- Rolfe, Fr.
Hadrian the Seventh.
New York: New York Review Books, [1904] 2001.
ISBN 0-940322-62-5.
-
This is a masterpiece of eccentricity. The author, whose full name
is Frederick William Serafino Austin Lewis Mary Rolfe, deliberately
abbreviated his name to “Fr.” not just in
the interest of concision, but so it might be mistaken for
“Father” and the book deemed the work of a Catholic priest.
(Rolfe also used the name “Baron Corvo” and affected a
coat of arms with a raven.) Having twice himself failed in
aspirations to the priesthood, in this novel the protagonist,
transparently based upon the author, finds himself, through
a sequence of events straining even the omnipotence of the
Holy Spirit, vaulted from the humble estate of debt-ridden
English hack writer directly to the papacy, taking the name Hadrian
the Seventh in honour of Hadrian IV, the first, last,
and only English pope to date.
Installed on the throne of Saint Peter, Hadrian quickly moves to
remedy the discrepancies his erstwhile humble life has caused to him
to perceive between the mission of the Church and the policies of its
hierarchy. Dodging intrigue from all sides, and wielding his
intellect, wit, and cunning along with papal authority, he quickly
becomes what now would be called a “media pope” and a major
influence on the world political stage, which he remakes along lines
which, however alien and ironic they may seem today, might have been
better than what actually happened a decade after this novel was
published in 1904.
Rolfe, like Hadrian, is an “artificer in verbal expression”,
and his neologisms and eccentric spelling (“saxificous head
of the Medoysa”) and Greek and Latin phrases—rarely
translated—sprinkle the text. Rolfe/Hadrian doesn't
think too highly of the Irish, the French, Socialists, the
press, and churchmen who believe their mission is building
cathedrals and accumulating treasure rather than saving souls,
and he skewers these and other targets on every occasion—if
such barbs irritate you, you will find plenty here at
which to take offence. The prose is simply beautiful,
and thought provoking as well as funny. The international
politics of a century ago figures in the story, and if you're
not familiar with that now rather obscure era, you may wish
to refresh your memory as to principal players and
stakes in the Great Game of that epoch.
June 2005 