ARTISTS AND OLD AGE
303
these men and women of genius almost half have lived to be very
old indeed. Our life-span
is
seventy years, so let us waste no time
on that. Let us begin straight away with those who live more than
seventy-five years. I think you will be as surprised as I was. Here
now
is
a list, merely with the names and ages, beginning with painters
and sculptors:
Titian ninety-nine, Michelangelo eighty-nine, Franz Hals
eighty-six, Goya eighty-two, H. Thoma eighty-five, Liebermann
eighty-eight, Munch eighty-one, Degas eighty-three, Bonnard eighty,
Maillol eighty-three, James Ensor eighty-nine, Donatello eighty, Tin–
toretto seventy-six, Rodin seventy-seven, Kathe Kollwitz seventy-eight,
Renoir seventy-eight, Menzel ninety, Matisse eighty-four.
Among poets and writers: Goethe eighty-three, Shaw ninety-four,
Hamsun ninety-three; Maeterlinck eighty-seven, Tolstoy eighty-two,
Voltaire eighty-four, H. Mann eighty, Ebner-Eschenbach eighty-six,
Victor Hugo eighty-three, Tennyson eighty-three, Swift, Ibsen, Bjorn–
son and Rolland seventy-eight, Ricarda Huch eighty-three, Haupt–
mann eighty-four, Lagerlof eighty-two, Gide eighty-two, d'Annunzio
seventy-five, Spitteler, Fontane, and Freytag seventy-nine, Frenssen
eighty-two, Isolde Kurz ninety-one, Claudel eighty-five, and among
the living: Thomas Mann, Hesse, Rudolf Alexander Schroder, Al–
fred Doblin, and Hans Carossa over seventy-five.
There are, admittedly, fewer great composers. Let me mention
Verdi eighty-eight, Richard Strauss eighty-five, Pfitzner eighty, Hein–
rich Schlitz eighty-seven, Monteverdi seventy-six, Gluck and Handel
seventy-four, Bruckner seventy-two, Palestrina seventy-one, Buxte–
hude and Wagner seventy, Georg Schumann eighty-one, Cherubini
eighty-two, Reznicek eighty-five, Auber eighty-four; and among the
living: Sibelius eighty-eight.
My list is by no means complete. I did not set about compiling
it systematically, but only picked up whatever I happened to come
across when I was looking into this matter in general. I am convinced
the list could be extended further.
If
one wanted to explain this phe–
nomenon, there are two points one could bring up. First of
all,
there
is
the sociological point that it
is
primarily those who live long who
become great and famous, because they have a long time in which to
produce their works. Secondly, there seems to be a quite reasonable
biological explanation: regarded from one point of view
art
is,
after
