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