Biography
The development of biography as an art form is a recent one. The credit for first using the term biography goes to John Dryden who defined it as the history of particular men's lives' The Oxford Dictionary defines it as "the history of the lives of individual men as a branch of literature" Harold Nicholson simply echoes this definition when he says that "the biography is a truthful record of an individual presented as a work of art."
Distinguished from History
Biography should be distinguished from history with which it is sometimes confused. History deals with the life of nations while biography deals with the life of an individual. History studies the movements affecting a nation or an age, whereas biography studies the personality of a man. Biography seeks to isolate the individual from his age, and unfold the charm of his distinctive personality.
Biography is a study sharply defined by two definite events, birth and death. It fills its canvas with one figure, and other characters, however, great in themselves, must always be subsidiary to the central dhero" (Edumund Gosse) Again biography deals with a man both from within and without. It exhibits the external life of the subject, gives a vivid picture of his character, and unfolds the growth of his mind.
The first and by far the greatest difficulty of the biographer lies in the way in which humanity at present regards death. The sudden arrival of bodily death to an active and vivid personality is so stunning and bewildering a thing to his immediate circle, that it seems to change their whole view of the departed.
The result too often is that the character of the departed. The result too often is that the character of the departed is instantly transformed and glorified. It seems irreverent to remember anything absurd or amusing about him : his very gaiety and cheerfulness is as fuel to sorrow. Then the biographer begins his work, and the moment that he writes. freely and naturally, touches upon faults or fralities or foibles, or above all, absurdities, there is a chorus of disapproval.
The piety of relatives which is real and true and must be. presented, fires up at the bare idea of the hero being represented in an unjust or perverse or ridiculous light: Then too, the light of an unjust or perverse or ridiculous light.' Then, too, the light of romance begins to shed its glow over their admiring memories. Further, the choice has to be made as to whether the thing is to be done at once, while memories are fresh and interest vivid, or whether the thing is to be done at once, while memories are fresh and interest vivid, or whether it is all to be deferred to some future date, when the glowing picture has faded into something dim and stately.
It ends as a rule in the thing being done soon and then everything is smoothed out, the salient features softened down, the contrast sacrificed, the proportion lost. This is the great, initial and supreme difficulty of the biography, ie. the fact that biographer is confronted with passionate emotion and intense hero-worship. It is the old conflict between realism and romance.
Most human beings are deeply in love with romance, and prefer a figure to be idealized, and until people learn that if a man is great enough to be written about, he is also great enough to be described clearly, accurately, and with relentless fidelity, biography must continue to be a tame, reticent, sentimental and insincere art.
Sentimental admirers do not desire either truth or proportion, they desire a glowing and glorified figure moving on from strength to strength, when the interchange of strength and weakness, of lofty beauty and childish pettiness, are often the chief interest of a man's care (A.C. Benson)
The perfect biographer must see his subject vividly, audibly and langibly; he must paint, not what he thinks, he sees, but what he actually does see. The biographer must have a relentless and microscopic faculty of observation; he must have patience, energy of research; he must have power of omission and selection; and lastly he must have a extreme veraciousness, which does not pay any particular heed to decorum or sentiment or romance.
He need not violate privacy or sacredness, any more than a portrait painter need insist on always painting from the nude; but he must have no deference for the kind of hero-worship which requires that a man should be exhibited in flawless, stainless and radiant perfection, while its sympathy and reverence will save him from mere caricature and from undue emphasis on what was, merely occasional, exagge rated or sensational.
Proportion is the true difficulty, how to balance what is lofty, noble and awe-inspiring with what is minute, whimsical, humorous. The beset biographer must know by a kind of inspired tact what is essential; he must not love fondly but truly, and then if he works both faithfully and skillfully, he may do what is perhaps the greatest service a man can do for his fellows, and persuade them to believe in life and show them that life itself finely lived, with all its shadows and failures, is a more beautiful and engrossing thing than any romantic or imaginative presentment of it.
Some Remarkable Biographies
Despite the innumerable difficulties which is biographer has to face, English language is particularly rich in this field. Izzac Walten's English Worthies contains the admirable biography of John Donne, and this is source book for all those who want to make a first hand acquaintance with one of the greatest of poets in the English language.
D. Jonnes's Lives of the Poets though sometimes marred by the great Khan's literary, political and personal prejudices, is remarkable for this - combination of biography with literary criticism. The learned Doctor's sound commonsense and his inimitable style make this collection of the lives of a number of great English writes, interesting and illuminating reading. Another work standing in the first rank of English biography is Boswell's Life of Johnson. The great literary dictator lives once again in the pages of this very intimate and a minute account of his life. Indeed, the credit for creating Dr. Jonson's legend must to to Boswell.
