Peter Washington

Age Cannot Wither Us

A cliché popular with literary schoolmasters when I was a boy held lyric poetry to be the province of youth, and prose fiction of maturity. Exceptions to the rule such as Yeats or Radiguet were said to prove it.

Like all clichés, the distinction, though crude, contains a germ of truth if applied in context, depending as it does on a Romantic notion of imagination as a living organism, itself subject to the process of aging. To adapt the image of that archetypal romantic poem, Kubla Khan, genius erupts in an untameable flood of song from the young (Shelley, Byron, Keats), subsiding into a sedate river of prose in middle-age (Austen, Scott). Nonsense, perhaps, but suggestive nonsense.

Sign Up to our newsletter

Receive free articles, highlights from the archive, news, details of prizes, and much more.

Follow Literary Review on Twitter

  • Last Tweets

    • 'The physical courage he demonstrated as a young man [...] gave way to intellectual power; radical thought, gifted… ,
    • 'While Jane Austen didn’t perhaps achieve the full recognition that she deserved in her lifetime, even then she out… ,
    • 'All I have is a voice To undo the folded lie, The romantic lie in the brain Of the sensual man-in-the-street And t… ,
    • 'You are interested in a particular subject; basic research hardens this interest into an obsession, after which th… ,
    • 'Keynes predicted that future generations would enjoy such an improved standard of living that they might work just… ,
    • 'Various dislocations ... emerge, iceberg-like, out of a troubled sea of unconscious motivation and confront Eisenb… ,
    • Today is the first today of the – they've got some excellent events coming up over the next two weeks.… ,
    Follow Us