Mémoires d'Hadrien by Marguerite Yourcenar

Le livre est présenté comme une longue lettre d’un vieil empereur adressée à son petit-fils adoptif et éventuel successeur âgé de 17 ans, Marc Aurèle. Yourcenar considérant le projet comme trop ambitieux pour être une œuvre de jeunesse, le décrivait de la trempe de ceux « qu’on ne doit pas oser avant d’avoir dépassé quarante ans ». Il s’agit d’une œuvre dont le projet remonte à l’adolescence de l’autrice. Ces pseudo-mémoires de l'empereur romain Hadrien ont immédiatement rencontré un extraordinaire succès international et assuré à son auteur une grande célébrité. She can make us share passion - for beauty, bodies, ideas, even power - and consider it closely at the same time.Mémoires d'Hadrien est un roman historique de l'écrivaine française Marguerite Yourcenar, publié en 1951.

every page is informed by her profound scholarship'Paul Bailey, author of Gabriel's Lament'Yourcenar conjures worlds. If you enjoyed Memoirs of Hadrian, you might like Robert Graves's I, Claudius, also available in Penguin Modern Classics. When Memoires d'Hadrien was first published in 1951, it was an immediate success and met with great critical acclaim. Her first novel Alexis was published in 1929 in 1939 she was invited to America by her lover Grace Frick, where she lectured in comparative literature at Sarah Lawrence College in New York. Marguerite de Crayencour (1903-88), who went by the inexact anagrammatic pen name 'Marguarite Yourcenar', was a Belgian-born French novelist and essayist, the first woman to be elected to the Academie francaise. A work of superbly detailed research and sustained empathy, Memoirs of Hadrian captures the living spirit of the Emperor and of Ancient Rome. The Emperor meditates on his past, describing his accession, military triumphs, love of poetry and music, and the philosophy that informed his powerful and far-flung rule.

The Emperor Hadrian, aware his demise is imminent, writes a long valedictory letter to Marcus Aurelius, his future successor. In her magnificent novel, Marguerite Yourcenor recreates the life and death of one of the great rulers of the ancient world.

Framed as a letter from the Roman Emperor Hadrian to his successor, Marcus Aurelius, Marguerite Yourcenar's Memoirs of Hadrian is translated from the French by Grace Frick with an introduction by Paul Bailey in Penguin Modern Classics.

Mémoires d'Hadrien by Marguerite Yourcenar