Lifeline: the Evolution of Biography

NATIONAL ENDOWMENT FOR THE HUMANITIES • VOLUME 5 NUMBER 3 JUNE 1984 Lifeline: The Evolution of Biography Henry James argued that all we ask of It must be borne in mind that my purpose fiction, fundamentally, is that it be in is not to write histories, but lives... As portrait-painters are more exact in the teresting. That, rather than signifi forms and features of the face, in which the cance, has also been the goal of artist- character is seen, than in the other parts of biographers, who put forth their claims the body, so I must be allowed to give my for what is interesting in a life: its per more particular attention to the marks and sonal, its intimate, its idiosyncratic, its indications of the souls of men. contradictory elements; its very shape. Here for the first time life-writing con Biography attempts to escape sciously separates itself from history through self-definition the clutches of and finds an evocative parallel in art. systems of meaning that disdain the What followed biography's classical random details of individual life, sys period, which included Tacitus's Life of tems that use life-telling for lessons or A gricola and Suetonius's Lives of the theories. Twelve Caesars, was the long, dark night > Except in the nineteenth century—a of hagiography—the celebration, in the period of dreadful back-sliding by the formula of saints' lives, of religious ab canons of post-Victorian biographical solutes. The disinterest in human dif criticism—biography as a self-con ferentiation—which had its aesthetic scious form has willingly relinquished equivalent in the iconic portrayal of the dignity of history or religion, the saints—extended to the secular world More's Life of Richard III is nonetheless telling of momentous public events, or as well. The first English biography of an evocative portrayal of a particular of spiritual lessons. But in the process, a layman, the Life of Alfred the Great, man. "He was close and secret," wrote biography has aspired to be interesting, written by Bishop Asser at the end of More, "a deep dissembler, lowly of has aspired to the dignity of art. the ninth century or the beginning of countenance, arrogant of heart, out Although the modern tradition of bi the tenth, is a saint's life in political wardly companionable where he in ography, at least in the English-speak terms. There is, again, no sense of per wardly hated, not hesitating to kiss ing world, traces its beginnings to the sonality, only of idealized traits. whom he thought to kill." sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, English biography can be said prop More, in time, became himself the the form takes as its patron saint Plu erly to begin in the era of the Renais subject of a classic English biography tarch, author of lives of Greeks and Ro sance with Thomas More's H istory of by his son-in-law William Roper. This mans who lived in the first century. Richard III, written in 1513, and pub Advocate of personality as a concern of lished in 1557. More's work, which life-writers, Plutarch wrote, in his pref would influence Shakespeare's charac ace to the Life of Alexander: terization of the king, can by no means be considered a saint's life, secular or otherwise. Clearly motivated by mal ice—(it was commissioned for Tudor propaganda)—and frequently imagi nary, particularly in its dialogue, book and George Cavendish's Life of truth." Brief Lives, Aubrey's notes, were those performances and incidents Wolsey, also written in the sixteenth not published for almost two centuries. which produce 'vulgar greatness' and Editor's Notes century, were the first sustained narra A modem critic described Aubrey's lead the thoughts into domestic priva tives of individual lives written in the data—filled with vivid detail told with cies and display the minute details of English language. These, although rev great style—as "biographic ore," which daily life." His own biographical work "The biographer," wrote Desmond erential and even solemn, are works of later generations would mine. ranged from the pungent Lives of the Morris, "is the novelist on oath." Al sixteenth-century humanism—reflected The late seventeenth century did Poets, which combined life-telling and though the facts cannot be invented, also in Holbein's portraiture of this produce one great biographer and bio criticism (an ongoing dilemma for they can be given narrative form, re time—avoiding allegorizing in the me graphical theorist, Roger North, who biographers), to his remarkable Life of creating for the reader the drama and dieval style. argued that anyone's life could be Savage, which, in its insistence on truth meaning of a life once lived. In the late seventeenth century, biog made interesting, and wrote three mas and psychological insight, is the first The Library of Congress recently un raphy took its name and its first step terful lives—of his brothers Francis example of a rich, complex portrayal of dertook a survey to determine national toward modem self-recognition as a Baron Guilford, Sir Dudley North, and a tortured, unlikable subject, viewed reading preferences. It was found that form. John Dryden, in his preface to Dr. John North. In an essay, unpub with honesty and human sympathy. more people had read a biography in Plutarch's Lives, Translated from the Greek lished until the twentieth century, It is of course Johnson's life written the preceding six months than any by Several Hands, pronounced: "bio- North made the first full claims for bi by Boswell that provides the fullest tes other kind of book. graphia the history of particular men's ography as art. He argued that some timony to biography's capacity for ar Small wonder! Just within the con lives." Dryden allowed that biography one might "make gatherings and ex tistic realization—the one unquestioned fines of these pages are people as dif was "inferior in dignity to history," but cerpts out of letters, books, or reports masterpiece. It might also be argued ferent as Santayana and Louis Arm he hit on its central advantage: in . but these are memorials or rather that it is the supreme statement of its strong, George C. Marshall and Sylvia " pleasure" it excels all other branches of bundles of uncemented materials, but time, what one critic called a "flamboy Beach. In each of their lives a new facet history. not the life." "There is," he insisted, ant proclamation of the importance of of history is revealed; we know another "great art... in making good descrip There is a descent into minute circum an individual." dimension of what it means to be stances and trivial passages of life . which tion of plain facts." To those who ar Boswell knew that he had created a human. the dignity of (history) will not admit. gued that only fiction could be made masterpiece. "I am absolutely certain," Perhaps the modem novel's aban There you are conducted only into the beautiful, "I answer," North wrote, he wrote in a letter to William Temple, rooms of state; here you are led into the donment of plot, character, and narra "that the same ingredients that are usu "that my mode of biography, which private lodgings of the hero: you see him in tive line is responsible for biography's ally brought to adorn fiction may come undress, and are made familiar with his gives not only a history of Johnson's rise in popularity. The journey be most private actions and conversations.. forward and be as well applied to the visible progress through the world . tween birth and death is, after all, the The pageantry of life is taken away. You setting forth of truths, that is, choice of but a. view of his mind in his letters and universal experience. With its wealth see the poor reasonable animal, as naked as words, charming periods, interspersion conversations, is the most perfect that ever nature made him; are made acquainted of laboriously researched details, biog of sentences, and facetious can be conceived." with his passions and follies, and find the raphy grows more particular—and expressions." Demi-God, a man. Boswell, thus, gave biography its more inviting—as the novel grows more The hunger for biography in the credo, and its model, and also its noto abstract. This was biography seen for its own early eighteenth century had grown riety. The public's reaction to Boswell's Is biography defined as history or sake—for pleasure, for curiosity, for sufficiently by 1716 to warrant an at commitment to write no "panegyrick," literature? Good biographies join the human sympathy—not construed as tack by Joseph Addison on "a race of but a life honestly rendered, brought to two. Perhaps their growing attraction panegyric, or religious model, or philo men lately sprung up . whom we the fore a wide-ranging discussion in for readers may be explained by pub sophical typology. cannot reflect upon without indigna journals and salons about the aspira lisher Thomas Congdon who says, "In No one of the age understood more tion. ... These are Grub-street biogra tions of biography. Boswell was at a world of facts, facts, facts, it's lives, completely, by instinct, what was inter phers, who watch for the death of a tacked not only for his depiction of lives, lives that matter." esting in people's lives than John Au great man, like so many undertakers, Johnson's faults but also for his revela —Judith Chayes Neiman brey, who collected from 1669 to 1696, on purpose to make a penny of him." tion of private conversations.

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