HOW TRUE TO LIFE IS BIOGRAPHY?
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WritIng of the life story? Or does the story precede life, shape it in
advance, and dictate it? And who writes, who creates the story-the
person who lives it, the one who writes it? Or perhaps the story writes
us all. In other words, life is replete with all the incongruity of messy
details and phenomena, and writing is a shaping skill with its laws and
considerations. When we write a biography, an autobiography, or a fic–
tional auto-bio-graphy, according to what laws do we fashion it, do we
carve it? And what is its "plot"? for me the plot is the bones' X-ray of
the life story, the hidden vein that feeds both the biographer and the
subject of the biography. Is the plot unique, original, or is there a pre–
existing plot, dominating the way a life story is both lived and told?
I've chosen an extreme case of biography
to
share my point with you.
It might be a little unusual to call it "biography"; but from my point of
view, not only does it meet the requirements of the genre, but this
"generic" biography also shapes the basic plot underlying the Western
story. The case I refer to is what I would name the Jewish Case, or the
Jewish Biography, with its extreme forms of plot and personification, its
singular timeline, and its unique modes of self-suspicion, up to the ques–
tioning of the whole status of the story. Today I'll limit my reading to
the overt, literal level.
The "Jewish Biography" starts and is projected into the future by the
power of God's Promise to Abraham. God chooses and extracts Abra–
ham out of his life, sending him on a journey towards a new life, and a
new place; a journey which is at once private and communal, unfolding
and shaping through history. A projected biography that embraces, in
advance, all future Jewish lives.
In fact, a Jew is born into an already articulated biography. In the tra–
ditional context of Halacha-the Jewish Law (which until two hundred
years ago was the only way a Jew could define him- or herself)-a Jew's
life is codified to a unique extent. From rising in the morning to the
moment of falling asleep at night, from birth to death and burial, the
myriad of gestures, thoughts, and even intentions is pre-articulated,
forming a specific mold into which the particular life is poured. The pri–
vate life in a given historical moment is a personal variation on that
generic mold; always seemingly only a re-enactment-not an "inven–
tion"-of a preexisting role in an ongoing plot that started with Abra–
ham, the first Jew, and is still unfolding.
The beginning of such a long and complex story could not be a tri–
fling move. And actually, the delivering of God's choice and promise
required a few drafts, and a number of new starts, clearly seen in the
biblical text. As if the Torah, like later the Talmud, the Midrash, and the
