Memoirs of Hadrian
question
Books you loved in the past and cannot understand why today
Jose
Jul 17, 2014 09:53AM
Nowadays, age 40, I find it amazing to see that books I loved as a teenager are a complete bore for me today.
Not because I find those books too childish or naïve but just the opposite: they are too deep or too poetic, or too full of descriptions and no action at all. I even wonder at how was it possible that I loved those books as a teenager. Was I more poetic, deeper, less mundane as a teenager?.
I have re read recently Margarite Yourcenar´s Memoirs of Hadrian, a book i found so inspiring when I was younger but today I find it unbearable, too deep, too poetical, too "intense".
Not because I find those books too childish or naïve but just the opposite: they are too deep or too poetic, or too full of descriptions and no action at all. I even wonder at how was it possible that I loved those books as a teenager. Was I more poetic, deeper, less mundane as a teenager?.
I have re read recently Margarite Yourcenar´s Memoirs of Hadrian, a book i found so inspiring when I was younger but today I find it unbearable, too deep, too poetical, too "intense".
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Interesting perspective; I read it couple of years ago at age 58 and found it to be if not inspiring, then definitely powerful in describing the hypothetical musings of that far removed emperor all too conscious of his own mortality....not having read it as younger man, I can't address your opening point, though I have felt the same way about Atlas Shrugged, I book I read at 20, 30, 40 and 55; and by the most recent reading finding it almost unreadable and tedious.....thanks for your comment
I think Memoirs of Hadrian is a book to be considered at the right distance, both in terms of history and in terms of reinterpretation of a point of view. So long as the writer has done careful studies, but it's easy to run the risk of mistaking it as a historical book. However, for me it was a good read, maybe too full of details. Certain for the author's job it must not have been easy to do it, at least I talk from the writer's point of view.
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