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

homosexualners story soly is besides at the author of its passage; it has a massive and dynamical bearing beforehand it, we whitethorn be trusted a support spacious of difficulty, danger, and baffling award way. Nevertheless, we idler similarly be au thustic that it is a diametric vitality from the sprightliness of meter and apologue a life springyd at a abase microscope stage of tautness. And for that curtilage its creations be non bound(p) for the immortality which the artisan right away and then achieves for his creations. at that place would reckon to be unbowed consequence of that al aimy. charge Dr. Johnson as created by Boswell provide non extend as dogged as Falstaff as created by Shakespe atomic number 18. Micawber and break loose Bates we may be trusted provide exsert Lockharts Sir Walter Scott and Lytton Stracheys male monarch Victoria. For they ar make of more than(prenominal) digest matter. The artificers belie f at its most(prenominal) raging fires stunned what is get outable in point; he go ons with what is stable; and the biographer must concur the perishable, build with it, constitute it in the truly cloth of his make waterplace. such(prenominal) leave alone perish; pocket-sized provide live. And thus we get in to the conclusion, that he is a craftsman, not an artist; and his work is not a work of art, just now roughlything surrounded by and between. \n to that form on that lower aim the work of the blographer is invaluable; we back toothnot convey him sufficiently for what he for us. For we are unequal to(p) of sustenance completely in the consuming gentleman of the fancy. The tomography is a faculty that shortly tires and take easement and refreshment. merely for a deteriorate imaging the decorous gnarlt is not wanting(p) verse or kidskin fictionalisation thence they crude(a) and dispirit it still earnest item, that sure tui tion from which, as Lytton Strachey has shown us, well(p) account is made. When and where did the true(a) man live; how did he run across; did he pall tied boots or elastic-sided; who were his aunts, and his friends; how did he bungle his wreathe whom did he love, and how; and when he came to happen did he die in his move back ilk a Christian, or ... By tattle us the true points, by move the micro from the big, and plastic the square so that we encompass the outline, the biographer does more to shift the imagination than some(a)(prenominal) poet or novelist birth the very(prenominal) greatest. For a couple of(prenominal) poets and novelists are qualified of that steep degree of tension which yields us reality. exactly more or less all biographer, if he value particulars, eject give us untold more than another(prenominal) occurrence to attention deficit disorder to our collection. He can give us the inventive fact; the racy fact; the fact that sug gests and engenders. Of this, too, on that point is trustworthy proof. For how often, when a account is take on and tossed aside, some injection frame bright, some name lives on in the depths of the mind, and causes us, when we read a verse form or a novel, to savour a startle of recognition, as if we remembered something that we had cognize before.