Hymn to Old Age Read online

  HERMANN HESSE

  HYMN TO

  OLD AGE

  Translated from the German by

  David Henry Wilson

  PUSHKIN PRESS

  LONDON

  Contents

  Title Page

  A WALK IN THE SPRING

  WATCHING AND LISTENING

  SUMMER’S END

  GROWING OLD

  LATE SUMMER

  THE OLD DAYS

  FROM TIME TO TIME

  ON A HEALTH CURE

  A LESSON

  THE FERRYMAN

  HOW SWIFTLY THINGS PASS

  THE MAN OF FIFTY

  ON GROWING OLD

  REUNION WITH NINA

  AS WE GROW OLD

  FOR MAX WASSMER ON HIS SIXTIETH BIRTHDAY

  SKETCH

  DYING

  [THE LAST JOURNEY OF THIS KIND]

  NO REST

  DEAD LEAF

  [HARMONY OF MOVEMENT AND REST]

  MARCH SUNSHINE

  ON AGE

  AUTUMN RAIN

  A GREY WINTER’S DAY

  A SMALL BOY

  STAGES

  LANGUAGE OF SPRING

  WEARY EVENING

  THE OLD MAN AND HIS HANDS

  THE LITTLE CHIMNEY SWEEP

  THINKING BACK

  [CHANGING BACK]

  MAXIM

  AUTUMN COMES EARLY

  [THE FRENZY OF THE BOOM AND THE FEVER OF PROPERTY SPECULATION]

  LADY WORLD, FAREWELL

  SOMETIMES

  [A CALL FROM BEYOND CONVENTION]

  END OF AUGUST

  THE FLOWERING BRANCH

  AUTUMNAL EXPERIENCES

  ON THE NEWS OF THE DEATH OF A FRIEND

  A WALK IN LATE AUTUMN

  [THE TENDENCY TOWARDS FIXED HABITS AND REPETITIONS]

  THE PATH TO LONELINESS

  [HAVING REACHED VERY OLD MANHOOD]

  ON AN AGE-OLD, WEATHER-BEATEN BUDDHA IN A WOODED GORGE IN JAPAN

  CHINESE PARABLE

  THE RAISED FINGER

  FIRST SNOW

  ALL DEATHS

  BROTHER DEATH

  ONCE, A THOUSAND YEARS AGO

  LITTLE SONG

  AFTERWORD

  A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH

  ABOUT THIS EDITION

  Also Available from Pushkin Press

  About the Publisher

  Copyright

  The titles in square brackets denote passages taken from longer texts.

  A WALK IN THE SPRING

  ONCE MORE THE LITTLE teardrops stand shining on the resinous leaf buds, the first peacock butterflies open and close their fine velvet cloaks, and boys play with spinning tops and marbles. It’s Holy Week, filled to overflowing with sounds, charged with memories of dazzling coloured Easter eggs, Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane, Jesus on Golgotha, the St Matthew Passion, youthful enthusiasms, first loves, first young taste of melancholy. Anemones nod in the moss, and buttercups glow warmly on the banks of streams.

  On my lonely wanderings, I do not distinguish between the instincts and urges within me and the concert of growing things whose thousand voices encompass me from without. I have come from the city, where after a long absence I was once more among people, and I have sat in a train, seen pictures and sculptures and heard wonderful new songs by Othmar Schoeck. Now the joyful breeze brushes my face just as it caresses the nodding anemones, but as it whirls up a swarm of memories in me like a dust cloud, a reminder of pain and transience rises from my blood into my conscious mind. Stone on the path, you are stronger than me! Tree in the meadow, you will outlast me, and perhaps so will you, little raspberry bush, and perhaps even you, rose-scented anemone.

  For a single breath I sense more profoundly than ever the transience of my form, and I feel drawn into transformation—to the stone, the earth, the raspberry bush, the tree root. My thirst is for the signs of passing, for the earth, the water and the withering of the leaves. Tomorrow, the day after, soon, soon I shall be you, I shall be leaves, I shall be earth, I shall be roots, I shall write no more words on paper, I shall no longer smell the regal wallflower, I shall no longer carry the dentist’s bill around in my pocket, I shall no longer be pestered by menacing officials demanding proof of citizenship, and so—swim cloud in the blue, flow water in the brook, bud leaf on the bough, I have sunk into oblivion and into my thousand-times-longed-for transformation.

  Ten and a hundred times more you will grasp me, enchant me and imprison me, world of words, world of opinions, world of people, world of increasing pleasure and feverish fear. A thousand times you will delight me and terrify me, with songs sung at the piano, with newspapers, with telegrams, with obituaries, with registration forms and with all your crazy odds and ends, you, world full of pleasure and fear, sweet opera full of melodic nonsense. But never more, may God grant, will you be completely lost to me, devotion to transience, passionate music of change, readiness for death, desire for rebirth. Easter will always return, pleasure will always become fear, fear will always become redemption, and the song of the past will accompany me on my way without grief, filled with affirmation, filled with readiness, filled with hope.

  1920

  WATCHING AND LISTENING

  A sound so sweet, a breeze so shy—

  Through grey of day they waft

  Like birds’ wings fluttering in the sky

  Like scents of spring so soft.

  Out of life’s early morning hours

  Come memories of yore

  Like oceans spawning silver showers

  That shine, then are no more.

  Yesterday seems far from me

  The long-gone past is near.

  Magical prehistory

  Is an open garden here.

  Perhaps my ancestor awakes

  From a thousand years of calm

  And now with my own voice he speaks

  And in my blood keeps warm.

  I’ll be going home.

  Perhaps a messenger attends

  And soon to me he’ll come;

  Perhaps before the long day ends

  SUMMER’S END

  IT WAS A FINE and shining summer here in the southern Alps, and for two weeks I had been feeling a secret fear that it would end—a fear that I know to be the additional and most secret ingredient of all things beautiful. Especially I feared even the faintest sign of a thunderstorm, because from mid-August onwards, any thunderstorm can easily get out of control, can last for days, and that means the end of summer, even if the weather manages to recover. Particularly here in the south it’s almost the rule that summer’s neck is broken by such a storm and that, blazing and quaking, it must fade and die. Then, when the day-long, violent shudders of this storm in the sky have ended, when the thousand flashes and the endless concerts of thunder and the raging torrents of lukewarm rain have passed away, one morning or afternoon there will emerge from the seething mass of clouds a cool calm sky, of serene colour, filled with autumn, and the shadows in the landscape will become a little sharper and blacker, having lost their colours but gained in form, like a fifty-year-old man who yesterday looked fit and fresh, but suddenly after an illness, a grief, a disappointment, has a face full of little lines, and in all the wrinkles lie the tiny signs of weathering. Such a final summer storm is terrible, and the death throes of summer are horrific, with its violent struggle against the compulsion to die, its crazed and agonised rage, its threshing and heaving, all of which is in vain and after a few more convulsions must end helplessly in extinction.

  This year, it seems that summer is not undergoing such a wild, dramatic end (though it’s still possible). This time it appears to be seeking a slow and gentle death by old age. There is nothing so characteristic of these days, and by no other signs
do I sense so inwardly this special, infinitely beautiful kind of summer’s end, as when coming home from a late-evening walk or from a country supper—bread, cheese and wine in a shaded inn somewhere in the forest. What is unique about such evenings is the dilation of warmth, the slow and imperceptible increase of coolness, the nocturnal dew and the silent, infinitely pliant retreat of summer even in its dying moments of resistance. When you walk for two or three hours after sunset, you can sense the struggle in a thousand fine waves. Then, in every dense thicket, every bush, every narrow pathway, the warmth of day has gathered itself and hidden away, holding on grimly for dear life throughout the night, clinging to any refuge, any shelter from the wind. At this hour, on the western side of the hills, the forests are great storage heaters, gnawed at from all sides by the cool night air, and not only every dip, every stream, but every woodland form, every thinness and thickness tells the wanderer with utmost clarity the changing degrees of heat. Just as a skier crossing a mountain landscape can sense each rise and fall, each lengthways and sideways ridge, simply through the bending of his knees, so that with a little practice his knees will give him a complete image of the mountain slope as he descends, I can read the image of the landscape in the darkness of a moonless night simply from the delicate waves of warmth. I enter a forest, and after just three steps I am enveloped in a rapidly increasing flow of heat, as if from a glowing stove, and I find that this heat expands and contracts according to the thickness of the vegetation; every dried-up stream, which has long since lost its water but still keeps a residue of damp in the earth, announces its presence by radiating its coolness. In every season the temperatures at different points of a landscape will vary, but only at this time when late summer turns into early autumn can one feel it so clearly and so strongly. As in winter the rose-red of the bare mountains, as in spring the teeming moistness of air and growing plants, as at the start of summer the nocturnal swarms of fireflies, so too at the end of summer this wonderful night-time walk through the changing waves of warmth is one of those sensual experiences that penetrate most deeply into one’s mood and one’s sense of being alive.

  That’s how it was last night when I walked home from the inn, and as I stepped onto the narrow path that leads to Sant’ Abbondio Cemetery I was struck by the cool damp rising from the meadows and the lakeside valley. At the same time the comforting warmth of the forest that had shyly crept beneath the acacias, chestnuts and alders was still with me. How the forest fought against the autumn, how the summer fought against inevitable death! So too, in the years when his summer fades, does man fight against the withering and dying, against the penetrating cold of space, against the penetrating cold of his own blood. And so with renewed vigour he devotes himself to the little games and tiny sounds of life, to the thousand sweet delights of the earth’s surface, to the showers of shimmering colours, the scurrying shadows of clouds, clinging with smiles and tremors of fear to the most ephemeral of things, seeing the approach of his own death and extracting both terror and comfort from it as he tremblingly learns the art of dying.

  Here lies the frontier between youth and age. Some cross it at the age of forty or even sooner, and some do not notice it until late in their fifties or sixties. But the story is always the same—instead of the art of living we begin to study that other art; instead of shaping and refining our character, we begin to focus on its decline and fall—and suddenly, almost from one day to the next, we feel old, and the thoughts and interests and emotions of youth seem alien to us. It is during these times of transition that we may be transfixed and touched by such tiny, tender spectacles as the fading and dying of summer, which fills our hearts with wonderment and dread, and makes us tremble and smile.

  The forest has lost its green of yesterday, and the vine leaves are beginning to turn yellow, while the grapes below are blue and purple. Towards evening, the mountains are violet and the sky has those hues of emerald that mean the approach of autumn. What then? Once again there will be no more evenings in the grotto, no more afternoons bathing in the lake at Agno, no more sitting painting under the chestnut trees. Lucky the man who can then go back to some meaningful work he loves, to people he loves, and to a home of his own. But he who does not have such things, and who has no illusions of such things, then creeps away from the approaching cold to hide in his bed, or escapes on his travels, and as a wanderer hither and thither watches those who have a home, who live in a community, who have faith in their occupations and professions, and watches them strain and struggle and strive, and beyond all their faith and all their endeavour he sees the slow, imperceptible approach of the cloud that is the next war, the next crisis, the next collapse, visible only to the idlers, the faithless, the disillusioned—to those who have grown old and whose lost optimism has given way to the tender predilection of age for bitter truths. We who are old see how day by day, beneath the waving banners of the optimists, the world becomes more perfect, how each nation feels more divine, more infallible, more justified in its use of force and its heedless aggression, how in art and sport and science new fashions and new stars shine forth, names go up in lights, superlatives drip from the newspapers, and we see how all this is pulsating with life, with warmth, with enthusiasm, with a passionate lust for life, with a drunken resistance to death. Wave upon wave of it glows like the waves of warmth in the summer forests of Ticino. Everlasting and powerful is the theatre of life, without substance, but forever in motion, forever doing battle with death.

  There are still many good things ahead before winter takes over once more. The blueish grapes will become soft and sweet, young men will sing at harvest time, and young girls in their coloured headscarves will stand among the yellowing vines like lovely wild flowers in the field. There are still many good things ahead, and many things that seem bitter to us today will eventually seem sweet, once we have learnt to master the art of dying. Meanwhile, we wait for the grapes to ripen, for the chestnuts to fall, and we hope we shall still be there to enjoy the next full moon, and even though we are growing older and older, we see that death is still a long way away. As a poet once wrote—

  A burgundy, a stove’s warm breath

  For such delights we old folk pray

  And finally a gentle death

  But that’s for later—not today!

  GROWING OLD

  The foolish things by youth desired—

  Sword and helmet, silk ties, curls—

  Were those to which I too aspired

  Above all to impress the girls.

  Only now, though, have I seen—

  Old men like me, you’ll understand,

  No longer have such things to hand—

  Only now, then, have I seen

  How wise my youthful quest had been.

  Gone are the silks and curly locks

  Gone is all the glittering gold.

  But in their place what I’ve paraded—

  Wisdom, virtue, nice warm socks—

  Alas will also soon have faded

  And the earth is very cold.

  A burgundy, a stove’s warm breath

  For such delights we old folk pray

  And finally a gentle death

  But that’s for later—not today!

  ‘Youth’ is what remains of the child in us, and the more we have of it, the more richly we can partake of this cold-conscious life.

  From a letter written in

  1912 to Wilhelm Einsle

  In childhood, how long it took from one birthday to the next! In old age, it goes faster and faster.

  From a letter written in December

  1960 to his son Bruno

  In old age, one often experiences the paradox that while the years go by at incredible speed, the hours and days often pass very slowly.

  From a letter written in

  December 1949 to Otto Korradi

  One ages so quickly if one is out of step with the world.

  From a letter written on 21st October

  1929 to Carlo
Isenberg

  As one grows older, one loves the autumn more and more, but one fears the spring.

  From a letter written on

  26th October 1929 to Elsy Bodmer

  Growing old is like what Goethe said of loneliness—he who gives way to it will soon be alone. And he who gives way to old age will soon be old. Every evening the grey phantom stands beside the bed. But first I shall lash out a few times, and let off a few fireworks.

  From a letter written in

  January 1920 to Anni Bodmer

  Grandparents, the old folk, who themselves are once more in the process of becoming children, do not take children seriously, just as they do not take themselves seriously. Pathos is a fine thing, and is often wonderful among young people. For older people, humour is more fitting—the smile, the self-irony, changing the world into an image, seeing things as if they were the fleeting spectacle of evening clouds.

  From Abendwolken

  (Evening Clouds) 1926

  LATE SUMMER

  Late summer still gives out its warmth so sweet

  In daily gifts. Above the cups of flowers

  With wings that seem more wearily to beat

  A butterfly shines bright in golden showers.

  The air of evening and the air of morning

  Is warm and moist with drops of mist and dew

  And from the mulberry tree, without a warning

  A yellow leaf drifts off into the blue.

  The shady vine leaves hide the purple grapes

  A lizard lies upon the sunlit stone.

  Under some magic spell the world now sleeps

  And with its dreams it must be left alone.