states somewhat cynically, “Peace was my aim, but not at all my idol; even to call it my ideal would displease as too remote from reality.”

More importantly Yourcenar shows us a complete Hadrian, a stoic, a sensualist, optimist, realist, cynic; an administrator, warrior, politician, and a superstitious yet incisive prognosticator and perceptive interpreter of his world.  We may be astounded that Hadrian was so deep, but we believe it because the author has Hadrian put his thoughts in ways an imaginative, and freethinking Emperor would.

We learn what Hadrian has done; his travels, problem solving, building, and reforming.  We know Hadrian as a literate, expressive, wise, and remarkable fellow.  He is someone imperious and disciplined – someone brutal and superstitious yet one possessing honest and blunt introspection.

                                               III

Both Yourcenar and our member, George Weimer, have said one must be a certain age and have a certain amount of experience before reading or even writing certain books.  Yourcenar could not even complete the beginning of this book when she was under 30.  As in the case of Proust, an author or a reader must be at least close to or beyond middle age to get the most benefit from such a book.  Some books are not for the young.  Conversely, some books are not for the old either.  This book is about a summing up of life and has much meaning to those who are at that point in their lives.

Yourcenar’s use of language from the earliest pages, though not simple, is often a thing of beauty and worth savoring.  In it we find especial brilliance and graceful expression.  Perhaps too poetic for some, occasionally too dense, and arguably, in some cases, slightly banal, still I find her work passionate and beautifully wrought.

At the opening of the book, she has Hadrian say, “Like a traveler sailing the Archipelago who sees the luminous mists lift toward evening, and little by little makes out the shore, I begin to discern the profile of my death,” then at the very end she translates Hadrian’s well-known poem and has him conclude,  “let us try, if we can, to enter into death with open eyes.”  This kind of skill and careful writing is found overwhelmingly often in this book.

The translation is also superb.  What else might one expect from Yourcenar, who translated Virginia Woolf’s The Wave and Henry James’s What Masie Knew into French, and for over 10 years lived in the US and taught at Sarah Lawrence?  She and her co-translator and long-term companion, the American Grace Frick have certainly found les mots justes, the right words, to connote the sometimes florid, aphoristic, imperial and self-serving thought and assertions of Hadrian.

 

IV

The first chapter’s title are the first three words from Hadrian’s surviving poem; “Animula, Vagula, Blandula.” This sets the tone for the memoir with a poetic double entendre and a fitting farewell for a sensual, ironic, and clever man.

         Animula Vagula, Blandula,
Hospes comesque corporus,
Quae nunc abibis in loca
Pallidula, Rigida Nudula
Nec, ut Soles dabis locas… .

Let’s look at this poem.  The punctuation is Yourcenar’s.  The first line: Animula, Vagula, Blandula, indicates a vague, wandering and gentle soul, wandering about the world, as did Hadrian during his life.  He suspects he will continue to wander after death.  The next line says, Hospes comesque…, host and companion of our corporis, our body or essence.  Note the dualism that we are our own constant host and companion.  Quae nunc, that now, abibis in loca, will go off, (the soul that is) and in an altered state, loca agreeing grammatically with, Pallidula, somewhat pale, Rigida, rigid and inflexible and Nudula or naked exposed and bare.

 There is a dual meaning in these three words, Pallidula… . This expected future state must be compared to his current life. A little pale and somewhat stiff and naked, in the post-mortem sense of course. One must not neglect the dissolute emperor’s past and his hopeful future visceral secondary meaning. Enthusiastic and avid Novel Club readers of Salter’s, Roth’s, and Smith’s crudities will appreciate these vulgarities.

To further support the erotic nuance, he ends with Nec ut, not, as in the manner of the, Soles, sunny past, abibis, it giving in the future, Iocos or joy. The expression, Io can also imply an expression of pain, again another duality.  Hadrian has compared his past and future with these hopeful double meanings.

In any case, after commencing with the actual poetic and thanos- appropriate words of Hadrian, Yourcenar creates a powerful veracity, which becomes more forceful as the book continues.  She immediately establishes Hadrian’s intelligence, honesty, heroic idealism, and most importantly his modernity and meaning.

We can empathize with the easily understandable comment that, “ it is difficult to remain an emperor in the presence of his physician and difficult to keep one’s essential quality as a man”.  Also many of us know how true it is when he muses, as we all have, that his body, a faithful companion that has served him well is not performing so well lately.  These truisms, perhaps somewhat banal, show another part of Yourcenar’s range of expression.

The book however at once becomes believable because Hadrian is someone not so different from us.  He tells us that he has reached the age where, “life, for everyman, is to accept defeat.”  Is he not one of us?

Yourcenar quickly establishes Hadrian’s reflective, moderate habits, his morality, and his subscription to the Roman virtues.  He is against gluttony, for water rather than wine, for simplicity, moderation, even in his own asceticism.  He even notes, the egregious behavior of wine snobs.  Like us, he fails at some of his ideals.  This makes him even more real.

Yourcenar outlines his musings on love; its power, irrationality, and mutability.  There are five rather dense pages early in the book devoted to assertions, theories, and praises of the Erotic.  This complicated exultation meant to establish the classical view of love, introduces and describes for us the sentiments of Hadrian expressed in the central chapter of this book, called Saeculum Aureum.

One might suspect Yourcenar’s own sentiments in Hadrian’s reminiscences about Antinous.  These remembrances are nonetheless an excellently developed classical and ideal concept of physical and spiritual adoration. Certainly this ideal still exists in full force today as a component of love.

Comments on the role of the seducer are influenced by Yourcenar’s Gallic roots, to wit; de Sade, Leclos, Balzac, Baudelaire, Flaubert, and Proust. Hadrian’s approach to love, sex, and seduction seems rather one-sided and that side his.  This is more classical than modern but still exists to a significant extent.

In reviewing his great passion long after the death of Antinous, Hadrian says, “The same law which ordains that the convalescent, once cured, ceases to understand the mysterious truths laid bare by illness, and that the prisoner, set free, forgets his torture, or the conqueror, his triumph past, forgets his glory.”  Yourcenar certainly expresses these ironic observations of human nature fluently.

She gives Hadrian a modern appeal, though expressed by an ancient and conditioned as we are today by the stoic, the skeptic, and other concepts and philosophical systems developed since ancient times.  Hadrian, ever the Hellenist seeks beauty everywhere and yet, as Emperor, remains the practical, serious, and forthright Roman.  Are not we too a combination of realist and passionate esthete?  As Alexander Pope’s poem says about Man, “…chaos of thought and passion all confused…”

Hadrian writes his memoirs to Marcus Aurelius, in order to know himself better.  He finds existing books and other men’s opinions faulty and inadequate.  He relies on honest introspection.  Yourcenar’s metaphor of a person as a mountain range with various materials, veins and accumulations heaped up pell-mell is an exquisite example of the poetic style that fills the book.

The chapter called Varius Multiplex Multiformis further establishes Hadrian’s background and involves us in his life.  His Spanish roots; a prophetic, protean, and superstitious uncle, a dedicated civil servant father, and basic items about his family are outlined.  He studies in Greece and joins the army as a very young man.

He becomes a lover of Hellenistic Art and Literature.  Yourcenar establishes Hadrian’s cultural enthusiasm with his comments such as, “Everything men have said best has been said in Greek.”  He says further, “I’m not sure the discovery of love is necessarily more exquisite than the discovery of poetry.”  Nevertheless, it seems his pursuit of love was far more exquisite than his pursuit of poetry.  We realize, what one says often is far from the way one acts.

At this point, Yourcenar sets forth Hadrian’s political progress.  After the decline and removal of Domitian and the short reign of Nerva, Trajan, Hadrian’s older cousin becomes the first Roman Emperor born outside of Italy.  We learn of the ascent of his “Spanish tribe.”  Hadrian reflects on life around him as a now mature judge, soldier, and administrator.  We learn of his enemies as he prepares his unmerciful revenge on them.

We begin to see what makes the Emperor tick.  For example, clear thinking Hadrian says, “It is not that I despise men. If I did I should have no right, and no reason, to try to govern. I know them to be vain, ignorant, greedy, and timorous, capable of almost anything for the sake of success, or for raising themselves in esteem (even in their own eyes), or simple for avoidance of suffering…”  This is a cynical and haughty though honest statement.  As a judge, he knows men’s foibles.  He is however honest enough to see these same weaknesses in himself.

Yourcenar continually sets the musings and assertions of Hadrian in a Roman context, as a Roman male and a Roman Emperor.  He sees the glimmering of the divine in Man.  Hadrian looks for ways to freedom.  He accepts experience and fate and says, “I have finally learned to accept myself.”  The Hadrian she paints is highly focused and able to convert calamity to positive experience using discipline, optimism, and concentration.

As a frontier soldier he rather casually describes his daring and bravery. With the help of Trajan’s wife Plotina and probably, although Yourcenar does not mention it, the support of the Army, he gains the throne.  Plotina is the most admired woman in Hadrian’s entire discourse.  She must have been essential in influencing Trajan’s hesitant choice to seek the crown.

There are few admirable women in this work.  Hadrian held no great respect for women.  Yourcenar, writing in the early 50’s does not hold current feminist views.  Comments on the role of women, their social intrigues and cosmetic preoccupations, and their general status, describe the state of Roman women in the 2nd century.  As to how much this still applies, I defer to our more courageous Novel Club members to reveal.

Hadrian had inherited an overextended empire.  The cost of the conquests and then maintaining the empire were burdensome.  He commences peace talks with the Parthian foe Osroes and begins travels on the frontiers.  The section is entitled Tellus Stabilita, (Stable Earth), a term then used in Imperial government propaganda which connotes the “Genius of the Pacified Earth.”  Genius is used in the sense of protector and spiritual supporter.

Attianus, his patron during his early years in Rome, soon assassinates Hadrian’s four major enemies.  Attianus is removed from his posts and then shortly afterwards is reinstated.  Hadrian feels that he now has gained respect because the people and Senate know that there will be no more political murders.  He begins the healing process and calls for morality. More popularly, he cancelled debts and reduced taxes.

We learn of the reforms and policies of Hadrian.  Slavery is one area in which he reduces the most heinous abuses.  He attacks unfair and burdensome laws.  He says, “Laws too severe must be broken and those too complicated are too easy to break.”  Too much respect for the past and tradition becomes a “pillow” for lazy judges.

Forced marriage, inheritance, and the inferior legal status of women will be improved by the Emperor.  Incidentally, Hadrian’s own arranged marriage was clearly a self-serving political and unsentimental move.

Hadrian justifies his policies and his role as a great builder.  He says interestingly that colossal effigies gives means of expressing, in true proportions, those things we most cherish.  What better excuse for a megalomaniac?

Hadrian says very practically that each of us has to choose between endless striving and wise indignation.  He notes that “ Man has always conceived of his Gods in terms of providence and worships his representative on earth,” be they priest or king.

 Hadrian even feels divine.  He humorously says that being divine is more demanding than being an Emperor.  Wisely, Yourcenar quotes many of Hadrian’s thoughts on astrology, superstition and cultic practices to remind us that he was very much a pagan.

Saeculum Aureum or the Golden Age is the peak of Hadrian’s career.  He falls for a handsome adolescent Bythnian beau, a moody and pensive idealist, all in the best tradition of classical romance.  He compares their relationship to that of Patroculus and Achilles and Hephaestion and Alexander.  Thus begins ”splendor at high noon” and “the halcyon seasons, solstice of my days, a special love, not disintegrating to banalities or indifference.”  This is also a period of great civic productivity for Hadrian.

Hadrian’s ephebophilic relationship, although it has all the features of “true love” does have its problems.  Yourcenar’s presentation of their love might appear a little shrill to some readers yet it has had great resonance to the homophilic community.

This is not the only time Yourcenar has written novels concerning the conflicts between the hetero and homosexual worlds.  Alexis and Coup de Grace cover abandoned, sadistic, and sad affairs of homosexuals and their various types of lovers.

One wonders what else there was besides physical attachment and adulation. What does “This graceful hound, avid for caresses and commands,” mean? Does the vulgar argot term, “Bull-Dyke” apply to Yourcenar’s approach to romance?

The quality of this love is in question.  When Hadrian relates his attempts to integrate the young lover into his more exotic erotic endeavors, the young man, is visibly shocked, but like a compliant and dominated companion does not object.

Hadrian self-centered interpretation of Antinous’ suicide deems this act his lover’s attempt to extend his life.  Hadrian does all in his power to deify Antinous by building cities, temples, and establishing a cult to him.  This last love is perhaps more powerful than were it to have lasted longer and ultimately become transient.  Yourcenar demonstrates that none can question the power of love to expand, transcend, and make ecstatic and agonizing the course of one’s life.

The chapter called Disciplina Augusta and Patiencia lists Hadrian’s accomplishments and needs for the future: need of the educated middle classes, (“in spite of their well-known deficiencies”), the vital need of libraries, Christians who “hold a doubtful proposition about loving others as themselves”, the flawed, unnecessary, and brutal suppression of the Jews, and Hadrian’s theory of political succession.  Much in these musings are probably Yourcenar’s own.

Hadrian’s own plan of succession is questionable.  All candidates are from his Verus clan.  Hadrian’s ex-lover, “an artist in pleasure,” Lucius Ceionius, (earlier known as Ceionius Commodus Verus and renamed Aelius Ceasar),  who was Hadrian’s first choice to succeed him, dies of a lung disease.  He then adopts Antoninus Verus (renamed Antoninus Pius), mentioning his kindness and level headedness, to succeed him.  He assigns the son of the dead Lucius Ceionius and Marcus Aurelius, earlier known as Annius Verus as co-rulers when Antoninus Pius dies.

We do get an argument for adoptive succession as opposed to natural succession.  It is questionable that our descendants are worthy or deserving enough for what we give them.  That question was lost on the otherwise rational and brilliant Marcus Aurelius.  Foolishly, Aurelius made his own only surviving son, the worthless Commodus, Emperor.

Hadrian calmly comments on his death.  He says, "meditation on death does not make it easier.”  He is content saying all he has implanted in humanity has taken root.  He is no longer angry and ready to die.  Uninhibited by his long life of introspection, he kills his 89-year-old brother-in-law, Julius Servianus, Julius’ grandson Fuscus and even a bothersome architect named Apollodorus.  This seems brutal and vindictive, especially at the end of a rational and sensitively examined life.  Yourcenar, to her credit adheres to historical facts.

V

 

We have read a novel full of wisdom and poetry and containing a very large, maybe too large number of subjects.  Marguerite Yourcenar has successfully and vividly set these observations and comments as elegantly expressed by an educated and experienced monarch who is facing death.

Yourcenar’s messages in this book though devoted to the classical period are directed to modern man.  These directions are meant to be as applicable to today as they were in ancient times.  The classics refresh and revitalize the present.  We examine the phenomenal heritage of our Western Civilization and realize that people have tussled with the same basic questions as we. Progress has been distressingly slow.

Memoirs of Hadrian provides much. For readers who love History and especially the Classics this is a chance to enter those times in a manner which is intimate and informing.  For those who love Philosophy, this book is stimulating and provocative.  For those who enjoy passionate, fluent, and exquisite literature this has been a superb opportunity to read the opulent and brilliant prose of Marguerite Yourcenar.