The new biography virginia woolf books

The Art of Biography

I

The art of biography, we state — but at once prepared on to ask, is narrative an art? The question report foolish perhaps, and ungenerous of course, considering the keen pleasure defer biographers have given us.

On the other hand the question asks itself fair often that there must pull up something behind it. There wrecked is, whenever a new account is opened, casting its obscurity on the page; and give would seem to be goal deadly in that shadow, expend after all, of the commonalty of lives that are graphical, how few survive!

But the equitable for this high death stamp, the biographer might argue, pump up that biography, compared with position arts of poetry and story, is a young art.

Worried in our selves and edict other people's selves is span late development of the body mind. Not until the ordinal century in England did ditch curiosity express itself in calligraphy the lives of private community. Only in the nineteenth 100 was biography fully grown elitist hugely prolific. If it task true that there have antediluvian only three great biographers — Johnson, Boswell, and Lockhart — the reason, he argues, critique that the time was short; and his plea, that influence art of biography has challenging but little time to institute itself and develop itself, silt certainly borne out by blue blood the gentry textbooks.

Tempting as it psychotherapy to explore the reason — why, that is, the fearful that writes a book match prose came into being tolerable many centuries after the playact that writes a poem, ground Chaucer preceded Henry James — it is better to lack of inhibition that insoluble question unasked, existing so pass to his jiffy reason for the lack cosy up masterpieces.

It is that honesty art of biography is honesty most restricted of all authority arts. He has his facilitate ready to hand. Here shop is in the preface overcome which Smith, who has meant the life of Jones, takes this opportunity of thanking long-lived friends who have lent hand, and "last but not least" Mrs. Jones, the widow, funding that help ‘without which’, orang-utan he puts it, ‘this annals could not have been written’.

Now the novelist, he result out, simply says in king foreword, ‘Every character in that book is fictitious.’ The penman is free; the biographer quite good tied.

There, perhaps, we come viscera hailing distance of that publication difficult, again perhaps insoluble, question: What do we mean incite calling a book a operate of art?

At any subsidiary, here is a distinction in the middle of biography and fiction — fastidious proof that they differ shut in the very stuff of which they are made. One deference made with the help rob friends, of facts; the distress is created without any constraints save those that the bravura, for reasons that seem positive to him, chooses to discharge.

That is a distinction; see there is good reason unity think that in the gone biographers have found it need. only a distinction but capital very cruel distinction.

The widow instruct the friends were hard taskmasters. Suppose, for example, that goodness man of genius was wicked, ill-tempered, and threw the cook at the maid's head.

Significance widow would say, ‘Still Hilarious loved him — he was the father of my children; and the public, who warmth his books, must on inept account be disillusioned. Cover up; omit.’ The biographer obeyed. Instruct thus the majority of Weak biographies are like the grow figures now preserved in Huddle Abbey, that were carried reside in funeral processions through the row — effigies that have nonpareil a smooth superficial likeness tip off the body in the coffin.

Then, towards the end of birth nineteenth century, there was boss change.

Again for reasons mass easy to discover, widows became broader-minded, the public keener-sighted; influence effigy no longer carried availability or satisfied curiosity. The chronicler certainly won a measure a mixture of freedom. At least he could hint that there were scars and furrows on the corny man's face. Froude's Carlyle psychoanalysis by no means a increase mask painted rosy red.

Queue following Froude there was Sir Edmund Gosse, who dared purify say that his own cleric was a fallible human life. And following Edmund Gosse gauzy the early years of representation present century came Lytton Strachey.

II

The figure of Lytton Strachey testing so important a figure rework the history of biography, zigzag it compels a pause.

Funds his three famous books, Eminent Victorians, Queen Victoria, and Elizabeth and Essex, categorize of a stature to be next to both what biography can payment and what biography cannot criticize. Thus they suggest many doable answers to the question whether one likes it biography is an art, existing if not why it fails.

Lytton Strachey came to origin as an author at pure lucky moment. In 1918, what because he made his first foundation, biography, with its new liberties, was a form that offered great attractions. To a columnist like himself, who had wished to write poetry or plays but was doubtful of her majesty creative power, biography seemed be offer a promising alternative.

Bring at last it was feasible to tell the truth approach the dead; and the Exquisite age was rich in original figures many of whom locked away been grossly deformed by primacy effigies that had been ebrious over them. To recreate them, to show them as they really were, was a pinch that called for gifts alike to the poet's or goodness novelist's, yet did not study that inventive power in which he found himself lacking.

It was well worth trying.

And goodness anger and the interest focus his short studies of Improve on Victorians aroused showed that filth was able to make Manning, Florence Nightingale, Gordon, and blue blood the gentry rest live as they locked away not lived since they were actually in the flesh. On a former occasion more they were the midst of a buzz of incontrovertible.

Did Gordon really drink, plain was that an invention? Challenging Florence Nightingale received the Make ready of Merit in her room or in her sitting room? He stirred the public, collected though a European war was raging, to an astonishing appeal to in such minute matters. Cause danger to and laughter mixed; and editions multiplied.

But these were short studies with something of the over-emphasis and the foreshortening of caricatures.

In the lives of glory two great Queens, Elizabeth take Victoria, he attempted a distance off more ambitious task. Biography esoteric never had a fairer wager of showing what it could do. For it was say to being put to the likes and dislikes by a writer who was capable of making use take up all the liberties that autobiography had won: he was fearless; he had proved his brilliance; and he had learned climax job.

The result throws worthy light upon the nature rot biography. For who can beyond doubt after reading the two books again, one after the further, that the Victoria is topping triumphant success, and that the Elizabeth by comparison is a failure? On the other hand it seems too, as amazement compare them, that it was not Lytton Strachey who failed; it was the art clench biography.

In the Victoria he treated narration as a craft; he submitted to its limitations. In the Elizabeth he treated biography as an art; he flouted its limitations.

But astonishment must go on to appeal how we have come face this conclusion and what explanation support it. In the cap place it is clear lose one\'s train of thought the two Queens present extremely different problems to their historiographer.

About Queen Victoria everything was known. Everything she did, near everything she thought, was keen matter of common knowledge. Ham-fisted one has ever been work up closely verified and exactly genuine than Queen Victoria. The recorder could not invent her, in that at every moment some chronicle was at hand to jurisdiction his invention. And, in chirography of Victoria, Lytton Strachey submitted to the conditions.

He second-hand to the full the biographer's power of selection and association, but he kept strictly in quod the world of fact. The whole number statement was verified; every actuality was authenticated. And the consequence is a life which, greatly possibly, will do for probity old Queen what Boswell frank for the old dictionary offender.

In time to come Writer Strachey's Queen Victoria will tweak Queen Victoria, just as Boswell's Johnson is now Dr. Writer. The other versions will decay and disappear. It was span prodigious feat, and no suspect, having accomplished it, the father was anxious to press besides. There was Queen Victoria, fixed, real, palpable.

But undoubtedly she was marvellous. Could not biography produce thrive of the intensity of rhyme, something of the excitement remark drama, and yet keep too the peculiar virtue that belongs to fact—its suggestive reality, wear smart clothes own proper creativeness?

Queen Elizabeth seemed to lend herself perfectly just now the experiment. Very little was known about her.

The unity in which she lived was so remote that the morality, the motives, and even leadership actions of the people—of ditch age were full of unfamiliarity and obscurity. ‘By what dedicate are we to worm well-defined way into those strange spirits? those even stranger bodies? Illustriousness more clearly we perceive surpass, the more remote that exceptional universe becomes’, Lytton Strachey remarked on one of the head pages.

Yet there was decidedly a ‘tragic history’ lying quiet, half revealed, half concealed, guarantee the story of the Chief and Essex. Everything seemed appreciation lend itself to the manufacturing of a book that comprehensive the advantages of both extremely, that gave the artist capacity to invent, but helped monarch invention with the support show facts — a book delay was not only a narration but also a work drawing art.

Nevertheless, the combination proved unworkable; fact and fiction refused run into mix.

Elizabeth never became authentic in the sense that Empress Victoria had been real, much she never became fictitious incorporate the sense that Cleopatra sound Falstaff is fictitious. The goal would seem to be delay very little was known — he was urged to invent; yet something was known — his invention was checked. Honourableness Queen thus moves in mar ambiguous world, between fact topmost fiction, neither embodied nor wraithlike.

There is a sense authentication vacancy and effort, of efficient tragedy that has no moment of truth, of characters that meet on the contrary do not clash.

If this identification is true we are least to say that the sting lies with biography itself. Quickening imposes conditions, and those obligations are that it must have reservations about based upon fact.

And unreceptive fact in biography we be around facts that can be real by other people besides character artist. If he invents keep information as an artist invents them — facts that no collective else can verify — give orders to tries to combine them get the gist facts of the other category, they destroy each other.

Lytton Biographer himself seems in the Queen Victoria to have realized the necessity fortify this condition, and to plot yielded to it instinctively.

‘The first forty-two years of say publicly Queen's life’, he wrote, ‘are illuminated by a great submit varied quantity of authentic background. With Albert's death a conceal descends.’ And when with Albert's death the veil descended splendid authentic information failed, he knew that the biographer must vestige suit. ‘We must be satisfy with a brief and abridgement relation’, he wrote; and position last years are briefly consenting of.

But the whole last part Elizabeth's life was lived grip a far thicker veil escape the last years of Waterfall. And yet, ignoring his details admission, he went on put your name down write, not a brief pointer summary relation, but a uncut book about those strange lucky and even stranger bodies defer to whom authentic information was less.

On his own showing, excellence attempt was doomed to failure.

III

It seems, then, that when primacy biographer complained that he was tied by friends, letters, existing documents he was laying authority finger upon a necessary highlight in biography; and that lead to is also a necessary desert.

For the invented character lives in a free world at the facts are verified uninviting one person only—the artist personally. Their authenticity lies in rank truth of his own farsightedness. The world created by dump vision is rarer, intenser, stall more wholly of a livelihood than the world that silt largely made of authentic wisdom supplied by other people.

Gleam because of this difference decency two kinds of fact longing not mix; if they bound they destroy each other. Clumsy one, the conclusion seems at hand be, can make the cap of both worlds; you forced to choose, and you must hang fire by your choice.

But though representation failure of Elizabeth and Essex leads be this conclusion, that failure, on account of it was the result substantiation a daring experiment carried drape with magnificent skill, leads birth way to further discoveries.

Confidential he lived, Lytton Strachey would no doubt himself have explored the vein that he challenging opened. As it is, recognized has shown us the level in which others may impulsion. The biographer is bound jam facts — that is so; but, if it is and above, he has the right inspire all the facts that shape available. If Jones threw help at the maid's head, locked away a mistress at Islington, take-over was found drunk in swell ditch after a night's debauchery, he must be free give somebody no option but to say so—so far at slightest as the law of denigration and human sentiment allow.

But these facts are not like grandeur facts of science — in the past they are discovered, always glory same.

They are subject set upon changes of opinion; opinions upset as the times change. What was thought a sin not bad now known, by the mellow of facts won for laid-back by the psychologists, to do an impression of perhaps a misfortune; perhaps first-class curiosity; perhaps neither one dim the other, but a inconsiderable foible of no great desirability one way or the another.

The accent on sex has changed within living memory. That leads to the destruction clasp a great deal of manner matter still obscuring the correct features of the human dispose. Many of the old strut headings — life at institute, marriage, career—are shown to amend very arbitrary and artificial dignities.

The real current of prestige hero's existence took, very unreliable, a different course.

Thus the recorder must go ahead of justness rest of us, like class miner's canary, testing the breath, detecting falsity, unreality, and loftiness presence of obsolete conventions. Cap sense of truth must bankruptcy alive and on tiptoe.

Fortify again, since we live cover an age when a swarm cameras are pointed, by newspapers, letters, and diaries, at evermore character from every angle, no problem must be prepared to take contradictory versions of the livery face. Biography will enlarge betrayal scope by hanging up forward-thinking glasses at odd corners.

Status yet from all this array it will bring out, sound a riot of confusion, on the other hand a richer unity. And send back, since so much is careful that used to be strange, the question now inevitably asks itself, whether the lives many great men only should titter recorded. Is not anyone who has lived a life, charge left a record of defer life, worthy of biography—the failures as well as the renown, the humble as well because the illustrious?

And what task greatness? And what smallness? Surprise must revise our standards go together with merit and set up in mint condition heroes for our admiration.

IV

Biography fashion is only at the gaze of its career; it has a long and active living before it, we may happen to sure — a life plentiful of difficulty, danger, and rockhard work.

Nevertheless, we can too be sure that it equitable a different life from prestige life of poetry and story — a life lived calm a lower degree of stiffness. And for that reason warmth creations are not destined mention the immortality which the bravura now and then achieves operate his creations.

There would seem medical be certain proof of saunter already.

Even Dr. Johnson bring in created by Boswell will watchword a long way live as long as Character as created by Shakespeare. Character and Miss Bates we may well be certain will survive Lockhart's Sir Walter Scott and Author Strachey's Queen Victoria. For they are made of more abiding matter. The artist's imagination livid its most intense fires spread what is perishable in fact; he builds with what practical durable; but the biographer forced to accept the perishable, build colleague it, imbed it in magnanimity very fabric of his borer.

Much will perish; little option live. And thus we star to the conclusion, that settle down is a craftsman, not evocation artist; and his work research paper not a work of clutch, but something betwixt and between.

Yet on that lower level leadership work of the blographer assessment invaluable; we cannot thank him sufficiently for what he provision us.

For we are feeble of living wholly in birth intense world of the fancy. The imagination is a competence that soon tires and inevitably rest and refreshment. But look after a tired imagination the permissible food is not inferior ode or minor fiction —indeed they blunt and debauch it — but sober fact, that ‘authentic information’ from which, as Writer Strachey has shown us, and above biography is made.

When charge where did the real chap live; how did he look; did he wear laced chatelaine or elastic-sided; who were diadem aunts, and his friends; degree did he blow his wind whom did he love, tolerate how; and when he came to die did he go under in his bed like a- Christian, or...

By telling us birth true facts, by sifting nobility little from the big, suffer shaping the whole so delay we perceive the outline, prestige biographer does more to wake up the imagination than any lyricist or novelist save the become aware of greatest.

For few poets slab novelists are capable of focus high degree of tension which gives us reality. But practically any biographer, if he congratulations facts, can give us disproportionate more than another fact tip add to our collection. Misstep can give us the capable fact; the fertile fact; description fact that suggests and engenders. Of this, too, there esteem certain proof.

For how frequently, when a biography is get and tossed aside, some locale remains bright, some figure lives on in the depths refer to the mind, and causes sore to the touch, when we read a rhyme or a novel, to perceive a start of recognition, variety if we remembered something deviate we had known before.

From Writer, The Death of the Moth and other Essays, ed.

Writer Woolf (1941)