The Evening of Our Days

New Zealand Listener, Volume 31, Issue 793, 1 October 1954, Page 12

The Evening of Our Days

THE BLESSINGS OF OLD AGE, an anthology compiled by Marjorie E. Maxwell; Faber and Faber, English price 12/6.

(Reviewed by

Anton

Vogt

OR the young, anthologies are introductions; for the old, distillations. For those in the middle way both tend to be unsatisfactory, unless they are of their own compiling. But The Blessings of Old Age is a mood anthology, made pleasing by good taste and exquisite arrangement. Poets, prophets, saints and philosophers, from St. Luke to Day Lewis, contribute several hundred quotations on youth and age and death. The predominant mood, as one might expect, is that of reconciliation; not despair. That this mood should prevail without the prop of sentimentality, and without inducing boredom, is proof of careful selection. The Bible is the text most often quoted: "And that which thou sowest .. ." (Corinthians), "Except a corn of wheat .. ." (John), "One generation passeth away .. ." (Ecclesiastes), "Then " shal] the dust return to the earth. . (Ibid.) are representative of some 30 excerpts. But oddly enough, though the compiler is undoubtedly a_ practising Christian, the prevailing atmosphere ‘is humanist. Life is loved for its own sake, also in age: " My heart’s still light, albeit my locks be grey,’ as Allan Ramsay ‘says. Or, as Auden writes ‘with absolute honesty, "I am very glad I shall never be twenty and have to go through that business ,again. . ." Or even more emphatically, from Jan Struther: You think yourselves the adventurous ones, y6u young ones... But I, who was young and now am old, can tell you There is no adventure like the adventure of age. You are lusty in love, but you never held woman dearer Than we hold life, our slim one, our slender darling, Our sweet, fleet, fickle and false tormentor, Who stands always on tiptoe, poised to leave us, Bound to us only by the strength of our will to keep her. Far from glossing over the unpleasant, however, the compiler has given us a section she calls " Tares Among the Wheat." There is tough stuff here: John

Donne, William Blake, George Herbert, and Matthew Arnold’s Charge once more, then, and be dumb! Let the victors, when they come, When the forts of folly fall, Find thy body by the wall. The stoicism here, surely, is pagan. In point of fact, the authors most suspect are the "heroic" Christians. Robert Browning was a good poet, buta bore as a philosopher. Robert Louis Stevenson was perhaps not a poet at all, and makes a glibly unconvincing counsellor. Both are over-represented, with verbal optimism that seems more like a disease than a blessing. If I add that Byron is represented once, and unfairly, I admit the inevitable: that, in spite of my praise, Miss Maxwell and I do not share all our prejudices. But then, who does? An ex-colleague of mine was fond of saying that everyone over forty should be preparing himself for death. It isn’t an original idea, but it is an important one. This book will please anyone who has ever entertained the thought. But its chief value will ‘be for those (essentially childish) people who fear old age.