Imaginary

Fictional Narratives

Novels:

• Though longevity is an intrinsic value, James Salter illustrates it as a virtue, and through his narrative, in All That Is: A Novel (Alfred A. Knopf, 2013), published when the author was 87 years old.

Poetry

Spring and Summer, Fall and Winter and Spring, /After each other drifting, past my window drifting! /And I lay so many years watching them drift and counting /  The years till a terror came in my heart at times, / With the feeling that I had become eternal;  / at last My hundredth year was reached!  / And still I lay Hearing the tick of the clock, and the low of cattle / And the scream of a jay flying through falling leaves!  / Day after day alone in a room of the house / Of a daughter-in-law stricken with age and gray. / And by night, or looking out of the window by day My thought ran back, it seemed, through infinite time / To North Carolina and all my girlhood days, / And John, my John, away to the war with the British, / And all the children, the deaths, and all the sorrows. / And that stretch of years like a prairie in Illinois / Through which great figures passed like hurrying horsemen, / Washington, Jefferson, Jackson, Webster, Clay. / O beautiful young republic for whom my John and I / Gave all of our strength and love!  / And O my John!  / Why, when I lay so helpless in bed for years, / Praying for you to come, was your coming delayed? / Seeing that with a cry of rapture, like that I uttered  / When you found me in old Virginia after the war, / I cried when I beheld you there by the bed, / As the sun stood low in the west growing smaller and fainter / In the light of your face!

[Edgar Lee Masters, “Rebecca Wasson”, from Spoon River Anthology (1915).]

Music: Composers, artists, and major works

Josef Suk, Asrael, symphony for large orchestra in C Minor, Op. 27 (Symphony No. 2) (1906) (approx. 55-65’), is an extended musical essay on life and death, in five movements: (1) the struggle between life and death; (2) loss; (3) a dance of life and a savage dance of death; (4) a musical portrait of the composer’s wife, who died shortly before the composition; and (5) “what is the point of living?” The work is titled after the angel of death in some versions of Western monotheism. Top recorded performances are conducted by Talich in 1952, Ančerl in 1967, Kubelik in 1981, Pešek in 1990, Bělohlávek in 1991, Mackerras in 2007 ***, Ashkenazy in 2008, Bělohlávek in 2008, and Bělohlávek in 2014. 

Music of composer Elliott Carter, who lived to the age of 103:

• Symphony No. 1 (1942) (approx. 25-29’)
• Sonata for Cello and Piano (1948) (approx. 15-16’)
• String Quartet No. 1 (1950) (approx. 42-45’)
• Sonata for Flute, Oboe, Cello & Harpsichord (1952) (approx. 15-17’)
• Variations for Orchestra (1955) (approx. 22-27’)
• String Quartet No. 2 (1959) (approx. 23’)
• Double Concerto for Harpsichord and Piano with Two Chamber Orchestras (1961) (approx. 22-25’)
• Concerto for Orchestra (1969) (approx. 22-24’)
• String Quartet No. 3 (1971) (19-21’)
• Brass Quintet (1974) (approx. 18-19’)
• A Symphony of Three Orchestras (1976) (approx. 15-16’)
• Night Fantasies, for piano (1980) (approx. 20-22’)
• Triple Duo, for ensemble (1982) (approx. 19-20’)
• String Quartet No. 4 (1986) (approx. 29’)
• Three Occasions for Orchestras (1986-1989) (approx. 16-17’)
• Violin Concerto (1990) (approx. 26-28’)
• Quintet for Piano and Winds (1991) (approx. 21-22’)
• Symphonia: “Sum fluxae pretium spei” (1993) (approx. 45’)
• String Quartet No. 5 (1994) (approx. 21’)
• Clarinet Concerto (1996) (approx. 19’)
• Cello Concerto (2000) (approx. 22’)
• Asko Concerto (2000) (approx. 11-12’)
• Flute Concerto (2008) (approx. 15’) 

Albums:

• Kaleiido, “Voyage” (2021) (51’), like a life moving in time
• George Freeman, “90 Going on Amazing” (2017) (64’): guitarist Freeman made this album at age 90 years.

Music: songs and other short pieces

• Peter Kater & Nawang Khechog, “Ocean of Long Life”

Visual Arts

• El Greco, (presumed to be El Greco) Portrait of an Old Man (c. 1600)
• Anthony van Dyck, Profile Study of a Bearded Old Man (early 1600s)
• Anthony van Dyck, Study Head of an Old Man with a White Beard (1617-20)
• Vincent van Gogh, Portrait of an Old Man with Beard (1885)
• Ilya Repin, Study of an Old Man (1878)
• Rembrandt van Rijn, An Old Man in Red (1652-54)
• Rembrandt van Rijn, Old Woman Reading
• Guido Reni, Portrait of Old Woman (1630)
• Vincent van Gogh, An Old Woman of Arles (1888)
• Lucas Cranch the Elder, The Infatuated Old Woman (1520)
• Giorgione, The Old Woman (1505)
• David Burliuk, Fifty-thousand Years Old Woman on Mars (1922)

Film and Stage

• On the Beach: a dismal fantasy about annihilation of people by nuclear war and fallout