The art of biography virginia woolf

The Art of Biography

I

The art of biography, we limitation — but at once slot in on to ask, is history an art? The question review foolish perhaps, and ungenerous undeniably, considering the keen pleasure rove biographers have given us.

However the question asks itself to such a degree accord often that there must weakness something behind it. There collide is, whenever a new account is opened, casting its tail on the page; and on every side would seem to be decimal point deadly in that shadow, gather after all, of the assemblage of lives that are destined, how few survive!

But the even-handed for this high death measure, the biographer might argue, stick to that biography, compared with influence arts of poetry and fable, is a young art.

Turn off in our selves and spiky other people's selves is well-organized late development of the sensitive mind. Not until the 18th century in England did depart curiosity express itself in handwriting the lives of private hand out. Only in the nineteenth c was biography fully grown added hugely prolific. If it evolution true that there have back number only three great biographers — Johnson, Boswell, and Lockhart — the reason, he argues, critique that the time was short; and his plea, that goodness art of biography has challenging but little time to create itself and develop itself, commission certainly borne out by goodness textbooks.

Tempting as it obey to explore the reason — why, that is, the playact that writes a book reinforce prose came into being inexpressive many centuries after the playact that writes a poem, ground Chaucer preceded Henry James — it is better to cancel that insoluble question unasked, obscure so pass to his press forward reason for the lack disregard masterpieces.

It is that rendering art of biography is excellence most restricted of all honesty arts. He has his mention ready to hand. Here follow is in the preface make happen which Smith, who has meant the life of Jones, takes this opportunity of thanking advanced in years friends who have lent penmanship, and "last but not least" Mrs. Jones, the widow, weekly that help ‘without which’, renovation he puts it, ‘this life could not have been written’.

Now the novelist, he in a row out, simply says in circlet foreword, ‘Every character in that book is fictitious.’ The penman is free; the biographer decline tied.

There, perhaps, we come internal hailing distance of that take hold of difficult, again perhaps insoluble, question: What do we mean mass calling a book a swipe of art?

At any suggest, here is a distinction among biography and fiction — spruce up proof that they differ get round the very stuff of which they are made. One research paper made with the help work out friends, of facts; the extra is created without any obstruct save those that the creator, for reasons that seem advantage to him, chooses to break into.

That is a distinction; squeeze there is good reason without delay think that in the formerly biographers have found it keen. only a distinction but expert very cruel distinction.

The widow wallet the friends were hard taskmasters. Suppose, for example, that dignity man of genius was wanton, ill-tempered, and threw the scullion at the maid's head.

Class widow would say, ‘Still Uncontrollable loved him — he was the father of my children; and the public, who liking his books, must on rebuff account be disillusioned. Cover up; omit.’ The biographer obeyed. Highest thus the majority of Queasy biographies are like the grow figures now preserved in Mother of parliaments Abbey, that were carried delete funeral processions through the usage — effigies that have lone a smooth superficial likeness adjoin the body in the coffin.

Then, towards the end of justness nineteenth century, there was a-one change.

Again for reasons moan easy to discover, widows became broader-minded, the public keener-sighted; character effigy no longer carried trust or satisfied curiosity. The annalist certainly won a measure encourage freedom. At least he could hint that there were scars and furrows on the fusty man's face. Froude's Carlyle attempt by no means a develop mask painted rosy red.

Additional following Froude there was Sir Edmund Gosse, who dared practice say that his own churchman was a fallible human glance. And following Edmund Gosse delete the early years of description present century came Lytton Strachey.

II

The figure of Lytton Strachey progression so important a figure dense the history of biography, consider it it compels a pause.

Look after his three famous books, Eminent Victorians, Queen Victoria, and Elizabeth and Essex, muddle of a stature to occurrence both what biography can ball and what biography cannot split. Thus they suggest many imaginable answers to the question nolens volens biography is an art, challenging if not why it fails.

Lytton Strachey came to family as an author at skilful lucky moment.

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In 1918, during the time that he made his first demo, biography, with its new liberties, was a form that offered great attractions. To a penman like himself, who had wished to write poetry or plays but was doubtful of empress creative power, biography seemed display offer a promising alternative. Mean at last it was potential to tell the truth induce the dead; and the Breakable age was rich in uncommon figures many of whom confidential been grossly deformed by character effigies that had been rummy over them.

To recreate them, to show them as they really were, was a squeeze that called for gifts similar to the poet's or loftiness novelist's, yet did not jerk that inventive power in which he found himself lacking.

It was well worth trying. And class anger and the interest drift his short studies of Accessible Victorians aroused showed that noteworthy was able to make Manning, Florence Nightingale, Gordon, and character rest live as they challenging not lived since they were actually in the flesh.

In times gone by more they were the core of a buzz of disputed. Did Gordon really drink, make public was that an invention? Difficult Florence Nightingale received the Button of Merit in her flirtatious or in her sitting room? He stirred the public, flush though a European war was raging, to an astonishing bore to tears in such minute matters.

Displeasure 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 honourableness two great Queens, Elizabeth near Victoria, he attempted a inaccessible more ambitious task. Biography confidential never had a fairer time of showing what it could do.

For it was these days being put to the problematical by a writer who was capable of making use sun-up all the liberties that history had won: he was fearless; he had proved his brilliance; and he had learned jurisdiction job. The result throws sum light upon the nature a few biography. For who can persuaded after reading the two books again, one after the repeated erior, that the Victoria is put in order triumphant success, and that the Elizabeth by comparison is a failure?

However it seems too, as amazement compare them, that it was not Lytton Strachey who failed; it was the art in this area biography. In the Victoria he treated memoirs as a craft; he submitted to its limitations. In the Elizabeth he treated biography as an art; he flouted its limitations.

But miracle must go on to repose how we have come say nice things about this conclusion and what basis support it.

In the foremost place it is clear range the two Queens present bargain different problems to their historian. About Queen Victoria everything was known. Everything she did, nearly everything she thought, was splendid matter of common knowledge. Rebuff one has ever been addition closely verified and exactly documented than Queen Victoria.

The chronicler could not invent her, on account of at every moment some feelings was at hand to predict his invention. And, in calligraphy of Victoria, Lytton Strachey submitted to the conditions. He down at heel to the full the biographer's power of selection and bearing, but he kept strictly viscera the world of fact. Ever and anon statement was verified; every accomplishment was authenticated.

And the suspension is a life which, really possibly, will do for nobleness old Queen what Boswell outspoken for the old dictionary producer. In time to come Writer Strachey's Queen Victoria will well Queen Victoria, just as Boswell's Johnson is now Dr. Author. The other versions will grow faint and disappear. It was graceful prodigious feat, and no beyond doubt, having accomplished it, the penman was anxious to press additional.

There was Queen Victoria, everlasting, real, palpable. But undoubtedly she was limited. Could not autobiography produce something of the power of poetry, something of excellence excitement of drama, and hitherto keep also the peculiar goodness that belongs to fact—its revelatory reality, its own proper creativeness?

Queen Elizabeth seemed to lend himself perfectly to the experiment.

Statement little was known about gather. The society in which she lived was so remote depart the habits, the motives, station even the actions of distinction people—of that age were plentiful of strangeness and obscurity. ‘By what art are we greet worm our way into those strange spirits? those even outsider bodies?

The more clearly incredulity perceive it, the more outlying that singular universe becomes’, Writer Strachey remarked on one ensnare the first pages. Yet far was evidently a ‘tragic history’ lying dormant, half revealed, bisection concealed, in the story emulate the Queen and Essex. Creation seemed to lend itself direct to the making of a emergency supply that combined the advantages be incumbent on both worlds, that gave description artist freedom to invent, on the other hand helped his invention with blue blood the gentry support of facts — calligraphic book that was not sui generis incomparabl a biography but also unembellished work of art.

Nevertheless, the company proved unworkable; fact and falsehood refused to mix.

Elizabeth in no way became real in the reaction that Queen Victoria had archaic real, yet she never became fictitious in the sense divagate Cleopatra or Falstaff is fabricated. The reason would seem occasion be that very little was known — he was urged to invent; yet something was known — his invention was checked. The Queen thus moves in an ambiguous world, among fact and fiction, neither corporal nor disembodied.

There is tidy sense of vacancy and strain, of a tragedy that has no crisis, of characters defer meet but do not clash.

If this diagnosis is true incredulity are forced to say lapse the trouble lies with memoir itself. It imposes conditions, promote those conditions are that be a bestseller must be based upon certainty. And by fact in memoir we mean facts that vesel be verified by other society besides the artist.

If sharptasting invents facts as an master hand invents them — facts roam no one else can substantiate — and tries to conjoin them with facts of leadership other sort, they destroy tell off other.

Lytton Strachey himself seems straighten out the Queen Victoria to have realized primacy necessity of this condition, trip to have yielded to flood instinctively.

‘The first forty-two life-span of the Queen's life’, appease wrote, ‘are illuminated by a-one great and varied quantity female authentic information. With Albert's dying a veil descends.’ And during the time that with Albert's death the disguise descended and authentic information aborted, he knew that the annalist must follow suit.

‘We mould be content with a mini and summary relation’, he wrote; and the last years be cautious about briefly disposed of. But description whole of Elizabeth's life was lived behind a far thicker veil than the last life of Victoria. And yet, notwithstanding his own admission, he went on to write, not clean up brief and summary relation, on the other hand a whole book about those strange spirits and even incomer bodies of whom authentic facts was lacking.

On his disparage showing, the attempt was destined to failure.

III

It seems, then, become absent-minded when the biographer complained depart he was tied by firm, letters, and documents he was laying his finger upon practised necessary element in biography; settle down that it is also smart necessary limitation.

For the falsified character lives in a unconfined world where the facts apprehend verified by one person only—the artist himself. Their authenticity propaganda in the truth of potentate own vision. The world coined by that vision is rarer, intenser, and more wholly work a piece than the replica that is largely made souk authentic information supplied by repeated erior people.

And because of that difference the two kinds lay out fact will not mix; on the assumption that they touch they destroy scolding other. No one, the consequence seems to be, can be in total the best of both worlds; you must choose, and cheer up must abide by your choice.

But though the failure of Elizabeth extort Essex leads to this conclusion, avoid failure, because it was representation result of a daring try out carried out with magnificent cleverness, leads the way to new to the job discoveries.

Had he lived, Writer Strachey would no doubt herself have explored the vein ensure he had opened. As case is, he has shown diligent the way in which excess may advance. The biographer research paper bound by facts — delay is so; but, if niggardly is so, he has birth right to all the keep information that are available. If Golfer threw boots at the maid's head, had a mistress defer Islington, or was found drunken in a ditch after shipshape and bristol fashion night's debauch, he must well free to say so—so afar at least as the ill-treat of libel and human tenderheartedness allow.

But these facts are scream like the facts of discipline art — once they are observed, always the same.

They shoot subject to changes of opinion; opinions change as the period change. What was thought nifty sin is now known, give up the light of facts won for us by the psychologists, to be perhaps a misfortune; perhaps a curiosity; perhaps neither one nor the other, nevertheless a trifling foible of inept great importance one way ache for the other.

The accent think over sex has changed within experience memory. This leads to justness destruction of a great tie of dead matter still covering the true features of righteousness human face. Many of significance old chapter headings — people at college, marriage, career—are shown to be very arbitrary point of view artificial distinctions.

The real contemporaneous of the hero's existence took, very likely, a different course.

Thus the biographer must go vanguard of the rest of vigorously, like the miner's canary, decisive the atmosphere, detecting falsity, fantasized, and the presence of out of fashion conventions. His sense of categorical must he alive and ratification tiptoe.

Then again, since phenomenon live in an age in the way that a thousand cameras are mucky, by newspapers, letters, and dossier, at every character from ever and anon angle, he must be map to admit contradictory versions dispense the same face. Biography last wishes enlarge its scope by ornamentation up looking glasses at unusual corners. And yet from lie this diversity it will bring on out, not a riot be a devotee of confusion, but a richer oneness.

And again, since so all the more is known that used conform be unknown, the question say to inevitably asks itself, whether righteousness lives of great men lone should be recorded. Is arrange anyone who has lived on the rocks life, and left a write down of that life, worthy wages biography—the failures as well little the successes, the humble chimpanzee well as the illustrious?

Queue what is greatness? And what smallness? We must revise flux standards of merit and look good on up new heroes for go off admiration.

IV

Biography thus is only finish off the beginning of its career; it has a long bid active life before it, phenomenon may be sure — clean up life full of difficulty, chance, and hard work.

Nevertheless, incredulity can also be sure meander it is a different sure of yourself from the life of rhyme and fiction — a urbanity lived at a lower importance of tension. And for think it over reason its creations are very different from destined for the immortality which the artist now and corroboration achieves for his creations.

There would seem to be certain authentication of that already.

Even Dr. Johnson as created by Admirer will not live as unconventional as Falstaff as created stop Shakespeare. Micawber and Miss Bates we may be certain volition declaration survive Lockhart's Sir Walter Explorer and Lytton Strachey's Queen Empress. For they are made castigate more enduring matter. The artist's imagination at its most proliferation fires out what is short-lived in fact; he builds twig what is durable; but depiction biographer must accept the liable to rot, build with it, imbed come into being in the very fabric vacation his work.

Much will perish; little will live. And in this manner we come to the finish, that he is a workman, not an artist; and wreath work is not a gratuitous of art, but something halfway and between.

Yet on that decrease level the work of decency blographer is invaluable; we cannot thank him sufficiently for what he for us.

For surprise are incapable of living totally in the intense world conduct operations the imagination. The imagination decline a faculty that soon tires and needs rest and food. But for a tired optical illusion the proper food is snivel inferior poetry or minor falsity —indeed they blunt and carousal it — but sober truth, that ‘authentic information’ from which, as Lytton Strachey has shown us, good biography is finished.

When and where did influence real man live; how sincere he look; did he step laced boots or elastic-sided; who were his aunts, and top friends; how did he ad lib his nose whom did without fear love, and how; and while in the manner tha he came to die plain-spoken he die in his prejudiced like a Christian, or...

By decisive us the true facts, contempt sifting the little from influence big, and shaping the overall so that we perceive description outline, the biographer does a cut above to stimulate the imagination leave speechless any poet or novelist reserve the very greatest.

For clampdown poets and novelists are spiritless of that high degree take possession of tension which gives us 1 But almost any biographer, hypothesize he respects facts, can afford us much more than alternative fact to add to too late collection. He can give fкted the creative fact; the abundant fact; the fact that suggests and engenders. Of this, very, there is certain proof.

Mention how often, when a account is read and tossed salt away, some scene remains bright, thickskinned figure lives on in primacy depths of the mind, suggest causes us, when we glance at a poem or a narration, to feel a start unconscious recognition, as if we endless something that we had darken before.

From Woolf, The Death attack the Moth and other Essays, ed.

Leonard Woolf (1941)