Hymn to Old Age

by Hermann Hesse

  The man I’m talking about had travelled a lot when he was younger. Once a year he had gone to Italy and had spent days, or sometimes weeks wandering through stately old towns and villages, gazing up at towers and cathedrals, walking round collections of ancient works of art—an activity engaged in by so many since Winckelmann and Goethe, and for which his true model, whom he loved the most, was the scholar from Basel, Jacob Burckhardt. As well as Milan, Florence and Venice, in this manner he had got to know a large number of Italian towns, and many of them he liked so much that he often returned to them. Others, however, attractive and promising though they might have been, remained unvisited, and these were not so much the remote and inaccessible places as those very towns that lay on major railway routes and whose stations the man had frequently seen for himself, each time thinking that he should get out here too in order to change his book knowledge of these towns into living images and experiences, though each time also thinking that there was no hurry for him to do so.

  The last journey of this kind was to Lake Garda, Lake Iseo and Brescia, and it had ended with a long and delightful trip on Lake Maggiore, from Arona to the northern end of the lake, on a day as clear as glass and with the foehn whipping the water, and as it later seemed to him, he had found it even more difficult than usual to bid farewell to Italy. This was in spring 1914, and it was to be his last journey to Italy, because shortly afterwards the Great War began, and when it was over the man had other things to think about than lovely, educational journeys—his youth and some of his joie de vivre had gone, and year followed year, difficult years and bearable years, and slowly, as the evening sun filters its light away until everything is grey, youth and the desire to travel and many other urges and many other lights filtered away and were lost from this man’s life and feelings, until he stood on the spot where we first met him, in his sixtieth year, a diligent and intellectually still unwearied man, but a man with routines and with problems, with a lot of work and little leisure, still a long way from the end, still spared from any major illness, but fading all the same and barely mobile, no lover of parties, no lover of surprises and quick decisions, no longer the curious traveller and wanderer whose heart leaps at the sight of a distant blue mountain, a golden cloud hovering on the horizon, filling him with the joys of travel and an unquenched love for the beauty of the world.

  Last year, he was badly affected by several personal blows and losses, and in suffering and enduring them he felt that they had struck at the very roots of his own life force. This bad period, however, was followed by a kinder one, in which he received signs of love and loyalty from old friends, so that gradually he regained his confidence and accustomed himself to accepting without defensiveness or irony this and that reference to the approach of his sixtieth birthday, and even secretly began to look forward to it. In this calm and indeed cheerful frame of mind, he also began to flirt with the idea of perhaps travelling once more to Italy, after a gap of over twenty years, and to try a trip to Tuscany or Umbria, wandering through beautiful foreign towns and landscapes, with all the little delights and adventures of a traveller’s life. Of course he had long since given up making such journeys, even just for pleasure, and often enough he had expressed his dissatisfaction at the now fashionable forms of travel which, although they seemed to give people no less pleasure than in former times, still seemed to him unworthy of a person with taste. All these arrangements with travel agents, preoccupation with the current exchange rate, the superficial race through different countries whose languages and cultures the tourist didn’t know, with Venice becoming just a village for an enjoyable evening on the beach, Marseille a restaurant for fish soup, Palestine and Egypt decorations for spoilt guests in luxury hotels—all of this seemed to him to be a sign of decadence and triviality, and if you objected that the world had grown younger, and instead of scholarly, meaningful journeys in the style of Goethe or Humboldt people nowadays quite rightly enjoyed simpler, more primitive and more easily digestible things like swimming pools and sport, and the carefree attractions for youth unsullied by intellect, then he would let out a scornful laugh and say that although he couldn’t deny people were getting younger and younger, soon they would no longer need their swimming pools and sports facilities but, having got even younger, would be satisfied with the delights of thumb-sucking. Just lately, though, he seems to have forgotten these somewhat grumpy assertions—or at any rate, he hasn’t let them stop him from once more thinking of travelling himself, and going to Italy …

  c1936

  NO REST

  Bird of my soul, you never cease

  One question fearfully to raise:

  When, after all our riotous days,

  Will there be rest, will there be peace?

  I know we’ll scarce have made our way

  To silent stillness ’neath the ground

  When there’ll be yearnings newly found

  To plague you every peaceful day.

  And so you’ll leave our resting place.

  In search of suffering you’ll go

  And then impatiently you’ll glow—

  The newest star in space.

  Whoever has grown old and is attentive can observe how, despite the decline of powers and potentials, with every year right to the very end a life goes on expanding and increasing the endless network of relationships and connections, and how so long as memory remains alert, nothing of what passes and is past is ever lost.

  From Weihnachtsgaben

  (Christmas Gifts) 1956

  DEAD LEAF

  Each blossom to its fruit gives birth

  Each morning dawns then leads to night

  For nothing ever lasts on Earth

  But all things change or else take flight.

  Even the finest summer will

  Feel autumn’s chilly breath one day.

  Be patient, leaf, and hold on still

  Until the wind steals you away.

  Play the game, there’s no defence

  So simply let it come

  And let the wind just bear you hence

  And blow you to your home.

  [HARMONY OF

  MOVEMENT AND REST]

  FOR MOST OLD PEOPLE, spring is not a good time—it also hit me hard. The powders and injections didn’t help much; the pain spread as lavishly as the flowers in the grass, and the nights were tough going. Nevertheless, the few short hours each day when I was able to go outside brought me intervals of forgetting and dedication to the miracle of spring, and occasional moments of delight and revelation, every one of which would have been worth holding on to, if only there were a way of holding on, if only these miracles and revelations could be described and passed on. They take you by surprise, and can last for seconds or minutes, these experiences in which a process in the life of nature addresses us, displays itself to us, and if one is old enough, it seems as if one’s whole life with joys and sorrows, with love and recognition, with friendships and love affairs, with books, music, travel and work has been nothing but a long diversion to the maturity of these moments, in which through the image of a landscape, a tree, a human face, a flower, God shows himself to us—the meaning and the value of all being and all happening is revealed to us. And the truth is, even if presumably in our younger years we have experienced more intensely and more dazzlingly the sight of a blossoming tree, a cloud formation, a thunderstorm, nevertheless for the experience that I’m referring to one does need great age, one needs the infinite sum of things seen, lived through, thought, felt and suffered, a certain frailty and proximity to death in order to perceive within a tiny revelation of nature the God, the spirit, the mystery, the coming together of opposites, the great oneness. Of course young people can experience this too, but less often, and without this unity of thought and feeling, of sensual and spiritual harmony, of stimulus and awareness.

  During our dry spring, before the rains came with the sequence of stormy days, I often stopped at a place in my vineyard where at this time of year I
build my campfire on a patch of still uncultivated soil. There, in the whitethorn hedge that closes off the garden, a beech tree has been growing for years—at first just a little shrub sprouting from a seed blown out of the forest; for several years I had somewhat reluctantly left it standing there just provisionally; I felt sorry for the whitethorn, but then the tough little evergreen beech flourished so prettily that eventually I accepted it, and now it’s already a sturdy little tree and I love it twice as much because the mighty old beech, my favourite tree in all the nearby forest, was recently chopped down, and the pieces of its sawn-up trunk lie there with massive solidity like the stumps of ruined columns. My little tree is probably the child of that great giant.

  It has always delighted and impressed me how persistently my little beech clings to its leaves. When everything else has long since been bare, it still stands there wrapped in the cloak of its dead leaves, all through December, January and February, and the wind pulls at it, snow falls over it and drops down from it, and those dry leaves, at first dark brown, become ever brighter, thinner, silkier, but the tree won’t let them go, because they must protect the young buds. Then at some time every spring, each year later than expected, one day the tree has changed, has lost its old leaves, and replaced them with damply shining, tender new buds. This time I witnessed the change. It happened soon after the rain had left the countryside all green and fresh, one moment in the afternoon around mid-April, and so far this year I hadn’t yet heard the cuckoo and had found no narcissi in the meadows. A few days earlier, I had stood here in a strong north wind, shivering, with my coat collar turned up, and I had watched with admiration as my beech tree stood there impassively in the biting wind and hardly yielding a leaf—tough and brave, stiff and stubborn, it held on to its bleached old foliage.

  And now, today, as I stood in the gentle, windless warmth of my fire, breaking bits of wood, I saw it happen—there arose the softest of breezes, nothing but a breath, and in hundreds and thousands those leaves, so long preserved, came down, light and soundless, willingly, tired of their endurance, of their defiance and of their courage. What had held on for five or six months of dauntless resistance now, in a few minutes, gave in to a nothing, a mere puff, because the time had come, because the bitter struggle was no longer necessary. Down they floated and fluttered, smiling, ripe, without a fight. The little breeze was far too weak to carry the light, thin leaves very far, and so like fine rain they drizzled down and covered the path and grass at the foot of the tree, a few of whose buds had already opened and grown green. What had this astonishing and moving show revealed to me? Was it death, the easy and spontaneous death of the winter foliage? Was it life, the pushing, jubilant youth of the buds whose suddenly awakened will had created space for themselves? Was it sad, was it cheerful? Was it a warning to me, the old man, to let myself flutter and fall—an admonition that perhaps I too was taking up the space of those younger and stronger than myself? Or was it a command to hold on, like the leaves of the beech, and stay on my feet as long and as obstinately as I could, to brace myself and resist, because then, when the moment was right, the farewell would be easier and happier? No, like every such revelation, it was a manifestation of the great and the eternal, the coming together of opposites fused in the flames of reality; it meant nothing, and warned of nothing, or rather it meant everything, it meant the mystery of existence, and it was beauty, it was joy, it was meaning, it was a gift and a discovery for the onlooker, as Bach is for the ear and Cézanne for the eye. These names and meanings were not the experience itself—they only came later; the experience itself was just an appearance, a miracle, a mystery, as beautiful as it was serious, as sweet as it was inexorable.

  At the same spot, by the whitethorn hedge and near the beech tree, now that the world had turned a juicy green and on Easter Sunday the first call of the cuckoo had graced our forest, one mild and changeable, windswept stormy day such as usually prepares the leap from spring to summer, the great mystery addressed me once more through a no less allegorical visual experience. In the heavily overcast sky, which nevertheless kept throwing bright sunbeams down into the budding green of the valley, the clouds were staging a great piece of theatre; the wind seemed to be blowing in all directions at the same time, though south-north seemed to be the favourite. The whole atmosphere was electric with the sound and fury. And in the midst of this spectacle, suddenly forcing itself into my view, stood another tree—a young and handsome tree, a freshly foliaged poplar in my neighbour’s garden. It shot up like a rocket, waving, elastic, with pointed top, in the short intervals of windlessness closed up tight like a cypress, and as the wind strengthened gesticulating with a hundred slender, combed-out branches. The top of this lovely tree reared and rocked, its foliage gently flashing and whispering, rejoicing in its power and youthful greenness, softly swaying like the needle of a scale, at one moment giving way like a giant catapult, and then spontaneously springing back (not until much later did it occur to me that decades ago I had already been alert to this phenomenon, which I’d seen on a peach tree, and I had recorded it in the poem Der Blütenzweig—The Flowering Branch).

  Joyfully, fearlessly and even mischievously, the poplar left its branches and leafy cloak to the mercy of the wet and swelling wind, and what it sang into the stormy day and what it wrote on the sky with its pointed top was beautiful, and perfect, and as light-hearted as it was serious, as much doing as being done by, as much fun as fate, and once again it contained all contrasts and contradictions. It was not the wind that was the winner and strong because it could shake and bend the tree; it was not the tree that was the winner and strong because each time it bent it could elastically and triumphantly spring back into position; it was the interplay between the two, the harmony of movement and rest, of heavenly and earthly powers; the endlessly elaborate dance of the treetop in the gale was only an image, only a revelation of the world’s mystery, beyond strength and weakness, good and evil, done and being done by. For a little while, for a little eternity, in all this I could read the pure and perfect manifestation of what is otherwise concealed and secret, as if I were reading Anaxagoras or Lao Tse. And once again it seemed to me as if, in order to see this image and read this writing, I had needed not only the gift of an hour in spring, but also the deeds and misdeeds, the follies and lessons, the pleasures and pains of very many years and decades, and I felt the dear poplar tree which had presented me with this show to be nothing but a boy, innocent and inexperienced. It would have to be worn down by many frosts and snowfalls, shaken by many gales, slashed and scarred by many thunderbolts, until perhaps it too would be able to watch and listen and eagerly enquire into the great mystery.

  From the circular letter

  Aprilbrief (April Letter) 1952

  MARCH SUNSHINE

  Drunk in the morning glare

  A yellow butterfly flits.

  By the window in his chair

  A sleepy old man sits.

  The spring was once a treat—

  Singing without a care

  He’d walked down many a street

  Dust flying o’er his hair.

  Although the blossoming bough

  And golden butterfly

  Seem no older now

  Than in the years gone by

  The aroma and the colour

  Are not so sweet or bright.

  The light is colder, duller

  The air makes lungs feel tight.

  Beneath the blue-white sky

  The spring as softly sings

  As humming bees. The butterfly

  Spreads its golden wings.

  ON AGE

  OLD AGE IS A STAGE in our lives, and like all the other stages it has its own face, its own atmosphere and temperature, its own joys and needs. We old men with white hair, like all our younger human brethren, have the task of giving meaning to our existence, and even someone critically ill or dying, who lies in his bed scarcely able to hear a cry that comes from this world, still has his task—
something to be done that is important and necessary. Being old is just as fine and sacred a task as being young; learning to die and dying is just as valuable a function as any other—provided it is done with respect for the meaningfulness and sanctity of all life. An old man who only hates his white hair and his proximity to death is as unworthy a representative of this phase of life as a young, strong man who hates his job and his daily work and tries to get out of them.

  In brief, if an old man is to achieve his goal and do justice to his task, he must be in accord with age and with everything that age brings with it—he must say yes to all of it. Without this yes, without acceptance of what nature demands of us, we lose the value and the sense of all our days—whether we are old or young—and we betray life.

  Everyone knows that old age brings its problems, and that death waits at the end of it. Year after year one must make more sacrifices and accept more deprivations. One must learn to distrust one’s senses and one’s powers. The path which not so long ago was just a little walk becomes long and tiring, and one day we can no longer manage it. We must give up the foods which all our lives we have so enjoyed eating. Physical joys and pleasures become rarer, and we must pay an ever greater price for them. And then all the breakages and illnesses, the weakening of the senses, the waning of the organs, the many aches and pains, especially in the long and fearful nights—none of this can be denied, for it is stark reality. But it would be sad and pathetic just to give in to this process of decay and not to see that old age has its good side, its advantages, its sources of comfort and enjoyment. When two old people meet, they should not speak only of their accursed gout, of their arthritic limbs and breathlessness on the stairs, they should not just exchange tales of their sufferings and annoyances, but they should also talk about cheerful and enjoyable experiences. And there are plenty of those.