Reviewed in Brief

Memoirs of Hadrian; nor amoral, like Colette’s Chéri; nor a prig, like Prince Hal. He knows the suffering he is causing. He knows, too, that he is helpless to do otherwise; helpless even to explain, much less to justify, or even escape. He can only wait, morally defenseless. He must not only endure his own hidden love for Conrad, but must inadvertently inflict misery upon Sophie.

It is a situation so “peculiarly terrifying” that poets until now have bypassed it altogether, thus encouraging us to pretend that it is less common in life than, actually, it is. Miss Yourcenar, besides being a fine writer and an acute grammarian of the heart, is therefore also a pioneer, a site-breaker, a sort of Columbus to a North America which literature has barely explored so far. I should think these 150 pages have a very long, and a very useful, future ahead of them.

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Memoirs of Hadrian; nor amoral, like Colette’s Chéri; nor a prig, like Prince Hal. He knows the suffering he is causing. He knows, too, that he is helpless to do otherwise; helpless even to explain, much less to justify, or even escape. He can only wait, morally defenseless. He must not only endure his own hidden love for Conrad, but must inadvertently inflict misery upon Sophie.

It is a situation so “peculiarly terrifying” that poets until now have bypassed it altogether, thus encouraging us to pretend that it is less common in life than, actually, it is. Miss Yourcenar, besides being a fine writer and an acute grammarian of the heart, is therefore also a pioneer, a site-breaker, a sort of Columbus to a North America which literature has barely explored so far. I should think these 150 pages have a very long, and a very useful, future ahead of them.