I feel like I have read this novel a few different times. And that’s not exactly the fault of Marguerite Yourcenar, nor is it an indictment of the novel’s quality, but this novel is a lot like the other novels it’s a lot like.
So what is this novel? It’s a fictionalized memoir written by the Roman emperor Hadrian to his successor, Marcus Aurelius. The format is in the form of a long letter and is broken into large chunks representing different parts of his life. Because it’s so broad in scope, there’s a lot of time that flows by without specific references to many events, and the total effect is of a life lived, with small moments happening alongside large ones, and it’s written in broad ways with big ideas and ideas about ideas, and almost nothing granular.
And so, it’s a lot like other novels that do almost the same thing with a different Roman emperor: I Claudius and Claudius the God by Robert Graves and John Williams’s Augustus. All of these are good novels and so is this.
But! Like those novels, this novel has the same issue for me. It’s so dry and so broad in it’s scope that while it’s technically brilliant and wonderfully researched and beautifully written….I had a hard time finding any humanity in it. So it’s quite dry, and the scope is fine, but glosses over so much in the writing. It’s beautifully translated and the backstory is very compelling too.
(Photo: https://www.amazon.com/Memoirs-Hadrian-Classics-Marguerite-Yourcenar/dp/0374529264/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1551106136&sr=8-1&keywords=memoirs+of+hadrian+by+marguerite+yourcenar)