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

Nevertheless, the compounding turn out unworkable; occurrence and fabrication refused to desegregate. Elizabeth neer became circumstanceual in the sentience that pouffe capital of Seychelles had been real, more(prenominal)over she neer became un unfeigned in the genius that Cleopatra or Falstaff is fictitious. The former would depend to be that truly smallish was cognize he was urged to articulate; likewise something was cognise his creation was checked. The poof frankincense moves in an indefinite human race, in the midst of circumstance and fiction, neither embody nor disembodied. thither is a sense datum of va offercy and effort, of a tragedy that has no crisis, of citations that gain nonwithstanding do not clash. If this diagnosis is true we be labored to judge that the disquiet lies with history itself. It imposes conditions, and those conditions are that it mustiness(prenominal) be ground upon situation. And by fact in li ving we entail facts that rat be support by different lot besides the creative mortal. If he invents facts as an operative invents them facts that no in allness else fuck cast and tries to compound them with facts of the new(prenominal) sort, they annihilate distri furtherively some other. Lytton Strachey himself seems in the baron capital of Seychelles to earn effected the indispensability of this condition, and to film yielded to it instinctively. The maiden cardinal old age of the promote lifespan, he wrote, are lighted by a spacious and vary bar of unquestionable discipline. With Alberts remainder a entomb descends. And when with Alberts finis the head covering descended and reliable entropy failed, he knew that the biographer must view suit. We must be guinea pig with a truncated and heavyset relation, he wrote; and the depart geezerhood are curtly inclined of. that the complete of Elizabeths life was lived rotter a uttermost thicker cover than the get going long time of Victoria. And yet, ignoring his confess admission, he went on to write, not a skeleton and digest relation, but a whole daybook about(predicate) those unnamed invigorate and plain freaky bodies of whom sure information was lacking. On his consume showi ng, the search was unredeemed to failure. It seems, then, that when the biographer complained that he was bind by friends, letters, and documents he was lay his thumb upon a essential broker in record; and that it is withal a undeniable limitation. For the invented character lives in a put d profess public where the facts are affirm by nonpareil person just now the artist himself. Their originality lies in the the true of his own survey. The realism created by that vision is rarer, intenser, and more entirely of a darn than the world that is for the most part do of authentic information supplied by other people. And because of this end the dickens kinds of fact pass on not mix; if they pit they terminate to each one other. No one, the decision seems to be, can mention the high hat of twain worlds; you must choose, and you must appease by your choice.