'Vieillir' by Raymond Queneau: a self-mocking elegy

Abstract

"Growing Old" composed thirty-three years before Quenau died and while his best achievements and greatest satisfactions were still in front of him, is neither total fiction, nor the true expression of his despondency. It is both a reflection on the harshness of the time of Nazi rule over France and a rather successful reworking of the theme of man's eternal anxiety about his ephemerality.