The Production of Lateness. Rahel Rivera Godoy-Benesch

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СКАЧАТЬ (Waxman 8), and ideas about what it means have shifted over the centuries. The leading German art historianart history Willibald SauerländerSauerländer, Willibald, for instance, has shown that with the increasing secularization of the Western world, ideas about old age have developed from the concept of a passive phase of waiting for death in expectation of the afterlife (i.e. God’s decision to take one’s life) to the current focus on consumption, entertainment, and active ageing.3 Moreover, as soon as we take the definition beyond chronological old age (i.e. the period of life after sixty, or seventy, depending on life expectancy), we will have to focus on subjective ageing, which is greatly influenced by a person’s individual situation and his/her cultural environment, for instance healthhealth, or, rather, illness and pain (cf. de Medeiros and Black), as well as social and economic circumstances (cf. Twigg and Martin, “Identities”). Regional distinctions, as, for example, rural versus urban life (cf. Edmondson and Scharf) and, more importantly, racerace, classclass and gendergender differences (cf. Calasanti and King) add to the complexity and make it almost impossible to safely determine to what extent and in which ways old age influences a particular artist’s creative production.

      From this, it follows that there are only two valid methods to approach old-age style: either there is enough testimony by the artists themselves about what ageing meant or means for them and for their artistic activity,4 or critics will have to rely on general cultural concepts of ageing – with due consideration of time period, region, gendergender, and classclass. The latter method, however, lifts the work of art from the strictly biographical context of its producer, and the study of old-age style turns into a purely abstract, reception-basedreception investigation. Hutcheon and Hutcheon, in critically scrutinizing such approaches, emphasize their artificiality and ideological bias, stating that they are always “a retrospectiveretrospection, critical construct with its own aesthetic and ideological agenda and, most importantly, its own view of both aging and creativity” (“Late style(s)” 3, original italics). In other words, the latter approach diminishes insights into the “specific impact of old age on creativity” that McMullan and Smiles would wish to expand.

      With these reservations in mind, and based on further reasons to be outlined below, the term ‘late stylelate style’ rather than ‘old-age styleold-age style’ will here be proposed for investigations into the connection between artists’ old age and their creative production, especially in the study of contemporary literature. The works selected for the discussion of stylistic changes in old age – John Barth’s The Development, Karen Blixen’s “Echoes,” and Joan Didion’s Blue Nights – were all written by ageing authors, and they could thus well carry the label ‘old-age style.’ However, although the texts abound with comments about old age, much of their impact lies in their urgency to make a last and lasting statement on creativity. The writers’ old age is thus relevant not merely as another phase of life, after childhoodchildhood, adolescenceadolescence, and middle agemiddle age have passed, but as the last stage, and therefore the last opportunity to be artistically productive. Within this line of argument, old age – with whatever markers it is culturally and personally endowed, the physical declinedecline and lossloss of social status, or rather, the wealth of a long life and gained wisdomwisdom – remains an important factor, but it cannot fully account for the works’ peculiar latenesslateness. In Shakespeare and the Idea of Late Writing, McMullanMcMullan, Gordon insists on the separation between old-age style and late style because late style, rather than being linked to old age, is “a celebration of a particular liminality – of, that is, the proximity of deathdeath. Late work is, in other words, borderline activity, a creative response to death, a kind of eschatology” that is not exclusive to old age (10). Yet, since old age is by definition always the last phase of life and therefore marked by the proximity to death, one could also argue that old age induces lateness, in the sense that the awareness of their advancing age may cause elderly authors to think about the liminal status of their life and their work. Karen PainterPainter, Karen suggests:

      The artist who does not die suddenly has the opportunity, and often feels the compulsion, to concentrate on the implications – the meanings – of lateness. He or she can come to terms with the limits of life and achievementachievement and focus on what still seems most important. (6, original italics)

      For many artists, such a stock-taking is marked by a concern about the last impression that their work(s) will leave.

      In the texts selected for this study, the feeling of urgency and the desire to make a last and lasting impression as an artist is observable on several levels. Most notably, this desire is expressed explicitly by the artist-protagonists portrayed in each story. In John Barth’sBarth, John The Development, the protagonist George Newett muses that he “would be remembered as a once-conventional and scarcely noticed writer who, in his Late Period, produced the refreshingly original works that belatedly made his name” (89). In Karen Blixen’sBlixen, Karen short story “Echoes,” Pellegrina Leoni, the ageing wanderer and former opera singer, decides to engage in one last act of creativity by turning a talented peasant boy into a professional singer, reflecting that “this last part bestowed upon her [by God] was the greatest of her repertoire and in itself divine. In it she must allow herself no neglectfulness and no rest. Were she to die at the end of the respite granted her it would be but a small matter” (171). She further compares her swan song’s effect to Christ’sChrist resurrection, upon which “the whole world had built up its creed” (170). In Joan Didion’sDidion, Joan autobiographical novel Blue Nights, the author’s desire to make a last statement can be best discerned in her wish to show herself in a direct, immediate way, rejecting her former authorial masksmask. “Let me try again to talk to you directly,” she states (134). And: “The tonetone needs to be direct. I need to talk to you directly, I need to address the subject as it were” (116, original italics). What the statements from these three texts have in common is their strong concern for the audience. How will the late or last work be receivedreception? What kind of shadow will the creative work cast on its creator? What image of the artist will the general public and the critical community infer from it?

      Such concerns about the response of the audience are, of course, nothing extraordinary in an artist’s world, were it not for the fact that they are here directly linked to the artists’ age. For each of these figures, old age contributes decisively to their wish to mark a stylistic change in their late creative works, and they state this wish explicitly. Unlike musicmusic and visual artpainting, literature has the advantage of explicit language and rhetoric. Hence, the protagonists can express what old age means for them, which makes subjective ageingsubjectivity (rather than cultural stereotypesstereotype) more accessible to the critic. Interestingly enough, in each of the chosen works, the physical aspects are at the forefront. In Barth’sBarth, John The Development, long lists of age-related ailments and illnesses dictate how the various elderly characters are perceived by the reader (26–28). In Blixen’sBlixen, Karen “Echoes,” Pellegrina imagines herself attending the presentation of her last work – the singing peasant boy – as “an old unknown woman in a black shawl, the corpse in the grave witnessing its own resurrection” (170). Finally, Didion’sDidion, Joan Blue Nights abounds in descriptions of Didion’s frailtyfrailty and her fear of it. She is constantly afraid of, for instance, falling in the street, or of not being able to get up from a chair after a concert has ended (e.g. 105–111).

      This strong emphasis on age-related vulnerabilityvulnerability and proximity to deathdeath raises some interesting questions while simultaneously complicating the positioning of late-style studies within the broader field of ageing studies. Should late stylelate style (or old-age style, for that matter) be defined as a stylistic phenomenon linked to physical declinedecline? Is it physical reality that intrudes upon the mental product, effecting changes in its form (rather than, for instance, wisdomwisdom and spiritual transcendencetranscendence)? Would one thus have to rename the phenomenon ‘style of frailty’?5 This would certainly not be doing any service to those branches of ageing studies dedicated to counter ageismageism, such as cultural gerontologycultural gerontology (cf. Twigg and Martin, “The Field”) and literary gerontologyliterary gerontology (cf. Falcus), since it would СКАЧАТЬ