Hymn to Old Age

by Hermann Hesse

  In one respect, I had an advantage over him. I was three months older, and my seventy-fifth birthday celebrations were behind me—I had got through it all, delivered my thanks, and the understanding organisers had given me special dispensation from making personal appearances at the celebrations. But he, my valiant Swabian, still had all of this to come, without any such dispensation, and in the near future he would have to face all the festive stresses and strains, which would be far from minor because all kinds of honours were to be showered upon him. There was also a little birthday present from me, already in the hands of a mutual friend in Stuttgart—a small, illuminated manuscript. No doubt he would cope far better than me with what lay ahead, and would know how to respond with dignity and charm to the ceremonies, allocutions, awards, and would conscientiously return the hundreds of bows and handshakes. Even if he had not been so exposed to the spotlight as I had, nevertheless his life had not been guided by the aphorism “Bene vixit qui bene latuit”*; he was a very well-known man who presumably had other enemies apart from the Nazis and had survived many a battle, but who now in the evening of his loyal, hard-working life was—in the eyes of those who knew about such things—one of the most indispensable representatives of the Swabian mind and spirit. We didn’t speak of these approaching times of honour, but we talked about those institutions of local cultural life that had given such vital support to his work during the dark days, and indeed had saved it. We also talked a little about our wives, and in particular the fact that his had recently been ill, and mine had for a few weeks been away on a well-earned holiday, fulfilling a long-held dream by going to Ithaca, Crete and Samos.

  Our second and last evening was also one of complete pleasure and harmony, producing a whole new range of items from the treasure chest of memory, plus many a wise word gleaned from my friend’s experiences. He was too conscientious and too great a lover of language ever to be a showy conversationalist, but he talked without effort, slowly and always choosing his words carefully. Later than intended, we eventually said goodbye, as he wanted to leave next morning at an hour when my day has not yet even begun, and I could rely on my son to do the honours. As we took leave of each other, we both smiled without putting into words what we were both thinking: “This is perhaps the last time.”

  The days grew ever more autumnal, the rainy ones ever darker, the brighter ones ever colder, and there was already snow on many of the hilltops. The Sunday after my guest’s departure was particularly beautiful; my son and I drove up to a high point from which we could see the Valais Alps, and in most of the surrounding villages people were still busy with the grape harvest. We enjoyed the vivid scene, and wished my friend could have been with us on this day too, taking in the blue and gold and white of the distant hills, the crystal-clear brightness of the air and the colourful groups of grape-pickers on the vine terraces.

  At this very moment, as we were thinking of him on our way, my friend died.

  He had reached home safe and sound and happy, had written postcards to several friends, including my sister, telling them about his visit to Montagnola, had also informed me about his safe return, and had thereupon been required to devote all his attention to one of his many offices. And on the very afternoon that had blessed us with its light and shimmering colours, he had felt unwell for just a short while, and then with a minimum of fuss had died. I learnt about it the next morning through a telegram which asked me to write a few words to be spoken at the graveside, and soon afterwards came a short letter from his wife. It said: “At two o’clock yesterday, Sunday, my husband died unexpectedly and without a struggle. He was able to experience friendship and love on his visit to you, and for that I would like to thank you. May you too think of him now with good thoughts.”

  Oh yes, with all my heart I thought of him. And despite the pain this loss brought me, above all else this death, of a man who in his life had been regarded as a model by so many good and honourable people, seemed to me in itself a wondrous model. To the very last moment he had accepted his responsibilities, faithfully done his work, and then no sickbed, no complaint, no cry for sympathy and attention, but just a simple, quiet, gentle death. A death which, for all one’s grief, one had to accept; a death which brought a peaceful end to a life of courage and service, and had kindly spared a friend, who had probably not even realised how tired he was, from the demands of the world and from the stress which his birthday would have imposed on him in just a few days’ time.

  The fact that for a moment, before he allowed himself to rest, he had called on me, had sat at my table, had brought me greetings and gifts from my home, that perhaps I was the last person with whom he had held a conversation outside the confines of work and everyday life, that he had once more honoured me with his friendship and affection, with his radiant warmth and calm and good humour, was a privilege and a blessing. Without this experience, I would probably not have been able to understand his end, though ‘understand’ is perhaps not the best word for the acceptance and classification of it as something good, right, harmonious and fitting. May his friends also see it this way, and at times when they and I most need it, may his person, his being, his life and his death be a comfort and an encouraging example to us all.

  1952

  * He who was well hidden had a good life. Ovid

  ON THE NEWS

  OF THE DEATH OF A FRIEND

  Swiftly the transient fades away.

  Swiftly the withered years depart.

  With scorn the stars look down, seeming eternal.

  Deep within us only the spirit

  Impassively can watch this game

  Not with scorn, not with pain.

  For ‘transient’ and ‘eternal’

  Mean as much, mean as little …

  However, the heart

  Resists and glows with love

  Yielding like a fading flower

  To the endless call of death

  To the endless call of love.

  In growing old, one has a tendency to take moral appearances, confusion and degeneration in the lives of individuals and of nations as whims of nature, although at least one is left with the comforting prospect that after every disaster the grass and flowers will grow again, and that after every fit of madness, nations will return to certain basic moral needs within which, in spite of everything, there seems to be an innate stability and normality.

  From a letter written on

  14th June 1939 to Helene Welti

  During our conversation, [Rudolf Alexander] Schröder came up with an unforgettable remark. He was talking about age and growing old (which does me no good, and leaves a bad taste). After he’d delivered something like a song of praise to life, he bent over very close to my face, with a radiant smile, and whispered with delight: “With old age things get more and more beautiful.”

  From a letter written in

  April 1952 to Georg von der Vring

  A WALK IN LATE AUTUMN

  Autumn rains have stirred the forest grey

  The valley shivers in the morning wind

  And from the chestnut tree the fruits crash down

  Burst open, with laughter moist and brown.

  My life has been disturbed by autumn too

  The wind has ripped the shredded leaves away

  And rattles branch by branch—where is the fruit?

  I blossomed love, and yet the fruit was pain

  I blossomed faith, and yet the fruit was hate.

  The wind is tearing at my dried-up branches.

  I laugh at it. I can withstand such storms.

  What’s fruit to me? What’s purpose! Once I blossomed

  And blossom was my purpose. Now I fade

  And fading is my purpose, nothing else

  For short-term are the purposes of the heart.

  God lives in me, God dies in me, God suffers

  Within my breast, and that’s sufficient purpose.

  Right path or wrong, whether fruit or blossom

  A
ll is one, for all are merely names.

  The valley shivers in the morning wind

  And from the chestnut trees the fruits crash down

  With laughter hard and bright. And I laugh with them.

  This collapse into old age has its good side, because it makes us doubly indifferent to what goes on outside—to world history and to the joint-stock companies that drive it on.

  From a letter written c1950 to Otto

  Basler

  Moving house gets more and more difficult with age, and in the end a hearse is more welcome than a removal van.

  From a letter written on 15th April

  1931 to Helene Welti

  One becomes so undemanding in old age that if one has had a good night’s sleep and no severe pain, one is almost happy.

  From a letter written in late August

  1948 to Hans Huber

  [THE TENDENCY TOWARDS FIXED

  HABITS AND REPETITIONS]

  SOMETHING ELSE … is the way old people experience things, and here I don’t wish to and mustn’t allow myself to indulge in fiction or illusion, but will stick to my knowledge of the fact that a person of younger or even youthful years has no idea of the way old people do experience things. For basically, there are no new experiences left for them; they have long since lived through all the appropriate, predetermined primary experiences, and their ‘new’ ones—which become rarer and rarer—are repetitions of those they have already had sometimes or often; new varnish on a painting apparently finished long ago, a new layer of paint or gloss, one layer over ten, over a hundred earlier layers. And yet they do mean something new, and although they are not primary, nevertheless they are real experiences. Because every time, among other things they become encounters with oneself and examinations of oneself. The man who sees the ocean for the first time or hears Figaro for the first time experiences something different and generally more intense than the man who does so for the tenth or fiftieth time. Because the latter has different, less active but more experienced and more sharply honed eyes and ears for the ocean or the music, and he not only feels the no longer new impression differently and more discerningly than the other, but with this repetition he is also reminded of the earlier occasions, and so as well as experiencing the already familiar ocean and music in a new way, he also encounters himself again, his younger self, and the many earlier stages of his life within the framework of that experience—regardless of whether he does so with a smile, a sneer, a superior sniff, emotion, embarrassment, joy or regret. In general, the older a person is, the more he is inclined to view his earlier exploits and experiences with emotion or embarrassment rather than with feelings of superiority, and that applies particularly to creative people like artists, who in the later stages of life, on being reunited with the power, intensity and richness of their peak years will very rarely get the feeling: “Oh, how weak and stupid I was in those days!” On the contrary, they are more liable to wish: “Oh, if only I had a bit of the energy I had then!”

  We poets and intellectuals attach a great deal of importance to memory—it is our capital and we live on it, but when we are surprised by an intrusion from the underworld of the forgotten and the discarded, it is always the discovery, whether pleasant or not, of a powerful force which does not reside within the memories of ourselves that we have so carefully nurtured. Occasionally I have had the thought or the suspicion that it might be the desire to wander free and to conquer the world, the hunger for the new, the not yet seen, for travel and for the exotic, that is familiar to most people with a bit of imagination, especially when they are young, and also a longing to be forgotten, to drive away what has been, in so far as it oppresses us, and to cover the images we know with as many new images as possible. On the other hand, the tendency of old age to cling to fixed habits and repetitions, to go back again and again to the same areas, people and situations would then be a striving after memories, a never satisfied need to reassure oneself concerning what memory has preserved, together perhaps with a desire, a mild hope, that one might see this preserved treasure expand, perhaps one day to rediscover this or that experience, this or that encounter, this or that image or face which had been lost and forgotten, and thus to add to the store of memories. All old people, even if they are not aware of it, are in search of the past, the seemingly irretrievable which is not, however, irretrievable and not necessarily gone for ever, because under certain conditions—for instance, through literature—it can be restored and for ever torn away from the grasp of the past.

  From the circular letter Engadiner

  Erlebnisse (Engadine Experiences)

  1953

  Truth is a typical ideal of young people, whereas love is one for mature people and for those who take pains to prepare themselves for decline and death. For thinking people, the urgent quest for truth only ceases when they have realised that man is extraordinarily badly equipped for the recognition of objective truth, so that searching for it really can’t be the activity for us humans. But even those who never actually achieve such insights go through the same process of discovery in the course of their unconscious experiences. Possessing the truth, being right, knowing, being able to distinguish precisely between good and evil, and consequently judging, punishing, condemning, being able and allowed to wage war—this is for young people and it suits young people too. As one gets older and comes to a standstill in the face of these ideals, so the ability—which in any case is pretty feeble—that we humans have, to ‘awaken’ and to sense superhuman truths, simply fades away.

  From a letter written in June 1931

  to Fanny Schiler

  Age and calcification are advancing; sometimes the blood doesn’t want to flow through the brain as it should. But when all is said and done, these evils also have their good side—one doesn’t take things in so clearly or so intensely any more, one misses a lot, one no longer even feels various blows and pinpricks, and a part of the person that was once called me is already there where soon the whole will be.

  From Ein Brief nach

  Deutschland (A Letter to

  Germany) 1946

  It’s one of the few good things about old age that one can’t be so completely touched by the present and reality any more, because there’s a slowly thickening veil coming between us.

  From a letter written on 7th September

  1951 to Ludwig Tügel

  Nowadays when one is old, one lives on a different geological level with a different climate and in a completely different environment from that in which one grew up and which was once normal and natural. At times one is amazed that one is actually still here.

  From a letter written in February

  1950 to Jeanne Berta Semmig

  THE PATH TO LONELINESS

  The world falls away

  All joys burn out

  That once you loved;

  The ashes threaten darkness.

  Into yourself

  You sink, reluctantly

  Pushed by a stronger hand;

  Freezing, you stand in a world that now is dead;

  Drifting towards you here, and weeping

  The dying sounds of your lost home

  Of children’s voices, tender tones of love.

  Hard is the path to loneliness.

  Harder than you ever thought

  And the source of dreams is dry.

  Have faith, though! At the end

  Of this your path, there will be a home

  Death and rebirth

  The grave, the eternal Mother.

  [HAVING REACHED

  VERY OLD MANHOOD]

  BETWEEN THE OLD and the very old there is a strange relationship. At least this is how it is with me—when a younger friend or colleague surprises me with the fact that suddenly he is sixty or seventy, has heart problems and has had to give up smoking, or has been made an honorary doctor, honorary president or freeman of the city, or has been assailed by one of the many other symptoms of old age, I am quite shocked by th
e perception that someone whose youthful follies we have just been looking upon with mild indulgence has suddenly claimed his place among the grown-ups and the dignitaries and, with grey or white hair, has entered the realm of old age, complete with honorary titles and decorations. With the stubbornness of my advanced years I had subconsciously expected, and indeed relied upon the fact, that the younger man would remain young and would keep me for ever in touch with young people.

  Once I have got over this first little shock, then of course I no longer consider the younger person’s moving-along process to be something audacious and even presumptuous, but instead begin to feel a degree of sympathy for the now old; that is to say, with the facts having shown themselves to be unalterable, my old man’s stubbornness immediately establishes a distance between myself and my younger friend. Because, I assume in the darkness of my senility, these symptoms that accompany the arrival of a greater age—birthdays and honours as well as aches and pains—still have the gloss of something new, the importance of a first experience, with the seventieth birthday boy feeling rather like the newly confirmed or the newly graduated; a new stage has been reached, a new room has been entered; the sense of resignation mingles pleasantly with the scent of ceremony—there will presumably be a celebratory feast with saddle of venison, burgundy and champagne, and the happy new arrival will still take it all fairly seriously, will listen not without emotion to the speech by the Minister of State or the Lord Mayor, will look back not without melancholy at the harmless high spirits of earlier celebrations and so, as I ascertain with some smugness, will therefore still be a youngster and a beginner by comparison with those of us who are really old. For those of us who are really old imagine that we have transcended all these vanities and, in cool proximity to death, now live a life of wisdom and dignified renunciation, and only rarely in our especially enlightened moments do we realise how slight is the difference between being very old and being old, and between our wisdom and the illusions and vanities which we short-sightedly attribute to those who are not yet standing at the same lofty heights as ourselves. And in these enlightened moments, we also recall how once as children or boys or teenagers we thought and laughed about the old and the very old, and we know that this laughter was far from being as innocent and silly as we might, even after many decades, have liked to think it was. Indeed we know that ultimately the only wisdom of age that has any substance consists in once more becoming a child.