Memoirs of Hadrian by Marguerite Yourcenar

I read this novel once before, long ago, and recall being as impressed with it as much back then as I am now. To state the obvious, it is in the form of a long valedictory letter  from a dying Hadrian to a young Marcus Aurelius, his successor’s successor. As an extended letter, though, it is hardly an epistolary novel and, while a fictionalised autobiography that nevertheless recounts a version of real events, it is constructed more as a philosophical essay than as the recounting of a story. It has no dialogue between characters, is very much from a single viewpoint, and can only very vaguely be said to have a plot.

Yet the novel, if that is what it is, bursts with classical learning as it describes the last years of the classical era, an era which, like all eras, feels itself to be in decline and culturally ossified while also fearing the loss of its immense heritage. Marguerite Yourcenar has achieved wonders in capturing the unique and plausible voice of Hadrian, a patrician of a certain time and place more alien to us than we think, with its dogma-free yet empty religious practices and its casual acceptance of suicide. She is to be commended in particular for capturing, in 1951, the casual normality of sexual attraction between men and adolescent boys that was so common in the classical era, at least amongst the aristocracy, by men who had no concept either of sexual orientation or of sin. This, at least, feels civilised, although the respective ages of a Hadrian and an Antinous are decidedly icky.

As much as the philosophy of civilisation and its transience, though, this is a treatise on how to endure old age with grace from an avowed non-stoic, and a thing of wonder in that respect. Without dialogue, without plot twists, this is an extraordinarily different yet deeply satisfying novel.