Pen pictures of ageing – The Hindu

Ageing has been represented in literature in all its complexity and subtle niceties. Its nuances and dynamics have attracted writers down the ages. Decrepitude, disease and death have fired their imagination. The philosophical musings on death and the poetic meditations on illness seek to define the absurdity of the human condition. The loneliness of the aged and their lived experience often constitute the emotional substratum of the literary text.

Gerontology, the science of ageing, is a multidisciplinary field that deals with the biological, psychological and social aspects of ageing. The empathy that literature evokes and the subtle shades of human experience it unfolds would give a new dimension to gerontological science and geriatric medicine. Ageing is a social and cultural construct. The venerable old man of a particular historical period or cultural context may degrade into a “paltry thing, a tattered coat upon a stick” in another.

In Shakespeare’s King Lear (1605), Lear, the senile, narcissistic, volatile and choleric tragic hero, is stripped of his power and authority by his ungrateful daughters. Forlorn and forsaken, he is buffeted by the fury of nature and inner turbulence, which inevitably unhinge him. Suffering transforms him into a humane and compassionate person who can identify himself with the “poor naked wretches” of the world. Finally, chastened and subdued, he feels excited to be sent to prison with Cordelia, where they would “sing like birds in the cage”. But fate has something else in store for them.

Santiago, the old unlucky fisherman in Ernest Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea (1952), is the quintessential existential hero. He has been unable to catch a fish for 84 days. On the 85th day, he hooks a huge marlin and struggles with it for hours before harpooning it. Then, he has to face a new challenge as sharks attack and devour his prized catch. He taps into his reserve energy. The unequal fight goes on until the fish is reduced to a skeleton. Ultimately, the story highlights the themes of perseverance, resilience, pride and the complex relationship between man and an indifferent nature. Santiago is trying to find meaning in a meaningless and absurd universe. He takes the responsibility for his existential choices. “Man is not made for defeat. A man can be destroyed, but not defeated” – These iconic words of Santiago are redolent of his indomitable spirit.

In Thomas Mann’s ‘Death in Venice’ (1912), ageing is central to the physical, moral and psychological collapse of the protagonist, Gustav Aschenbach, a disciplined and famous German writer. Confronted with a mid-life crisis in creativity precipitated by a structured and rigid life, he leaves for Venice, the city of passion, ecstasy and chaos, hoping to revive his youth and rediscover his creativity. Undeterred by the raging epidemic, he gets entangled in a homo-erotic relationship with a 15-year-old boy, Tadzio. At last, he falls a victim to cholera and dies.

Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s ‘Love in the Time of Cholera’ (1985) tells how roses bloom again in the life of two aged lovers, Florentino Ariza and Fermina Daza. Love had sprouted in their young hearts decades ago, but fate separated them until they were re-united in their old age, when cholera was stalking the streets of the city. Running out of time, they re-dedicate themselves to each other.

Dr.Gaustine, the geriatric psychiatrist of Time Shelter (2023), the Man Booker Prize winning novel by the Bulgarian novelist Georgi Gospodinov, builds a “clinic of the past” for his ageing Alzheimer’s patients, considering their predilection for happy yesterdays. It is a sort of reminiscence therapy, involving psychosocial intervention, based on the recall of the past.

There are countless literary texts which are woven around the theme of ageing. There are also immortal characters like Ursula Buendia of Marquez’s’ One Hundred Years of Solitude (1967), Pampa Kampana of Salman Rushdie’s Victory City (2023) and the unnamed Caribbean dictator in Marquez’s Autumn of the Patriarch (1975) who are resilient and indefatigable even in the twilight of their life. Like Tennyson’s archetypal ageing hero, Ulysses, they “strive, to seek, to find and not to yield”.

The insights received from literature would provide new ways of looking at the sunset years and would be instrumental in widening the scope of gerontology. Writers with their imaginative reaches and intuitive powers can unravel the subtle and inscrutable facets of human experience. Literary narratives on ageing are non-linear and multi-layered. They contest the biomedical model of ageing that considers ageing as a universal and irreversible process, brought about by cellular damage which is sought to be managed by clinical intervention.

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