Hadrian's Memoirs
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Mémoires d'Hadrien is a novel by French writer Marguerite Yourcenar describing the life and death of the Roman emperor Hadrian, who meditates on his military triumphs, love of poetry and music and his philosophy and his passion for his lover Antinous, capturing what Gustave Flaubert calls "the melancholy of the antique world." The book was published in France in French in 1951 and was an immediate success, meeting with enormous critical acclaim.
The real Hadrian did pen an autobiography which has been lost to history.
Quotations
"Of all our games, love’s play is the only one which threatens to unsettle our soul, and is also the only one in which the player has to abandon himself to the body’s ecstasy. …Nailed to the beloved body like a slave to a cross, I have learned some secrets of life which are now dimmed in my memory by the operation of that same law which ordained that the convalescent, once cured, ceases to understand the mysterious truths laid bare by illness, and that the prisoner, set free, forgets his torture, or the conqueror, his triumph passed, forgets his glory".
"Like everyone else I have at my disposal only three means of evaluating human existence: the study of self, which is the most difficult and most dangerous method, but also the most fruitful; the observation of our fellowmen, who usually arrange to hide secrets where none exist; and books, with the particular errors of perspective to which they inevitably give rise."Template:Book-stub