Senior Seminar

At 60, I have already outlived, at least in duration, most of the writers of my closest study. Marcus Aurelius died just short of 59; Michel de Montaigne at 59; Henry David Thoreau, 44; Marcel Proust, 51. Of that select bibliography, only Henry Adams have I yet to eclipse in longevity, who died at 80. Shakespeare died at 52. His achievement, astounding as it is, gave Henry Adams pause to imagine the Bard’s death the greatest tragedy in literature. “I wish Shakespeare had lived long enough to draw an old man from his own point of view,” he wrote, “drama lost its greatest creation when Shakespeare died young. At about 75 he would have been worth reading.” (Henry was in his early 70s when he penned that remark.) My other Henry, Henry David, had his doubts. He conceded the old aged to be “not without honor of a kind,” but couldn’t recommend us highly for wisdom or “important advice.” Between my Henries, I take a middle position. While maturity may be no better an instructor of youth than, well, youth itself, who inhabit an entirely new environment of opportunity, it may reasonably instruct us, the aged, a sort of senior seminar. An old, perhaps the oldest school. Let us think, if only to ourselves.