I'm turning 44 next month, and I have the sense that 44 is going to be a very good year, a year of fulfillment, realization. I have that sense, not because of anything particular in store for me, but because I read it would be a good year in a 1968 book by Norman Mailer.
Slijedeći mjesec napunit ću 44 godine, i imam osjećaj da će 44 biti jako dobra godina, godina ostvarenja, realizacija. Osjećam to, ne zbog nečega posebnog što mi predstoji, već jer sam pročitao da će ovo biti dobra godina u knjizi Normana Mailera iz 1968.
"He felt his own age, forty-four ..." wrote Mailer in "The Armies of the Night," "... felt as if he were a solid embodiment of bone, muscle, heart, mind, and sentiment to be a man, as if he had arrived."
"Svoju vlastitu dob, četrdeset i četiri godine ..." piše Mailer u romanu "Vojske noći," "... osjećao je kao utjelovljenje od kosti, mišića, srca i uma, i težnji da bude muškarac, kao da je stigao."
Yes, I know Mailer wasn't writing about me. But I also know that he was; for all of us -- you, me, the subject of his book, age more or less in step, proceed from birth along the same great sequence: through the wonders and confinements of childhood; the emancipations and frustrations of adolescence; the empowerments and millstones of adulthood; the recognitions and resignations of old age. There are patterns to life, and they are shared. As Thomas Mann wrote: "It will happen to me as to them."
Da, znam da Mailer nije pisao o meni. Ali isto tako znam da je; za sve nas -- tebe, mene, subjekt njegove knjige, starenje više manje postepeno, nastaviti koračati od rođenja, duž istaknutog slijeda, kroz čuda i ograničenja djetinjstva; odvojenosti i frustracija adolescencije; moćnih i velikih trenutaka zrele dobi; priznanja, ali i rezignacija odrasle dobi. Postoje šablone u životu, i svi ih dijelimo. Thomas Mann je napisao: "Dogodit će se meni kao i njima."
We don't simply live these patterns. We record them, too. We write them down in books, where they become narratives that we can then read and recognize. Books tell us who we've been, who we are, who we will be, too. So they have for millennia. As James Salter wrote, "Life passes into pages if it passes into anything."
Ne samo da živimo po obrascima. Mi ih i bilježimo. Mi ih zapisujemo u knjige, gdje postaju pripovijetke koje zatim možemo čitati i prepoznavati. Knjige nam također otkrivaju što smo bili, tko smo, i što ćemo postati. To rade već tisućljećima. Kako je James Salter napisao, "Ako postoji jedna stvar u koju se život prenosi -- to su stranice."
And so six years ago, a thought leapt to mind: if life passed into pages, there were, somewhere, passages written about every age. If I could find them, I could assemble them into a narrative. I could assemble them into a life, a long life, a hundred-year life, the entirety of that same great sequence through which the luckiest among us pass. I was then 37 years old, "an age of discretion," wrote William Trevor. I was prone to meditating on time and age. An illness in the family and later an injury to me had long made clear that growing old could not be assumed. And besides, growing old only postponed the inevitable, time seeing through what circumstance did not. It was all a bit disheartening.
I tako je prije 6 godina, misao prošla kroz moju glavu: ako se životna mudrost uistinu izljeva u stranice, onda negdje, moraju postojati odlomci o svakoj mogućoj životnoj dobi. Njihovim pronalaskom, mogao bih sklopiti cijelinu. Cijelinu koja zatim postaje život, stotinu godina dug život, potpunost tog veličanstvenog slijeda koji samo najsretniji među nama dovrše u cijelosti. Tada mi je bilo 37 godina, "razdoblje diskretnosti," piše William Trevor. Bio sam sklon meditaciji o vremenu i dobi. Bolest u obitelji, a kasnije i ozljeda koja me zadesila jasno su mi pokazale da ne možemo pretpostaviti kada ćemo ostariti. Uostalom, starenje samo odgađa neizbježno, dok vrijeme vidi kroz ono što okolnosti ne mogu. Sve to bilo je pomalo obeshrabrujuće.
A list, though, would last. To chronicle a life year by vulnerable year would be to clasp and to ground what was fleeting, would be to provide myself and others a glimpse into the future, whether we made it there or not. And when I then began to compile my list, I was quickly obsessed, searching pages and pages for ages and ages. Here we were at every annual step through our first hundred years. "Twenty-seven ... a time of sudden revelations," "sixty-two, ... of subtle diminishments."
Popis stvari bi doduše potrajao. Zabilježiti svaku ranjivu godinu života značilo bi očuvati ono nestalno, pružajući sebi, ali i drugima pogled u budućnost, čak i ako smo već do tamo stigli. I kad sam tada počeo sastavljati, svoju listu -- ubrzo sam opsesivno pretraživao stranicu za stranicom, godinu za godinom. Prošao sam svim godišnjim stepenicama, duž svojih prvih sto godina. "Dvadesetsedam ... razdoblje iznenadnih otkrivenja," "šezdeset i dvije ... razdoblje suptilnog propadanja."
I was mindful, of course, that such insights were relative. For starters, we now live longer, and so age more slowly. Christopher Isherwood used the phrase "the yellow leaf" to describe a man at 53, only one century after Lord Byron used it to describe himself at 36.
Naravno da sam bio svjestan, relativnosti takvih shvaćanja. Za početnike, sad živimo duže, i starimo sporije. Christopher Isherwood je upotrijebio izraz "žuti list" kako bi opisao 53-godišnjaka, samo sto godina nakon što je Lord Byron, tim istim izrazom opisao sebe sa 36.
(Laughter)
(Smijeh)
I was mindful, too, that life can swing wildly and unpredictably from one year to the next, and that people may experience the same age differently. But even so, as the list coalesced, so, too, on the page, clear as the reflection in the mirror, did the life that I had been living: finding at 20 that "... one is less and less sure of who one is;" emerging at 30 from the "... wasteland of preparation into active life;" learning at 40 "... to close softly the doors to rooms [I would] not be coming back to." There I was.
Bio sam i svjestan činjenice, da je život neobuzdan i nepredvidljiv, iz godine u godinu, i da ljudi istu dob mogu proživljavati različito. Čak i da je tako,dok se lista sjedinjavala istovremeno se na stranici, jasno kao odraz u zrcalu, sjedinjavao i moj život: saznavajući da s 20 "osoba postaje sve nesigurnija svojeg pravog identiteta;" da bi sa 30 iskrsnula iz "pustoši pripreme za aktivni život;" naučivši sa 40 "... kako nježno zatvoriti vrata prema sobama kojima se [Ja] neću vraćati." Bio sam tamo.
Of course, there we all are. Milton Glaser, the great graphic designer whose beautiful visualizations you see here, and who today is 85 -- all those years "... a ripening and an apotheosis," wrote Nabokov -- noted to me that, like art and like color, literature helps us to remember what we've experienced.
Naravno, svi smo mi bili tamo. Milton Glaser, sjajni grafički dizajner čije prekrasne vizualizacije vidite ovdje, i kojemu je danas 85 -- sve ove godine "... zrenje i apoteoza," piše Nabokov -- napominjale su mi da, kao umjetnost i boja, književnost nam pomaže da se sjetimo onoga što smo iskusili.
And indeed, when I shared the list with my grandfather, he nodded in recognition. He was then 95 and soon to die, which, wrote Roberto Bolaño, "... is the same as never dying." And looking back, he said to me that, yes, Proust was right that at 22, we are sure we will not die, just as a thanatologist named Edwin Shneidman was right that at 90, we are sure we will. It had happened to him, as to them.
I doista, kad sam podijelio popis sa svojim djedom, on je kimnuo u znak potvde. Tada mu je bilo 95 i bio je na samrti, koja je, piše Roberto Bolaño, "... isto kao nikada ne umrijeti." Gledajući unatrag, rekao mi je da, Proust jest bio u pravu -- sa 22 godine sigurni smo da nećemo umrijeti, kao što je Tanatolog Edwin Shneidmann -- bio u pravu da smo sa 90 uvjereni u suprotno. Dogodilo se njemu, kao i ostalima.
Now the list is done: a hundred years. And looking back over it, I know that I am not done. I still have my life to live, still have many more pages to pass into. And mindful of Mailer, I await 44.
Sada je popis dovršen: stotinu godina. I gledajući nazad prema njemu, znam da nisam gotov. Još uvijek trebam proživjeti svoj život, i još stranica u koje ću se uobličiti. I svjestan Mailera, iščekujem četrdeset četvrtu.
Thank you.
Hvala vam.
(Applause)
(Pljesak)