By Adam Zagajewski, from Slight Exaggeration, a memoir that will be published next month by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Zagajewski is a poet and essayist. Translated from the Polish by Clare Cavanagh.

Two days in Berlin in July, a public conversation on how aging affects writing. I was surprised at first that I had been asked to take part in a conversation on this subject — but then I recalled, with some distress, that I’d reached an age that gives you the right to answer such questions. I took the position that aging, for those who perform mental, spiritual labor — or…