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PARTISAN REVIEW
supposed to have drowned himself, at twenty, for Hadrian's sake, in
order to pierce tbe curtain first, we are disposed to admire not this
sacrifice but Hadrian, to side with Hadrian, for like him we can only
be amazed at how much we are loved, how foolish Antinous was to
try his life for our sake. At the end (for the classical is what survives),
it is Hadrian who makes up the record, and as Hadrian, we watch
ourselves sighing, and groaning, being exquisite and beautiful about
death and life and Antinous, too. Here, in short, is the ideal aesthetic
object which can be contemplated in a classical scholar's dreams, for
this object finally sees itself being admired, and with a faint shudder,
a smiling caress, puts its arm out to show itself being admired.
Now this stasis, this old man dying, who is past everything-this
is the object of Mme. Yourcenar's adoration, but this is not all of it.
One rea son for the classical scholar's rapture is that with such a man,
as with all things ancient, everything is of a piece and the world is in
our hands, so that studying this man we are in Egypt with the necro–
mancers and in Greece with Plato's shade; with Hadrian we read every–
thing, have a thought about evcrything, and go everywhere-Egypt,
Palestine, Greece. Above all, we can linger in Greece. For Hadrian is
more than emperor: he is the Roman Hellenist
per excellence,
and yet
not grave like his "grandson" Marcus Aurelius, not so disposed to die
nobly, not that content to round out his life with a maxim. In fact,
Hadrian is the ideal sensualist: not such a beast as Nero, nor such a
goody-goody as Marcus Aurelius.
And it is this-this sensual subtlety and indifference, if you like;
this suggestion H adrian always gives us of conducting his sexual life
so casually, of having a final secret; of allowing us this far into his mind
but of barring us, with a little grimace at our vulgarity, at the door to
the bedchamber-it is this that constitutes the real heart of the classi–
cist's image, its fabled sensual freedom. It was this that haunted Nietz–
sche, who began as a classical scholar. But Mme. Yourcenar is not
troubled by it: she sees, with a little smile, a light in Hadrian's temple
that she has kept her eye trained on all the whole. This is what she
loves in the past and this is the serenity on the face of the past: not
only does it all fit, but there is this final ambiguity, this secret, in a
field in which the explicit detail is so necessary, where everything must
be made clear so as to assure us that these bones live. We see Hadrian's
arm, but not what he reaches for with it, or which consummation he
prepares.
Alfred Kazin
