Both an exploration of character and a reflection on the meaning of history, Memoirs of Hadrian has received international acclaim since its first publication in France in 1951. In it, Marguerite Yourcenar reimagines the Emperor Hadrian's arduous boyhood, his triumphs and reversals, and finally, as emperor, his gradual reordering of a war-torn world, writing with the imaginative insight of a great writer of the twentieth century while crafting a prose style as elegant and precise as those of the Latin stylists of Hadrian's own era.
"…an example of extraordinary historical fiction. When I read that book, I had a feeling of the research, which is not obvious in the book, it flows as part of the story. The reader never feels the obstacle of the research, the research is part of the narrative, is a part of life."
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“The reading of the poets had even more disturbing effects; I am not sure that the discovery of love is necessarily more delicious than that of poetry. ~ Marguerite Yourcenar "Memoirs of Hadrian", 1951. https://t.co/AfWVm6dl5m
Alina Stefanescu is a poet and book reviewer.
"Little by little the light changed," the Roman emperor, Hadrian, says in Marguerite Yourcenar's "Memoirs of Hadrian," where the aging ruler marks the passage of time in its changed relation to light, or the prospective one reads into the world. Age as a relation to light.