The Cavalier daily :: Friday, December 1, 1972 :: University of Virginia Library

Probably the last thing a
young man of twenty wants to
be is an old man of eighty. To
a young buck enjoying the
reckless excesses and various
debaucheries of
post-adolescentdom, being
eighty means tottering senility
and a total loss of the nimble
passion that accompanies
youth. Being eighty means
being rickety and crickety and sitting
prune-like in a rocking chair
waiting for the Iceman's
arrival. Looking way up at
eighty from way down at
twenty is nearly
impossible–yet possible
enough to know that eighty is
frightening and certainly no
fun. In fact, it almost looks
better not to be being than to
be being eighty.

But I'm convinced that
Ernst Gellhorn, author of The
Time Concertina, is at
seventy-nine years old just
entering the prime of his life.
For years Mr. Gellhorn was an
internationally renowned
neuro-physiologist, writing
nearly a dozen scholarly books
and hundreds of scientific
papers, entirely devoting his
life to his work, his wife, and
his family, until one day in
semi-retirement his wife died
and his world caved in.

Neurophysiology

For a while he mourned and
moped, his wife dead, his life's
work nearly over, but he soon
grew tired of his melancholy
and began to do something he
had never done before.

He began to write. Not
scientific treatises on
neurophysiology, but poetry
and prose about life, and love,
and being human. His stories,
satires and essays quickly piled
up and at seventy-nine years
old he decided he had
something to say and wanted
to be read. After several
publishers rejected The Time
Concertina as "not sell-able,"
Ernst Gellhorn, with all the
vigor of a twenty year old,
published the book himself. We
can be thankful, for the
sixty-five page Concertina gives
us a happy glimpse of man as
seen through the owl-like eyes
of an eighty-year old sage.

Forty Pieces

What he writes has, of
course, been written before.
His perspective, though, is well
worth examining. Mr. Gellhorn
has a way of being profound
without being pretentious.
Several times the book comes
close to sloshing over into the
sweet sea of sentimentality,
but it never makes it, always
saved by his sense of humor
that, "requires maturity, wide
experience, and the ability,
even after a long life of
dedicated work, to take neither
life nor oneself too
seriously."

The book contains close to
forty "little pieces", some on
"God and the World", some on
love, some on science, and
some simply called "For
Children and Those Young At
Heart". Certainly no one
theme runs through all the
stories, yet when the book is
finished, the material digested,
one lays back and can't lose
the feeling that Ernst Gellhorn
is trying to make a point.

"If I understand the
problem correctly, paradise is a
state of mind. To me it means
fulfillment through one's own
efforts, not unearned bliss
through the bounty of the
lord."

"...the main task is still to be
done. To complete the cycle of
creation by making the earth a

Ernst Gellhorn:

"The Vigor Of A Twenty Year-Old"

paradise through man's own
efforts."

"...Immortality as taught by
the orthodox Western religions
assumes existence without
change through eternity. This
state of being is characteristic
for inorganic matter but not
for life as we know it with its
joys and sorrows, achievements
and failures, memories and
dreams."

"(our finite life) may even
arouse the envy of the gods
who must realize that eternal
life deprives them of the
ecstasy which is conveyed to
human life through the
knowledge of its temporal
limitations."

Yes, Mr. Gellhorn is very
secular, very rational, and very
humanistic, as he has the faith
and hope that man can
"immanentize the eschaton"
and create heaven on earth. At
times his secular rationality
resembles the preaching of the
most fundamental of
fundamentalists, and all those
readers who are either
Christians, mystics, gurus, of
somehow involved in that
other world, may find his work
somewhat less than palatable.

Mysticism

In one of his more scientific
moods, he relates, "...the
mystical world cannot exist in
the mind as long as the world
around us is clearly discernible
and stable; yet it is compatible
with conditions in which, for
various reasons, normal
perception is interfered with."

Only rarely does the
scientific overshadow the
humanistic in The Time
Concertina, and in several
stories he attacks the pitiful
characters that he occasionally
worked with as a
neuro-physiologist. In
"Fragment On Love", a story
about a hollow Nobel
prize-winner, he points out
that, "Married life seemed to
require an emotional
adaptability which is not
readily obtained in a physics
laboratory."

Humor With Holes

A large number of the essays
and anecdotes exhibit Mr.
Gellhorn's superb dry wit and
lightheartedness. One such
story is "The Hole", a
nonsensical half a page devoted
to the crisis the author faces
when he notices that someone
has stolen the hole the author
dug for his patio umbrella. "In
view of the recent sharp
increase in crime I thought it
might have been stolen by
somebody who needed a
similar hole in his patio and
wanted to avoid work."

In a children's story. "After
The Storm", he explains to
some young friends the
presence of the thousands of
white bubbles at the seashore.
"All along the beach there
were innumerable 'soap'
bubbles, small and large and all
a little dirty. I pondered what
all this meant. Then an inner
light appeared and I knew it. It
was washday for the fish."

In sixty-five pages he covers
a lot of ground, but he covers it
well and in a style that is
simple, straightforward, and
which flows surprisingly well
for a German-born immigrant
writing in his second language.
It is indeed a short book,
perhaps too short, for it can be
gobbled up in no time at all.
But after the book has been
put down, the reader will
probably keep munching on it
for quite awhile. What Ernst
Gellhorn says is not different
or difficult to swallow, it is
simply enjoyable and well
worth the chewing.

Fascinating Intensity

Ernst Gellhorn has lived, and
continues to live, with an
intensity that other men rarely
experience during their
lifetimes. Looking into his
mind through The Time
Concertina was a fascinating
experience. It almost makes a
twenty-year-old want to be
eighty.

(Anyone interested in
purchasing The Time
Concertina: Meditations of a
Humanist can find a copy in
both Newcomb Hall and
Anderson Brothers Bookstores.
Copies can also be obtained by
writing the author at 15
Wendover Drive, West Leigh,
Charlottesville, Va. 22901.)