Across the arts personal biography and self-projected image is relevant
insofar as it is incorporated in a particular individual's work. We all know
what Durer or Rembrandt or Van Gogh looked like, or at least we think we do
, and those self-projections are entwined with their work, carry a kind of
commentary on it. But it doesn't really matter what Cezanne or Pollock or
Ingres looked like. As far as I know, that is.
Take a poet like Blake. Along with Blake the poet comes a certain amount of
biographica - he was a Londoner, he died singing, he had visions, there was
an important Mrs Blake etc. But that detail, even tho' it spills into the
fields of 'etc', is not 'a life', in reality it's quite small and relevant
because it has been pulled into the work. But if I'm reading The Poison Tree
for example it's not foremost in my mind.
I avoid literary biographies avidly. I find them profoundly depressing. Like
Shakespeare's Will, as in Last and Testament.
david bircumshaw
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