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Anybody can look at a pretty girl and see a pretty girl. An artist can look at a pretty girl and see the old woman she will become. A better artist can look at an old woman and see the pretty girl that she used to be. But a great artist - a master - and that is what Auguste Rodin was - can look at an old woman, portray her exactly as she is… and force the viewer to see the pretty girl she used to be … and more than that, he can make anyone with the sensitivity of an armadillo, or even you, see that this lovely young girl is still alive, not old and ugly at all, but simply prisoned inside her ruined body. He can make you feel the quiet, endless tragedy that there was never a girl born who ever grew older than eighteen in her heart…. no matter what the merciless hours have done to her.
-- Jubal Harshaw on Rodin’s La belle heaulmiere in Robert Heinlein's "Stranger In a Strange Land"
Not bad for a science-fiction novel, right?
Of course, the sentiment applies to men as well as women. Although one can appreciate the maturity that usually comes with more years and more experience, the slow decaying and dying of the body is something we can all lament, even as I write this with dimming vision and wonky body, but such is the signature of our mortality and the passing of generations. More the pity if we were never so pretty and our youth was seldom gay.
