371
PARTISAN REVIEW
the latest in a long line of pets. Later I will show you my dog
cemetery in the garden."
A dog's cemetery! Hadrian's tomb would have been less
surprising! She continued talking about the book in progress. No
detail, jacket design, type, the quality of paper, was overlooked. She
had strong opinions on everything; her courteous suggestions had
been thought through with meticulous care. And yet, there were
manuscript pages scattered everywhere, on every inch of space.
They seemed to flutter like wings and, at first glance, I feared that
something would be lost. However, Yourcenar's
sereni~
reassured
me. Other authors might require more outward order, but the
prose of Marguerite Yourcenar has the quality of perfect control:
this outward flurry of paper, any domestic disorderliness, could
be
only apparent.
We sat down to lunch at a small table next to the living room
window facing the street, partially hidden by those wine-red
portieres. And I seemed to hear the sounds of the Paris of the
Second Empire issuing from behind their stately folds; the clojr
ping of horseshoes on cobblestones,. the cries of street vendors,
and the smell of sausage hanging outside a neighboring butcher
shop. Most certainly, the meaty smell was not from our frugal meal.
A bowl of shiny cranberries, resembling milliner's trim on a
belk
epoque
hat, was placed at the center of the table, flanked by salad
greens, Greek olives, and coarse, crusty peasant bread.
"I grow these berries myself," said Marguerite Yourcenar,
handing the dish with pride.
I watched her as she ate. She tasted the cranberries thought–
fully as though to extract their very essence. Marguerite Yourcenar
was sensual, sentient, a potentate who, having lived through a rich
variety of sensory experiences, had come to relish the ordinary
fruits of the world with a connoisseur's pleasure born of past
hedonism, now tempered by the mellow wisdom of age. It was no
accident that her remarkable "imaginary" memoir of the Emperor
Hadrian was in the works for about thirty years. Often begun, often
interrupted by travel, war, love, illness, but still there until the
writer's voice merged with that other one, dusty with time, and the
completed book seemed more an act of perpetuity than a
contrived memoir. Here at a luncheon table in Maine sat
Marguerite Yourcenar, the alchemist, who had made this
fusion-delighting in her homegrown cranberries, like the
