MEMOIRS OF HADRIAN / MEMORIAS DE ADRIANO

Walking back home last Saturday after going for tapas in the city center, I stumbled onto an old friend in front of a library. It was actually a book. A book, called "MEMOIRS OF HADRIAN". I know it's strange to call a friend a book but that's how it is - there is no better way to put it. I have first read that book in French... long ago. Later on, I reread it, in English, when I was living in Ireland. And now, after all these years, I could not let pass the opportunity to add a third copy of it in my collection - for the ridiculous price of 2€! This time, it is a Spanish edition. Hence, the double article.

MEMOIRS OF HADRIAN is a book about one of the most famous Roman Emperor, who lived from 70 to 138. He was part of the so-called 5 Good Emperors who brought the Empire to its peak of power and prestige thanks to their intelligence, serenity, economical improvements and restraint. He ruled successfully from 117 till his death. However, gaining the Imperium, keeping it, and using it to good end while he was revered as a god and feared just as much was no easy feat and that's what this book is about - but not only. It is truly a masterful account of a human mind in a time and a place so removed from our own today that I always considered this book to be far more than a basic historical novel. The story is told at the first person and there is no other work which moved me so much as I was reading it, as if I was reading à coeur ouvert inside a fellow human being, as if I could make his thoughts my own.

Source

This monument was conceived, written, and published by the Franco-Belgian writer Marguerite Yourcenar (1903 - 1987). In the notes which accompany most of the book edition, you can discover the agonizing and ambitious project that this novel was for her. It is said for example that she wrote most of it between 1924 and 1929... and then lost the manuscript. She started again the 1930s, but the project was stalled by the Second World War, taken back later on, and it's not before 1951 that it was completed and finished. One of the most important note is this one: Reconstruct from inside what the archeologists of the XIXth century did from the outside.

I recommend this book to anyone, even if I know not everybody will like it. It's probably too slow for our times and our limited attention span, it's probably too introspective. Where are the Legions, where are the gladiators? I can probably hear. Nevermind, this book is a mine, which can be read one paragraph at a time, one bit after another, to let its wisdom percolate into our mind, like the own writings of Marcus Aurelius, and will remain immortal as its subject.

What about you, is there a book which keeps popping up in your way time and again, every decade, in every country?