Hymn to Old Age Read online

  It is with such thought games that I generally react when I hear news of sixtieth, seventieth or seventy-fifth birthdays within the circle of my somewhat younger friends. They are an attempt to resist with some humour the uneasy feelings that overcome us whenever we are notified of how swiftly time flies and how fragile life is. One of the contradictions of this life, whose tragic aspects are so often and so easily covered up by its comedy, is the fact that with one half of our souls we artists are delighted by and in love with nothing so much as the moment, the short-lived, the lightning changes of life’s directions, while in the other half of our souls we have and nourish the deep desire for permanence, for stasis, for eternity—the longing that goes on driving us to try and achieve the impossible: the spiritualisation and externalisation of the transient, the crystallisation of the fluid and changeable, the capture of the moment. It is what the wise man seeks to attain in his contemplative renunciation of all actions—the cancellation of time—that is what we artists strive for in our reversal of direction; we strain every sinew to keep things firm and fixed for ever.

  From a letter written in November

  1957 to Ernst Morgenthaler

  On your entry into a new habitat, the forecourt to old age, an old man wishes you all the gifts that life at this stage has to offer—increased independence from the judgement of others, increased imperviousness to the passions, and an unworried reverence for the eternal.

  A page from an album

  written in the 1950s

  We are curious about undiscovered bays in the South Seas, about the earth’s polar regions, about the nature of the winds, currents, lightning, avalanches—but we are infinitely more curious about death, the last and boldest adventure of our existence. Because we think we know that of all our insights and experiences, only those for which we willingly sacrifice our lives can be deserving and satisfying.

  From Reiselust

  (Wanderlust) 1910

  When a person has grown old and has done his all, it is his task peacefully to make friends with death. He does not need other people. He knows them and has seen enough of them. What he needs is peace. It is not seemly to seek out such a person, to talk to him, to torment him with your chatter. At the gateway to his home the proper thing is to pass by, as if nobody lived there.

  A notice that Hesse stuck to the

  door of his house after he had

  been awarded the Nobel Prize

  ON AN AGE-OLD, WEATHER-BEATEN

  BUDDHA IN A WOODED

  GORGE IN JAPAN

  Softened and smoothed by rains sent down from the skies

  Green with moss, by icy frosts deep burned

  Your gentle cheeks, your large and lowered eyes

  In peace towards their distant goal are turned

  Willing to decay and to disperse

  Into the shapeless, boundless universe.

  Yet still the crumbling posture and expression

  Reveal the noble motives of your mission

  Seeking, despite the mud, the earth, the chill

  The fading forms, your great task to fulfil.

  Tomorrow into roots and leaves you’ll turn

  And into water, reflecting sky and sun

  And into ivy, algae and green fern

  An image of the eternal All-is-One.

  CHINESE PARABLE

  AN OLD MAN NAMED Chunglang, which means ‘Master Rock’, owned a small farm in the mountains. One day it so happened that one of his horses went missing. Then the neighbours came to offer him their sympathy over this misfortune.

  The old man, however, asked them: “How do you know that it’s a misfortune?” And lo and behold, a few days later the horse returned and brought with it a whole herd of wild horses. Once again the neighbours came, this time to offer him their congratulations on his good fortune.

  The old man from the mountains, however, responded: “How do you know that it’s good fortune?”

  Since he now had so many horses at his disposal, the son of the old man developed a liking for riding, and one day he broke his leg. Then back they came, the neighbours, in order to express their sympathy. But once again the old man said to them: “How do you know that it’s a misfortune?”

  The following year, the Commission of ‘Beanpoles’ came to the mountains to take away tall, strong men to serve the Emperor as boot-men and litter-bearers. They did not take the old man’s son, because he still hadn’t recovered from his broken leg.

  Chunglang could not resist a smile.

  THE RAISED FINGER

  Master Chu-Chi was, so we are told

  A modest, gentle man, not brash or bold;

  In words and lectures he did not believe

  For words are outward shows that can deceive

  And he abhorred deception of all kinds.

  When students, monks and novices discussed

  With noble words and brilliant flashing minds

  The meaning of the world and other teachings

  He treated their discussions with mistrust

  On silent guard against such overreachings.

  Whenever they with many questions came

  Some vain, some earnest, all about the meaning

  Of ancient writings, or the Buddha’s name

  About Enlightenment, the world’s beginning

  And its end, he gave them no reply

  But soundlessly would raise his finger high.

  The silent eloquence of this finger raised

  Grew ever more profound and animated

  It talked, it gave instructions, punished, praised

  The heart of life and truth it penetrated

  And many young men, when this finger spoke

  Knew what it meant, and trembled, and awoke.

  We have lived through suffering and disease, we have lost friends to death, and death has not only knocked on our window from outside, but it has also done its work inside us and has made progress. Life, which once we took so much for granted, has become a precious but increasingly threatened possession, and what was self-evidently our own has changed into a loan of uncertain duration.

  But the loan that may be called in at any time has by no means lost its value—on the contrary, the threat has increased it. We love life just as we did before, and want to remain true to it, for the sake among other things of love and friendship which, down through the years, like wine of good vintage, do not lose but increase their quality and value.

  From a letter written on

  24th August 1957 to Max

  Wassmer

  The loss of our nearest and dearest, and especially our childhood friends, is one of the many strange and ambivalent experiences that old age puts us through—perhaps the strangest. As gradually everything fades away, and in the end there are far more of those nearest and dearest ‘on the other side’ than here, one unexpectedly becomes curious about this ‘other side’, and loses the fear felt by those who are more firmly fenced in.

  From a letter written on 17th March

  1950 to Thomas Mann

  FIRST SNOW

  Year, you are old now; once so green and fair

  Your looks have faded, snow is in your hair

  Your gait is weary, death now walks with you

  And so will I, for I am dying too.

  Along the fearful path the heart must go

  The winter seeds sleep trembling in the snow

  The wind has taken from me many a bough

  But all the scars are my protection now!

  How many bitter times have I been slain!

  But with each death, I have been born again.

  And so you’re welcome, death, gateway of night!

  Beyond, life’s choir is singing of the light.

  I have the same attitude towards death as I had before—I do not hate it and I do not fear it. If I were to ask who and what—apart from my wife and my sons—I love and cherish most, it would transpire that they are all dead people, the dead of all the centuries, composers, wr
iters, painters. Their being, compressed into their works, lives on and is more present and real to me than most of my contemporaries. And it is the same with the dead whom I have known, loved and ‘lost’: my parents and siblings, the friends of my youth—they belong to me and to my life; today just as before, when they were still alive, I think of them, I dream of them, and I regard them as part of my daily life. This attitude towards death is therefore not madness or some sweet fantasy, but is real and integral to my life. I am well acquainted with grief over the transience of things, and I can feel it with every flower that fades. But it is grief without despair.

  From a letter written in July 1955

  to Hans Bayer

  In the last few days I have been reading one of the old Chinese writers—if one calls dead people homecomers, then the living are wanderers. Whoever wanders and does not know where he is going is homeless. If a single person has lost his home, one considers that unfair. But now that the whole world has lost its home, there is no one who would find it unfair.

  From an undated letter to Alice Leuthold

  Young people like talking about death, but never think about it. With old people it’s the other way round. Young people think they will live for ever and so can direct all their wishes and thoughts towards themselves. Old people have realised that somewhere there is an end, and that everything one has and does for oneself ultimately falls into a hole and was for nothing.

  From Gertrud, 1909

  The dead person was not torn away by chance, or senselessly, or cruelly, or wickedly, but his life’s work was over, and he has gone away in order to come back and continue in a new form. ‘His work was over’ does not, of course, mean that he could not have gone on for many more years achieving valuable things, or that he was replaceable. But for himself, for the innermost meaning of his life, the goal had been reached, he had ripened, and even if he died reluctantly, today he knows it, and of that which he was there is nothing lost or fragmented. That is my belief. There is no death. Every life is eternal, every person returns. There is in every person an innermost self which no death can destroy … I do not believe in a personal reunion, or a return in the form of ‘ghosts’. But I believe with all my heart in a common goal for all humans, and in our bond through mind and deed with those who have left us. Not in death but only in life do we find again what is eternal and immortal in the dead.

  From a letter written on

  30th December 1920 to Anne

  Rümelin

  To be able to go to sleep when one is tired, and to be able to let fall a burden that one has carried for a long time—that is a precious and wonderful thing.

  From Das Glasperlenspiel

  (The Glass Bead Game) 1943

  With those whom we can no longer see we commune in a different way than with those who are still ‘there’. But they cannot be less present for us, and indeed they are often closer than the others.

  From a postcard written in

  August 1942 to Lene Gundert

  The dear departed, with the essential being that made its impact upon us, remain alive with us so long as we ourselves are alive. Sometimes we can even have a better conversation with them, consult with them, and get better advice from them than from the living.

  From a letter written on

  4th January 1939 to Lydia Link

  Our life is short, and soon we shall be on the other side, and even if we don’t ‘know’ anything about the Great Beyond, nevertheless we have experienced the fact that a dead person may often be dearer and closer to us and more alive than the living all around us, and herein lies the solid foundation of our heart’s natural connection with the other side.

  From a letter written on 17th May

  1947 to Grete Gundert

  Every route, whether to the sun or to the night, leads to death, leads to rebirth, of whose pains the soul is afraid. But all follow this path, all die, all are born, for the eternal Mother returns them eternally to the day.

  From a letter written in September

  1940 to Rolf Conrad

  ALL DEATHS

  All deaths are deaths that I’ve already died

  All deaths are deaths I wish to die again—

  To die the wooden death in the tree

  To die the stone death in the mountain

  The earthy death in the sand

  The crackling death of the leaf in the summer grass

  And the bleak and bloody death of the human being.

  As a flower I want to be born again

  As tree and grass I want to be born again

  As fish and deer, as bird and butterfly

  And out of every form

  My longing will tear each single stage

  To the final pains

  To the final pains of man.

  O bow now drawn and quivering

  If the white-knuckled fist of longing

  Should seek to bend both poles of life to one!

  Then often and over and over again

  You will hunt me from death to birth

  Along the painful path of creation

  Along the glorious path of creation.

  The throes of death are also one of life’s processes, no less than birth, and often one can confuse the two.

  From an undated letter

  Pain and lamentation are our first and natural response to the loss of a loved one. They help us through the initial grief and distress, but they are not enough to link us to the dead person.

  This is done on a primitive level through the cult of the dead—sacrifices, decorating the grave, monuments, flowers. But at our level, offerings to the dead must take place within our own souls, through thoughts, through the most precise memories, through the reconstruction of the dearly beloved deep within ourselves. If we can accomplish this, the dead person will walk on beside us, his image will be saved and will help us to make our pain fruitful.

  From an undated letter

  BROTHER DEATH

  One day before me you’ll appear

  To put an end to pain.

  You won’t forget I’m waiting here

  For you to break the chain.

  Brother Death, you stand afar

  A stranger more or less

  Shining like a distant star

  Over my distress.

  One day, though, you will be near

  Burning in my cause.

  Come, my brother, I am here

  Take me, I am yours.

  In recent times I have been given a powerful jolt. Getting old and falling apart, like growing in one’s earlier years, occurs in fits and starts. Or rather, it may have proceeded gently and smoothly without one’s noticing, but then every so often it suddenly takes a kind of leap, and one becomes very aware of it … The aches and pains increase, and one often needs all the support of the spirit in order to stand firm.

  From a letter written in January

  1962 to Felix Lützkendorf

  I sometimes think of Regina Ullmann, and imagine her being just as ‘busy’ as I am and as all very old people are—with weaknesses, with farewells, with fading away. These are processes that require just as much effort as growing and being active, and like all stages of life they have two faces—sometimes they are sad and painful, but sometimes they are positively remarkable, even enjoyable. It changes according to the days and according to the times of day.

  From a letter written in March

  1958 to Ellen Delp

  ONCE, A THOUSAND YEARS AGO

  From a broken dream awaking

  Restless, longing to take flight

  I hear my bamboos softly speaking

  Whispering to me in the night.

  Instead of gently resting, lying

  From old bonds I must break free

  Away from here I should be flying

  Deep into infinity.