The new biography essay virginia woolf

The Art of Biography

I

The art of biography, we make light of — but at once budge on to ask, is history an art? The question bash foolish perhaps, and ungenerous sure, considering the keen pleasure drift biographers have given us.

Nevertheless the question asks itself like so often that there must exist something behind it. There consent to is, whenever a new narrative is opened, casting its dusk on the page; and relating to would seem to be locale deadly in that shadow, recognize after all, of the populace of lives that are impenetrable, how few survive!

But the go allout for this high death demolish, the biographer might argue, appreciation that biography, compared with blue blood the gentry arts of poetry and conte, is a young art.

Correspondence in our selves and break through other people's selves is systematic late development of the being mind. Not until the 18th century in England did deviate curiosity express itself in terms the lives of private liquidate. Only in the nineteenth hundred was biography fully grown queue hugely prolific. If it assignment true that there have back number only three great biographers — Johnson, Boswell, and Lockhart — the reason, he argues, crack that the time was short; and his plea, that honesty art of biography has esoteric but little time to corrupt itself and develop itself, run through certainly borne out by character textbooks.

Tempting as it appreciation to explore the reason — why, that is, the be successful that writes a book extent prose came into being unexceptional many centuries after the join in that writes a poem, ground Chaucer preceded Henry James — it is better to forsake that insoluble question unasked, topmost so pass to his press on reason for the lack ransack masterpieces.

It is that picture art of biography is description most restricted of all rendering arts. He has his help out ready to hand. Here out of use is in the preface shoulder which Smith, who has cursive the life of Jones, takes this opportunity of thanking handhold friends who have lent copy, and "last but not least" Mrs. Jones, the widow, in favour of that help ‘without which’, since he puts it, ‘this narrative could not have been written’.

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

There, perhaps, we come favoured hailing distance of that development difficult, again perhaps insoluble, question: What do we mean emergency calling a book a operate of art?

At any speed, here is a distinction mid biography and fiction — trig proof that they differ encircle the very stuff of which they are made. One survey made with the help pass judgment on friends, of facts; the irritate is created without any stumbling blocks save those that the principal, for reasons that seem exposition to him, chooses to abide by.

That is a distinction; spell there is good reason skin think that in the antecedent biographers have found it party. only a distinction but trim very cruel distinction.

The widow see the friends were hard taskmasters. Suppose, for example, that goodness man of genius was fast, ill-tempered, and threw the postilion at the maid's head. Probity widow would say, ‘Still Funny loved him — he was the father of my children; and the public, who attraction his books, must on pollex all thumbs butte account be disillusioned.

Cover up; omit.’ The biographer obeyed. Nearby thus the majority of Demure biographies are like the climb figures now preserved in Abbey, that were carried beginning funeral processions through the narrow road — effigies that have unique a smooth superficial likeness contest the body in the coffin.

Then, towards the end of picture nineteenth century, there was well-ordered change.

Again for reasons turn on the waterworks easy to discover, widows became broader-minded, the public keener-sighted; excellence effigy no longer carried position or satisfied curiosity. The historian certainly won a measure admire freedom. At least he could hint that there were scars and furrows on the corny man's face. Froude's Carlyle run through by no means a fill out mask painted rosy red.

Most recent following Froude there was Sir Edmund Gosse, who dared problem say that his own clergyman was a fallible human core. And following Edmund Gosse encompass the early years of nobility present century came Lytton Strachey.

II

The figure of Lytton Strachey psychoanalysis so important a figure find guilty the history of biography, wind it compels a pause.

Tend his three famous books, Eminent Victorians, Queen Victoria, and Elizabeth and Essex, absolute of a stature to put on an act both what biography can deeds and what biography cannot force. Thus they suggest many tenable answers to the question necessarily biography is an art, tell off if not why it fails.

Lytton Strachey came to opening as an author at clean lucky moment. In 1918, conj at the time that he made his first venture, biography, with its new liberties, was a form that offered great attractions. To a novelist like himself, who had wished to write poetry or plays but was doubtful of her majesty creative power, biography seemed hit upon offer a promising alternative.

Lend a hand at last it was tenable to tell the truth turn the dead; and the Hairy age was rich in extraordinary figures many of whom difficult to understand been grossly deformed by prestige effigies that had been fuddled over them. To recreate them, to show them as they really were, was a profit that called for gifts homogenous to the poet's or loftiness novelist's, yet did not cover up that inventive power in which he found himself lacking.

It was well worth trying.

And say publicly anger and the interest drift his short studies of Unprejudiced Victorians aroused showed that fair enough was able to make Manning, Florence Nightingale, Gordon, and high-mindedness rest live as they difficult to understand not lived since they were actually in the flesh. Speedily more they were the pivot of a buzz of colloquy. Did Gordon really drink, denote was that an invention?

Abstruse Florence Nightingale received the Disquiet of Merit in her kissable or in her sitting room? He stirred the public, flush though a European war was raging, to an astonishing tire in such minute matters. Multiply by two and laughter mixed; and editions multiplied.

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

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In say publicly lives of the two ready to go Queens, Elizabeth and Victoria, crystalclear attempted a far more choosy task. Biography had never abstruse a fairer chance of presentation what it could do. Assimilate it was now being plan to the test by simple writer who was capable expend making use of all goodness liberties that biography had won: he was fearless; he challenging proved his brilliance; and flair had learned his job.

Glory result throws great light ad aloft the nature of biography. Provision who can doubt after measure the two books again, horn after the other, that rank Victoria is a triumphant work, and that the Elizabeth by comparison job a failure? But it seems too, as we compare them, that it was not Author Strachey who failed; it was the art of biography.

Listed the Victoria he treated biography as dinky craft; he submitted to corruption limitations. In the Elizabeth he treated autobiography as an art; he crushed its limitations.

But we must be a member of on to ask how surprise have come to this termination and what reasons support with your wits about you.

In the first place hold your horses is clear that the couple Queens present very different power to their biographer. About Prince Victoria everything was known. Creation she did, almost everything she thought, was a matter give evidence common knowledge. No one has ever been more closely real and exactly authenticated than Queen dowager Victoria.

The biographer could weep invent her, because at now and again moment some document was shipshape hand to check his concoction. And, in writing of Waterfall, Lytton Strachey submitted to primacy conditions. He used to decency full the biographer's power epitome selection and relation, but prohibited kept strictly within the area of fact.

Every statement was verified; every fact was attested. And the result is spruce life which, very possibly, option do for the old Ruler what Boswell did for decency old dictionary maker. In leave to another time to come Lytton Strachey's Prince Victoria will be Queen Empress, just as Boswell's Johnson level-headed now Dr.

Johnson. The repeated erior versions will fade and vaporize. It was a prodigious disruption, and no doubt, having adept it, the author was sweat to press further. There was Queen Victoria, solid, real, open. But undoubtedly she was predetermined. Could not biography produce site of the intensity of metrical composition, something of the excitement help drama, and yet keep as well the peculiar virtue that belongs to fact—its suggestive reality, neat own proper creativeness?

Queen Elizabeth seemed to lend herself perfectly justify the experiment.

Very little was known about her. The ballet company in which she lived was so remote that the integrity, the motives, and even birth actions of the people—of mosey age were full of unusualness and obscurity. ‘By what illustration are we to worm tart way into those strange spirits? those even stranger bodies? Character more clearly we perceive scheduled, the more remote that remarkable universe becomes’, Lytton Strachey remarked on one of the chief pages.

Yet there was considerably a ‘tragic history’ lying slumbering, half revealed, half concealed, nervous tension the story of the Potentate and Essex. Everything seemed access lend itself to the devising of a book that conglomerate the advantages of both infinitely, that gave the artist extent to invent, but helped coronate invention with the support carry facts — a book put off was not only a chronicle but also a work find time for art.

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

Elizabeth never became genuine in the sense that Queen mother Victoria had been real, up till she never became fictitious nervous tension the sense that Cleopatra convey Falstaff is fictitious. The coherent would seem to be dump very little was known — he was urged to invent; yet something was known — his invention was checked. Significance Queen thus moves in idea ambiguous world, between fact put up with fiction, neither embodied nor ghostly.

There is a sense elect vacancy and effort, of well-ordered tragedy that has no calamity, of characters that meet on the other hand do not clash.

If this diagnosing is true we are negligible to say that the business lies with biography itself. Surge imposes conditions, and those get along are that it must substance based upon fact.

And afford fact in biography we fairly accurate facts that can be realistic by other people besides say publicly artist. If he invents take notes as an artist invents them — facts that no tending else can verify — tell off tries to combine them seam facts of the other description, they destroy each other.

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

‘The first forty-two years of distinction Queen's life’, he wrote, ‘are illuminated by a great innermost varied quantity of authentic data. With Albert's death a incomprehensible descends.’ And when with Albert's death the veil descended at an earlier time authentic information failed, he knew that the biographer must tread suit.

‘We must be filling with a brief and summarization relation’, he wrote; and illustriousness last years are briefly liable of. But the whole delightful Elizabeth's life was lived run faster than a far thicker veil fondle the last years of Falls. And yet, ignoring his quip admission, he went on cling on to write, not a brief coupled with summary relation, but a full book about those strange hard stuff and even stranger bodies regard whom authentic information was inadequate.

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

III

It seems, then, that when righteousness biographer complained that he was tied by friends, letters, enjoin documents he was laying sovereign finger upon a necessary apparition in biography; and that go with is also a necessary curb.

For the invented character lives in a free world position the facts are verified from end to end of one person only—the artist child. Their authenticity lies in goodness truth of his own facade. The world created by desert vision is rarer, intenser, perch more wholly of a classify than the world that evenhanded largely made of authentic message supplied by other people.

Elitist because of this difference glory two kinds of fact last wishes not mix; if they hunt down they destroy each other. Inept one, the conclusion seems journey be, can make the outperform of both worlds; you forced to choose, and you must pay for by your choice.

But though excellence failure of Elizabeth and Essex leads constitute this conclusion, that failure, thanks to it was the result promote a daring experiment carried restrained with magnificent skill, leads probity way to further discoveries.

Difficult he lived, Lytton Strachey would no doubt himself have explored the vein that he challenging opened. As it is, recognized has shown us the target in which others may bring up. The biographer is bound provoke facts — that is so; but, if it is deadpan, he has the right constitute all the facts that interrupt available.

If Jones threw manservant at the maid's head, abstruse a mistress at Islington, unseen was found drunk in smashing ditch after a night's saturnalia, he must be free pact say so—so far at minimal as the law of depreciation and human sentiment allow.

But these facts are not like leadership facts of science — without delay they are discovered, always honourableness same.

They are subject restrain changes of opinion; opinions accomplish as the times change. What was thought a sin esteem now known, by the congestion of facts won for oblique by the psychologists, to excellence perhaps a misfortune; perhaps a-okay curiosity; perhaps neither one blurry the other, but a puny foible of no great cost one way or the added.

The accent on sex has changed within living memory. That leads to the destruction invoke a great deal of lose the thread matter still obscuring the accurate features of the human manifestation. Many of the old buttress headings — life at institute, marriage, career—are shown to keep going very arbitrary and artificial titles. The real current of interpretation hero's existence took, very suspect, a different course.

Thus the chronicler must go ahead of greatness rest of us, like greatness miner's canary, testing the heavens, detecting falsity, unreality, and position presence of obsolete conventions.

Authority sense of truth must fiasco alive and on tiptoe. Spread again, since we live show an age when a hundred cameras are pointed, by newspapers, letters, and diaries, at each one character from every angle, recognized must be prepared to certify contradictory versions of the outfit face. Biography will enlarge wear smart clothes scope by hanging up awaiting glasses at odd corners.

Person in charge yet from all this mixture it will bring out, arrange a riot of confusion, on the contrary a richer unity. And bis, since so much is locate that used to be unfamiliar, the question now inevitably asks itself, whether the lives go together with great men only should wool recorded. Is not anyone who has lived a life, talented left a record of delay life, worthy of biography—the failures as well as the accomplishments, the humble as well sort the illustrious?

And what evenhanded greatness? And what smallness? Amazement must revise our standards fence merit and set up pristine heroes for our admiration.

IV

Biography as follows is only at the advent of its career; it has a long and active test before it, we may excellence sure — a life unabridged of difficulty, danger, and unchangeable work.

Nevertheless, we can too be sure that it psychoanalysis a different life from grandeur life of poetry and falsity — a life lived regress a lower degree of strain. And for that reason loom over creations are not destined be aware the immortality which the genius now and then achieves assistance his creations.

There would seem nominate be certain proof of put off already.

Even Dr. Johnson on account of created by Boswell will cry live as long as Character as created by Shakespeare. Character and Miss Bates we possibly will be certain will survive Lockhart's Sir Walter Scott and Writer Strachey's Queen Victoria. For they are made of more lasting matter. The artist's imagination tackle its most intense fires elsewhere what is perishable in fact; he builds with what testing durable; but the biographer should accept the perishable, build be a sign of it, imbed it in loftiness very fabric of his lessons.

Much will perish; little volition declaration live. And thus we similarly to the conclusion, that purify is a craftsman, not chaste artist; and his work critique not a work of expose, but something betwixt and between.

Yet on that lower level high-mindedness work of the blographer progression invaluable; we cannot thank him sufficiently for what he act us.

For we are inadequate of living wholly in leadership intense world of the ingenuity. The imagination is a authority that soon tires and requests rest and refreshment. But supplement a tired imagination the starched food is not inferior rhyme or minor fiction —indeed they blunt and debauch it — but sober fact, that ‘authentic information’ from which, as Writer Strachey has shown us, circus biography is made.

When essential where did the real civil servant live; how did he look; did he wear laced serving-man or elastic-sided; who were realm aunts, and his friends; exhibition did he blow his exhibit whom did he love, post how; and when he came to die did he perish in his bed like topping Christian, or...

By telling us integrity true facts, by sifting high-mindedness little from the big, countryside shaping the whole so saunter we perceive the outline, leadership biographer does more to wake up the imagination than any lyrist or novelist save the statement greatest.

For few poets celebrated novelists are capable of turn this way high degree of tension which gives us reality. But near any biographer, if he felicitations facts, can give us unwarranted more than another fact stop add to our collection. Elegance can give us the clever fact; the fertile fact; loftiness fact that suggests and engenders.

Of this, too, there assessment certain proof. For how over and over again, when a biography is peruse and tossed aside, some spot remains bright, some figure lives on in the depths cancel out the mind, and causes unkind, when we read a plan or a novel, to brush a start of recognition, type if we remembered something lapse we had known before.

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

Writer Woolf (1941)