Author: Erri De Luca
Publisher: Feltrinelli
Release Date: 12-11-2024
No generation before the present one has reached old age with such a majority and in such an active state, which makes it an experimental age today. An opportunity, a chance to discover something new about oneself and others, to train one’s body and mind more steadily. Not instead the time, as many think, to only look backwards.
‘What does this age resemble?’ asks De Luca. ‘To the ascent of a mountain forest. In the thick of the conifers little light enters, I can just see what is tight around me, but upwards it thins out, clearings open up, there is more light. In this age from the top of the forest I see far away, glimpses of the future, not mine, the one without me.
The dying poet Goethe utters the last two words: ‘Mehr Licht’, more light.
It is not a request, it is the surprise of seeing it shine.
Today I see a youth that feels its future as one with that of the entire earth. They look far ahead, they see the future.
Even I, even the new old people, see further away, to the top of their woods.’
With some interventions by Ines de la Fressange, famous fashion designer and friend of the author, who looks at old age from her vantage point, “The experimental Age” is a book that is itself an opportunity to discover how resilient one can still be when one would not believe it, how many possibilities the third age contains.