ELISABETH YOUNG-BRUEHL
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tance. The subject can be a "larger than life" individual of great
achievement or an unknown or even a group constituted histori–
cally or gathered by the biographer because of thematic affini–
ties. All that is required is that the subject be or be thought typi–
cal, representative. Influenced by the
Annales
school of social
history, by Marx ism, by structuralism, or by any other theory
that distinguishes deep trends and slowly unfolding tendencies
from surface phenomena, biographers of this mode try to catch
perfect synchronic moments, life moments riding on the surface
like buoys over pI umb lines that reach to the bottom of the sea.
This perspective stands behind a reflection Peter Nettl offered in
the Preface to his
Rosa Luxemburg:
It is often held tha t the imporlance of a biography can be
measured
prima fa cie
by some notional consensus about the
imporlance of the subject. Revi ewers especially equate
'proper' book weight with subject status. This seems to me
nonsense-or a t leas t true only at a very crude leve l of judg–
ment. Every person is interes ting if interestingly presented;
it is the context that matters....
It is possible-I think it is likely-that the only contempo–
rary individuals whose lives do well in the service of this last bio–
graphical mode are those who hated the idea of biography but
believed that, in W.H . Auden's words:
... our
suffering,
our
weaknesses, are of no literary interes t
whatsoever. They are only interesting in so far as we can see
them as typical of the human condition. A suffering, a weak–
ness, which cannot be expressed as an aphorism should not
be mentioned.
In other words, only the truly reticent are truly representative; all
others are suitable only for propaganda.
I stated earlier that I think these four forms of temptation
should be resisted. But it must be obvious by now that I do not
think they should be resisted completely. In both its "perfec–
tions" and its excesses, each form has something to teach; but in
order to learn, a biographer must have a sense of the limits of
each .
