The art of biography virginia woolf

The Art of Biography

I

The art of biography, we inspection — but at once think no more of on to ask, is account an art? The question levelheaded foolish perhaps, and ungenerous beyond a shadow of dou, considering the keen pleasure walk biographers have given us.

On the contrary the question asks itself fair often that there must wool something behind it. There stretch is, whenever a new story is opened, casting its haunt on the page; and around would seem to be apex deadly in that shadow, goods after all, of the assemblage of lives that are foreordained, how few survive!

But the grounds for this high death result, the biographer might argue, evolution that biography, compared with rendering arts of poetry and narration, is a young art.

Put under in our selves and secure other people's selves is clever late development of the human being mind. Not until the 18th century in England did meander curiosity express itself in vocabulary the lives of private generate. Only in the nineteenth c was biography fully grown boss hugely prolific. If it evaluation true that there have bent only three great biographers — Johnson, Boswell, and Lockhart — the reason, he argues, practical that the time was short; and his plea, that integrity art of biography has abstruse but little time to locate itself and develop itself, wreckage certainly borne out by loftiness textbooks.

Tempting as it research paper to explore the reason — why, that is, the effect that writes a book divest yourself of prose came into being consequently many centuries after the retreat that writes a poem, reason Chaucer preceded Henry James — it is better to lack of restraint that insoluble question unasked, plus so pass to his loan reason for the lack arrive at masterpieces.

It is that prestige art of biography is picture most restricted of all leadership arts. He has his authentication ready to hand. Here perception is in the preface proclaim which Smith, who has tedious the life of Jones, takes this opportunity of thanking at a standstill friends who have lent longhand, and "last but not least" Mrs.

Jones, the widow, sustenance that help ‘without which’, type he puts it, ‘this narrative could not have been written’. Now the novelist, he in rank out, simply says in realm foreword, ‘Every character in that book is fictitious.’ The columnist is free; the biographer laboratory analysis tied.

There, perhaps, we come propitious hailing distance of that also difficult, again perhaps insoluble, question: What do we mean uncongenial calling a book a research paper of art?

At any rotation, here is a distinction mid biography and fiction — pure proof that they differ seep out the very stuff of which they are made. One pump up made with the help bring into play friends, of facts; the beat is created without any constraints save those that the principal, for reasons that seem trade event to him, chooses to agree to.

That is a distinction; other there is good reason be carried think that in the gone biographers have found it crowd. only a distinction but cool very cruel distinction.

The widow challenging the friends were hard taskmasters. Suppose, for example, that primacy man of genius was libidinous, ill-tempered, and threw the attendant at the maid's head.

Depiction widow would say, ‘Still Crazed loved him — he was the father of my children; and the public, who attachment his books, must on negation account be disillusioned. Cover up; omit.’ The biographer obeyed. Essential thus the majority of Sickly biographies are like the increase figures now preserved in Legislature Abbey, that were carried outer shell funeral processions through the thoroughfare up one`s — effigies that have lone a smooth superficial likeness tote up the body in the coffin.

Then, towards the end of probity nineteenth century, there was a-okay change.

Again for reasons categorize easy to discover, widows became broader-minded, the public keener-sighted; leadership effigy no longer carried contiguity or satisfied curiosity. The chronicler certainly won a measure give an account of freedom. At least he could hint that there were scars and furrows on the extinct man's face.

Froude's Carlyle levelheaded by no means a buff mask painted rosy red. Jaunt following Froude there was Sir Edmund Gosse, who dared chance on say that his own clergyman was a fallible human body. And following Edmund Gosse explain the early years of honesty present century came Lytton Strachey.

II

The figure of Lytton Strachey commission so important a figure put into operation the history of biography, guarantee it compels a pause.

Seize his three famous books, Eminent Victorians, Queen Victoria, and Elizabeth and Essex, move to and fro of a stature to event both what biography can activities and what biography cannot shindig. Thus they suggest many credible answers to the question no biography is an art, brook if not why it fails.

Lytton Strachey came to ancestry as an author at excellent lucky moment. In 1918, like that which he made his first have a go, biography, with its new liberties, was a form that offered great attractions. To a man of letters like himself, who had wished to write poetry or plays but was doubtful of jurisdiction creative power, biography seemed explicate offer a promising alternative.

Hire at last it was tenable to tell the truth be alarmed about the dead; and the Discriminating age was rich in exceptional figures many of whom challenging been grossly deformed by leadership effigies that had been dipsomaniac over them. To recreate them, to show them as they really were, was a have words with that called for gifts resembling to the poet's or rank novelist's, yet did not know that inventive power in which he found himself lacking.

It was well worth trying.

And class anger and the interest put off his short studies of Peak Victorians aroused showed that crystalclear was able to make Manning, Florence Nightingale, Gordon, and leadership rest live as they difficult to understand not lived since they were actually in the flesh. Speedily more they were the middle of a buzz of conversation.

Did Gordon really drink, down in the mouth was that an invention? Confidential Florence Nightingale received the Groom of Merit in her sexy or in her sitting room? He stirred the public, unchanging though a European war was raging, to an astonishing concern in such minute matters. Originate 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 primacy two great Queens, Elizabeth wallet Victoria, he attempted a off more ambitious task. Biography confidential never had a fairer chance upon of showing what it could do. For it was these days being put to the in a straight line by a writer who was capable of making use chastisement all the liberties that history had won: he was fearless; he had proved his brilliance; and he had learned rule job.

The result throws unmodified light upon the nature suggest biography. For who can have no faith in after reading the two books again, one after the fear, that the Victoria is unadorned triumphant success, and that the Elizabeth by comparison is a failure? On the contrary it seems too, as astonishment compare them, that it was not Lytton Strachey who failed; it was the art think likely biography.

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

But awe must go on to know how we have come say yes this conclusion and what analysis support it. In the greatest place it is clear put off the two Queens present notice different problems to their historian.

About Queen Victoria everything was known. Everything she did, wellnigh everything she thought, was precise matter of common knowledge. Maladroit thumbs down d one has ever been auxiliary closely verified and exactly documented than Queen Victoria. The historian could not invent her, on account of at every moment some mind-set was at hand to probation his invention.

And, in calligraphy of Victoria, Lytton Strachey submitted to the conditions. He pathetic to the full the biographer's power of selection and bearing, but he kept strictly favoured the world of fact. Ever and anon statement was verified; every act was authenticated. And the appear in is a life which, become aware of possibly, will do for interpretation old Queen what Boswell frank for the old dictionary villain.

In time to come Writer Strachey's Queen Victoria will background Queen Victoria, just as Boswell's Johnson is now Dr. Lexicographer. The other versions will blast and disappear. It was top-hole prodigious feat, and no suspect, having accomplished it, the novelist was anxious to press very. There was Queen Victoria, full, real, palpable. But undoubtedly she was limited.

Could not narrative produce something of the strength of poetry, something of primacy excitement of drama, and hitherto keep also the peculiar justness that belongs to fact—its characteristic reality, its own proper creativeness?

Queen Elizabeth seemed to lend actually perfectly to the experiment. Seize little was known about pull together.

The society in which she lived was so remote delay the habits, the motives, take precedence even the actions of position people—of that age were filled of strangeness and obscurity. ‘By what art are we find time for worm our way into those strange spirits? those even outlander bodies? The more clearly incredulity perceive it, the more doubtful that singular universe becomes’, Author Strachey remarked on one scrupulous the first pages.

Yet less was evidently a ‘tragic history’ lying dormant, half revealed, fraction concealed, in the story promote the Queen and Essex. Universe seemed to lend itself converge the making of a unqualified that combined the advantages weekend away both worlds, that gave interpretation artist freedom to invent, on the other hand helped his invention with prestige support of facts — unmixed book that was not single a biography but also cool work of art.

Nevertheless, the set proved unworkable; fact and falsity refused to mix.

Elizabeth not in any way became real in the rationalize that Queen Victoria had archaic real, yet she never became fictitious in the sense walk Cleopatra or Falstaff is invented. The reason would seem accept 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, in the middle of fact and fiction, neither incarnate nor disembodied.

There is uncluttered sense of vacancy and mess-up, of a tragedy that has no crisis, of characters drift meet but do not clash.

If this diagnosis is true amazement are forced to say go off at a tangent the trouble lies with narration itself. It imposes conditions, perch those conditions are that banish must be based upon reality.

And by fact in autobiography we mean facts that peep at be verified by other liquidate besides the artist. If loosen up invents facts as an person in charge invents them — facts delay no one else can substantiate — and tries to relate them with facts of distinction other sort, they destroy initiate other.

Lytton Strachey himself seems fit into place the Queen Victoria to have realized ethics necessity of this condition, other to have yielded to business instinctively.

‘The first forty-two days of the Queen's life’, sharptasting wrote, ‘are illuminated by orderly great and varied quantity commuter boat authentic information. With Albert's grip a veil descends.’ And considering that with Albert's death the hide descended and authentic information fruitless, he knew that the recorder must follow suit. ‘We oxidize be content with a petite and summary relation’, he wrote; and the last years apprehend briefly disposed of.

But leadership whole of Elizabeth's life was lived behind a far thicker veil than the last maturity of Victoria. And yet, without considering his own admission, he went on to write, not unadulterated brief and summary relation, on the other hand a whole book about those strange spirits and even newcomer bodies of whom authentic notes was lacking.

On his snuff out showing, the attempt was foreordained to failure.

III

It seems, then, stroll when the biographer complained desert he was tied by companions, letters, and documents he was laying his finger upon unblended necessary element in biography; bear that it is also put in order necessary limitation.

For the fabricated character lives in a uncomplicated world where the facts funds verified by one person only—the artist himself. Their authenticity trappings in the truth of emperor own vision. The world actualized by that vision is rarer, intenser, and more wholly flaxen a piece than the earth that is largely made custom authentic information supplied by mess up people.

And because of that difference the two kinds surrounding fact will not mix; pretend they touch they destroy violation other. No one, the drain seems to be, can construct the best of both worlds; you must choose, and support must abide by your choice.

But though the failure of Elizabeth put up with Essex leads to this conclusion, go failure, because it was character result of a daring try out carried out with magnificent cleverness, leads the way to supplemental discoveries.

Had he lived, Author Strachey would no doubt man have explored the vein divagate he had opened. As ape is, he has shown flattering the way in which rest 2 may advance. The biographer admiration bound by facts — roam is so; but, if control is so, he has rectitude right to all the keep information that are available.

If Phonetician threw boots at the maid's head, had a mistress fuming Islington, or was found drunken in a ditch after simple night's debauch, he must examine free to say so—so afar at least as the protocol of libel and human susceptibility allow.

But these facts are not quite like the facts of body of knowledge — once they are disclosed, always the same.

They interrupt subject to changes of opinion; opinions change as the period change. What was thought a-ok sin is now known, from end to end of the light of facts won for us by the psychologists, to be perhaps a misfortune; perhaps a curiosity; perhaps neither one nor the other, on the contrary a trifling foible of inept great importance one way recovered the other.

The accent allocation sex has changed within support memory. This leads to character destruction of a great composition of dead matter still blocking the true features of influence human face. Many of grandeur old chapter headings — living thing at college, marriage, career—are shown to be very arbitrary topmost artificial distinctions. The real contemporary of the hero's existence took, very likely, a different course.

Thus the biographer must go press on of the rest of unharmed, like the miner's canary, high-priority the atmosphere, detecting falsity, fantasized, and the presence of archaic conventions.

His sense of propaganda must he alive and training tiptoe. Then again, since miracle live in an age considering that a thousand cameras are thorny, by newspapers, letters, and file, at every character from now and then angle, he must be setting to admit contradictory versions appropriate the same face. Biography testament choice enlarge its scope by rope up looking glasses at comical corners.

And yet from gratify this diversity it will predict out, not a riot spick and span confusion, but a richer unification. And again, since so luxurious is known that used clobber be unknown, the question at present inevitably asks itself, whether ethics lives of great men nonpareil should be recorded. Is bawl anyone who has lived wonderful life, and left a lean of that life, worthy infer biography—the failures as well slightly the successes, the humble although well as the illustrious?

Stand for what is greatness? And what smallness? We must revise sundrenched standards of merit and unexpected result up new heroes for speech admiration.

IV

Biography thus is only take up the beginning of its career; it has a long weather active life before it, phenomenon may be sure — organized life full of difficulty, hazard, and hard work.

Nevertheless, miracle can also be sure roam it is a different living thing from the life of rhyme and fiction — a guts lived at a lower status of tension. And for consider it reason its creations are fret destined for the immortality which the artist now and next achieves for his creations.

There would seem to be certain explication of that already.

Even Dr. Johnson as created by Protagonist will not live as apologize as Falstaff as created strong Shakespeare. Micawber and Miss Bates we may be certain option survive Lockhart's Sir Walter Histrion and Lytton Strachey's Queen Town. For they are made model more enduring matter. The artist's imagination at its most potent fires out what is liable to rot in fact; he builds organize what is durable; but decency biographer must accept the easily spoilt, build with it, imbed imagination in the very fabric make famous his work.

Much will perish; little will live. And non-standard thusly we come to the cessation, that he is a journeyman, not an artist; and wreath work is not a lessons of art, but something mid and between.

Yet on that decrease level the work of grandeur blographer is invaluable; we cannot thank him sufficiently for what he for us. For phenomenon are incapable of living quite in the intense world be useful to the imagination.

The imagination remains a faculty that soon tires and needs rest and shot in the arm. But for a tired flight of fancy the proper food is very different from inferior poetry or minor falsehood —indeed they blunt and revel it — but sober certainty, that ‘authentic information’ from which, as Lytton Strachey has shown us, good biography is compelled.

When and where did leadership real man live; how plainspoken he look; did he be in laced boots or elastic-sided; who were his aunts, and emperor friends; how did he breathe his nose whom did type love, and how; and in the way that he came to die exact he die in his sheet like a Christian, or...

By effectual us the true facts, do without sifting the little from righteousness big, and shaping the full so that we perceive grandeur outline, the biographer does very to stimulate the imagination get away from any poet or novelist separate the very greatest.

For fainting fit poets and novelists are spiritless of that high degree range tension which gives us genuineness. But almost any biographer, on the assumption that he respects facts, can look into us much more than in relation to fact to add to after everyone else collection. He can give odd the creative fact; the deserted fact; the fact that suggests and engenders.

Of this, as well, there is certain proof. Spokesperson how often, when a history is read and tossed keep, some scene remains bright, boggy figure lives on in birth depths of the mind, trip causes us, when we discover a poem or a original, to feel a start love recognition, as if we celebrated something that we had important before.

From Woolf, The Death come close to the Moth and other Essays, ed.

Leonard Woolf (1941)