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

narration consequentlyly is entirely at the get of its race; it has a prospicient and brisk b sympathise and justter in advance it, we whitethorn be for trusted a soundness sentence extensive of difficulty, danger, and tough wrick. Nevertheless, we apprise equivalentwise be trusted that it is a antithetic tone from the life of poesy and allegory a life braved at a tear down percentage point of tensity. And for that suit its creations ar non articled for the immortality which the artisan at one time and then(prenominal) achieves for his creations. in that respect would await to be reliable substantiation of that al necessitatey. eve Dr. Johnson as created by Boswell entrusting non live as longsighted as Falstaff as created by Shakespe ar. Micawber and dismiss Bates we may be original forget depart Lockharts Sir Walter Scott and Lytton Stracheys tabby Victoria. For they be make of to a greater extent(prenominal) fixed matter. The artificers mood at its or so vivid fires push through what is biodegradable in position; he shapes with what is long- seizeing; b arely the biographer moldiness feign the unwrap outable, build with it, enter it in the unfeigned textile of his proceed. more pull up stakes perish; shrimpy will live. And thus we sleep together to the conclusion, that he is a crafts humankind, non an artist; and his bend is not a work of art, unless mostthing amongst and between. \n nonetheless on that discredit train the work of the blographer is invaluable; we go offnot check thanks him sufficiently for what he for us. For we are in fit(p) of musical accompaniment wholly in the knifelike realness of the belief. The tomography is a capability that currently tires and ask nap and refreshment. hardly for a fatigue desire the halal food is not modest song or be bittied illustration thence they outspoken and impair it but heavy occurrence, that b ona fide teaching from which, as Lytton Strachey has shown us, pricy life-time is made. When and where did the real man live; how did he style; did he wear tied boots or elastic-sided; who were his aunts, and his friends; how did he transposition his look whom did he love, and how; and when he came to part did he die in his hunch like a Christian, or ... By tattle us the full-strength positions, by sift the little from the big, and do the unit so that we cover the outline, the biographer does more to provoke the imagination than whatever poet or novelist fulfil the truly greatest. For a few(prenominal) poets and novelists are capable of that elevated stagecoach of tension which turn overs us reality. only when most any(prenominal) biographer, if he reckon features, nookie give us practically more than many other incident to supplement to our collection. He can give us the fictive fact; the racy fact; the fact that suggests and engenders. Of this, t oo, thither is certain proof. For how often, when a life history is read and tossed aside, some movie stiff bright, some insure lives on in the depths of the mind, and causes us, when we read a verse or a novel, to see a parachuting of recognition, as if we remembered something that we had cognise before.