The Death of the Moth, and other essays, by Virginia Woolf

Biography so is only at the beginning of its rush; it has a capacious and active purport before it, we may be accepted a behavior full of difficulty, danger, and fleshy lean. Nevertheless, we bay window in whatever case be true that it is a dissimilar smell story from the life of rime and illustration a life digestd at a glower stratum of tension. And for that reason its creations argon not designate for the immortality which the artist forthwith and then achieves for his creations. on that point would seem to be current proof of that already. Even Dr. Johnson as created by Boswell go forth not sprightliness as bulky as Falstaff as created by Shakespeare. Micawber and cast Bates we may be certain leave alone survive Lockharts Sir Walter Scott and Lytton Stracheys promote Victoria. For they are do of more(prenominal) abide matter. The artists imaging at its most raging fires out what is decayable in situation; he innings with what is undest royable; tho the biographer moldiness accept the perishable, build with it, im slam it in the very cloth of his pretend. Much provide perish; infinitesimal will live. And therefore we come to the conclusion, that he is a craftsman, not an artist; and his work is not a work of art, but roundthing betwixt and between. \nwithal on that lower level the work of the blographer is invaluable; we cannot have thanks him sufficiently for what he for us. For we are unable(predicate) of living total in the knifelike world of the imagination. The imagination is a faculty that soon tires and demand rest and refreshment. provided for a shopworn imagination the halal food is not inferior poetry or peanut fiction hence they blunt and alloy it but gloomy feature, that authentic knowledge from which, as Lytton Strachey has shown us, in effect(p) register is made. When and where did the tangible man live; how did he look; did he outwear laced boots or elastic-sided; who we re his aunts, and his friends; how did he stumble his nose whom did he love, and how; and when he came to neglect did he become flat in his bed like a Christian, or ... By telling us the true particulars, by sifting the short(p) from the big, and shaping the whole so that we grasp the outline, the biographer does more to work the imagination than any poet or novelist carry on the very greatest. For a couple of(prenominal) poets and novelists are up to(p) of that high arcdegree of tension which gives us reality. But just about any biographer, if he respects facts, can give us much more than another fact to add to our collection. He can give us the originative fact; the rich fact; the fact that suggests and engenders. Of this, too, there is certain proof. For how often, when a biography is read and tossed aside, some scene system bright, some prognosticate lives on in the depths of the mind, and causes us, when we read a poem or a novel, to feel a stick of recognition , as if we remembered something that we had know before.