I am baffled by the familiarity of so many things in Hadrian’s memoirs. Or is it my memoirs? As I read, quite often I feel one with him. His voice is my voice. This goes as far as to irk me whenever Yourcenar misses or misunderstands something of importance to either one of us. But what could link me with the Roman emperor? Reflective nature? Prodigious learning? Extensive travel? Spiritual yearning? Some mysterious tie along ancestral lines? Or complete oblivion of the book I first read a full decade ago?

Addendum (November 14, 2003)

Every being who has gone through the adventure of living is myself.

From Marguerite Yourcenar’s “Reflections on the Composition of Memoirs of Hadrian,” Memoirs of Hadrian, Harmondsworth: Middlesex: Penguin, 1986 (first published in 1951), p. 284.