Autobiography

“ The happiness of writing an autobiography which is going to be published and read is a simple and comprehensible emotion. Before books were invented, men carved on stone something of a vainglorious nature about themselves, and expected their subjects, or their neighbours, to decipher it. But there is a deeper and subtler gratification in writing an autobiography which seeks no immediate public, and contents itself with the expression of a profound and indulged egotism. ”

“ No sadder autobiography has ever been written. It is a lame and impotent attempt at self-justification, revealing on every page the writer's distrust of the virtues which he exalts, and of man whose reason and majesty he deifies,--even of the friendships in which he sought consolation, and of the retirements where he hoped for rest. ”

“ No man, unless he puts on the mask of fiction, can show his real face or the will behind it. For this reason the only real biographies are the novels, and every novel, if it is honest, will be the autobiography of the author and biography of the reader. ”

“ As ghastly figures stare from the written pages of autobiography, reminders that the mortal or weak parts dominated the whole, and left a record that is unchangeable.
To the biographer, not too closely related to his subject, and to the editor, belongs the task of telling the truth—not the simple or the whole truth, but as much as the records will afford. The writer of biography has the wider field, the better opportunity, for he may wander far and invoke the dramatic and the picturesque, even infusing into the relation a color of his own. ”

“ Especially in the case of autobiography is all this true, for here we have the pleasure of feeling that the record is both authentic and intimate. The best of biographers, however learned, vivid, or philosophical, leaves between us and the past an interval which only a good autobiography can span. Such an autobiography may possess great historical value if its author was intimately connected with significant events and had some capacity to perceive their causes and their effects. ”

“ We say to the biographer: “Let your subject, as far as may be, tell us of himself; give us any fragments of autobiography or journals which may be in existence; print copiously of his letters.” The wise writer of biography does so; and the most valuable portions of the life of a man of note are those in which he speaks himself. Let Michael Angelo, with candle stuck in his pasteboard cap, teach those who undertake to show us a character in whom there is a public interest; let them keep their own shadows off the canvas. ”

“ Formerly, if a man wanted to talk about himself, he wrote an autobiography to be published posthumously, and there was therefore some safeguard, in so far as he was not to be directly conscious of the effect produced. Now, the autobiography is being superseded by the 'reminiscences,' in which every one is invited to explain what a genial and charming creature he is; how thoroughly he appreciates his contemporaries, and how superior he is to any desire for popular praise. ”

“ Nevertheless, I see, with you, many reasons for regarding my autobiography as exceptional in its character, and as being, in some sense, naturally beyond the reach of those reproaches which honorable and sensitive minds dislike to incur. It is not to illustrate any heroic achievements of a man, but to vindicate a just and beneficent principle, in its application to the whole human family, by letting in the light of truth upon a system, esteemed by some as a blessing, and by others as a curse and a crime. ”

“ The [575] diction of memoirs is somewhat determined by circumstances and subject; but if you write an autobiography, you should see to it that your words and constructions are unmistakably simple. Be as modest as is consistent with your great deeds, and as cheerful as the fates will allow. If you make yourself out a good fellow, do so by the general impression of your narrative, not by assertion. ”

“ Nobody ever wrote a dull autobiography. If one may make such a bull, the very dulness would be interesting. The autobiographer has ex officio two qualifications of supreme importance in all literary work. He is writing about a topic in which he is keenly interested, and about a topic upon which he is the highest living authority. It may be reckoned, too, as a special felicity that an autobiography, alone of all books, may be more valuable in proportion to the amount of misrepresentation which it contains. ”

“ AUTOBIOGRAPHY—CHATEAUBRIAND'S MEMOIRS.3
Autobiography, when skilfully and judiciously done, is one of the most delightful species of composition of which literature can boast. There is a strong desire in every intelligent and well-informed mind to be made acquainted with the private thoughts, and secret motives of action, of those who have filled the world with their renown. We long to learn their early history, to be made acquainted with their first aspirations—to learn how they became so great as they afterwards turned out. ”

“ That is what the highest criticism really is, the record of one’s own soul. It is more fascinating than history, as it is concerned simply with oneself. It is more delightful than philosophy, as its subject is concrete and not abstract, real and not vague. It is the only civilised form of autobiography, as it deals not with the events, but with the thoughts of one’s life; ”

“ In giving the life of this admirable woman, we have at once the advantage and disadvantage of drawing the details of her early years from her autobiography. We are thus secure from false statements and meagre conjecture; but our pages must appear cold and vapid, as containing only an abridgment of details which she recounts with a glowing pen. ”

“ One is first hand information, the other second, or even third. As Trudeau puts it: to recount the actions of another is not biography, it is zoology. Both have points in common, as all works of art must be founded on art and beauty, but the qualities that make biography great are not those that autobiography needs to achieve perfection.
In the first place, the chief merit of autobiography is to be found in veracity and sincerity; these qualities are more important than style or grammar. ”

“ An automobile, for instance, is a self-moving vehicle. So autobiography is the biography of oneself. The great aim of the novelist is, by any means within his power, to make his tale seem true, and the truer it is—the truer to human nature and the facts of life—the greater is his triumph. ”

“ I invoke for this book that kindly judgment of my countrymen which has attended everything I have done in my life so far. I have tried to guard against the dangers and the besetting infirmities of men who write their own biography. An autobiography, as the word implies, will be egotistical. An old man's autobiography is pretty certain to be garrulous. If the writer set forth therein his own ideals, he is likely to be judged by them, even when he may fall far short of them. ”

“ To write another person’s life-history in the first person, and yet give to it the verisimilitude of a genuine autobiography, would under ordinary circumstances be a difficult if not impossible undertaking. ”

“ My answer is that if it be true that every novel contains an element of autobiography—and this can hardly be denied, since the creator can only express himself in his creation—then there are some of us to whom an open display of sentiment is repugnant. ”

“ In view of the tremendous and increasing interest in personality due to an awakening of the sense of personal responsibility, to the increasing interest in human immortality, and to the widespread and searching study of abnormal manifestations of personality, it is not to be wondered that biographical writing which aims at revealing personality is so popular.
The time has now come when every one writes biography or autobiography, and from every corner of the earth, and from every branch of human or divine activity, there pour forth studies of the lives of prominent representatives. ”

“ It is not, indeed, until after some reconnaissance and review that the writer awakes to find himself engaged upon something in the nature of autobiography, or, perhaps worse, upon a chapter in the life of that little, beautiful brother whom we once all had, and whom we have all lost and mourned, the man we ought to have been, the man we hoped to be. ”

“ My principal reasons for writing an autobiography are because I am the only person in the world who knows enough about my history to give a truthful account of it, and because I dread the possibility of falling into the hands of some writer who might attempt a biography with inadequate materials. ”

“ There is a noticeable desire to make humanity or the reading public our residuary legatee, to endow it with our experiences, to enrich it with our egotisms, to strip ourselves bare in the market-place—if not for the edification, at all events for the amusement, of man. All this is accomplished by autobiography. ”

“ Even fictitious representations are significant when viewed as showing the tendency at a given moment to idealize certain schematizations of life. The autobiography has a more positive value for the student, but usually tends to approach the model of fiction, idealizing certain situations and experiences and repressing others totally. Incidentally 251one of the largest and most important bodies of spontaneous material for the study of the personality and the wishes passes through the mails. ”

“ And the realization that he had gone as far and gained as much as would ever be possible for him deepened his melancholy. "It seems that when a man finishes his autobiography, he's practically finished his life too," he thought. ”

“ Nevertheless, despite the drawbacks of subject-matter, the autobiography is a very interesting piece of English prose. The narrative style, for all its coxcombry and its insistence on petty details, has a singular vivacity; the constructions, though sometimes incorrect ("the edict was so severe as they who transgressed were to lose their heads") , are never merely slovenly; and the writer displays an art, very uncommon in his time, in the alternation of short and long sentences and the general adjustment [Pg 440] of the paragraph. ”

“ The world has reason to be thankful that the fate of the Autobiography should thus have been left to the decision of men who, even if they had not lived in the eighteenth century, would have been robust enough, in point of intelligence and morals, to believe that the youthful errata laid bare in that book were more than atoned for by the manly and generous aims that inspired it. ”

“ The only stories life presents to us in an orderly way are those of our autobiography, or the career of our companions from our childhood upward, or perhaps of our own children. But it is a great art to make a connected strictly relevant narative of such careers as we can recount from the beginning. ”

“ It is generally accepted that the relation which exists between autobiography and biography is so close that so far as purpose and quality of form and subject are concerned, the words are interchangeable; that is to say, the average person thinks the unique difference between the two is that one is written in the first person, the other in the third. ”

“ But who knows the essential, since biographists must perforce omit the spade work of life on character, the gradual attrition or upbuilding of principles under experience, and the strain and stress, that, sooner or later, bear fruit in action? Even autobiography, as all other history, needs must be incomplete, since no man himself exactly appreciated the vital experiences that made him what he is, or turns him from what he was ”

“ The author has sought his end by means of a fictitious autobiography. This was of course. No unusual faculty in the selection of methods was necessary to the choice; for only in the autobiographical form could the inner life of a courtesan be so revealed as to present a truthful and living picture of her soul's experience. A fine novel of this kind would be a great book, and one productive of much good ”

“ It is really a remarkable system of shorthand autobiography, enabling a complete stranger to tell whether one belongs to a good family going downhill, or a poor one coming uphill, or a mediocre at a standstill. ”

“ The sense as of a projection of certain features of the writer into all and sundry of his important characters, thus imparts, if not an air of egotism, then most certainly a somewhat constrained, if not somewhat artificial, autobiographical air—in the very midst of action, questions of ethical or casuistical character arise, all contributing to submerging individual character and its dramatic interests under a wave of but half-disguised autobiography. ”

“ But we may be certain that had such autobiography ever been written, the self-delineation of its pages would have differed in many important particulars—in details 71put in, and even more seriously in details left out—from that contained in the journal itself. As it is, we have an odd and uncomfortable sense, when we first open the Diary, of intruding where we have no proper business, of breaking in upon the privacy of a man’s life, and surprising him in the undress which he might wear for himself, but in which he would not willingly be caught by even his closest friend. ”

“ Stephen McKenna
[Pg 173]
You would think it should be easy—far easier than writing a novel—for any man of literary capacity to sit down and write the story of his own life, bring into it, instead of imaginary characters, the real men and women he has known, and so make a great Autobiography. Yet there are fewer great books in autobiography than in any other form of literature. ”