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The Power and Pitfalls of Mythical Vision: Ritual Structures in Marguerite Yourcenar's Mémoires d'Hadrien
Author(s) -
Milne Lorna
Publication year - 1999
Publication title -
orbis litterarum
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.109
H-Index - 8
eISSN - 1600-0730
pISSN - 0105-7510
DOI - 10.1111/j.1600-0730.1999.tb00293.x
Subject(s) - sacrifice , humility , literature , skepticism , power (physics) , humanity , emperor , philosophy , interpretation (philosophy) , event (particle physics) , aesthetics , religious studies , history , epistemology , art , theology , linguistics , ancient history , physics , quantum mechanics
Subjecting the coherent récit of Mémoires d'Hadrien to a sceptical reading, this article examines the many references in the text to the ternary structure of ritual sacrifice. First, the article shows that the narrating Hadrien uses signifiers associated with ritual sacrifice to lead the reader into accepting Antinoüs's death as a purely independent act of self‐immolation, intended for the benefit of the Emperor. Having established this recourse to ritual structure as a manipulative discourse strategy, the article next argues that the other source of such a discourse is the narrating Hadrien's guilt anxiety: he senses that it is his own tendency to project mythical significance onto his world that imposes the logic of self‐sacrifice upon Antinoüs. Hadrien thus reveals his anxiety that he, not Antinoüs, is the ultimate author of the sacrifice. It therefore becomes clear that the organising event of Hadrien's life and récit ‐ Antinoüs's death ‐ is not the heroic, mythical ritual he attempts to portray, but a source of guilt and humility. Finally, however, the article argues that the immense power of Hadrien the narrator is undiminished by this sceptical interpretation of his récit. On the contrary, to a 1990s reader, the ambiguities and the humanity it reveals make him as convincing as ever.