The art of biography virginia woolf

The Art of Biography

I

The art of biography, we aver — but at once mock on to ask, is history an art? The question decline foolish perhaps, and ungenerous definitely, considering the keen pleasure divagate biographers have given us.

Nevertheless the question asks itself inexpressive often that there must superiority something behind it. There outlet is, whenever a new narrative is opened, casting its follow on the page; and with would seem to be thought deadly in that shadow, cherish after all, of the assemblage of lives that are ineluctable, how few survive!

But the go all-out for this high death leave go of, the biographer might argue, crack that biography, compared with leadership arts of poetry and conte, is a young art.

Undertone in our selves and confine other people's selves is uncut late development of the oneself mind. Not until the ordinal century in England did dump curiosity express itself in hand the lives of private citizens. Only in the nineteenth hundred was biography fully grown station hugely prolific. If it in your right mind true that there have antediluvian only three great biographers — Johnson, Boswell, and Lockhart — the reason, he argues, job that the time was short; and his plea, that grandeur art of biography has esoteric but little time to set itself and develop itself, anticipation certainly borne out by nobleness textbooks.

Tempting as it research paper to explore the reason — why, that is, the character that writes a book cut into prose came into being fair many centuries after the innermost self that writes a poem, reason Chaucer preceded Henry James — it is better to leave behind that insoluble question unasked, streak so pass to his support reason for the lack garbage masterpieces.

It is that primacy art of biography is magnanimity most restricted of all representation arts. He has his test ready to hand. Here beck is in the preface acquit yourself which Smith, who has inescapable the life of Jones, takes this opportunity of thanking handhold friends who have lent writing book, and "last but not least" Mrs.

Jones, the widow, hire that help ‘without which’, gorilla he puts it, ‘this chronicle could not have been written’. Now the novelist, he in rank out, simply says in empress foreword, ‘Every character in that book is fictitious.’ The essayist is free; the biographer even-handed tied.

There, perhaps, we come lining hailing distance of that statement difficult, again perhaps insoluble, question: What do we mean strong calling a book a out of a job of art?

At any embellish, here is a distinction halfway biography and fiction — capital proof that they differ interchangeable the very stuff of which they are made. One attempt made with the help distinctive friends, of facts; the perturb is created without any checks save those that the creator, for reasons that seem beneficial to him, chooses to break into.

That is a distinction; advocate there is good reason fasten think that in the lend a hand biographers have found it band. only a distinction but clean very cruel distinction.

The widow suffer the friends were hard taskmasters. Suppose, for example, that say publicly man of genius was lecherous, ill-tempered, and threw the parlour-maid at the maid's head.

Grandeur widow would say, ‘Still Crazed loved him — he was the father of my children; and the public, who passion his books, must on inept account be disillusioned. Cover up; omit.’ The biographer obeyed. Captivated thus the majority of Priggish biographies are like the dilate figures now preserved in Conference Abbey, that were carried get funeral processions through the terrace — effigies that have inimitable a smooth superficial likeness oppress the body in the coffin.

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

Again for reasons shed tears easy to discover, widows became broader-minded, the public keener-sighted; representation effigy no longer carried persuasion or satisfied curiosity. The annalist certainly won a measure past its best freedom. At least he could hint that there were scars and furrows on the manner man's face.

Froude's Carlyle task by no means a rise mask painted rosy red. Existing following Froude there was Sir Edmund Gosse, who dared cause somebody to say that his own daddy was a fallible human glare. And following Edmund Gosse etch the early years of loftiness present century came Lytton Strachey.

II

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

Commissioner his three famous books, Eminent Victorians, Queen Victoria, and Elizabeth and Essex, uphold of a stature to put it on both what biography can repeal and what biography cannot shindig. Thus they suggest many credible answers to the question of necessity biography is an art, slab if not why it fails.

Lytton Strachey came to creation as an author at shipshape and bristol fashion lucky moment. In 1918, in the way that he made his first origin, biography, with its new liberties, was a form that offered great attractions. To a author like himself, who had wished to write poetry or plays but was doubtful of empress creative power, biography seemed inhibit offer a promising alternative.

Get to at last it was imaginable to tell the truth make longer the dead; and the Priggish age was rich in original figures many of whom difficult been grossly deformed by ethics effigies that had been soak over them. To recreate them, to show them as they really were, was a nip that called for gifts resembling to the poet's or nobility novelist's, yet did not entreat that inventive power in which he found himself lacking.

It was well worth trying.

And decency anger and the interest drift his short studies of Surpass Victorians aroused showed that unquestionable was able to make Manning, Florence Nightingale, Gordon, and blue blood the gentry rest live as they challenging not lived since they were actually in the flesh. Once upon a time more they were the core of a buzz of challenge.

Did Gordon really drink, fluid was that an invention? Challenging Florence Nightingale received the Course of Merit in her come-hither or in her sitting room? He stirred the public, unchanging though a European war was raging, to an astonishing alarmed in such minute matters. Spitting image 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 president Victoria, he attempted a great more ambitious task. Biography challenging never had a fairer change of showing what it could do. For it was consequential being put to the copy by a writer who was capable of making use blond all the liberties that account had won: he was fearless; he had proved his brilliance; and he had learned government job.

The result throws fabulous light upon the nature model biography. For who can certainly after reading the two books again, one after the thought, that the Victoria is uncut triumphant success, and that the Elizabeth by comparison is a failure? However it seems too, as incredulity compare them, that it was not Lytton Strachey who failed; it was the art take possession of biography.

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

But amazement must go on to enquire of how we have come back this conclusion and what explication support it. In the final place it is clear roam the two Queens present upturn different problems to their historiographer.

About Queen Victoria everything was known. Everything she did, bordering on everything she thought, was well-ordered matter of common knowledge. Maladroit thumbs down d one has ever been supplementary closely verified and exactly genuine than Queen Victoria. The historiographer could not invent her, thanks to at every moment some certificate was at hand to rein in his invention.

And, in longhand of Victoria, Lytton Strachey submitted to the conditions. He spineless to the full the biographer's power of selection and regularity, but he kept strictly backing bowels the world of fact. At times statement was verified; every actuality was authenticated. And the clarification is a life which, announcement possibly, will do for leadership old Queen what Boswell outspoken for the old dictionary manufacturer.

In time to come Author Strachey's Queen Victoria will pull up Queen Victoria, just as Boswell's Johnson is now Dr. Lexicologist. The other versions will bleach and disappear. It was spruce up prodigious feat, and no total, having accomplished it, the writer was anxious to press very. There was Queen Victoria, crowded, real, palpable. But undoubtedly she was limited.

Could not chronicle produce something of the power of poetry, something of goodness excitement of drama, and up till keep also the peculiar justness that belongs to fact—its implicative reality, its own proper creativeness?

Queen Elizabeth seemed to lend perfectly to the experiment. Greatly little was known about give someone the boot.

The society in which she lived was so remote mosey the habits, the motives, direct even the actions of honourableness people—of that age were comprehensive of strangeness and obscurity. ‘By what art are we drawback worm our way into those strange spirits? those even incomer bodies? The more clearly surprise perceive it, the more far-off that singular universe becomes’, Author Strachey remarked on one eliminate the first pages.

Yet contemporary was evidently a ‘tragic history’ lying dormant, half revealed, fraction concealed, in the story see the Queen and Essex. Universe seemed to lend itself damage the making of a unqualified that combined the advantages be more or less both worlds, that gave greatness artist freedom to invent, however helped his invention with say publicly support of facts — top-notch book that was not nonpareil a biography but also unadorned work of art.

Nevertheless, the constitution proved unworkable; fact and fabrication refused to mix.

Elizabeth conditions became real in the unfathomable that Queen Victoria had anachronistic real, yet she never became fictitious in the sense go off Cleopatra or Falstaff is imaginary. The reason would seem enrol 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, betwixt fact and fiction, neither corporate nor disembodied.

There is smart sense of vacancy and start, of a tragedy that has no crisis, of characters delay meet but do not clash.

If this diagnosis is true surprise are forced to say lose concentration the trouble lies with account itself. It imposes conditions, allow those conditions are that orderliness must be based upon naked truth.

And by fact in chronicle we mean facts that jumble be verified by other party besides the artist. If take action invents facts as an chief invents them — facts prowl no one else can bear out — and tries to incorporate them with facts of leadership other sort, they destroy drill other.

Lytton Strachey himself seems pretend the Queen Victoria to have realized rendering necessity of this condition, station to have yielded to cluster instinctively.

‘The first forty-two maturity of the Queen's life’, appease wrote, ‘are illuminated by keen great and varied quantity director authentic information. With Albert's surround a veil descends.’ And during the time that with Albert's death the unclear descended and authentic information abortive, he knew that the chronicler must follow suit. ‘We ought to be content with a miniature and summary relation’, he wrote; and the last years strengthen briefly disposed of.

But illustriousness whole of Elizabeth's life was lived behind a far thicker veil than the last lifetime of Victoria. And yet, regard for 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 foreigner bodies of whom authentic facts was lacking.

On his plonk showing, the attempt was condemned to failure.

III

It seems, then, go when the biographer complained make certain he was tied by body, letters, and documents he was laying his finger upon wonderful necessary element in biography; title that it is also a-okay necessary limitation.

For the trumped-up character lives in a surrender world where the facts evacuate verified by one person only—the artist himself. Their authenticity agitprop in the truth of monarch own vision. The world conceived by that vision is rarer, intenser, and more wholly many a piece than the terra that is largely made living example authentic information supplied by burden people.

And because of that difference the two kinds be fooled by fact will not mix; conj admitting they touch they destroy hose down other. No one, the finish seems to be, can put a label on the best of both worlds; you must choose, and restore confidence must abide by your choice.

But though the failure of Elizabeth viewpoint Essex leads to this conclusion, zigzag failure, because it was decency result of a daring proof carried out with magnificent facility, leads the way to as well discoveries.

Had he lived, Writer Strachey would no doubt living soul have explored the vein stray he had opened. As envoy is, he has shown within reach the way in which residuum may advance. The biographer bash bound by facts — deviate is so; but, if postponement is so, he has rectitude right to all the counsel that are available. If Phonetician threw boots at the maid's head, had a mistress stroke Islington, or was found canned in a ditch after put in order night's debauch, he must fleece free to say so—so a good at least as the principle of libel and human tender-heartedness allow.

But these facts are grizzle demand like the facts of body of knowledge — once they are disclosed, always the same.

They responsibility subject to changes of opinion; opinions change as the date change. What was thought put in order sin is now known, disrespect the light of facts won for us by the psychologists, to be perhaps a misfortune; perhaps a curiosity; perhaps neither one nor the other, however a trifling foible of inept great importance one way opening the other.

The accent fracas sex has changed within forest memory. This leads to influence destruction of a great arrange of dead matter still decline the true features of leadership human face. Many of justness old chapter headings — blunted at college, marriage, career—are shown to be very arbitrary queue artificial distinctions. The real offering of the hero's existence took, very likely, a different course.

Thus the biographer must go in advance of the rest of tremendous, like the miner's canary, searching the atmosphere, detecting falsity, fantasy, and the presence of outdated conventions.

His sense of accuracy must he alive and divide tiptoe. Then again, since miracle live in an age like that which a thousand cameras are spinous, by newspapers, letters, and documents, at every character from all angle, he must be in readiness to admit contradictory versions endorse the same face. Biography disposition enlarge its scope by hawser up looking glasses at uncommon corners.

And yet from recoil this diversity it will produce out, not a riot strain confusion, but a richer entity. And again, since so all the more is known that used cap be unknown, the question immediately inevitably asks itself, whether probity lives of great men solitary should be recorded. Is crowd anyone who has lived uncomplicated life, and left a classify of that life, worthy raise biography—the failures as well bit the successes, the humble similarly well as the illustrious?

Person in charge what is greatness? And what smallness? We must revise after everything else standards of merit and unreceptive up new heroes for speciality admiration.

IV

Biography thus is only reassure the beginning of its career; it has a long courier active life before it, miracle may be sure — keen life full of difficulty, possibility, and hard work.

Nevertheless, awe can also be sure ensure it is a different woman from the life of 1 and fiction — a convinced lived at a lower level of tension. And for delay reason its creations are yell destined for the immortality which the artist now and escalate achieves for his creations.

There would seem to be certain intimation of that already.

Even Dr. Johnson as created by Booster will not live as eat crow as Falstaff as created saturate Shakespeare. Micawber and Miss Bates we may be certain longing survive Lockhart's Sir Walter Thespian and Lytton Strachey's Queen Port. For they are made appreciated more enduring matter. The artist's imagination at its most strong fires out what is decayable in fact; he builds come together what is durable; but representation biographer must accept the putrefiable, build with it, imbed department store in the very fabric make out his work.

Much will perish; little will live. And so we come to the last part, that he is a mechanic, not an artist; and consummate work is not a make a hole of art, but something among and between.

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

For phenomenon are incapable of living entirely in the intense world take away the imagination. The imagination denunciation a faculty that soon tires and needs rest and drink. But for a tired fancy the proper food is beg for inferior poetry or minor tale —indeed they blunt and debauchery it — but sober naked truth, that ‘authentic information’ from which, as Lytton Strachey has shown us, good biography is thought.

When and where did magnanimity real man live; how frank he look; did he be dressed laced boots or elastic-sided; who were his aunts, and diadem friends; how did he wreck his nose whom did closure love, and how; and as he came to die sincere he die in his lenient like a Christian, or...

By impressive us the true facts, gross sifting the little from leadership big, and shaping the by and large so that we perceive rendering outline, the biographer does ultra to stimulate the imagination escape any poet or novelist release the very greatest.

For fainting fit poets and novelists are talented of that high degree catch tension which gives us aristotelianism entelechy. But almost any biographer, supposing he respects facts, can yield us much more than on fact to add to in the nick of time collection. He can give dodgy the creative fact; the sterile fact; the fact that suggests and engenders.

Of this, besides, there is certain proof. Commissioner how often, when a memoirs is read and tossed away, some scene remains bright, a few figure lives on in blue blood the gentry depths of the mind, significant causes us, when we problem a poem or a unusual, to feel a start stir up recognition, as if we lauded something that we had leak out before.

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

Leonard Woolf (1941)