Different Lives : Global Perspectives on Biography in Public Cultures and Societies [1 ed.] 9789004434974, 9789004428126

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Different Lives

Biography Studies Editor-in-Chief Hans Renders (University of Groningen)

Editorial Board Nigel Hamilton (University of Massachusetts Boston) Sigurður Gylfi Magnússon (University of Iceland) Lindie Koorts (University of the Free State)

Volume 1

The titles published in this series are listed at brill.com/bio

Different Lives Global Perspectives on Biography in Public Cultures and Societies

Edited by

Hans Renders David Veltman In collaboration with

Madelon Nanninga-Franssen

Cover illustration: © Dolf Verlinden. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Renders, Hans, editor. | Veltman, David, editor. Title: Different lives : global perspectives on biography in public cultures and societies / edited by Hans Renders, David Veltman ; in collaboration with Madelon Nanninga-Franssen. Other titles: Global perspectives on biography in public cultures and societies Description: Leiden ; Boston : Brill, [2020] | Series: Biography studies, 2468-2497 ; volume 1 | Identifiers: LCCN 2020016841 | ISBN 9789004428126 (hardback) | ISBN 9789004434974 (e-book) Subjects: LCSH: History–Biography ; Life histories ; Memoirs. | Intellectual history. Classification: LCC CT21 .D53 2020 | DDC 808.06/692–dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020016841

Typeface for the Latin, Greek, and Cyrillic scripts: “Brill”. See and download: brill.com/brill-typeface. ISSN 2468-2497 ISBN 978-90-04-42812-6 (hardback) ISBN 978-90-04-43497-4 (e-book) Copyright 2020 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands. Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints Brill, Brill Hes & De Graaf, Brill Nijhoff, Brill Rodopi, Brill Sense, Hotei Publishing, mentis Verlag, Verlag Ferdinand Schöningh and Wilhelm Fink Verlag. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher. Authorization to photocopy items for internal or personal use is granted by Koninklijke Brill NV provided that the appropriate fees are paid directly to The Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Suite 910, Danvers, MA 01923, USA. Fees are subject to change. This book is printed on acid-free paper and produced in a sustainable manner.

Contents Acknowledgements vii List of Figures viii Notes on Contributors ix Introduction 1 Richard Holmes Different Lives in a Global World 3 Hans Renders Truth, Lies and Fake Truth: the Future of Biography 12 Nigel Hamilton Historical Biography in Canada: Historians, Publishers, and the Public Daniel R. Meister Biography as Discourse: South African Biography in the Post-apartheid Era 41 Lindie Koorts ‘La pauvre Belgique’: How a Debate over the Repression after the Second World War Informed a Biographical Tradition in Belgium 57 David Veltman Biography in Spain: a Historical and Historiographic Perspective 69 María Jesús González The Chinese Sense of Self and Biographical Narrative: an Overview 86 Kerry Brown Double Dutch: the Art of Presidential Biography 99 Carl Rollyson Biography in Australia: Different Yet the Same? All Connected Flatland? 111 Melanie Nolan

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Writing Lives in Contemporary Italy Yannick Gouchan

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Hidden and Forbidden Issues in Works of Iranian Biography 139 Sahar Vahdati Hosseinian From Reticence to Revelation: Biography in New Zealand Doug Munro

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The Icelandic Biography and Egodocuments in Historical Writing 165 Sigurður Gylfi Magnússon Between ‘Creators and Bearers of the Czech National Myth’ and an ‘Academic Suicide’: Czech Biography in the Twenty-First Century 182 Jana Wohlmuth Markupová Biographies and Their Agendas: the Danish Biographical Tradition in a Historical Perspective 197 Joanna Cymbrykiewicz Biography in the Netherlands The Biography’s Pretension to Truth Is Relative 208 Elsbeth Etty Inception, Inheritance and Innovation: Sima Qian, Liang Qichao and the Modernization of Chinese Biography 217 Liu Jialin Bibliography Index 261

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Acknowledgements Many of the contributors to this volume presented their papers at the conference Different Lives: Global Perspectives on Biography in Public Cultures and Societies. This conference was organized in September 2018 at the University of Groningen by Hans Renders, Madelon Nanninga-Franssen and David Veltman, with support of the Biography Institute, the Biography Society and the Biographers International Organization. The organizers would like to thank the following sponsors for their generous support of the conference: the University of Groningen, Aix-Marseille Université, Biographers International Organization, Centre Aixois d’Études Romanes (CAER), Fédération CRISIS, Institut de Recherches Asiatiques (IrAsia), Institut Universitaire de France, Groningen Research Institute for the Study of Culture (ICOG), Laboratoire d’Études et de Recherche sur le Monde Anglophone (LERMA), Dutch Foundation for Literature, Nicolaas Muleriusfonds Foundation, Groningen University Fund (GUF), Sustainable Society, and Friends of the Academic Heritage Groningen. Furthermore, we would like to thank Tyge Krogh (Denmark), Karen Christensen (Berkshire Publishing Group llc), Sybren Bonnema (translator of Elsbeth Etty’s article on the Netherlands) and Jim Gibbons (editor). During the conference, we enjoyed the kind help of the following volunteers: Gijs Altena, Joske Boudewijn, Janine Eleveld, Ria Hoving, Anke Jongste, and Henk Willem Smits.

Figures 1 2 3

Works of biography and life writing published per year 29 Gender of biographers and their subjects 36 Occupations of biographical subjects 37

Notes on Contributors Kerry Brown is Professor of Chinese Studies and Director of the Lau China Institute, King’s College, London, and Associate Fellow on the Asia Pacific Programme at Chatham House, London. From 2012 to 2015 he was Professor of Chinese Politics and Director of the China Studies Centre at the University of Sydney. Prior to this, from 1998 to 2005, he served as a diplomat in the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office, and then from 2006 to 2012 Senior Fellow and then Head of the Asia Programme at Chatham House. He was Director of the Europe China Research and Advice Network (ECRAN) funded by the European Union. He is the author of 20 books, the most recent of which are China’s Dreams: The Culture of the Communist Party and the Secret Sources of its Power (Polity, Cambridge, 2018) and The Trouble with Taiwan: History, the United States and a Rising China (Zed Books, London, 2019). Joanna Cymbrykiewicz is a research staff member of the Institute of Scandinavian Studies at Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznań, Poland. Her main field of academic interest is contemporary Danish biofiction and biography, but she has also done research on Scandinavian litanic verse and Danish thanatological poetry. In 2019 she published a monograph Biografia jako pretekst. Modele współczesnych duńskich biofikcji (Biography as a Pretext. The Models of Contemporary Danish Biofictions). Elsbeth Etty is a specialist in Dutch culture, literary critic, columnist, and biographer. From 1973 until 1982 she was an editor of the communist newspaper De Waarheid and from 1987 until 2017 editor of NRC Handelsblad. In 1996 she got her PhD cum laude on the biography Liefde is heel het leven niet – Henriette Roland Holst 1869–1952, which was awarded with the Busken Huet prize and the Gouden Uil prize. In the years 2005–2015 she was appointed as extraordinary professor literary criticism at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. In 2019 her biography In de man zit nog een jongen, of the Dutch poet Willem Wilmink appeared. Apart from various collected columns in NRC Handelsblad, which were awarded in 2008 with the Anne Vondeling prize for political journalism, she published amongst others the following books: De Nederlandse erotische literatuur in 80 en enige verhalen (2011), ABC van de literaire kritiek (2011), Het bloed van de barones – Seksueel geweld in Langs lijnen van geleidelijkheid (2013), and Min-

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nebrieven aan Maarten – Over Maarten ’t Hart en zijn oeuvre (2019). Since 2017 she is president of the Multatuli Society. Yannick Gouchan is professor of Italian Literature and Culture at Aix-Marseille Université (France). He has taught in the Italian Studies Department and is a researcher at the CAER (in Romance Studies) since 2004. He is a member of the editorial boards of the journal Italies, the publishing house Stilo Editrice, and the Center PENS (Poesia Contemporanea e Nuove Scritture). His scholarship mainly concerns contemporary Italian literature, in particular poetry. He has published many works on Giovanni Pascoli, Attilio Bertolucci, and Vittorio Sereni, as well as on Paolo Maccari, Salvatore Quasimodo, and the Italian literature of World War I. His most recently published works are about childhood from the late nineteenth to the early twentieth centuries (La figura del fanciullo nell’opera di D’Annunzio, di Pascoli e dei Crepuscolari, Cisalpino, 2016, and Enfances italiennes, Italies 21–22, Presses Universitaires de Provence, 2017–2018). As a member of the board of the Biography Society, he contributes studies on the relationship between poetry and biography. María Jesús González is Professor of Contemporary History at the University of Cantabria, Spain, and Senior Research Fellow at the Cañada Blanch Centre for Contemporary Spanish Studies (LSE, London). An expert in the political history of the reign of Alfonso XIII, she is author of Ciudadanía y Acción: El conservadurismo maurista 1907–1923 (1990) and the political biography of the conservative statesman Antonio Maura: El universo conservador de Antonio Maura: Biografía y proyecto de Estado (1997), shortlisted for the Spanish National Essay and History Prizes, 1998. She has also written the intellectual biography of the British hispanist Raymond Carr, Raymond Carr: La curiosidad del zorro: Una biografía (2010), shortlisted for the Spanish National Prize of History, translated into English as Raymond Carr: The Curiosity of the Fox (2013), and longlisted for the Elizabeth Longford Prize of Historical Biography, 2014. In addition to other chapters or articles on biographies of politicians or intellectuals, she has recently co-edited a book about a Spanish historian: M.J. Gonzalez and J. Ugarte, Juan Pablo Fusi: El historiador y su tiempo (2016). She now co-directs, with Prof. Anna Caballé, an international research project on biography: Biographical Reason: Biography and Autobiographical narratives in the Historical and Literary Research of 20th Century Europe: Case Studies and Theoretical Reflections. (HAR2017-82500-P, Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitivity) AEI/FEDER/UE.

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Nigel Hamilton has published more than twenty books, including Biography: A Brief History, and multi-volume biographies of Field-Marshal Bernard Montgomery, President Bill Clinton, and President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, as well as a bestselling biography of the early life of President John F. Kennedy. He has won the Whitbread Prize for Biography, the Templer Medal for Military History, and the New York Blue Ribbon Award for Best Documentary (Profile). His works have been translated into sixteen languages, including French, German, Dutch and Chinese. He taught History and the History of Biography at Royal Holloway, University of London, from 1995 to 2000, and was made Professor of Biography at De Montfort University, where he pioneered undergraduate and postgraduate courses on the History of Biography and Approaches to Biography. He established the British Institute of Biography in collaboration with Royal Holloway, and won a Feasibility Award from the Arts Council of England and Wales to establish Britain’s first center for biography. Moving to the United States in 2000, he helped found Biographers International Organization (BIO) and was elected its first President. His own specialty is military and presidential history and biography; his The Mantle of Command: FDR at War, 1941–1942 (Houghton Mifflin, 2014) was nominated for the National Book Award 2014. His three volume biography of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, FDR at War, (2014–2019), was nominated for the National Book Award 2014. With Hans Renders he published in 2019 The abc of Modern Biography. Richard Holmes was the first Professor of Biographical Studies at the University of East Anglia, 2001–2007. He is a Fellow of the British Academy, and an Honorary Fellow of Churchill College, Cambridge. He is the author of Footsteps: Adventures of a Romantic Biographer, and biographies of Shelley, Coleridge and young Dr Johnson. His study of scientists and poets The Age of Wonder won the Royal Society Prize for Science Books (UK) and the National Book Critics Circle Award for Nonfiction (USA). He has also written about the early balloonists in Falling Upwards, which was one of Time magazine’s Top Ten Non-Fiction Books of 2013. His most recent book is This Long Pursuit, a study of his biographical methods and teaching. In 2018 he won the international BIO Award (USA) for sustained achievement in Biography. Sahar Vahdati Hosseinian has a BA in Mining engineering (minors: extraction) and a MA in Iranian languages (minors: Old Indo-Iranian languages). She was selected as brilliant talent of Tabriz University during 2016–2018. Her career in music began when

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she was only seven years old. She won top places in the National Youth Festival and the Fajr International Music Festival in the field of dulcimer playing. She started her research on biography at the age of sixteen, about Iranian (esp. Azerbaijan) eminent cultural persons. During these years, she published a book titled ‘Chehreh-ha’ (Prominent Personalities of Azerbaijan-Iran, 2011) and some articles in internal and external publications about short biographies of more than hundred Iranian eminent figures. She presented papers at international symposiums held in Turkey (Sakariya University) and Tajikistan (Academy of Science of Republic of Tajikistan); she cooperated as a researcher in Tajikistan oral history (executive: Iran-Tajikistan Friendship Association) and prepared and executed programs about biography of Iranian prominent personalities for Radio Tehran. From 2010 to 2012, she was member of editorial board of Hafteh magazine published in Montreal, Canada. Liu Jialin is professor of literature, deputy dean of School of Humanities, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, director of SJTU Centre for Life Writing. His publications include: Nabokov’s Poetic World (Shanghai: Shanghai People’s Press, 2012), Foreign Biography Dictionary (deputy editor in chief, Shanghai: Shanghai Dictionary Press, 2009), Introduction to Comparative Literature (co-author, Peking: Peking University Press, 2002). He is also the translator of Dostoevsky: the Years of Ordeal, 1850–1859 (Guilin: Guangxi Normal University Press, 2016), Vladimir Nabokov: the American Years (Guilin: Guangxi Normal University Press, 2011) and Vladimir Nabokov: the Russian Years (Guilin: Guangxi Normal University Press, 2009). Sigurður Gylfi Magnússon (Historian – PhD) is currently a Professor of Cultural History, Department of History and Philosophy at the University of Iceland. He is furthermore chair of the Center for Microhistorical Research. He has written 23 books and numerous articles published in Iceland and abroad. His latest books in English are: Wasteland with Words. A Social History of Iceland (London: Reaktion Books, 2010), What is Microhistory? Theory and Practice (London: Routledge, 2013), co-authored with István M. Szijártó, and Minor Knowledge and Microhistory (London: Routledge, 2016), co-authored with Davíð Ólafsson. Sigurður Gylfi is the founder and one of three editors of a book series named: “The Anthology of Icelandic Popular Culture” (Sýnisbók íslenskrar alþýðumenningar) which has so far published 25 books, mostly on the topics of egodocuments and everydaylife history. He is also co-editor with István M. Szijártó of a new international book series, Microhistories, published by Routledge.

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Daniel R. Meister is a Term Adjunct in the Department of History at Queen’s University. His doctoral dissertation, ‘The Racial Mosaic: Race, Cultural Pluralism, and Canadian Multiculturalism’, was completed in 2019. In a previous article, entitled ‘The Biographical Turn and the Case for Historical Biography,’ he argued for the discipline of history to fully accept biography as a subfield. Doug Munro resides in New Zealand. He has taught in universities in Australia and Fiji and is now an Adjunct Professor of History at the University of Queensland. His initial academic specialism was Pacific Islands history but he has increasingly identified himself as a biographer. His particular interest in ‘Telling Academic Lives’, which found expression in a special issue of the Journal of Historical Biography in 2014 (www.ufv.ca/jhb/Volume_16/Volume_16_TOC.pdf). Other publications include The Ivory Tower and Beyond: participant historians of the Pacific (2009), J.C. Beaglehole: public intellectual, critical conscience (2012) and Clio’s Lives: biographies and autobiographies of historians (2017), which he co-edited with John G. Reid. Melanie Nolan is Professor of History, Director of the National Centre of Biography and General Editor of the Australian Dictionary of Biography in the School of History at the Australian National University (ANU). Her work includes Breadwinning (2000) a history of women and the state, and Kin (2005), a collective biography of a working-class family which won the 2006 ARANZ Ian Wards Prize and was short-listed for the 2007 Ernest Scott Prize. Her edited publications include Suffrage and Beyond: International Feminist Perspectives (1994) and, most recently, as general editor, Australian Dictionary of Biography, vol. 18 (2012) with vol. 19 forthcoming. She chairs the Editorial Committee of ANU Press’ series in biography, ANU.Lives, and is on the Editorial Board of the Australian Journal of Biography and History. She is currently working on a manuscript about historians’ biographical practices which is under contract with Routledge. Hans Renders is Professor in History and Theory of Biography and is director of the Biography Institute, both at the University of Groningen, the Netherlands. He was a member of the founding committee of the Biographers International Organization (bio). He has written biographies of the Dutch poet Jan Hanlo (1998) and the Dutch journalist and author Jan Campert (2004). He is editor of the Biographical Studies series and the editor-in-chief of a series of edited reprints

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of Dutch and foreign biographies. He has published studies on the theme of biography in various international journals, among them Journal of Historical Biography, Le Temps des Médias, and Storia della Storiografia, and is a member of the board of Quaerendo; A Journal Devoted to Manuscripts and Printed Books. He edited (with Binne de Haan and Jonne Harmsma) the edited volume The Biographical Turn: Lives in History (Routledge, 2016). He is cofounder and vice president of the Société de Biographie / Biography Society. Carl Rollyson Professor Emeritus of Journalism, at Baruch College, CUNY, has published twelve biographies: A Real American Character: The Life of Walter Brennan, A Private Life of Michael Foot, To Be A Woman: The Life of Jill Craigie, Amy Lowell Anew: A Biography, American Isis: The Life and Art of Sylvia Plath, Hollywood Enigma: Dana Andrews, Marilyn Monroe: A Life of the Actress, Lillian Hellman: Her Life and Legend, Beautiful Exile: The Life of Martha Gellhorn, Norman Mailer: The Last Romantic, Rebecca West: A Modern Sibyl, Susan Sontag: The Making of an Icon, and three studies of biography, A Higher Form of Cannibalism? Adventures in the Art and Politics of Biography, Biography: A User’s Guide and Confessions of a Serial Biographer. His reviews of biography appear in Reading Biography, American Biography, Lives of the Novelists, Essays in Biography, and in The Wall Street Journal, The Weekly Standard, The New Criterion and other newspapers and periodicals. He has published four biographies for young adults on Pablo Picasso, Marie Curie, Emily Dickinson, and Thurgood Marshall. The Life of William Faulkner and The Last Days of Sylvia Plath will be published in the spring and fall of 2020. David Veltman is working, as a PhD student at the Biography Institute (University of Groningen), on a biography of the Flemish artist Felix de Boeck (1898–1995). He has a Master’s degree in modern Dutch literature and is a specialist on twentiethcentury Belgian biography and historiography. After graduating in 2005, he worked for eight years at the Haarlem-based auction house Bubb Kuyper. He is a freelance reporter for the Dutch artist’s magazines Atelier and kM (Artist’s Material). Jana Wohlmuth Markupová is lecturer and a head of the Department of Oral History – Contemporary History at Faculty of Humanities, Charles University in Prague, Czech Republic. She has also collaborated on several projects with the Institute for Contemporary History at the Czech Academy of Sciences. She has published a historical

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biography called Ivan M. Havel. From Puzuk to Sakateka (1938–1989) and she is a co-author of several oral history books (Peaceful Science? Changes and Constants in Works and Lives of Scientists in the Years 1968–2008, 2018; One Hundred Student Evolutions. University Students of 1989. Biographical Interviews in Longitudinal Perspective, 2019). In her PhD thesis she focuses on biography and microhistory.

Introduction Richard Holmes

Over forty years ago I delivered a lecture to a small seminar of academics at the English Department of the University of Cambridge. My lecture was modestly entitled ‘The Necessary Ignorance of the Biographer.’ My listeners were silent and suspicious. They were right to be. In fact the lecture was a passionate, angry defence of the biographic form, directed at what was then a largely hostile and sceptical audience. In those days the universities believed that basically ‘biography was bunk’, compared to fiction, literary criticism or traditional history. So my ironic title was partly inspired by another passionate defence, ‘The Necessity of Atheism’, given at the University of Oxford by the rebellious poet Percy Bysshe Shelley (the subject of my first biography in 1974). Well, times have changed. The academics no longer assume we are ignorant; nor, more importantly, does the general reader. What one might call the ‘biographic vision’, the universal significance of the individual life story, has steadily established itself both as a source of genuine knowledge and of popular human drama. Biography now convincingly offers authority, revelation or controversy in rich and diverse measures. It can equally inspire university PhDs or bookshop bestsellers or TV documentaries or mass-entertainment biopics. But it has achieved all this on a world-wide scale. The three-day international conference at Groningen entitled Different Lives: Global Perspectives on Biography in Public Cultures and Societies, upon which the present remarkable collection of essays is based, was to me the most extraordinary experience. I treasure the little Black n’ Red notebook which I filled with quotations from seventeen different speakers, with as many types of accented English, and with very different styles of lecturing and of dress. (Biographers notice those hardworking shoes, that expressive scarf…). For me the conference dispelled a different kind of Ignorance. It demonstrated the truly global impact of the biographic form in widely different public cultures. I had always assumed that biography was largely a creation of Western Europe, with its roots in the Greek of Plutarch and the Latin of Suetonius. But here we were given a vivid glimpse of quite different foundations and traditions: for example in Iran, in Iceland, in Russia, in China, or in Vietnam. The conference proved that every country had its own quite distinctive history of biographical forms. In some cases, such as The Records of the Grand

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2020 | DOI:10.1163/9789004434974_002

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Historian in China, these had an antiquity quite equal to the European Classical one; or in the case of the seventeenth century Travel Books in Iceland, an entirely different and thrilling inspiration. From the nineteenth century onwards the politics of the emerging nation state, and growing self-identity – though quite differently expressed in North America say, or Iran, or South Africa, or the Czech Republic, or Belgium, or Australia – has always had a powerful shaping force on the development of each biographical tradition, and the kind of issues it addressed (or sometimes nervously avoided). It is fascinating, and often soberly instructive, to compare these. (Do not overlook, either, the superb bibliographies attached to each essay as footnotes: they summaries entire national literary traditions.) In this context, modern biography has been notable in giving voice to previously silent minorities, such as the Quebecois in Canada or Maoris in New Zealand. Above all, perhaps, as appears in almost every one of these essays, it has given attention to the long supressed voices and life-histories of women throughout the world. This is surely one of biography’s modern glories. What other common themes emerge from this thought-provoking and panoramic collection? One is almost certainly the biographers’ global struggle with censorship, whether in the more obvious political forms, or more subtly as social disapproval, or even moral suppression of certain subjects and views and life-styles. So often biography has had to confront the frown or ridicule or even persecution of established authorities or received opinions. In its own way it can be the most quietly heroic of endeavours. Parallel with this runs a continual, brilliant current of self-questioning. So many of the essays raise and debate the true nature of biographical truth, and how exactly it can be told. Does it lie in ‘micro-history’, or ‘popular’ narrative, or ‘scholarly’ biography, or the self-consciousness of the ‘biographical turn’? Have we truly outgrown ‘heroic’ nineteenth century biography? Are we trapped by the fragmented forms of ‘modernist’ twentieth century biography? Why is biography so different from ‘Memoir’? And to begin where we started: has it really been accepted by the universities as a genuine ‘discipline’? All of these terms, and challenging issues, will be found to recur faithfully from essay to essay in Different Lives, but each time throwing new light from immensely varied and original perspectives. They do indeed combine to form a genuinely and astonishingly global symposium. The effect is both provocative and positive. I am perhaps known, if for anything, for my optimistic view that biography is essentially an act of friendship: ‘a handshake’ across time, across cultures, across identities. If so, then this is a true book of international greetings and recognitions. If not exactly a biographers’ hug-in, it is a noble and generous embrace. I recommend it with all my English biographical heart.

Different Lives in a Global World Hans Renders

The present volume Different Lives has emerged, as did the conference we organized in September 2018 under the same name, from the question: What is the state of the art concerning biography in other countries? This question became all the more relevant when we observed that biographies of Lenin, Stalin, Putin, and other figures from Russian history – or at least those books that receive international acclaim – are almost always written by British or American biographers. What, then, defines the Russian practice of writing biographies? The same question can be asked about German or Austrian figures of the Nazi era. The recent biography of Hitler by Volker Ullrich is an exception, but most of the biographies of prominent National Socialists have been written by biographers from the English-speaking world. The biographies we know of Mussolini and General Franco have not been written by Italians or Spaniards, respectively. Considering this situation, we decided to ask biographers and biography-scholars from five continents to tell us, in a nutshell, what their respective countries’ biographical traditions look like. The result became the conference ‘Different Lives: Global Perspectives on Biography in Public Cultures and Societies’, in which seventeen scholars shed light on the major questions and themes in the biographical sphere in Australia, Belgium, Canada, China, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Iceland, Iran, Italy, the Netherlands, South Africa, Spain, the United Kingdom, the United States, New Zealand. Elsbeth Etty’s contribution elsewhere in this book examines what exactly is academic in the genre of biography, which has, after all, an important presence in the public domain. Etty tells us about the specifics of Dutch biography, as all other contributors did for their country. Together, this brought about a mosaic that has not been addressed in this way before: what is the state of the art in the world concerning biography? What are the main themes and questions that biographers pose in different countries? Other pertinent questions that were addressed were about the role biography plays in the public domain, and about the way national historiography is informed by biography. For some countries, this assignment was too wide-ranging – therefore, in the case of China and the US, we asked two specialists to contribute to this volume. ‘Different Lives: Global Perspectives on Biography in Public Cultures and Societies’ is the result of an international collaboration between the Biographer’s International Organization, The Biography Society and the Biography

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Institute. It is also the first volume of the new series Biography Studies – which calls attention, as below, to the international nature of Biography Studies in the Netherlands. All volumes in the series will be in English and the publisher is Brill, a renowned publisher for centuries, originally started in Leiden and now with branches in the United Kingdom and the US, with a distribution area that covers the entire world. An example of national traditions in biography can illustrate the aim of this volume. Let us have a more specific look at the Dutch tradition. In the Netherlands the culture of biography is based on a steady national tradition: each year somewhere between 50 and 100 biographies are published. Yet – perhaps because of the country’s size – public interest in biography stretches way beyond Durch borders, and is strongly internationally oriented.1 An example can be found in Dutch translation policy, and its swiftness. A biography of Hitler or Goebbels, written by Peter Longerich, will take roughly two years to reach the American market after its first publication in the United Kingdom, whereas such books are often in Dutch bookstores, in nicely bound translations, at least a full year before they are available in the United States. These translations are part of Dutch biography-culture, and reflect the way that biography influences the Dutch reader, and thereby the Dutch understanding of what biography should look like. We could call that globalization, but should be wary, for national traditions are not necessarily easy to describe, reflecting – as they do – style and manners as much as the subjects chosen. Daniel R. Meister is right when he refers in his chapter to ‘biography in Canada’ and not to ‘Canadian biography’, since ‘the idea of an essentially Canadian biography is complicated by the country’s great ethnic and cultural diversity, both historically and in the present. As there is no essential Canadian, so can there be no essentially Canadian biography.’ No biographical tradition can represent all people in a country. This is evident, but in an age of contested identity politics it is good to make such a statement. In a globalizing biographical tradition it is often difficult to get a clear view upon separate cultures, which tend to be veiled by dominant opinions on what a biography should be like. That’s another reason why this book is a valuable contribution to Biography Studies. How is biography involved in public cultures, and in the way opinions are formed in different parts of the world? Is the current grand narrative of history corrected by biography, because the perspective is no longer general, but

1 Hans Renders, ‘Biography in the Public Sphere: The Year in the Netherlands,’ in Biography: An Interdisciplinary Quarterly 39, no. 4 (Fall 2016), 641–647.

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individual? These and other questions are being answered differently in different countries. Read for example the two contributions on Chinese biography. Kerry Brown states: ‘There is also a sense in which this disposition to look down on individuality per se means that the telling of a person’s life story on its own terms simply does not exist in the Chinese literary tradition.’ Contrastingly, in his chapter Liu Jialin calls for a quality of Chinese biography that seems to suggest the opposite view: ‘the strong link of the subjects to their social and historical contexts’. A turbulent recent history of biography has preceded the current state of affairs in the Netherlands – one that has involved its funding. In 1990, the Nederlandse Maatschappij der Letterkunde (Society of Dutch Literature) established the Werkgroep Biografie (Biography Working Group). From 1991 to 2017, this working group published the journal first known as Biografie Bulletin and later as Tijdschrift voor Biografie (Journal for Biography). Earlier, in 1982, the De Arbeiderspers publishing house began issuing the prestigious biography series Open Domein, and the privately funded Prins Bernhard Cultuurfonds initiated a subsidy policy for biographies in the 1980s. They started by inviting ten biographers to write biographies of important figures in Dutch cultural history. Each biographer received 100,000 guilders (45,000 euros), which was a substantial amount of money at the time. In 2007, the Prins Bernhard Cultuurfonds implemented a second project, asking each of ten writers to author a biography of a key figure in Dutch history. The (not uncritical) biographies on three Dutch kings who ruled the Netherlands during the nineteenth century were very successful. All three appeared when the Kingdom celebrated its two hundredth anniversary – stipends for these three biographers through four years having been funded by the Prins Bernhard Cultuurfonds, as above. The Letterenfonds (Fund for Literature, financed by the government) still has a special bursary for biographers – to promote the genre, every two years nine biographers each receive a sum of maximum 40,000 euros. Just as the quality of acting and theater in Britain has become a worldphenomenon for such a small country, thanks to its public and private funding, so the quality and extent of Dutch biography has improved dramatically. In 1990, the city of Dordrecht installed the Dordtse Biografieprijs (Dordrecht Biography Prize); this encouraging initiative lasted until 2000. New institutions also helped put biography on the map again in the new millennium. At that period, I published my biography of the Dutch journalist, critic, poet, and Second World War resistance hero Jan Campert; by the end of 2004, I had set up the Biography Institute at Groningen University. We started with a programmatic text, and explaining how biographies had gained significant popularity, not simply improved in quality, in recent years. By 2007, we were able to add

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that the board of the university had installed a chair entitled History and Theory of Biography. In 2012, the chair was transformed from an extraordinary professorship to a full professorship, and thus the Department of History and Theory of Biography came into existence. Over the years, a sound theoretical fundament was thereby built in Biography Studies in the Netherlands – but one that has a distinctly international outlook. Above all, we study and practice biography as an overarching field of study, one that includes life writing. This is why biographies, defended as PhD-theses of the Biography Institute at the University of Groningen, have a dual purpose: they require academic justification in terms of their scholarship and rigor, but all of them are published by trade publishers so as to reach a wide readership. The Biography Institute, then, considers biography to be an independent genre in its own right involving history, literature, journalism, and other, auxiliary disciplines. Research for a biography, however, is always historical by nature. For biography, in our culture, not only deals with interesting individuals, but biographers are increasingly concerned with the methods they use, and the theoretical framework that is constructed around the narrative account of any individual’s life and work. An essential feature of research into the genre of biography, too, involves an understanding of the important role played by biographies in the construction of public opinion. This can be measured in surveys, concerning reputations of individuals. It can also be seen in factual evidence supplied or tabled by biographers. In at least one known example the Dutch government was compelled to release classified documents in response to the publication of a biography, namely that of the former prime minister Joop den Uyl, which mentioned a report on the American aerospace factory Lockheed in its appendix. In this so-called ‘Northrop appendix,’ it was revealed that bribes had been paid to a member of the Dutch royal family.2 David Veltman, one of the editors of this volume, argued in his contribution on Belgium that this country, until recently, did not have a biographical tradition. Biography did not play a role in the process of adaptation that Belgian society imposed on individuals. Its ‘agenda’ was often oriented towards the emancipation of one of the two (French and Dutch) language communities. In many other countries, biography has also developed as a genre unafraid to contest public myth, or re-examine fixed stories, and debunk representations. As Doug Munro writes in his paper, this even led, in 1998, to a counter-reaction when New Zealand’s foremost biographer, Michael King, entered a plea that

2 ‘Biography in the Public Sphere: The Year in the Netherlands’, p. 641–647.

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biographers exercise restraint, or ‘compassionate truth’, meaning that he proposed to ‘withhold information that might be hurtful to the families and relatives of subjects, but the notion found little favor at home or abroad’. Biographies, then, are not merely random stories about individuals. They collectively reveal – in their choice of biographical subjects, the way the research is carried out and presented, and the overall interaction between the media, the public, and society at large – topics and debates that are exceedingly relevant to the cultures in the countries where they are published. There is often a political component: biographies can influence public political opinion – and votes. Biographies are ‘actual’ and ‘active’ histories of individual people, whether long deceased, or still alive and kicking (sometimes even kicking back, in court!). Biographers write history, but they are inevitably influenced by their own time, and the actuality or public interest of this time. Take for example the biography that appeared in 1998 of Hendrik Colijn, Dutch prime minister in the 1930s, which caused outrage because of its account of Colijn’s military actions in the Dutch East Indies. In the decades before the publication of this biography, no one would have found this aspect interesting enough to become vexed or scandalized by it. Biographies can thereby have an important and corrective impact on the evaluation of individuals and topics in history – an evaluation that often illustrates the divide between scholarly truths and public acceptance of those truths. Jana Wohlmuth Markupová makes this clear in her account of how differently individuals can be represented in academia and the public sphere in the Czech Republic. Dutch biography often mirrors – and is fueled by – investigative journalism: a feature prevalent in many other countries today. If journalists are said to provide the ‘rough page of history’, biographers aim to provide a still more deeply-researched and reflective account, though always from the author’s personal perspective. And hard work, generally requiring years of research, and proof, or evidentiary sourcing. Thus, while fiction and memoir abjures footnotes and endnotes, serious biography today finds its justification and validation in most countries through forensic, scholarly research, substantiated by verifiable sources, and in order to serve historical and democratic understanding. Biography benefits from being independent: free from outside influence and, one hopes, devoid of ideology. Like history and journalism, biography, in this way, may be said to serve as an important tool in the functioning of a transparent, democratic society. Biographies do not exist to express the established views that their subjects have of themselves – that is what autobiography is

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for. Everyone, in our hyper-individual, technologically hyper-communicative world, running on algorithms, ‘likes’ and troll-driven hysterics, has his or her own story to tell. So why should this not be the case for the biographer, too – an author who has his or her own well-researched, thoughtful interpretation of an individual’s life, based on evidence not narcissism or histrionics? Certainly it is another reason for continuing to honor reviews of biographies – as a warning against shallow or mythic argument, especially over ‘famous’ figures who become politicized figureheads. Carl Rollyson points in his article to the vast domain of ‘Presidential Biography’ in the US, as well as to another fashion trend in the American world of biography, namely the advancing role of fiction in biography. ‘It is one thing to say a biography reads like a novel,’ Rollyson warns. ‘It is quite another thing to suppose a biography can actually be, ontologically speaking, a novel.’ Whoever reads the chapters collected here will see how fraught the matter of independency, free from ideology, can be across the world – reflecting, as it does, very different cultures. Many national traditions are characterized by strict codes that come from the past, and affect the way the past is expected to be dealt with by historians – and biographers. This is being illustrated by Yannick Gouchan’s submission. He addresses topics ranging from the particular relationship between biography and the nation-building process – the effort ‘to make the Italians’ in the late nineteenth and the early twentieth centuries – to the different forms of telling lives in contemporary Italy. María Jesús González shows in her contribution that biography in Spain cannot be told apart from the history of the Spanish Civil War – and the political implications this brings along. The same goes for the situation in South Africa and its dark history of Apartheid. Lindie Koorts tells us how is in this contested, highly charged landscape, South African biographers continue to study past, controversial individuals with intellectual courage, yet mindful of current sensitivities. Just as Sahar Vahdati Hosseinian, too, makes clear to us that biographical research would be nonsensical without taking into account the Constitutional Revolution (1905–1911), a time also known as the period of the ‘Iranian awakening’, considered as the decisive era in Iran’s history with regard to its political and literary transformations. These are examples of chapters in this volume that illustrate how the role of biography in public life can have different national forms, expression and significance. But there is also a striking resemblance between nations, or common concern, as we can note in the paper ‘Truth, Lies and Fake Truth’: The Future of Biography’ by Nigel Hamilton. With governments and political parties willing and able to distort the public domain with unreliable facts, as in Fox News, for example, the role of biography as a groundrock of civilized faith

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in verifiable evidence and fact has become far more important than deliberately diverting discussion of the ‘nature of truth’, in theorizing biography. Without the urge to strife for transparency and sincere concern for truth and factual evidence, the biographical genre, as we know it today, will not survive. Moreover, in an era of selfies and presenting oneself as successful as possible, biography becomes more and more important in appreciating the individuality and humanity of the ‘other’, and thus helping to provide a bulwark against intolerance: the thoughtless prejudice against those who do not mirror ourselves. In Australia this aspect of biography has become more and more prominent. Melanie Nolan writes about a specific type of Australian biography that has grown in importance, namely that of indigenous people. Current Australian biographical interest in identity and solidarity is, she points out, partly a function of Australian immigration patterns, past and present. The continent has become a twenty-first-century ‘melting pot’ or ‘fusion of nationalities, cultures, and ethnicities.’ In this process, the particular role of biography in relation to the Aboriginals is important, and Nolan gives a beautiful description of how autobiography and biography have evolved into ‘modern’ biography there. In sum, independent biography has the capacity to interpret or reinterpret someone’s life, depending on the era in which the biographer’s book is written. Always, however, biography contrasts with autobiography and memoir in its concern with evidence, and scholarly skepticism. Prudent biographers will certainly make use of the autobiographical views of their subjects, in memoirs and other forms of self-representation, from diaries to public speeches, but they should do so only as one of many different aspects of a final result. Therefore, studies solely based upon diaries and literary texts written by the biographical subject himself can hardly be taken serious as biography, since almost everyone recognizes that people write autobiographies to justify themselves and their actions. What strikes us most in the various contributions to Different Lives is the robust national orientation in many of the countries represented here. Of course there are exceptions, when it comes to international figures like Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Leonardo Da Vinci and so on. Also in this volume papers were included by scholars, such as Joanna Cymbrykiewicz, who is not a native citizen of the country – Denmark – she investigated. Nevertheless she displayed a broad grasp of Danish biographical traditions. As far as the choice of biographee is concerned, this national focus or even bias is natural and understandable. What is less obvious it how this conclusion also holds with regard to the more theoretical observations about the biographical genre in different countries.

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This is especially visible in the often close-minded or intellectually limited concern shown by biographers themselves with regard to ‘foreign’ biography. References to foreign literature and historiography are seldom found in the acknowledgments of biographies or in articles about biography, it must be admitted. ‘It is interesting to observe that several well-known Icelandic biographers opt to say little or nothing about their research methods or their sources’, thus Sigurður Gylfi Magnússon illustrates this claim, in relation to his own country. True, there are always exceptions. Richard Holmes is cited all over the globe, but we should note how often such quotations are made very selectively. Holmes is, for example, often invoked to justify so-called ‘literary biography’ – not in order to quote what, in fact, he has written about it, but to veil the lack, in many of these biographies, of a sound theoretical framework by the author. Citation as name-dropping rather than as evidence is a matter of considerable importance in justifying and theorizing the practice of biography. In his Huizinga lecture given in 1997 at the University of Leiden, Holmes spoke about the ‘dreamwork’ that transpires while writing biography – a poetic reference that has been widely misinterpreted.3 As a lifelong proponent of the genre, Holmes was at pains to emphasize the importance of imagination for the historian-biographer. His statement that a biographer must ‘dream,’ and therefore should be a literary biographer, means a biographer should be willing to write as well as a novelist, whether about historical figures or literary ones.4 However, in his theoretical reflections on biography, Holmes has been at pains to distinguish in biographical research between archival field work and the interpretative ‘dreamwork’ that a biographer performs. This distinction has often caused misunderstanding: a biographer cannot solely rely on ‘dreamwork’ – which is, on the contrary, possible only when the necessary fieldwork has been conducted thoroughly. Even good historians use their imaginative power or dreamwork, moreover, when building on their research in order to understand the past, and highlight their interpretations. The Waning of the Middle Ages by the Dutch historian Johan Huizinga, is a good example – and no one has any reason to call this classic work from 1919, which has

3 Richard Holmes, De biografie en de dood: Huizinga-lezing 1997 (Amsterdam, Bert Bakker, 1997); Richard Holmes, ‘The Proper Study?’, in Mapping Lives. The Uses of Biography, ed. Peter France and William St. Clair (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), 7–18. 4 Hans Renders and Binne de Haan, ‘Richard Holmes: A Biographer-Historian par excellence. Uncovering the Roots and Methodology of the Modern Field Work of a Romantic and Humanistic Biographer’, Les Grandes figures historiques dans les lettres et les arts [online] 6bis (2017): https://figures-historiques-revue.univ-lille.fr/category/hors-serie-2-2017/.

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been translated into many languages, a novel. The biographer, the historian, and every nonfiction writer is, in other words, allowed to ‘dream within his sources’ – and this is the essential difference with these sorts of writers and the novelist. We are especially pleased that Richard Holmes, as a founding father of modern biography, attended our conference in Groningen, and took part in it in an inspiring manner. We as editors of this volume would like to thank him heartily for the introduction he has written to this book.

Truth, Lies and Fake Truth: the Future of Biography Nigel Hamilton

Biography is a genre that is not everywhere the same but it is in fact a relative concept, reflecting widely different cultures – and subcultures. I use the word ‘relative’ with some concern – for although biography in the United States, where I live and work, has enjoyed something of a golden age over the past four decades, the very culture in which it is undertaken is now facing what some observers see as a mortal threat: namely, that of ‘relativism.’ To the surprise and shock of almost all political pundits, the White House was won in 2016 by a real estate developer committed to a platform of misogyny, hatred of immigrants, opposition to the federal government itself, and greed-obsessed fantasy as preferable to reality. Americans like me are now living with the worrying outcome of that election – especially its implications for the concept of truth. The longtime chief book critic of the New York Times, Michiko Kakutani, titled her recent book The Death of Truth – and the title wasn’t meant to be taken ironically.1 Chapter by chapter, drawing on her experience at the Times, she addresses the danger to democratic society posed by groups of people who have lost belief or even interest in truth – blaming this ‘degradation’ of truth above all on those academics who, in the 1970s, gave rise to the tsunami of poststructuralism, deconstruction, and postmodernism in our universities: a tidal wave in which not only the humanities but also the sciences were overrun by men and women arguing ‘that scientific theories are socially constructed’ and are merely the product of ‘the identity of the person positing the theory and the values of the culture in which they are formed; therefore, science cannot possibly make claims to neutrality or universal truths.’2 Kakutani largely blames the current US administration’s assaults on the notion of global warming, the teaching of evolution, the need for environmental protection, the importance of vaccination, and other targets on what one might call the pdp’s: the poststructuralists, deconstructors and postmodernists who, in thrall to such theorists and critics as Derrida, Foucault, and Saussure and others, had questioned and ridiculed the idea of an objective reality – their intellectual objections

1 Michiko Kakutani, The Death of Truth: Notes on Falsehood in the Age of Trump (New York: Tim Duggan Books, 2018). 2 Kakutani, Death of Truth, 54.

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2020 | DOI:10.1163/9789004434974_004

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subsequently ‘pinballing’ their ‘relativistic’ way ‘through our culture’ over recent decades, as Kakutani neatly puts it.3 It was one thing for pdp’s to upend the staid conventions of academic thinking, notes Kakutani; but it was quite another to replace it with ‘jargon-filled prose and perversely acrobatic syntax,’ which, in the hands of evil people’ morphed into ‘dumbed-down corollaries’ that took over not only the White House but huge swathes of the national consciousness – thereby allowing the 45th president and his defenders ‘to use its relativistic arguments to excuse his lies.’4 Lies or deliberate untruths that had already amounted to some 2,140 false or misleading claims made by the president in his first term – ‘an average of nearly 5.9 times a day,’ according to Kakutani.5 The Washington Post recently counted five thousand ‘lies or misleading claims’ made by Trump since taking office.6 What had once been playful philosophical and linguistic musings, floated in the hallowed halls of elite universities, now exerted real and menacing consequences. An American president, enjoying huge, constitutionally given powers, and his supporters in the ‘real’ world outside of academia could cynically use a version of these ideas to mask what was at its core an ideological, fascist movement: one seeking naked power and control that could be wielded without legal constraint or even criticism by men who, though they lacked knowledge of Derrida, Foucault, or Saussure, could use the notion that it was impossible to arrive at objective truth as a means to openly advance lies and fake truths – concerning the birthplace of the 44th President or the denials that the Holocaust ever happened or that children had been mass-murdered at Sandy Hook Elementary School. As Kakutani rightly points out, George Orwell had warned of such a danger in 1984 – though the novel, published in 1949, is an allegory based on Stalinist communism and Hitlerian fascism. Orwell’s memorable invention had been, Kakutani points out, the “Ministry of Truth”: a ministry charged with ensuring that every concept promoted by Big Brother and those in power is in fact the opposite of the truth, if truth is defined as that which can be verified or is based on accumulated, genuine evidence. Kakutani’s book is only one of a growing number of works by alarmed authors, commentators, critics, and political scientists in America. Others 3 4 5 6

Kakutani, Death of Truth, 18, 54. Kakutani, Death of Truth, 45. Kakutani, Death of Truth, 13. ‘Tracking all of President Trump’s false or misleading claims.’ Washington Post, graph figure for September 9, 2019. By March 3, 2019, the number had risen to 9,014 in only 773 days: Fact Checker, https://Washingtonpost.com, accessed March 19, 2019.

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include Otto Shawn’s The War on Science;7 Edward Luce’s The Retreat from Western Liberalism;8 Kurt Andersen’s Fantasyland;9 Kevin Young’s Bunk; Lee McIntyre’s Post Truth; Jennifer Kavanaugh and Michael Rich’s Truth Decay;10 and Simon Blackburn’s On Truth.11 In our new technological, internetconnected age, misinformation and lies can be spread and used by trolls on a vast scale, whether to subvert elections, promote specific ideological aims, or simply to cause political disruption among one’s opponents. As a result America has become polarized and paralyzed as never before. The role of educators and serious authors has thus become, in America, crucially important. This role, moreover, deeply affects biography. I have mentioned biography’s ‘golden age.’ We are experiencing a unique period of innovation and popularity, as well as literary and scholarly achievement that can trace its origin to the 1980s in what Hans Renders, in his collection of essays on the subject, has called The Biographical Turn.12 In our latest book, though, The ABC of Modern Biography, we note biography’s good fortune in being unaffected, for the most part, by the ravages of pdp.13 Ironically, this immunity resulted from the particular positioning of the field – unlike Gender Studies, Sports History, and Race and Ethnicity Studies, biography, despite its two-thousand-year history, had never been accorded a place in academia. By contrast, the advent and continuing influence of pdp compelled the teachers of English Language, Arts, and Literature not only to teach pdp but also to lead courses in ‘creative nonfiction’ and ‘memoir’ to students with diminishing attention spans and a growing addiction to narcissistic blogs and, eventually, social media. History teachers, for their part, were reduced to praying for deliverance from the pdp onslaught. The great German-born British Tudor historian Sir Geoffrey Elton, whom we quote under “H is for History,” railed

7 8 9 10

11 12 13

Otto Shawn, The War on Science: Who’s Waging It, Why It Matters, and What We Can Do About It (Minneappolis, MN: Milkweed Editions, 2016). Edward Luce, The Retreat of Western Liberalism (New York: Atlantic Monthly Press, 2017). Kurt Andersen, Fantasyland: How America Went Haywire, A 500-Year History (New York: Random House, 2017). Jennifer Kavanaugh and Michael Rich, Truth Decay: An Initial Exploration of the Diminishing Role of Facts and Analysis in American Public Life (Santa Monica, CA: Rand Corporation, 2018). Simon Blackburn, On Truth (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018). Hans Renders, Binne de Haan, and Jonne Harmsma, The Biographical Turn: Lives in History (London: Routledge, 2017). Nigel Hamilton and Hans Renders, The ABC of Modern Biography (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2018).

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against the dying of the light. “[W]e historians are, in a way, fighting for our lives,” he declared. “Certainly we are fighting for the lives of innocent young people beset by devilish tempters who claim to offer higher forms of thought and deeper truths and insights – the intellectual equivalent of crack.”14 Not being tasked with the instruction of young people, biographers, by contrast, were left nearly unscathed by poststructuralism, deconstruction, and postmodernism. Now it is true that Kakutani, in The Death of Truth, blames biography in retrospect for providing, instead of ‘chronicles of other people’s lives,’ mere ‘platforms for philosophical manifestos’ such as Norman Mailer’s Portrait of Picasso as a Young Man; or ‘feminist polemics’ such as Francine du Plessix Gray’s Rage and Fire; or ‘deconstructionist exercise[s]’ such as S. Paige Baty’s American Monroe: The Making of a Body Politic.15 She reserves her greatest scorn, however, for Edmund Morris, castigating him for his ‘preposterous exercise in biographical writing,’ namely Dutch: A Memoir of Ronald Reagan.16 Her problems with Dutch were governed by the conceit that the biographical chronicler was not in fact Morris but an invented character whom we were supposed to believe had known Reagan in his younger years, and so could happily if inauthentically describe the sports commentator, actor, and would-be politician as he made his way through college and his early adulthood.17 These are slim pickings. Morris, hardly a pdp-acolyte, was instead a devotee of le grand récit, as demonstrated in his wonderful multi-volume biography of Theodore Roosevelt.18 In Dutch he merely sought a way out of writing, under an impossibly generous Random House contract, the life of a man he found more or less a cypher. Dutch, in any case, was swiftly denounced by critics – failing utterly to be accepted as a new biographical template, if that was its supposed aim. Besides, historians of biography well knew that Morris was not serious – he had merely strayed from the reservation. There had always been spoof biographies that crossed over into the truthful, nonfiction realm, though most – such as Virginia Woolf’s Orlando, or Julian Barnes’s Flaubert’s Parrot – had been published as declared works of fiction.19 No, for all the addictiveness 14 15 16 17 18

19

Hamilton and Renders, ABC of Modern Biography, 71. Kakutani, Death of Truth, 71. Edmund Morris, Dutch: A Memoir of Ronald Reagan (New York: Random House, 1999). See Nigel Hamilton, Biography: A Brief History (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2007), 250. Edmund Morris, The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt (New York: Coward, McGann and Geoghegan, 1979); Theodore Rex (New York: Random House, 2001); Colonel Roosevelt (New York: Random House, 2010). See Hamilton, Biography: A Brief History, 161–62 and 216–19.

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of the new pdp drug, biography was not going to shake off its two-thousandyear history overnight. What is remarkable is that, in contrast to so much writing in history, English language, arts and literature, as well as the social sciences, science and other areas of art and knowledge, biography remained impervious to pdp, at least in North America and the UK. In fact it can be argued that, as a genre, biography happily stepped into the role vacated by those many former practitioners of history who had been intimidated or silenced by pdp. Freed from many earlier restrictions placed on the genre – the threat of libel, laws related to pornography, social norms of privacy – biographers in the US reveled, from the 1980s onwards, in their unabashed right in America to weave les grands récits. Even les petits récits – in what Hans Renders has termed ‘Slice of Life biography’ – as well as group biographies.20 In terms of structure and narrative they certainly did not shy away from using new techniques drawn from fiction, journalism, and cinema; in fact, in 2008 Hermione Lee could write in her Biography: A Very Brief Introduction, that nowadays no self-respecting biographer begins a biography with the birth of its subject.21 This was hardly deconstruction or postmodernism, though. Freed from many traditional limitations on the chronicling of real lives, biographers of the golden age responded, in short, to an American public willing to accept new forms of narrative technique – but not lies or deliberate fake truths. For biographers, truth remained a red line: a boundary that extended all the way back to classical times. In its general, unashamed adherence to le grand or even le petit récit, biographers of the golden age overwhelmingly hewed to what was biography’s lifeblood: nonfiction. The actuality of a life provided, after all, the very reason readers turned to biography rather than fiction, even if biography lacked the magic of invention. Respect for verifiable facts as opposed to myths and entertainment meant, moreover, that biographers were pressed to work harder than ever in their search for the truth about real individuals, past or present. Whereas footnotes and endnotes had once been considered de trop in biography, they now became mandatory, required support for the author’s interpretation of a real life. As historians largely retreated before the pdp wave, American biographers – often trained as journalists, as we’ve noted under ‘J is for Journalism’ and ‘N is for Non-Fiction’ – arguably picked up the historians’ cast-off mantle as chroniclers of the past.22

20 21 22

Hamilton and Renders, ABC of Modern Biography, 117, 181. Hermione Lee, Biography: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 8. Hamilton and Renders, ABC of Modern Biography, 85–92 and 120–128.

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Presidential biographers, in particular, were often perceived to be better historians of discrete ages than non-biographer historians, since they were willing to work harder to find and authenticate sources, conduct new interviews, and challenge and update earlier accounts: to engage, in short, in the intense forensic research, footnoted and endnoted, that had once been the prerogative of the academic historian. Robert Caro, Ron Chernow, Blanche Wiesen Cook, Doris Kearns Goodwin, David McCullough, Michael Beschloss, Kenneth Davis, H.W. Brands, Robert Dallek, Edmund Morris: these and other American biographers demonstrated that you could write popular modern biographies without resorting – save in the case of Dutch! – to invention, let alone deliberate lies. And coming up behind them was a wave of biographers approaching the genre with the same enthusiasm and respect for fact as the basis for trying to tell the truth.23 I say ‘trying.’ Obviously, no biographer, going back to Plutarch and Suetonius, ever claimed to possess the sole truth about a real individual or to offer definitive records of their subjects’ lives. Different generations, different perspectives gave rise to different interpretations. Selection, as in shot selection in golf or tennis, led to different outcomes – but the fundamental rules, as in golf or tennis, remained the same for all practitioners. No invention; no predetermined ideological motive, or veering into something that was not biography but a different genre, namely hagiography; no lying! No fake truth, or assertions that were not based, in other words, on documentary or reliable evidence. Though biography and history share so many resemblances – especially their respect for fact – the process of the former had never been quite the same as the latter. Historians search for larger patterns, explanations of how and why things happened and developed in the past; biographers home in on the person who happened, and who developed, over a full or a part of a lifetime. Biographers are therefore more like detectives, following the clues, evidence, and contexts from which a better understanding of an individual’s life can be deduced. An understanding, not the understanding – biographers know their serious reports or files will inevitably be superceded by later reports, but this eventual obsolescence does not invalidate their work, undertaken in all honesty and sincerity. This attitude or orientation makes the biographer completely different, in America, from the author of a memoir, say, as we have noted in ‘M is for Memoir’ – note that many memoir-writers have been exposed as deliberate deceivers, from James Frey to Misha Defonseca or

23

See Nigel Hamilton, ‘Biography as Corrective’, in The Biographical Turn: Lives in History, ed. Renders, De Haan, and Harmsma, 15–30.

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Margaret B. Jones, but few if any serious biographers have resorted to such fraud or the peddling of ‘fake truth.’24 At the fringes – such as ‘A is for Authorized Biography,’ which forms the first entry in our ABC, or ‘K is for Kings’ – there have been examples of discretionary silence toward embarrassing facts. But outright invention, lies or fake truths? No. Serious biography, after all, is serious work, unlike memoir or so much ‘creative’ nonfiction – as Hans Renders and I have emphasized! The years spent tracking down the evidence of a real life mitigates against such shortcuts or flights of invention. Even the popularity of the modern genre does not mean biographers get temptingly rich in America – no one was more surprised than Ron Chernow that his Hamilton become the basis of a hit Broadway hit musical.25 The root of all – or much – evil is thus, mercifully, a far lesser temptation for biographers than, say, pharmaceutical scientists. And so I come to the future of biography, at least in an America that has experienced a golden age of the genre yet now confronts the effects of American cultural decay – just as, in its role as a more or less benign empire, the position of the US as the leading global power since World War II is now unraveling. Biography may have been spared the tidal wave of pdp, but the genre is not immune to a nation’s culture and politics. As I’ve tried to show in Biography: A Brief History, biography in the West was and remains the natural outcome of man’s desire to commemorate the lives of the dead, and even the living – but its interpretation of those lives has always been constrained by the pressures of the society in which such commemoration and interpretation take place.26 These pressures are now serious and menacing in America. Every reviewer and critic is worried about the current situation, even if there are few credible prescriptions that offer much hope to those who believe in truth as the backbone of human survival – environmentally, politically, socially, and economically. It is as if the damage has been done, its onslaught of destruction climaxing like a hurricane making landfall. With power given, legally and constitutionally, to a reckless American administration of willful know-nothings, there is nothing that can be done, many people say, save to wait out the storm and survey the damage in its aftermath. The challenge thus posed for biographers is the same as what now faces journalists and educators: how to hold to the value of truth rather than lies, 24 25 26

Hamilton and Renders, ABC of Modern Biography, 111–118. Pia Catton, ‘Hamilton’s Biographer is Making History of Broadway’, in Wall Street Journal, December 25, 2015. Hamilton, Biography: A Brief History, 15, 27, 32, 77–79, 80.

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and facts in contrast to inventions, in a time of deliberate disinformation and an Orwellian subversion of truthfulness. I loved the commencement speech of the outgoing president of Harvard University, Drew Gilpin Faust, delivered in May 2018, and especially when she said: ‘We must be a place where facts matter, where reasoned and respectful discourse and debate serve as arbiters of truth.’ As a university, her institution often showed itself to be a ‘cacophony’ of voices and argumentation, marked by a reduced willingness to listen to other views: ‘But that must motivate us to redouble our efforts. Silencing ideas or basking in comfortable intellectual orthodoxy independent of facts and evidence blocks our access to new and better ideas. We must be dedicated to the belief that truth cannot be simply asserted or claimed, but must be established with evidence and tested with argument. Truth serves as inspiration and aspiration in all we do; it pulls us toward the future and its possibilities for seeing more clearly, understanding more fully, and improving ourselves and the world. Its pursuit is fueled by hope. Hope joins with truth as the very essence of a university.’27 Noble words! Biography, for its part, is a hardy plant; it has survived thousands of years in the Western world, in differing cultural manifestations and against many headwinds, from censorship to the arrests and executions of its practitioners. It won’t survive an environmental apocalypse, however, for it is as much a pawn of circumstance and power as any other cultural tradition. At least, in the short term. There is a wonderful passage in chapter 23 of Margaret Atwood’s great novel The Handmaid’s Tale. ‘It can’t last forever,’ the chronicler narrates. ‘I intend to get out of here. Others have thought such things, in bad times before this, and they were always right, they did get out one way or another, and it didn’t last forever. Although for them it may have lasted all the forever they had.’28 Individually, we may not live long enough to survive the current onslaught against the value of truth in America – on truth based on a respect for facts and responsible argument. But as a complement to Faust’s plea for hope, I would say the following, here at this university, and among fellow biographers and students of the genre, coming from many countries. It concerns a thread running through The ABC of Modern Biography which Hans Renders and I have penned in this time of great cultural travail: a theme perhaps best described as spiritual, and one largely hidden from the world beyond the realm of biography and biographers. 27 28

Drew Faust, 2018 Commencement Speech, Harvard University (May 24, 2018), https:// Harvard.edu, accessed March 16, 2019. Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid’s Tale (New York: Anchor, 1998), 134.

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It is this: the unique sense of fulfillment which biography, as the record and interpretation of a real individual’s life story, accords the biographer. We all know Dr. Johnson’s famous adage about biography, that it was a pursuit he esteemed ‘as giving us that comes near to ourselves, what we can most put to use.’29 Well, those sentiments were not mere words. Johnson was a biographer, and a proud one. For all its rules and limitations, the doing of biography – at least in the Western cultural heritage since Xenophon, Plutarch, and Suetonius – affords the biographer a spiritual fulfillment that no other endeavor does. It is not for everyone, however. Virginia Woolf hated it, as we’ve noted in our ABC, for she felt its constraints, for a great fictional artist, to be intolerable – an ‘appalling grind,’ an ‘endless drudgery,’ moreover a challenge she found she could not master. To her chagrin her biography of her friend Roger Fry turned out to be a complete disaster, without even ‘a flick of life’ in it, as she herself wrote in her diary.30 But for those of us who appreciate and respect those rules and constraints that are necessary in our research and in the representation of a real person’s life story, the reward is seldom pecuniary, or commercial, or even the social esteem of fame. It is, rather, the fulfillment of the biographer’s long struggle with the reality of the other – another person’s actual life. Anti-othering: the spirit of modern biography. Not a great draw in America, one must admit – a nation headed by an elected president who has turned against the very notion of immigrants, deliberately othering them as ‘rapists’ and ‘animals.’31 Nevertheless a challenge – and perhaps a new way of looking at the meaning, significance, even theory of biography – that abounds in lessons, insights, and a kind of joy, too: the joy of being a serious biographer, of applying one’s curiosity, intelligence, sensitivity, good judgment, education, energy, critical skills, and a passion for truth to the literary recreation of another person’s real life, done for others, and – not least – for oneself. That challenge – the challenge of exploring the truth of another human being, in both good and evil aspects alike, may be disparaged or sneered at in an age of ‘alternative facts’ and ‘fake news,’ but it is real to the biographer – and if the past two thousand years are anything to go by, it will ultimately prevail. 29 30 31

Nigel Hamilton, How to Do Biography: A Primer (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2008), 10. Hamilton and Renders, ABC of Modern Biography, 25. Eugene Scott, ‘In reference to ‘animals,’ Trump reveals an ugly history of dehumanization’, in Washington Post, May 16, 2018.

Historical Biography in Canada: Historians, Publishers, and the Public Daniel R. Meister

People look to biographies to examine and re-examine the past. And in the case of Canada, a nation that is perpetually unsure of its identity, biography often plays an important role in the quest to define or understand Canadian identity.1

∵ There are many signs that in Canada, as in many other countries, biography remains a popular genre with the general public. One classic, if anecdotal, marker remains shelf space. In large bookstores such as Chapters/Indigo the largest proportion of space given over to nonfiction is indeed most often devoted to biographies. Filling these shelves are books such as those in the Extraordinary Canadians series launched by Penguin Canada in 2009. Edited by the public intellectual John Ralston Saul, this series of short, accessible books earned wide praise and was eventually developed into a television show.2 Biographies, and their continued popularity, are also the subject of discussion in the press. In the 2017 edition of the annual 100-best-books list compiled by the Globe and Mail, a national newspaper, four of the twenty nonfiction books were biographies of individuals, one was a collective biography, and seven were memoirs; yet another book was a reflection on the writing of obituaries, themselves a form of biography. The CBC’s best-ten list that year included three

1 David Marshall, ‘Exceptional Canadians: Biography in the Public Sphere’, in Media and Politics, ed. David Taras and Christopher Waddell, vol. 4 of How Canadians Communicate (Athabasca: AU Press, 2012), 233. 2 My thanks to Petra Teunissen-Nijsse for drawing my attention to this series. For more information, see the publisher’s website, https://www.penguinrandomhouse.ca/ series/B9X/extraordinary-canadians; and on the show, https://www.cpac.ca/en/programs/ extraordinary-canadians/. For an insightful critique of the series, see Philip Marchand, ‘Extraordinary Canadians’, in The Walrus, April 12, 2009, https://thewalrus.ca/2009-04-books/.

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2020 | DOI:10.1163/9789004434974_005

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memoirs.3 Although the Drainie-Taylor Biography Prize, a Canadian award dedicated to biography, was discontinued in 2006, several biographies have been nominated for other prestigious literary awards in recent years. Assessing the state of biography on a national scale is difficult, especially given how broadly the term ‘biography’ is often used. Consequently, and in keeping with my ongoing interest in its scholarly form, I have generally limited my remarks in this chapter to what has been called ‘historical biography.’ Historical biography is simply a form of biography that examines a life that has ended, one that provides an account both of an individual’s life and of the historical events and processes in which that person was involved.4 I should also make it clear that I will be discussing ‘biography in Canada’ and not ‘Canadian biography,’ for the idea of an essentially Canadian biography is complicated by the country’s great ethnic and cultural diversity, both historically and in the present. As there is no essential Canadian, so can there be no essentially Canadian biography. There are simply biographies written by Canadians and biographies written of Canadians (and most often sums of the two). So what is the state of the art of biography in this multicultural country? To answer this question, I turn to some pragmatic yet unanswered questions: How do academic publishers view biographies? How well do scholarly biographies sell? What is the primary market for serious biographies, and is it more expansive than those of other genres published by academic presses and trade publishers? Finally, how are historians approaching the art of biography? The writing of biography in Canada has a long history that predates the country’s Confederation in 1867. In the late nineteenth century, biography was a popular literary genre read ‘in the home for leisure and popular education, and in school where it spanned the curriculum as a tool for intellectual and 3 ‘The Globe 100: Best Books of the Year’, The Globe and Mail, November 24, 2017, https://www.theglobeandmail.com/arts/books-and-media/the-globe-100-these-are-the -best-booksof2017/article37071356/; ‘The Best Canadian Nonfiction of 2017’, cbc Books, December 22, 2017, http://www.cbc.ca/books/the-best-canadian-nonfiction-of-2017-1.4453296. See also Charlotte Gray’s recent musings about the genre’s future in ‘The Future of Biography’, The Walrus, April 4, 2018, https://thewalrus.ca/the-future-of-biography/. 4 The vagueness of the term has been noted by Nigel Hamilton and Hans Renders in their The ABC of Modern Biography (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2018), 7. For another recent primer, see Birgitte Possing, Understanding Biographies: On Biographies in History and Stories in Biography (Odense: University Press of Southern Denmark, 2017). On historical biography, particularly in the Canadian context, see Daniel R. Meister, ‘The Biographical Turn and the Case for Historical Biography’, History Compass 16, no. 1 (January 2018), https://doi.org/10.1111/hic3.12436. Those interested in the broader field of life writing or auto/biography in Canada may wish to also consult Julie Rak, ed., Auto/Biography in Canada: Critical Directions (Waterloo, ON: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2005).

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personal development.’ Particularly popular during this era were collective biographies, or biographical dictionaries, and the individual short biographies they contained were believed to be a means of imparting moral and cultural lessons. Biography became increasingly popular as a genre of history in the early twentieth century. This development is best evinced by the introduction of the ‘Makers of Canada’ series, which was designed to provide a history of Canada through a look at major political figures. The best-selling twentyvolume series, which ran from 1903 through 1908, has since been described as ‘the climax of the Victorian practice of biography in Canada’.5 In the 1920s, professional historians shifted the practice of biography toward a new, more empirical, less hagiographic model. But these efforts were merely flawed in a different way; ‘frequently these became totally depersonalized accounts; the protagonists lost their personalities and became merely products of their times.’ The debunking spirit of Strachey’s Eminent Victorians was, in the words of historiographer Carl Berger, expressed in Canada ‘in a more tepid and limited fashion, leading in most cases not to full-scale biographical works but rather to revisionist essays.’ Berger situated the growing respectability of biography within the context of a reaction against history being written as ‘the sway of impersonal forces’ during the late 1930s and early 1940s.6 In the late 1940s and early 1950s, the dominant approach to biography shifted again, this time within a context of intensifying cultural nationalism. The publication in 1952 of the first volume of Donald Creighton’s biography of the first Canadian prime minister, Sir John A. Macdonald, in many ways marked the beginning of the ‘golden age’ of biography in Canada. The book became the standard against which succeeding biographies were measured, and unleashed a thirty-year ‘flood of biographies,’ many of them political.7 As the historian John English has wistfully remarked, in the 1950s ‘Canada’s finest historians wrote great political biographies’ which ‘express[ed] the spirit of their time, the fundamental debate about how individual character shapes

5 Robert Lanning, The National Album: Collective Biography and the Formation of the Canadian Middle Class (Ottawa: Carleton University Press, 1996), 16; and Carl Berger, The Writing of Canadian History: Aspects of English-Canadian Historical Writing: 1900–1970 (Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1976), 218. 6 Berger, Writing of Canadian History, 220; and P.A. Buckner, ‘Canadian Biography and the Search for Joseph Howe’, Acadiensis 14, no. 1 (Autumn 1984), 105. See also Donna Coates, ‘The Makers of Canada’, in The Canadian Encyclopedia, https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia .ca/en/article/the-makers-of-canada. 7 Marshall, ‘Exceptional Canadians’, 236–244; Berger, The Writing of Canadian History, 222; and Donald Swainson, ‘Trends in Canadian Biography: Recent Historical Writing’, Queen’s Quarterly 87, no. 3 (Autumn 1980), 414.

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the circumstances of national experience.’8 According to Carl Berger, with the launch of the first volume of the Dictionary of Canadian Biography (DCB) in 1966, ‘biography became the dominant form in historical studies’. By 1973, some 1,200 biographies of Canadians had been published, the majority of which focused on the post-confederation period.9 But the heyday of political biography was not to last. Despite the seemingly endless supply of such works, they began to receive criticism. Stephen Henderson notes that by the 1970s such accounts were being satirized as ‘little more than accounts of “dead white guys”’.10 The supposed displacement of political biographies is typically attributed to the rise of social history, with its focus on doing history from the ‘bottom up.’11 But biography never fell from favor with the public and, perhaps owing to its enduring popularity, scholars would in time return to this historical methodology. Historian J.I. Little, citing Geoff Eley, argues that after the move toward social history, ‘the subsequent rise of cultural history, with its turn to subjectivity, has led to a resurgence of interest in biography, though with the goal […] of revisiting individual lives ‘as complex texts in which the same large questions that inspired the social historians were embedded.’12 In 1980, Robert Craig Brown delivered the presidential address to the Canadian Historical Association on the subject of ‘biography in Canadian history’. In it, he acknowledged the popularity of the biographical approach among 8

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John English, ‘Foreword’, in Paul Litt, Elusive Destiny: The Political Vocation of John Napier Turner (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2011), vii. See also Robert Bothwell and John English, ‘Foreword’, in Greg Donaghy, Grit: The Life and Politics of Paul Martin Sr. (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2015), esp. xi. Berger, The Writing of Canadian History, 221; and Swainson, ‘Trends in Canadian Biography’, 414. Swainson, ‘Trends in Canadian Biography’, 415 and 418; and Stephen Henderson, ‘Lives by the Left: Biography and Materialist History’, Left History 10, no. 1 (Fall/Winter 2004), 153. For an account of changing approaches to historical biography from the 1960s through the 1990s, see Brian Young, ‘Cross-generational Biography as a Vehicle for Understanding Historical Process: a Canadian Example’, in La Création biographique/Biographical Creation, ed. Marta Dvorak (Rennes: Presses Universitaires de Rennes et l’Association Française d’Études Canadiennes, 1997), 247–252. English, ‘Foreword’, vii; Barbara J. Messamore, Canada’s Governors General 1847–1878: Biography and Constitutional Evolution (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2006), 3; and David A. Wilson, Passion, Reason, and Politics, 1825–1857, vol. 1 of Thomas D’Arcy McGee (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2008), xiii. J.I. Little, Patrician Liberal: The Public and Private Life of Sir Henri-Gustave Joly de Lotbinière, 1829–1908 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2013); and Geoff Eley, A Crooked Line: From Cultural History to the History of Society (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2005).

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historians and made note of the longstanding complaint that biography had ‘dominated’ English-Canadian historiography. He also argued, somewhat paradoxically, that biography had to stand on its own but that historical biography, with its focus on the dialectic between the individual and society, was essential to ‘all historical inquiry’. Throughout the 1980s and 1990s historians continued to write biographies, and scholars such as P.B. Waite and J.R. Mallory lectured and wrote about biography as a form of history. In these decades a number of political biographies were published as part of the Ontario Historical Studies Series (ohss). The 1990s also saw conferences on biography and the subsequent publication of edited volumes, but these endeavors had significant connections to Europe. For instance, Boswell’s Children: The Art of the Biographer (1992) emerged from a conference on biography in history held at the Centre of Canadian Studies at the University of Edinborough, while Biography and Autobiography: Essays on Irish and Canadian History and Literature stemmed from the 1991 Conference of the Canadian Association for Irish Studies.13 By 2004, Henderson could remark that biography ‘remains a powerful – and very popular – approach to history’.14 That same year, in the introduction to her work on Canada’s governors general, which took the form of a collective biography, the historian Barbara Messamore critiqued the hegemony of social history within the discipline. She cautioned that attempts to move away from an exclusive focus on ‘dead, white males’ should not lead historians to dismiss political and constitutional history, filled as it might be with ‘extraordinary’ individuals. ‘Our understanding of change will not be complete if we focus solely

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Robert Craig Brown, ‘Biography in Canadian History’, in Historical Papers 15, no. 1 (1980), 8; J.R. Mallory, ‘Biography, History, and Social Science in Canada: Different Questions, Different Answers’, in Journal of Canadian Studies 15, no. 4 (1980), 125–128; P.B. Waite, Reefs Unsuspected: Historians and Biography in Canada, Australia and Elsewhere (Sydney: Macquarie University, 1983); Waite, ‘Invading Privacies: Biography As History’, Dalhousie Review 69 no. 4 (1990), 479–495; R.B. Fleming, ed., Boswell’s Children: The Art of the Biographer (Toronto: Dundurn, 1992); and James Noonan, ed., Biography and Autobiography: Essays on Irish and Canadian History and Literature (Ottawa: Carleton University Press, 1993). Swainson, ‘Trends in Canadian Biography’, provides a valuable overview of the field as it stood in 1980. Bill Harnum (conversation with author, June 27, 2018) first drew my attention to the OHSS, which sponsored biographies of such figures as G. Howard Ferguson, Leslie M. Frost, Sir Oliver Mowat, Sir James Pliny Whitney, John P. Robarts, and Mitchell F. Hepburn. For a review from the period, see H. Blair Neatby, “Character and Circumstance’: Political Biography in the 1990s’, in Acadiensis 22, no. 2 (Spring 1993), 154–160. The 1990s also saw ECW Press launch a Canadian Biography Series, producing slim (roughly 80-page) biographies of literary figures. See Sandra Djwa’s review of the first three volumes in University of Toronto Quarterly 63, no. 1 (Fall 1993), 214–217. Henderson, ‘Lives by the Left’, 153.

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on the disenfranchised many’, she argued, for ‘it depends upon our grasp of the lives of the few – those who held power and were able to shape the course of events.’15 In 2007, the open-access Journal of Historical Biography (jhb) was launched with Messamore at the helm. In its inaugural issue Donald Wright, then in the midst of writing a biography of Donald Creighton, reflected on biography’s ‘enormous appeal and popularity’. In response to these developments, and conscious of the reality that such an approach was not really new, the 2010 annual meeting of the Canadian Historical Association hosted three panels dedicated to the ‘Biographical (Re)turn’.16 This brief overview has so far focused on Canadian scholarship published in English, but biography has a long history among francophone Canadians and, at least since the mid-twentieth century, francophone scholars have often been more apt than their anglophone colleagues to reflect on the art of biography. The historian Fernand Ouellet, in his 1970 presidential address to the Canadian Historical Association, though conceding the need for additional biographies of influential politicians, argued that biography should be utilized in a more systematic way to show a constant dialectic between the individual and society.17 Brown, in his address delivered a decade later, repeatedly quoted Ouellet in discussing the biography’s explicit role in French Canadian historical writing. This trend continued: in 1995, an interdisciplinary and bilingual conference on biography was held at the Centre d’Études Canadiennes in Rennes, France. Both English- and French-speaking Canadians contributed to the event, whose papers were published two years later as La Création Biographique/ Biographical Creation. Little wonder that in 1996 the literary scholar Shirley Neuman went so far as to argue that francophone auto/biographical writings were more sophisticated than their anglophone equivalents.18

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Messamore, Canada’s Governors General, 3. Donald Wright, ‘Reflections on Donald Creighton and the Appeal of Biography’, in Journal of Historical Biography 1 (Spring 2007), 15–26; and ‘The Biographical (Re)Turn’, special issue of the Journal of the Canadian Historical Association 21, no. 2 (2010). The JHB ceased publication in 2014 but remains archived at https://www.ufv.ca/jhb/. Fernand Ouellet, ‘L’histoire sociale du Bas-Canada: bilan et perspectives de recherches’, in Historical Papers [of the Canadian Historical Association] 5, no. 1 (1970), 1–18; quoted in Brown, ‘Biography in Canadian History’. In 1987, B.L. Vigod argued that French Canadian historians continued to abstain from writing political biographies. See his ‘Biography and Political Culture in Quebec’, in Acadiensis 7, no. 1 (Autumn 1977), 141. Dvorak, Création biographique; and Shirley Neuman, ‘Reading Canadian Autobiography’, in Essays on Canadian Writing 60 (Winter 1996), 1–13, cited in Susanna Egan and Gabriele Helms, ‘Auto/Biography? Yes. But Canadian?’ Canadian Literature 172 (Spring 2002), 6.

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Francophone historians have continued their activity in recent decades. In 2000, the Quebec-based Revue d’histoire de l’Amérique française published a special section on ‘Biographie et histoire,’ the introduction to which argued that biography, once considered a minor field of history, was making a marked comeback in Quebec, as in other places. Contributing to this trend, an edited volume on Approches de la biographie au Québec was published in 2004, and another on Transformations de la modernité et pratiques (auto)biographiques in 2012.19 Since 1986, Quebec has also recognized excellence in biography with the Prix Maxime-Raymond, awarded every three years for the best historical biography published in French.20 Academic presses publish most historical biographies in Canada, so comparing the foregoing with an analysis of the number of biographies published by Canadian university presses during the past two decades is revealing. Before we turn to this analysis, a brief explanation of the context and methodology is in order. According to the Association of Canadian University Presses/Association des presses universitaires canadiennes (acup/apuc), its sixteen members ‘publish more than 600 titles annually, primarily by Canadian researchers and on Canadian subjects in the humanities and social sciences.’21 Beyond the

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For a listing of collective biographical works relating to Quebec, see Mary E. Bond and Martine M. Caron, comps., Canadian reference sources: an annotated bibliography/Ouvrages de reference canadiens: une bibliographie annotée (Vancouver: UBC Press, with the National Library of Canada and Canada Communication Group, 1996), 225–230. It lists more than thirty works, some dating back to 1876. Of course, biographical writing has longer roots that stretch back to hagiography; for one discussion see Allan Greer, ‘L’hagiographie en Nouvelle-France: le cas de Kateri Tekakwitha’, in La Création biographique, 267–274. Revue d’histoire de l’Amérique française 54, no. 1 (2000), 67–131; Dominique Lafon, Rainier Grutman, Marcel Olscamp, and Robert Vigneault, eds., Approches de la biographie au Quebec (Anjou, QC: Éditions Fides, 2004); and Danielle Desmarais, Isabelle Fortier, and Jacques Rhéaume, eds., Transformations de la modernité et pratiques (auto)biographiques (Québec: Presses de l’Université du Québec, 2012). Books similar to the latter include Céline Yelle, Lucie Mercier, Jeanne-Marie Gingras, and Salim Beghdad, eds., Les histoires de vie: Un carrefour de pratiques (Québec: Presses de l’Université du Québec, 2011), and most recently Manon Auger, Les journaux intimes et personnels au Québec (Montréal: Presses de l’Université de Montréal, 2017). The Prix Maxime-Raymond is awarded by l’Institut d’histoire de l’Amérique française, with funding from la fondation Lionel-Groulx. ACUP/APUC website, http://acup-apuc.ca/. For a recent look at scholarly publishing in Canada, see the ‘Final Report’ of the Canadian Scholarly Publishing Working Group (July 2017), http://www.carl-abrc.ca/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/CSPWG_final_report _EN.pdf. For an overview, see George L. Parker, ‘University Presses’, The Canadian Encyclopedia, https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/university-presses.

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university presses, Canada also is home to several smaller, specialized academic presses such as Between the Lines, Fernwood Publishing, and the Canadian Scholars’ Press, as well as a variety of regional presses.22 However, it is worth noting that the three largest university presses in Canada – the University of Toronto Press, the University of British Columbia Press, and McGillQueen’s University Press – collectively publish roughly 70 percent of the nation’s academic books.23 The statistics provided in the charts that follow are based on the publication history of all the members of the acup over the past two decades. The titles were compiled from individual publishers’ websites, and there are likely errors resulting from works being miscategorized on these sites. Nevertheless, I hope this initial study can be used to persuade publishers to collect and organize such data and make them available to researchers in the future. One of the most notable findings is that despite the widespread assumption of biography’s cyclical popularity, the data suggest a more complicated pattern. For instance, discussions of biography’s ‘return’ occurred during a period of decreased publication, and fluctuations in recent years have been quite large. Even among the three largest publishers there is no single stance toward biography as a genre. At utp, Acquisitions Editor Len Husband stated frankly that he would not turn down a biography, as he believed in biography as a form of scholarship. However, Randy Schmidt, a Senior Editor at ubc Press, was equally frank in stating that, as a general rule, the press did not publish traditional, life-to-death biographies. In his words, many biographies were ‘just life stories of an interesting person or a person who has had an interesting life. There is nothing wrong with that… but it’s not something that we feel fits our current mandate as a university press.’ Biographies were better suited to publication in the Dictionary of Canadian Biography or as articles, he suggested, but not as monographs. If the press were to publish a biography, it would have to

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Of course, some Canadian authors choose to publish with large international presses or smaller American publishers, but this chapter limits its scope to biographies published with Canadian firms. Recent examples include Adele Perry, Colonial Relations: The Douglas-Connolly Family and the Nineteenth-Century Imperial World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015); Kurt Korneski, Race, Nation, and Reform Ideology in Winnipeg, 1880s–1920s (Lanham, MD: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press and Rowman & Littlefield, 2015); and Nina Reid-Maroney, The Reverend Jennie Johnson and African Canadian History, 1868–1967 (Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press, 2013). These presses are referred to hereafter as UTP, UBC, and MQUP, respectively. The figure of 70 percent is taken from Randy Schmidt, ‘A Session on Scholarly Publishing’, Osgoode Hall Law School, April 3, 2013, https://youtu.be/OlFbh4ZBjgg?t=8m50s.

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Works of biography and life writing published per year Note: In the ‘life writing’ category I have included memoirs and autobiographies; correspondence, diaries, and journals; edited collections; auto/biography; and theoretical works about life writing.

engage with the existing literature and make a clear scholarly contribution.24 Perhaps landing between the two positions, Philip Cercone, the Executive Director of MQUP, suggested that the main consideration for the press was the degree to which the subject of a potential biography was well known. If the subject was not well known, an author had to provide a strong case for why the figure should become well known.25 Cercone also suggested that one important factor when considering the market for a biography involved determining whether its audience would be limited to the academy or whether the book would appeal both to academics and the ‘educated general public.’ David Larsen, Sales and Marketing Super-

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Schmidt stressed that this view was not official company policy but rather his understanding based on his long experience with the press. Yet it aligns with the 2018 Subject Area Grid released by the Association of University Presses (formerly the Association of American University Presses), which reports that UBC may have a significant backlist but is not actively acquiring in the area of ‘Biography and Memoir’. The report is available at http://www.aupresses.org/images/stories/documents/2018Subject _Area_Grid_final_20180115.pdf. That said, UBC is home to the C.D. Howe Series in Canadian Political History, which encourages the publication of books on all aspects of Canadian political history including ‘biographies of key public figures’. On the series, see its first book: Donaghy, Grit: The Life and Politics of Paul Martin, ii, ix-xi; and also the UBC website, https://www.UBCpress.ca/the-cd-howe-series-in-canadian-political-history. Len Husband, conversation with the author, May 29, 2018; Schmidt, correspondence with the author, June 27, 2018; and Cercone, conversation with the author, May 29, 2018.

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visor at the University of Manitoba Press (ump), was quite forthcoming (and optimistic) about the market for biographical works: Our readers, to the best of our ability to identify, are academics across gender and age categories and, outside of that the principal audience, among general readership are women and among them there is a sizeable cohort among 30–60 year olds. This follows general trends within the publishing trade. This aligns with BookNet’s research, which suggests that the average buyer of biographies is a married, university-educated female, 49 years of age. (BookNet is a nonprofit organization that tracks book sales in the country.) By comparison, BookNet’s research on history books found that the average buyer was a university-educated male, 54 years of age.26 However, the market for academic books as a whole is not well understood. While some in the academic publishing industry believe ‘there is a highly educated segment of the reading public that does not work in academia and is not particularly well served by trade publishers’, others dismiss the idea of the educated general reader as ‘apocryphal’. Bill Harnum, a former senior executive at utp, explains: I actually once had t-shirts made which said, “I’m an EGR*” on the front, and on the back it said, “*Educated General Reader”. The educated general reader… It’s [someone] we know is out there, and we all seek, but [is] very hard to find. But that was certainly what our market was, the general educated reader: someone who was not themselves an academic but was interested in ideas.27 The question requires further research, but the recent success of the University of Regina Press (urp) in marketing to this segment suggests it does in fact exist. Formerly operating as the Canadian Plains Research Centre, in 2013 the 26

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David Larsen, correspondence with the author, March 15, 2018; and BookNet Canada, Deep Dive: The History Book Buyer, 2017 (BNC Research, 2018), 4, which adds: ‘History generally appeals to older buyers; there is a slightly higher following among those aged 65+ (35%)’. The sample size for the study was 243 respondents compared with 3,047 for all nonfiction. Cercone, quoted in Bronwyn Chester, ‘The press that’s a success’, in McGill Reporter, January 14, 1999, http://reporter-archive.mcgill.ca/Rep/r3108/cercone.html; Schmidt, ‘A Session on Scholarly Publishing’, https://youtu.be/OlFbh4ZBjgg?t=51m16s; and Bill Harnum, conversation with the author, June 27, 2018.

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press was transformed under the leadership of Bruce Walsh. Walsh has been critical of academic publishing’s norms and practices and has made the press an innovative player in the industry. ‘The humanities and social sciences are withering within the academy and I think academic publishing is part of the problem’, he has observed. Describing URP’s approach as ‘transformative’, he stated that their goal is to publish books that speak to the zeitgeist, books that will be read ‘100 years from now’ and that will encourage young people to study the humanities and social sciences. While this is a huge goal, the press has the results to back it up: urp has released seven national bestsellers in the past five years.28 Regardless of the market, it is difficult to generalize about the state of historical biography from a publishing perspective because Canadian university presses do not keep statistics on how well biographies or historical biographies sell as a genre. Although each publisher collects sales data on individual titles, they view their scholarly books as distinct works rather than as representatives of any particular category or subcategory. (The two trade presses whose representatives I spoke with also organized sales information in this way.) One of the few publishers willing to offer anecdotal remarks was mqup, whose Susan McIntosh suggested that ‘how well biographies sell is dependent on the profile of the author as well as how well known the subject of the biography is’. Many of the smaller presses felt that they had simply published too few biographies to fruitfully compare them to other books. One exception was the ump, where according to Larsen ‘the categories of memoir and biography generally sell more copies than our monographs and certainly more than most of our collections. Recently we have published more memoirs than biographies and both combined are approximately one eighth of our average output.’ Biography, he

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Bruce Walsh, conversation with the author, July 3, 2018; and Ashley Martin, ‘U of R Press director Bruce Walsh believes in changing the narrative’, Regina Leader-Post, October 8, 2017, https://leaderpost.com/news/local-news/u-of-r-press-director-walsh -believes-in-changing-the-narrative. See also Natalie Samson, ‘Standing out in the world of scholarly publishing’, in University Affairs, March 9, 2016, https://www.universityaffairs .ca/features/feature-article/standing-out-in-the-world-of-scholarly-publishing/; and Ed Nawotka, ‘Canada’s University of Regina Press: More Than the Little Publisher on the Prairie’, in Publishers Weekly, March 31, 2017, https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/ by-topic/international/international-book-news/article/73237-canada-s-university-of -regina-press-more-than-the-little-publisher-on-the-prairie.html. In the time between the writing and publication of this chapter, Walsh and the URP parted ways.

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added, ‘remains a subset of the general interest market and the academic market’.29 Almost everyone at the publishers I spoke with directed me to BookNet, but this organization does not provide sales data for authors, students, or the general public, with the exception of published reports. Their Deep Dive series in particular provides helpful information not otherwise available, and in a 2016 report about biography the organization noted that ‘the Biography category continues to increase while Non-Fiction overall has seen a notable decline’. The growth is relatively small, however, as biography’s share of the overall print market has increased by only one percent in the last decade.30 Scholars increasingly make the case for biography as an academic discipline or subdiscipline and see it as distinct from Life Writing, but this distinction is not always made within the publishing industry.31 A number of examples have already been mentioned, such as ump’s placement of biography and memoirs into one category, which BookNet does (with autobiography also included) as well. The inclusion of memoirs could explain the increase in popularity that they have tracked, as the genre is currently quite popular: recall that the Globe and Mail’s list of best nonfiction had nearly double the number of memoirs as biographies. Similarly, Larsen of ump noted that in recent years they have published more memoirs than biographies. All this suggests that the memoir ‘boom,’ detailed by Julie Rak in 2013, shows no signs of abating.32

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Susan McIntosh, correspondence with the author, March 15, 2018; and David Larsen, correspondence with the author, March 15, 2018. (McIntosh has since retired.) BookNet Canada, Deep Dive: The Biography & Autobiography Book Buyer, 2016 (BNC Research, 2017), 13–14, 15. It also found that biography was ‘fairly backlist heavy’, meaning that such books stay on the market for quite some time. However, it is important to note that their sample size is small; this particular report was based on a sample of 213 buyers representing 272 book purchases, compared with 2,330 nonfiction book buyers (see pages 3 and 11 of the report). Harnum estimated that a historical biography would sell in the range of 1,500 to 2,000 copies, which is high for an academic book (conversation with the author, June 27, 2018). On the distinction between the two areas, see Hans Renders and Binne de Haan, eds., Theoretical Discussions of Biography: Approaches from History, Microhistory, and Life Writing (Leiden: Brill, 2014). David Larsen, correspondence with the author, March 15, 2018; and Julie Rak, Boom! Manufacturing Memoir for the Popular Market (Waterloo, ON: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2013). Other publishers increasingly see the value of the two genres: Les Presses de l’Université d’Ottawa / University of Ottawa Press recently introduced a new series entitled ‘Biographies et memoirs/Biographies and Memoirs’: see https://press.uottawa.ca/series/ contemporary-society/biographies-and-memoirs.html.

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In recent years there has been little agreement among historians about the state of the art of historical biography in Canada. In 2011, a year after the cha’s discussion of biography’s ‘return,’ Béatrice Craig argued that as a general rule ‘academic historians do not write biographies’. Two years later, David MacKenzie countered that biography, and especially political biography, remained popular, and in 2013 the social historian Suzanne Morton remarked that was ‘no denying the current fascination with biography by historians.’33 But popularity aside, there remains a continuing timidity toward historical biography. Signs of this attitude include a lack of biographical approaches to history in the classroom and a continued belief that biographies are unsuitable for history dissertations. Reflecting on his twenty-two years with the University of Toronto Press, Bill Harnum remarked: ‘if your first book is a popular biography, that’s not going to be considered legitimate or significant enough from a tenure committee or a hiring committee. You’re far better off to do something that’s more monographic in its focus than a biography of any kind.’ He continued: ‘I’ve never seen a biography come in that had been a thesis… I’m sure it’s happened, but I can’t recall any. But I think that’s certainly a prejudice that would exist.’34 Biographers themselves also express some ambivalence about their craft; some recent reflections have spent more time cautioning about biography’s limitations than discussing its benefits.35 Although historical biographies that

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Béatrice Craig, ‘The Art of Biography’, in Acadiensis 40, no. 2 (Summer/Autumn 2011): 146; David MacKenzie, ‘Where Character Meets Circumstance: Political Biography in Modern Canada’, in Acadiensis 42, no. 1 (Winter/Spring 2013): 182–194; and Suzanne Morton, Wisdom, Justice, and Charity: Canadian Social Welfare through the Life of Jane B. Wisdom, 1884–1975 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2014), 7–8. Thanks to Len Husband for drawing my attention to Morton’s work. Harnum, conversation with the author, June 27, 2018 (emphasis added). The only such example I could find was T. Stephen Henderson, Angus L. Macdonald: A Provincial Liberal (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2007), which began as ‘A Provincial Liberal: Angus L. Macdonald, 1890–1954’ (PhD diss., York University, 2003). Bruce Walsh, reflecting on the long path that one particular book took to reach publication, suggested that perhaps students were warned away from biographies simply because of how difficult they were to write well (conversation with the author, July 3, 2018), while one historian suggested to me that a biographical dissertation would leave prospective historians with difficulties defining their fields of expertise on the academic job market. See for example Jason Sean Ridler, Maestro of Science: Omond McKillop Solandt and Government Science in War and Hostile Peace, 1939–1956 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2015), 7, 9; Roderick J. Barman, ‘Biography as History’, in Journal of the Canadian Historical Association 21, no. 2 (2010), 61–75; and MacKenzie, ‘Where Character Meets Circumstance’, 182. By contrast, see a recent defense of biography from an editor at an Ameri-

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open with a lengthy discussion or defense of the biographical method are increasingly rare, many biographers continue to feel it necessary to justify their choice of subject. In his biography of the Canadian astronomer J.S. Plaskett, R. Peter Broughton begins by answering the question: ‘Why should a biography of an astronomer, albeit a celebrated one, arose much interest?’ Richard Kaplan lists the early life accomplishments of justice Ivan C. Rand before remarking that none of it ‘would merit a biography’, and then suggests that only Rand’s contribution to the law as a judge justified the biography. And the historian Robert Wardhaugh admitted quite honestly that, when asked to author a biography of the civil servant William Clifford Clark, he was initially ‘unsure if Clarke was deserving of a full-length biography’.36 The question of who merits or deserves a biography has no easy answer. The practical issues related to publication discussed above, such as the potential publisher, market, funding, and sales, are doubtless considered. However, one of the primary considerations seems to be whether a study of the subject will also explore a broader sociohistorical context. Indeed, this larger view is what distinguishes historical biography from other forms of biography.37 When writing biographies, historians are always considering two elements: the life and its context. The terminology often changes – some prefer ‘life and times’ and others ‘character and circumstance’ – but the underlying goal is generally the same: to illuminate some aspect of the past. Some historians will target more life, others more context; perhaps most will aim for the middle of the continuum defined by these poles. On the occasion of the sesquicentennial of Confederation, the flagship journal of the Canadian historical profession, The Canadian Historical Review (chr), organized a feature on ‘Confed-

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can university press: Michael J. McGandy, ‘Arguing Biography’, in Uncommon Sense [blog of the Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture] October 23, 2018, https://blog.oieahc.wm.edu/dh3-arguing-biography/. Thanks to Katelyn Arac for bringing this to my attention. R. Peter Broughton, Northern Star: J.S. Plaskett (Toronto: University Press, 2018), xiii; Richard Kaplan, Canadian Maverick: The Life and Times of Ivan C. Rand (Toronto: University of Toronto Press for the Osgoode Society for Canadian Legal History, 2009), xii; and Robert A. Wardhaugh, Behind the Scenes: The Life and Work of William Clifford Clark (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2010), ix–x. Meister, ‘The Biographical Turn and the Case for Historical Biography’. For some classificatory schemes relating to biography, see Birgitte Possing, ‘Biography: Historical’, in the International Encyclopedia of the Social and Behavioral Sciences, 2nd ed., ed. Neil J. Smelser and Paul B. Baltes (London: Elsevier, 2001), 2:644–649; and Thomas Söderqvist, ‘The Seven Sisters: Subgenres of Bioi of Contemporary Life Scientists’, in Journal of the History of Biology 44 (2011), 633–650. Thanks to Allan Hildon for directing me to the latter.

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eration, Biography, and Canadian History’. The resulting pieces revealed some of Canadian historians’ varied approaches to historical biography. Adele Perry, the president of the cha, admitted that her comments about the two subjects amounted to ‘something close to an argument against both’. When researching her most recent work Perry was confronted with the unevenness of the archival record of her biographical subjects and as a result ‘reject[ed] the total project of biography’. ‘The practice of biography fractures in practice,’ she argues, ‘and points us to more modest and expansive approaches to […] putting human lives into history, and history into them.’38 Historians who seek a balance between life and context often invoke Barbara Tuchman’s famous ‘prism’ metaphor. The idea is that by looking through a life, the historian can reveal previously unnoticed aspects of a historical period or subject. But it is worth remembering that Tuchman was not aiming for such a balance; as she put it, her use of biography was ‘less for the sake of the individual subject’ than ‘exhibiting’ an age, nation-state, or situation.39 (Alice Kessler-Harris has offered a similar metaphor of life as a ‘lens’ and has more accurately described her approach as ‘anti-biography’.) Donald Wright asked in his piece in the chr, ‘Why would any biographer want to see through the life?’ Aiming for that middle ground, he rightly argued that ‘lives do not preclude or even get in the way of, a deeper or new understanding of historical circumstances and historical processes.’40

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Adele Perry, ‘Beyond Biography, Beyond Canada’, in Canadian Historical Review 98, no. 2 (June 2017): 329 and 336. Barbara Tuchman, ‘Biography as a Prism of History’, in Telling Lives: The Biographer’s Art, ed. Marc Pachter (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1985), 133. For recent examples, see Linda A. Ambrose, A Great Rural Sisterhood: Madge Robertson Watt and the ACWW (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2015), 8; and Michael Gauvreau, The Hand of God: Claude Ryan and the Fate of Canadian Liberalism, 1925–1971 (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2017), 5. A historical biographical approach dominates even the formatting of the subtitles of scholarly biographies, where the prevailing model is ‘x and the y’, where x is an individual and y is a period, organization, or theme (note the titles listed above). Alice Kessler-Harris, ‘Why Biography?’ in American Historical Review 114, no. 3 (June 2009), 625–630; and Donald Wright, ‘His Macdonald, My Creighton, Biography, and the Writing of History’, in Canadian Historical Review 98, no. 2 (June 2017), 354. For one recent use of the lens metaphor, see Patricia Roy, Boundless Optimism: Richard McBride’s British Columbia (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2012), 1. For another discussion of the varying approaches, see Craig, ‘The Art of Biography’. Other Canadian historians have offered shorter but promising reflections. For instance, in a letter to the editor, Michael Gauvreau offered an insightful description of the biographical project: ‘The standard of successful biography remains the full elucidation and presentation of the subject’s selfunderstanding in the context of his or her society and culture.’ Gauvreau, ‘Re: ‘Quiet,

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Figure 2

Gender of biographers and their subjects

Absent from these discussions has been much engagement with international writing on biographical theory and methods, although many historical biographers are now paying attention to feminist historians’ powerful critiques of the way biography has traditionally been written.41 However, women continue to be underrepresented in biographical writing (see figure 2). Similarly, biographies of people from diverse ethnic backgrounds continue to be underrepresented within the historiography. And when such peoples are addressed, often only the stories of the elites are told. As the historian Barrington Walker argues about Black Canadian historiography in particular, much of this literature has been overtly filiopietistic (a term that refers to the excessive veneration of one’s ancestors).42 Ironically, despite political historians’ continued concerns about the decline of political biography,43 the publication history suggests that

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and Not Entirely a Revolution’, by Graham Fraser (February 2018),’ in Literary Review of Canada 26, no. 2 (March 2018), 32. See for example Carmen Nielson, ‘A Much-Fathered Nation: Feminist Biography and Confederation Politics’, in Canadian Historical Review 98, no. 2 (June 2017), 356–374; Ambrose, A Great Rural Sisterhood, 8–9; Little, Patrician Liberal, xii; Ridler, Maestro of Science, 7–9; and Morton, Wisdom, Justice, and Charity, 4, 7–8. Barrington Walker, Race on Trial: Black Defendants in Ontario’s Criminal Courts, 1858–1958 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press and the Osgoode Society for Canadian Legal History, 2010), 7. He returned to this theme in his ‘Critical Histories of Blackness in Canada’, Annual Faculty Lecture, Department of History, Queen’s University (November 29, 2018). John English, the general editor of the Dictionary of Canadian Biography/Dictionnaire biographique du Canada, wrote in 2011 that it was ‘extremely difficult to find authors to write biographies of prominent political figures’. English, ‘Foreword’, x. A year later, Philip Buckner argued that Canadian historians had ‘largely abandoned full-scale political biog-

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Occupations of biographical subjects

politicians – who are, at least historically, statistically most likely to be male and racialized as white – remain the most frequent recipients of biographical treatments. (Authors are the second-most written-about group, mainly owing to the efforts of literary scholars; see figure 3). Finding non-traditional biographical subjects in Canada requires looking beyond biographies to autobiographies and memoirs. Fernwood Publishing, for instance, has released biographies and memoirs of political activists but does not publish historical biographies. Athabasca University Press (au Press) eschews biography altogether in favor of other forms of life writing. Their ‘Our Lives: Diary, Memoir, and Letters’ series, introduced with the aims of social history in mind, seeks to ‘make available voices from the past that might otherwise remain unheard’ and to ‘foregroun[d] the experience of ordinary individuals’. Similarly, at ump, several memoirs have been published as part of their ‘First Voices, First Texts’ series, dedicated to out-of-print or neglected works by Indigenous authors. In light of the increasing interest in Indigenous studies among the general public in Canada, this series no doubt contributes to ump’s sales of biographies and memoirs.44 In short, while publishers are increasingly favoring the memoirs and autobiographies of diverse figures, we still find

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raphy’. See MacKenzie’s dissenting article (which argues political biography is alive and well), ‘Where Character Meets Circumstance’, quote at 182. Beverly Rach (Managing Editor, Fernwood), correspondence with the author, June 26, 2018; Larsen, correspondence with the author, March 15, 2018; and AU Press,

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historians opting for the traditional subjects of academic biographies: men, politicians, and middle-to-upper-class people of European descent. Persons considered subaltern and those racialized as nonwhite are often challenging to tackle as biographical subjects, due to factors such as a lack of traditional source material. Such challenges should be viewed not as deterrents but rather as opportunities to think, research, and write in creative and innovative ways.45 This effort is a necessary part of the ongoing struggle to unseat Eurocentrism within the academy. As Mary McCallum writes, ‘In history, as in other forms of work, there is a significant and seemingly irreconcilable dualism that divides Native people as the target or object of labour and Native people as workers. In the field of history, this split divides Native people as history and Native people as historians.’ The same has occurred in relation to biography; Alice Te Punga Somerville and Daniel Heath Justice argue that, for far too long, people of European descent have considered Indigenous peoples to be only the subjects, and not the authors, of biographies.46

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‘Series’, https://www.aupress.ca/series/our-lives-diary-memoir-and-letters/. A review of their catalogs suggests that one to two of the dozen or so works they publish each year are in this series. (AU Press is notable for being Canada’s first open-access scholarly press; it sells print books but the texts of these works are all freely available as .pdf files on its website.) The University of Calgary Press formerly ran a similar series, ‘Legacies Shared’, which was designed to preserve personal histories of ‘pioneer’ and immigrant life. Nunavut Artic College Media also publishes a number of memoirs, as well as genre-stretching works that consist of transcribed oral life histories of one or more Inuit people. See also Alana Bell, ‘Truth and Reconciliation in Life Writing: The Year in Canada’, in Biography 39, no. 4 (Fall 2016), 585–591. Reid-Maroney’s The Reverend Jennie Johnson and African Canadian History exemplifies these challenges. Johnson left behind very few papers, making her a difficult biographical subject. The book received mixed reviews; one reviewer argued that the study should have been article-length, given that in the book gaps in Johnson’s life history were filled with background information, biographical sketches of other figures, and discussions of events and organizations that were ‘quite frankly off topic’. See Dann J. Broyld’s review in The Journal of African American History 100, no. 2 (Spring 2015), 330. Nevertheless, as Lisa A. Lindsay argues, life histories belong ‘firmly in our repertoire of approaches into the African and diasporic past’. See her ‘Biography in African History’, in History in Africa 44 (2017), 11–26. Mary Jane Logan McCallum, Indigenous Women, Work, and History 1940–1980 (Winnipeg: University of Manitoba Press, 2014), 231; and Alice Te Punga Somerville and Daniel Heath Justice, ‘Introduction: Indigenous Conversations About Biography’, in Biography 39, no. 3 (Summer 2016), 240–241. Some recent biographies of Indigenous people include Jean Barman, Abenaki Daring: The Life and Writings of Noel Annance, 1791–1869 (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2016); Ronald W. Hawker, Yakuglas’ Legacy: The Art and Times of Charlie James (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2016); Tolly Bradford, Prophetic Identities: Indigenous Missionaries on British Colonial Frontiers, 1850–1875 (Van-

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Biographical methods used by Indigenous people are valuable for both Indigenous and non-Indigenous audiences and, while much has yet to be written on this subject, it is fruitful to consider how aspects of these approaches might be used to complicate Euro-Canadian approaches to biography and to challenge the continued undervaluation of oral history in the historical profession. Indeed, Te Punga Somerville and Justice note that one common thread through their conversation on the subject was ‘an insistence on Indigenous biographies as more than past-tense histories of study, but rather, as meaningful and ongoing living relationships in the world.’47 Of course, one must be cautious not to be deterministic or construct a rigid binary. As Deanna Reder argues, ‘while it is true that different epistemologies will provide different ways of seeing the world, I would not claim that this will result in identical expression by one group and the opposite expression by another.’48 In short, all people living in Canada should strive to learn from people whose cultural backgrounds are different than their own, and should do so without preconceptions. This advice can be applied more broadly: as the present volume no doubt illustrates, there are differences in how lives are written about in different countries and, as I have argued with regard to Canada, there are also differences within these countries. One of biography’s benefits is that it provides a way of learning from and about one another. The sociologist Richard Day has documented how diversity in Canada has long been presented as a problem to be

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couver: ubc Press, 2013); Peggy Brock, The Many Voyages of Arthur Wellington Clah: A Tsimshian Man on the Pacific Northwest Coast (Vancouver: ubc Press, 2012); Richard Daly and Rena Bolton, Xwelíqwiya: The Life of a Stó:lō Matriarch (Athabasca: au Press, 2012); and Jeanne MacKinnon, The Identities of Marie Rose Delorme Smith (Regina: University of Regina Press, 2012). Te Punga Somerville and Justice, ‘Indigenous Conversations About Biography’, 246. One of the first collections to explore such approaches is Peter Read, Frances PetersLittle, and Anna Haebich, eds., Indigenous Biography and Autobiography (Canberra: Australian National University E Press and Aboriginal History Incorporated, 2008). See also Thomas Peace, ‘Indigenous intellectual traditions and biography in the northeast: A historiographical reflection’, in History Compass 16 (2018), https://doi.org/10.1111/hic3.12445, which examines the concept of Indigenous intellectual traditions and argues that scholars must look beyond print culture. Deanna Helen Reder, ‘Âcimisowin as Theoretical Practice: Autobiography as Indigenous Intellectual Tradition in Canada’ (PhD diss., University of British Columbia, 2007), 28. There are plenty of unanswered questions in this subfield. While Te Punga and Justice argue for keeping the term ‘biography’ (as opposed to ‘life writing’) on the grounds that it is ‘well known in Indigenous circles’ (243), Reder’s research suggests that much of the writing done by Indigenous authors in Canada has been autobiographical in nature.

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solved. But diversity itself is not the problem: the problem is prejudice, and biography can play an important role in breaking it down. As Morton suggests, biography’s focus on an individual ‘not only liberates the historian from isolating and reifying aspects of identity; it also creates space for personal agency and empathy.’49 And perhaps therein lies its greatest promise. In a country of great diversity, and especially in this age of increased intolerance around the world, biographies from and about figures from a multiplicity of backgrounds can play an important role in bringing people together. Biographies can help illustrate the injustices of the past and tell the stories of those who fought to correct them. They can also reveal the injustices of the present, illuminate their historical lineages, and – one hopes – inspire positive change.

Acknowledgements I would like to thank all those in the publishing industry who took the time to respond to my questions, and a special thanks to those willing to be quoted. I am also very grateful for Alicia Dobbelsteyn for her help compiling the statistical data on publishing trends, for providing feedback on earlier versions of the paper, and for her constant support. 49

Richard J.F. Day, Multiculturalism and the History of Canadian Diversity (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2000); and Morton, Wisdom, Justice, and Charity, 9.

Biography as Discourse: South African Biography in the Post-apartheid Era Lindie Koorts

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Introduction

It is difficult to speak of a single South African biographical tradition. The country has a divided past, and these divisions continue into the present. In addition, its porous borders encompass multiple races, ethnicities and languages. There is no homogeneous South African identity, and therefore no homogeneous South African literary tradition. It is contentious to speak of a South African biographical tradition, and I do so with the utmost caution. Nevertheless, there are a number of recognisable strands that run through the country’s patchwork of literary cultures, and I will focus on some of these. Foremost among them is the matter of power: South African history and biography are a reflection of power relations – and attempts at defying those power relations. South African biography presents a paradox. If one were to insist on the definition of ‘conventional’ biography as a measure and a benchmark for its biographical tradition, one would find a limited number of works that answer to its rigorous demands. By ‘conventional’ biography, I imply a critical, empirical biography of a well-documented life, in which the biographer has access to enough documents to write either a cradle-to-grave account, or a very detailed slice-of-life biography. The documents in question allow the biographer to create an image of the subject’s personality, motives, thoughts, and decision making processes, and to document his or her actions and their impact. In essence, the biographer is able to bring the reader closer to the subject’s inner life, which offers an explanation of that individual’s place and role in history. In South Africa, a country that in the past few years has been beset by debates that demand a decolonisation of the intellectual landscape, using such a benchmark would open one up to accusations of imposing a Western mould onto a country whose conditions do not fit such an exclusionary documentary framework. The majority of South African lives are simply not that welldocumented, and it is in many ways a reflection of the country’s history of inequality. However, if one were to cast the net wider, beyond the conventions of scholarly biography, one would find a lively writing culture that defies the constraints of written sources in order to elevate undocumented lives; where

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2020 | DOI:10.1163/9789004434974_006

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biographers and their subjects are at the forefront of public discourse, and where biographies have become drivers of ideas.

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The Politics of the Archive

Biography, like history, is a matter of sources. To any biographer, the ideal is to excavate private letters and diaries that gives one insight into the subject’s inner world, and which would help to explain the subject’s motives and decisions. It is therefore no small wonder that there are so many biographies of artists, writers and intellectuals, who documented their own lives through their letters and diaries, and politicians whose every act was scrutinised and recorded, and who were powerful and important enough to warrant private archival collections – whether or not one’s documents are preserved are a marker of one’s place and importance in society. Of course, there are many lives that have been documented without such intimate materials, but then the biographer still has access to alternative sources, scattered as they may be, that give a multi-angled view of his or her subject. However, in countries where power relations are skewed, and especially in a country such as South Africa, with its history of colonialism, apartheid and lingering inequality, well-documented and well-preserved lives are, essentially, elite lives and, by implication, mostly white lives, which has elicited significant pushback since the 1970s, as left-leaning historians sought to elevate the lives of workers, women and the marginalised, in defiance of so-called ‘great man’ history.1 This approach instilled an academic culture which still remains prevalent among South African historians today – histories of the marginalised and oppressed continue to dominate research priorities, or at the very least, perceptions of what research priorities ought to be. The reality of South African archives is that the majority of materials collected before the fall of apartheid in 1994 reflected the preoccupations of a white state and a white elite. In the post-1994 era, initial attempts to widen the archives to reflect a broader and more inclusive society were quickly supplanted by neglect, underfunding, corruption and a renewed culture of se-

1 A prominent example is the work done by the Wits History Workshop, which consciously set out to defy ‘great man’ history by writing histories of workers, women and the marginalised. The Wits History Workshop was deeply influenced by a Marxist analytical framework, which also eschewed a focus on individuals, and instead favoured of a wider analysis, in particular the role of class, in historical processes. See Ken Smith, The changing past: Trends in South African Historical Writing (Johannesburg: Southern Book Publishers, 1988), 165–167.

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crecy.2 South African biographers and historians therefore work under increasingly challenging conditions. In addition to the limits presented by the archives, there is the somewhat more contentious question of the limits presented by written sources, as South Africa’s transition from an oral culture to the written word is fairly recent.3 In Sub-Saharan Africa, pre-colonial and early colonial Africans were often recorded in the papers of European travellers, administrators and missionaries. In essence, Europeans were inevitably mediators of the written word on a continent with a strong oral tradition. This changed, as literacy spread, but until the advent of mass-education in the twentieth century, the papers of literate Africans were, essentially, also the papers of a small, Western-educated elite who had formed a distinct class by the late-nineteenth century.4 Their preservation, given the priorities of a white, colonial state, was at times uneven and precarious. One would be hard-pressed to find detailed biographies of pre-nineteenth century black South Africans. As a result, there is a relatively small body of ‘conventional’, scholarly biographies of Africans. These focus overwhelmingly on late-nineteenth century and early-twentieth century African intellectuals and political activists.5 Hlonipha Mokoena’s biography of the early African intellectual, Magema Fuze (1840–1922) is an example of this, as Fuze was ‘a classic example of how first-generation converts made the transition from oral to literate cultures, the homestead to the mission and from being ‘native informants’ to being kholwa intellectuals… caught… between the promise of full and equal incorporation into colonial society and the ties that bound them to traditional society and culture.’6

2 See ‘State of the Archives: An Analysis of South Africa’s National Archival System, 2014’, http://www.apc.uct.ac.za/apc/projects/state-of-the-archives-report. 3 Hlonipha Mokoena, ‘The making of a Kholwa intellectual: A discursive biography of Magema Magwaza Fuze’, unpublished PhD thesis, University of Cape Town, 2005, 5. 4 Mokoena, ‘The making of a Kholwa intellectual’, 5. 5 See for example Brian Willan, Sol Plaatje: A life of Solomon Tshekisho Plaatje, 1876–1932 (Johannesburg: Jacana, 2018); Heather Hughes, The First President: A life of John L. Dube, founding president of the ANC (Johannesburg: Jacana, 2011); Hlonipha Mokoena, Magema Fuze: The Making of a Kholwa Intellectual (Pietermaritzburg: UKZN Press, 2011); Bongani Ngqulanga, The man who founded the ANC: A biography of Pixley ka Isaka Seme (Cape Town: Penquin, 2017); Catherine Higgs, The Ghost Of Equality: The Public Lives of D.D.T. Jabavu of South Africa, 1885–1959 (Ohio: Ohio University Press, 1997); Tim Couzens, The New African: A Study of the Life and Work of H.I.E. Dhlomo (Johannesburg: Raven Press, 1986). 6 See description on the book’s homepage, http://www.ukznpress.co.za/?class=bb_ukzn _sample_chapters&method=view_sample&global[fields][_id]=356, accessed 14 December 2019.

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In some instances, scholars sought to challenge the limits of written sources by drawing on oral history to fill the gaps in the colonial archive. While oral history is an accepted research methodology the world over, in South Africa it was imbued with political meaning in that it sought to give a voice to the marginalised, and to address the skewed power relations reflected in the archive. A biographer such as Tim Couzens sought to supplement the written record, and to create context for his subject through oral interviews, while Charles van Onselen used oral history to create a record where none existed.7 His magisterial, 535 page biography of the sharecropper Kas Maine was notable for recording the life of a man who had only left a single documentary trace of his existence in the state archives: a fine for not being in possession of a dog license. Oral history defied the limitations of the archive by proving that ‘in an industrialising society characterised by a high level of illiteracy, history lives on in the minds of its people far more powerfully than the cracked parchment of officialdom might know’.8 The book’s greater significance lay in the fact that Kas Maine could not be described as an influential individual by any stretch of the imagination. His biography was an answer to the call to give agency to the marginalised and, in Van Onselen’s words, to ‘set right a historic wrong, to recreate the life of a man who deserves to be remembered for far more than his failure to produce a dog license… Kas Maine, the members of his family, and thousands like them were central to the building, feeding and shaping of this tortured country as it struggled to brush aside the racial goblins that guarded entry to the modern world.’9 However, for Van Onselen it was not merely a matter of elevating an otherwise unknown life – his ambitions stretched beyond biography. Kas Maine was a lens to understanding the wider processes of rural dispossession in 20th century South Africa. In the same way, Mokoena used Fuze’s life to understand the transition of the first generation of African intellectuals from an oral to a written culture. These lives were representative of a wider South African tale. What the works cited here all have in common is their scholarly rigour. The biographers in question either turned to documented African lives – even if the 19th century was the earliest instance of such documentation – or used oral history to document more recent lives. Even though they were not devoid 7 Couzens, The New African; see also the review by Isabel Hofmeyr, ‘Review: The New African: A Study of the Life and Work of H.I.E. Dhlomo by Tim Couzens and H.I.E. Dhlomo: Collected Works by Tim Couzens, Nick Visser and H.I.E. Dhlomo’, in: English in Africa 13(1986)1, May, p. 93–98. 8 Charles van Onselen, The seed is mine: The life of Kas Maine, a South African sharecropper, 1894–1985 (New York: Hill and Wang, 1997), 10. 9 Van Onselen, The seed is mine, 11.

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of activism, in that they sought to defy African subjugation by excavating and elevating African agency, they stand in contrast to the explosion of more popular struggle biographies and memoirs which flooded the market after 1994.

3

Great White Men/Great Black Men

While sources may determine biographers’ ability to write a critical and comprehensive biography, a country’s political narrative also determines whose lives are deemed important, and therefore whose lives are written. While South African scholars and activists alike have made a strong case for elevating the marginalised over the ‘great men’, in a country where politics has been driven by various forms of nationalism for more than a century, it is inevitable that a plethora of biographies have been devoted to political leaders. The pre-1994 era was beset by biographies of Afrikaner nationalist heroes – from Voortrekker leaders to the presidents of the former Boer republics, which lost their independence following the South African war of 1899–1902. By the late twentieth century, there were notable biographies of nationalist politicians and apartheid leaders. A number of these biographies were written by respected scholars, and were meticulously researched, their subjects mostly having lived well-documented lives. Yet, the biographers’ unquestioned acceptance of Afrikaner nationalism doomed their work to hagiography and irrelevance once apartheid, that most infamous product of Afrikaner nationalism, came to a fall.10 In the post-1994 era, the new South African state was concerned with a nation-building project that would weld a divided country into a single nation. In many respects, compromises were made to represent both black and white in the country’s national symbols. The national anthem, for example, became a hybrid, sung in five of the country’s eleven official languages, combining the Xhosa hymn, Nkosi Sikelel’ iAfrika, with Die Stem, the country’s former national anthem. Former nationalist monuments were left in place, and new monuments were erected, in some cases, alongside them. A visitor driving into Pretoria, South Africa’s capital city, may be surprised to see the silhouette of the Voortrekker Monument, the most triumphalist of Afrikaner nationalist monuments, to the west, while on a neighbouring hill, to the east, lies the il10

I discuss Afrikaner biography in more depth in Lindie Koorts, ‘Palatable and unpalatable leaders: Apartheid and post-apartheid Afrikaner biography’, in The Biographical Turn: Lives in History, ed. Hans Renders, Binne de Haan and Jonne Harmsma (London: Routledge, 2017), 141–156.

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luminated reeds of Freedom Park, a heritage site that memorialises those who died in South Africa’s struggle for freedom. These initial attempts at creating an inclusive narrative, state-driven as they were, could not withstand the ascendance of a much larger, triumphalist metanarrative. As one scholar wrote wryly, ‘the need for forgiveness and reconciliation, and the oneness of the rainbow nation… did not survive [Nelson Mandela’s] presidency’.11 The new ruling party, the African National Congress, centralised its history in the public commemorations that followed, and the liberation struggle quickly consumed South Africa’s literary landscape. There was an insatiable appetite for stories about the fight against apartheid, and a plethora of memoirs and biographies soon flooded the South African market. The book that doubtlessly set the trend, was Nelson Mandela’s memoir, Long Walk to Freedom. Published in 1994, the year of South Africa’s first democratic elections, it has never gone out of print, and remains a staple of South African bookshops. It sparked a veritable Mandela-industry, which was given even more impetus by his death in 2013. Publications ranged from an authorized biography and scholarly critiques to the memoirs of Mandela’s personal assistant, his prison warder and his chef.12 Many more biographies, autobiographies and memoirs – all intertwined – followed.13 These books dealt with the more recent past, which meant that the majority of their subjects were still alive. Many of the individuals in question wanted to control their narratives by writing their own memoirs (or having them ghost written). In a sense, memoirs, like newspapers, became the first draft of South Africa’s post-liberation history – a history that was being recollected much faster than it could be recorded. There has not yet been enough time and distance to write more critical biographies of the individuals in ques-

11 12

13

Colin Bundy, Nelson Mandela: A Jacana Pocket Biography (Johannesburg: Jacana, 2015), 139. For a widely respected authorized biography, see Anthony Sampson, Mandela: The authorised biography (New York: Harper Collins, 1999); for more scholarly analyses of Mandela, see Tom Lodge, Mandela: A critical life (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007) and Bundy, Nelson Mandela. For popular memoirs of Mandela’s close (and sometimes not so close) associates, see Zelda la Grange, Good Morning, Mr Mandela (London: Penguin, 2015); Christo Brand and Barbara Jones, Doing Life with Mandela (Johannesburg: Jonathan Ball, 2014); Brett Ladds, The Madiba Appreciation Club: A Chef’s Story (Johannesburg: Jonathan Ball, 2018). The books listed here are only a sample – there are many more. Some notable biographies of the struggle elite included Luli Callinnicos, Oliver Tambo: Beyond the Engeli Mountains (Claremont: David Phillip, 2004); Elinor Sisulu, Walter & Albertina Sisulu: In Our Lifetime (Claremont: David Phillip, 2002); Padraig O’Malley, Shades of Difference: Mac Maharaj and the Struggle for South Africa (New York: Viking, 2007); Scott Couper, Albert Luthuli: Bound by Faith (Scottsville: ukzn Press, 2010); Xolela Mangcu, Biko: A Biography (Cape Town: Tafelberg, 2012).

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tion. Many of these memoirs were nevertheless recognized for their literary quality, and awarded important non-fiction prizes.14 While biographers might bristle at the idea of being placed in the same category as memoirists and life writers, in South Africa, where the processes of memory and history all run in tandem, it was inevitable that the literary community generally accorded them all with the same importance. What this first round of biographies, autobiographies and memoirs generally had in common, was that they established a heroic narrative of the antiapartheid struggle. The great white men of yesteryear were swept away, and replaced by great black men. Tales of heroic women were certainly not absent, but they belonged to a much smaller subset. Masculine heroics remained dominant.

4

Everything Must Fall

In the years immediately following the fall of apartheid, the heroic struggle narrative was so all-encompassing that one could have been forgiven for thinking that it would dominate into perpetuity.15 However, the first cracks soon appeared in Nelson Mandela and Desmond Tutu’s idealised ‘rainbow nation’. In 1998, Mandela’s then deputy president, Thabo Mbeki, delivered his famed ‘Two Nations’ speech. In defiance of the ideal of non-racialism, Mbeki pointed to the brutal reality that South Africa consisted of two nations – one white and relatively wealthy, the other poor and black.16 He was lambasted for shifting the focus back to racial divisions, but after he ascended to the presidency a year later, the focus on racial inequality grew and intensified. By the time Mbeki was pushed from office in 2008, his populist successor, Jacob Zuma, and Zuma’s young battering ram, Julius Malema, had built their base on the disaffected black poor. The rainbow quickly faded into nostalgia, while the heroics of the liberation struggle were blatantly appropriated for political legitimacy to offset Zuma’s scandal-clad record.

14 15

16

See for example Hugh Lewin, Stones Against the Mirror: Friendship in the Time of the South African Struggle (Cape Town: Umuzi, 2011). The subheading ‘Everything Must Fall’ is borrowed from the film by Rehad Desai, which traced the student protests in the latter half of 2015. See the film’s website, http:// everythingmustfall.co.za/ (accessed 17 December 2019). Thabo Mbeki, ‘Statement of deputy President Thabo Mbeki at the Opening of the Debate in the National Assembly, on “Reconciliation and Nation Building, National Assembly Cape Town, 29 May 1998.’ http://www.dirco.gov.za/docs/speeches/1998/mbek0529.htm (accessed 14 December 2019).

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Jacob Zuma came to the presidency plagued by controversy. In 2005, he was dismissed as deputy president following a corruption scandal, in which his financial advisor was jailed for soliciting bribes on his behalf.17 Zuma, however, successfully thwarted the South African justice system through endless delays on technicalities, and by claiming a political conspiracy against him, which led to the charges against him being dropped shortly before his election as the country’s president in 2009, only to be reinstated shortly after his fall from office in 2018. At the time of writing, he has yet to be prosecuted on a plethora of corruption charges.18 A year after the initial corruption charges, in 2006, Jacob Zuma was tried for rape. In many democracies, such charges would sink a political career. However, in Zuma’s case, his supporters toyi-toyied outside the courthouse to demonstrate their support, and jubilantly celebrated him as a ‘100% Zuluboy’, in reference to Zuma’s assertion of both his masculine and tribal identity during the course of the trial, and chanted ‘burn the bitch’.19 Shortly after, the rape accuser’s house was burned down.20 The rape charges, like the corruption charges, were framed as a political plot against him. Zuma was acquitted after his accuser, who had been raped three times as a child, was painted by the defence as a promiscuous woman who had a habit of accusing men of rape.21 Following the trial, she fled the country. In the years that followed, Zuma and his associates plundered the state coffers and, with the help of a notorious (and now defunct) British public relations firm deflected any criticism by blaming the country’s every-growing inequality on ‘white monopoly capital’.22 As disaffection with both inequality and the state grew, the generation born after 1994, the so-called ‘born frees’ came of age. For years they had been hailed as a generation born into equality, unfettered by the constraints of apartheid legislation. Yet, by 2014, the new generation made it clear that they were anything but free. While the majority of the youth were crippled by debilitating poverty, those who were lucky enough to escape its clutches by accessing

17 18

19 20

21 22

N.A., ‘Deputy president sacked’, in Mail & Guardian 14 June 2005. Bill Corcoran, ‘Zuma employing “Stalingrad defence” as legal stalling strategy’, in The Irish Times 23 May 2019; Greg Nicholson, ‘Court lashes Jacob Zuma’s language and finds no merits in his appeal argument’, in The Daily Maverick, 29 November 2019. Fikile-Ntsikelelo Moya, ‘100% Zuluboy’, in Mail & Guardian 6 April 2006. Marianne Thamm, ‘#RememberKhwezi: Zuma’s rape accuser dies, never having known freedom’, in The Daily Maverick 9 October 2019. Toyi-toyi is a dance, consisting of the rhythmic stomping of the feet, while simultaneously chanting and singing, which is employed during South African political protests. N.A., ‘Jacob Zuma cleared of rape’, in The Guardian 8 may 2006. David Segal, ‘How Bell Pottinger, P.R. firm for despots and rogues, met its end in South Africa’, in The New York Times 4 February 2018.

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formerly white schools and universities, found themselves forced to conform to institutionalised cultures that had, in many respects, remained unchanged. This found expression in a book by the then 22-year old Malaika wa Azania, entitled Memoirs of a Born Free: Reflections on the Rainbow Nation, which argued that the majority of the post-apartheid generation was still struggling for economic freedom, while those who had gained access to formerly white institutions still had to fight for their mental liberation.23 Their anger was a festering sore, which burst open in early-2015, when students at the University of Cape Town demanded that a statue of the archimperialist, Cecil John Rhodes, be removed. It sparked a movement entitled #RhodesMustFall, which quickly spread to university campuses across the country.24 By the following year, it had morphed into an even bigger movement entitled #FeesMustFall, which demanded universal free university education. The Fallists, as they quickly became known, not only pushed for the removal of colonial-era statues and university fees. They demanded that the socioeconomic and intellectual landscape, along with the institutional cultures that accompanied it, be ‘decolonised’.25 This fed into global debates around critical race theory, and showed striking parallels to the Black Lives Matter movement in the United States. In such a context, with the anc government having lost much of its legitimacy due to its corrupt excesses, with a renewed focus on race, and an accompanying disillusionment with and rejection of South Africa’s negotiated settlement, a new turn could be seen in the literary landscape. Publishers became activists in their own right, with book-length exposes of the anc government’s corruption quickly becoming a staple of South African bookstores.26 A new

23 24 25

26

See for example Malaika wa Azania, Memoirs of a Born Free: Reflections on the Rainbow Nation (Johannesburg: Jacana Media, 2014). Douglas Foster, ‘After Rhodes Fell: The new movement to Africanize South Africa’, The Atlantic, 25 April 2015. Rehad Desai, ‘#FeesMustFall: How student movements shaped a new South Africa’, Al Jazeera, 10 May 2019. https://www.aljazeera.com/blogs/africa/2019/05/feesmustfall -student-movements-shaped-south-africa-190507073038858.html (accessed 17 December 2019). Annie Olivier, ‘Om die internasionale taal van boeke te praat’, Netwerk24, 25 November 2019. https://www.netwerk24.com/Stemme/Menings/om-die-internasionale-taal-van -boeke-te-praat-20191122 (accessed 3 December 2019). While book-exposés are not new to South Africa (there even were such publications during apartheid), the latest wave began in 2016 with the publication of Johann van Loggerenberg and Adrian Lackay, Rogue: The Inside Story of sars’s Crime-busting Unit (Johannesburg: Jonathan Ball, 2016). This was followed Jacques Pauw, The President’s Keepers: Those Keeping Zuma in Power and out of Prison (Cape Town: Tafelberg, 2017). The President’s Keepers became an international bestseller, selling an unprecedented (for the South African market) 200 000 copies, and

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turn could also be seen in the biographies being published. While there was still a number of biographies that focused on prominent figures in the liberation struggle, the new works that appeared not only complicated the narrative, but also challenged the new order. One of the first among these was Jacob Dlamini’s Askari.27 Dlamini is a respected historian, and his work was the result of rigorous documentary research, oral interviews, and sophisticated theoretical underpinnings. The book focused on the life of Glory Sedibe, an anc militia who was captured by the apartheid security police, tortured, and turned. He became a notorious askari, an apartheid collaborator who was responsible for the deaths of many of his erstwhile comrades. Dlamini’s book evoked anger among the anc establishment. Given the tradition of heroic biographies in South Africa, there was an immediate assumption that the very fact that a book about Sedibe had been written, meant that the notorious turncoat was being eulogized.28 Yet, what Dlamini was doing, was to complicate the triumphalist narrative by overturning the traditional white/black, perpetrator/victim categories to create an alternative account of the struggle which challenged simplistic ‘fictions of racial solidarity’. It also highlighted the afterlife of secrets in post-apartheid South Africa, secrets that do not fit with a triumphalist meta-narrative. Dlamini diverged from ‘conventional biography’ in the structure of his book. He was not concerned with a chronological narrative, but instead opted for a patchwork of themes, interspersed with autobiographical accounts in which he ruminated on small instances of his own, everyday complicity while growing up under apartheid. In doing so, as one reviewer noted, he placed himself on trial along with his subject, thereby forcing his readers ‘to acknowledge their own moral ambiguity in the past and present’.29 In this sense, Dlamini was concerned

27 28

29

was nominated for prestigious non-fiction awards. Other notable titles include Crispian Olver, How to Steal a City: The Battle for Nelson Mandela Bay (Johannesburg: Jonathan Ball, 2017); Pieter-Louis Myburgh, The Republic of Gupta: A Story of State Capture (Johannesburg and Cape Town: Penguin Random House, 2017); Pieter-Louis Myburgh, Gangster State: Unravelling Ace Magashule’s Web of Capture (Johannesburg and Cape Town: Penguin Random House, 2019); James-Brent Styan and Paul Vecchiatto, The Bosasa Billions: How the ANC sold its soul for braaipacks, booze and bags of cash (Pretoria: Lapa, 2019). These titles are only a sample – there are many more. Jacob Dlamini, Askari: A Story of Collaboration and Betrayal in die Anti-Apartheid Struggle (Johannesburg: Jacana, 2014). I made this observation while attending one of Jacob Dlamini’s book launches, where a number of anc stalwarts expressed their anger at Sedibe’s betrayal – and at the fact that he had become the subject of a book. Danelle van Zyl-Hermann, ‘History made human: Confronting the unpalatable past through biographical writing in post-apartheid South Africa’, African Historical Review 47(2015)2, 115–131.

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with using the life of an individual as ‘a lens onto the phenomenon of collaboration’.30 Biography in Dlamini’s hands, unconventional as it may be, thus became a potent vehicle whereby to challenge the struggle narrative’s simplicity, and to implicate the present in a compromised past. While Dlamini’s book, which was awarded South Africa’s prestigious Alan Paton prize for non-fiction, could be lauded as the product of sophisticated academic reflection, other works, which could also be seen as sophisticated in their reflection, but less scholarly in terms of their research, made a significant impact on the public discourse and the turn against Zuma. In August 2016, as Jacob Zuma was announcing the results of the country’s municipal elections, in which the anc had suffered a significant setback, four young women all dressed in black silently walked to the podium and, with their backs to the president and facing the audience and national and international television cameras, held up five placards: ‘I am 1 in 3’, ‘#’, ‘10 years later’, ‘Khanga’ and ‘Remember Khwezi’. Khanga referred to the traditional garment, similar to a sarong, that Jacob Zuma’s rape accuser wore on that fateful night, and which he notoriously regarded as an invitation to his sexual advances. Khwezi was the pseudonym she assumed to protect her identity in the face of public vilification and threats against her life, and ‘1 in 3’ referred to the statistics that indicate that one in three South African women experience sexual abuse in their lifetime.31 The protest elicited a storm, and it was in the wake of this public outburst that Redi Thlabi’s Khwezi: The remarkable story of Fezekile Ntsukela Kuzwayo was published in October 2016.32 Redi Thlabi is a well-known public figure in South Africa. A radio-presenter and broadcast-journalist, she made a name for herself as an author when her memoir, Endings and Beginnings: A Story of Healing won the prestigious Alan Paton prize.33 Thlabi has distinguished herself as a feminist activist, and it is through this lens that she and Khwezi, who had since returned to the country, set out to record her story. The book would restore her name, Fezekile Ntsukela Kuzwayo, and the two women dreamed of a triumphal book launch where this restoration would happen. However, Fezekile, who had been hiv+ for years, died before the book was completed. Instead of being a co-author and ghost writer, Thlabi suddenly found herself thrust into the role of a biographer.

30 31 32 33

Van Zyl-Hermann, ‘History made human’, 123. Ra’eesa Pather, ‘Four women, the president and the protest that shook the results ceremony’, in Mail & Guardian, 6 August 2016. Redi Thlabi, Khwezi: The remarkable story of Fezekile Ntsukela Kuzwayo (Johannesburg: Jonathan Ball, 2017). Redi Thlabi, Endings and Beginnigs: A Story of Healing (Johannesburg: Jacana, 2013).

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Fezekile’s story, which was constructed through countless interviews with her and her family and friends, was told through Thlabi’s eyes. It was a powerful and compelling story. However, the power of the book lay in the moments where Thlabi shifted the lens beyond Fezekile to the wider tale she represented: the sexual abuse of women and children through the course of the liberation struggle, which had, hitherto, remained unacknowledged. Even the country’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which was set up in the aftermath of apartheid to hear confessions and grant amnesty to perpetrators, failed to have a category for gender violence against women, and its investigators refused to record countless tales of rape.34 Apart from rape perpetrated by apartheid-era police, Thlabi wrote: …the rape of some women and children in exile debunks the heroic narrative of the struggle. The ruling party has, largely, been in denial about this, choosing instead a narrative that speaks only of the heroism and sacrifices of so many gallant comrades – a narrative that is true, but incomplete. The war against apartheid was fought on and across women’s and children’s bodies. Many paid the price.’35 Fezekile, a child in exile, had thrice been raped by men her family had trusted and who would be celebrated as freedom fighters in the post-apartheid era. Her final rape was perpetrated by a man who, as a family friend, had been a father figure to her and who had used his struggle credentials to legitimise his corrupt hold on power. The book was a challenge to South Africa’s intensely patriarchal society and a heroic struggle narrative that glossed over the abuse of women and children perpetrated under its wings. Fezekile Kuzwayo, who was an activist in her life, now had a biography that became an activist work in her afterlife.

5

A Woman for the Moment

Redi Thlabi’s biography of Fezekile Kuzwayo represented a turn towards feminist biography. By 2018, the country’s attention turned to another feminist icon: Winnie Madikizela-Mandela. In the post-Nelson Mandela era, she became the rallying symbol for an angry younger generation who rejected the negotiated settlement and the drive for reconciliation. She also became a source of fascination for feminist scholars and activists who are determined to view her in her own right, and not merely as the wife – and later ex-wife – of an international icon. Portrayals of her have veered between depictions of a righteous warrior and a Lady Macbeth, a woman who endured torture, solitary confinement and exile at the hands of a cruel and oppressive state, and 34 35

Thlabi, Khwezi, 41–43. Thlabi, Khwezi, 43.

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a woman who, herself, was capable of immense cruelty and the murder of children – she was both ‘damnable and heroic’, as one biographer described her.36 Winnie Mandela’s complicated character and her turn to violence was contrasted with Nelson Mandela’s sainted appeal for reconciliation and forgiveness. In a post-apartheid South Africa, ‘both of them became icons in their distinct ways. Madiba [Nelson Mandela] came to be seen as a figurehead for peace, while Winnie was seen as a symbol of defiance.’37 It was Winnie Mandela who spoke to the mood of the country following the student protests of 2015 and 2016, and it was she who became a mentor to a new political movement of young, disaffected black activists and politicians. Her death in April 2018 evoked more raw emotion in South Africa than had been the case when Nelson Mandela passed away in December 2013. Commentators, used to easy binaries of heroes and villains, battled to make sense of her legacy.38 And in the same way that the Khwezi biography fortuitously hit the shelves a few months after the protest against Jacob Zuma, six months after her death, in October and November 2018, two polar opposite biographical works on Winnie Mandela were published. Fred Bridgland’s book, Truth, Lies and Alibis: A Winnie Mandela Story was the first to appear, in October 2018.39 Bridgland is a Scottish-born foreign correspondent who had spent more than three decades covering Southern Africa, and who was responsible for exposing to the world South Africa’s covert invasion of Angola in 1975.40 His book, which is a mixture of exposé and biography (and more of the former than the latter), sought to delve into the murders of anti-apartheid activists, one of whom was a child of fourteen, allegedly at the hands of Winnie Mandela and her associates, in the dying days of apartheid.41 Its publication caused an outcry, not so much for its contents,

36 37 38

39 40 41

Sisonke Msimang, The Resurrection of Winnie Mandela (Johannesburg: Jonathan Ball, 2018), 148. Msimang, The Resurrection of Winnie Mandela, 148. See for example, Ra’eesa Pather, ‘Even in death, Mam’ Winnie can’t catch a break’, in Mail & Guardian, 3 April 2018; Afua Hirsch, ‘Winnie Mandela was a hero. If she’d been white, there would be no debate’, in The Guardian, 3 April 2018; Nkateko Mabasa, ‘Youth inspired anew by AN icon they barely knew’, in Daily Maverick, 12 April 2018; Sean Jacobs, ‘How do we write about Winnie’s life sympathetically?’ in Mail & Guardian, 13 April 2018. Fred Bridgland, Truth, Lies and Alibis: A Winnie Mandela Story (Cape Town: Tafelberg, 2018). See author page, http://www.tafelberg.com/en/authors?authorId=1845 (accessed 7 December 2019). It is very difficult to comment on the merits of the exposé itself. As with everything related to Winnie Mandela, there are lies and there are truths, and it is at times impossible to distinguish between them. What is at issue here is the book’s representation in the public discourse.

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but for the publisher’s decision to use quotations from prominent black commentators – taken from newspaper articles, and all clearly referenced – which conveyed Winnie Mandela’s complicated and contradictory legacy. The commentators in question reacted angrily, as they had been quoted without their explicit consent. In the war of words that followed, in which the author was even accused of being an apartheid apologist, the publisher was forced to recall the books in order for them to be rejacketed, without the quotations. Even though the quotations were in the public domain and clearly referenced, their position on a book’s back cover could be misread as an endorsement of the book – and this was not a book any of the commentators would endorse.42 The commentators, among whom were Redi Thlabi and Sisonke Msimang, had publicly reflected on Winnie Mandela’s complicated legacy, but they did this from a standpoint of admiration, and they were in no mood to be associated with a book that delved deeper into her dark side.43 For Bridgland, as he made clear in the book’s dedication, there was also a story to be told and justice to be sought for ‘those ‘little’ and ‘unimportant’ people who suffered, and… who died, at the hands of the Mandela United Football Club’ – the name given to the coterie of young men who surrounded Winnie Mandela in the last years of apartheid.44 The book sank like a stone. There were a number of reviews, and across the board, the author succeeded in convincing the reviewers that Winnie Mandela had gotten away with murder.45 Yet emotions around Winnie Mandela ran too high for Bridgland to throw her newly resurrected heroism into question. The simplistic and heroic struggle narrative might have been dented by Dlamini and Thlabi at a time when the country was turning against a corrupt president, but in its place there was a new narrative in the making, one in which Winnie Mandela was a leading protagonist, and which did not welcome Bridgland’s challenge. Sisonke Msimang’s The Resurrection of Winnie Mandela: A Biography of Survival, published merely a month later, in November 2018, stood in stark contrast to Bridgland’s book. Sisonke Msimang, like Redi Thlabi, is a prominent 42

43 44 45

Jessica Levitt, ‘Anger over new Winnie Mandela book, accusations of fake shout-outs’, TimesLive, 30 October 2018; Isaac Machlangu, ‘Outcry over cover of new Winnie book’, SowetanLive, 31 October 2018; Jessica Levitt, ‘I’m no apartheid apologist, says author of controversial Winnie Mandela book’, TimesLive, 31 October 2018. See for example Redi Thlabi, ‘Woman of her times’, Sunday Times, 8 April 2018. See the dedication page, Fred Bridgland, Truth, Lies and Alibis. See for example Paul Trewhela, ‘Winnie Mandela – An issue for Christians?’, Daily Maverick, 18 October 2018; Eric Naki, ‘Book Review: Truth, Lies and Alibis – A Winnie Mandela Story’, The Citizen, 14 February 2019; N.A., ‘How anc shielded Winnie’, City Press, 7 October 2018.

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personality. An activist and columnist, she was raised in exile by her ancactivist parents. Upon their return to South Africa, members of her family took up prominent positions in the new anc government. Her memoir, Always Another Country: A Memoir of Exile and Home won her great acclaim, and was short-listed for the Alan Paton prize.46 A superficial read of The Resurrection of Winnie Mandela might give the impression of a hagiographic enterprise, especially as Msimang proclaims in her introduction that ‘I will not pretend otherwise: I am interested in redeeming Ma Winnie.’47 Yet, that is not what she does. Instead, she points to the double standards whereby male and female freedom fighters are judged. Msimang writes: In the 1980s, South Africa was burning. There were army trucks swarming through the townships and a ‘people’s war had been declared by liberation-movement structures within and outside the country. Winnie was not the only African National Congress (anc) leader who traded in recklessness and fiery rhetoric. But she was the only woman who was visibly doing so. anc activist Harry Gwala, who was implicated in countless assassinations and political crimes in the 1990s, was depicted as the Lion of the Midlands. He was not tarnished in the same way as Ma Winnie, even though she was operating in the conventions of her political party at the time… The hypocrisy is obvious: the party leaders urged others to undertake these acts but did not wish to get their own hands dirty. Worse, they were ashamed when Winnie adopted the violent tactics they advocated. She was a woman and a wife, so her actions were deemed to be repugnant.48 Instead of trying to navigate Winnie Mandela’s contradictions, Msimang embraces them as a more realistic reflection of post-apartheid South Africa’s messiness, one in which ‘all of us were both victims and perpetrators’, rather than ‘the orgy of sentimentality that gripped this country in the 1990s’.49 The book’s merits as a biography can be called into question. Its introduction and conclusion are searing commentaries on gender, feminism and the anger of a new generation, but its narrative, written as an address to Winnie

46 47 48 49

Sisonke Msimang, Always Another Country: A Memoir of Exile and Home (Johannesburg: Jonathan Ball, 2017). Msimang, The resurrection of Winnie Mandela, 19. Msimang, The resurrection of Winnie Mandela, 14. Msimang, The resurrection of Winnie Mandela, 153, 156.

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Mandela, is jarring. It is not an attempt to excavate new knowledge.50 Instead, it is an attempt at interpreting Winnie Mandela within the context of a Fallist South Africa and through a feminist lens. As was the case with so many of the other biographies discussed in this contribution, Winnie Mandela came to represent the psyche of a nation at a contested moment in history, one in which the outcome is still murky.

6

Conclusion

South African biography writing is dominated by the twists and turns of the country’s politics. In the post-apartheid era, there is a pre-occupation with our wounded past and our identity as a nation. The great white men of yesteryear have been replaced by great black men who, in turn, are facing a challenge of their own from newly assertive women, and from a younger generation disenchanted with their heritage. Public discourse in South Africa is heated and polarised, as is the case the world over. This leaves very little room for nuance and poses a challenge to biographers. The space for dispassionate biography is extremely limited, and many biographers have, instead, opted to use biography as drivers for ideas. Biographers have, in essence, become public commentators and activists in their own right. The results have been varied. There have been sophisticated and meticulously researched scholarly biographies, and then there have been biographies that would not stand up to scholarly scrutiny, but which have used the stories of prominent individuals as a vehicle to challenge power structures and to shape public discourse. In such an environment, biographers find themselves in the frontlines, and on this contested terrain, brave and creative works are being written. 50

Winnie Mandela has been the subject of scholarly research by the respected feminist scholar, Shireen Hassim, whose work Msimang references. However, Hassim’s work has only been published as a seminal academic article, and its introduction into the mainstream, and into public discourse, has been through publications such as Msimang’s. See for example Shireen Hassim, ‘Not just Nelson’s Wife: Winnie MadikizelaMandela, Violence and Radicalism in South Africa’ in Journal of Southern African Studies 44(2018)5, 895–912; S. Hassim, ‘The Impossible Contract: The Political and Private Marriage of Nelson and Winnie Mandela’ in Journal of Southern African Studies, 2019, DOI: 10.1080/03057070.2019.1697137 (accessed 7 December 2019).

‘La pauvre Belgique’: How a Debate over the Repression after the Second World War Informed a Biographical Tradition in Belgium David Veltman

Belgium has often been called ‘La pauvre Belgique’, after the famous pamphlet by the French poet Charles Baudelaire. Its biographical tradition can indeed be called pauvre, poor. Although there is no dearth of attention for the national heroes of its past, such awareness was formerly divided among the country’s various political and language communities, or ‘pillars’. Until the 1980s, it was nearly unheard-of to encounter a critical biography of a Dutch-speaking figure that had been published from within the francophone community, and vice versa. This situation often led to mutual prejudice and misunderstandings between the two language communities. Especially when remembrance of the Second World War was at stake, the discussion often made use of clichés: all Flemish people, for example, were considered to have been collaborators by Walloon people, who saw themselves to be the moral victors of the war. The debate over the war is reflected in Belgian biography. One major leader of the various fascist parties in Belgium during the final years of the interwar period was in fact a journalist. This man, Léon Degrelle, had been working for the Éditions Rex publishing house when, in 1935, he founded Rex, an extreme right-wing Catholic party. The fascist and antisemitic speeches Degrelle gave during party rallies exerted a strong influence on the Catholic electorate. Nevertheless, only in 2017 the first critical biography of Degrelle, written by Bruno Cheyns, was published.1 After the war Degrelle escaped to Spain, where he continued to peddle his extreme-right opinions until his death in 1994. His fate indicates something significant about the postwar punishment (and sometimes lack thereof) of former collaborators. Some prominent Nazi-aligned families successfully cleared any reference to ‘incivism,’ as it was called, from their legal records, whereas others faced severe penalties, including the sequestration of their possessions.

1 Bruno Cheyns, Léon Degrelle: De Führer uit Bouillon (Antwerp: Vrijdag, 2017).

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2020 | DOI:10.1163/9789004434974_007

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The Belgian government was often accused of being unfair and short-sighted in this regard.2 The debate about such reckonings often proceeded along the lines of the two language communities in Belgium. That the francophone Degrelle’s biography was published in Dutch shows the situation is now changing. After the war, many francophone members of the civil service, the clergy, and the military accused their Dutch-speaking compatriots of seeking to deny or underplay the Flemish nationalists’ close ties with Nazi leaders. But it was not as if all Walloon people had pristine records in this regard. The shame over this dark period in Belgian history lasted for almost fifty years. As a result, many biographies did not pose critical questions about their subjects’ wartime activities. Especially when biographies of Nazi sympathizers were published from within the biographer’s own language community, these books were often criticized for fouling their own nest. Hedwig Speliers’s biographical account Als een oude Germaanse eik, about the author Stijn Streuvels’s relation to the Third Reich, became the subject of one such controversy.3 Many of Streuvels’s stories are set in agricultural Flanders and feature simple but hardworking peasants as their protagonists – which could readily be aligned with the Blut und Boden-rhetoric of the Nazis. During the Second World War, the author deliberately made use of Nazi infrastructure to promote the German translations of his novels. In 1999, Speliers was heavily criticized when he wrote that Streuvels had made huge efforts after the war to destroy his correspondence with German translators, publishers, and censors. Many Flemish critics and lovers of Streuvels’s work preferred to believe that there could not be anything suspect about their hero’s Germanophilia, since he had not been accused of collaboration after the war.4 Another example is Gerard Walschap. This author accepted that his novels were being published and distributed by Nazi-run companies, and he gave a lecture in Berlin in 1941. Still, when the literary scholar Jos Borré published his biography of Walschap in 1990, he eschewed mentioning the author’s collabo2 Historians Luc Huyse and Steven Dhondt stated in their seminal study Onverwerkt verleden that the postwar punishment was not structurally aimed at Flemish collaborators only, although many Flemish nationalists continued to believe otherwise. Luc Huyse and Steven Dhondt, Onverwerkt verleden. Collaboratie en repressie in België, 1942–1952 (Leuven: Kritak, 1991). See also Koen Aerts, ‘Repressie zonder maat of einde?’: De juridische re-integratie van collaborateurs in de Belgische staat na de Tweede Wereldoorlog (Ghent: Academia Press, 2013). 3 Hedwig Speliers, Als een oude Germaanse eik. Stijn Streuvels en Duitsland (Antwerp: Manteau, 1999). 4 Gijs Zandbergen, “Verzeild tussen de nationaal-socialisten: Hoe ‘fout’ was Stijn Streuvels in beide wereldoorlogen?,” de Volkskrant, April 7, 2000. For a later contribution to this discussion see Frank Hellemans, “Wie schrijft, die blijft, soms,” Knack Magazine, October 23, 2007, 70.

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ration with the Nazis – and continued to do so even in the expanded version of this biography published in 2013.5 Much has since changed. Bert Govaerts, in his 2016 biography of Ernest Claes, an author and friend of Streuvels who was just as eager as his colleague to promote his novels in Germany during the war, acknowledged that Claes was a member of the VNV, a political party with close ties to the SS in Flanders.6 The ongoing debate about the treatment of former collaborators helps explain why these two wartime authors were regarded differently.

1

National or Flemish Historiography?

This debate can account for the longstanding neglect of biography by many Flemish publishing houses. As with the effects of pillarization on the writing of biographies in the Netherlands (where biographical writers also took up the life stories of people like themselves), biographies of Belgian Catholic figures were written by Catholics, biographies of liberals by liberal writers, and so on. This pillarization had a large influence on the respective Dutch and Belgian historiographies of their national pasts. But these pillars had a totally different character in each country: in Holland the Roman Catholic pillar made up a minority among the other religious groups in the population, its members striving for political and social recognition and emancipation.7 In Belgium, where the Catholic faith was the dominant religion, pillarization concerned the relation between church and state: should Catholicism be a dominant political force, or should it concentrate on other domains of society? In a bilingual country like Belgium, national histories, such as Henri Pirenne’s Histoire de Belgique (published in seven volumes between 1899 and 1932), were often criticized on linguistic grounds. To use the French language was to be seen marking the dominant ethnicity of the country: by writing in French, historians showed that they were part of the civilized world.8 The Bel5 Jos Borré, Gerard Walschap: Rebel & Missionaris (Antwerp: Dedalus, 1990); Jos Borré, Gerard Walschap: Een biografie (Antwerp: De Bezige Bij, 2013). 6 Bert Govaerts, Ernest Claes: Biografie van een heer uit Zichem (Antwerp and Utrecht: Houtekiet, 2016). 7 Arend Lijphart, The Politics of Accomodation: Pluralism and Democracy in the Netherlands (Berkeley and Los Angles: University of California Press, 1968), 17. In this book, the term ‘pillarization’ is not used. Instead, the author speaks of a division of ‘blocs’. 8 Marnix Beyen and Benoît Majerus, “Weak and Strong Nations in the Low Countries: National Historiography and Its ‘Others’ in Belgium, Luxembourg and the Netherlands in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries,” in The Contested Nation. Ethnicity, Class, Religion and Gender in National Histories, ed. Stefan Berger and Chris Lorenz (New York and London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008), 296.

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gian elite spoke French in the public spheres of justice, politics, and higher education, whereas Flemish was relegated to the private sphere and for use among subaltern groups. The Flemish Movement could not accept the aim of Pirenne’s Histoire to prove that the historic origins of the Belgian state resided at the social and economic crossroads of northwestern Europe. They saw this view as a deterministic account of national history informed by a misplaced Belgian patriotism. As an alternative, certain Flemish nationalists tried to formulate a Greater Dutch idea, in which all Dutch-speaking regions shared a common ethnic background. In the intellectual climate determined by this heated debate, Belgian historians did not write biographies, since the biographical genre was deemed unable to objectively perceive and clarify the role of unusual events and individuals in the unfolding of long-term developments. At the university, Pirenne’s historiography remained very influential, although not all of his pupils defended his thesis that an ethnic diversity had been united within the cultural and political history of the Belgian state. Historians such as Hans van Werveke and François-Louis Ganshof, more interested in transnational social and cultural developments, often left their national allegience undecided. They preferred not to choose between a Belgian patriotic and a Flamingant interpretation of national history.9 But there were also historians who did participate in Flamingant historical initiatives such as the two-volume Encyclopedie van de Vlaamse Beweging [Encyclopedia of the Flemish Movement].10 This book soon became suspect because many of its contributors (Hendrik Elias and Herman van Puymbrouck, for example) had collaborated with the Germans during the Second World War. In their biographical lemmas, they gave a one-sided account of Flemish political activism or collaboration involving parts of the Flemish Movement during the First and Second World Wars.11 Therefore, it was decided that in 1998 a new version of this encyclopedia would appear, which would attempt to provide a detached view of the Flemish Movement.12 Various biographical lemmas focused mainly on the intellectual networks in which a given individual was involved. Less attention was given to 9 10 11

12

Marnix Beyen and Benoît Majerus, ‘Weak and Strong Nations in the Low Countries’, 299. Ed. Jozef Deleu et al., Encyclopedie van de Vlaamse Beweging (Tielt and Utrecht: Lannoo, 1973–1975). Romain Vanlandschoot, ‘Van ‘de soldaat Johan’ tot ‘Herman den SS-soldaat’: Peiling naar de verhouding tussen literatuur, Vlaamse beweging en collaboratie 1940–1944’, in WT 66, no. 4 (2007): 322. Ed. Reginald de Schryver et al., Nieuwe Encyclopedie van de Vlaamse Beweging (Tielt: Lannoo, 1998).

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practices that had informed the individual’s experience of Flemish nationalism. By the beginning of the 1980s, the Annales school had learned to embrace biography as a way to cherish the role of individual agency in long-term developments. Belgian biography, however, seems to have remained largely unaffected by this development. Although personal responsibility and initiative are concepts central to Belgian society, just as they are to the rest of the Western world, the subjects of Belgian biography sometimes seem to be exclusively the products of social and economic factors. The microhistorians Carlo Ginzburg and Carlo Poni introduced the term ‘normal exception’ to describe the way an individual’s behavior deviates from or conforms to the grand narrative of history. When these exceptions are investigated in great detail, structures can be found that are ‘more revealing than a thousand stereotypical documents’.13 As a result of this insight, greater attention has been given in biography to the individual way of life, to experience and mentality. But biographers now also bear greater responsibility in justifying their work, in showing how a biography can help us better understand the circumstances in which the subject lived and worked. According to the historian Simone Lässig, one might find ‘missing links’ in the relation between a subject’s life and work, which would shed new light on that person’s inner longings or fears.14 A biographer who is sensitive, for example, to gender inequalities can focus more on the significance of familial circumstances during a certain period. Similarly, a biography of someone who did not live in accordance with societal norms can show something about the process of adaptation that a given society imposes on individuals.15 Biography thus became an analytic framework in which to study complex historical phenomena. The exceedingly complex matter of the repression of Flemish nationalism after the Second World War has too often been treated with a certain disdain in

13

14

15

Carlo Ginzburg and Carlo Poni, ‘The Name and the Game’, trans. Eren Branch, in Microhistory and the Lost Peoples of Europe, ed. Edward Muir and Guido Ruggiero (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1991), 8. See also Hans Renders, ‘The Limits of Representativeness: Biography, Life Writing, and Microhistory’, in Theoretical Discussions of Biography, ed. Hans Renders and Binne de Haan (Leiden: Brill, 2014), 138. Simone Lässig, ‘Introduction’, in Biography between Structure and Agency: Central European Lives in International Historiography, ed. Simone Lässig and Volker R. Berghahn (New York and Oxford: Berghahn Books, 2008), 16. See for example Eric J. Hobsbawm, Primitive Rebels: Studies in Archaic Forms of Social Movements in the 19th and 20th Centuries (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1959), 3.

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biography. Once the living memories of this repression began to fade, biographers could judge their subject’s behavior during the war at what they deemed to be face value. But even in the liberal postwar social climate in Belgium, many people in Flanders remained fascinated by a romantic story that characterized their fatherland as conservative, faithful to God, and highly traditional in its values. In the second part of this article, I will analyze the debate about this romantic view’s validity via some examples of the region’s biographical production.

2

Whistleblowers

In 1941, a collection of short biographies was published under the title of 100 Groote Vlamingen [100 Great Flemish men].16 The list of contributors to this book is remarkable in its diversity of backgrounds. There were not only conservative Flemish nationalists such as Wies Moens, Ferdinand Verknocke, and Filip de Pillecyn, all of whom were sympathetic to the Nazi occupation; academic and liberal authors also contributed to the volume, among them Fernand Toussaint van Boelaere, Gustaaf Schamelhout, and Hans van Werveke. It appeared that pillarization had been put aside during the preparation of the book. ‘Concrete social contacts, a feeling of solidarity between colleagues and a scientific logic were more important than ideological convergences’, runs the historian Marnix Beyen’s apt description of the publication history of 100 Groote Vlamingen.17 When 100 Groote Vlamingen came out, the publication of Dutch-language books in Belgium was a relatively new phenomenon: it had become widespread only after 1920. When the Vereniging ter Bevordering van het Vlaamse Boekwezen [Society for the Promotion of the Flemish Book Trade] was founded in 1929, its explicit goal was to strive for Flemish cultural emancipation. By stimulating the sale and distribution of Dutch-language books in Flanders, the society tried to break the hegemony of foreign publishing houses in Flanders. Until then, Dutch books had been imported in large numbers from

16 17

Leo Elaut, ed., 100 Groote Vlamingen: Vlaanderens roem en grootheid in zijn beroemde mannen (Antwerp and Utrecht: Standaard and De Haan, 1941). Marnix Beyen, “Een werk waarop iedere Vlaming fier kan zijn’? Het boek 100 Groote Vlamingen (1941) als praalfaçade van het Vlaams-nationale geschiedenisbouwwerk’, in De lectuur van het verleden: Opstellen over de geschiedenis van de geschiedschrijving aangeboden aan Reginald de Schryver, ed. Jo Tollebeek, Georgi Verbeeck, and Tom Verschaffel (Leuven: Universitaire Pers Leuven, 1998), 424.

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Holland. Flemish publishing houses such as Manteau, Lannoo, and Standaard published mostly novels, works of poetry, monographs, and children’s books to meet the demand for Dutch-language books. Biography was certainly not a priority for many Flemish publishers: only a few biographical portraits had appeared in the Dutch language. During the Second World War, the publication of biographies became even more difficult. The Flemish public was interested in such works, but there were many problems caused by paper shortages and censorship. The cultural department of the German military’s occupation force (Militärverwaltung) was administered by the historians Franz Petri and Werner Reese. They had to share their power with other cultural-political institutions belonging to the SS and the Nazi Party. This situation was not conducive to the publication of Flemish biographies. Unlike in Holland, in Belgium there was no Kulturkammer to control the publication of books, but nonetheless a certain degree of self-censorship took hold among Flemish authors.18 The publication of biographies that raised critical questions about their subjects was often postponed until well after the war. The collective biographical study 100 Groote Vlamingen – an initiative of the urologist Leo Elaut, the art historian Ludovicus Grootaers, the historian Robert van Roosbroeck, and the former senator August Vermeylen – was an exception to this tendency. Many of its portraits adopted a critical distance and described the significance of their subjects for the times in which they lived. Although the book was presented in a letter to the contributors as being ‘worthy of national pride to all Flemish people’, it was certainly not the aim of the contributors to reduce all artists, scientists, and politicians represented in the book to a single essence or ‘soul’ of the Flemish people.19 In this way, 100 Groote Vlamingen can be seen as a descendant of the Dutch biographical magazine Mannen van Beteekenis in Onze Dagen [Men of Significance in Our Days], which ran from 1870 to 1875. The portraits included in this periodical employed a detached style to describe the values and qualifications represented by the persons depicted.20 In introducing a journalistic approach to the writing of lives, Mannen van Beteekenis tried to give a truthful account of the character of important figures such as politicians or noblemen.

18

19 20

Ernst Bruinsma, ‘Het boekbedrijf tijdens de bezetting in Vlaanderen’, in Inktpatronen: De Tweede Wereldoorlog en het boekbedrijf in Nederland en Vlaanderen, ed. Hans Renders, Lisa Kuitert, and Ernst Bruinsma (Amsterdam: De Bezige Bij, 2006), 38. Marnix Beyen, ‘Een werk waarop iedere Vlaming fier kan zijn’?, 430. Hans Renders, ‘Contemporary Values of Life: Biographical Dictionaries in the Nineteenth Century,’ in Theoretical Discussions of Biography, ed. Renders and De Haan, 96.

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Of course, the pursuit of truthfulness in 100 Groote Vlamingen was hampered by the political situation during the Second World War. Its selection of historical figures was informed by an increased demand for popular history literature. This interest in a patriotic heritage was stimulated by the German occupiers, who saw it as a good way to deflect attention away from the pre-war oppositions among the different pillars of Flemish society. Indeed, the varied ideological backgrounds of the contributors suggested that pillarization had been put aside for a while. Another example of a journalistic, non-pillarized approach in Flemish biography is Dwarsliggers in Vlaanderen [Whistleblowers in Flanders], published in 1976 by HIRAM, an organization that aimed to reveal abuses of power by civil servants. The biographical portraits were written by Frans Boogaard, a Dutch journalist working for the Flemish newspaper De Stem. He was not the only Dutch biographer to have chosen a Belgian subject.21 According to the foreword by Nelly Maes, a parliamentarian for the Flemish national party Volksunie, whistleblowers were people who ‘criticized the existing political structures’.22 In the book, they were often portrayed as victims of the postwar repression, an ordeal also endured by many members of the Volksunie. But not only were right-wing Flemish nationalists portrayed in the book, but also Catholics, socialists, and even communists. One portrait recounts the life of Flor Grammens, a Catholic language activist who had painted over many French street signs in Flemish cities from 1937 onwards. He willingly accepted repeated arrests in order to provoke the various lawsuits that would inevitably be leveled against him. His trials allowed him to show that Flemish people still could not speak their own language in court, although officially they were allowed to be heard in Dutch.23 Although Grammens was member of the fascist party VNV, he withdrew from politics when the party’s leader, Staf de Clercq, tried to incorporate his actions into the political program of the party. In 1944 Grammens was again taken into custody, and was incarcerated for four years without trial. In Dwarsliggers in Vlaanderen, his actions and their harsh repression were connected with the

21

22 23

Jan Willem Stutje, a Dutch historian, wrote a biography of the professor Ernest Mandel (2007) and the politician Hendrik de Man (2018). Jos Joosten, a professor of Dutch literature in Nijmegen, wrote a biography of the author Jan Walravens (2018). Forthcoming is a biography of the painter Felix de Boeck by the undersigned author. Nelly Maes, ‘De Dwarsliggers’, in Dwarsliggers in Vlaanderen, ed. Frans Boogaard (Brussels: HIRAM, 1976), 7. Lode Wils, ‘Flor Grammens’, in Nieuwe Encyclopedie van de Vlaamse Beweging, p. 1348–1350.

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spirit of the 1970s, when many people stood up against the undemocratic policies taken by management, clergy, and royalty.24 Another example is Ward Hermans, who had also been a member of the VNV before the Second World War. A fanatical supporter of Hitler, he nonetheless ran into trouble with the Militärverwaltung. He accused governor Alexander von Falkenhausen of taking bribes in exchange for his freeing leaders of the resistance movement. Although the author of Dwarsliggers in Vlaanderen gives no evidence for Hermans’s role in this case, the story is used to show his honesty and determination. The same values were also used to characterize his behavior during his postwar trial: he even asked the judges to acquit other ‘minor collaborators’, because he himself had asked them to cooperate with the Nazis.25 The resemblances between 100 Groote Vlamingen and Dwarsliggers in Vlaanderen are striking. In both collections, biographical portraits are given of Flemish people who possess various ideological backgrounds. Both books adopt an outsider’s perspective, trying to give a detached view of the persons depicted. Although both series of biographies were explicitly written to take pride in Flemish national history, they mainly concern the significance of their subjects’ actions within the given political circumstances. Almost no women were involved in either publication, and indeed the history of the Flemish Movement has often been considered a male affair. Although the poet Blanka Gyselen and the women’s-rights advocate Angela Dosfel-Tysmans – to name but two examples – were actively involved in it, neither woman nor any of their female peers has ever been the subject of a biography.

3

Stubborn Kings

During the 1930s, King Leopold III and Cardinal Jozef van Roey were the moral leaders of Belgium. Their stance in public debates exerted a huge influence on how people thought on the burning issues of the time, such as the crisis in democracy and the persecution of the Jews in Germany. A biography of Leopold or Van Roey should try to understand why these figures acted as they did, or rather why they abstained from taking action amid the decline of democratic values and the rise of antisemitism in Belgium. By exploring such issues, biography can not only initiate a debate among historians about how we should grasp difficult passages in history but, what’s 24 25

Boogaard, Dwarsliggers in Vlaanderen, 193. Boogaard, Dwarsliggers in Vlaanderen, 230.

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more, a biography can ask critical questions about how a given society relates to its history. The biography of King Leopold III by Jan Velaers and Herman van Goethem shows that his alleged distrust of the parliamentary system and his latent antisemitism was shared by many magistrates and members of his staff.26 For various pragmatic and ideological reasons, the Belgian elite decided not to act in times of crisis. Remarkably, there has yet to be written a critical biography of Cardinal Van Roey about this subject. Due to the stubborn character of many of its members, the Belgian royal family faced many problems throughout the twentieth century.27 Leopold deliberately wanted to stay with his people when the Second World War broke out, although he knew that Belgian defenses could not possibly hold against the German onslaught. By staying at home, he hoped that Hitler would respect the neutrality of his country, whereas members of his cabinet repeatedly tried to convince him that his rule would end immediately after a Nazi takeover of Belgium. After the war, Leopold’s decision not to go into exile was explained as an acceptance of Hitler as his superior. In fact, he actively negotiated with the Nazis, for instance asking them to let him rule the Belgian province of Limburg, in order to obtain certain military and political concessions. His biography shows how he tried to cleanse his reputation, but to no avail: once these negotiations became known in 1950, he had no choice but to resign. Leopold’s memoires were published posthumously in 2001 by his second wife, Princess Lilian, under the title Kroongetuige [Crown witness].28 In these memoires, only made available years after his death in 1983, the king justifies his actions. This shows something about Belgium’s difficulties coming to terms with its war heritage. In the meantime, his son Boudewijn had demonstrated another proof of the Belgian monarchy’s stubborn character. Boudewijn, a religious man, did not want to sign a liberal abortion law in 1990, and therefore he decided to resign for one day. By doing so, Boudewijn not only avoided having to be officially responsible for this law, but he also tried to show that he had become a grown man who was capable of making his own decisions. He wanted to avoid renewed discussion about his father’s wartime collaboration and distrust of the parliamentary system.

26 27 28

Jan Velaers and Herman van Goethem, Leopold III: De koning, het land, de oorlog (Tielt: Lannoo, 1994). Caroline de Gruyter, ‘België’s koppige koningen: Leopold III (1901–1983) en Boudewijn I (1930–1993)’, in NRC Handelsblad, September 7, 2001. Leopold III of Belgium, Kroongetuige: Over de grote gebeurtenissen tijdens mijn koningschap, trans. Philippe de Gryse (Tielt: Lannoo, 2001).

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Scholarly annotated biography in Belgium like the work that has been devoted to Leopold III is often the result of years of research. The Leuven professor Lode Wils published the definitive version of his biography of the politician Frans van Cauwelaert in 2017.29 This work’s first part was completed in 1998, to be suceeded by another four installments before the five-volume edition was published as a single tome. When someone writes many different biographies, it is often possible to discern political considerations in that biographer’s choice of subjects. Romain Vanlandschoot, for example, has a clear preference for major figures in the Flemish Movement. Vanlandschoot’s biographies were all brought out by Lannoo, the publishing house named after its founder Joris Lannoo – who also happens to be the subject of one of Vanlandschoot’s books. Before the Second World War, Lannoo was a Flemish nationalist editor involved with the publication of works by the priest-poets Cyriel Verschaeve, Albrecht Rodenbach, and Hugo Verriest.30 Vanlandschoot considered these authors worthy of biographical treatment because he sought to trace the origins of the Flemish Movement. That many of the movement’s members were collaborators during the war is not ignored either in Vanlandschoot’s biographies or in other Lannoo publications such as Gaston Durnez’s biography of Felix Timmermans and Ludo Stynen’s book on Lode Zielens.31 But the importance still given to these figures demonstrates that the debate about how to understand and characterize their collaboration is ongoing. One last example will show how pillarization continues to inform the way the Second World War is dealt with in Belgian biography. In 2015, the theologians Karim Schelkens and Jürgen Mettepenningen wrote a biography of the Flemish cardinal Godfried Danneels.32 Their book is distilled from a remarkable mix of firsthand accounts of the now retired cardinal and thousands of archival documents from his personal archive. Time and again, the book shows how Danneels used a particularly strong mode of self-representation: he cast himself as a hardworking man from the rural town of Kanegem who was not affected by ideological debates. But in fact his career in the Catholic Church was blocked more than once by the efforts of different factions.

29 30

31 32

Lode Wils, Frans van Cauwelaert: Politieke biografie (Deurne: Doorbraak Boeken, 2017). Romain Vanlandschoot, Kapelaan Verschaeve (Tielt etc.: Lannoo etc., 1998); Romain Vanlandschoot, Albrecht Rodenbach (Tielt: Lannoo, 2002); Romain Vanlandschoot, Hugo Verriest (Tielt: Lannoo, 2014). Gaston Durnez, Felix Timmermans (Tielt: Lannoo, 2000); Ludo Stynen, Lode Zielens: Volksschrijver (Tielt: Lannoo, 2001). Karim Schelkens and Jürgen Mettepenningen, Kardinaal Danneels (Antwerp: Polis, 2015).

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A difficult theme in the life of Danneels was his reaction to alleged sexual abuse of children by priests. In 2010, this issue prompted criticism for his failure to intervene in these matters. But Schelkens and Mettepenningen could make use of Danneels’s archives without restriction. This was the direct result of a lawsuit involving the cardinal when his biographers started their research. Danneels was accused of not intervening while he knew that children in his archdiocese had endured sexual abuse by priests. His personal archive was confiscated by Belgian law enforcement, in order to find evidence related to the allegations. After he was proven innocent, his archives were partly returned. In an unprecedented move, Danneels decided to give his biographers access to these documents to show why he acted in the ways he did.33 The biography wisely refrains from making judgements about the role of the cardinal in allowing the sexual abuse of children to happen within the walls of the Church. Rather, it shows how papal diplomacy works: Danneels has seen at close range what it takes to become a pope. Ten years before Jorge Mario Bergoglio acceded to the papacy as Pope Francis, Danneels and his allies prepared the way for his election during secret meetings at Sankt-Gallen. Until now, almost no accounts of these meetings have been published. The biography of Danneels shows how methods drawn from journalism can be successfully used in biography. Nowadays, the biographical tradition in Belgium is no longer pauvre. Of course the status of biography as a journalistic genre is different than what pertains to books about historical figures such as Léon Degrelle or King Leopold III. Nonetheless, considerable controversy about biography in Belgium could have been avoided had biographers made use of journalistic methods. Conversations with French- and Dutch-speaking eyewitnesses can give us insights into the agency possessed by our ancestors. They also shed light into the afterlives of the subject under scrutiny: What is remembered correctly? Which kinds of mythology are at work? A society needs myths, but it is the biographer’s task to show how such myths can be related to the individual life. 33

Walter Pauli, ‘Een kardinaal met stille ambities: Nieuwe biografie stelt beeld van kardinaal Danneels bij’, in Knack Magazine, September 23, 2015, 38.

Biography in Spain: a Historical and Historiographic Perspective María Jesús González

The development of biography in its various incarnations – as ‘a perspective on the world, a method of historical research, a form of literature [and nonfiction narrative], and a phenomenon of popular culture’ – has taken place in tandem with historiographical tendencies and theoretical developments across the humanities and social sciences.1 But it has also been shaped by cultural diversity and processes of nation-building.2 For a long time, biography in Spain was characterized by a certain time-lag in the absorption of international trends, and a degree of poverty when it came to indigenous models of biographical writing. Those aspects were twinned with a relatively strong dependence on theories and models imitated from abroad and the translation of biographical works initially from France and, later, from the English-speaking world. Historically, a number of specific cultural factors – ranging from a religious tradition with a marked moralizing streak to a relative dearth of memoirs and autobiographies – led to a smaller output of quality products and a smaller critical mass than elsewhere, which in turn caused a slowdown in both the progress of biography and its appeal to the wider public. Since the early twentieth century, critics talked of this situation as a ‘deficit’ and traced its origins to the Church and the Counter-Reformation. But they also highlighted a number of ‘psychological’ cultural attitudes linked to the supposed nature of the ‘Spanish character’: individualistic and lacking interest in others.3 Unscientific (and ultimately undemonstrable) though that explanation may be, it fed 1 Dedicated to the memory of Santos Juliá, a great historian and the biographer of Manuel Azaña. This text, translated by Nigel Griffin, is associated with the project ‘Biographical Reason: Biography and Autobiographical Narratives in Historical and Literary Research into 20th-Century Europe’ har2017-82500-P. aei/feder/ue. 2 See Volker Depkat, ‘The Challenges of Biography: European-American Reflections’, in Bulletin of the German Historical Institute 55 (2014), 39. 3 Comparison among Spain, France and Great Britain in Ricardo Baeza, ‘El Nuevo arte biográfico’ in El Sol, April 29, 1927; also May 2, 5, and 7 1927. Also individualism in Gerald Brenan, as told by Ian Gibson, El Pais, April 16, 2006; Ian Gibson, ‘Biografías para qué y cómo’, in Historia y biografía en la España del siglo XX: II Congreso sobre el republicanismo en la Historia de España. Historia y biografía, ed. José Luis Casas and Francisco Durán (Cordoba: Priego de Córdoba, 2002), 236; James S. Amelang, ‘Comparando la escritura autobiográfica en España

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2020 | DOI:10.1163/9789004434974_008

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the notion that Spain was ‘different’.4 Funnily enough, it was a similar kind of religious-cum-cultural explanation invoked by Harold Nicolson in The Development of British Biography (1928) that accounted for the opposite phenomenon of Britain’s ‘overproduction’ of biography. ‘Intelligent interest in biography’, he wrote, ‘is increasing. The less people believe in theology, the more they believe in human experience.’5 Even now, not a few contemporary writers and critics have argued that factors such as ‘democracy’, ‘civics’, ‘modernity’, and even ‘moral freedom’ are ingredients in the compost that enriches the soil in which quality biography can take root and flourish. Political factors have also undoubtedly marked the evolution of biography in Spain (and, somehow, its weakness and even its style). A historic succession of rude ruptures in national political life (e.g., civil wars and dictatorship), ongoing disagreements and tensions related to regime type, and the question of internal ‘nationalities’ have each had an impact on the development of the discipline. Sometimes, silence about certain issues and individuals has been imposed and, generally speaking, it has been difficult to reach consensus concerning either biographical characters or values. The result has been what we might term a marked regional map of biographical trends or ‘geography of biography’, with two principal centers of activity: Madrid and Barcelona.6 I will here focus mostly on the development of the genre as viewed from a historiographic perspective. First, I will address recent studies on historical aspects of biography in Spain.7

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e Inglaterra durante la Edad Moderna: ‘¿Qué se debe hacer?”, in El otro, el mismo: Biografía y autobiografía en Europa (siglos XVII–XX), ed. James C. Davis and Isabel Burdiel (Valencia: PUV, 2005), 63–72. The idea that Spain was somehow ‘exceptional’ in the European context has long been an enduring stereotype. Harold Nicolson, The Development of English Biography (London: Hogarth Press, 1928), 134–142. Although there are other centers specializing in biographies of local interest (Galicia, Andalusia, Valencia, and, most notably, the Basque Country), I shall here focus on the two most important such centers as a way of comparing the national picture with what is happening in the regional ‘nations’. Among others, Anna Caballé, ‘La biografía en España: primeras propuestas para la construcción de un canon’, in La historia biográfica en Europa: Nuevas perspectivas, ed. Isabel Burdiel and Roy Foster (Zaragoza: Prensas Universitarias, 2015), 89–117; Manuel Pulido Mendoza, Plutarco de moda: La biografía moderna en España, 1900–1950 (Mérida: Editora Regional Extremadura, 2009); Jessica Cáliz Montes, ‘La renovación biográfica de las Vidas españolas e hispanoamericanas del siglo XIX’, in Dicenda: Cuadernos de Filología Hispánica 32 (2014): 125–138; Jordi Casassas, ‘La biografía histórica a Catalunya contemporània (notes sense ànim d’exhaustivitat)’, in Cercles 10 (2007), 102–113; Enric Balaguer, María Jesús Francés, and Vicent

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A Historical and Biographical Landscape (1900–1980)

In the early twentieth century, two approaches found favor in Madrid. The first was the dubious tendency to eulogize the Great and the Good in collections like ‘Great Spaniards’ and the two series ‘Figures of the Race’ and ‘Men of Our Race’, both launched by the Books of Our Race publishing house. The repetition of the term ‘race’ is significant. It was employed to denote the whole of Spain, projecting the nation as different from (and morally superior to) Latin America and even the rest of Europe. The second and more important approach, coexisting with the impact of European ‘New Biography’ and its teachings, we find in works published by the philosopher José Ortega y Gasset and the historian Melchor Fernández Almagro. They created the splendid Nineteenth-century Spanish and SpanishAmerican Lives series, for which the subjects were all chosen by Ortega. The editors thought that the publication of such biographies was a philosophically important means of unleashing the ‘humanizing’ potential of the individual and of understanding man as the product of his ‘circumstances.’ Their purpose was not to create heroes or saints, but rather, as with New Biography, to insist that there be ‘no hero worship, no sententious moralizing’.8 The endeavor was also useful for educational as well as civic and political reasons, in what was seen as a project of national regeneration. But if in Madrid efforts were being made on the one hand to shepherd men of note into the Spanish pantheon and, on the other, to reinforce and reaffirm the liberal world and its values, as well as to emphasize the Latin American connection (all that through a loosely associative patriotic model), the picture was quite different in Catalonia. In the mid-nineteenth century, during the so-called Renaixença or ‘Catalan Renaissance,’ a specifically ‘homegrown’ strain of biography had emerged. Written in Catalan, these biographies were essentially nationalist Catalan panegyrics of local celebrities, which stressed their deep traditional roots as combined with their modernity and progressiveness. Countless short biographical sketches were published, mostly in newspapers and magazines but also in a number of biographical collections or series. Those series assembled figures who were, as the historian Fausto Ripoll puts it, catalanísimos: Catalans Vidal, eds., Aproximació a l’altre: Biografies, semblances i retrats (Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing, 2015); Joaquim Espinós, Antoni Maestre, and Isabel Marcillas, ed, La biografía a examen (Barcelona: Abadia de Montserrat, 2015). 8 Melchor Fernández Almagro, La Gaceta Literaria, January 15, 1930. See also José Lasaga, ‘Notas para una teoría de la biografía en Ortega’ in Ortega y Gasset: el imperativo de la intelectualidad, ed. José María Atencia (Málaga: Universidad de Málaga, 2017), 11–19.

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‘through and through’, embodiments of ‘hardcore’ nationalist sentiment, examples of the so-called Catalan ‘race’, who (in the words of the publisher of the series) expressed ‘the innate Catalan character’ through their art, politics, or religion, or their endeavours in the world of commerce, and who helped to forge a distinctive Catalan identity and personality.9 The term ‘race’ in this context was used specifically to establish a differentiation from the rest of Spain. This conscious concern with national icons and nation-building is what makes the worlds of Castilian and Catalan biography so different on the overall map of Spanish biography. But apart from regional differences, generally speaking, the 1920s and 1930s saw a number of leading writers and intellectuals from a variety of backgrounds lay the foundations for a Spanish school of biography. The genre was also appreciated by general readers and was even discussed in newspapers; biography had never before been so open nor so experimental.10 The Civil War (1936–1939), for obvious reasons, brought everything to a sudden halt. However, due to an awareness of biography’s potential to transmit moral and political messages, it retained some of its force during the war years and was pressed into service by both sides as a tool of propaganda, indoctrination, and resistance. Republican sympathizers published biographies of anarchists, heroic revolutionaries, antifascist fighters, and prominent Bolsheviks (the last group consisting of translations from Russian).11 On the Franco side, there was an amalgam of military heroes and ‘martyrs’ in series such as ‘Biographical Sketches of the Leading Figures of the Salvation Movement’. These were part of a kind of hagiographical national-cum-Catholic biography that would endure and be influential for years to come.12 Franco was portrayed as a ‘crusader’ against evil. His first biography appeared in 1937 and some fifty more have since been published. Even today we find, as the historian Paul Preston puts it, ‘the occasional one which is unashamedly favourable’.13

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Fausto Ripoll, ‘La biografia com a eina de construcció nacional: Les biografies del catàleg de Josep María de Casacuberta’, in La biografia a examen, ed. Joacquim Espinós et al. (Barcelona: Abadia de Montserrat, 2015), 25–35. See also Jordi Casassas, La fàbrica de les idees: Politica i cultura a la Catalunya del segle XX (Valencia: Afers, 2009). See Anna Caballé, ‘La biografía en España’, 109. Biographies were published of the anarchists Kropotkin, Durruti, Salvochea, and Francisco Ascaso, as well as the communist Lina Odena and the German antifascist Hans Beimler. There were also a number of translations of Russian biographies of, among others, Kirov, Lenin, Babushkin, and the Italian Malatesta. See Pulido Mendoza, Plutarco de moda, 152. Pulido Mendoza, Plutarco de moda, 152. See Paul Preston, ‘Los biógrafos de Franco’, in El historiador y su tiempo: Juan Pablo Fusi, un retrato inacabado, ed. María Jesús González and Javier Ugarte (Madrid: Taurus, 2015),

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The Franco dictatorship saw biography converted into a tool for (re)fashioning national-Catholic consciousness. The genre flourished, but in the worst possible way. Apart from the production of ‘neutral’ biographies of differing quality of painters and writers from the Spanish Golden Age, Francoism derided the importance recently attached to biography, with its exploration of human nature and concern for innovation and methodology. In its place, it established a blueprint that was imperial in character, terminally ideological, and hagiographic in tone, becoming indissolubly associated with political, military, and diplomatic history. Style and methodology were not the only victims. Gone also were accounts of certain ‘heterodox’ characters (and with them whole ‘heterodox’ periods of history like the nineteenth century). Their places were taken by conquistadores, viceroys, and royal figures, as well as the saints and heroes of Catholic nationalism and Imperial Spain.14 In this intellectual ‘desert’ there was nonetheless a handful of biographers of real quality, including Gregorio Marañón, Melchor Fernández Almagro, Francisco Ayala, Josep Pla, and Jaume Vicens Vives.15 During those years there also emerged what we might term the ‘Catalan paradox’: the use of biography as an elitist and symbolic tool of ‘resistance’, a subtle way of recouping Catalan culture even at the

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113–125 (114). Among the long list of biographies of Franco analyzed in Preston’s work (and two more have appeared since) we might mention: Joaquín Arrarás, Franco (1939); Fernando de Valdesoto, Francisco Franco (1945); Ricardo de la Cierva, Francisco Franco: un siglo de España, 2 vols. (1973); Rogelio Baón, La cara humana de un Caudillo (1975); Luis Suárez Fernández, Francisco Franco y su tiempo, 8 vols. (1984); Juan Pablo Fusi, Franco: autoritarismo y poder personal (1985); Paul Preston, Franco, ‘Caudillo de España’ (1994); Jesús Palacios and Stanley G. Payne, Franco: una biografía personal y política (2014); Antonio Cazorla Sánchez, Franco: biografía del mito (2015); and Enrique Moradiellos, Franco: Anatomy of a Dictator (2017, Spanish version 2018). A small selection of examples might include the Vidas santificadas (Sanctified Lives) series and also: Juan Chabás, Vida de Santa Teresa (1941); Luis Fernández de Retana, San Fernando III y su época: estudio histórico (1941); Luciano de Taxonera, Felipe V: fundador de una dinastía y dos veces rey de España (1942); Felipe Ximénez de Sandoval, José Antonio (1941); César Silió, Isabel la Católica, fundadora de España (1943); Felipe Ximénez de Sandoval, Don Juan de Austria (1943); Guillermo Lohmann Villena, El Conde de Lemos, Virrey del Peru (1946); Ignasi Casanovas, San Alonso Rodriguez (1947); Tomás Prieto, Soldados de España (1946); Manuel Ballesteros-Gaibrois, Cristobal Colón (1951); José Sanz y Díaz, Generales Carlistas (1954); Luis de Armiñán, Cisneros, el fraile regente (1954); Ricardo Majó Framis, Vida de los navegantes y conquistadores españoles del siglo XVI (1946); España en sus héroes: historia bélica del siglo XX (1969); and Francisco Andes, Ramiro de Maeztu (1965). Gregorio Marañón produced some first-rate ‘psychobiographies’, among them his Antonio Pérez (1947), while Francisco Ayala gave us Jovellanos (1945), Fernández Almagro provided Cánovas (1951), Pabón the magisterial Cambó (1952), and Vicens Vives an unfinished biography of Ferdinand II of Aragon. On Marañón’s work and his biographical theories, see María Teresa del Olmo Ibáñez, Teoría de la biografía (Madrid: Dykinson, 2015).

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height of the Franco regime (when a prize for biography in Catalan, Aedos, was established as early as 1953, as well as series of ‘popular biographies’).16 In the years after the death of Franco in 1975 there was a groundswell of interest in social history, peasant revolt, economics, and the Civil War. Collective subjects were preferred to individual lives and the theoretical perspective was predominantly Marxist. The result was what Sabina Loriga has called ‘the sacrifice of the individual dimension’.17 There was also a marked reaction against biography, not only because internationally it had been called into question by other historiographic trends but also because in Spain the genre, having been so corrupted by politics and so associated with what was seen as ‘outdated’ history, had become ‘scientifically and morally suspect’.18 An equally important factor in its decline was the lack of concern in the 1970s with narrative or the quality of the prose (such an important feature of biography elsewhere). Historians were content with what has been dubbed ‘historiographical ugliness’: work, that is, which was bundled any old how into an ideological and conceptual straitjacket.19

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Welcome to Biography: Areas of Current Interest

Since the mid-1980s, however, Spain has begun to catch up with international trends and biography has become fashionable once more. First there appeared signs of the ‘revival of narrative’ in place of impersonal abstraction; Lawrence Stone’s celebrated essay on the topic was translated and became widely quoted in Spain. The impact of microhistory, with its analysis of the world through the eyes of the individual, also began to make itself felt with the translation and study of writers such as Carlo Ginzburg and Giovanni Levi.20 Then, in the

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See Llorenç Soldevilla i Balart, ‘Seixanta anys de biografisme català (1953–2013): Aproximació i repertori’, in Aproximació a l’altre, 61–73. Sabina Loriga, ‘The Plurality of the Past: Historical Time and the Rediscovery of Biography’, in The Biographical Turn: Lives in History, ed. Hans Renders, Binne de Haan, and Jonne Harmsma (London: Routledge, 2017), 31–42 (31). Isabel Burdiel, ‘La dama de blanco: notas sobre la biografía histórica’, in Liberales, agitadores y conspiradores: Biografías heterodoxas del siglo XIX, ed. Isabel Burdiel and Manuel Pérez Ledesma (Madrid: Taurus, 2000), 17–48 (21). Juan Francisco Fuentes, ‘La biografía como experiencia historiográfica’, in Cercles 10 (2007): 37–56 (41). Lawrence Stone, ‘The Revival of Narrative: Reflections on a New Old History’, in Past & Present 85 (1979): 3–24. In Spain see (among many others) Juan Pablo Fusi, ‘Por una nueva historia: volver a Ranke’, in Perspectiva Contemporánea 1 (1988): 153–155, and A. Morales

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mid-1990s, the phrases ‘return to the subject’ and ‘revival of biography’ began to echo remorselessly in Spain, as in the rest of Europe. It has been claimed that this recrudescence of biography in the historiographical field has close links with something analogous in the field of political history. There was certainly a stimulating wave of modern ‘democratic’ political biographies written by political historians such as Javier Tusell, Francisco J. Paredes, Juan Pablo Fusi, Salvador Forner, and Mercedes Cabrera (followed by a younger generation that included María Jesús González and Javier Moreno).21 But as happened in France after the doges of structure (like Duby and Le Goff) began to show an interest in biography, or, later, in Britain when the social historian and ‘antibiographer’ Ian Kershaw became the acclaimed biographer of Hitler, so too in Spain did social historians assume an important role in promoting the return of the genre. Biographies published by a few prestigious progressive historians previously concerned with social history (like Santos Juliá, José Álvarez Junco, or Julio Aróstegui) now helped biography take firm strides in the direction of legitimacy and academic respectability.22 This development was also boosted by other excellent biographies published by British Hispanists, a phenomenon of special interest in Spain because of their influence and popularity; notable among these s figures were John Elliott with his Conde Duque de Olivares (1986), Paul Preston with Franco (1995, and several editions), and Henry Kamen with Felipe de España (1997). Their work whetted the appetite for high-quality well-written biographies (of a typically British stamp) that were both academically respectable and appealing to the general reader.

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Moya, ‘Historia y postmodernidad’, in Ayer 6 (1992): 91–110. On microhistory (and biography) see Justo Serna and Anaclet Pons, ‘El ojo de la aguja: ¿De qué hablamos cuando hablamos de microhistoria?’ in Ayer 12 (1993): 93–133. See A. Morales Moya, ‘En torno al auge de la biografía’, Revista de Occidente 74–75 (1987): 61–76. Also Xosé Ramón Veiga Alonso, ‘Indivíduo, sociedad e historia: Reflexiones sobre el retorno de la biografía’, in Problemas actuales de la historia (Salamanca: Universidad de Salamanca, 1993), 229–257. For the relationship between the return of biography and political history see the issue ‘The Return of Political History’, in Historia Contemporánea 9 (1993), and the recent contribution by Isabel Burdiel, ‘Historia política y biografía: más allá de las fronteras’, Ayer 93 (2014), 47–83. Among political biographies from the 1990s are: Juan Pablo Fusi, Franco (1985); Francisco J. Paredes, Pascual Madoz, 1805–1870 (1991); Javier Tusell, Franco en la guerra civil (1992), Maura (1993), and Carrero (1993); Salvador Forner, Canalejas (1993); Mercedes Cabrera, La industria, la prensa y la política: Nicolás María de Urgoiti (1994); María Jesús González, Antonio Maura (1997) and Javier Moreno, Romanones (1998). See Santos Juliá, Manuel Azaña: una biografía política (Madrid: Alianza, 1990), José Álvarez Junco, El emperador del Paralelo: Lerroux y la demagogia populista (Madrid, Alianza, 1990), and Julio Aróstegui Sánchez, Francisco Largo Caballero: la última etapa de un líder obrero (Madrid: Fundación Largo Caballero, 1990).

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All these factors worked to the advantage of biography as a genre. Finally, biography began to be included and discussed in international conferences on historiography in Spain such as the Congreso de Ciencias Históricas in Madrid (1992), and the I Congreso Internacional de Historia a Debate in Santiago de Compostela (1993). From then onwards, being a biographer no longer meant that you were an old-school historian or necessarily a conservative anti-Marxist, and the biographical perspective began to be taken seriously. From around the mid-1990s and particularly since 2000, biography as a historiographical genre started to establish itself as the embodiment of a reputable heuristic technique and a methodological tool for historians from different fields. As a result, it has become part and parcel of an increasingly interdisciplinary approach. It has also been used to revive certain political values and interpretations as well as to restore the reputation of individuals (liberals, republican revolutionaries) who had previously been debunked or neglected. Examples would be the twelve progressive politicians surveyed by Javier Moreno (2006), the anarchist and minister Federica Montseny (Tavera, 2005), the republican poets Blasco Ibañez (Reig, 2002; Varela, 2016) and Miguel Hernández (Ferris, 2016), the republican president Juan Negrín (Moradiellos, 2005), the Catalan presidents Josep Tarradellas (Pujol, 2018) and Lluis Companys (Lladó i Figueres, 1991; Ortiz, 2010), the anarchist educationalist Francisco Ferrer (Avilés, 2006), and the liberal exile Manuel Ruiz Zorrilla (Higueras Castañeda, 2017). The most popular biographical subjects by far have been politicians and the intellectuals who lived through the struggles of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, but new individuals of interest have also emerged from the fields of labor, social, and cultural history.23 One growing area of current interest is the writing of women’s lives. Here there are three tendencies. First, there are conscious attempts simply to ‘recover’ the biographies of women previously unknown or ignored, beyond the usual ‘women worthies’, as Natalie Zemon Davis puts it.24 This tendency has expressed itself in specialist series aimed at the general reader such as the initiative launched by the Madrid Association of University Women (Eila) and Circe, as well as in dictionaries. Dozens of biographical dictionaries of women 23

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Among them Unamuno, Marañón, Ortega y Gasset, and the poets of the generation of 1927, but also contemporaries such as Semprún and Pradera. For some general approaches see Cercles 10 (2007) (issue dedicated to historical biography) and Víctor Núñez García, ‘La biografía como género historiográfico desde la historia contemporánea española’, in Erebea 3 (2013), 203–226. See Natalie Zemon Davis, ‘Women’s History in Transition: The European Case’, Feminist Studies in 3.3–4 (1976), 83–103.

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(of uneven quality) have been published in the last ten years dealing with women artists, scientists, masons, writers, revolutionaries, and so on. Biographies of greater ‘substance’ have addressed historiographical problems and, to a greater or lesser extent, take up the question of gender. And finally, there is a separate strand consisting of theoretical and methodological discussions around the biography (and the history) of women from the perspective of gender.25 Biography in Spain is also playing its part in the nebulous sweep of ‘historical memory’ associated with the traumatic processes of war and of dictatorship. Metaphorically, biography has to do with disinterring bodies, naming and shaming the guilty, recovering the lives of the downtrodden and the defeated in the Civil War, creating new historiographical and literary pantheons as well as renaming city streets.26 It is today becoming an essential tool for reshaping memory in our democracy as well as being its latest ‘reference database’. There 25

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Among popular specialist series ‘recovering’ women (María de Maeztu, Rosa Chacel, María Moliner, Rosa Galindo, Alfonsa de la Torre, María Zambrano, Dora Maar, Maruja Mallo, and others), see the initiative launched by the Madrid Association of University Women http://eilaeditores.es/libros.html, and also Circe http://www.oceano.com/ oceano/catalogo/ncirce.asp. Also Mujeres en la historia de España enciclopedia biográfica, ed. Susanna Tavera (2000). Among the best biographers of women who also ponder relevant cultural and/or historical problems are Isabel Burdiel, Isabel II (2010) and Emilia Pardo Bazán (2019), Anna Caballé, Carmen Laforet (2010) and Concepción Arenal (2018), and Susanna Tavera, Federica Montseny (2005). See also Concepción Núñez, Carmen de Burgos (2006) and José Luis Ferris, Carmen Conde: vida, pasión y verso de una escritora olvidada (2007). Women are also subjects of collective biographies such as Heroínas y patriotas, mujeres de 1808, ed. Gloria Espigado and Mari Cruz Romeo (2009). Interesting theoretical or methodological reflections on the biography of women are to be found in ‘Mujeres y repertorios biográficos’, in Biografías y género biográfico en el occidente islámico, ed. María Luisa Avila (Madrid: CSIC, 1997), 127–139; Mónica Bolufer Peruga, ‘Multitudes del yo: biografía e historia de las mujeres’, in Ayer 93 (2014), 85–116; and ¿Y ahora qué?: nuevos usos del género biográfico, ed. Henar Gallego Franco and Mónica Bolufer Peruga (Madrid: AEIHM Icaria, 2016). This is happening all over Spain. In Madrid, for instance, more than fifty streets have been renamed either to make them ‘neutral’ (by repressing references to the Civil War) or to replace Francoist figures with Republican or Democratic ones: General Mola (a Francoist) has been supplanted by Enrique de Ruano (an assassinated antifascist student); General Romero Basar (another Francoist military figure) by Blas Cabrera (an exiled Republican scientist); García Morato (a Francoist aviator) by Robert Capa (the pro-Republic photographer); the Conde de Mayalde (a pro-Nazi mayor) by Emilio Herrera (an engineer and President of the Republican Government in Exile). The list goes on and on. In Catalonia such changes involve replacing not only pro-Franco figures but also pro-Spanish (political or cultural) individuals with Catalan luminaries: the ‘Duke of Victory’ (the Liberal Spanish General Espartero) with Lluís Maria Xirinacs (an pro-independence writer and philosopher); the Duke of Ahumada (founder of the Spanish Civil Guard) with Albert

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are now collective biographies of exiled ‘heroes’, of the repressed (both prisoners and those killed by Franco) and also of the the repressors. And on the other side, there are collective biographies of so-called martyrs: priests and nuns killed during the Civil War.27 Biography has become involved too, in refashioning the collective memory of the transition to democracy that has been a live political issue since 2012. An increasing number of biographies of the protagonists of that transition have followed the initial autobiographical wave.28 A special case and a recent example of biography as a ‘battlefield’ of memory and representation (and of its power to impact or connect with the public) is provided by the scandalous ‘affair’ of the Spanish Dictionary of National Biography published by the Royal Academy of History (2012), in which Franco’s image (along with those of other controversial figures) was whitewashed. He was, for example, defined not as a ‘dictator’ but as the ‘slightly authoritarian savior’ of Spain. No matter that all his public statues in Spain have been removed: this characterization was an attempt – an important symbolic attempt, an ‘official’ biography blessed by the highest historical institution – to erect a new monument in words. Provoking a wave of protest, it was denounced in the press and by academic and civic institutions alike. Some of the entries, although the dictionary was already in print, had to be rewritten. But no biographies were added in the paperback edition to bolster its paltry 9 percent share of women and, because entries on living men and women were removed for the updated online version (2019), the percentage of women in fact has fallen in this edition (to 5.2%, or 2,500 women out of a total of 45,000 entries). Such an imbalance is a shocking misrepresentation of the truth (compare the 30% of women in the current Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, for example).

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Salvany (a famous local ‘casteller’, or person who makes the human castles so popular with Catalans), and the Marqués del Duero (a Spanish aristocrat) with Albert Virella (the Catalan historian). Recent examples (of many) include: Pedro L. Angosto, Diccionario del franquismo: Protagonistas y cómplices (1936–1978) (Madrid: Comares, 2018); Josep Portella, Llibre d’Exilis: Diccionari biogràfic de l’exili menorquí (Mahón: CIM, 2018); Conxita Mir et al., Tenien nom: víctimes de la repressió franquista a les terres de Lleida, 1938–1963 (Barcelona: Pagès, 2017); and Ángeles Egido, ‘Memoria de la represión: nombres femeninos para la historia’, in Arenal 24, no. 2 (2017), 509–535. Autobiographies of the Transition in Adrian Magaldi, ‘A través de los recuerdos: las diferentes visiones de la Transición desde la memorialística política’, in Investigaciones Históricas 38 (2018), 479–506. See Pascual Raga, ‘La Transición biografiada’, in Aportes 90 (2016), 101–136. The main protagonists from the Transition have all been the subjects of biographies: King Juan Carlos, Adolfo Suárez, Fernández-Miranda, Fraga, Calvo Sotelo, Abril Martorell, Tierno Galván, Felipe González, Gutiérrez Mellado, Santiago Carrillo, and so on.

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The implementation of selection procedures designed to include professions or political fields where women have been more active might help to redress the balance. But the scope of the problem extends further. A cursory glance at the internet reveals important women not featured in the dictionary, among them the much-heralded inventor of the e-book, Ángela Ruiz Robles; progressive educators such as Francesca Bonnemaison and Elena Maseras; the doctor, writer, and suffragist Elena Soriano Fisher; artists and poets such as the surrealist painter Maria de los Remedios Varo, as well as Margarita Gil Roësset and Mercedes Pinto; film directors like Helena Cortesina and Elena Jordi; political activists and founders of democratic movements such as Virginia González, Manuela Galeote, and Enriqueta Otero; well-known journalists and writers such as Aurora Bertrana and María Cambrils; the opera star Lucrecia Bori; and so on, and so on.29 Biographical dictionaries and prosopographies are another fertile field. In the last fifteen years, parliamentary prosopography and collective biography have mushroomed and have disinterred elements of parliamentary life as well as the lives of liberal politicians consigned by Franco to the dustbin of history and now serve as a database for lengthy future biographies or political studies. Countless regional and national dictionaries of nineteenth- and twentiethcentury parliamentarians have been published.30 Biographical dictionaries of historians have grown, too (and there are more in the pipeline, such as the online biographical project directed by the historian Ignacio Peiró).31 These efforts reflect the urge to define the role and the extent of the ‘manufacturers’ of culture in the building of the nation and to place them in context socially, professionally, and institutionally.32 There is also a small clutch of book-length 29

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The best analyses of the controversial entries are José Luis Ledesma, ‘El Diccionario Biográfico Español, el pasado y los historiadores,’ in Ayer 88 (2012), 247–265, and Jeremy Treglown, ‘Franco’s Friends’, in Times Literary Supplement, March 30, 2012. For the comparison with the ODNB I am grateful to its editor Alex May, who sent me details and percentages. See also John Gross, ‘Feminine Wills: A Literary Tour Through the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography’, in Times Literary Supplement, December 17, 2004, 12–13. An advanced search of the online version of the DBE shows the imbalance all too clearly: http://dbe.rah.es/. Joseba Agirreazkuenaga and Mikel Urquijo, ‘Desafíos de la biografía en la historia contemporánea’, in Cercles 10 (2007), 57–78; also Mikel Urquijo, ‘Renovación metodológica de los diccionarios biográficos nacionales en el siglo XXI’, in Erebea 3 (2013), 249–270. See the Online Biographical Dictionary of Spanish Chairs in History: A Cartography of Spanish Historians: http://diccionariodehistoriadores.unizar.es/. Ignacio Peiró Martín, ‘En el taller del historiador: la(s) biografía(s) como práctica histórica e historiográfica’, in Gerónimo de Uztariz 28–29 (2012–2013), 11–29; and Gonzalo Pasamar Alzuria and Ignacio Peiró Martín, Diccionario Akal de Historiadores españoles contemporáneos (Madrid: Akal, 2002).

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biographies of historians, mostly Spanish figures, but also Hispanists and other relevant international historians.33 Once again, Catalonia has its own distinctive biographical dictionaries and heroes. In the prologue to the dictionary of Catalan historiography we read that its mission is ‘to go beyond academic historiography’. The dictionary will furnish a tool for researchers and teachers in Catalonia and ‘Catalan territories’ that will facilitate the study and recognition of a Catalan historiographical tradition. This tradition is not only seen as part of the cultural backbone of the entire and complex Catalan ‘project’ but is also ‘on a par with the most advanced historiographical traditions in the western world’.34 And finally, a field of endeavor quite separate from written biography, but which has its place since it mirrors the rise of a ‘biographical ethos’, is the production of filmed biopics of historical figures. During the Franco years, biopics were screened in cinemas to celebrate ‘exemplary’ citizens who embodied the ‘virtues’ exalted in the historical narrative of the day (hagiography, patriotism, and the rest): their subjects included Agustina de Aragón, El Greco, San Isidro el labrador, Jeromín (Juan de Austria), Goya, Juana la Loca, Gaudí, Isabel de Aragon (‘the Holy Queen’), Santa Rosa de Lima, and Saint Teresa of Avila. These films were hugely successful; among their number, not surprisingly, was a fabricated biography of the dictator entitled Franco, That Man. The final days of the regime saw the first biographical TV documentaries of leading Spanish intellectuals and artists (Ramon y Cajal, Azorín, Gaudí, Menéndez Pelayo, Ortega y Gasset, Albéniz, Concepción Arenal, and Solana). But only after the Transition was under way did such documentaries begin to come into their own. Bespoke television biopics have grown in number and have the purpose, as Francés and Llorca put it, of ‘creating myths for the general public’ by promoting an official version of people and events and focusing on the collective memory of the citizenry.35 Most of them homed in on figures from the political center like Adolfo Suárez and Fernández Miranda. Several national

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Among them the biographies of Josep M. Muñoz, Vicens Vives (1995); Albert Ghanime, Joan Cortada (1992); Francesc Vilanova, Ramón d’Abadal (1996); Enric Pujol, Ferrán Soldevila (2000); and of the hispanist Raymond Carr by María Jesús González (2010), translated as Raymond Carr: The Curiosity of the Fox (Brighton: Sussex University Press, 2013). There has even been an international conference ‘El historiador y su biografía’ (University of Zaragoza, April 2017). Biographies of E.P. Thompson, E.H. Carr, and Fernand Braudel have been translated into Spanish. See Antoni Simon i Tarrés, ed., Diccionari d’historiografia catalana (Barcelona: Enciclopèdia Catalana, 2003). Miquel Francés i Domenec and Germá Llorca Abad, La ficción audiovisual en España: relatos, tendencias y sinergias productivas (Barcelona: Gedisa, 2012), 71.

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figures previously close to the heart of the Franco regime (for example, Teresa of Avila, the ‘Saint of the Race’, and Cervantes) have, in the 1980s and 1990s, been revisited in documentaries that, by emphasizing other, less predictable sides to their personalities (rebellion against the Establishment and feminism in the case of Teresa, democracy and pro-Europeanism in that of the creator of Don Quixote), turn them into champions in the fight against the traditional, Counter-Reformationist, and illiberal Spain of yesteryear. In the 2000s new takes on women (Rosalía de Castro; Concepción Arenal; queens Cristina de Borbón, Juana la Loca, Isabel II, and Isabel the Catholic, Clara Campoamor, and so on) play their part in that struggle, both on TV and in the cinema.36 There is a series showing at the moment, entitled Los Imprescindibles (‘The Essential Ones’), which consists of biographical documentaries on leading cultural figures of the twentieth century and includes contributions from historians and biographers alike.

3

By Way of Conclusion

Biography in Spain long served the elite, reinforced norms of respect and deference to the Crown and the cult of saints, and encouraged the uncritical acceptance of political dogma and even the legitimization of military rule and of dictators who reinvented themselves as saviors of the fatherland. But we should not forget that during the Second Republic (1931–1936), the bookshelves of republican teaching missions were stacked with biographies, designed this time to educate a new ‘ideal’ democratic citizenry.37 Nor should we neglect to acknowledge that biography serves today to cobble together a ‘world with an accent on the feminine’: one peopled by previously ignored and therefore anonymous women. Their biographies serve to preach, for instance, the 36

37

See Sira Hernández Corchete, ‘De las biografías ejemplares de TVE a los biopics de éxito de las cadenas privadas: un recorrido histórico por las biografías televisivas en España’, in La biografía fílmica: Actas del segundo congreso internacional de historia y cine, ed. M. Gloria Camarero Gómez (Madrid: T&B, 2011), 349–357; and Javier Moral, ‘La biografía fílmica como género’, in La biografía fílmica, 262–275. Also Francisca López, Elena Cueto Asín, and David R. George, Historias de la pequeña pantalla: representaciones históricas en la televisión de la España democrática (Madrid: Iberoamericana, 2009); and Baltasar Fra Molinero, ‘Hagiografías democráticas para la televisión: Cervantes, Santa Teresa, Lorca y Miguel Hernández’ in Historias de la pequeña pantalla, 245–272. Since documentaries of this kind on TV do not appear to have proved all that ‘profitable’ their producers and backers are today turning to celebrity culture for their subjects. Ana Martínez Rus, La política del libro durante la Segunda República: socialización de la lectura (Madrid: Trea, 2003).

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virtues of the intellectual, artistic, adventurous, political, or scientific life to girls who have in previous eras lacked models to emulate.38 In this sense, as the Spanish historian Elena Hernández Sandoica has written, biography as a narrative strategy ‘is never morally neutral. It constructs edifying tales which highlight certain values or else attack them. It offers the reader models to imitate, patterns of behaviour, more or less rigid, and rules to follow or to break.’39 Nevertheless, developments that have ensued since biography in Spain was readmitted to the historiographic fold have clearly amounted to an overt shoring up of its ‘scientific’ base and methodological quality by way of a deliberate distancing from the (elusive, utilitarian, and subjective) elements of what has been deemed the heroic, the moral, and the didactic. The concepts of greatness or exemplarity previously employed in the selection and treatment of subjects have also been called into question. No one in Spain these days asks whether biography can be of heuristic value in the writing of history. Some Spanish specialists have concentrated their efforts on rehabilitating biography by reinforcing its use to explain historical events and conundrums and to shed light on the interaction between individuals and social structures or processes, between the private and public. Historians have also emphasized the need for biographies guided by substantial problems, biographies which focus on a deeper knowledge of context, no matter the extent to which an individual may be representative or exceptional.40 Such approaches require sophisticated historiographical skills and the adoption of a more elaborate ‘point of view’, and theoretical justifications of the discipline, as a means of claiming academic respectability, are relatively common in certain biographies and in academic articles. In any case, the ability of biography to connect with the ‘anxieties, debates, and intellectual, political, and ideological dilemmas of contemporary 38

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Apart from the many dictionaries and a few individual biographies, see the collective biographies on different professions: Creación artística y mujeres: recuperar la memoria, ed. M. López Fernández Cao (Barcelona: Narcea, 2000); Carmen González Casal, Mujeres con historia: perfiles de 50 empresarias asturianas (Oviedo: Septem, 2004); María José Casado Ruiz de Lóizaga, Las damas del laboratorio: mujeres científicas en la historia (Barcelona: Debate, 2006); Ángel Rodríguez Cabezas et al., Mujeres en la medicina (Málaga: Grupo Editorial 33, 2006); Arquitectura y mujeres en la historia, ed. María Elena Díez Jorge (Barcelona: Síntesis, 2015); and Tània Balló, Las sinsombrero: sin ellas, la historia no está completa (Madrid: Espasa, 2016). Elena Hernández Sandoica, ‘La escritura biográfica’ in Cercles 10 (2007), 10–25. See Isabel Burdiel, ‘La dama de blanco’, 29, and ‘Historia política y biografía: más allá de las fronteras’. Also Veiga Alonso, ‘Indivíduo, sociedad e historia’, 141–145, and Adrian Shubert, ‘What Do Historians Really Think About Biography?’, in Letras de Hoje 53, no. 2 (2018), 196–202.

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Spain’ continues to dictate, even beyond any strictly objective or academic criteria, the selection of subjects for biographical study.41 Nationalist and proindependence sentiments, to take just one example, punch above their respective weights when it comes to choosing new subjects for biography in Catalonia, a tendency that has become more marked over recent years.42 In Madrid, meanwhile, the Fundación para el Análisis y los Estudios Sociales, run by expresident José María Aznar, brought out, between 2013 and 2018, a series of biographies of conservative politicians and nineteenth- and twentieth-century Liberals, all written by historians of repute but now updated and recast from an openly conservative perspective. More middle-of-the-road is the biographical collection from the reputable publishing house Taurus entitled ‘Eminent Spaniards’, whose volumes began appearing in 2012. The series contains a number of quite excellent biographies and its subjects (a philosopher, three churchmen, five writers – four men and one woman – and a social reformer) are representative of varying political ideologies. But they have been chosen according to a quite specific criterion – ‘the knowledge that there are individuals whose moral behaviour and whose humanity made them stand out in their day and who can still act as beacons for the collective conscience’ – and with the general aim in mind to ‘rewrite our history to make it more inclusive and to spread awareness of individuals whose virtues ought to be more widely recognized with a view to making our society today a more cohesive one.’43 These 41 42

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See Jaume Aurell, ‘Biography and Autobiography Between Tradition and Innovation: The Year in Spain’, in Biography 40, no. 4 (2017), 664–671. Examples of biographies of Catalan nationalist and pro-independence figures published in the last two years include Lluís Busquets i Grabulosa, Lluís M. Xirinacs, el profetisme radical i noviolent (Barcelona: Balasch, 2017); Lluïsa Julià I Capdevila, Maria-Mercè Marçal: una vida (Barcelona: Galàxia Gutenberg, 2017); Carles-Jordi Guardiola, Carles Riba, retrat de grup: protagonists de la cultura catalana del segle XX (Barcelona: Tres i Quatre, 2017); Maria Conca and Josep Guia, A frec del seu nom: vida, obra i lluita de Xavier Romeu (Barcelona: El Jonc, 2018); Fermí Rubiralta i Casas, Un conspirador independentista: Joaquim Juanola i Massó (1891–1967) (Barcelona: Llibres de l’Index, 2018); Oriol Dueñas Iturbe, Carme Ballester: Compromís, resistència i solitud (Barcelona: Gregal, 2018); and Lluís Duran, Pompeu Fabra: llengua, civisme, país (Barcelona: Economía Digital, 2018). Politicians featured in the FAES series include Cánovas, Silvela, O’Donnell, Maura, GilRobles, Alcalá Zamora, and Javier de Burgos. For the series Españoles Eminentes, the quotation comes from the Director’s Foreword (now reworded) included in the original form in which it was written by philosopher Goma Lanzón in all the volumes published between 2012 and 2017: see, for example, B. Hernández, Bartolomé de las Casas, 2015. See also the analysis of the series in Christine Rivalan and Miriam Nicoli, La colección: auge y consolidación de un objeto editorial (Bogotá: Uniandes, 2017), 258–259, which describes the collection as ‘taking up the idea of consensus which has been at the heart of political thinking in post-Franco Spain’.

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examples show the current Spanish appreciation of and interest in biography within academic circles and beyond, even though they occasionally bring the genre into contact with areas that are somewhat slippery: namely, the political and the exemplary. It would be fair to admit that in Spain today, after battling against every kind of prejudice and restriction, ‘the biographer has won his freedom’.44 Recent years have seen a clear advance in biography marked by improved outreach and a growing cultural popularity among previously reluctant readers, as well as academic respectability buttressed by prizes, scholarly debate, the staging of international and national conferences, seminars, and special issues in journals.45 The European Network for the Theory and Practice of Biography (2009–2014), coordinated by Isabel Burdiel, has been a pioneer and has also proved an effective catalyst in bringing together, through meetings and publications, the work of significant European biographers. A few research projects on biography have been funded by the Ministry of Economy, Industry and Competitivity.46 In general, quite a number of dissertations focusing on the biographies of a wide range of individuals from different periods and in different disciplines have been completed in Spain over the last ten years (albeit many are as yet unpublished).47 Research on biographical methodology 44 45

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Interview with Santos Juliá in Letras Libres, February 13, 2015. Prizes (some now defunct) include Comillas, Algaba, Las Luces, Gaziel, Domínguez Ortiz, and Stella Maris. Collective studies and special issues in academic journals (Ayer, Cercles, Erebea, Historia Contemporánea) deal with the theory and practice of biography. Between 2010 and 2017 the Ministry of Economy Industry and Competitivity (Agencia Estatal de Investigación) funded biography-related research projects: El conocimiento del otro: biografías y retratos en la literatura catalana del siglo XX (Universidad de Alicante), 2011; Epistolarios, memorias y otros géneros autobiográficos de la cultura española del medio siglo (Universidad Autónoma de Madrid), 2014; La biografía como género historiográfico en la edad contemporánea: España, Argentina, México (Universidad Complutense de Madrid), 2017; and La razón biográfica: biografías y narraciones autobiográficas en la investigación histórica y literaria del s. xx europeo: estudios de caso y reflexión teórica (Universidad de Cantabria and Universidad de Barcelona) 2017, the last of these coordinated by Anna Caballé and myself (see note 1). A growing number of theses (many unpublished but available online) can be found in the academic database Dialnet: https://dialnet.unirioja.es. A few examples of theses on biography published in Castilian, Catalan, or Galiciano are: Isabel Extravís, Jerónimo Zurita (1512–1580): Un esbozo biográfico (Zaragoza: Institución Fernando el Católico, 2014); María Teresa del Olmo-Ibáñez, Teoría de la Biografía (Madrid: Dykinson, 2015); Antonio Miguel López García, Ángel Ossorio y Gallardo: Biografía política de un conservador heterodoxo (Madrid: Reus, 2017); Joan Esculies, Ernest Lluch: Biografía d’un intellectual agitador (Barcelona: La Magrana, 2018) (Prize Gaziel) and Seixas Seoane Miguel Anxo, Castelao: Construtor da nación. Tomo I: 1886–1930 (Santiago de Compostela: Galaxia, 2019).

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as well as the theory and peculiarities of biography in modern Europe has also blossomed, although the recent fashion for ‘life writing’ has won no acolytes in Spain.48 Nevertheless, biography is still poorly represented in Spanish university curricula and reading lists and no specific training is on offer. With the exception of the Unit of Biographical Studies, run by Anna Caballé in Barcelona, there are no specialized academic centers. Certainly more Spanish readers are now interested in biography, as is evident from bookshop displays and sales figures, although many are consumers of low-quality commercial biography, while good scholarly biography still seems to be a product for the elite. As a genre, biography in Spain continues to suffer from the inability of its protagonists to achieve reputations for themselves beyond the national frontier and also from the small number of international figures chosen as biographical subjects (something which makes Spain reliant on biographies produced elsewhere). Academic historians do not, of course, exercise a monopoly over the genre. The number of journalists and freelance and amateur writers practising the genre has grown, although there is no Spanish equivalent of the quality ‘professional biographer’ we find in other countries. The practice of biography has certainly come of age in Spain and now flourishes more vigorously than ever. But that is not to say that it compares favorably with what is happening in other countries with more firmly established biographical traditions. The future beckons. 48

See Davis and Burdiel, El otro, el mismo; Ruiz Torres, ‘Las repercusiones de los cambios culturales de la modernidad en el modo de pensar la biografía’, in Ayer 93 (2014), 19–46 and La historia biográfica en Europa, ed. Burdiel and Foster.

The Chinese Sense of Self and Biographical Narrative: an Overview Kerry Brown

It should be stressed that in this essay the main subject is biographies in the Chinese language produced by Chinese writers and biographers. In English, French, German, and of course in Asian languages – Japanese, Korean and Vietnamese – there is an immense amount of writing about the lives of Chinese figures from the earliest times to the present. But the focus of this piece is on the tradition of writing about the lives of prominent Chinese figures in the Chinese language, in cases where the original is written in Chinese. There is a perfectly valid reason for this focus. The tradition of biography in Chinese literature is long and distinguished, comparable in antiquity to traditions in ancient Greek and Latin, and in extent to those existing almost anywhere else in the world. The most significant figure is Sima Qian (d. 86 BCE 司马迁), the grand court historian in the Han era (206 BCE–220 CE), whose immense Records of the Grand Historian (史记), completed mostly after he had been castrated as punishment for offending the ruling emperor, remains one of the great masterpieces of world literature. A compilation of 132 lives, from the most ancient dynasties of the Xia (c. 2700–1600 BCE) and Shang (c. 1700–1070 BCE) up to Sima’s own period, it combines a powerful sense of narrative with piercing insights into the psychology of the figures being discussed. The First Emperor, Qin Shi Huangdi (259–210 BCE 秦始皇帝), is described as a man ‘with a waspish nose, eyes like slits, a chicken breast, and a voice like a jackal. When in difficulties he willingly humbles himself, when successful he swallows men up without a scruple […] Should he succeed in conquering the empire, we shall all become his captives. There is no staying long with such a man.’1 Such a portrait summarizes as well as anyone has in the intervening two thousand years the powerfully horrifying completeness of this ruler’s despotism, something that visitors to that monument of megalomania, the Terracotta Warrior site in Xian, central China, can appreciate to this day.

1 Sima Qian, Selections from Records of the Historian, ed. An Pingqiu, trans. Yang Xiangyi and Gladys Yang (Beijing: Foreign Languages Press, 2008), 11. A more complete selection is also available in the translation of Burton Watson: the two-volume Records of the Grand Historian (New York: Columbia University Press, 1996).

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2020 | DOI:10.1163/9789004434974_009

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The narrative traditions that Sima Qian’s work promoted and cemented in the Chinese literary tradition have continued unabated to the present. In this sense he can be called the father not just of Chinese historians but of Chinese biographers. But his work was produced within a specific view of what humans and their stories were, a context shaped by the developing tradition of Confucianism. Confucius (551–479 BCE 孔子), a figure whose biography is given in the Records of the Grand Historians, had lived four centuries before. He, and philosophers active in the Warring States period (475–221 BCE) immediately before and after him, had, as American sinologist Donald Munro wrote, convictions about the evaluative nature of human personality and the deep need for the moral cultivation of the self. In this outlook, despite the indifference of their work to the kinds of metaphysical questions being posed by the almost contemporaneous Greek philosophers in Athens, they shared Plato’s desire to discover which regimes and habits could be used to cultivate a better self and bring about individual moral improvement. This imperative to improve the self, in accordance with the strong sense of the deep significance of commitment to rituals and the key sets of societal relationships within the Confucian social order, set the boundaries within which a personal life story had meaning, and dictated how it should be told and developed.2 There is also a sense in which a stress on family, social life and collective identity means that modes of expressing a strong sense of indiduality, and one which celebrates this sort of individuality, set against these other more collecticist values does not fit easily in the Chinese literary tradition. There are biographies of figures like the great intinerant monk Xuanzang (602–664 CE 玄奘) from the early Tang era (618–906 CE), but his remarkable tale, although it was recorded by his almost exact contemporary Huili (慧立), is far better known in the semi-fictional Journey to the West (西游记).3 For imperial figures, too, there are official court accounts of their lives. But whereas in the Western literary tradition there are copious lives of saints, produced by writers under the aegis of the Christian church, there is no analogous phenomenon in China: perhaps the Buddhist predisposition to discount the value of individual personal histories and their importance reduced the space available for biographies that could be edifying and might convey particular stories about personal development. Finding out about the life stories of scientists 2 Donald J. Munro, The Concept of Man in Early China (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1969). 3 Huili’s life of Xuanzang has only been translated into French from the original Chinese. Histoire de la Vie de Hiouen-Thsang et Ses Voyages Dans L’Inde Depuis L’An 629 Jusqu’en 645, trans. Stanislas Julien (Paris: Imprimerie Imperiale, 1853).

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and inventors like Bi Sheng (990–1051 毕昇) or poets like Du Fu (712–770 杜甫), can be gleaned from their own works or from circumstantial records about the times in which they lived. There were contemporaneous or near contemporaneous biographies written specifically about them. A Chinese equivalent of the kind of biographical work of Asser about King Alfred in ninth-century England based on his personal relationship with the king, or Possidius in his life of his teacher, the great St. Augustine of Hippo, in the fifth century, displaying intimate knowledge of not just the public by the private like of their subjects, apart from Huili’s work on Xuanzang, does not exist. Nor did this situation change with the coming of more recent dynasties. The most important literary figure from the mid-Qing era (1644–1911), Cao Xueqin (1715 or 1724–1764 or 1765 曹雪芹), produced, in his vast novel of manners from the early eighteenth century The Dream of the Red Mansion (红楼们), what may be read as an intricate account of the lives of his family and social circle. But as the sinologists John Minford, David Hawkes, and others have observed, biographical material about such a significant figure, whose work remains widely popular even today, was thin to nonexistent during the two centuries after his death. And while similar complaints can be made about the elusiveness of William Shakespeare, at least there is an archival record detailing business deals, property ownership, and other practical matters that shows us something about the great playwright’s life. For Cao, there is next to nothing.4 With the arrival of modernity and of Western modes of thinking in China from the late Qing period in the nineteenth century onwards, the idea that certain figures lived lives that might be worth recording and writing about at length became more acceptable. The modern era, therefore, will be the focus of the following discussion.

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Biography and Politics

One of the main characteristics of biography in Chinese, at least as it has existed in the People’s Republic of China (PRC) after its foundation in 1949, is the highly politicized way a person’s history is told. Mao Zedong (1894–1976 毛泽东), via his encounter with the American journalist Edgar Snow in the 1930s and the highly sympathetic account given of the life led by him and his

4 See John Minford, ‘Cao Xueqin’, in Berkshire Dictionary of Chinese Biography, Volume Three, ed. Kerry Brown (Great Barrington, MA: Berkshire, 2015), 1098–1113.

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primary colleagues, clearly absorbed a sense of the great propagandistic and political uses afforded by the telling of his life in a certain way and with a particular moral and narrative structure.5 Mao’s life story became increasingly central to his exercise of power after 1949, when the Communists took over the government. While many accounts of Mao’s life were produced up through his death in 1976, their content and the treatment of their subject are nearly purely hagiographic. Mao’s bodyguard and a tramp who had known him when he was younger were each able to produce adoring accounts of their experiences of the Great Leader.6 Full accounts of Mao’s early life reached a peak during the Cultural Revolution, supplementing the cult of personality then in full effect. In these descriptions, Mao figured as someone predestined from birth to take up the mantle of greatness and leadership. Their adoring tone grated against the publicly egalitarian ethos espoused by the Party, and also went against the grain of a literary and historic tradition where selflessness, humility, and self-abnegation were regarded as the most desirable qualities. Mao is seen as a radical and revolutionary figure, and in many senses one aspect of this characterization, though not often noted, is the way in which the circumstances of his own life story, as the rebellious son of a traditional landlord family, are linked to his political philosophy and convictions, adding more meaning to them. In the era of high socialism, there were certainly other biographies, but many of these erred to the other extreme in comparison to the exalted depictions of Mao. Such life histories were produced in the service of campaigns of vilification. Lin Biao, Mao’s chosen successor in the Cultural Revolution’s middle period of the late 1960s, was exposed, after a brief period of being praised and fêted, to an onslaught of books and pamphlets in the wake of his death fleeing China in a plane crash in 1971 after taking part in an alleged coup attempt.7 These accounts contained a broad outline of his life story and his military background, and at least in that regard have some historic utility. They are also useful, even today, in giving granular detail about the crimes imputed to Lin and his family during his fall from grace. But their fierce tone, the pervasive

5 Edgar Snow, Red Star over China (London: Gollancz, 1937). 6 Siao-yu, Mao Tse-tung and I Were Beggars: A Personal Memoir of the Early Years of Chairman Mao, (London: Syracuse University Press, 1959); Quan Yanchi, Mao Zedong: Man, Not God (Beijing: Foreign Languages Press, 1992). 7 One of these has been translated into English: Yao Ming-le, The Conspiracy and Murder of Mao’s Heir (London: Collins, 1983). This book was written under a pseudonym, and made the claim, never completely dispelled, that Lin was not willingly fleeing China but was murdered under Mao’s orders.

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invective, and the patently obvious political bias indicates that these are documents of a smear campaign rather than records devoted to any sort of factual assessment of a person’s life. Subsequently, far more substantive works have appeared, though these books are not available in China. The most extensive, by Lin Qingshan (林青山) – Lin Biao Zhuan [林彪传, Biography of Lin Biao], a hefty 886-page volume – is a case in point.8 According to Shao Dongfang, in this whole huge book by Lin, only two pages concern his distinguished military career – the main activity on which it is likely future historians will assess and judge his importance. Lin Biao’s contribution to the final Communist victory in the 1946–1949 Civil War was, after all, very considerable. Shao goes on to state: The Party and government [in China], with an eye to their own interests, have formulated various restrictions which have fettered life-writing. For political and ideological reasons, the Party was hostile to historical accuracy. But it is important to remember that the most obvious political taboos were not the only ones present. The existence of these prohibited areas of investigation was part of a wider set of assumptions about privacy which should not simply be seen in defensive terms. Chinese biographers by implication, were and are not free. They remain very cautious in writing about political figures, and try to avoid violating any taboos. […] In the name of political expediency, some have tried to evade major events in Chinese social and political history, which actually greatly influences a bigraphee.9 No one was immune to this kind of censorship. Ironically, Mao himself was exposed to similar unrestrained attacks after he died in 1976, though these were produced in Chinese outside the People’s Republic. The most infamous account was the memoir of Li Zhisui, for many years Mao’s personal doctor, whose book, issued first in the US in Chinese and then in a very successful English translation, offered intimate insights into the Chairman’s insomnia, his sex life, and his battle with Parkinson’s disease as an old man.10 These accounts

8 9

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Published by Knowledge Publishers (知识出版时). Shao Dongfang, ‘Transformation Diversification, Ideology: Twentieth Century Chinese Biography’, in Life Writing from the Pacific Rim: Essays from Japan, China, Indonesia, India and Siam, with a Psychological Overview ed. Stanley Schab and George Simon (Honolulu, University of Hawaii Press, 1997), 36. Li Zhisui, The Private Life of Chairman Mao: The Memoir of Mao’s Personal Physician, Tai Hung-chao, ed. Anne F. Thurston (London and New York: Chatto and Windus, 1994).

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simply illustrate the plain fact that whatever forms of biography existed during the Maoist period, they were constrained within a tight political framework. In showing something about this situation, they have a certain value. But they cannot be accepted as objective evaluations of the lives being recounted.

2

Biography Post-Mao

The more relaxed and open atmosphere in the 1980s and the process of economic liberalization created a greater space for individualism and, accordingly, for books focusing on life stories and the telling of these stories which were not so strictly politicized. Even works dealing with political figures could put forth more orthodox and credible sorts of narrative, despite the sometimes highly critical stances they adopted toward their subjects. Ye Yonglie (b. 1940 叶永烈), a Shanghai-based science fiction writer and biographer, is the most important figure from the late 1980s into the 1990s who chronicled the lives of key figures from the late Maoist period. He enjoyed, through the right social connections, unparalleled access to archival sources. In contemporary China this is no mean feat. As Wa Ye and Joseph Esherick have shown, although the Communist Party has been assiduous over the last eight decades in keeping records both of events and the personnel serving in its ranks at almost every level, access to these resources has been fiercely policed.11 And unlike what happened after the Soviet Union’s collapse in 1991, when archives were made available and researchers gained access to a large amount of previously unseen material, in China the Communist Party’s continued power and governance have meant that there was no analogous opening of official records, and it is unlikely that the situation will change any time soon. Even the very limited access to documents and papers granted to Ye was precious, and so his works on Jiang Qing (江青), Wang Hongwen (王洪文), Zhang Chunqiao (张春桥), and Yao Wenyuan (姚文元), members of the so-called Gang of Four blamed for the turmoil after the end of the Cultural Revolution in 1976, remain useful. Part of this utility lies in the fact that Ye enjoyed access to some of his subjects – particularly Yao, largely seen as the chief writer for the group, though in terms of ideological demagoguery he is equaled and perhaps surpassed by Zhang. Both were based in Shanghai, as was the younger Wang Hongwen. They

11

Wa Ye and Joseph W. Esherick, Chinese Archives: An Introductory Guide (Berkeley: Institute of East Asian Studies, University of California, 1996).

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had interesting backstories, which Ye was able to tell, with Yao Wenyuan coming from a family of writers and intellectuals despite his later fierce attacks against this social group. Yao lived until 2005, but despite the many attempts made by foreign researchers wishing to tell his remarkable story and interview him, he remained off limits. It seems, however, that Ye was given limited access. His work during this period was made possible by the Communist Party’s own ‘Resolution on Historic Matters’ from 1981, which set out the permissible terms of a general historic view of the entire Cultural Revolution period. According to the resolution, massive mistakes had been committed, and it was therefore permissible to talk about them.12 Ye’s work about the Gang of Four is faithful to this framework in imputing blame for the whole era to Mao’s wife Jiang Qing and to those around her. His level of detail is also useful, with references to documents, news reports, and other sources. But in these works the protagonists are clearly guilty from page one, and there is no criticism or dissent with regard to the prevailing orthodoxy of the time. Of Ye’s subjects, Jiang Qing posed the most challenges. Jiang, Mao’s fourth wife since the Yen’an revolutionary period predating the Party’s rise to power in the late 1930s, had a complex background. Originally from the coastal Shandong province, she had found her way prior to the Sino-Japanese War to Shanghai, which at that time was home to a flourishing film industry. Under a number of aliases she had appeared in minor roles in movies. But the low social standing of actors generally meant that when Mao announced his intention to marry her to the Party’s central committee in 1937, it was agreed to only on the condition that she keep a low profile and not engage in politics. She was thus largely invisible until her dramatic reappearance in the mid-1960s when, clearly at Mao’s behest, she spearheaded the initial attacks in the cultural realm that prefigured the Cultural Revolution more generally. Ye’s account of Jiang’s early life spells out these complexities in her background. During her trial in 1981, after all, large parts of which had been televised in an edited version each evening on Chinese TV, with less wholesome episodes from her past dredged up to vilify and attack her. There was poetic justice in this onslaught, as she herself had sanctioned some of the most virulent attacks against supposed opponents during the previous decade. Even so, her fiery comment when she was finally convicted of crimes against the state and sentenced to death (commuted to life imprisonment) – she ‘was Mao’s 12

See Resolution on Certain Questions in the History of Our Party Since the Founding of the People’s Republic of China (Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, 1981), available at https://www.marxists.org/subject/china/documents/cpc/history/01.htm, accessed July 6, 2019.

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dog, and when he said bite, I bit’ – made it evident that she had little agency beyond what her husband had granted. One thing clear from Ye’s story, and corroborated elsewhere, is her pursuit, during the Cultural Revolution, of often fatal revenge campaigns against those deemed to have slighted her during the period of her anonymity, or those who seemed to possess some kind of information about her. The father of a future Politburo Standing Committee member in the 2000s, Yu Zhengsheng, had reportedly been her lover in the period before Mao, and his persecution culminated in his death.13 Ye is circumspect in his treatment of Jiang, however, for the simple reason that her relationship with Mao was still subject to sensitivities. Questions about how and why Mao had used her, and what her precise role had been in his own political calculations, remain largely undiscussed and were off limits in Ye’s book. So, too, for the other figures, who are seen within an interpretive framework that imputes them with mendacity and considerable agency, which they probably did not enjoy. Non-Chinese material about them shows they operated within a far narrower ambit, with no significant power beyond what Mao accorded them.14 Once he had died, they survived for only a few weeks before being arrested by his successor, Hua Guofeng (华国锋). As a sign of how norms regarding acceptable topics change in China, the general silence now blanketing the Cultural Revolution (the fiftieth anniversary of its commencement passed in 2016 with only two curtly condemnatory pieces in the official People’s Daily) means that Ye’s books are no longer publicly available within China. Nor have there been any accounts of the Gang of Four or other leading figures from this period in recent years.

3

Follow the Leaders – Biography in the Deng Era and Afterwards

Political figures may be of central importance in the contemporary PRC, but there was increasing resistance to writing their life stories at least until the era of Xi Jinping. Exceptionally, Deng Xiaoping, the country’s leader throughout the 1980s, commissioned a biography that was produced and published in Chinese in China – but it was written by his daughter, Deng Mao, who had

13 14

Kerry Brown, The New Emperors: Power and the Princelings in China (London and New York: I.B. Tauris, 2014). See for instance, Roderick MacFarquhar and Michael Schoenhals, Mao’s Last Revolution (Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2008) for a comprehensive overview of the Cultural Revolution period and an indication of the extent to which the Gang of Four largely operated under the command of Mao.

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significant political capital of her own. Deng Rong’s work covers the period in which her father was sidelined and sent into what was effectively internal exile during the Cultural Revolution, starting in 1966. The book sidesteps more contentious issues about Deng’s role in earlier campaigns clamping down on intellectuals and largely portrays him as a true and faithful Communist maintaining integrity and dignity even as the rest of the country was pitched into turmoil. Biographies in English, of which there have been plenty, by figures such as the Harvard historian Ezra Vogel or the British academic Michael Dillon, make up for what they lack in intimacy with a more nuanced and complex picture of their target. Even so, Vogel in particular was accused of being uncritical of Deng’s role in the 1989 crackdown on students and others in Tiananmen Square.15 Deng Rong’s book was published in English in 1995, but under the name of Deng Maomao.16 Deng’s immediate successors tended to opt for an increasingly low profile, and this lack of visibility sunk to its nadir in the era of Hu Jintao, president from 2003 to 2013, who maintained a persona so faceless that even his precise place of birth and the date of his father’s death remain, to this day, unclear. Hu, in his public pronouncements, eschewed any attempt to inject his language with even a hint of personal content. He spoke in the archetypal register of the technocrat. This personal reticence did not stop people in Chinese-speaking communities outside the Mainland from producing works that engaged in various sorts of speculation about what the pasts, and the inner lives, of elite Chinese political figures might be. A lack of information, joined with the rising prominence and power of these figures, fueled this subgenre. One of the most prominent writers in this vein, the author Yu Jie (于杰), actually began working in China. His 2008 account of Wen Jiabao proved to be a morality tale for others. Wen’s clean avuncular image while serving as premier (the head of government in the Chinese system) starting in 2003 under Hu Jintao was persistently belied by rumors about the immense wealth of his wife and immediate family, which was attributable to the networks he had forged due to 15

16

Deng Rong used her nickname ‘Maomao’ for the English version to convey a greater sense of informality. Deng Maomao, My Father Deng Xiaoping [translation of 邓榕 ‘我的父亲邓 小平文革岁月’] (Beijing: China Central Documents Publishing House, 2000). Ezra Vogel, Deng Xiaoping and the Transformation of China (Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2011) and Michael Dillon, Deng Xiaoping: The Man who Made Modern China (London and New York: I.B. Tauris, 2015). For a penetrating critique of Vogel see Perry Anderson, ‘Sino-Americana’, in London Review of Books, February 2012, available online at https://www.lrb.co.uk/v34/n03/perry-anderson/sino-americana, accessed July 6, 2019. Deng Maomao, Deng Xiaoping, My Father (New York: Basic Books, 1995).

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his public position. He thus proved a tempting target. Yu’s coruscating work on Wen was rewarded by a campaign of savage reprisals and harassment over the course of 2009. Yu himself fled first to Hong Kong and then the US, repaying the attention focused on him by writing works which have grown even starker in their depiction of current Chinese leaders as latter-day emperors exercising despotic powers. His work on Wen was followed by a book on the even more provocative target of Xi Jinping, whom Yu called ‘China’s Godfather’.17 Xi himself had evidently sanctioned at least some biographical work on him. He had allowed an exhaustive account of his father’s life to appear. He had been willing to do so mainly because such a biographical treatment would bolster his own political capital, Xi Zhongxun being an elite leader from the Mao and Deng eras who had a relatively unproblematic background and track record. Placed under house arrest because of accusations against him in the early 1960s even before the Cultural Revolution commenced, Xi senior had reemerged in the late 1970s and had taken part in the implementation of Dengera reforms in Guangzhou while a senior leader there. This proved to be a rich mine for Xi junior to delve, despite the more complex rumours that Zhongxun had been highly critical of the leadership’s clampdown in 1989.18 That Xi intended to use his own life story as a source of credibility and to garner wider public engagement and support was clear from an outline of his life-path issued by Xinhua, the official state news agency, soon after he came to power in 2012.19 This account portrayed him as someone who, despite being from an elite background in Beijing, had been sent to a rural area in the late 1960s and had experienced firsthand the conditions of the countryside at the time. In other biographical works issued since his ascent to power, the time he spent living in caves in the revolutionary base area of Yan’an during the early 1970s has been presented as a tangible link with the figure of Mao. All this has contributed to the sense that there has been a return to a person-centered, charismatic era of politics, recalling the tenor of the Mao period. The oddity, though, is how this recurrence can happen in a country now so socially and 17

18

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Yu Jie, China’s Best Actor: Wen Jiabao [中国影帝温家宝] (Hong Kong: New Century Press, 2010. See “Chinese Writer Desribes ‘Inhumane Treatment’” January 19, 2012, available at https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-china--16625119, accessed July 4, 2019. Yu Jie, China’s Godfather Xi Jinping [中國教父習近平] (Taipei: Qianwei Publishers 2014). The Editorial Committee for the Biography of Xi Zhongxun, Xi Zhongxun zhuan [Biography of Xi Zhongxun] (Beijing: Zhongyang wenxian chubanshe, two volumes, 2013). See the review by Andrew Nathan in The New York Review of Books, ‘Who Is Xi?’, May 12, 2016, https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2016/05/12/who-is-xi/, accessed July 4, 2019. See ‘Man of the People’, in Xi Jinping, The Governance of China, vol. 1 (Beijing: Foreign Languages Press, 2014), 475ff.

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economically different from the prior era. Xi’s ‘story’ has great symbolic utility, though, infused as it is with the sense of him being wise, almost all-knowing, and humane. Figures like the US doctor Robert Kuhn have complemented such portraiture with biographical contribution in English. What they possess is the most precious of all things to biographers – access to their subject and to primary source material. And even though this access is clearly very limited, and its interpretations and modes of presentation are skewed, we have been offered precious insights into the highly controlled, often very enclosed world of the most powerful political figures in contemporary China. For readers within the People’s Republic of China, as levels of censorship have increased over the last decade, a strategy involving work on distant, historic figures has been adopted. Those who wander into the often vast bookstores in the city centers of contemporary Chinese cities are likely to be struck by the sheer number of works about business and historical figures. The property tycoon and founder of Wangke, Wang Jianlin, is a case in point, as there is no dearth of admiring works about the secrets of his success, the way he overcame early challenges to become in 2016 China’s richest man, and how he might serve as a model for others.20 This treatment harks back to the idea, mentioned earlier, of the Confucian notion of human perfectibility through learning and the use of models enabling others to achieve this ideal state. A similar phenomenon can be found in works on the entrepreneur and founder of Alibaba, Jack Ma Yun, a younger, much more striking figure who is also offered as an exemplar of how anyone, given the necessary grit and application, can succeed. What Chinese-language accounts of these figures lack in China is any attempt to seriously research and interrogate their business practices and understand better just how they have managed to survive, and then thrive, in an environment that most regard as being deeply competitive and often ruthless. Ironically, China’s libel laws mean that those writers who choose contemporary film stars and pop singers as their subjects are as likely to be taken to court for defamation of character by their subjects as they are to fall afoul of traditional censors. In recent years, too, scholarship has burgeoned on figures from the Ming and Qing eras. Qianlong and Kangxi in particular, with their long reigns in the eighteenth century, have proved particularly popular, though even here there are issues around their politicization. These periods were those of the most significant territorial expansion, spreading out over areas such as Xinjiang, which

20

Zhou Xuan, Wang Jianlin and Dalian Wanda: A Biography of One of China’s Greatest Entrepreneurs (China’s Leading Entrepreneurs and Enterprises) (LPublishing, 2017).

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remains contested and troubled to this day. But these works also speak to a sense of nostalgia for a former golden age and a time when China’s cultural influence was at its peak. For the actual technique and practices of biography, there is at Shanghai Jiaotong University a specific center focused on Chinese biography – the Center for Life Writing. Established in 2012, and hosting seminars and international symposia on writing, research, and publishing, it describes itself as fulfilling ‘the urgent need of the society for biography industry as well as to develop the domestic culture of biography. By conducting pervasive research on biography, the Center will establish a modern course of biography. Furthermore, it will also cultivate intelligent scholars in this field, optimizing the opportunity of communication with international academic circle.’ It runs a project supported by the National Social Science Fund, ‘Complication and Research of Overseas Life-writing on Modern Chinese People,’ and is the home to the bulletin Modern Biography Study.21

4

Conclusion

Despite the immense achievement of Sima Qian over two thousand years ago, the Confucian ethos of anti-individualism, alongside the Communists’ own restraints on using personal life stories and their commitment to the collective, has led to significant cultural and political restraints on the practice of writing biographies within the People’s Republic of China. With regard to the long imperial eras, although there are often comprehensive chronological histories, it is rare to find contemporaneous accounts by scholars or others that deal with the lives of significant people. This situation is partly because the most visible and prominent individuals – emperors (there has only ever been one empress in the long sweep of Chinese dynasties) – made biography risky: writing about them in a way subsequently deemed inappropriate could carry a very high cost. Sima Qian himself exemplifies this predicament: his castration resulted from being accused of belittling the emperor in power during the time in which he lived. Nor was there much of a habit of writing about figures in other fields, such as writers or scientists. This norm has extended even to modern times. The shadow of this inhibition against producing critical, evaluative accounts of the lives of important figures continues. Ironically, the best and

21

See the website of the center at http://shss.sjtu.edu.cn/En/Show?w=175&p=170&f=1058.

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most detailed studies of figures like Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping exist in languages other than Chinese, even despite the great restrictions on access to archives within China – a phenomenon that has intensified under Xi Jinping. In different ways, biography of public figures is deeply politicized, with accounts divided between those that read as hagiography, expressing a clearly political motivation in accord with specific narratives of historic development sponsored by the Communist Party, and those that are highly critical and often emerge from Chinese-speaking communities abroad in the US, Taiwan, and, until recent years, Hong Kong. Much of this latter material can be dismissed as salacious and based on speculation and gossip. But Mirror Books in the US has issued works which have at least some semblance of academic integrity. As China becomes increasingly like a capitalist society, at least on the surface, greater individualism has meant that other figures have emerged as subjects who interest the reading public: businesspeople, fashion icons, film celebrities. Strangely, here too there seem to be barriers: although political restraints could be expected to be less strict, fear of libel encourages circumspection. The situation in 2019 is therefore very unusual. A society which has undergone massive change, and where there are human stories in abundance testifying to the individual experience of such immense metamorphoses, is also one in which the analytic and critical evaluation of key players in this vast narrative is simply off limits or is written in a tightly controlled, circumscribed fashion. Xi Jinping encouraged his fellow leaders in 2012 to ‘tell the China story’. It seems that telling the Chinese story at the level of individual people, however, still proves none too easy – a status quo that links the China of today, for all its transformations and changes, with the China of half a century ago.

Double Dutch: the Art of Presidential Biography Carl Rollyson

It has been almost twenty years since Edmund Morris outraged reviewers of presidential biography with his effort to subvert what he deemed a stodgy genre by inventing a narrator, a purported contemporary of Ronald Reagan’s, and events that seemed to him the only way to get at his elusive subject. In the paperback edition of Dutch: A Memoir of Ronald Reagan, the publisher’s note quotes Morris on his predicament: Ronald Reagan is a man of benign remoteness and no psychological curiosity, either about himself or others. He considers his life to have been unremarkable. He gives nothing of himself to intimates (if one can use such a noun in such a phrase), believing that he has no self to give. In the White House he wrote hundreds of personal letters, and obediently kept an eight-year diary, but the handwritten sentences, while graceful and grammatical (never an erasure, never a flaw of spelling or punctuation!), are about as revelatory of the man behind them as the calligraphy of a copyist.1

1 Edmund Morris, Dutch: A Memoir of Ronald Reagan (New York: Modern Library, 2000). The first hardcover edition appeared in 1999. Only the paperback includes the publisher’s note and nineteen excerpts from reviews extolling the book as ‘conceptually courageous’ (Christopher Lehmann-Haupt, The New York Times); ‘controversial in form, and monumental, complex and imaginative in substance’ (John Merony, The American Enterprise); ‘he stepped over the limits assigned to him, trying to explore the inexplorable, to express the inexpressible. The result has all the hallmarks of a great creative work’ (Joan Givner, The Toronto Star). Such accolades obscure the overwhelming chorus of condemnation voiced by other critics, including Peggy Noonan: ‘The fictitious ‘Edmund Morris’ is a bore, tedious and windy, and a distraction from the more compelling story, fitfully told, of Ronald Reagan’ (http://www.peggynoonan.com/84/); Elizabeth Manus noted the ‘book’s breathtaking lunacy and its daring conceit’: ‘In the authorized biography of Ronald Reagan, film-star President, the man who said he witnessed the liberation of the concentration camps but actually only saw newsreel films of the event, it’s difficult to know what it real and what isn’t’ (The New York Observer); James Q. Wilson: ‘He is a writer, a greatly gifted one who obviously spent countless hours fashioning some of the splendid sentences in this book; but these splendid sentences are mostly a revelation of Morris, not of Reagan’ (Commentary). The publisher’s note in the paperback edition does acknowledge other negative assessments, including those by Robert Novak (‘a grossly inadequate biography’) and Joseph J. Ellis (‘a scandal and a travesty’).

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2020 | DOI:10.1163/9789004434974_010

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By reinventing himself as a character in Reagan’s story, the publisher’s note explains, Morris aimed to “bring an extra sharpness of observation to events unquestionably authentic.” He would not make up facts, but put those facts into the service of a fictional narrator. Where to look for precedents in Morris’s bold and controversial authorized biography? The very term, authorized, exalts the old reliable and, so Morris thought, boring narratives. He wanted to be a boffo Boswell. Since 2003, I have reviewed dozens of presidential biographies, and it is time to look at what they have wrought. Is there a way to reverse the rope tied around presidential biography, so that biographers can jump in two different directions at once, serving their subjects and the cause of biography at the same time? Reviewers of Dutch: A Memoir of Ronald Reagan did not respond directly to the frustrations and inhibitions that plague most biographers and that Morris tried to circumvent with his extreme measures, which included the fabrication of screenplays and a writing career for his narrator. Critics focused instead on the biographer’s inventions, and not on why, as a biographer, he wanted to depart from his own previous practice in his acclaimed multi-volume biography of Theodore Roosevelt.2 Morris blamed Reagan for the problem that the biographer had to solve by resorting to fictional techniques. But Morris had other options available to him, as I will show. By subtitling his book ‘a memoir’, he made a category error – which I will explain in due course after examining the many different ways American presidents have been written about. Like Morris, other presidential biographers have tried to write like novelists. In John Adams: A Party of One, for example, James Grant begins with a dramatic scene: John Adams, formerly a rebel and now the first American minister to Great Britain, steels himself for an audience with George III. Grant sets the scene well, pitting the earnest and stiff Adams against the magnanimous and even playful king. This opening shows off what Grant does best: revealing how human character collides with history. The biographer does not provide new data; he offers no novel interpretations of Adams’s politics or even of his personality. And yet the interaction of the individual and events, the connections between the everyday man and the historic role he is obliged to play, are engagingly evoked. Thus, ‘John Adams composed his thoughts on government to the accompaniment of a crying baby [his firstborn child]’.3

2 The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt (New York: Random House, 1980) won both the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award. After Dutch, he completed his trilogy: Theodore Rex (New York: Random House, 2001); Colonel Roosevelt (New York: Random House, 2010). 3 James Grant, John Adams: Party of One (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2005), 20.

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It would be difficult to give George Washington the James Grant treatment. Washington merged so fully with his public role that one of his biographers, Marcus Cunliffe, concluded that the monument had subsumed the man. In His Excellency: George Washington, Joseph J. Ellis singles out Cunliffe’s George Washington: Man and Monument for praise, and I can see why. Cunliffe’s first chapter is drenched in the history of biographies about Washington in order to show how Washington’s laconic style has encouraged biographers to project their own sensibilities and those of their countrymen upon that indispensable man. After Cunliffe, what to do?4 Cunliffe argues that it would be a mistake to humanize Washington – that is, to see him as only performing a role while safeguarding a different, private self. Washington’s reticence was not merely a ploy; it was a habit. He had not held back what he had to say or what he felt; he had schooled himself in feeling only what his role required him to express. Washington’s rare departures from decorum (usually when he lost his temper in volcanic flashes of anger) can be regarded in Cunliffian terms as just that: a momentary break out of his school of cool. Ellis, on the other hand, sees an abiding tension in Washington’s personality, a rashness that resulted not merely in blowups but, for example, in reckless plans to attack the British – disastrous potential assaults that his staff and foreign military observers had to oppose firmly before Washington calmed down. Psychology pervades modern presidential biography. But there is also the Richard Brookhiser way. He has returned to the Plutarchian notion of ‘moral biography’. Calling his book Founding Father: Rediscovering George Washington, Brookhiser structures his narrative via chapters simply titled ‘War’, ‘Constitution’, ‘President’, ‘Nature’, ‘Morals’, ‘Ideas’, ‘Fathers’, ‘Patriarchs and Masters’, ‘Father of His Country’. In some ways, the book marks a return to Cunliffe, seeing the life as a single, exemplary whole.5 The Brookhiser option was not available to Morris since Reagan’s life cannot be sorted into the components of a Plutarchian moral order. No modern man comes with the built-in neoclassical persona of a George Washington. Not enough time has passed to make of Reagan that kind of exemplum. But, like Lincoln, Reagan wrote many of his own speeches, reflecting a persona and worldview that might well structure of a biography. In The Reagans: Portrait of a Marriage, Anne Edwards features Reagan in his role as a writer. Certainly 4 Marcus Cunliffe, George Washington: Man and Monument (New York: New American Library, 1958); Joseph J. Ellis, His Excellency: George Washington (New York: Knopf, 2004). 5 Richard Brookhiser, Founding Father: Rediscovering George Washington (New York: Free Press, 1996).

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he had speechwriters in the White House, but for most of his public career Reagan wrote his own words and labored diligently and daily on his prose so that the prose became the man. Edwards’s biography annihilated the notion often proffered that Reagan was merely a tool or a mouthpiece for others. She solidifies this point by including some of Mr. Reagan’s early speeches as appendices.6 Similarly, in David Donald’s Lincoln, the sixteenth president’s prose provides the template for the biography. Here the biographer remains within Lincoln’s point of view, so that events unfold, as nearly as possible, through Lincoln’s consciousness. Donald is fortunate to have a subject who wrote simply and beautifully and whose words were often recorded. The best passages of the biography skillfully blending judicious quotation and paraphrases of what Lincoln said and wrote.7 Similarly, much of what Reagan wrote about American values can be traced back to his own Illinois childhood and even to his Hollywood years. A different kind of Plutarchian option was open to Morris. Rather than invent a fictional contemporary of Reagan’s to tell the story, why not choose another actor, for example, as a kind of counterweight? I have in mind Robert Ryan, who once told a group of California politicos who wanted to run him for office that Reagan was their man. Ryan had the looks and the stature to play an American president, but he refused the role. Why did he reject such an opportunity, and why did Reagan run after it? Both men’s names had the alliteration and rhythm that worked well in Hollywood and Washington. They would function well as parallel lives. Plutarch argued that an individual’s biography gains in significance when paired with another’s; thus Coriolanus’s ornery pride and antisocial temperament is contrasted to Alcibiades’s good humor and popularity. How did such different men achieve so much and then fail? In Lincoln and Whitman: Parallel Lives in Civil War Washington,8 Mark David Epstein means to be Plutarchian, and then some. On the one hand, the poet and the politician seem breeds apart: the politician always had to consider public opinion, but the poet often thrived by upsetting conventional wisdom. On the other hand, Whitman wanted to be the poet of every American, and Lincoln, especially after he read parts of Leaves of Grass, developed a bolder voice that made him controversial but also brought him national recognition – 6 Anne Edwards, The Reagans: Portrait of a Marriage (New York: St. Martin’s, 2003). 7 David Donald, Lincoln (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1995). 8 Mark David Epstein, Lincoln and Whitman: Parallel Lives in Civil War Washington (New York: Ballantine Books, 2004).

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first stimulated by the Lincoln-Douglas debates, then through the sensationally successful Cooper Union speech in New York City that helped him win the Republican presidential nomination, and finally, of course, in masterpieces such as the Gettysburg Address and his Second Inaugural, both expressing what he had to say with poetic brevity, each totaling less than a thousand words. It is startling to discover via Epstein that in 1859 Lincoln, four years after the publication of the first edition of Whitman’s Leaves of Grass, told Wisconsin farmers, ‘Every blade of grass is a study.’ It is just as startling to discover that Whitman, in a sense, invented Lincoln, when he wrote more than a year before Lincoln took office that the poet would be ‘much pleased to see some heroic, shrewd, fully-informed, healthy-bodied, middle-aged, beard-faced American blacksmith or boatman come down for the West across the Alleghenies, and walk into the Presidency, dressed in a clean suit of working attire, and with the tan all over his face, breast, and arms.’ For Edmund Morris, though, the novel, not Plutarch, proved to be the vehicle to delve into what he could not explore through biography. He had rejected another option: the speculative biography. Why was Reagan so reticent about himself? For Morris, his subject’s reclusive personality could be overcome only by inventing that friend who could tell the story, the way Nick Carraway told of Gatsby’s rise and fall in The Great Gatsby. Not for Morris the kind of openended narrative that C.A. Tripp essays in The Intimate World of Abraham Lincoln (2005). Tripp’s work reminds me of other great speculative biographies, Fawn Brodie’s on Thomas Jefferson and Erik Erikson’s on Martin Luther. Like his predecessors, Tripp teases out anecdotes and details that other historians have either dismissed or passed over without much comment.9 It is quite easy to find lapses in Tripp’s methodological rigor, and it is to his publisher’s credit that critical views of Tripp’s book are included in an Afterword, as well as in an introduction by Jean Baker, one of Mary Todd Lincoln’s biographers. The historians Michael Burlingame and Michael Chessen provide, respectively, ‘A Respectful Dissent’ and ‘An Enthusiastic Endorsement’ – although the latter does not ratify Tripp’s conclusions but rather hails the therapeutic nature of his effort. In Chessen’s view, Tripp’s work has shaken up the Lincoln establishment – much as Annette Gordon-Reid’s book on Jefferson rocked historians.10 9

10

C.A. Tripp, The Intimate World of Abraham Lincoln (New York: Free Press, 2005); Fawn Brodie, Thomas Jefferson: An Intimate History (New York, W.W. Norton, 1974); Erik Erikson, Young Man Luther (New York: W.W. Norton, 1958). Annette Gordon-Reid, Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings: An American Controversy (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 1997).

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It is not enough to throw obstacles in Tripp’s way – to say, for example, that just because Lincoln slept with men means nothing. Men often shared beds in the nineteenth century. But Lincoln slept for four years in the same bed with Joshua Speed, and in the White House he clearly became infatuated with a Union officer, though neither Tripp nor anyone else can determine the precise nature of their relationship. But Tripp highlights other instances of Lincoln’s intimacy with men. Historians often deplore gossip, but biographers should not so easily discard it. Why do certain people seem to stimulate certain kinds of gossip? Why did Virginia Woodbury Fox, the wife of the Assistant Secretary of the Navy, Gustavus V. Fox, report in her diary this confidence from her friend Letitia McKean, a ‘player’ (as Tripp puts it) in ‘Washington’s fashionable society’: ‘Tish says, “there is a Bucktail soldier [C.M. Derickson] here devoted to the President, drives with him, and when Mrs. L. is not home, sleeps with him.” What stuff!’11 Read the rest of Tripp’s chapter on the Lincoln/Derickson liaison, and it is difficult not to see the close bond Lincoln formed with this handsome man nearly a decade his junior. Tripp does not claim to know what happened between the sheets, but Fox’s brief report is not a detail that Plutarch would have omitted any more than he avoided mentioning the gossip Pericles’s son relayed about his famous father. What, then, is Tripp’s point? The same as any biographer’s: to explore the mystery and complexity of human identity. By any measure, his probing account deserves the deference of even his most skeptical critics. Tripp’s effort reveals how hard it is for biographers to penetrate the inner lives of their subjects, and why Morris wanted so badly to write a narrative of Ronald Reagan’s interior life. But for some biographers this modern emphasis on the psychology of the subject is irrelevant, and they revert to an older, eighteenth-century concept of character. In Franklin Delano Roosevelt: Champion of Freedom, Conrad Black does not attribute his subject’s prevarications to any aspect of his upbringing, to those years so crucial, according to psychologists, to the formation of the individual’s personality. FDR liked to aggrandize his role in events – no matter how inconsequential the incident. Thus he wrote home to his parents from boarding school that he had finished fourth in a six-mile paper chase. ‘He hadn’t,’ his biographer reports, ‘but he knew the Grotonian would publish only the names of the three first finishers.’12 So impressed have modern biographers been by the notion of a psyche forged in 11 12

Tripp, Intimate World, 1. Conrad Black, Franklin Delano Roosevelt: Champion of Freedom (New York: Public Affairs, 2003), 26.

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the crucible of early nurturing – or lack thereof – that they are loathe to make moral judgments. Who are the biographers that they should pronounce such verdicts? Psychologizing is the bane of contemporary biography, and Conrad Black will have none of it – or so I surmise, not from any attack he makes on Freud & Co. but from his straightforward narration of how FDR formed his own character. Like Thomas C. Reeves in A Question of Character: A Life of John F. Kennedy, Black believes that the biographer indeed possesses the authority to judge his subject: misinforming his doting parents on such trivial matters was unseemly and potentially risky.13 The adulatory goodwill of his parents was a great asset and Franklin Roosevelt, the eventual political nonpareil, should have recognized that he was putting too much at risk for too little possible reward. In his reading of FDR’s character, Black finds it impossible to believe that his wily subject, however ill he may have been, could have been anyone’s dupe: ‘Even as a child and schoolboy, Franklin Roosevelt was frequently duplicitous. As a political leader he was almost compulsively devious.’14 This is not news to anyone who has read enough Roosevelt biographies. Yet Black knows that the presentation of this aspect of his character makes all the difference. Thus he criticizes Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr.’s defense in volume one of The Age of Roosevelt that his hero was ‘not really Machiavellian’ and that a ‘simple-hearted idealism’ lay near the ‘core of Roosevelt’s personality’.15 On the contrary, Mr. Black replies: Franklin Roosevelt’s talent at deception extended to his convincingly seeming to be a kindly sentimentalist who couldn’t stand to fire people, and a man who was straightforward by nature but nonetheless enjoyed the occasional ruse. Ironically, Roosevelt’s academic admirers, by offering this picture of him, have made him into a better man but a lesser statesman than he actually was. In JFK: Reckless Youth, Nigel Hamilton also takes an eighteenth-century character-driven approach so that the book reads like a picaresque novel. His hero is an adventurer and a bit of a rogue in the family tradition established by the aptly named Joseph, the Kennedy patriarch. The very title of Hamilton’s book is an offense to conventional presidential biography. His gustatory work outraged the Kennedy establishment, including Arthur Schlesinger Jr. and Doris Kearns Goodwin, who campaigned against Hamilton. As a result, he

13 14 15

Thomas C. Reeves, A Question of Character: A Life of John F. Kennedy (New York: Free Press, 1991). Black, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, 28. Black, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, 29; Arthur M. Schlesinger, The Crisis of the Old Order: 1919–1933 (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1956).

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was denied the archival access he needed to complete the second volume of his biography.16 Robert Dallek’s An Unfinished Life: John F. Kennedy, 1917–1963 returned presidential biography to its traditional pious purposes: ‘My objective has not been to write another debunking book (these have been in ample supply in recent years) but to penetrate the veneer of glamour and charm to reconstruct the real man or as close to it as possible.’17 Note that Dallek does not attack the debunkers. How could he, when his Notes section repeatedly cites their work? Ever the gentleman scholar, he uses words like ‘judicious’ and ‘balanced’ in describing his approach. Balance, however, like beauty, is apparently in the eye of the beholder. Certainly Hamilton did not think of himself as injudicious or unbalanced. He set out to write ‘a complete life in the English tradition’, he points out in his Author’s Note and Acknowledgments. His aim was to create a ‘serious, balanced, and scholarly biography’. How did Dallek overcome the Kennedy sensitivities and impediments put in the way of a biographer like Hamilton, and gain access to, in Dallek’s fulsome words, the ‘exquisitely located John F. Kennedy Library at Columbia Point, overlooking Boston Harbor’?18 Dallek, author of an acclaimed twovolume biography of Lyndon Johnson, notes, among other reasons for his access, that he has a reputation for even-handedness. What does this mean? It means that for every negative, he finds a positive. In Hamilton’s book, JFK’s father appears as a rather scurrilous character. A genius stock manipulator and a world-class lecher, Joseph Kennedy was also a political schemer who, as U.S. ambassador to Britain, became in effect an advisor to Neville Chamberlain and a man out to subvert his own president’s policies. In Dallek’s narrative, Joe is an admired athlete with an ‘infectious grin’, a ‘brilliant banker’ and a keen observer of ‘contemporary American financial practices’. In other words, Joe’s juicy life is sucked dry by prose that turn this living character into a parade of bloodless pronouncements. Here is how Dallek treats Joseph Kennedy’s repeated adulteries: ‘Joe’s independence and willingness to defy accepted standards partly expressed itself in compulsive womanizing.’19 It is hardly womanizing at all when put into Dallek’s pacifying prose. It is precisely this kind of anodyne biography that Edmund Morris sought to subvert. He wanted to capture the whole man from a point of view that shed

16 17 18 19

Nigel Hamilton, JFK: Reckless Youth (New York: Random House, 1992). Interview with Nigel Hamilton, September 20, 2018. Robert Dallek, An Unfinished Life: John F. Kennedy (Boston: Little, Brown 2003), x. Dallek, Unfinished Life, 713. Dallek, Unfinished Life, 17, 18, 19, 23.

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the biographer’s usual sidelined sightings of the subject. How to put himself there with Dutch, as the friends of Reagan’s youth nicknamed him, became Morris’s obsession. Other biographers have wanted to do the same and have sought out witnesses to their subject’s doings in the historical evidence – as does Elizabeth Dowling Taylor in A Slave in the White House: Paul Jennings and the Madisons.20 When James Madison died, he owned about one hundred slaves. He freed none of them, not even Paul Jennings, his valet. Jennings could read and write, and in fact published the first White House memoir, declaring that Madison was ‘one of the best men who ever lived’. Modern biographers of Madison, such as Richard Brookhiser and Jeff Broadwater, have frankly acknowledged the shocking truth that such a politically astute and sensitive founding father utterly failed to address the problem of slavery seriously.21 Kevin R.C. Gutzman, Andrew Burstein and Nancy Isenberg, and other biographers treat the issue of slavery as a thing apart, in separate chapters of their books, instead of dealing with the place of the ‘peculiar institution’ in Madison’s life.22 Dowling, by contrast, crafts a narrative in which African Americans are virtually never out of sight. This makes a great deal of sense: It is unlikely that Madison ever spent a day without relying on the services of enslaved people. He took at least one of them with him whenever he traveled. Paul Jennings was the last one out the door, clutching some of Dolley Madison’s treasures, as the British advanced and set fire to the White House during the War of 1812. Like Madison himself, his biographers treat slavery as a kind of dirge, faintly heard offstage and nearly drowned out by the stirring music of the freedom fighters making an American Revolution and the framers of the Constitution going about the glorious work of creating a democratic republic. Taylor wants us to listen to a more troubled theme, and the result is a revelation: We are tasked with considering Madison as a ‘garden-variety slaveholder’: ‘He followed the basic patterns and norms for slaves’ living conditions and treatment that had long been established on Virginia plantations and like most owners respected the customary ‘rights’ – such as Sundays off – that enslaved

20 21

22

Elizabeth Dowling Taylor, A Slave in the White House: Paul Jennings and the Madisons (New York: St. Martin’s, 2012). Richard Brookhiser, James Madison (New York: Basic Books, 2011); Jeff Broadwater, James Madison: A Son of Virginia and a Founder of the Nation (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2012). Kevin R.C. Gutzman, James Madison and the Making of America (New York: St. Martin’s, 2012); Andrew Burstein and Nancy Isenberg, Madison and Jefferson (New York: Random House, 2010).

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people had come to consider their due.’23 If it is not oxymoronic to say so, Madison was a humane slaveholder. He was also not very enterprising, in that his human holdings constituted – as they did for Jefferson – a losing economic proposition. As soon as her husband died, Dolley Madison, whose Quaker father had freed his slaves, sold off batches of her slaves to pay off debts. Madison’s idea of the American polity had no place for educated black men and women, let alone the masses of freed slaves that he believed had trouble governing themselves. No matter which biography you read, all of them eventually disclose this fundamental fact: Madison did not believe that white and black Americans could live side by side on terms of equality and amity. His failure to imagine a world more capacious and tolerant than his own helps explain a good deal of subsequent history, and America’s resistance to the very practice of equality that Madison otherwise did so much to foster. Taylor infuses presidential biography with a new spirit by including the testimony of Paul Jennings, just as Annette Gordon-Reid used the testimony of the Hemings family to reorient our view of Jefferson.24 By subtitling his book a memoir, Edmund Morris acknowledged that some of the best biographies are also memoirs and draw heavily on the memoir form. It is a difficult feat – to see a subject whole while providing a personal perspective. It took Boswell more than seven years to master this hybrid genre, factoring in the Samuel Johnson he knew for twenty-eight years as well as other primary sources and competing biographies. This kind of biographer, submitting his perceptions to a long gestation, can make his own developing understanding of the subject a study in itself. The journalist Lou Cannon worked on his own hybrid treatment of Ronald Reagan for over thirty-five years, interviewing and reporting on the governor and president and developing an authority that his subject’s authorized biographer, Edmund Morris, could only dream of attaining.25 Morris refers to Cannon as ‘Dutch’s most dispassionate chronicler’. The phrase seems a demotion, since chroniclers are not in the same high class as biographers and historians, but elsewhere Morris acknowledges Cannon as Reagan’s ‘longtime observer and biographer’. Nevertheless, Dutch seems designed to supplant not merely .

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Taylor, Slave in the White House, 21. See Annette Gordon-Reid, The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family (New York: W.W. Norton, 2008). Lou Cannon, Ronnie and Jesse: A Political Odyssey (New York: Doubleday, 1969); Reagan (New York: Putnam’s, 1982); President Reagan: The Role of a Lifetime (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1991; revised edition 2000); Governor Reagan: His Rise to Power (New York: Public Affairs, 2009).

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Cannon but every other biographer as well. As Morris told his editor Robert Loomis, ‘I want to make literature out of Ronald Reagan.’ Until I read Cannon’s Governor Reagan: His Rise to Power, Morris’s invention of himself as a character in Reagan’s biography remained a mystery to me. The mystery began in 1997, the English Speaking Union invited me to join a panel discussion of biographers starring Edmund Morris. But at the last minute he pulled out, pleading the pressure of his Reagan biography deadline, and so his wife, the lively Sylvia Jukes Morris, biographer of Clare Boothe Luce, appeared in his stead. She said not a word when I provocatively chided biographers for being rather stodgy – not inventive enough in constructing their narratives. I had no specific remedies in mind – certainly not anything like Morris’s radical departure from biographical decorum – but biographers on all sides attacked me as a revolutionary. I took the stillness of Sylvia the Silent as an even sterner reproof. But I now imagine she was sitting there musing on her husband’s doomed attempt to ‘make literature out of Ronald Reagan’. Morris wanted to play Jack Burden to Mr. Reagan’s Willie Stark. The trouble is that this idea of the biographer as the subject’s contemporary shadow works reasonably well in Robert Penn Warren’s novel, All the King’s Men, and in Primary Colors, Joe Klein’s knockoff of Warren, but it cannot work for biography.26 Morris was simply not there at the critical moments in Reagan’s life. I can imagine Lou Cannon saying, in a paraphrase of Senator Lloyd Bentsen famous quip in the 1988 vice-presidential debate, ‘Sir, I knew Ronald Reagan.’ Perhaps this is why Cannon does not even include Dutch in his bibliography. Morris attempts to deflect attention away from his fouling of biographical conventions by arguing that Ronald Reagan could not be known through the usual techniques available to the biographer. The remote Mr. Reagan had no intimate friends and did not open himself up even to his children. To Nancy, his nearest and dearest, he retained a reservoir of feeling she could never quite fathom. But Morris went further, positing Reagan as a hollow man. This is a standard theme in Reagan biography. In President Reagan: The Role of a Lifetime, Cannon made much of Reagan’s career as an actor, positing the well-worn idea that actors are empty vessels: having no well defined personalities, they take refuge in scripts and in characters who endow the actor with traits they temporarily adopt while looking for yet further roles to play, in order to fill the emptiness that otherwise haunts them. Morris, frustrated that he could not engage Reagan even after gaining unprecedented access to the White House, never gets beyond this view of Ronald Reagan as actor. The greatness of Lou 26

Robert Penn Warren, All the King’s Men (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1946); Anonymous [Joe Klein], Primary Colors (New York: Random House, 1996).

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Cannon’s fifth book on Reagan is that he does. To be sure, acting is still an important theme in Cannon’s biography. He recounts his interview with an angry Reagan complaining about accounts calling him a ‘B-picture actor’. Reagan named all the great actors with whom he had appeared in films and then, Cannon writes, ‘He calmed down, paused, and – almost shyly – added, ‘I’m proud of having been an actor.’27 To me, at any rate, Cannon has captured the tone of an engaged human being who conveyed to his biographer his heartfelt conviction. Cannon latches onto the greatest theme a biographer can have when he endeavors to explain why his subject has been so misunderstood. Of course Reagan was a performer; of course he told the same jokes and stories over and over and thus shaped a compelling public persona. But the idea that behind the performance there was no thinking man who could be described by a biographer will strike anyone reading Cannon’s account of Reagan’s rise to power as absurd. So why did Edmund Morris persist in his idiosyncratic quest? He reached a point recognized by many biographers: What we want to say is wrapped up in our own involvement with the subject, and yet readers come to our books wishing to know about the subject, not the biographer. Biography proceeds under false pretenses insofar as, unlike the novel, we never learn much about the first-person narrator, the biographer. The exceptions are the memoirs written by the Boswells of the world. Morris, unfortunately, for all his access, did not see enough of Ronald Reagan to effectively become such a Boswell, and so the Kenyan-born biographer made himself an American, a scenario writer, a denizen of Hollywood and other places where Ronald Reagan made his mark. The trouble is that we, as readers, do not care about the Edmund Morris who appears in Dutch the way we do care about Jack Burden or Nick Carraway or other such characters in fiction. We identify with Burden or Carraway precisely because they are fictional and cannot exist outside of the novels for which they have been created. When they tell us about Willie Stark and Jay Gatsby we are engrossed and enchanted. But when we read about the character ‘Edmund Morris’, we say, ‘Who cares?’ He is not real. Only fiction, pure fiction, paradoxically, can make believers of us. In Dutch: A Memoir of Ronald Reagan, Edmund Morris has committed a fundamental category error. He wants to ascribe to biography what can only belong to fiction. It is one thing to say a biography reads like a novel – as James Grant’s life of Adams does. It is quite another thing to suppose a biography can actually be, ontologically speaking, a novel. 27

Cannon, Governor Reagan, 61.

Biography in Australia: Different Yet the Same? All Connected Flatland? Melanie Nolan

Australia’s leading autobiographer, Jill Ker Conway (1934–2018), argued that explaining patterns of autobiographical writing and the reasons people read about other people’s lives lay ‘not in theory but in cultural history’, that is beliefs, norms and traditions.1 Conway’s own cultural life was transnational. She was best known for her autobiographies, in particular her first, bestselling book The Road from Coorain (1989), an account of her childhood in a remote sheep station in the Western Plains of New South Wales in Australia and her journey to being accepted into Harvard’s doctoral program in the United States.2 It was on the New York Times’ bestseller list for fifty-four weeks and the Australian Public Broadcasting Service, as part of the PBS series Masterpiece Theater, based a film on it in 2002. Less well-known were the second and third volumes in her autobiographical trilogy. In True North in 1994 she argued that, as an Australian woman who had come of age in the 1950s, she could not have had an interesting career as a young woman; she ‘had to get away from Australia’.3 Her decision to go to North America was a professional conclusion reached ‘by exhausting all the possibilities of interesting careers in Australia, discovering, one by one, that they were not open to women’.4 However, being refused entry, for instance, into the Australian foreign service allowed her to ‘view life from a different perspective’ over her many years living in the US and Canada.5 A Woman’s Education spans her decade as the first woman president of Smith College, the largest women’s college in the US, from 1975 to 1985, a time when, dealing with fashions in scholarship, she had to overcome 1 Jill Ker Conway, When Memory Speaks: Reflections on Autobiography (New York: Alfred Knopf, 1998), 3–4. 2 Jill Ker Conway, The Road from Coorain (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1989). 3 The first three women accepted into the Australian diplomatic service in 1943 were Diana Hodgkinson, Bonnie Taylor, and Julia Drake-Brockman; Coral Bell and Cynthia Nelson joined External Affairs soon after. The first resigned as a result of the marriage bar by 1948; Bell did not marry, but went into academia in 1951, while Nelson was the first female career diplomat, serving until she married in the late 1950s. 4 Conway was part of a wave of Australian women who came to the US. See Anne Rees, ‘Travelling to Tomorrow: Australian Women in the United States, 1910–1960’, Ph.D thesis, Australian National University (ANU), 2016. 5 Jill Ker Conway, True North: A Memoir (New York: Vintage, 1995 [1994]), ix.

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2020 | DOI:10.1163/9789004434974_011

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‘a conservative faculty and ossified traditions’ in attempting to prepare the young women in her charge for the new realities they would face in the world beyond the campus.6 She returned to Australia at least every two or three years and even in death she showed herself to be transnational: half of her ashes were placed next to her husband’s in Massachusetts, and half were scattered on the bare and harsh plains of far western New South Wales. Even more little known than her own life story was Conway’s analytical work about memoirs and autobiographies. A historian and feminist biographer, Conway viewed life writing of all kinds as social documents – intermingling author, subject, and object.7 Her idea of biography was a flatland, too: she did not draw a clear distinction between biography and autobiography, it was all life writing, and biography as a research topic belonged to history as well as to literature. Conway argued that life writing was bound in the ‘prison of history and culture’ with its forms and stylistic patterns varying ‘profoundly over time’.8 Culture, however, gave subjects ‘an inner script by which we live our lives’.9 Conway teased out an universal Western European script, which included ‘white settler societies that are its offshoots’ but went further in a series of surveys to show that women’s memoirs in Africa, Asia, Australia, Britain, Canada, and New Zealand as well as the United States largely shared this script.10 Gendered differences mattered most to Conway as a liberal feminist historian when she considered this universal Western European autobiographical and life-writing script. While the genre’s forms and stylistic patterns were contingent and varied ‘profoundly over time’ its variations constituting ‘a kind of history of the way we understand the self’, the theoretical categories ‘defining a genre may be fixed’.11 She argued that theoretical issues remained important, with male and female life scripts being fundamental. For instance, Freud and Jung inscribed the conventional male and female life scripts as thoroughly into their practice as did those writing in classical antiquity. Conway judged the linguistic conventions of life writing as subsuming the female within the male, resulting in a male-dominant infrastructure or arche6 7 8 9 10

11

Jill Ker Conway, A Woman’s Education (New York, Vintage, 2001). Jill Ker Conway, In Her Own Words: Women’s Memoirs from Australia, New Zealand, Canada, and the United States (New York: Vintage, 1998), vii. Conway, When Memory Speaks, 4. Ibid., 7. Jill Ker Conway ed., Written by Herself: Autobiographies of American Women: An Anthology (New York: Vintage, 1992); Written by Herself, vol. 2: Women’s Memoirs from Britain, Africa, Asia, and the United States (London: Vintage, 1996); and In Her Own Words: Women’s Memoirs from Australia, New Zealand, Canada, and the United States (New York: Vintage, 1998). Conway, When Memory Speaks, 4.

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typical life script for memoir and biography. This conviction meant that her main research question in history became, as she put it, ‘How can she construct the life history of someone other than a sex object whose story ends when soundly mated?’12 The overarching pattern for life writing derived from adaptations of the story of the epic hero in classical antiquity which cast life as an odyssey. Jean-Jacques Rousseau in Confessions (1781) reworked this model into a new template for male life history, based on the secular hero fashioning his life as ‘an odyssey, a journey through many trials and tests, which the hero must surmount alone through courage, endurance, cunning and moral strength’.13 Conway surveyed a series of ‘archetypal male biographical epics’; those by Benjamin Franklin (1818), Frederick Douglass (1845, 1855, 1881) and Henry Ford (1923).14 Whereas the symbolic male hero’s life changes over time, until relatively recently the life of a powerful woman was regarded not as admirable but rather as monstrous. Western culture rendered women extraneous to two core areas of life: politics and theology. Nevertheless, the presence of women in monasteries and the gradual increase in the education of girls and women led women to seek political and cultural rights and to work against the patriarchal inheritance in order to tell their stories. Of late, then, as a result of women’s expanded agency and their growing literary consciousness, there has been some breakdown in the symbolic male hero dominance in biographical scripts. Conway’s discussion of a universal script and its long-enduring efficacy did not blind her to variations in and from that script. She argued that memoirs were ‘invaluable documents for the historian for the patterns of culture’ that they delineated, as well as for their contribution to the analysis of universal scripts: As a product of the pre-1950 British Commonwealth world, I have lived my adult life in Canada and the United States. This means I have often played the game of wondering what life might have been like had I stayed in my native Australia, and during journeys home, I have reflected on the

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Conway, When Memory Speaks, 4. Conway, When Memory Speaks, 7. Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Confessions (1781). Benjamin Franklin, Autobiography (London & New York: Dent/Dutton, 1948 [1818]). Frederick Douglass, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave (1845), My Bondage and My Freedom (1855) and The Life and Times of Frederick Douglass (1881, revised 1892). Henry Ford, in collaboration with Samuel Crowther, My life and work (Sydney: Angus & Robertson, 1924 [1923]).

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various ways in which being a woman in one segment or other of the English-speaking world is different but the same.15 In this chapter, I consider how Australia exhibits most of the characteristics of biographical writing common to the Western world even as it manifests something different as well. Australian biography exhibits the same features that Nigel Hamilton and Hans Renders have considered in their recent The ABC of Modern Biography. They observe that it is possible to give an ‘overview of modern biography as it is understood and practised today’ as can be recognized ‘across the media and the globe’.16 Recently there has been a huge wave of Australian biographical writing, as has happened elsewhere, and these instances share many things in common. And yet I argue that there is more to Australian biography than simply its particular subject matter and antipodean idiom. Australian biography possesses certain peculiar and significant characteristics that derive from the chemistry of the genre with specific places, eras, and methods.

1

Global Aspects of Australian Biography: Enough to Be Excellent?

The overriding characteristic of Australian biographical writing is its belatedness. Several overviews of Australian biography have argued that it took relatively longer to emerge than elsewhere and came to be only with some travail.17 Putting this aspect to one side, let us ask, then, whether Australian biography was ‘born modern’ or global when it finally came to flourish.18 The mere identification of Australian biography was a matter of debate at the end of the twentieth century, but soon there were other debates, too. Indeed, it is revealing to consider recent public controversies over Australian biography, 15 16 17

18

Conway, In Her Own Words, vii. Nigel Hamilton and Hans Renders, The ABC of Modern Biography (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2018), 7. For overviews of the development Australian Biography see Dorothy Green’s rev. ed. of H.M. Green, A History of Australian Literature Pure and Applied: A Critical Review of All Forms of Literature Produced in Australia from the First Books Published after the Arrival of the First Fleet until 1950 (London & Sydney: Angus & Robertson, 1984–85 [1962]). See also Stuart Macintyre, ‘Biography’, in The Oxford Companion to Australian History, ed. Graeme Davison, John Hirst, and Stuart Macintyre (Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1998), and Melanie Nolan and Malcolm Allbrook, ‘Australian Historians and Biography’, in Australian Journal of Biography and History, no. 1 (November 2018): 3–21. See Nicholas Brown, ‘Born Modern: Antipodean Variations on a Theme’, in Historical Journal 48, no. 4 (2005): 1139–1154.

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which in many ways mirror those that have erupted elsewhere on the global stage. As Ray Monk and others have pointed out, an expanding international body of academic literature on biography asks some of the same questions that Samuel Johnson addressed in his two famous essays on biography in the Rambler (1750) and the Idler (1759): Is biography fiction? Who deserves to have a biography written about them? What details are appropriate to be included in a biography? Is it possible to know with any certainty the inner life of another? What are the moral or ethical responsibilities of biographers toward their subjects, social sensitivities, and the truth?19 There have been controversies over particular biographies. Tim Rowse’s biography of H.C. ‘Nugget’ Coombs, the director-general of postwar reconstruction, the governor of the Reserve Bank, and a public intellectual, made no mention of his long relationship with the poet and fellow intellectual Judith Wright, which prompted discussion about whether one could write Coombs’s life and knowingly exclude his clandestine twenty-five-year relationship with Wright.20 Coombs and Wright’s correspondence was released in 2009; access to such ‘egodocuments’ is not just an Australian issue, nor are the issues about reading such material confined to the local scene. The Dutch historian Jacques Presser defined egodocuments as ‘those documents in which an ego deliberately or accidentally discloses or hides itself’.21 Similarly the lack of any clear distinction between autobiography and memoir, or among kinds of egodocuments, is not a distinctly Australian biographical issue. Indeed, in addition to the discussions about defining Australian biography or autobiography, there have been debates in Australia paralleling those overseas over fictive and fraudulent biographies, about the ethics of writing contemporary biographies of people who refuse to cooperate with their authors, and, increasingly, the legacy of the Western script that Conway has identified. When Geoffrey Cains created the National Biography Award of Australia at the end of the twentieth century, he was signaling that Australian biography 19 20

21

Ray Monk, ‘Life without Theory: Biography as an Exemplar of Philosophical Understanding’, in Poetics Today 28, no. 3 (Fall 2007): 527–570. Tim Rowse, Nugent Coombs: A Reforming Life (Port Melbourne, Victoria: Cambridge University Press, 2002). Their relationship was one of the ‘best-kept open secrets in Australian literary history’ and was finally made public when their embargoed letters to each other were released in 2009. For a discussion of ‘egodocuments’ and their reconception over time, see Michael Mascuch, Rudolf Dekker, and Arianne Baggerman, ‘Egodocuments and History: A Short Account of the Longue Duree’, Historian 78, no. 1 (Spring 2016): 11–56. I thank the editors for drawing my attention to the relevance of this article to my discussion.

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had come of age. Cains wanted to stimulate interest in Australian biographical writing by rewarding its practitioners by way of a ‘rich prize’.22 Hoping to stimulate others to engage in public philanthropy, he founded the award with his own funds and entrusted its operation and administration to the State Library of New South Wales.23 Established in 1996, it has been awarded annually since 2002 to honor the best published work of biographical or autobiographical writing by an Australian, tackling as its subject an Australian or someone who has ‘made a significant contribution to Australia’. Although more than one life can be dealt with, titles qualifying for the award can only be those books ‘where the stories or lives are strongly intertwined’.24 The first award was given to Abraham Biderman, a Holocaust survivor born in Lódz, Poland, who immigrated to Australia in 1949, singling out his The World of My Past, a book about his wartime experience.25 The second award went to the poet Roberta Sykes’s The Snake Cradle, the first volume of an autobiographical trilogy.26 Her father, whom she never knew, was an African-American soldier who had visited Australia; she became the first black Australian to graduate from a university in the United States (Harvard, in 1983), and became a prominent Australian land activist. In 2000 the joint winners were Peter Robb, for his biography of the Italian painter Caravaggio, and Mandy Sayer, for her account of the years she spent performing on the streets of New York and New Orleans with her father, a jazz drummer.27 Indeed, the National Biography Award of Australia was established amid a wider debate ‘about how Australian should Australian literature be’.28 Frank Moorhouse’s Grand Days was excluded from consideration from the Miles Franklin Literary Award in 1994 because his fictional account of Edith Campbell Berry, a woman diplomat representing Australia in Geneva during the early days of the League of Nations, was deemed not to have sufficient Australian content. The book was good, but questions were raised about whether 22

23 24 25 26 27 28

Angela Bennie, interviewing Cains, ‘They’re six of the best’, in Sydney Morning Herald, March 1, 2002. See also National Biography Award guidelines, http://www.sl.nsw.gov.au/ sites/default/files/national_biography_award_guidelines_2018, accessed March 21, 2018. In 2005, the prize money was increased from $12,500 to $20,000, with the support of Michael Crouch, and to $25,000 in 2012. National Biography Award guidelines, 2018. Abraham H. Biderman, The World of My Past (Melbourne: AHB Publications, 1995). Roberta B. Sykes, The Snake Cradle (St. Leonards, NSW: Allen & Unwin, 1997). Peter Robb, M: Biography of European Painter Caravaggio (Sydney: Duffy & Snellgrove, 1998). Mandy Sayer, Dreamtime Alice: A Memoir (New York: Ballantine, 1998). Nicholas Birns, ‘Is Australian Literature Global Enough?’, in JASAL: Journal of the Association for the Study of Australian Literature, 15, no. 3 (2015): 15.2–15.3.

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it was sufficiently Australian. The subsequent outcry led to a broadening in the interpretation of ‘Australian life’ with regard to the prize guidelines. Even though Berry was still in Geneva, a judging panel for the Franklin in 2001 deemed the second volume in what became a trilogy, Dark Palace, to be sufficiently Australian for it to win the prize that year. Berry was a fictional creation, although David Marr teased that it was a curious oversight that Edith Campbell Berry ‘has no entry in the Australian Dictionary of Biography’.29 At some point around the turn of the present century, Australian literature globalized. The National Biography Award of Australia picked up on this debate by putting forth its broad definition of what constituted an Australian author and subject: to be excellent was enough. This revised stance also reflected modern Australian demography: one in four of Australia’s population had now been born overseas; one in five is an expatriate; and at least 45 percent of Australians have at least one parent who was born overseas. Conway’s idea of a gendered biographical script is also evident here. Since the NBA’s establishment it has been awarded to seven women and sixteen men, honoring six biographies of women and eighteen biographies of men.30 One biography was indigenous: Roberta Sykes’s aforementioned Snake Cradle. Barry Hill won in 2004 for his Broken Song: T.G.H. Strehlow and Aboriginal Possession.31 Strehlow was an anthropologist who studied the Arrernte (Aranda, Arunta) Aboriginal Australians in Central Australia, who had ritually adopted him. While there are many more biographies appearing on Australian women and indigenous subjects, structural challenges linger and, as elsewhere, gender and racial imbalances in authors and subjects persist. In this respect the National Biography Award of Australia is probably representative of biography prizes internationally. Richard Evans, longtime judge of the British Wolfson Prize, suggested that, ‘if you take quality history with an appeal beyond the academic, then women are finding publishers and readers and winning prizes too’.32 Nevertheless, most surveys indicate that biography is still mostly written by men about male subjects, a bias that strongly suggests that the most popular biographies continue to reflect a particular subject’s social, intellec-

29 30 31 32

David Marr, ‘Age of Innocence’, Monthly, November 2011. Compared to the ten individual women who had won the Miles Franklin Literary Award over its fifty-four-year history. Barry Hill, Broken Song: T.G.H. Strehlow and Aboriginal Possession (Milsons Point, NSW: Vintage, 2003). Richard J. Evans, “Big Books by Blokes about Battles’: Why Is History Still Written Mainly by Men?’, Guardian, February 6, 2016, accessed August 23, 2018, www.theguardian.com/ books/2016/feb/06/books-blokesbattles-history-written-by-men.

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tual, and political standing. One marker of change is the current debate over decolonizing and feminizing the Australian Dictionary of Biography.33 There has been a second major Australian debate over genre boundaries. As Hamilton and Renders note, ‘the extension or crossing of one boundary […] has come to cause practitioners of biography to feel a deep sense of anxiety, the matter of fact’.34 Historians have been most concerned about wider issues such as indicated in the title of Ann Curthoys and John Docker’s 2005 work, Is History Fiction?35 Of course there are novels, which have not caused concern. Peter Carey’s True History of the Kelly Gang is a historical novel which claims to be a ‘true history’ based ‘loosely on actual events’ in Kelly’s life.36 Australian biographers who use fiction more selectively or episodically have, however, attracted controversy. Kate Grenville’s The Secret River in 2006 elicited criticism from a range of historians who wanted to enforce the boundary between historical figures and a novelist’s inventions. Inga Clendinnen argued that Grenville’s novel was an abuse of the historical record that made her ‘flinch’, an example of the many ways novelists ‘have been doing their best to bump historians off the track’.37 Similarly Mark McKenna, complained about ‘novelists parading as historic authorities’ but, more importantly, he claimed: ‘Fiction has historical elements, history has fictive elements, but fiction should not be claimed as history. All writers and critics have an obligation to distinguish between the two. Most of all we owe this distinction to our readers.’38 Grenville defended her writing in a spirited fashion: ‘Here it is in plain words: I don’t think The Secret River is history […] Nor did I ever say that I thought my novel was history. In fact, on countless occasions I was at pains

33

34 35 36 37

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‘Recovered Lives: Why Don’t We Know Their Names?’, in Inside Story, liftout published in Canberra Times, March 8, 2019, https://insidestory.org.au/why-dont-we-know-their -names/; Paul P. Daley, ‘Decolonising the Dictionary: Reclaiming Australian History for the Forgotten’, in Guardian, February 17, 2019; Frank Bongiorno, ‘Australian Portraits: The Australian Dictionary of Biography’, in Meanjin 78, no. 2 (Winter 2019): 88–94. Hamilton and Renders, The ABC of Modern Biography, 21. Ann Curthoys and John Docker, Is History Fiction? (Sydney: UNSW Press, 2006). Peter Carey, True History of the Kelly Gang (New York: Knopf, 2000). Inga Glenndinen, ‘The History Question: Who Owns the Past?’, in Quarterly Essay 23 (2006), 1–72. See also ‘The History Question: Response to Correspondence’, in Quarterly Essay 25 (2007), 73–77. Mark McKenna, ‘Writing in the Past’, in The Australian Financial Review, December 16, 2005, 16, republished in Drusilla Modjeska, ed., Best Australian Essays 2006 (Melbourne: Black Inc, 2006). For a wider discussion, see Sarah Pinto, ‘History, Fiction and The Secret River’, in Lighting Dark Places: Essays on Kate Grenville, ed. Sue Kossew (Amsterdam and New York: Rodopi, 2010), 179–198.

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to make it clear that I knew it wasn’t.’39 She was not bumped off the track herself, either. Grenville went to publish other ‘creative fictive’ biographies. She has published on the scholar and astronomer William Dawes, a lieutenant with the First Fleet who attempted to record and decipher the language of indigenous people in the Sydney area with the help of a young Aboriginal girl, Patyegarang. Despite having twenty notebooks full of her mother Nance Russell’s memoir fragments and taped conversations with her, Grenville decided to write ‘in third person through Nance’s imagined consciousness’, blending biographical and fictional practices. Grenville is clear that she made up the dialogue.40 Like Grenville, Peter FitzSimons has also made up dialogue in his biographies of iconic Australian figures such as the World Cup–winning Wallaby captain Nick Farr-Jones (1993), the federal opposition leader Kim Beazley (1998), John Eales (2001), the magazine queen Nene King (2002), the cricketer Steve Waugh (2004), the boxer Les Darcy (2007), the aviator Sir Charles Kingsford Smith (2009), the Antarctic explorer Douglas Mawson (2011), the war heroine Nancy Wake (2011), the bushranger Ned Kelly (2013), the continental explorers Burke and Wills (2017), as well as numerous military histories and an autobiography of his childhood. His case is more in the nature of R.G. Collingwood’s ‘reenactment,’ although applied to narrative history, part of the ‘affective turn’.41 Peter FitzSimons’s publishers note that he is ‘one of Australia’s biggest selling non-fiction authors of the last twenty years’.42 His biography of Wake sold more than 200,000 copies in 2017; the average academic tome sells less than 2,000. Writers of popular biography such as Grenville and FitzSimons often practice scrupulous scholarship ‘as an essential stage of preparation’.43 As Margaret Atwood explained of her novel Alias Grace, based on Grace Marks: ‘When there was a solid fact, I could not alter it but, in the parts left unexplained – the gaps left unfilled – I was free to invent.’44 Opinions have been divided even 39 40 41 42 43 44

Kate Grenville, ‘The History Question: Response’, in Quarterly Essay 25 (2007): 66–72. Kate Grenville, One Life: My Mother’s Story (Melbourne: Text Publishing, 2015). Ian McCalman and Paul Pickering, eds., Historical Reenactment: From Realism to the Affective Turn (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010), 1–2. Peter FitzSimons, ‘On Biography’, paper delivered at the National Centre of Biography, ANU, April 11, 2019. Ina Schabert, 1982: ‘Most ‘biographical’ novelists insist on scrupulous scholarship as an essential stage of preparation.’ Margaret Atwood, ‘In Search of Alias Grace: On Writing Canadian Historical Fiction’, in American Historical Review 103, no. 5 (December 1998): 1515. Alias Grace (Toronto: McLellan and Stewart, 1996). See the AHR’s ‘Forum on Histories and Historical Fictions’, in American Historical Review 103 (December 1998): 5.

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over deceptive biography. In 1994 Helen Darville (later Helen Dale) wrote under her pen name, Helen Demidenko, the novel The Hand that Signed the Paper, the story of a young Australian woman striving to understand her Ukranian family’s past and their siding with the Nazis against Bolshevik Jews during World War II. It won the Australian Vogel’s and Miles Franklin literary awards. The publisher stressed Demidenko’s Ukrainian ancestry and the author spoke about her family’s connection to the Holocaust in interviews, so people assumed her book was based on family sources. When Darville was exposed as having no Ukranian background, opinion was divided.45 She went on to become a political advisor to a right-wing libertarian politician.46 A third public discussion and controversy has taken up the gatekeeping of the writing of biography. On one level this involves the restriction of the use of personal records and recollections, even when deposited in public archives. Australia has strict guidelines, moreover, on birth, death, and marriage records held in the public trust. While World War I soldiers’ military records have been released and are available digitally, including repatriation records, which record soldiers’ treatments for sexually transmitted diseases or the histories of mental illness, for the past eighty years only family members have been allowed to access birth, death, and marriage certificates from most State Registry offices. Furthermore, some subjects attempt to control their biographical reputations by commissioning processes and extending or withholding cooperation and access. The extent to which Australian biography follows global trends is clear in this regard: indeed, Hamilton and Renders are able to cite Australian examples when discussing the ethics of living subjects’ objections to biographical portraits addressing their lives.47 The Australian left-wing feminist and mostly expatriate academic Germaine Greer, author of the international bestseller The Female Eunuch (1970), savaged her biographer Chris Wallace, describing her, inter alia, as a ‘dung beetle’, ‘intestinal flora’ and a ‘wretched bloody woman’, whom she threatened to ‘kneecap’ if Wallace dared to talk to her mother.48 Peggy Greer did talk to Wallace and the unauthorized biography was published in 1997, but projects by other authors have had to be

45 46 47 48

Helen Dale, ‘My Life as a Young Australian Novelist’, in Quadrant (May 2006): 14–21. Jeff Sparrow, ‘The Return of Helen Demidenko: From Literary Hoaxer to Political Operator’, in Australian Guardian, July 8, 2015. Hamilton and Renders, ABC of Modern Biography, 45. Robert Milliken, ‘Greer Savages Dung Beetle Biographer’, Independent, September 28, 1997; Louis Nowra, ‘The Better Self? Germaine Greer and the Female Enunch’, Monthly, February 25, 2010. See Chris Wallace, Germaine Greer, Untamed Shrew (Sydney: Macmillan, 1997).

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scuttled because the subject refused to cooperate (for instance, Hazel Rowley’s own planned biography of Greer, which Rowley abandoned).49 The follow-up to Greer’s story is that the University of Melbourne Archives paid $3 million in 2013 to purchase, transport, catalogue, house, and selectively digitize her papers, an archive spanning her life and career.50 Greer has never wanted a biography written about her while alive and consistently did not cooperate with Elizabeth Kleinhenz on the latter’s biography which was based on the Germaine Greer Archive, whose materials currently fill 487 archive boxes and occupy 82 meters of shelf space, covering the years 1959–2010 and now publicly accessible.51

2

Characteristics of an Australian Biographical Practice?

These public debates over biography involve drawing lines in spatial terms and concern genre rules and access to subjects and sources, showing that Australian debates resemble those in other countries and are pervaded by unresolved tensions. But certain issues are also taking Australian biography in particular directions. The Australian biographical interest in identity and solidarity is partly a function of Australian immigration patterns past and present. Australia is a twenty-first-century ‘melting pot’ or fusion of nationalities, cultures, and ethnicities. The US was of course an earlier ‘melting pot’. While many nations have a history of coerced labor or experience with a transported population of convicted prisoners, the Australian penal transportation system generated rich sources which have lent themselves to prosopographical biography.52 For instance, two of the most significant projects in this regard are the Founder and Survivors project and Hamish Maxwell-Stewart’s Tasmanian intergenerational database, based on the records of 75,000 convicts sent to Van Diemen’s Land from 1800 to 1853. They consider convict biography in the aggregate, but both 49

50 51 52

When Germaine Greer responded to Rowley’s approach with a letter describing biographers ‘as vultures, scavengers and entrails’, Rowley was so horrified she decided: ‘That’s it, I am only going to write about dead people’, Sydney Morning Herald, March 16, 2013. Deborah Gough, ‘Germaine Greer sells Archive to Melbourne University’, in Age, October 28, 2013. Elizabeth Kleinhenz, Germaine: The Life of Germaine Greer (North Sydney: Penguin/Random, 2018). Hamish Maxwell-Stewart, ‘Transportation from Britain and Ireland, 1615–1875’, in A Global History of Convicts and Penal Colonies, ed. Clare Anderson (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2018).

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projects are implicitly transnational because of colonization, which in Australia occurred to a marked degree. About 164,000 convicts were transported to the Australian colonies between 1788 and 1868 aboard 806 ships, providing Australian historians with, as Maxwell-Stewart notes, ‘one of the world’s greatest archives’. Many projects are based on the tracing of convicts, a veritable ‘digital panopticon’.53 The prosopographical projects have generated much individual biography. At the same time, as has already been indicated, there is a particular bending of genre rules in Australian biographical practice. Australian biography is conspicuous in the degree to which historians are writing autobiographies of their own. In doing so they sometimes breach the assumed demarcation between biographies and creatively imagined memoirs. Several Australian historians have taken to writing their autobiogaphies that are realist and supported by footnotes. They are writing their own ‘biographies’. Simon Schama noted, in his 1991 Dead Certainties, that historians are left forever ‘chasing shadows, painfully aware of their inability ever to reconstruct a dead world in its completeness however thorough or revealing their documentation. We are doomed to be forever hailing someone who has just gone around the corner and out of the earshot.’54 Presumably historians feel that at least they know their own pasts and have permission to use them. Jeremy Popkin has measured the extent to which Australian historians have adopted égo-histoire long before Pierre Nora challenged historians to consider ‘the link between the history you have made and the history that has made you’. Indeed, as discussed, Presser raised the issue of the links between biography and autobiography by introducing in 1958 the concept of ‘egodocument’.55 Historians usually consider authors in order to understand the history a historian constructs. This new phenomenon, common in the Western world, is just a matter of degree. Australian historians, however, more than any other national group of historians, have had their works considered as mainstream efforts that can make ‘major contributions to the national literature’.56 Pop53

54 55 56

Hamish Maxwell-Stewart, ‘The Digital Panopticon: Tracing London Convicts in Britain & Australia, 1780–1925’, https://blog.digitalpanopticon.org/people/hamish-maxwell -stewart/, accessed 6 May 2019. Simon Schama, Dead Certainties: Unwarranted Speculations (New York: Knopf, 1991), 319–320. Mascuch, Dekker and Baggerman, ‘Egodocuments and History: A Short Account of the Longue Durée’, 11–13. Jeremy D. Popkin, History, Historians, & Autobiography (Chicago/London: University of Chicago Press, 2005), 74; and ‘Ego-histoire Down Under: Australian HistorianAutobiographers’, in Australian Historical Studies 38, no. 129 (2007), 110.

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kin and the Icelandic microhistorian Sigurður Gylfi Magnússon described this development as the ‘singularization of history’: as doubts arose about the ability of historical accounts to be objective, and faith in the grand narratives of liberalism, Marxism, and nationalism declined, historians have increasingly been drawn to approaches ‘that emphasised ordinary experience’ and subjective and personal approaches.57 Biography is seen as ‘corrective’ in the same way that microhistory has always aimed to be.58 The autobiographical writing of historians has long been valued in the Australian literary canon, certainly as instances of personal and family memoir but also more broadly for its capacity to ‘confront questions about the relationship between personal and national pasts that are quite different from those encountered by their colleagues in other countries’.59 The list of historian autobiographers includes Keith Hancock, Kathleen Fitzpatrick, Bernard Smith, Manning Clark, Ann Moyal, and Inga Clendinnen, as well as Jill Ker Conway.60 Most recently Graeme Davison, Penny Russell, Nick Brodie, and Ann Curthoys have published family histories.61 Indeed, Ann Moyal has pointed out that in recent decades Australian 57

58 59 60

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Popkin, ‘Ego-Histoire Down Under’, 109; Sigurður Gylfi Magnússon, ‘The Singularization of History: Social History and Microhistory within the Postmodern State of Knowledge’, in Journal of Social History 36, no. 3 (Spring 2003): 791–735; and ‘The Life Is Never Over: Biography as a Microhistorical Approach’, in The Biographical Turn: Lives in History, ed. Hans Renders, Binne de Haan, and Jonne Harmsma (London: Routledge, 2017), 42–52. Nigel Hamilton, ‘Biography as corrective’, in Biographical Turn, ed. Renders, de Haan, and Harmsma, 15–30. Popkin, ‘Ego-histoire Down Under’, 110, 119. For a fuller discussion see Melanie Nolan, ‘Country and Kin Calling? Keith Hancock, the National Dictionary Collaboration, and the Promotion of Life Writing in Australia’, in Clio’s Lives: Biographies and Autobiographies of Historians, ed. Douglas Munro and John G. Reid (Canberra: ANU Press, 2017), 247–272. See also W.K. Hancock, Country and Calling (London: Faber & Faber, 1954); Hancock, Professing History (Sydney: Sydney University Press, 1976); Kathleen Fitzpatrick, Solid Bluestone Foundations: Memories of an Australian Girlhood (Ringwood: Penguin, 1983); Manning Clark, The Puzzles of Childhood (Ringwood: Viking, 1989); Clark, The Quest for Grace (Ringwood: Viking, 1990); Bernard Smith, The Boy Adeodatus: The Portrait of a Lucky Young Bastard (Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1990); Ann Moyal, Breakfast with Beaverbrook: Memoirs of an Independent Woman (Sydney: Hale & Iremonger, 1995); and Inga Clendinnen, Tiger’s Eye: A Memoir (Melbourne: Text Publishing, 2000). For instance, Smith’s Adeodatus won both the Victorian Premier’s Literary Award and the National Book Council Prize. Graeme Davison, Lost Relations: Fortunes of My Family in the Golden Age (Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 2015); Penny Russell, ‘Travelling Steerage: Class, Commerce, Religion and Family in Colonial Sydney’, in Journal of Australian Studies 38, no. 4 (2014): 383–395; Nick Brodie, Kin: A Real People’s History of Our Nation (Richmond, Vic.: Hardie Grant Books, 2015); Ann Curthoys, ‘From Montserrat to Settler-Colonial Australia: The Intersecting Histories of Caribbean Slave-Owning Families, Transported British Radicals, and Indigenous Peoples’, A.W. Martin Lecture, ANU, May 22, 2018, is about her Shiell family.

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women historians have taken up the autobiographical challenge with gusto, establishing ‘a complementary culture to male autobiography with its ongoing emphasis on national identity and image’. As Popkin suggests, too, the Australian biographical turn has largely lacked the ‘theoretical pretensions’ of French égo-histoire. That Australian biographers have not much been interested in theory is not particularly conspicuous.62 Indeed, some have interpreted the resurgence of interest in biography, the biographical turn, as a reactionary anti-theory backlash responding to the ‘theory wars’.63 But it has involved the sorts of new theoretical interests which Hans Renders and Binne de Haan and others are developing.64 Daniel Meister has suggested that ‘a Dutch school of biography’ now seeks to combine biographical methods with the theoretical approaches of microhistory.65 Australians seem to prefer politics to ‘European interests’ in microstoria, poetics, and the theory of biography. We now arrive, finally, at the non-Western critique of European values from within Australia. Indigenous Australian conferences on writing biography share common themes with indigenous biography conferences internationally. The Humanities Research Centre hosted an indigenous biography conference in 2007; the National Centre of Biography organized another such gathering in 2018, ‘Reframing Indigenous Biography’, both at the Australian National University.66 Similarly, a special number of the journal Biography in 2016 followed a conference in Hawaii on ‘Indigenous Conversations about Biography’.67 Indigenous Australian writers share the need to balance ‘the demands of western and non-western scholarship’ with other indigenous people but there is no one non-Western way. These considerations lead us to the last significant public debate to be acknowledged here. Sally Morgan’s My Place (1987), although not the earli62 63 64 65 66

67

Hamilton and Renders, ‘Theory’, ABC of Modern Biography, 176–185. Joanny Moulin, ‘Introduction: Towards Biography Theory’, in Cercles 35 (2015): 1–11. Hans Renders and Binne de Haan in Theoretical Discussions of Biography: Approaches from History, Microhistory and Life Writing (Brill Academic Publishing, 2014). Daniel R. Meister, ‘The Biographical Turn and the Case for Historical Biography’, in History Compass 16 (January 2018): 1. Peter Read, Frances Peters-Little, and Anna Haebich, eds., Indigenous Biography and Autobiography (Canberra: ANU E Press, 2008). The aim of the 2018 Reframing Indigenous Lives conference was to consider what aspects make it distinct and ultimately to rethink approaches. See also Vanessa Castejon, Anna Cole, Oliver Haag, Karen Hughes eds., Ngapartji Ngapartji. In turn, in turn: Ego-histoire, Europe and Indigenous Australia (Canberra: ANU Press, 2014). Guest Editors: Alice Te Punga Somerville, Daniel Heath Justice, and Noelani Arista, special issue ‘Indigenous Conversations about Biography’, in Biography 39, no. 3 (Summer 2016).

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est Aboriginal autobiography, was the first to achieve mass sales in Australia and internationally. Morgan was brought up believing she was Indian only to discover her aboriginality in her teens. For the first time, many European Australians learned about the impact of past government policies on Aboriginal communities and families, especially the forced removal of children, the ‘Stolen Children.’ And perhaps more importantly, they became aware of the strategies Aboriginal people had been forced to adopt in order to survive. In 1999 Conway used an extract from Morgan’s narrative, noting it was ‘in the first person’, which was to be expected of an ‘oral culture’; Morgan’s resort to autobiography was attributable to the nature of her sources.68 Held in high regard internationally, the book met with a scholarly reception within Australia that was ‘rancorous, angry, passionate and bitter’, a response, John Docker suggests, elicited in part because it was ‘low, other and female’.69 On one hand, there were demands that there was an Aboriginal discursive strategy of nondisclosure, and a need to observe traditional Aboriginal genres which, as Jackie Huggins for instance argued, Morgan’s book transgressed. Bain Attwood suggested that Morgan’s Aboriginality is really but an assemblage of effects of European discourse.70 Keith Windschuttle dismissed the book outright, claiming it was fabricated; he also questioned the extent to which Morgan was Aboriginal.71 Others defended her publication, pointing out the complexity of identity and asserting that black-and-white borders should not be policed.72 And of course, despite all the controversy, it is still seen as a seminal text for the analysis of Stolen Generations in Australia. The other point about the debate concerns the need to accommodate traditional Aboriginal cultural beliefs and practices, which are so varied in Australia. For instance, there were more than 250 distinct languages spoken

68 69

70

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Conway, In Her Own Words. John Docker, ‘Recasting Sally Morgan’s My Place: The Fictionality of Identity and the Phenomenology of the Converso’, Humanities Research 1 (1998) 3–22, accessed April 1, 2019: https://search.informit.com.au/documentSummary;dn=178453670556368;res=IELHSS. Marcia Langton, ‘Aboriginal Art and Film: The Politics of Representation’, in Race and Class 35, no. 4 (1994), 89–106; Stephen Muecke, ‘Aboriginal Literature and the Repressive Hypothesis’, in Southerly 48, no. 4 (1988), 405–418; Bain Attwood, ‘Portrait of an Aboriginal as an Artist: Sally Morgan and the Construction of Aboriginality’, in Australian Historical Studies 25, no. 99 (1992), 302–318; Jackie Huggins, ‘Always was always will be’, in Australian Historical Studies 25, no. 100 (1993), 459–464. Keith Windschuttle, The Fabrication of Aboriginal History, vol. 3 (Sydney: Macleay Pres, 2009), 320. Subhash Jaireth, ‘The ‘I’ in Sally Morgan’s My Place: Writing of a Monologised Self’, in Westerly 3 (1995), 69–78; Tim Rowse, ‘Indigenous Autobiography’, in Australian Humanities Review 33 (August 2004): http://australianhumanitiesreview.org/category/issue/issue -33-august-2004/.

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at the time of colonization.73 Contemporary indigenous communities are diverse and varied in their understandings of what is appropriate for them to share with non-indigenous researchers. In accordance with customary law, some cultural traditions are secret. Indeed, A.P. Elkin acknowledged as early as 1938 that most ceremonies practised in Aboriginal communities could not be discussed fully, due to their sensitive and sacred nature: [Ceremonies] are extremely important, apart from their meaningful significance, because they are always of a highly emotional nature, which are closely entwined with the beliefs, social behaviour and life of the tribes. The contemplation of the heroes and ancestors of the past through the chanting of myths and the handling of sacred symbols such as churinga’s, the frequent self infliction of bodily pain, the dancing and the tense atmosphere in which the main act occurs, all work on the emotions, and at the same time cause all present to feel themselves as one. They are with and part of the super ancestors of the Dreamtime.74 There is secrecy or confidentially about certain biographical information. Some families refuse to acknowledge identity. Some communities demand that no one writes anything at all. Many groups hold that cultural knowledge should not be disclosed to members of the opposite sex. Some groups’ cultural traditions dictate that one is not to name a dead person or publish that person’s image. Sometimes the deceased person’s name is changed due to cultural beliefs. Others differ. More than in other colonial situations, as Henry Reynolds attested in his autobiography Why Weren’t We Told?, the violence and dispossession of the Australian frontier has been concealed, in what W.E.H. Stanner called the ‘great Australian silence’.75 Morgan’s autobiography was part of the articulation of the legacy of this particular colonial situation. Despite cultural constraints, nonetheless, there has been a stream of indigenous biography and memoir since 1987. The Australian Indigenous Autobiography Archive on the National Centre of Biography website lists only fifty such works, but it shows the depth

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‘Aboriginal Languages’, NSW Department of Aboriginal Affairs: daa.nsw.gov.au/ landandculture/language.html. A.P. Elkin, The Australian Aborigines: How to Understand Them (Sydney: Angus and Robertson, 1964 [1938]). Henry Reynolds, Why Weren’t We Told? A Personal Search for the Truth about Our History (Ringwood, Vic.: Viking, 1999).

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and geographic range of a vibrant form of Aboriginal self-writing, holding details of works by significant Aboriginal Australians such as Cathy Freeman, Jack Davis, Charles Perkins, Anthony Mundine, and Nova Peris.76 Like the Western script that Conway identified, the Western script in relation to indigenous autobiography and biography is in transition.

3

Conclusion

For many there is an ontological link between self and place. Jeff Malpas describes this connection as the ‘topological analysis of self and identity’ in philosophy. The development of collective sensitivities has been thoroughly studied: Pierre Nora famously termed it romain nation or the collective discourse on the history of the nation and its place in the world.77 That in itself would suggest that an ‘Australian biographical practice’. Perhaps it is an issue of degree, for the contours of Australian biography are recognizable to those elsewhere in the Western world. Australian biographers have a longstanding interest in autobiography and a growing interest in prosopography. Australian biography, then, has a distinctive flavor that has developed in response to its particular national historical characteristics as well as the nature of its collective archive. 76 77

Australian Indigenous Autobiography Archive search, National Center of Biography website: ia.anu.edu.au?biographies/added/. Melanie Nolan, ‘Country and Lives: Australian Biography and Its History’, in Cercles: Revue Pluridisciplinaire du Monde Anglophone, no. 35 (special number ed. Joanny Moulin, ‘Towards Biography Theory’), (March 2015), 96–117.

Writing Lives in Contemporary Italy Yannick Gouchan

1

Nineteenth-Century Biography: in the Service of a National Historiography under Construction

According to Maria Pia Casalena’s impressive essay on the practice of biography in nineteenth century Italy, 8,000 biographies were published between 1800 and 1915.1 Casalena provides considerable statistical information about the publishing houses and the cities where biographies were released. As expected, Rome, Bologna, Milan, Torino, Florence and Naples prevail over the rest of the peninsula. Nevertheless, the minor centers of culture show an interesting output of biographies dedicated to local public figures. Furthermore, one should recall that many biographies were actually translations from other languages and originated abroad, above all in France, the origin of 74% of the translated biographies in Italy before the Unification in 1861. The remainder of the translations came mainly from the United Kingdom (11%), Austria, and the United States.2 Excepting these translations, Italian biographies were concerned mostly with the lives of saints, with historical models for youth (the genre of plutarchi), and with political heroes. The influence of these foreign biographical and historiographical works brought French and English theories and doctrines, such as those of Samuel Smiles, to Italy. In 1865 the Barbèra publishing house released a very successful biographical essay by Michele Lessona entitled Volere è Potere, inspired by Smiles’s theory of Self-help.3 It was meant primarily to suggest examples of contemporary personal success across the country. More generally, the book intended to ‘make the Italians’ – citizens had to be shaped in conformity to historical exempla. Another important example of British influence on early-twentieth-century Italy is Thomas Carlyle and his On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History.

1 Maria Pia Casalena, Biografia: La scrittura delle vite in Italia tra politica, società e cultura, 1796–1915 (Milan: Mondadori, 2012). 2 See Donald Sassoon, The Culture of the Europeans: From 1800 to the Present (London: Harper Collins, 2006) and Franco Moretti, Atlante del romanzo europeo: 1800–1900 (Torino: Einaudi, 1997). Italy imported 50% of the books listed in the reading rooms’ catalogues. 3 Michele Lessona, Volere è potere (Florence: G. Barbèra, 1869). Each chapter is dedicated to a main city of the peninsula and provides biographies of contemporary Italians who distinguished themselves in areas such as science, art, and industry.

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2020 | DOI:10.1163/9789004434974_012

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In the Italian biographical tradition, there is a striking coexistence of two main types of biographies: the first dealing with religious figures, considered as a genre because of the specific editorial market and audience for these books, the other treating the lives of national and foreign historical characters (politicians, leaders, artists, etc.). Given the context of nineteenth-century publishing and writing, biographers at this time, unsurprisingly, were mostly men (only 3% were women). Catholic hagiography was also very influential. The writing and reading of lives had a strong effect on nation-building, as in every other European country of the period. Indeed, the nineteenth century in Italy was the era of the country’s emancipation from Austria, which had ruled, directly or indirectly, half the peninsula. After the Unification many biographies were written and published to justify a national culture and to create national models. Throughout the Risorgimento biographies enhanced – in addition to the traditional history of the saints – the tradition of national patriotic martyrs that held sway during the Austrian occupation. Important examples of these national symbols are Dante Alighieri, Ludovico Ariosto, Ugo Foscolo, and Christopher Columbus. La vita di Cristoforo Colombo (1846), Angelo Sanguineti’s book on the famous navigator, is particularly noteworthy in comparison with the Vita di Cristoforo Colombo (1895) of Cesare De Lollis, a scholar who also studied and edited Columbus’s written works. These writers give two very different views on the colonization of the New World.4 We should pay particular attention to great historians who wrote biographies, such as Gaudenzio Claretta, who specialized in the lives of Piedmontese nobility in the 1850s and 1860s, using thoroughly new sources.5 We can also refer to Pasquale Villari, who integrated the renewed national orientation of the historical sciences and of scientific historiography in his biographies of Savonarola (1859) and Machiavelli (1877), and to Angelo De Gubernatis, who initiated in 1878 the Dizionario biografico degli scrittori contemporanei and in 1889 the Dizionario degli artisti italiani viventi.6 After 1861, the year of the proclamation the Italian Kingdom, the intention of ‘making the Italians’ involved a politics of memory. Biography now strongly served to create a national sense of belonging, celebrating the great

4 Angelo Sanguineti, La vita di Cristoforo Colombo (Genova: Antonio Bettolo, 1846); Cesare De Lollis, Vita di Cristoforo Colombo (Milan: Treves, 1895). See the article by Diego Stefanelli, ‘Il Cristoforo Colombo di Cesare De Lollis’, in Carte Romanze 1–2 (2013), 275–350. 5 Gaudenzio Claretta, Dizionario biografico e genealogico del Piemonte (unpublished), kept at the Archivio di Stato in Turin. 6 Pasquale Villari, La storia di Girolamo Savonarola e de’ suoi tempi (Florence: Le Monnier, 1859); Niccolò Machiavelli e i suoi tempi (Florence: Le Monnier, 1877).

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figures of the past and the Risorgimento, such as Camillo Cavour, King Vittorio Emanuele II, Giuseppe Mazzini, and Giuseppe Garibaldi. These efforts were aimed at establishing a national pantheon. In the 1870s and 1880s the school curricula for History included biographies of national figures such as ancient Roman notables, warriors, generals, poets, inventors, and navigators. These plutarchi, written for young boys, intended to teach courage and fortitude. Indeed, the conservative governments told their version of the Risorgimento and its heroes with a particular taste for the anecdote and an overriding sense of morality. After World War II, when communists and socialists nearly dominated the whole of Italian culture, a different biographical vision of the Risorgimento emerged.7 This new view differed from the consensus of the late nineteenth century, when popular biographies of the Unification’s protagonists still flourished and were inevitably connected with the heroism and the struggle for independence.8 As a result, the life of Giuseppe Garibaldi as rendered in biographies changed, in accordance with the respective political views of his biographers ranging from the time of the first government in 1861 through to Fascism, when his character endured nationalist distortions. He was regarded either as a hero of the independence or as a rebel, either as a savior of Southern Italy or as a dangerous republican.9 Analogously, there are the biographies of the politician Giuseppe Mazzini, regarded sometimes as a disturbing figure for the government and sometimes as a saint of the newborn nation, a man at the center of an authentic cult because ‘he became a God’ in the twentieth century.10

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For instance the biographer and politician Giuseppe Massari, Il conte di Cavour: Ricordi biografici (Torino: Eredi Botta, 1873); La vita e il regno di Vittorio Emanuele II, primo re d’Italia (Milan: Treves, 1878); and Il generale Alfonso La Marmora. Ricordi biografici (Florence: G. Barbèra, 1880). See Cosimo Ceccuti, ‘Le grandi biografie popolari nell’editoria italiana del secondo Ottocento’, in Il mito del Risorgimento nell’Italia unita, Atti del convegno, Milan, 9–12 november 1993, Risorgimento, A. XLVII, no. 1–2 (1995), 110–123. A recent biography of Anita Garibaldi, the wife of Giuseppe, won the Giovanni Comisso Prize in 2018: Silvia Cavicchioli, Storia e mito di Anita Garibaldi (Torino: Einaudi, 2017). Dante Della Terza, ‘L’eroe scomodo e la sua ombra. L’immagine di Mazzini e la letteratura del Risorgimento’, Letteratura e critica tra ‘800 e ‘900: itinerari di ricezione (Cosenza: Periferia, 1989), 9–44. Pietro Finelli, ‘È divenuto un Dio: Santità, Patria e Rivoluzione nel culto di Mazzini (1872–1905)’, in Storia d’Italia, Annali 22, Il Risorgimento, ed. A.M. Banti and P. Ginsborg (Turin: Einaudi, 2007). See a survey of the evolution and distortion of Mazzini in Simon Levis Sullam, L’apostolo a brandelli: L’eredità di Mazzini tra Risorgimento e Fascismo (Bari: Laterza, 2014).

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Biography, as Conceived by Certain Italian Intellectuals and the Research on Biography in the Twentieth Century

Benedetto Croce was a philosopher and historian whose influence strongly marked Italian culture for several generations. In 1947 he founded the Istituto per gli studi storici in Naples, which became a breeding ground for great historians. Croce briefly accounted for his own conception of biography in his essay La storia come pensiero e azione. Here he asserts an aversion to biography on the theoretical level, even though he used to practice the genre as a writer. For Croce, biography is deprived of a specific function because ‘the individual character is thought and judged only by his own work and at the same time by what is not, the work he does and that which goes beyond him.’11 According to Croce, writers such as André Maurois, Emil Ludwig, and Lytton Strachey wrote merely ‘pleasant historiographical literature’ – their biographies were bound to be forgotten and would soon be out of date. But after many decades we know that Croce’s judgement was completely wrong.12 Today the biographies written by Croce are usually considered minor works. But his beautiful Vite di avventure, di fede e di passione contained six accurate biographies dedicated respectively to Filippo di Fiandra, il conte di Campobasso, il marchese di Vico, Isabella di Morra, Diego Duque de Estrada, and Carlo Lauberg. These were deliberately written as a counterpart to the much-deplored fictionalized biographies.13 In contrast to Croce, Antonio Gramsci (one of the founders of the Italian Communist Party) recognized that the biographies written by Maurois, Ludwig, and Strachey had enabled the middle classes to come closer to history and politics than they had through the historical novels of Dumas and Hugo.14 For Gramsci, indeed, biography has a function in the teaching of history, although, except for the plutarchi and the hagiographies, the Italian tradition suffered from a shortage of great popular biographies. A very recent essay on Gramsci

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Benedetto Croce, ‘L’individuo è pensato e giudicato solo nell’opera che è sua e insieme non sua, che egli fa e che lo oltrepassa’, in his La storia come pensiero e azione (Bari: Laterza, 1954 [1938]), 13. Benedetto Croce, Storia della storiografia italiana nel secolo decimonono (Bari: Laterza, 1964, 4th ed.), II: 281. Benedetto Croce, Vite di avventure, di fede e di passione (Bari: Laterza, 1936). Minor works indeed, but with undeniable aesthetic qualities, as stated in Federico Chabod, Lezioni di metodo storico (Rome-Bari: Laterza, 1973), 192. After his death, his Isabella di Morra e Diego Sandoval de Castro was published as a separate biography. Antonio Gramsci, Quaderni del carcere, ed. V. Gerratana (Turin: Einaudi, 1975 [1948–1951]), 688–689.

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has demonstrated that a biographical method allows for a qualification of the traditional teleological conception of his political outlook.15 In the same way, a famous historian of ancient Greece, Arnaldo Momigliano, considered biography to be not the means of creating a work of literature but rather an instrument for researching social history. He attributed importance to the relationship between biography and historiography in his four lectures at Harvard in 1968, which were published in English in his now-classic essay The Development of Greek Biography.16 So did Franco Venturi and, more recently, Carlo Capra (biographer of Pietro Verri and Giovanni Ristori) in their biographies of eighteenth-century politicians and intellectuals: they considered biography to be no less than the very foundation of history.17 The next generation of historians, born in the 1930s and 1940s and influenced by the social sciences, developed the ‘new history’ in Italy. They read and practiced biography in locales such as the Fondazione Einaudi in Turin (created in 1970) and the Istituto Universitario Europeo in Fiesole (created in 1972). They exposed Italian historiography to international influences due to their activity in France, especially at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, and in the United States. Their new interest in mentalities and in the individual led to a new conception of the writing of lives. One of these historians, Carlo Ginzburg, published an important and celebrated book in 1976, The Cheese and the Worms: The Cosmos of a Sixteenth-Century Miller, which perceives biography to be a narrative genre belonging to the historical studies.18 This biography tells the life of an obscure Renaissance miller called Menocchio in the Friuli (in the northeast of Italy). In Italy, Giovanni Levi, Edoardo Grandi, and Carlo Ginzburg expressed interest in partial biography, no longer seeking to write an exhaustive survey of an individual’s entire life. In Inheriting Power: The Story of an Exorcist, for example, Levi observed the behavior and the overall freedom of his subject within the interstices of a cohesive collection.19 Fundamental to the microhis15 16

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Angelo d’Orsi, Gramsci: Una nuova biografia (Milan: Feltrinelli, 2017). Arnaldo Momigliano, The Development of Greek Biography (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1971), then Lo sviluppo della biografia greca, trans. Guido Donini (Turin: Einaudi, 1974). See Arnaldo Momigliano nella storiografia del Novecento, ed. Leandro Polverini, Storia e Letteratura 224 (2006). See Pierre Musitelli, ‘Usages de la biographie historique: Le cas italien entre Lumières et Restauration (2e partie)’, in La Clé des Langues [online] (Lyon: ENS, 2015). Carlo Ginzburg, Il formaggio e i vermi: Il cosmo di un mugnaio del Cinquecento (Torino: Einaudi, 1976, English trans. 1980). See the issue of the Italian journal Sigma 17, no. 1–2 (January-August 1984), dedicated to literary biography. Giovanni Levi, L’eredità immateriale: Carriera di un esorcista nel Piemonte del Seicento (Turin: Einaudi, 1985, English trans. 1988).

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torian’s practice of biography is a reduction in the scale of observation, which has led to a new interest in the individual, in what is private or intimate, in individual customs, and in the promotion of singular phenomena. By doing research on a microscopic level, by using previously neglected sources, and by paying attention to tiny details, microhistorians were able to reveal factors that had previously been overlooked.20 Biographical studies, under the influence of microhistory, came to address the difference between uniqueness and representativeness, as well as the particulars of sexual life, eating and drinking customs, work habits, and the anthropology of the family. Giovanni Levi worked as a historian in France for the famous review Annales ESC, and in his labors there he considered the practice of biography to be related to sociology, anthropology, and psychology. According to Levi, the individual biography is not merely a private enterprise. It cannot be studied in an unequivocal way, because then it might be restricted to illustrating the links of individual behavior to common or expected social conditions.21 In the 1980s, microhistory inspired the Einaudi publishing house to create its Microstorie imprint, featuring biographies taking a strong interest in the mentalities manifested in the lives of individuals, especially the obscure ones.22 In Italy, in the 1970s and the 1980s, the genre of historical biography was thriving. Biografia e storiografia, a collective essay published in 1983, symbolizes this period.23 It was a time of intense debate in which the distinction between biography and historiography was no longer pertinent, because biography was considered part of the historical sciences. Italy was now expressing profound interest in biographies, but why? First, as we might expect, the biographical approach reflected the crisis of mass ideologies. Biography enabled Italians to imbue historical facts with meaning in a country where biography had no great tradition comparable to that of the English-speaking world.24 Second, social history was taking a methodologically new direction toward

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Sigurður Gylfi Magnússon, ‘The Life Is Never Over: Biography as a Microhistorical Approach’, in The Biographical Turn: Lives in History, ed. Hans Renders, Binne de Haan, and Jonne Harmsma (New York: Routledge, 2017), 42–52. Giovanni Levi, ‘The Uses of Biography’, in Theoretical Discussions of Biography: Approaches from History, Microhistory and Life Writing, ed. Hans Renders and Binne de Haan (Leiden: Brill, 2014), 59–74. See Valeria Sgambati, ‘Le lusinghe della biografia’, in Studi Storici 36, no. 2 (1995), 397–413. Biografia e storiografia, Atti del Seminario promosso dalla fondazione G. Brodolini e dall’Istituto del diritto del lavoro e di politica sociale dell’Università degli Studi di Milano, ed. Alceo Riosa (Milan: Angeli, 1983). Monica Rebeschini, ‘La biografia come genere storiografico tra storia politica e storia sociale. Questioni di metodo’, in Acta Histriae 14 (2006), 427–446, 431.

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the political and the institutional sphere. In the wake of this development there arose many new historical and political biographies.25 For instance, we can recall the successful translation of Robert A. Rosenstone’s John Reed: Rivoluzionario romantico in 1976, which became something of a new model for a generation of Italian biographers.26 In Italy collective reality had long prevailed over individual facts, mainly due to the cultural influence of both the Annales School and Marxist ideology. Furthermore, unlike in the Englishspeaking world, the biographer is hardly regarded as a professional in contemporary Italy. He is not really taken seriously, because he is often a journalist and not a historian.27 As a result, two horizons of expectation have emerged among readers: biographers primarily tell life stories addressed to a larger audience, whereas only historians can fashion biographically meticulous works, which are mainly addressed to other historians. In the 1980s the genre of the historical biography became rather popular, as did writers’ biographies. The case of the early-twentieth-century poet Dino Campana is significant: Campana was discovered again by virtue of a novelized biography by Sebastiano Vassalli published in 1984. This treatment led to a groundswell of enthusiasm for the Tuscan poet, who was regarded as a poète maudit because of his madness. In the wake of Vassalli’s well-documented book several biographies of Campana have appeared.28 Today the Istituto Nazionale Ferruccio Parri in Bologna is committed to conducting research on the history of the Italian Resistance and of the contemporary period. It promotes notable projects that elaborate a contemporary form of biographical investigation: the biographies of a community. In the wake of the emergence of the microhistorical tradition, the biografia di comunità, particularly in the northern part of Italy, has attempted to rebuild collective memory through a biographical method. It involves the collection of documents, such as interviews and recollections of evidence, in order to gather information about many different forms of local life. This research addresses

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See the collective article ‘La biografia: un genere storiografico in trasformazione’, ed. C. Cassina and F. Traniello, Contemporanea 2, no. 2 (April 1999), 287–305. Robert A. Rosenstone, John Reed: Rivoluzionario romantico (Rome: Editori Riuniti, 1976 [New York: 1975]). Gabriele Turi, ‘La biografia: un genere storiografico in trasformazione’, in Contemporanea 2, no. 2 (April 1999), 295. Sebastiano Vassalli, The Night of the Comet (Turin: Einaudi, 1984, English trans. 1989). One year later two biographies were published: Gabriel Cacho Millet, Dino Campana fuorilegge (Palermo: Novecento, 1985) and Gianni Turchetta, Dino Campana: Biografia di un poeta (Milan: Marcos y Marcos, 1985). See also Paolo Maccari, Il poeta sotto esame, con due importanti inediti di Dino Campana (Florence: Passigli, 2012).

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the history of a specific community during times of notable and often shocking events that, most of the time, brought with them widespread trauma or an important turn in economic life. For example, biographies have been written about a community in Tuscany shaken by a reprisal during World War II, and have addressed the impact of industrialization on a village in the Emilia province. These biographies deal with many individual memories that have been brought together to constitute an archive of local collective memory. Their method tries to combine the historical investigation of individual lives with a partial reconstruction of the life and outlook of a community at a specific time.29

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The Importance of Certain Editorial Collections and the Dizionario Biografico

In the early twentieth century the Formiggini publishing house in Genoa established its Profili imprint. Between 1909 and 1938, the publisher Angelo Fortunato offered 128 books to a wide audience, which on the whole were dedicated to great or lesser-known Italian or foreign figures, among them artists, politicians, writers, and scientists. New books were regularly and successfully released every two months. The challenge was to find the right balance between popularization and the presentation of facts, and to do so without distorting history or reducing its complexity. Later, Mondadori’s popular collection Le Scie [the Wake] published the disordered and overabundant ‘Collana di memorie, epistolari, biografie e curiosità.’ This series, founded in 1926 by Arnaldo Mondadori, took a huge interest in passionate historical figures, women, heroism, and the private lives of great figures.30 Many translated biographies by Emil Ludwig were published under this imprint. From the ’60s onwards, the publishing house UTET brought out ‘La vita sociale della nuova Italia,’ an important series that was perhaps the first contemporary collection of highquality biographies,31 responding to the new appetite for the genre, and especially for the lives of politicians.32 One of its titles was Piero Pieri and Giorgio 29 30 31 32

Lorena Mussini, ‘Un ponte culturale tra memoria e storia: la biografia di comunità’, in E-Review 3 (2015). Gabriele Turi, Storia dell’editoria nell’Italia contemporanea (Florence: Giunti Editore, 1997), 434. Claudia Gollini, ‘Biografia e divulgazione: la collana ‘La vita sociale della nuova Italia”, in Italia contemporanea 193 (December 1993), 707–716. Sergio Romano, ‘Considerazioni sulla biografia’, in Storia della storiografia 3 (1983), 113–123.

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Rochat’s biography of Marshal Pietro Badoglio, which was written more as a political biography than a story of the private life of a man who left his mark during World War II.33 Between 1962 and 1995 the imprint, under the direction of Nino Valeri, released 42 books, making up 13% of the 288 biographies dedicated to post-Unification Italian figures in this period. The series mainly paid attention to individuals belonging to the ruling class or to the bourgeoisie, whose values were personified through their lives.34 Among these biographies we find great historical figures, mainly politicians and writers, as well as artists, economists, and scientists. Examples of these now-classic books include Giovanni Boldini by Dario Cecchi, Edmondo De Amicis by Lorenzo Gigli, Pirandello by Gaspare Giudice, and Verga by Giulio Cattaneo, all published between 1962 and 1963. The later Benito Mussolini (1969), by Gaspare Giudice, was reflective of an innovative psychological turn. The biographers that contributed to this collection of publications were principally formidable scholars of history or literature, such as Dario Cecchi and Lorenzo Gigli, but there were also professional writers specializing in the genre, such as Massimo Grillandi, the author of many biographies.35 In the wake of the Italian economic miracle of the ’50s and the ’60s, a new audience emerged for biographies dedicated to the imprenditori, those emblematic businessmen of Italian capitalism such as Giovanni Agnelli and Vittorio Valletta.36 In the end, the imprint succeeded in creating an editorial pantheon of exemplary portraits. Besides this imprint, there was also Laterza, one of the main and more serious publishing houses for historical books, which sought a balance between its aim to maintain high scholarly standards and its intention of reaching many readers.37 Its catalogue now offers masterpieces of the genre including Rosario Romeo’s Cavour e il suo tempo (1969–1984), Denis Mack Smith’s Garibaldi (1973), and Giorgio Bocca’s Palmiro Togliatti (1973). In the wake of the microhistory boom, another large national publishing house, Einaudi, initiated in the 1980s its Microstorie series focusing on partial biographies: its 33 34 35

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Piero Pieri and Giorgio Rochat, Badoglio (Turin: UTET, 1974). Claudia Gollini, ‘Biografia e divulgazione’, 714–715. Massimo Grillandi wrote two biographies for the UTET collection (Francesco Crispi in 1969 and Emilio Treves in 1977) and then wrote about the countess of Castiglione, Belli, Rasputin, Mata Hari, Lucrezia Borgia, etc. Respectively: Valerio Castronuovo, Giovanni Agnelli (Turin: UTET, 1971) and Piero Bairati, Vittorio Valletta (Turin: UTET, 1983). Bruno Caizzi had written a double biography of Camillo and Adriano Olivetti in 1962 for the same series. Alberto Caracciolo, ‘Il mercato dei libri di storia, 1968–1978: Elementi per una analisi’, in Quaderni storici 41 (1979), 765–777.

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titles included Pietro Redondi’s Galileo eretico (1983), specifically dedicated to the trial of the scientist; Roberto Zapperi’s Annibale Carracci (1989), limited to the origins and the youth of the painter; and Sara Caribbo and Marilena Modica’s La santa dei Tomasi: Storia di Suor Maria Crocifissa (1989), which homed in on a process of sanctity in sixteenth-century Sicily. A current example of a biographical series, in this case developed by the Gribaudo publishing house in the 2000s, is ‘Le opere, i giorni, i luoghi: una biografia per immagini’. These biographies are especially dedicated to contemporary writers. They give preference to the places where their subjects lived (Calvino, Gadda, Fenoglio, Quasimodo, Pasolini, Pavese, etc.) and incorporate substantial iconographic documents and a considerable amount of testimonies. They have been published as large-format biographical albums. In considering here how the publishing houses have played an important role in the flourishing of biography over more than four decades, the existence of the DBI (Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani) must be mentioned. With origins in the nationalist desire to praise noteworthy Italians, the project ultimately led to a necessary correction of the nation’s historical narrative. In the nineteenth century, there was the Galleria dei contemporanei, published by Pomba, and the Dizionario biografico degli scrittori contemporanei, edited by De Gubernatis. Afterwards Leone Caetani constituted a corpus of 7,000 forms and notices for the Dizionario biobibliografico italiano, created in 1925 as a project of the Istituto Treccani, the Italian encyclopedia that had been founded by Giovanni Treccani and Giovanni Gentile. During the Fascist period the Dizionario was dominated by hagiographical lemmas that faithfully supported patriotism, nation-building, and national history as tinged by the aims and values of the Mussolini regime. Its celebrated figures were seen as reflections of the soul of the motherland. After Fascism, however, the DBI did not cease; it frequently kept up with new information obtained through historical research on eras ranging from the Roman Empire to the present. The dictionary opened itself to varied fields such as economy, business, the sciences, and the mass media. In addition, many women were included in the DBI, although they represented a minority at the beginning. It is not surprising that its contributors include important scholars such as Giovanni Levi, Arnaldo Momigliano, and Eugenio Garin.38 Nowadays we can consult the 31,000 biographies collected in the Dizionario degli Italiani della Repubblica online,

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Giuseppe Pignatelli (editor of the Dizionario since 1964), ‘Biografia e contesto’, in Contemporanea 2, no. 2 (April 1999), 299–302.

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which contains an index of all the biographies published since the start of the First Republic in 1946.39 Having presented this overview of the Italian biographical tradition, I would like to remind you of an important issue specific to this tradition of writing lives. The selection of figures has always been controversial with regard to where they properly belong: that is, are they part of the national or of a regional history? – given that before 1861 every Italian simply belonged to a (sometimes great) local history having its own tradition and culture.40 How could a biographer forget the inherent contrast between a late, unfinished common history and a rich, long-lasting local history? For example, since Unification biographical figures from southern Italy have relatively limited space, and what treatments there were mainly came from the Kingdom of Naples. Instead, more importance on the whole was given to members of the Piedmontese upper and middle classes, which were considered to be the collective protagonist of the Risorgimento. These groups imposed their rules, their particular conception of national historiography. Writing good biographies in Italy today means challenging what seems obvious: it should problematize the country’s senses of national identity and of belonging, and strike a balance in emphasis between individual famous or minor local lives on the one hand, and a complex collective history on the other.41 39 40

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http://www.treccani.it/biografico/ For instance the pre-Unification Dizionario biografico degli uomini illustri di Sardegna, ed. D. Pasquale Tola (Turin: Chirio e Mina, 1837–1838) and the current Dizionario biografico dei friulani: http://www.dizionariobiograficodeifriulani.it/ both originated in the remote eighteenth century. See Francesco Paolo Casavola, ‘Dalle biografie individuali alla identità nazionale’, in Il Veltro 5–6 (2000), 539–545.

Hidden and Forbidden Issues in Works of Iranian Biography Sahar Vahdati Hosseinian

During its several-thousand-year history, Iran has witnessed successive invasions by alien ethnic groups and has experienced continuous changes in political governance. As a result of the authority or inefficiency of Iranian kings, the country’s political and geographical boundaries have always been expanding and contracting. Ultimately Iran’s geographical frontiers were formed in the early nineteenth century on the basis of the treaties of Gulistan and Turkmenchay. These agreements were not in Iran’s interest and ceded vast areas to the Russian Empire. Consequently, the current borders were formed. If we pay due attention to the numerous varied and distinct ethnic groups, linguistic groups, religions, folklores, and traditions of Iran, it seems difficult if not impossible to restrict Iranian cultural and lingual boundaries to the space within its current geographic borders. Knowledge of the literary life and the cultural transformations of this society requires reference not only to books and publications from within the country; one also needs to investigate the internal movements and events that have taken place abroad. As in every society, revolutionary movements can influence or be influenced by other societal movements. Such developments are reflected in the literary and cultural life of a society. The constitutional revolution of 1905–1911, a time also known as the period of the ‘Iranian awakening’, can be considered the decisive era in Iran’s history with regard to its political and literary transformations. The political tumult of the constitutional revolution’s first years meant that books were no longer being written – the inner reflections of Iranian authors were solely to be found in newspapers.1 But after the revolution, constitutionalists started to write constitutional history in the form of autobiographies. Their goal in setting down these memoirs was mostly to conserve an account of constitutional events free from the distortions of malevolent people and to keep them from being forgotten. Factors that distinguish the works of the post-constitutional from the pre-constitutional era include an alteration in writing style; increased attention to social and political issues in the form of satire, caricature, songs, and

1 Yahya Aryanpour, Az Nima Ta Ruzgar-e Ma [From Nima to Our Time; The History of Contemporary Persian Literature] (Tehran: Zawar, 2008, original 1995), vol. 3, 57.

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2020 | DOI:10.1163/9789004434974_013

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plays; the presence of women in the press; and the prominence given to prose (instead of poetry) in Persian literature. At this time, only autobiographical works, and no biographies, were published. Of course, because Iranians have been brought up in the cradle of artistic expression and have been known to preserve the works of ancient poets and artists, they have preserved their own works along with commentaries on their lives for future generations. For example, issues mentioned in the preface to Name-ye Daneshvaran, an important early-twentieth-century dictionary of scientific biography, show that Iranian scholars possessed a perfect awareness of the importance of writing such opuses.2 In the introduction to this book, the intellectual prince Aliqoli Mirza Etezad-ol-Saltaneh of the nineteenth-century Qajar dynasty emphasized the necessity of preserving the eloquence, fluency, rhetoric, and beauty of speech. As a result, ordinary people and experts alike would be able to comprehend the book. He also stressed the significance of contemplating and understanding the truth and avoiding any religious fanaticism and zeal.3 Nonetheless, biography had not found a genuine place as a valuable resource for recognizing and understanding Iran’s society. This was the case not only during the period from the constitutional to the Islamic revolution of 1979, but also after this later revolution – although biography’s popularity had by then begun to rise. Iranian society’s problems with biography were mostly rooted in forbidden issues in the religious, political, social and cultural spheres. Hushang Muradi Kermani, a well-known author, has written his autobiography in the form of a story entitled Shoma Ke Gharibe Nistid.4 He uses the metaphor of an onion to describe the situation of biography in Iran. Mentioning the lack of success and the falsehood of most of the biographies published in Iran, he argues that in Iran, biographies are not being published more than three or four times and they are not bestsellers because Iranian people live like an onion. This means they are secretive and hypocritical; they wrap themselves in these layers and they do not share their words [thoughts] with their closest friends or relatives. Our biographies are therefore flat and

2 This book is one of the most important reference works in Islamic research: see Yahya Aryanpour, Az Saba Ta Nima [From Saba to Nima; The History of 150 Years of Persian Literature] (Tehran: Zawar, 2008, original 1995), vol. 1, 196–200. 3 Yahya Aryanpour, Az Saba Ta Nima, 199. 4 This book, published in 2005 and republished 27 times, was translated into English by Caroline Croskery in 2016 under the title You’re No Stranger Here and published by Createspace Independent Publishing Platform.

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unimaginative. They are not given an artistic form. People only talk about the dates of death and birth.5 Biography for most eminent Iranians is best described as a commentary upon the chronology of events. Simin Daneshvar (1921–2012), the first major Iranian female novelist, reflected: ‘I do not have anything to write about in my life except grief and sorrow.’6 She believed (auto)biographers should be loyal and intimate in their works and should show social turmoil only implicitly.7 Forough Farrokhzad (1934–1967), one of the most celebrated Iranian modernist poets, felt that it would be tedious and indeed pointless for her to talk about her personal life.8 Seyed Hassan Taghizadeh (1878–1970), an influential politician and outstanding researcher in the contemporary Iranian cultural and political area, and Seyed Ahmad Kasravi (1890–1948), a notable Iranian historian and constitutionalist, have both stated – directly and indirectly – that any reference to their personal lives would have no relevance to constitutional events or political issues and would only bore their readers.9 Why this hypocrisy, dissimulation, and disloyalty in contemporary Iranian biography? Why does Iranian society show itself to be terrified at the prospect that somone would write about social networks and matters of intimacy in biography? Has this been so during all of Iran’s historical periods? There is no consensus on the state of the biography in Iran. Some scholars, like the famous author and translator Kaveh Mirabbasi, believe that this art has still not found its genuine place among people. But Abdolhossein Azarang, a member of the editorial board of the Encyclopedia of Iran, claims that Iranian biography is in good shape.10 How can we explain these contradictions? Nowadays in Iran a biography is appreciated mostly when it is written in the form of a novel 5 6 7 8

9

10

Hushang Muradi Kermani, ‘Biography in Iran Is Like an Onion’, http://fhnews.ir/fa/news/ 93729, last modified July 27, 2017, accessed October 30, 2018. Farzaneh Milani, ‘Speak with Simin Daneshvar’, in Ketabe-Alefba Quarterly (Fall 1983), 155. Milani, ‘Speak with Simin Daneshvar’. Iraj Gorgin, ‘Forough Farrokhzad’s dialogue with Iraj Gorgin, radio Iran, 1964’, in In the Words with Forough Farrokhzad (the Original and Valuable text) (Tehran: Daftarhaye Zamaneh, 1967), 4. Iraj Afshar, Zendegi-ye Tufani [Tempestuous Life: Memoirs of Seyed Hassan Taghizadeh] (Tehran: Elmi, 1989), 9–11. Ahmad Kasravi, Zendegi-ye man [My Life: The First Period of His Life from Childhood to Thirtieth Birthday] (Tehran: Peyman, 1944), preface. Ahmad Kasravi, History of the Iranian Constitutional Revolution (Tehran: Amir Kabir, 1984; original 1940), vol. 1, 3–6. Ahmad Kasravi, The Eighteen-Year History of Azerbaijan (Tehran: Amir Kabir, 1978; original 1937), vol. 1, preface. Kaveh Mirabbasi, ‘Biography Has Not Yet Commenced in Iran’, in Ebtekar Newspaper, November 20, 2017, 8. Farangis Habibi, interview with Abdolhossein Azarang, ‘Biography in Iran’, Radio France International, aired 1 December 1, 2008, accessed October 30, 2018 [online].

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or when it pertains to politicians. There are many more readers of political biographies than of other genres in Iran. To find reasonable responses to these questions, one must inevitably refer to and study biographical books in Iran independently and comparatively. The questions and ambiguities surrounding biography find their origins in cultural, political, social and religious imperatives, which have been imposed on society either compulsorily or through the maintenance of conventions. In fact, biography can not only provide an appropriate place for the manifestation of these controversies, but it can also offer a means to investigate processes of societal change during various historical periods. Unfortunately, there is no comprehensive and accurate research about these forbidden issues in Iran, where study of these subjects is restricted to research on various ethnic or lingual groups and different historical periods. Although political power has changed hands, the prohibition to speak about certain issues in Iran’s religious, social and cultural spheres has remained. Womanhood, a controversial subject, is one of biography’s taboos in Iran. Fourteen centuries ago, Islam was introduced to Iran. In spite of its rules and regulations, the condition and status of women were imposed by convention and practice, which were a mixture of religious and previous social attributes. Practically, the rules of Islam here diverged from their central direction. The Arabs brought to Iran a synthesis of Islamic and pre-Islamic values, which were now combined with Iran’s pre-Islamic culture. The arrival of the Mongols in Iran and other Islamic countries then widened the gap between Islam’s theoretical and practical judgments. Praiseworthy manners and customs promulgated by Islam and its representatives became degraded, and in the atmosphere of moral corruption, women were more apt to stay at home, locked behind the fences of their houses.11 This situation worsened due to religious fanaticism. Everything related to women was considered part of society’s taboos. Women’s bodies had to be covered in public; their voices must not be heard by male strangers; their names could not be mentioned in front of men; portraits of women could not be painted. These rules suppressed Iranian women physically and verbally. Breaking them was considered an intrusion into their privacy and a violation of societal taboos.12 11

12

Seyed Sa’id Zahed and Bizhan Khajehnouri, ‘A Survey and Analysis of Women’s Social Role in the History of Iran’, in Farhang Quarterly 16, no. 48 (Winter 2004), 70. Simin Rejali, ‘The Role of Woman in Education of Iran’, in The Role of Woman in Iranian Culture and Civilization (collection of lectures by Iranian women’s organizations, on the occasion of 2500th anniversary of the founding of the Persian Empire) (Tehran: Sazman-e Zanan-e Iran, 1971), 14–15. Farzaneh Milani, Veils and Words (The Emerging Voices of Iranian Writers) (New York: Syracuse University Press, 1992), 46.

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The country’s constitution – for Iranian women the starting point of a transition towards a modern view of society – caused these forbidden issues only partly to become freely expressed.13 Even intellectuals were obliged to follow society’s implicit moral values. The Iranian intellectual Yousef Etessami (1879–1938), one of the constitutionalists, translated parts of Qasim Amin’s ‘Tahrir al-Mar’a (The Liberation of Women).14 This book exerted considerable influence on the awakening of women. And yet he opposed publication of the collected poems of his daughter Parvin Etessami (1907–1941), a famous Iranian poet, while she was unmarried. Due to certain social conditions and assumptions, he considered such publication inappropriate: men would take it as a means for her to find a husband.15 In patriarchal Iranian society, men possessed power over three realms: society and family; private and public spaces; public information and literature.16 Therefore, history was written by men. The names of women appeared less frequently in the classical biographical encyclopedia, in which even the lives of eminent women were studied only generally, superficially, and concisely. We find hardly any information about the worries, roles, perspectives, and destinies of the mother, wife, daughter(s), and female relatives of a biographical subject.17 As a result, women’s biography currently faces the problems not only of collecting information and documents, but also of forbidden issues. Many gender stereotypes in Iranian works are reflective of Iran’s patriarchal society. A woman’s life is still hidden in her husband’s biography, and eminent women still complain about their successes being connected with their husbands. Thus Simin Daneshvar: ‘Do not know me by [husband] Jalal but do know me by myself.’18 The role of motherhood has always been important in Iranian society. In the constitutional period, a time when the country’s Islamic culture encountered modern Western civilization, most of the clergymen and intellectuals

13

14 15 16

17 18

Mohammad Ali Alizadeh, Ali Baghdar Delgosha, ‘A Review of Women’s Social Demands in the Press of Constitutional Era (With an Emphasis on Their Writing in the New Iran Newspaper)’, in Woman and Society Quarterly 7, no. 25 (Spring 2016), 214. There is a diversity of opinion about his date of birth. Cf. Nasrollah Haddadi, The Life and Times of Parvin E’tesami (Tehran: Namak, 2014), 20–31. Nasrollah Haddadi, The Life and Times of Parvin E’tesami, 146. Maryam Ameli Rezai, ‘A Shift from the Oral Culture to the Written Culture in Women’s Writings (From the Naseri Period to the Constitutional Period)’, in Pazhūhish-i Źabān va Adabiyyāt-i Fārsī Quarterly 14, no. 14 (Autumn 2009), 175. We face this attitude in biographies and in autobiographies and memoirs. Hossein Danai, ‘A Stone on a Grave Was Published Untimely,’ last modified July 19, 2013, accessed October 30, 2018 [online]. Jalal Al-e Ahmad (1923–1969), was a writer, translator, literary critic, and influential person within intellectual movements in Iran.

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did not accept the idea that women could enjoy a free and active presence in society. They wanted to stress the importance of the traditional role of women as mothers – not just in the family but also in society. One of the pioneering figures in the Iranian women’s movement, the journalist Sedigheh Dolatabadi (1882–1961), founded the magazine Zaban-e Zanan to advocate for Iranian women’s rights. She wrote: ‘Great and prominent men are only born from great and literate mothers – that is a fact. One thing is for certain, a mother’s morality, disposition and manner have an influence on her child. Also her breast milk and education’s influence are undeniable. Certainly, a woman who doesn’t enjoy all human rights won’t be a meritorious mother. Then why do men want to restrain their own progress by limiting women in their freedom and their participation in social affairs?’19 To recognize the process of change in women’s affairs across several historical periods in Iran, women’s biographies must be analyzed and studied comparatively against other biographies written in other societies. The subject of women in biography can be investigated by conducting research from both quantitative and qualitative perspectives. The criteria for researching male and female matters are different. In Iran, female biographers mainly focus on the personal and emotional lives of their subjects and usually do not pay attention to historical or wider general issues concerning these women’s areas. The emphasis is mostly on family and friends. Usually they employ satire, certain kinds of emphasis, and a simple style rather than the idealized, rationalist, powerful and nostalgic style characteristic of male biographers.20 To understand the place of women in Iranian biography, one must study their presence or absence in biographical works. Is the woman’s role in a biography active or passive, either as biographer or biographee? Social and family considerations provide further examples of some of the Do’s and Don’ts in Iranian society. Politeness, humility, avoidance of damaging someone’s reputation, and the fear of criticism are impediments to a frank exploration of the details or secrets of a person’s life. If biographers or biographees want to wade into these waters, they will choose euphemisms or mitigate the difficult aspects of a life. For example, when Jalal Al-e Ahmad’s book Sangi bar Gori was published after his death, it was confronted with not only his wife’s resistance but also with harsh disapproval from the rest 19

20

Sedigheh Dolatabadi, Sedighe Dolatabadi: Letters, Writings, and Remembrances, vol. 2, ed. Mahdokht Sanati and Afsaneh Najmabadi (New York: Nigarish va nigarish-i zan, summer 1998), 337. Firouzeh Mohajer, ‘Women and Biographies’, last modified March 12, 2012, accessed October 30, 2018, http://sedighedolatabadi.org/?p=558.

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of Iranian society.21 Some believed that the goal of this book was to tamper with Jalal’s reputation; others saw the revelation of his life’s secrets as a break with tradition and an invasion of privacy. The publication of Al-e Ahmad’s romantic letters to his wife, Simin Daneshvar, annoyed her because she believed that they should have been kept private.22 Another example of the unwillingness to delve into the secrets of a subject’s life is the instance of Seyed Hassan Taqizadeh, who wanted his wife to publish his memoirs ten years after his death. But she believed that the publication of some difficult issues in his memoirs was not possible without the removal of political obstacles. The authorities, however, did not want to explain their motives.23 Sometimes, because these considerations are pursued so strictly, we are given only the positive side of a biographical subject, which leads to hyperbole and mythologization. In a continuously turbulent country such as Iran, social and political instability have caused a decline in self-confidence, of the readiness to accept criticism, and of trust in other people. As Muradi Kermani says: ‘Presently Iranians hide three things: the amount of money they have, their beliefs and their plans for the future.’24 Mistrust of other persons has led people to embark on autobiographies or works in which they write whatever they want to tell. One evident example is a work by Seyed Ahmad Kasravi. When he found out that false and panegyric things had been written about him in newspapers, he decided to write his life history himself so that there would be no need for others to ask, search for, and write things about him, correct or false.25 In Iran memoirs and autobiographies present a large obstacle to biography. After the authors of these works pass away, their relatives or friends believe that their whole life story has been told. They do not want to give out more information. Indeed, they do not want to say anything that might damage the reputation of the dead. As a result, we are losing much of their life stories. Iraj Afshar (1925–2011), a well-known Iranologist and bibliographer, believed that Taqizadeh did not give consideration in his memoirs to cultural issues and his scientific activities in Iran. Had he written about his relations and 21 22 23 24 25

This book was translated by Azfar Moin as A Stone on a Grave (Costa Mesa, CA: Mazda, 2008). Hossein Danai, ‘A Stone on a Grave Was Published Untimely.’ Farzaneh Milani, ‘Writing Women’s Lives in Iran’, Iran Nameh Quarterly 14, no. 4 (Fall 1996): 633. Iraj Afshar, Zendegi-ye Tufani [Tempestuous Life: Memoirs of Seyed Hassan Taghizade], 3–4. Hushang Muradi Kermani, ‘Biography in Iran Is Like an Onion’. Ahmad Kasravi, Zendegi-ye man [My Life: The First Period of His Life from Childhood to Thirtieth Birthday].

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discussions with important scientists, his memoirs would have been far more comprehensive.26 Islam is another sensitive subject in Iranian society. Any insult to the Islamic faith has been prohibited and blasphemy has been followed by civil disturbance. Unfortunately, throughout Iranian history there has been no defined border between freedom of speech and freedom of action. This is the consequence of a more than a century-old policy of official and unofficial censorship in Iran. Instead of investing in the scientific community of scholars and thinkers who do not support ethnic, religious, cultural, political, and sectarian fanaticism, officials have established and supported a group of censors who depend on the government and carry out censorship according to the government’s goals, in the name of preventing social, moral, and political damage to society. Most likely the memories of Bahaedin Khoramshahi, one of the most famous Iranian Islamic studies scholars and Shiite researchers, illustrates this subject. He stated that some time ago one of my friends, the best of our country’s translators (from French to Persian), translated a very precious classical book about Islamic civilization in medieval times. He and his publisher had done their characteristic self-censorship. They asked me, as a person whose field of research is Islamic studies, to review this book responsibly. Truthfully, I studied it with care and I rectified some subtle difficulties with caution, without spoiling the book’s real meanings and authorial intentions. Just before publication, the text was sent to the book authorization office. But after one additional year, the translator was told that this book had numerous difficulties. He replied that the book had been examined responsibly by a specialist, who claimed that the book accorded with norms of politeness and the sharia rules. Upon hearing this remark, the censors laughed and simply stated: ‘His opinion is valid for him, our rules are different.’ Presumably, the censors’ knowledge, respect for, and belief in Islam and Islamic education is worth more than what I, writer of these lines, possess?27 When people find themselves in a bottleneck situation and can’t frankly engage in a debate because of governmental censorship, they try to eliminate or revolutionize the whole constellation of cultural, social, and religious taboos, most of which have been internalized by society’s members. They believe that their obligation to uphold the prohibitions on these forbidden issues leads

26 27

Iraj Afshar, Zendegi-ye Tufani [Tempestuous Life: Memoirs of Seyed Hassan Taghizadeh], 3. Bahaedin Khoramshahi, ‘Self-censorship’, in Daneshgah-e Enghelab Quarterly (Special Issue of Book and Book Reading) 2 (Nov. 11–17, 1995), 53–54.

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them to unconscious self-censorship. They do their work, but without comprehending these forbidden issues’ positive or negative influence on their society. Then, automatically, censorship becomes a factor of disturbance in society. In attending to the forbidden issues in every society, the reading of biographies should be given particular prominence, because they can make clear the extent to which these issues have become weaker or stronger. Sometimes the prohibitions are eliminated altogether or, in converted forms, feed into other forbidden issues whose taboo status is determined by political and social conditions. To get a better understanding of differences between societies, biographical works should be studied comparatively. The biographical production of Iran, reflecting the ups and downs of the turbulent periods of the country’s historical, political and literary life, can serve as a valuable source for comprehending Iranian society. By knowing the society’s forbidden issues, research will become easier. Hopefully we will then no longer be handicapped by censorship to understand what is considered proper and improper in Iranian biography.

From Reticence to Revelation: Biography in New Zealand Doug Munro

New Zealand biography is a contradiction borne of its demographic setting, in the sense that it is a country with a rich biographical tradition in spite of the smallness of its population. There were just under two million New Zealanders in 1950, and today the population is just under five million. The immediate question is: how does biographical writing, and writing generally, survive, never mind flourish, given such evident disadvantages of scale? The constraints in New Zealand, especially its small market, are perhaps similar to those experienced in other countries with comparable populations: the Republic of Ireland (4.8 million), Norway (5.3 million), Finland (5.5 million), and Croatia (4.15 million). The difference, however, is the recent time frame of a literary tradition in New Zealand. A rough and ready starting point of the literary tradition would be 1840, when the country became a British Crown Colony. Other factors distinguishing the biographical writing of New Zealand include its increasing professionalization; its reflection of changing societal mores; and its place within, rather than separate from, a wider literary culture. Within this setting, biographical writing in New Zealand finds itself, paradoxically, in a healthy yet somewhat precarious condition. The present chapter, which considers three major categories of biography in New Zealand, is by no means meant to be exhaustive.1

1

Sporting Biography

New Zealand is reputedly a sports-mad country, especially about rugby union. Unsurprisingly, a large auto/biographical industry has grown around the lives

1 For state of the art discussions of biography in nearby Australia, see Malcolm Allbrook and Melanie Nolan, ‘Australian Historians and Biography’, in Australian Journal of Biography and History 1 (2018), 3–21; Mark McKenna, “The Character Business’: Biographical Political Writing in Australia,’ in A Historian for all Seasons: Essays for Geoffrey Bolton, ed. Stuart Macintyre, Lenore Layman, and Jenny Gregory (Melbourne: Monash University Publishing, 2016), 48–70.

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2020 | DOI:10.1163/9789004434974_014

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of sportsmen and, more recently, sportswomen. Geoff Watson, assessing recently the plethora of New Zealand sporting biographies and autobiographies (the latter are far more numerous), identifies three transitional phases: ‘a chronological era, extending from the early twentieth century until the 1960s; an indirectly confessional phase between the 1970s and mid 1980s and an openly confessional phase from the mid-1980s.’2 As well as ‘afford[ing] a valuable insight into New Zealand’s changing self-image and values’, these books demonstrate a rolling back of authorial self-censorship: curtailment gives way to candor and the former veil of discretion has increasingly been replaced by the disclosure of one’s self and others. An example that comes immediately to mind is the biography of Christian Cullen, a member of the national rugby union team the All Blacks, where, with considerable justice, the coach and selectors are roundly criticized for his treatment during his twilight years with the organization.3 In other words, the sports auto/biographies reflect global trends whereby reticence has lost ground to revelation. These works mirror the more candid character of the biographies that have emerged since the 1960s, when boundary-breaking legal battles over the banning of such ‘immoral’ novels as Lady Chatterley’s Lover and Lolita both reflected and contributed to a less buttoned-up moral climate that permitted greater personal disclosure. The fine line between public and private was spectacularly pulled back by Michael Holroyd’s Lytton Strachey (1967–1968), a full-frontal exposure of the writer and his circle that resembles Strachey’s Eminent Victorians (1918) in its contribution to the evolution of the biographical form. These developments helped sanction a greater degree of openness and directness on the part of biographers. Thus, the post-1970s biographies (and especially the autobiographies) became far more self-revealing on the one hand and, on the other, more critical of the perceived faults and foibles of others. There was a counter-reaction in 1998 when New Zealand’s foremost biographer, Michael King (1945–2004), entered a plea that biographers exercise restraint, or ‘compassionate truth’ as he termed it, and withhold information that might be hurtful to the families and relatives of subjects, but the notion found little favor at home or abroad.4 2 Geoff Watson, ‘From Chronology to Confessional: New Zealand Sporting Biographies in Transition,’ in Journal of New Zealand Studies 21 (2015), 19. 3 John Matheson, Christian Cullen: Life on the Run (Auckland: Hodder Moa Beckett, 2003). 4 Michael King, ‘Tread Softly for You Tread on My Life: Biography and Compassionate Truth’, in New Zealand Studies 8, no. 2 (1998), 3–8, republished in his Tread Softly for You Tread on My Life (Auckland: Cape Catley, 2001), 9–17. The critics include Harry Ricketts, ‘Without Guilt or Apology’, in New Zealand Books, March 2002, 11; Carl Rollyson, A Higher Form of Cannibalism? Adventures in the Art and Politics of Biography (Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 2005), 174–175.

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Biography, then, is becoming more frank and forthright but it is still a useful barometer as to what is deemed unacceptable behavior. Take the dual autobiography of the oarsmen Hamish Bond and Eric Murray, Kiwi Pair.5 Unbeaten in international competition (including the winning of two Olympic gold medals) between 2009 and 2016, when they disbanded, they were probably the greatest coxless pair combination of all time. A shabby episode related in the book – detailing the response of their coach and the national selectors when Murray wanted a week off training to be present when his partner gave birth to their child – resulted in a public backlash. In a tense meeting, one of the selectors (also an Olympic gold medalist) responded that ‘men didn’t come home from war just because women were having children’. Later that day their coach (an Olympic silver medallist) burst in on them shouting, ‘You blond-haired, arrogant, motherf***ing c***s! Who do you think you are!’ Judging by the media reaction, it can safely be said that the court of public opinion handed down the verdict that the selectors and coach had transgressed the norms of human decency. The matter would never have arisen in rugby union, where paternity leave is granted as a matter of course. Kiwi Pair also highlights the degree to which the distinctions between biography and autobiography are blurred in sporting biography. Because prowess at sport and facility in writing do not always coincide, most sports auto/ biographies are written with the assistance of a co-author, usually a sports journalist. The question then arises as to where the respective contributions begin and end – is the co-author a mere facilitator or more of an amanuensis; a mere mouthpiece whose job it is to tidy up the subject’s English; or someone whose input actually amounts to co-authorship? It is often hard to tell. The authorship here is attributed to ‘Hamish Bond and Eric Murray with Scotty Stevenson’. The extent of Stevenson’s contribution begins is not specified, although the book is evidently neither biography nor autobiography but something in between. Then there is the travesty produced when James McNeish (1931–2016) wrote a fictionalized biography (including wholly invented episodes) of Jack Lovelock (1910–49), the middle-distance runner who won the 1500 meters at the 1936 Olympics in world-record time. Far from presenting the essential truth, as McNeish claimed he had, this biographer introduced distortions of the sort that are likely to stick in the public mind. McNeish was rightly chided by another Lovelock scholar, who made the obvious point that the athlete’s life was ‘fascinating enough without the fiction’.6 5 Hamish Bond and Eric Murray with Scotty Stevenson, Kiwi Pair (Auckland: Penguin, 2016). 6 James McNeish, Lovelock (Auckland: Hodder & Stoughton, 1986); David Colquhoun, ‘Come On, Jack!,’ in New Zealand Listener, August 2, 2008, 29–31.

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151

Political Biography

Political biography is the most widespread form of biography in New Zealand after sporting auto/biographies; it, too, can be used illustrate themes in New Zealand biographical writing. There are biographies of almost every premier and prime minister and of several colonial governors. Almost invariably these books can be identified as biographies and not something else, in that the subject is always at the forefront of discussion. Barry Gustafson probably summed up the raison d’être for political biography in saying that ‘individuals do make a difference. They cannot be separated from their context but neither should they be regarded as passive irrelevancies in a detailed analysis of that context or buried in some collective mass.’7 An exception might be the group biography of the governors and governors-general; it is hard to decide whether it is primarily biographical in intention or instead represents an account of the office organized chronologically around the incumbents.8 The political biographers also eschew theory and avoid the jargon of political science: they recall David Novarr’s statement that ‘theory and criticism are about as important to writers of biography as ornithology is to birds.’9 While models and theories of political leadership, for example, might inform the narrative, explicit discussion of such matters is confined to introductions or appendices or to specialized journal articles – or else the author will write, say, on the question of leadership as illustrated by the contrasting styles of different prime ministers.10 The genre’s long history can be used to illustrate other themes. One is the increasing professionalization, for want of a better word, of New Zealand biographical writing. An intellectual point of departure came in 1907, when the parliamentary reporter James Drummond (1851–1921) wrote a substantial biography of the recently deceased Richard Seddon (1845–1906). Although deferential and largely descriptive, it was nonetheless a serious and diligent work

7

8 9 10

Barry Gustafson, His Way: A Biography of Robert Muldoon (Auckland: Auckland University Press, 2000), 11. Many of the people referred to in the present chapter can be looked up online in the Dictionary of New Zealand Biography, https://teara.govt.nz/en/biographies. Biographical chapters on the prime ministers since 1893 are in Michael Bassett, New Zealand’s Prime Ministers: From Dick Seddon to John Key (Mangawhai: David Ling Publishing, 2017). Gavin McLean, The Governors: New Zealand’s Governors and Governors-General (Dunedin: University of Otago Press, 2006). Quoted in Nigel Hamilton and Hans Renders, The ABC of Modern Biography (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2018), 177. Jon Johansson, Two Titans: Muldoon, Lange and Leadership (Wellington: Dunmore Publishing, 2005).

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that set a benchmark that subsequent political biographers failed to live up to. The numerous political biographies that were published in the following decades were almost always written by journalists, devotees, or members of the party faithful. Some were better than others, but even into the 1950s the overall quality was not high. Pious and anodyne, they reflected the biographical trends of the time. Academically trained biographers were also at fault. Guy Scholefield (1877–1963) was a journalist, archivist, and historian with a PhD from London whose two-volume Dictionary of New Zealand Biography (1940) attracted the criticism that ‘our Dr Scholefield is not the man to soil a tomb with ambiguous flowers; he lays the pure lily; no weed of criticism enters into his wreath; our Great it seems were all Good, or if not good then Misunderstood’.11 Only from the mid-1960s onward did New Zealand political biography come of age, in the sense of being academically respectable.12 By contrast, political biographies by academics in Canada commenced in the 1920s, although such works ‘were more concerned with the biography of the state than with their subjects’ own natures’.13 Two developments contributed to the changing nature of political biography in New Zealand. From the late 1940s onward, the university system expanded, resulting in a commensurate increase in academic historians (and eventually political scientists). The other factor was the insistence that scholarship be of higher quality.14 Thus history (and, with it, political biography) became increasingly professionalized. The publication of several important monographs in the late 1950s marked a decisive break, ushering in a new order in which New Zealand historiography could be said to have finally gained a substantial identity and standing in its own right.15 A definite sense that the old order has passed is conveyed by Tom Brooking, the most recent biographer of Richard Seddon, the country’s longest serving prime minister, who held the 11 12

13 14

15

Quoted in Tim Beaglehole, ed., ‘I think I am becoming a New Zealander’: Letters of J.C. Beaglehole (Wellington: Victoria University Press, 2013), 187. P.J. O’Farrell, Harry Holland: Militant Socialist (Canberra: Australian National University, 1964); Keith Sinclair, William Pember Reeves: New Zealand Fabian (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1965). See also Len Richardson, ‘Patrick O’Farrell and the Making of Harry Holland: Militant Socialist’, in Labour History 115 (2018), 27–46. Carl Berger, The Writing of Canadian History: Aspects of English-Canadian Historical Writing since 1900, 2nd ed. (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1986), 218. For example, Keith Sinclair, The Maori Land League: An Examination into the Source of a Historical Myth (Auckland, 1950), 3; J.C. Beaglehole, ‘The New Zealand Scholar’ (1954), in The Feel of Truth, ed. Peter Munz (Wellington: A.W. & A.H. Reed, 1969), 251. Keith Sinclair, ‘New Zealand’ in The Historiography of the British Empire-Commonwealth: Trends, Interpretations, and Resources, ed. Robin W. Winks (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1966), 174–196.

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position from 1893 to 1906. One of Brooking’s justifications for a new biography was his contention that the previous one, published in 1955, was ‘so suffused with purple prose and quaint archaisms as to be almost incomprehensible to the modern reader’.16 This is not to say that non-academic biographers are necessarily comfortable with, or defer to, the dispensation of professionalism. In 1984, Lynley Hood attended a biography conference and felt ‘alienated’ that the other delegates, as she saw it, were not ‘as emotionally involved with their subjects or as concerned with their subject’s inner lives as I am’.17 Biography is becoming more respectable within the academy because so many high-quality biographies are now being written, not least by academics. Pockets of resistance remain among university-employed historians, but there can be little question about the growing worth and significance of biography to New Zealand historiography. My own perception is that the real divide is not between history and biography but rather ‘amateurs’ and ‘professionals,’ with members of these loosely defined, partially overlapping categories often viewing each other askance. There is also the perception of a dichotomy between ‘academic history’ and popularization. In reviewing Michael King’s A Penguin History of New Zealand (2003), which was aimed at a ‘curious and intelligent’ lay audience, an academic asked what the book had to offer ‘us’, even though King possessed a doctorate in history.18 Much of this sort of sentiment lingers. Writers outside the academy, for their part, are wont to post reminders that academics receive a fortnightly paycheck and are thus not subject to the whims of the literary marketplace. Academics by no means have a monopoly on achievement, but the overall quality of political biography in New Zealand has risen appreciably as a result of their input – not only in the tracking down of material in private hands but also through a widespread willingness to research an enormous quantity and variety of material. The official government publications and the newspaper sources that satisfied a previous generation of biographers are now complemented by personal papers, party records, and interviews. Improved technology has also meant that television and radio broadcasts are available in ways 16

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Tom Brooking, Richard Seddon: King of God’s Own: The Life and Times of New Zealand’s Longest-Serving Prime Minister (Auckland: Auckland University Press, 2014), 8, referring to R.M. Burdon, King Dick: A Biography of Richard John Seddon (Christchurch: Whitcombe & Tombs, 1955). Lynley Hood, Who Is Sylvia? The Diary of a Biography (Dunedin: John McIndoe, 1990), 89 (quotation), 217. Another account of the actual writing of a biography is Stephanie de Montalk, ‘Super Bug, Rumour and Truth: Writing a Memoir/Biography of Count Geoffrey Potocki de Montalk,’ in Journal of New Zealand Studies 1 (2002), 63–76. Caroline Daley, New Zealand Journal of History 38:1 (2004), 77–79.

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they had not been in earlier generations. To date, the underutilization of government files is the exception to a pattern defined by depth of research. Two features stand out. The first is that someone has to be willing and able to see through to a conclusion the sizeable commitment of writing a full-scale political biography. Remarkably, two individuals have written a disproportionate share of these works – Barry Gustafson and Michael Bassett, both history graduates of the University of Auckland and each a former academic. Neither set out to be political biographers but both have been politically engaged (in each case changing his political allegiance). Between them, they have written seven biographies of prime ministers, and much else besides. It is a sobering thought that New Zealand political biography would be much poorer had these two individuals not chanced to commit themselves to the writing of multiple biographies.19 The other feature to note is that political biography in New Zealand, as elsewhere, has been confined to ‘visible’ political actors. To date, only two full-scale biographies have treated the lives of career public servants.20 Underrepresentation is also present in other walks of life. There are numerous biographies of missionaries to the Maori but very few of non-missionary clerics.21 There are also few biographies of trade union leaders, despite numerous histories of the labor movement.22 Biographies of career academics are also thin on the ground.23 The same applies to members of the armed forces. Books about military history are popular in New Zealand and readily find publishers, but most of these works are campaign histories. Centenary commemorations of World 19

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The biographies of twentieth-century New Zealand prime ministers are discussed and itemized in Doug Munro, ‘Biographies of Post-1900 New Zealand Prime Ministers,’ in Political Life Writing in the Pacific Islands: reflections on practice, ed. Jack Corbett and Brij V. Lal (Canberra: ANU Press, 2015), 145–167. Major political biographies continue to appear – e.g., David Grant, The Mighty Totara: The Life and Times of Norman Kirk (Auckland: Random House, 2014). Noeline Alcorn, ‘To the fullest extent of his powers’: C.E. Beeby’s Life in Education (Wellington: Victoria University of Wellington, 1999); Mary McEwen, Te Oka – Pākehā Kaumātua: The Life of Jock McEwen (Wellington: Reviresco Trust, 2016). Rory Sweetman, Bishop in the Dock: The Sedition Trial of James Liston (Auckland: Auckland University Press, 1997); Nicholas Reid, James Liston: A Life (Wellington: Victoria University Press, 2006). E.g., Graeme Hunt, Black Prince: The Biography of Finton Patrick Walsh (Auckland: Penguin, 2004); David Grant, Man for All Seasons: The Life and Times of Ken Douglas (Auckland: Random House, 2010); Mark Darby, White-Collar Radical: Dan Long and the Rise of White-Collar unions (Nelson: Craig Potton Publishing, 2013). E.g., Tim Beaglehole, The New Zealand Scholar: A life of J.C. Beaglehole (Wellington: Victoria University Press, 2006); Paul Spoonley, Mata Toa: The Life and Times of Ranginui Walker (Auckland: Penguin, 2009); Doug Munro, J.C. Beaglehole – Public Intellectual, Critical Conscience (Wellington: Steele Roberts, 2012).

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War I, which have been spread over five years, have recently given the genre a boost, yet biography has largely been shunned. There are certainly works where the wartime interruptions to the subjects’ lives are integral to the stories being told.24 But biographies of career soldiers are rare, although it helps in the biographical stakes to have won a Victoria Cross.25 Questions of patriotism also enter the picture; patriotic sentiments certainly create an atmosphere that discourages criticism, especially if the subject is still alive – akin to the bravery one would have to show in saying anything against a national treasure such as the late Sir Edmund Hilary (1919–2008).

3

Changing National Contexts

In his biography of Prime Minister Robert Muldoon (1921–1992), Barry Gustafson noted that he had ‘no problem with discussing some aspects of the private Muldoon, a man shy and sensitive in some ways, brutal and insensitive in others’.26 It makes for sometimes uncomfortable reading. An earlier, more circumspect generation of biographers, especially those dealing with the period of early contact between Maori and Pakeha (Europeans), had a different way of thinking. In that era biographers and historians alike reflected a more complacent, uncomplicated, and self-assured age that emphasized the theme of progress (meaning the spread of European settlement). Their narratives – whether concerning missionaries, governors, prominent settlers, Maori warriors, Pakeha-Maori (Europeans who lived among Maori and adopted many of their norms), or assorted adventurers – were written in the heroic mould. They presented a romanicized view of Maori life that conformed to the myth of a harmonious biracial society that was ‘the laboratory of the world’ in social reform.27 Biography may have formed only a small part of this literature, but biographers were part of it. 24

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E.g., Keith Ovenden, A Fighting Withdrawal: The Life of Dan Davin – Writer, Soldier, Publisher (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996); Rosemary Jamieson, In Command: Minesweeper Captain and Labour Parliamentarian (Wellington: Steele Roberts, 2009). E.g., Paul Freyberg, Bernard Freyberg, VC: Soldier of Two Nations (London and Auckland: Hodder & Stoughton, 1991); Kenneth Sandford, Mark of the Lion: The Story of Charles Upham, VC and Bar (London: Hutchinson, 1962); Paul Little, Willie Apiata, VC: The Reluctant Hero (Auckland: Viking, 2008). Gustafson, His Way, 15. See, generally, Erik Olssen, ‘Where to from Here? Reflections on the Twentieth-Century Historiography of Nineteenth-Century New Zealand,’ in New Zealand Journal of History 26, no. 1 (1992): 54–77; Rachel Barrowman, ‘History and Romance: The Making of the Centennial History Surveys’, in Creating a National Spirit: Celebrating New Zealand’s Centennial, ed. William Renwick (Wellington: Victoria University Press, 2004), 161–177.

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On the theme of changing biographical perceptions, the career of Edward Gibbon Wakefield (1796–1862) illustrates how biographical subjects have come under greater scrutiny and how different groups as well as different generations can view a major historical figure. Originally lauded as the originator of ‘systematic colonisation’ in South Australia and parts of New Zealand, Wakefield has been transformed from a hero of colonial development to an opportunistic postcolonial ogre. His ‘amazing career’, as an earlier biographer described it, has increasingly been regarded as being mired in unreality and fraud. The latest major study is not wholly condemnatory but it does stress the disjunction between the initial ‘courage and vision’ and the ‘cupidity and stupidity’ of the Wakefield scheme in practice.28 Maori take a grimmer view of the person they regard as the arch-villain who set them back generations. At a 1997 conference to reassess the life and work of Wakefield, the two Maori presenters made clear their anger and pain at the loss of Maori land and mana (standing prestige) as a direct consequence of Wakefield’s initiatives.29 Growing dissatisfaction at how Maori were being represented in the historical and biographical literature came to a head by the 1980s, when Maori radicals disputed the ‘right’ of Pakeha authors, whether historians or biographers, to involve themselves in Maori history. An earlier criticism was that Pakeha authors neglected Maori; now the point at issue was that Pakeha should not be appropriating and misrepresenting Maori history, and should clear from the area immediately. This development was a sign of the time; similar turf wars were taking place in African-American and Pacific Islands historiography.30

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Richard Garnett, Edward Gibbon Wakefield, the Colonization of South Australia and New Zealand (London: Longmans, Green & Co., 1898); A.J. Harrop, The Amazing Career of Edward Gibbon Wakefield (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1928); Irma O’Connor, Edward Gibbon Wakefield: The Man Himself (London: Selwyn & Blount, 1928); Michael Turnbull, The New Zealand Bubble: The Wakefield Theory in Practice (Wellington: Price Milburn, 1959); Peter Stuart, Edward Gibbon Wakefield in New Zealand (Wellington: Price Milburn, 1971); Paul Bloomfield, Edward Gibbon Wakefield, Builder of the British Commonwealth (London: Longmans, 1961); Ged Martin, Edward Gibbon Wakefield: Abductor and Mystagogue (Edinburgh: Ann Barry, 1997); Philip Temple, A Sort of Conscience: The Wakefields (Auckland: Auckland University Press, 2002). Ngatata Love, ‘Edward Gibbon Wakefield: A Maori Perspective’; and Matiu Rei, ‘Edward Gibbon Wakefield: A Ngati Toa View’, both in Rachel Underwood (ed.), Edward Gibbon Wakefield and the Colonial Dream: A Reconsideration (Wellington: Friends of the Turnbull Library/GP Publications, 1997), 3–10, 95–97. August Meier and Elliott Rudwick, Black History and the Historical Profession: 1915–1980 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1986), 287–294; Doug Munro, ‘Who ‘Owns’ Pacific History? Reflections on the Insider-Outsider Dichotomy’, in Journal of Pacific History 29, no. 2 (1994), 232–37.

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A particular target was Michael King, which was all the more unjust given his authorship of two biographies of Maori leaders based on immersion, empathy, and trust.31 Many, although not all, Pakeha historians withdrew from the field. Eventually the controversy simmered down, not least because Maori have written biographies of other Maori.32 But suspicion lingers in some quarters and Pakeha involvement in Maori biography remains somewhat fraught. Another indicator of societal change is group biography. Guy Scholefield’s Dictionary of New Zealand Biography (1940), already mentioned, took great and good men as its subjects, was heavily weighted to emphasize political history, and was careful not to offend anyone, living or dead. This orientation reflects both the times and Scholefield’s personality. Work commenced on a second Dictionary of New Zealand Biography in 1983 and its departures from both Scholefield’s volume and its Australian counterpart (the Australian Dictionary of Biography) are notable indicators of changing attitudes. Whereas the abd concentrated on prominent white males, the second dnzb made sure to contain a fair representation of women and Maori and to include entries on common folk as representative figures of particular social groups. Some of these emphases were a function of timing; the initial planning for the ADB began in the late 1950s, whereas the latter DNZB was conceived during a time of greater social awareness and in an atmosphere more receptive to expressions of gender equality and multiculturalism. Key figures involved during the planning stages also possessed considerable bearing, notably Keith Sinclair (1922–1993), the Professor of History at the University of Auckland: ‘On the [policy] committee he was unfailing in his support, especially of the efforts we made to enhance the representation of Maori and women. I remember him saying, with that great capacity he had to cut through abstraction with a concrete example, that though he would not expect the Dictionary to include every male nineteenth-century high school principal, he did expect to find every female one’.33 To emphasize multicultural nature of the enterprise,

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Michael King, Being Pakeha: An Encounter with New Zealand and the Maori Renaissance (Auckland: Hodder & Stoughton, 1985), 174–192. For the wider background, see James Belich, Paradise Reforged: A History of the New Zealanders from the 1880s to the Year 2000 (Auckland: Penguin, 2001), ch. 16 (‘Resurgent Maori’). King recounts some of his research for this earlier work in ‘New Zealand Oral History: Some Cultural and Methodological Considerations’, in New Zealand Journal of History 12, no. 2 (178), 104–123. E.g., Ranginui Walker, He Tipua: The Life and Times of Sir Apirana Ngata (Auckland: Viking, 2001). W.H. Oliver, ‘Obituary: Keith Sinclair, 1922–1993’, in New Zealand Journal of History 27, no. 2 (1993), 222; Melanie Nolan, ‘The Politics of Dictionaries of Biography in New Zealand’, in After the Treaty: The Settler State, Race Relations and the Exercise of Power in

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Maori advisors and contributors were recruited and the entries on Maori and Pacific Islander subjects were republished in two separate bilingual volumes. Such priories and strategies would have been totally alien to Scholefield when he was working on his own Dictionary in the 1930s. The second dnzb both reflected and contributed to a different sort of national consciousness.

4

Artistic Biography

Another major category of biography covers the arts – used here as an omnibus term to cover writers, actors, musicians, composers, and painters. In some respects these books run counter to the national stereotype of a country obsessed with rugby, racing, and beer, preoccupations that helped create an anti-intellectual environment inimical to the life of the mind. Like all stereotypes, this picture holds more than a grain of truth. A permanent state-owned national orchestra was formed as late as 1946. A Literary Fund to assist authors was established only the following year. Professional drama, ballet, and opera companies did not arrive until 1953–1954.34 Yet this discouraging context nonetheless produced notable artists in the broader sense of the term, although many had to emigrate in order to pursue their careers. A representative vignette from the period can be drawn from the experience of James McNeish and the response he received when he proudly showed his father a copy of his first book: ‘Good,’ he said… ‘Now that you’ve got that out of your system. You’ll be able to get on [with your life].’35 When I returned to New Zealand in 2000 after an almost twenty-year absence, I was pleasantly surprised to discover the range and general high quality of these sorts of biographies. This subgenre arrived much more recently than political biography.36 But since its emergence the pace has not slack-

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Colonial New Zealand, ed. Brad Patterson, Richard S. Hill, and Kathryn Patterson (Wellington: Steele Roberts, 2016), 40–61; Melanie Nolan and Christine Fernon, eds., The adb’s Story (Canberra: anu E Press, 2013). E.C. Simpson, A Survey of the Arts in New Zealand (Wellington: Chamber Music Society, 1961); Elizabeth Caffin and Andrew Mason, The Deepening Stream: A History of the New Zealand Literary Fund (Wellington: Victoria University Press, 2015). James McNeish, Touchstones: A Memoir (Auckland: Vintage, 2012), 24. E.g., Denys Trussell, Fairburn (Auckland: Auckland University Press/Oxford University Press, 1984). Lynley Hood, Sylvia! The Biography of Sylvia Ashton-Warner (Auckland: Viking, 1988); Ian Carter, Gadfly: The Life and Times of James Shelley (Auckland: Auckland University Press, 1993); Michael King, Frank Sargeson: A Life (Auckland: Viking, 1995); Rae McGregor, The Story of a New Zealand Writer: Jane Mander (Dunedin: University of

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ened and at any given time someone seems to be working on a major biography in the field.37 Like the political biographies, the artists’ biographies are typically deeply researched, drawing on a wide array of sources. And just as the authors of biographies of recent politicians are, typically, politically engaged, the artists’ biographies are almost always written by someone in the same field. Thus, the composer Philip Norman has written about a fellow composer and the art historian Jill Trevelyan has written books on an artist and an art dealer.38 Artistic biography demonstrates some of the practical difficulties in New Zealand in writing about the lives of one’s countrymen. Turf wars seem inevitable in such a small country, a case in point being the two rival biographers of the poet and activist James K. Baxter (1926–1972), who were told by Baxter’s widow to either sort out their differences or else be denied further access to the Baxter Papers.39 Smallness of scale can also inhibit what can and cannot be decently said, even within a general context of increasing disclosure and openness. When writing her ‘theatrical life’ of Nola Millar (1913–1974), Sarah Gaitanos agonized whether she should mention the philanderings of Dick Campion (1923–2013), the founder of the New Zealand Players, the country’s first professional repertory company. She decided to proceed on grounds of relevance – namely that Campion’s infidelities upset Nola to the extent that they affected her relationship with Campion, and because Nola ‘felt her own loyalties were compromised, especially her friendship with Edith

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Otago Press, 1998); Margaret Lovell-Smith with Louisa Shannahan, The Enigma of Sister Mary Leo: The Story Behind New Zealand’s Most Famous Singing Teacher (Auckland: Reed Books, 1998); Gordon Ogilvie, Denis Glover: His Life (Auckland: Godwit, 1999); Michael King, Wrestling with the Angel: A Life of Janet Frame (Auckland: Viking, 2000). E.g., Rachel Barrowman, Mason: The Life of R.A.K. Mason (Wellington: Victoria University Press, 2003); Chris McLean, John Pascoe: Author, Historian, Mountaineer, Photographer (Nelson: Craig Potton Publishing in association with The Whitcombe Press, 2003); W.J. McEldowney, Geoffrey Alley, Librarian: His Life and Work (Wellington: Victoria University Press, 2008); Joanne Drayton, Ngaio Marsh: Her Life in Crime (Auckland: HarperCollins, 2008); Sarah Gaitanos, The Violinist: Clare Galambos Winter, Holocaust Survivor (Wellington: Victoria University Press, 2011); Philip Temple, Life as a Novel: A Biography of Maurice Shadbolt: Volume One, 1932–1973 (Mangawhai: David Ling Publishing, 2018); Damian Skinner, Theo Schoon: A Biography (Auckland: Massey University, 2018). Philip Norman, Douglas Lilburn: His Life and Music (Christchurch: University of Canterbury Press, 2006); Jill Trevelyan, Rita Angus: An Artist’s Life (Wellington: Te Papa Press, 2008); Trevelyan, Peter McLeavey: The Life and Times of a New Zealand Art Dealer (Wellington: Te Papa Press, 2013). W.H. Oliver, Looking for the Phoenix: A Memoir (Wellington: Bridget Williams Books, 2002), 135–136.

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[Campion]’ – and devoted a paragraph to the matter.40 Some time later, Gaitanos and the elderly Campion met at a social function and he good-naturedly remarked: ‘You’ve been saying that I was a naughty boy’. ‘No,’ replied Gaitanos. ‘Nola said you were a naughty boy.’41 A subject’s sexuality can be another thorny problem for a biographer. Although homosexuality ceased to be a criminal offense in New Zealand in 1986, homophobia is still rather too prevalent. After the publication of his biography of the writer Frank Sargeson (1903–1982), Michael King received a letter from the relatives of one of Sargeson’s partners, informing him that ‘there would be consequences’ if the latter’s name was ever again mentioned in relation to Sargeson. The warning was underlined.42 There were also the tribulations of the joint biographers of the writer Iris Wilkinson (1906–1939, alias Robin Hyde), one of whom was her son. The book’s publication was delayed when certain initially supportive family members withdrew their approval in emphatic terms, culminating in one of them threatening serious self-harm on one of the biographer’s doorsteps if she did not desist.43 By contrast, Paul Millar’s biography of the writer Bill Pearson, detailing the extent impact of Pearson’s fear of being outed, could never have been written without the cooperation of Pearson and his long-term partner, Donald Stenhouse. Speaking of the latter, Millar remarked: ‘It is a very hard thing for a naturally private person to be so exposed through his relationship with Bill, yet Donald supported me at every stage.’44 The still-living writer Maurice Gee (b. 1931) extended similar generosity to Rachel Barrowman in authorizing her, with no strings attached, to write a biography that, among other things, detailed his repressed childhood and his frequently turbulent later life, and the effects of these events on his writing.45 Ever lurking in the wings are the twin terrors of copyright and libel law. In 2008, Chris McLean was forced to abandon his biography of the woodcarver John Bevan Ford (1930–2005) because the widow objected to a previous 40 41 42 43 44 45

Sarah Gaitanos, Nola Millar: A Theatrical Life (Wellington: Victoria University Press, 2006), 149. Information from Sarah Gaitanos, December 31, 2017. King, ‘Tread Softly’, 6. D.A. Challis and Gloria Rawlinson, The Book of Iris: A Life of Robin Hyde (Auckland: Auckland University Press, 2002), xx-xxii. Paul Millar, No Fretful Sleeper: A Life of Bill Pearson (Auckland: Auckland University Press, 2010), ix. Rachel Barrowman, Maurice Gee: Life and Work (Wellington: Victoria University Press, 2015). Not everyone relishes the prospect of being the subject of a biography. The reclusive Douglas Lilburn described biographers as ‘maggots on the meat of reputation’ (Norman, Douglas Lilburn, 7, 358).

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relationship being mentioned ‘to any significant extent’ despite its influence on the subject’s work. The widow, who held the copyright of her late husband’s work, refused to grant permission to reproduce his artworks in the book and threatened legal action if the book went ahead, leaving McLean with nothing ‘to show for three years on my life.’46 Two years later, C.K. Stead published a few extracts from letters to him by the novelist Janet Frame (1924–2004). The Janet Frame Literary Trust is a particularly vigilant, dogmatic, and controlling keeper of the writer’s flame, and Stead was compelled to apologize for breach of copyright in order to stave off a lawsuit.47 In another case, the author and publisher of a group biography of diplomatic wives were threatened with legal action by an aggrieved party who declared that he was not a participant in a table sex romp described in the book. The threatened lawsuit was avoided by an agreement to pulp the remaining copies of the book, resulting in humiliation for the biographer and a financial setback for the publisher.48

5

Denouement

New Zealand is a somewhat difficult environment for biography to flourish in. Because the country was unable to absorb all the talent it produces, many New Zealanders plied their wares overseas.49 Expatriatism is a theme in New Zealand history, not least for writers and artists, and this tendency is reflected in biographical writing.50 Dan Davin (1913–1990), who eventually became the academic publisher at Oxford University Press, remarked that New Zealand society in the 1930s discouraged the life of the mind so forcefully that ‘we got

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Chris McLean, A Way with Words: A Memoir of Writing and Publishing in New Zealand (Nelson: Potton & Burton in association with the Whitcombe Press, 2018), 142–144. ‘C.K. Stead settles claim with Frame Trust’, https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article .cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10654227; http://www.janetframe.org.nz/default.htm. https://www.kiwiblog.co.nz/2013/11/no_high_commission_table_sex_romp.html; Joanna Wood, Diplomatic Ladies: New Zealand’s Unsung Envoys (Dunedin: Otago University Press, 2013). See Belich, Paradise Reforged, ch. 11 (‘The Expatriate Game’). Eric McCormick, The Expatriate: A Study of Frances Hodgkins (Wellington: New Zealand University Press, 1954); James McNeish, Dance of the Peacocks: New Zealanders in Exile in the Time of Hitler and Mao Tse-Tung (Auckland: Vintage, 2003); Vincent O’Sullivan, Long Journey to the Border: A Life of John Mulgan (Auckland: Penguin, 2003); Martin Edmond, The Expatriates (Wellington: Bridget Williams Books, 2017). There is also the biographical industry around the writer Katherine Mansfield (1888–1923), both at home and abroad – most recently, Redmer Yska, A Strange Beautiful Excitement: Katherine Mansfield’s Wellington (Dunedin: University of Otago Press, 2017).

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out in droves’ and stayed away.51 Those who remained, or returned, often lived on the financial edge to fulfill their ‘absurd ambition’ to be writers.52 The situation has improved. Growing up in a book-filled house in the 1950s and early 1960s, Michael King concluded that being a writer in New Zealand was ‘achievable’.53 He ultimately made a comfortable enough living for himself, but not without setbacks along the way. He wrote an autobiography during a prolonged illness because he could work without having to leave his bed – the sources were in either his head or his files.54 To maintain a stream of income, he also gathered journalism he had published into collected volumes.55 The effort to maintain a constant flow output is taxing, so that writers often take recourse in genres in which the writing can be done quickly.56 The biographer and historian Philip Temple turned a disastrous extramarital affair – what he describes as a ‘mid-life catastrophe’ – into the basis for a novel.57 Biographers in New Zealand often alternate between biography and history, as opportunity beckons. The royalties from publications will bring in income but seldom in sufficient amounts to sustain one’s life and soul. A working partner or spouse can help bridge the financial gap. Part-time employment (such as relief schoolteaching) may be resorted to, but this eats into writing time, whereas the constraining security of full-time employment, such as university teaching, limits one’s time for research and writing. The numerous existing grants and fellowships are keenly contested and biographers must compete with other sorts of writers. In short, there are too many aspirants chasing too few dollars. Some of the book awards are generous enough but these prizes are open to the broad field of writers, so that biographers are again thrown into competition with everyone else. Philip Norman has perhaps best summed up the situation. When working on his biography of the composer Douglas 51

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Quoted in Millar, No Fretful Sleeper, 200. See Chris Hilliard, The Bookmen’s Dominion: Cultural Life in New Zealand, 1920–1950 (Auckland: Auckland University Press, 2006) for a fine evocation of the literary networks. Eric McCormick, An Absurd Ambition: Autobiographical Writings, ed. Dennis McEldowney (Auckland: Auckland University Press, 1996), 1, 192–193. Michael King, The Silence Beyond: Selected Writings (Auckland: Penguin Books, 2011), 117. King, Being Pakeha. A second edition was published as Being Pakeha Now: Reflections and Recollections of a White Native (Auckland: Penguin, 2004). Starting with Hidden Places: A Memoir in Journalism (Auckland: Spectre, 1992). The stresses and strains of writing book after book are graphically conveyed by Tony Simpson in Along for the Ride: A Political Memoir (Wellington: Blythswood Press, 2017), 403. Philip Temple, To Each His Own (Christchurch: Hazard Press, 1999); Temple, Chance is a Fine Thing: A Memoir by Writer, Mountaineer, Campaigner, Explorer and Historian (Auckland: Vintage, 2009), ch. 23.

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Lilburn (1915–2001), he was ‘disillusioned to discover that, despite a proliferation of well-paid arts administrators in recent decades, the fundamental problem facing artists [in the broadest sense of the word] have remained essentially unchanged since Lilburn began composing 70 years ago.’58 On the credit side, archival repositories such as the Hocken Library in Dunedin and, in particular, the Alexander Turnbull Library in Wellington actively seek to house and steward the well-ordered personal papers so necessary to the biographer’s task.59 Except in cases where donors have restricted access, the Hocken and the Turnbull Libraries strive to make such material readily available to researchers – in contrast, for example, to the experiences of a political biographer in the 1950s, who was ‘not encouraged’ to consult the records kept at Government House.60 Publishers are another vital component of the infrastructure and it is to many authors’ advantage to have a strong relationship with a particular publisher. But no New Zealand publisher has dedicated a series specifically to biography; they all consider biographical manuscripts on their merits. The constraining factor is the small market for New Zealand books, which creates difficulties that are compounded by publishing houses getting more submissions than they can handle, and more than the reading public is prepared to buy. The reading public, moreover, is differentiated according to interests, so that sporting auto/biographies are easily and reliably the bestselling titles in a small domestic market.61 Publishers chase grants and subventions in the same way that writers go after fellowships, awards, and prizes. Independent publishers have to run a tight ship and not all manage to survive. The aptly named Hazard Press went out of business in 2007 with accumulated debts of $NZ825,000.62

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Norman, Douglas Lilburn, 8. Several New Zealand writers have recounted their experiences. In addition to the already mentioned memoirs by King, McLean, Temple, and Simpson, see Dick Scott, A Radical Writer’s Life (Auckland: Reed, 2012); Edmund Bohan, Singing Historian: A Memoir (Christchurch: University of Canterbury Press, 2012), ch. 13; Deborah Shepard (interviewer), The Writing Life: Twelve New Zealand Authors (Auckland: Massey University Press, 2018); Jeffrey Paparoa Holman, Now When It Rains: A Memoir (Wellington: Steele Roberts, 2018). Eric McCormick, Alexander Turnbull: His Life, His Circle, His Collections (Wellington: Alexander Turnbull Library, 1974); Donald Jackson Kerr, Hocken: Prince of Collectors (Dunedin, University of Otago Press, 2015). Burdon, King Dick, 322. Watson, ‘From Chronology to Confessional’, 31. On the precariousness of being a freelance writer, see Ruth Butterworth, ‘Thoughts of a Feral Historian’, in Going Public: The Changing Face of New Zealand History, ed. Bronwen Dalley and Jock Phillips (Auckland: Auckland University Press, 2001), 204–216. http://www.stuff.co.nz/business/16910/Book-publisher-owes-825-000

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The five university presses also have to be careful with their pennies but are supported by their home institutions, which provide some leeway for them to pay salaries and to be able to embark on risky ventures. Auckland University Press, for example, has published two massive biographies in recent years.63 As the publisher explains, ‘we aim to publish according to quality, importance and impact; and that we aim to make the financials (including subventions) work to enable that sort of publishing. […] That’s why we took on [those two biographies]. Major books on major figures, exemplary scholarship, important arguments. We got subventions for both books, and the university supports our operation, but that didn’t decide the case for publication’.64 Thus, the biographical industry is an unsteady balancing act that represents the triumph of hope over experience. Perhaps it could be likened to an inverted pyramid in which a large body of aspirants rest on a small base of financial and structural supports. Biography in New Zealand might also be likened to the bumblebee, which famously defies the laws of aerodynamics. The insect should not be able to fly in the first place – its wings are too short, its body too heavy – and yet, in ignorance of what is aerodynamically possible, it somehow is able to remain aloft.65 63

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Andrew Sharp, The World, the Flesh and the Devil: The Life and Opinions of Samuel Marsden in England and the Antipodes, 1765–1838 (Auckland: Auckland University Press, 2016), viii + 926 pages; Terry Sturm, Allan Curnow: Simply by Sailing in a New Direction: A Biography, ed. Linda Cassells (Auckland: Auckland University Press, 2017), xiv + 717 pages. Sam Elworthy, email to author, 30 November 2018. Michael King has deployed the bumblebee imagery in a slightly different context: see ‘Political Biography: A Commentary’, in Biography in New Zealand, ed. Jock Phillips (Wellington: Allen & Unwin in association with the Port Nicolson Press, 1985), 36.

The Icelandic Biography and Egodocuments in Historical Writing Sigurður Gylfi Magnússon

1

Theoretical Framework

Icelandic microhistory has in some ways taken a different path from that of microhistorians in many other countries; Icelandic microhistorians have, first and foremost, made use of a huge body of firsthand sources in order to attain the best possible insights into the lives of individuals.1 That material can be characterized as egodocuments; these have in some cases constituted part of Icelandic popular culture over many centuries – including diaries, letters, autobiographies, biographical material, etc.2 Much of it is unpublished and poorly accessible in uncatalogued archives.3 Women’s voices, for instance, are more likely to be heard in such documents than in official documents used by historians.4 The very fact that there was general literacy within every level of society during the late modern period in Iceland was of major significance to its written and spoken culture. The research methods applied by Icelandic microhistorians have provided opportunities for discussion about the past on the level of what might be

1 Sigurður Gylfi Magnússon and István M. Szijártó, What Is Microhistory? Theory and Practice (London: Routledge, 2013). See also: Sigurður Gylfi Magnússon, ‘A ‘New Wave’ of Microhistory? Or: It’s the Same Old Story – A Fight of Love and Glory’, in Quaderni storici 155 / a.LII, no. 2 (August 2017), 557–576. 2 These sources have been investigated in depth and used to wide and varied effect by members of the Icelandic school of microhistory: see for example Sigurður Gylfi Magnússon, ‘From Children’s Point of View: Childhood in Nineteenth Century Iceland’, in Journal of Social History 29 (1995), 295–323; Davíð Ólafsson, ‘Wordmongers: Post-Medieval Scribal Culture and the Case of Sighvatur Grímsson’ (University of St Andrews Ph.D. diss, 2008), forthcoming as a book from Cornell University Press; Sigurður Gylfi Magnússon and Davíð Ólafsson, ‘Minor Knowledge: Microhistory and the Importance of Institutional Structures’ in Quaderni Storici 47, no. 2 (2012), 495–524. 3 See an interesting scholarly discussion about egodocuments in: Michael Mascuch, Rudolf Dekker and Arianne Baggerman, ‘Egodocuments and History: A Short Account of the Longue Durée’, in The Historian 78, no. 1 (2016), 11–56. 4 Sigurður Gylfi Magnússon, ‘Gender: A Useful Category in Analysis of Ego-Documents? Memory, Historical Sources and Microhistory’, in Scandinavian Journal of History 38 (2013), 202–222.

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2020 | DOI:10.1163/9789004434974_015

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termed ‘in-between spaces’ – grey areas that open up between institutions and the people connected with them. Rather than simply assume that communications between them are always ‘one way’ – from the institutions to the people, who hence become almost passive tools in their hands, devoid of will – we can identify a societal ‘discourse’ that takes place within these ‘in-between spaces’. I feel that using this approach makes it possible to distinguish ways that made it feasible for ordinary people to exert a genuine influence on the workings of institutions through their ideas and actions.5 This is what Davíð Ólafsson and I have tried to show in many of our publications – that the activities of the popular scribes of Icelandic peasant culture were essential to the education and culture of the people of Iceland, working in parallel to the institutions that ostensibly directed these areas of society, each influencing and being influenced by the other. We find it inconceivable that Icelandic peasant culture would have been able to operate and flourish as it did without the unique collective contribution of these people, which was based on unremitting toil and dedication to their self-appointed functions. They built up extensive, far-reaching networks of contacts and created much deeper, more varied connections within society than would have emerged from a purely institutional approach to the development of Icelandic society.6 Their work became the foundation for the Icelandic biographical tradition. In this chapter I seek to demonstrate how eighteenth- and nineteenthcentury popular culture exerted considerable influence on the material which would form the basis of many modern biographies, and to show how the idea of the ‘self’ evolved and strengthened the position of that literary tradition up through the present. The popularity of egodocuments in Icelandic culture is

5 For an excellent example of this kind of discourse between differing ‘groups’ or ‘areas’ see Luise White, Speaking with Vampires: Rumor and History in Colonial Africa (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2000), 3–86. See also: Sigurður Gylfi Magnússon, ‘Living by the Book: Form, Text, and Life Experience in Iceland’, in White Field, Black Seeds: Nordic Literacy Practices in the Long Nineteenth Century, ed. Matthew James Driscoll and Anna Kuismin (Helsinki: Finnish Literature Society, 2013), 53–62. 6 Sigurður Gylfi Magnússon and Davíð Ólafsson, ‘Barefoot Historians: Education in Iceland in the Modern Period’, in Writing Peasants: Studies on Peasant Literacy in Early Modern Northern Europe, ed. Klaus-Joachim Lorenzen-Schmidt and Bjørn Poulsen (Århus: Landbohistorisk selskab, 2002), 175–209; Sigurður Gylfi Magnússon and Davíð Ólafsson, ‘Minor Knowledge: Microhistory and the Importance of Institutional Structures’; Sigurður Gylfi Magnússon, ‘Tales of the Unexpected: The “Textual Environment”, Ego-Documents and a NineteenthCentury Icelandic Love Story – An Approach in Microhistory’ in Cultural and Social History 12, no. 1 (2015), 77–94.

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obvious, wherever one looks, and it has inter alia strengthened the position of biography in the present.7 That story will be recounted below.

2

The ‘Self’ in Iceland’s Historical Context

The first writings in Iceland which may be classified as egodocuments have a long and interesting history.8 First there is the ‘travel book’, which recounts adventurous journeys undertaken by the writer. It may be hard to distinguish between fact and fiction in these stories – the narrative is often farfetched, to say the least. The first Icelandic book of this type dates from the seventeenth century: Reisubók síra Ólafs Egilssonar [the Travel Book of Rev. Ólafur Egilsson]. The Rev. Egilsson (b. 1564) was captured in the Westman Islands off Iceland’s southern coast in a raid by pirates from the Barbary Coast, known in Iceland as ‘the Turkish Raid’. Many of the Icelandic captives were sold into slavery in North Africa. Another example of the genre is Reisubók Jóns Ólafssonar Indíafara [the Travel Book of Jón Ólafsson (b. 1593) to India]. Professor Guðbrandur Jónsson, editor of the second edition of the Reisubók (1946), saw fit to point out in his foreword that ‘I see no reason to make an issue of Jón’s tendency to exaggerate.’ On the contrary, he attributes to Jón many virtues: ‘The Travel Book demonstrates that Jón was an outstanding observer; and it is no less interesting to notice that he had an excellent memory – and the reader must not forget that Jón was nearing the age of 70 when he wrote the Travel Book, 35 years after the end of the journey. Despite this he remembers most of what he recounts so precisely that there is rarely any discrepancy.’9 Guðbrandur Jónsson goes on to enumerate various sources which were available to Jón Ólafsson and demonstrates that he possessed a good overview of his journeys, although knowledge of exotic lands was generally patchy in those days. Other writings in this genre include, for example, such famous works as those of Ásgeir Sigurðsson [the Travel Story of Carpenter Ásgeir Sigurðsson 7 Sigurður Gylfi Magnússon, ‘The Life Is Never Over: Biography as a Microhistorical Approach’, in The Biographical Turn: Lives in History, ed. Hans Renders, Binne de Haan, and Jonne Harmsma (London: Routledge, 2017), 42–52. 8 Sigurður Gylfi Magnússon, Fortíðardraumar: Sjálfsbókmenntir á Íslandi [Dreams of Things Past], Sýnisbók íslenskrar alþýðumenningar 9 (Reykjavík, 2004); Sigurður Gylfi Magnússon, Sjálfssögur: Minni, minningar og saga [Metastories], Sýnisbók íslenskrar alþýðumenningar 11 (Reykjavík, 2005). 9 Guðbrandur Jónsson, ‘Formáli’, in Reisubók Jóns Ólafssonar Indíafara samin af honum sjálfum 1661. Vol. 1.: Byssuskytta Kristjáns IV. og ferðir um England og Norðurhöf (Reykjavík: Bókfellsútgáfan, 1946), xi.

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(b. 1650)], the Rev. Jón Steingrímsson (b. 1728), and the Rev. Þorsteinn Pétursson (b. 1710) of Staðarbakki.10 Scholar Haraldur Sigurðsson wrote an introduction to an edition of Pétursson’s autobiography, stating: ‘The manuscript of the biography is huge, 764 sheets, in addition to some loose sheets – of which there were probably more originally […] I do not know where Jón Sigurðsson acquired the book […] The Rev. Þorsteinn’s manuscripts have arrived at the National Library from various different directions, which would indicate that they had been dispersed after his death.’11 This story indicates how manuscripts are preserved and the randomness of their fates: some end up in collections, others are lost. Jón Sigurðsson, hero of the Icelanders’ campaign for selfdetermination in the nineteenth century, was also a scholar and collector of manuscripts. He somehow acquired this manuscript, and so it was preserved in his personal archive in Copenhagen, where he lived and worked for much of his life. The story also indicates how extensive such self-expression in writing was during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, as the manuscript comprises 1,528 pages (Haraldur Sigurðsson states that it is 764 sheets – i.e., twice as many pages of text). A biography of Jón Sigurðsson, written in the twentieth century, will be discussed later in this chapter. Guðbrandur Jónsson also wrote the introduction to the autobiography of Rev. Jón Steingrímsson, one of the best-known books of the genre in Iceland. The Rev. Jón, known as the Fire Pastor, is renowned for having been an eyewitness of the calamitous volcanic eruption of 1783. Guðbrandur Jónsson starts out by maintaining that curiosity – a so-called vice – is the basis of all human progress in all fields. All scientific knowledge – practical or otherwise – is thanks to the curiosity of mankind; without it there would be no knowledge. Man would be no more than a beast, and would probably sit naked, or scantily dressed in some garments of animal skin, with no fire, in a dark, damp cave, gnawing raw meat from the bones of wild animals, which he would have hunted bare-handed 10

11

Reisubók séra Ólafs Egilssonar, ed. Sverrir Kristjánsson (Reykjavík: AB, 1969); Jón Ólafsson, Reisubók Jóns Ólafssonar Indíafara. Samin af honum sjálfum (1661), ed. Völundur Óskarsson (Reykjavík: Mál og menning, 1992); Ferðasaga Árna Magnússonar frá Geitastekk 1753–1797, samin af honum sjálfum, ed. Björn K. Þórólfsson (Reykjavík: Heimdallur, 1945); Jón Steingrímsson, Ævisaga síra Jóns Steingrímssonar eftir hann sjálfan, 2nd ed. [Biography], ed. Guðbrandur Jónsson, (Reykjavík: Helgafell, 1945); Þorsteinn Pétursson, Sjálfsævisaga síra Þorsteins Péturssonar á Staðarbakka, [Autobiography], Haraldur Sigurðsson bjó til prentunar (Reykjavík: Hlaðbúð, 1947). Haraldur Sigurðsson, ‘Inngangur’, in Sjálfsævisaga síra Þorsteins Péturssonar á Staðarbakka (Reykjavík: Hlaðbúð, 1947), xv.

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with no weapon – had divine providence not implanted curiosity in his breast, the spark of the divine, which drives mankind on to more and more discoveries. To decry curiosity is thus no less than blasphemy.12 This impassioned defense of curiosity served, of course, to justify an interest in knowing something about people’s lives and how they felt. ‘One’s neighbour is no less interesting’, asserted Jónsson, ‘than other natural phenomena, and knowledge of man and his nature is no less than a prerequisite for the possibility to maintain a healthy civil society, and to discern where people’s habits and conditions require improvement. The concomitant inquisitiveness about the affairs of others thus also serves the cause of progress.’13 Guðbrandur Jónsson points out that the autobiography attained great popularity due to people’s desire to learn things firsthand – and that the work in question was guided by the principle of truthfulness. All this argued, in Guðbrandur Jónsson’s view, in favor of paying attention to this genre of literature. Steingrímsson’s autobiography, being far more outspoken and candid than most other writings of the time, was a landmark work. As stated above, the book strikes a new tone in Icelandic self-expression, making it one of the most powerful works in Iceland’s latter-day literature. In Íslensk bókmenntasaga [A History of Icelandic Literature] the late Matthías Viðar Sæmundsson, associate professor of Icelandic literature at the University of Iceland, analyzed these books and their relationship to comparable writings from mainland Europe.14 In a sense, travel books may be said to have constituted a springboard for individualistic self-expression, leading to the sort of fully formed autobiography we find in the twentieth century as well as other biographical writing at the same time. But we have not yet considered the literary forms which provided models for biography. ‘The writing of biographies did not begin in earnest in Iceland until after 1700’, writes Matthías Viðar Sæmundsson, although various genres of old Icelandic literature may be classified as biographies. The trail was blazed by Rev. Jón Halldórsson of Hítardalur (1665–1736), writing Biskupasögur [Histories of Bishops], Skólameistarasögur [Histories of School Principals] at Skálholt 1552–1728 and 12 13 14

Guðbrandur Jónsson, ‘Formáli’, in Ævisaga síra Jóns Steingrímssonar eftir sjálfan hann, 2nd ed., ed. Guðbrandur Jónsson (Reykjavík: Helgafell, 1945), ix. Guðbrandur Jónsson, ‘Formáli’, in Ævisaga síra Jóns Steingrímssonar, ix–x. See Matthías Viðar Sæmundsson, ‘Bókmenntir um sjálfið’, [The Literature of the Self], in Íslensk bókmenntasaga, vol. 3, ed. Halldór Guðmundsson (Reykjavík: Mál og menning, 1996), 112–143.

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Prestasögur [Histories of Pastors] in the diocese of Skálholt from the Reformation [in the mid-sixteenth century] until 1730. Others continued to write such personal histories, but these were generally brief accounts or summaries. The most remarkable of these biographies is that of [the scholar and manuscript collector] Árni Magnússon written by [his amanuensis] Jón Ólafsson of Grunnavík, in 1758–1759, to which ‘some few additions’ were made until 1779.15 Indeed, a trail was thus blazed for an important literary genre enjoyed by Icelanders of different social classes in the eighteenth, nineteenth, and twentieth centuries. The biography became one of the most popular literary forms to provide a platform for the popular lore, sometimes called the local tale tradition [þjóðlegur fróðleikur], of the nineteenth century. Stories of interesting people, or at least of those who had experienced something unusual during their lives, enjoyed vast popularity among the bibliophile peasantry of Iceland; this interest still persists. And genealogy, as we will now discuss, has always been a feature of the phenomenon.

3

Modern Versions of the Biographical Tradition

Icelanders have been keenly interested in genealogy ever since the first settlement of the island during the Middle Ages. In the beginning, genealogy was first and foremost a practical matter, ensuring that certain families maintained possession of particular pieces of land. This concern was probably the main reason for the writing of Landnámabók [the Book of Settlements] and similar late-medieval manuscripts. Over time, families became the fundamental units of Icelandic social structure, with the family dynasties reaching their peak during the thirteenth century. The primary purpose of genealogy has changed over time, but Icelanders have retained their genealogical interest.16 A case in point comes from the end of the twentieth century. One manifestation of the growing importance of science and new technologies to Iceland’s economic landscape of in recent times is the company deCODE Genetics, established in 1996 with the ambitious aim of mapping the entire Icelandic genome.17 As mentioned above, genealogy and family history have been something of a ruling passion among Icelanders over the centuries: 15 16 17

Matthías Viðar Sæmundsson, ‘Bókmenntir um sjálfið’, 123. Sigurður Gylfi Magnússon, Wasteland with Words: A Social History of Iceland (London: Reaktion Books, 2010), 147–165. Sigurður Gylfi Magnússon, Wasteland with Words, 248–257.

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a vast quantity of amassed demographic material makes it possible to trace family relationships several centuries back in time. The company planned to make use of this unique fund of material, which would be complemented, it was hoped, with material gained via access to personal medical records. Collating these records, it was hoped, might make it possible to identify the causes of a host of common genetic diseases. The company’s founder, the bioscientist Kári Stefánsson, had worked for many years in the US at several internationally regarded scientific institutions. Two things proved crucial to the plan’s commercial prospects. First, Stefánsson enlisted the support of Iceland’s best-known genealogist, Friðrík Skúlason, who also ran an IT firm specializing in computer system security. On the side he had made some headway in developing a program designed to store and process the various sources of information relevant to genealogical studies. Second, the Icelandic government was prepared to support deCODE by allowing it access to various types of information held in personal medical records. The company was to have exclusive commercial rights over the database generated from this information for a period of up to twelve years. For reasons that remain unclear, the much-debated genetic database never became a reality. The company is still in operation, though its commercial results have not yet lived up to the hopes expressed by its advocates at the outset. The project has, however, produced one very interesting spin-off. Unlike its genetic counterpart, the genealogical database was not only completed but, in a sense, was presented to the nation. At the end of 2001 a version was posted on the web under the name Íslendingabók [The Book of Icelanders].18 Public access made it possible for any Icelander to trace his or her relatives and family tree back several centuries. The reaction was extraordinary: the site immediately attracted more hits than any other in Iceland, and it is now reckoned to have been visited by something like two-thirds of the country’s 330,000 Icelanders – testament, if any were needed, to the country’s abiding fascination with personal history and ancestry, made possible by this collaboration between modern genetics and traditional genealogy. If it is possible to speak of genealogy as an Icelandic pastime, the same could be said about poetry. Verse provided individuals with an outlet for personal expression in the seventeenth century and continues to do so today.19 Remarkable poems recounted events in the life of the writer or their subjects. 18 19

See: www.islendingabok.is. The name is taken from Ari the Learned’s twelfth-century history of Iceland. Þórunn Sigurðardóttir, Heiður og huggun: Erfiljóð, harmljóð og huggunarkvæði á 17. öld (Reykjavík: Háskólaútgáfan, 2014).

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Scholarly consensus suggests that the ‘self’ began to take shape in Icelandic texts during the latter part of modern times, reflecting people’s ideas about the individual and society. Works of fiction were to become important manifestations of such experiments. And new opportunities certainly arose for people to express themselves in writing, to describe the world as they saw it. This new tendency did not exactly spread like wildfire across Icelandic literature: ideas about the possibilities for self-expression advanced rather modestly until the late nineteenth to early twentieth century, when certain conventions had established themselves. I feel it is important not to overstate the importance of this gradual development of self-expression claimed by scholars. The pre-history of egodocuments in Iceland, which lasted until the end of the eighteenth century, is consistent with trends and developments in other countries. I am of the view that after that time the respective Icelandic and European literary cultures to some extent diverge. The difference here is especially evident with respect to participation by the Icelandic peasantry: they may be said to have grasped the new thinking with both hands, and related it to their own sphere of experience and knowledge, from the beginning of the nineteenth century. That led to vibrant cultural activity, pursued in rural Iceland by poor yet enthusiastic peasant scholars, whose interest in writing and learning was inexhaustible. The historian Davíð Ólafsson and I have discussed this passion for reading and writing extensively in our writings.20 We have shown the pervasiveness of such activity throughout the nineteenth century, and we take the view that peasant scholars played such a vital role that they can accurately be viewed as an informal institution.21 We have focused especially on a group of scholars in the West Fjords whom we refer to as the West Fjord’s Academy – peasant scholars who took every opportunity to forge networks, exchange materials and compare notes. This production of historical material was enormously important in allowing the peasantry to gain access to materials that reinforced their self-image and their ideas about the time they were living in. Self-consciousness became clearer as texts more diverse than what one could find in published material – which was often devotional – became available to the peasantry. Thus handwritten copies of texts were passed from farm to farm, and thus there was a certain continuity between the oral culture of the early modern period and the written culture which became predominant in the nineteenth century.

20 21

See discussion of this issue in my Fortíðardraumar, 140–145. Sigurður Gylfi Magnússon and Davíð Ólafsson, Minor Knowledge and Microhistory: Manuscript Culture in the Nineteenth Century (London: Routledge, 2017).

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The progress of this scribal culture influenced the scope of possibilities available to Icelanders for written self-expression during the nineteenth century. Two more factors must also be borne in mind when considering this history. First, the Icelandic peasantry had the advantage of being familiar with saga literature: the sagas of Icelanders, legendary sagas, and chivalric sagas. Ordinary people could easily insert themselves into the sphere of autobiographical expression because their lives so closely resembled what they read about in the sagas. Along with their dramatic stories of feuds and bloodshed, the sagas also contained accounts of ordinary people who had lived much as these nineteenth-century readers did. For average people, daily life in Iceland had not changed much over the centuries, and so it would be quite natural for such readers to identify with what they read. Many nineteenth-century individuals most likely found it easy to place themselves within a text – to place their selves within the narrative of a life – and for that reason made sure that they would have access to as much biographical material as possible. The existence of the model was important, and it influenced people’s self-expression and the desire for biographical material long into the twentieth century.22 Second, many educated Icelanders with the opportunity to study at university in Copenhagen were influenced by the international literary trends of realism and romanticism. Both movements exerted an impact on their image of themselves. The worldview of these movements influenced individuals’ selfimage, which was manifested first in the biographies of intellectuals and then, in due course, in peasant writings. Romanticism, for instance, is deemed to be primarily individualist in nature – which for obvious reasons tied man to himself and perhaps also to nature. The movement and related intellectual currents disrupted not only the sway of heretofore accepted political attitudes throughout Europe but also altered individuals’ perception of their place in the world. In Iceland the distinction between the peasantry and the intelligentsia was, it should be noted, remarkably unclear, as both groups had sprung from the universal cultural background of the kvöldvaka or winter-evening gatherings in Icelandic homes, when the members of the household sat together and worked at their tasks while someone read aloud.23

22 23

Magnússon, ‘Living by the Book’, 53–62. Sigurður Gylfi Magnússon, Menntun, ást og sorg: Einsögurannsókn á íslensku sveitasamfélagi 19. og 20. aldar [Education, Love and Grief], Sagnfræðirannsóknir 13 (Reykjavík: Sagnfræðistofnun Háskóla Íslands og Háskólaútgáfan, 1997), 113–120; Guðmundur Hálfdanarson, ‘Private Spaces and Private Lives: Privacy, Intimacy, and Culture in Icelandic 19th-Century Rural Homes’, in Power and Culture: New Perspectives on Spatiality in Euro-

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It is important to realize that the majority of such writings originated in continental Europe, where highly cultivated cultural discourse had been formulated over the centuries – whereas in Iceland the minds of the peasantry were informed by other influences. The roots of the culture were deep, but new possibilities for expression changed the atmosphere of everyday life. The scribal culture was strong in Iceland in the nineteenth century. The manuscript archives are all filled with material from people who recorded information about their own time, about themselves and their surroundings. It is hard to estimate how much of this handwritten material has been preserved – but the portion that has found its way into archives is worth its weight in gold. In the early 1900s, publication of (auto)biographies boomed. It is fair to say that the twentieth century was the heyday of public self-expression and the creation of biographical material. A database compiled a few years ago in connection with my research project on egodocuments identified 1,089 titles published in Iceland between the second half of the nineteenth century and 2004 that can be categorised as egodocuments. Of these, about 85% were written by men. The principal characters in the books were all born after c. 1850.24

4

Biographies as ‘Sites of Memory’ (lieux de mémoire)

The statues in public places around Reykjavík – that is to say, those which portray identifiable persons – share a semiotic world: the subjects, almost without exception, are people whose biographies have been written.25 Thus the statues and the biographies go hand in hand; this entails that most of the biographies published in the twentieth century recount the lives of males – predominantly writers and politicians. Almost all the statues of female figures, however, depict an image of ‘Woman’ rather than a specific woman. And as for biographies, few women’s lives have been explored. The statues and the biographies are based, in this sense, on the same ideological foundation. Both forms are intended to be the nation’s ‘memory’ of events or individuals deemed important to commemorate. A past worth remembering is thus constructed, and the nation is re-

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pean History, ed. Pieter François, Taina Syrjämaa, and Henri Terho (Pisa: Pisa University Press, 2008), 109–124. For the various genres of life writing and egodocuments in Iceland, see my Fortíðardraumar; and also Sjálfssögur. My book Fortíðardraumar contains a detailed analysis of the evolution of biography in Iceland; see 95–126.

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quired to commit it to memory, in what has been termed the nation’s ‘historical memory.’ Such ‘sites of memory’ are, in a sense, powerful reflections of their time – offering us the opportunity to delve into the nation’s consciousness and revealing material that has continued the creation of biographical material over recent centuries. In the past twenty to thirty years, biographical writing has flourished, attributable, I believe, to people’s yearning for comprehensible ‘sites of memory’ – norms which can be used for guidance, whether with regard to past, present, or future, in an era of rapid change.26 It is worth stressing that the form of scholarship known as biographical writing has, for almost the entire twentieth century, been overwhelmingly based upon the collation of material; analysis has been minimal and hence there has been very little contextualization – there has not been much generalization. Biographers gathered in particular cases ‘interesting scraps of information,’ which were then cobbled together into a continuous chronological narrative. This somewhat primitive method is still the predominant way to write biography in Iceland. But how have other, more ambitious biographers approached their task? They have chosen to explain their methods in a great variety of ways. It is interesting to observe that several well-known Icelandic biographers opt to say little or nothing about their research methods or their sources. The prolific Páll Valsson, for instance, works with his subject matter through the biography of the well-known devotional poet Jónas Hallgrímsson, analyzing him and bringing out the subject’s principal elements in a thoroughly academic manner. Another biographer, Jakob Ásgeirsson, has alternately shown the tendency of allowing the sources a free hand, granting them plenty of space in the established manner of twentieth-century Icelandic biographers. Ásgeirsson states in his biography of the Icelandic politician and entrepreneur Pétur Benediktsson that extensive source work lies behind this book, although much remains to be explored. It cannot be the objective of a biography to tell ‘the whole story’, – that is impossible – but rather to say enough so that the reader is given a realistic picture of the person described and his time. In that sense the biographer plays a similar role to the portrait artist, although assuredly he has ‘historical duties’ which do not apply to the portraitist. 26

Much has been written in recent years about biography. Here it suffices to refer to an enlightening recent roundtable which took place in 2009 in the American Historical Review. See: AHR Roundtable: Historians and Biography, American Historical Review 114 (2009), 573–661.

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Here the approach has been taken of recounting Pétur’s history in the conventional way, year by year, and allowing him to speak for himself as far as possible – permitting the reader to draw their own conclusions about the man from his deeds and words.27 Allowing ‘the subject to speak for himself’ has no clear meaning. This historical approach, used by few scholars, is unusual.28 It generally signifies that the subject has been ‘set free’, and there are long passages of direct quotation – even up to ten pages!29 We find such indulgence mainly in biographies whose author has some connection with the subject, whether ideological or emotional. The writer, unwilling to meddle with the words of the ‘guru’, allows him to tell his story with minimal outside intervention – on the principle that he is the best person to do so. This method thus dispenses with critical analysis; the subject himself is sacrificed to a more important cause – in the judgment of the author, at least. As a rule, the result is a tiresome paean to an individual who has lived an eventful life: a work of limited literary and scholarly merit, though it may serve as a model for a certain group. Biographies of ‘great men’ are thus sometimes used to establish a connection between modern political ideas and these individuals’ lives, with the aim of attributing to such ideas a share of their fame and fortune. Páll Eggert Ólason, a historian, lawyer, and later the rector of the University of Iceland who wrote one of the best-known twentieth-century biographies of the national hero Jón Sigurðsson, to whom reference was made above, reflected upon his treatment of ‘President Jón’: Nor need much be said here about the author’s handling of the material which gradually became available and was revealed by research. He has avoided the quasi-philosophical musings which have become common about how that matter is to be handled. Naturally the most attention is paid to the specifically Icelandic matter; the general matter from abroad is not included, except where it is necessary for understanding of domestic unrest or events; ordinary textbooks otherwise suffice there.30 27 28

29 30

Jakob F. Ásgeirsson, Pétur Ben. Ævisaga (Reykjavík: Mál og menning, 1998), 8. One scholar who has maintained this view is the British historian Arthur Marwick. See his The Nature of History, 3rd. ed. (London, [1970] 1989). It is fair to say that few agree with Marwick today. See e.g. Jakob F. Ásgeirsson, Valtýr Stefánsson ritstjóri Morgunblaðsins (Reykjavík: AB, 2003), 327–335 and passim. Páll Eggert Ólason, Jón Sigurðsson V (Reykjavík: Hið íslenzka þjóðvinafélag, 1933), 425–426.

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Ólason occupies a similar wavelength to what has been alluded to above, except that the author is not particularly discursive about his book; nor does he display much interest in allowing the reader to have insights into his source work. Clearly, in such a book, that work must have been extensive. ‘It would be an almost endless task’, remarks Ólason, ‘to identify all the sources; and indeed it would be pointless to make a list here of all those that have been used, since they are clearly footnoted throughout. In addition are all those piles of manuscripts and documents and other writings which the author had explored in order to gather material, which have proved of no benefit in that matter.’31 Here we have examples of books with elements in common: they are intended to be ‘monuments’ of a sort to the ‘great man’ in question – writings which may show ordinary people the way to a virtuous life and perhaps provide insight into the minds of those who have excelled in some way. They are, in a sense, ‘pure and simple’ biographies, but they are also source books, depending so heavily on primary sources and incorporating long passages from them.

5

On the Right Track into the Future

In the last twenty or thirty years, scholars who have worked with the biographical form have embarked on extensive deliberations about their subjects – so extensive, in fact, that some of their writings have been accompanied by long scholarly commentaries. I shall mention below certain examples of such methodology, which have marked a turning point in people’s conceptions of biography as a scholarly enterprise. The anthropologist Sigríður Dúna Kristmundsdóttir, a professor at the University of Iceland, explains the methodological approach behind her biography of Björg C. Þorláksdóttir, the first Icelandic woman to graduate with a PhD. First, Kristmundsdóttir recounts that the biography had been several years in the making, and that the process involved many more people than is usual for conventional biographies. Þorláksdóttir’s biography was grounded in the research of a number of scholars who had immersed themselves in the extensive scholarship devoted to the subject.32 Kristmundsdóttir definitely benefited from this work. The biography is thus essentially a strictly scientific research project, constructed 31 32

Ólason, Jón Sigurðsson V, 424. See vol. 2 of Björg: Verk Bjargar C. Þorláksson, ed. Sigríður Dúna Kristmundsdóttir (Reykjavík: JPV útgáfa, 2002). Five authors contributed to this volume, in addition to the editor.

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like any other scientific study but without the risk of the author falling into the trap of becoming embroiled in issues and debates specific to her discipline. On the contrary, the biography is highly readable, even entertaining. Kristmundsdóttir comments on her scholarly approach: ‘I have applied various academic prisms in analysing Þorláksdóttir’s life. I would mention especially the prism of gender theory in biography, and the prism of anthropological discourse on authors’ influence on their academic work.’33 She goes on to explain what this ‘prismatic’ approach means in this context, pointing out inter alia that ‘the story of one woman thus acquires relevance to other women’s stories, because gendered reality is common to all women.’ For that reason Kristmundsdóttir has sought out Þorláksdóttir’s models and considered how private and public life overlap, and examines the relationship between gender and these fields. ‘On that basis the person’s life from cradle to grave is examined,’ writes Kristmundsdóttir, ‘as an ongoing progression where each phase influences the next; and my analysis is carried out in accord with that vision.’34 Kristmundsdóttir also explains the participatory method of anthropology and applies it to her project. She herself becomes a subject of research as a woman, scholar, former politician, wife, and mother, to name but some of her roles. ‘I examine Björg Þorláksdóttir’s life as a field where many voices are heard. Some of the voices are more personal and sincere than an anthropologist expects to hear in the field. These are found in private correspondence intended only for the recipient, and hence the researcher’s bond with the subject becomes even closer than otherwise.’35 The author then discusses the multivocal chorus that she conducted during the production of the biography; these voices were varied, as is common in biographical writing. Kristmundsdóttir here confides to the reader certain information that is likely to explain how the biography was made, and at the same time she has made it easier to read. Here, then, is an exemplary work. Many more biographers have, of course, used this literary form to write works nonetheless grounded in strict scholarly methods. One such example is the biography of Icelandic-Canadian poet Stephan G. Stephansson written by the literary scholar Viðar Hreinsson, published in two volumes (2002, 2003) and later in English (2012).36 Approaching his subject in a highly innovative

33 34 35 36

Sigríður Dúna Kristmundsdóttir, Björg, 338–339. Sigríður Dúna Kristmundsdóttir, Björg, 339. Sigríður Dúna Kristmundsdóttir, Björg, 340. Viðar Hreinsson’s biography was discussed in my book Fortíðardraumar, 117–118. See Viðar Hreinsson, Landneminn mikli. Ævisaga Stephans G. Stephanssonar [The Great Explorer] (Reykjavík: Bjartur, 2002); Viðar Hreinsson, Andvökuskáld: Ævisaga Stephans G.

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manner, the biographer re-evaluates our understanding of the poet’s time by attacking the cliché-ridden manifestations of two potent grand narratives: one relating to literacy or popular culture, the other to immigration to America. Hreinsson could have taken the easy option and assimilated his subject into these grand narratives’ existing framing. He would thus have presented an image of the poet congruent with the ‘Icelandic version’ of the Viking: a man who set out into the wide world in order to conquer it according to a predetermined formula for such adventures. Hreinsson succeeds in throwing off the yoke of the grand narrative by applying the transnational (sometimes also called transatlantic) conceptual framework, which prompts the author to explore the complex connections between different cultures – within and outside specific cultural units. Several elements are important here: Hreinsson succeeds in relating Stephansson’s writings and daily life to the avant-garde ideas of the American philosophers Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau, as well as the poet Walt Whitman and his Song of Myself. That perspective throws new light on the roots of popular culture in Iceland and in the New World. Icelandic popular culture was the foundation on which Stephan G. Stephansson based his philosophy of life. In a new, distant environment, that aspect of his life acquired a quite different significance and importance. In this manner Viðar Hreinsson sheds light on the status of culture within many realms of society in Iceland, Canada, and the United States. In the process, he demolishes accepted theories about the state of mind of those who undertook the sort of long journey that Stephan G. Stephansson embarked upon at that time, and hence he illuminates motivations and thinking that cannot be accommodated within the grand narrative. But despite such efforts – of which there have been several – the fact remains that the vast majority of published biographies make no use of these new ideas on how best to approach historical subjects. And, what is more, such biographies appear to be firmly rooted in Iceland’s predominant culture and mindset. They are premised on the same ideas that the statues of ‘great men’ take as their cornerstone – intended to be symbols of great ideas or ideals, they testify to the ‘big, strong’ men who shaped people’s lives in Iceland and laid the foundations of the nation’s existence. These biographies depict a flattened, indeed simplified image of individuals whose personalities were often highly complex. The life story is thus often recounted as a seamless series of events leading to the parade of successive triumphs which made the person a

Stephanssonar [A Wakeful Poet] (Reykjavík, Bjartur, 2003); Viðar Hreinsson, Wakeful Night: Stephan G. Stephansson – Icelandic-Canadian Poet (Calgary: Benson Ranch, 2012).

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figure ‘deserving’ of a biography. The subject’s deeds, like the statues on their pedestals, are thus meant as good examples for readers to take to heart. And it is safe to say that new scholarly approaches such as microhistory have had little impact on modern biography. Matthías Viðar Sæmundsson blazed a new trail in his book about Héðinn Valdimarsson – a leading left-wing Icelandic politician of the first half of the twentieth century – and his family.37 The author declares war, so to speak, on the ‘idea of time’, and, in an innovative way, applies the methods of microhistory in writing his book. Not only is Valdimarsson’s family placed front and center; the story is also situated in the middle of one of Reykjavík’s residential areas, where daily life progresses among its various diversions and scenes of colorful town life. Þingholtsstræti, the street in downtown Reykjavík where Valdimarsson and his parents lived, becomes in a sense the focus of the study. Various secondary characters drift in and out – leaving a trace in the sources but vanishing from the reader’s view. These ‘minor’ elements form the framework of Sæmundsson’s narrative, derived from police reports, court documents, civic records, private correspondence, and a wide range of printed material. These evidentiary traces become, as in life itself, part of people’s daily lives – a series of events often determined by chance and impulse. Sæmundsson not only works with the diverse materials of the story; he himself steps into the text, not hesitating to deliberate on what he is doing – the phenomenon he is creating. The literary critic Þröstur Helgason has aptly called Sæmundsson’s book ‘a unique reading experience’.38 The main point here is that Sæmundsson has placed biography in a new context via his experiment in approaching an individual’s life story in an unusually radical manner. He is one of those few who have flown in the face of biography’s stereotypical form and he has reaped the fruits of his efforts, creating a most interesting work of literature. Together, its many narratives of life in Reykjavík undermine any preconceptions of the grand narrative so often found in stories of progressive politics. Sæmundsson’s own dialogue with the texts, as presented to the reader, underlines even more clearly the personal nature of the subject – the life story of a man. In that manner Sæmundsson has challenged the Icelandic biographical tradition and has demonstrated that biography can be a productive form for social analysis.

37 38

Matthías Viðar Sæmundsson, Héðinn, Bríet, Valdimar og Laufey: Fjölskylda og samtíð Héðins Valdimarssonar (Reykjavík: JPV útgáfa, 2004). Þröstur Helgason, ‘Skörun er lykilorðið’, in Lesbók Morgunblaðsins, January 8, 2005.

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Acknowledgements I am grateful for the support I enjoyed from the Icelandic Centre for Research (Rannís, no. 184976-051 – Grant of Excellence) during my research. Furthermore, I would like to thank the editor, Hans Renders and his associates, for their comments and encouragement during my work on this article.

Between ‘Creators and Bearers of the Czech National Myth’ and an ‘Academic Suicide’: Czech Biography in the Twenty-First Century Jana Wohlmuth Markupová

In my contribution I offer an illustrative account of the current state of biography in the Czech Republic – in both academia and the public sphere.1 I will add to an ongoing debate about the roots of biography and of national and cultural traditions.2 Most existing works in this vein focus on Western countries that have enjoyed continual freedom in the pursuit of historical research. My aim here is to capture the essence of the situation in a country which experienced two totalitarian regimes during the twentieth century and to explore how its experience may have affected the historical research at the heart of Czech biography.

1

Historical Context

The Czech historian Lenka Řezníková wrote that auto/biographical writing in the Czech lands emerged during the late eighteenth and the nineteenth centuries, when today’s Czechia was a part of the Austrian (since 1867 AustroHungarian) Empire.3 When modern-day Czechoslovakia was founded in 1918, historiography was already well established within academic institutions. Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk, an intellectual and the first Czechoslovak president, was at the forefront of the so-called conflict over the meaning of Czech history. We might note here that Masaryk’s main opponent, the professor of history Josef Pekař, was also an author of historical biographies that took up significant personalities in Czech history (namely Albrecht von Waldstein and

1 This essay was written as part of project SVV 260 469, conducted under the auspices of the Faculty of Humanities, Charles University. 2 Hans Renders and Binne de Haan, eds., Theoretical Discussion of Biography: Approaches from History, Microhistory and Life Writing (Leiden: Brill, 2014), 11–23. 3 Lenka Řezníková, ‘Biografie jako textová a sociální praxe: Ke konjunktuře žánru na prahu moderny’, in Dějiny-teorie-kritika 1 (2015), 93–117. Lenka Řezníková, as a postmodern-oriented scholar, makes no distinction between autobiography and biography. This text, however, will focus solely on biography.

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2020 | DOI:10.1163/9789004434974_016

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Jan Žižka, with his biographies published in 1933–1934 and 1927–1933, respectively).4 Czech historiography, on the one hand, successfully integrated the academic standards of the German positivist school during the second half of the nineteenth century, especially regarding the thoroughly ‘objectivist’ critique of sources. On the other hand, it was understood to be part and parcel of the Czech national movement, whose leaders tended to consider historiography a handmaiden of national emancipation.5 The nationalist political milieu expected Czech historiography to consist of ‘natural’ elaborations of leading Czech historical personalities, which were crucial for the contemporary national discourse and its philosophy of history.6 This pressure had, moreover, existed during the period when leading protagonists of Czech historiography such as Jaroslav Goll mostly refused to involve themselves in contemporary disputes and discussions concerning the nature of historical knowledge and epistemology of historiography.7 Contemporary inspirations, coming especially from the fields of German neo-Kantian philosophy (the Baden school) and historical sociology (as practiced, for example, by Max Weber), exerted almost no influence on Czech historiography.8 During the First Czechoslovak Republic (1918–1938) biography, already an established and respected research area, was basically taken to be a given field of historical research. The problem – from today’s perspective – is that it was embedded in an academic milieu whose practices evolved more or less outside a span of almost fifty years of fervent historiographical development in Western Europe. After the short era bookended by the establishment of Czechoslovakia (1918) and the Nazi Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia in March 1939 (following the complete closure of Czech universities and colleges in November that same year), there was a long period characterized by an utter lack of freedom. Thus Czech biography lagged even further Western Europe and did not

4 Josef Pekař, Valdštejn.: 1630 až 1634 (dějiny valdštejnského spiknutí). Díl 1. 2 (Prague: Melantrich, 1933–1934); Josef Pekař, Žižka a jeho doba (Prague: Vesmír, 1927–1933). 5 František Kutnar and Jaroslav Marek, Přehledné dějiny českého a slovenského dějepisectví (Prague: Nakladatelství Lidové Noviny, 2009), 381–382. 6 Renders and De Haan, eds., Theoretical Discussion of Biography, 20. See also the longstanding dispute between Josef Pekař and Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk. Miloš Havelka, Spor o smysl českých dějin 1895–1938 (Prague: Torst, 1995), 23–26. 7 Kutnar and Marek, Přehledné dějiny českého a slovenského dějepisectví, 399. 8 Kutnar and Marek, 399. See also Miloš Havelka, Spor o smysl českých dějin 1895–1938 (Prague: Torst, 1995), 20–22.

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keep up with the developments and practices there. A short post-WWII period (1945–1948) may be regarded as a quasi-democratic interlude, which was promising for historians because they were able to return to their interrupted endeavors. However, these prospects ended in February 1948 with the government takeover by the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia and the massive ideological purges carried out under the watchful eye of the Soviet Union. Like every other aspect of life in Czechoslovakia, historiography, along with all of the humanities, was completely dominated by the influence of the Party. It became a very important instrument of power and propaganda. Democratic historians were now excluded from official historical institutions. Although the communist regime went through structural and personal changes during that period, the situation was basically unchanged until the Velvet Revolution in 1989 and the collapse of the communist regime in Czechoslovakia. It is now obvious that Czechoslovak historiography had no chance to evolve freely or to follow modern trends and paradigms, and acknowledgment of such constraints is important if we are to understand Czech biography and its perception today. There was a complete lack of freedom – not only civil, but scientific as well. ‘Biographical research’ – to the extent that it existed – was then mainly focused on communist leaders, on maintaining the cult of personality, and on personalities from Czechoslovak history whose portraits were then used in an ongoing ‘ideological struggle’.9 In only two short periods historiography could breathe relatively freely: before 1948, as noted, and around 1968, during the so-called Prague Spring (a democratization process that ended when the Soviets occupied the country in August 1968). These are the two years that I consider important for democratic biographical research in Czechoslovakia, because these were the years, respectively, in which two particular books were published: Josef Šafařík’s Seven Letters to Melin (published in 1948 and soon banned after the Czech communist coup that February) and Max Scheler’s The Human Place in the Cosmos (1968) with a foreword by Jan Patočka, the Czech philosopher who was later an important dissident.10 These books can more or less be seen and explained as expressions of personalism, which can be very useful for a biographical approach to historical research or at least for finding the traces of biographical thinking in communist Czechoslovakia in relation to its present state. 9

10

Josef Bezdíček, ‘Naši historikové o pojetí českých dějin’ in Spor o smysl českých dějin 2 (1938–1989): Posuny a akcenty české otázky, ed. Miloš Havelka (Prague: Torst, 2006), 232–241. Josef Šafařík, Sedm listů Melinovi: z dopisů příteli přírodovědci (Prague: Družstevní práce, 1948); Max Scheler, Místo člověka v kosmu (Prague: Academia, 1968).

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Personalism in Czechoslovakia

Personalism, in general, is a philosophical school of thought that gives centrality to God as a Supreme Person or to the human person in the world as such. It possesses, obviously, close parallels to the Christian tradition and, in certain aspects, to existentialism. Among the main personalist authors are the philosophers Max Scheler (1874–1928), Nikolai Alexandrovich Berdyaev (1874–1948) and Emmanuel Mounier (1905–1950), who even wrote A Personalist Manifesto in 1936.11 He was strongly convinced that personalism should be not an abstract system but rather a philosophy and an attitude to one’s life, in which all individuals should be allowed to find their own vocations or, as Scheler would put it, their own places in the cosmos.12 This belief is in evident contradiction to collectivist and totalitarian ideologies that prioritize the interests of the group over those of self. In Czechoslovakia, there were several expressions of personalist thinking during its totalitarian era: František Xaver Šalda (1867–1937), a literary critic and a journalist; Josef Šafařík; and Václav Černý (1905–1987), a writer and a literary scientist active during most of communist era in Czechoslovakia. Although he was forced to leave the university in 1951, he could still work at the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences. In 1970, in the wake of the Prague Spring, he was finally forced to ‘retire’. In 1976 he signed Charter 77, one of the most important dissident initiatives in Czechoslovakia.13 Personalist tendencies derived from varied individual disciplinary standpoints: literary scholars used the philsophy in relation to the authors of the texts they had studied, whereas historians might use a personalist approach to understand a particular historical figure as an individual, because the web of discovered meanings and explanations applicable to one person might not be valid for another. In other words: if we historians accept the personalist premise that all individuals can and should be allowed to find their own particular vocations, this assumption might also help us theoretically explain the very basis of biographical research, because how other than individually – biographically – can we trace and capture these singular ways of finding and realizing these distinct vocations? And if individuals all come to find a specific

11 12 13

Emmanuel Mounier, Místo pro člověka: Manifest personalismu (Prague: Vyšehrad, 1948). Emmanuel Mounier, Místo pro člověka. Manifest personalismu, 72. Source: http://www.slovnikceskeliteratury.cz/showContent.jsp?docId=357. Václav Havel, for example, was one of the founding members, first signatories, and spokesmen of Charter 77.

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way to discover what they each actually want to do in life, it is evident that ‘every personality needs their own specific approach and explanation.’14 The scattered hints we find of a free, quasi-biographical, or personalist thinking in communist Czechoslovakia are usually present among not historians but literary scholars, hidden from and forbidden to appear in official mainstream publishing houses and institutions. Thus we must consider the unofficial sphere in Czechoslovakia – the world of dissent, of underground and samizdat publishing. In this arena we can capture something about the state of biographies that were written freely in Czechoslovakia or by Czech writers abroad in the 1970s and 1980s.15 Understanding this world of the past – and its two-pronged split into realms official (influenced primarily by censorship and ideological control of both books and their authors) and unofficial (characterized by freedom of thought, but also by very limited access to sources and financial support of research) – will help us grasp the roots of biography in today’s Czechia. Under these twentieth-century circumstances there was a fine line between biographies and other historical books and articles. In other words: there was no particular place reserved solely for biographies. We will therefore examine the major unofficial sources of literary and historical production, paying particular attention to biographies.

3

Biography in Samizdat and Exile Publishing Houses

Samizdat was a way of publishing and distributing books, by simple means and completely outside official publishing institutions, of (primarily) censored authors. The phenomenon mainly occurred in the dissident and underground sphere, because in an authoritarian regime even the publication of books can be a political act (or be deemed so) and become a reason for imprisonment. In the context of biography, I will consider only the two largest samizdat endeavors in Czechoslovakia, Petlice [Padlock] Editions and Expedition Editions, and one particular journal. Petlice Editions was ‘unofficially founded’ in 1972 by Ludvík Vaculík (1926–2015), a Czech writer and former member of the Communist Party, who left the party after 1968 and became a prominent dissident. His samizdat edition published 391 books between 1972 and 1990, comprising mainly Czech and Slovak writers who had been banned from or severely restricted 14 15

Martin C. Putna et al., Homosexualita v dějinách české kultury (Prague: Academia, 2011), 31. Michal Přibáň et al., Český literární samizdat 1949–1989: edice, časopisy, sborníky (Prague: Academia, 2018), 11–87.

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in official publishing. For example, the aforementioned Václav Černý published seven samizdat books with Petlice Editions. In total, only five of the books published by Petlice could be somehow construed as being biographical: two were written by Jindřich Chalupecký, a Czech theorist and critic of the visual arts and literature, as well as an essayist and philosopher; one was written by Eda Kriseová, a Czech writer; another by Eva Kantůrková, a Czech author and screenwriter; and yet another by Jiří Lederer, an essayist, writer, and journalist.16 The second samizdat publisher, Expedition Editions, offers a similar picture. It was founded in 1975 by Daňa Horáková and Václav Havel (1936–2011), a playwright and intellectual who became a prominent dissident and later, of course, the final president of the Czech and Slovak Republic and the first president of the Czech Republic. Expedition published more than two hundred books (the total rising to 279 if unfinished book projects are taken into account), only two of which were biographies. One was, again, by Jindřich Chalupecký and the other was a portrait of Charles de Gaulle by Jaroslav Jírů (1935–2013), a Czech historian who had worked as a radio commentator in the 1960s and then lost his job in 1970.17 He later signed Charter 77. When Jírů’s biography of Charles de Gaulle was published officially in 2014, its blurb read: ‘This book has no ambitions to be a scholarly publication.’18 An understandable disclaimer, given the author’s complicated situation with regard to access to historical sources. Yet it is also indicative of the status of biographies composed in Czechoslovakia during this period: if written under the auspices of official institutions, they were doubtless influenced by the Party’s ideological surveillance. When written for publication via unofficial structures, they were mostly the works of non-historians, and even if their authors were scholarly historians, their access to historical sources, theoretical literature, or any biographical works published in the West was usually very limited. Though such restriction did not stop them from their intellectual activities – albeit in an unofficial sphere. A typical example is the samizdat journal Historical Studies, founded in 1978 by the historians Miloš Hájek, Pavel Seifter, Jan Křen, Milan Otáhal, and others. This journal periodically published studies, reviews, and articles, which made it different from the literary samizdat endeavors that concentrated on books.19 The journal format allowed them to issue a greater number of historical texts

16 17 18 19

Jitka Hanáková, Edice českého samizdatu 1972–1991 (Prague: Národní knihovna České republiky, 1997). Available online: http://www.ludvikvaculik.cz/index.php?pid=2&sid=17. Gabriela Romanová, Příběh edice Expedice (Prague: Knihovna Václava Havla, 2014). Source: https://www.kosmas.cz/knihy/195675/de-gaulle/. Přibáň et al., Český literární samizdat 1949–1989, 231–234.

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but also limited the length of the material they published. We find in this samizdat journal more biographies (especially about Czech politicians and historians) than in samizdat editions. However its articles, with their customary length of around twenty-five pages, lacked the necessary space to permit much in the way of theoretical reflections on their research.20 Complementing the samizdat initiatives in Czechoslovakia were several exile publishing houses for Czechoslovak literature in the West. Not only publishing books abroad by Czech authors was banned in Czechoslovakia, these firms were also regularly involved in the illegal importation and smuggling of forbidden books into the country. Though geographically distant, they nevertheless exerted an influence on all facets of Czechoslovak literary culture, including biography.21 One of the biggest and best known is 68 Publishers, founded in Toronto in 1971 by the Czech writer Josef Škvorecký and his wife, Zdena Salivarová. In total this house published 225 books between 1971 and 1993.22 Several were autobiographical books or memoirs, but there was again a paucity of biographies, in this case only four. There was a biography of a Czech film director residing in the us, Miloš Forman, written by Antonín Jaroslav Liehm, a publicist and critic; a book about the Czech businessman Tomáš Bat’a, by Antonín Cekota, a Czech journalist; and the remaining two were written by the literary historian Jiří Morava and by George Vescey, an American non-fiction writer and sports columnist, who wrote a biography of Martina Navrátilová, the celebrated Czech tennis player living in the US.23 We could find more examples of biographical Czechoslovak books written in this period, but with regard to the biographical approach to historical research the trend is already obvious: while Czechoslovak historians working in official institutions were under ideological control, their potential colleagues in unofficial domestic or exile spheres had very limited access to archival sources relevant for Czechoslovak historical topics. Both groups of publishers preferred historical works other than biographies. Since historical research is about freedom not only of thought and speech but also of access – to sources and to literature – this situation helps us understand why biograph20

21 22 23

Vilém Prečan, ‘Bibliografie čs. Samizdatu: Historické studie 1978–1988’, in: Acta, 1988, vol. 5–8, 44–52. Available online: http://www.csds.cz/cs/publikace/2119-DS/2155-DS ?language=cs#dsPublicationContents. Přibáň et al., Český literární samizdat 1949–1989, 218. Source: https://web.archive.org/web/20120713073916/http://www.arts.gla.ac.uk/Slavonic/ Ohrada.html#143. Source: https://web.archive.org/web/20120713073916/http://www.arts.gla.ac.uk/Slavonic/ Ohrada.html#143.

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ical research, let alone theoretical reflection about it, was highly limited in Czechoslovakia between 1938 and 1989. And although many things changed after the Velvet Revolution, some of the previous research tendencies remained in place.

4

Biography after the Velvet Revolution (1989)

The strong censorship in publishing and research – maintained until 1989 – suddenly collapsed with coming of the Velvet Revolution. During this nonviolent transition in November 1989, the Communist Party yielded its power to a democratic regime, whose reforms influenced all the institutions relevant to biographical research: universities, academic institutes, publishing houses, newspapers, journals and archives.24 This wave of change, along with the renewed possibility of operating a private enterprise, caused book publishing to boom in the early 1990s. People were desperate to read formerly banned authors and books. Many books were published very quickly; because of readers’ hunger, newly established private publishers brought out books in enormous print runs. While before 1989 there were fewer than seventy publishing houses in Czechoslovakia, even by 1990 there were hundreds and since 1992 the total has risen to the thousands.25 Books by previously prohibited Czech writers became bestsellers in the early 1990s: Miloslav Švandrlík’s Černí baroni (Black Barons), for example, sold 700,000 copies.26 Nowadays bestsellers vary in sales between 30,000 and 60,000 copies sold.27 This freedom in publishing also led

24

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26 27

Jan Klápště and Ivan Šedivý, eds., Dějiny Česka (Prague: Nakladatelství Lidové noviny, 2019), 298–304. Jaroslav Pánek et al., Dějiny českých zemí (Prague: Univerzita Karlova, nakladatelství Karolinum, 2018), 605–647. Estimates vary: there were anywhere from forty to seventy publishing houses before the Velvet Revolution. Anna Stöcklová, ‘Proměny knižního trhu v současnosti’ in Knihovny současnosti 2008: Sborník z 16. konference, konané ve dnech 16.–18. září 2008 v Seči u Chrudimi (Brno, 2008), 119. Available online: http://sdruk.mlp.cz/sdruk/konference -knihovny-soucasnosti/2008/clanek/konference-knihovny-soucasnosti-2008-sbornik/. See also Miroslav Balaštík, ‘Koncepce účinnější podpory umění 2007–2013, oblast literatury’ (první pracovní verze, 18. května 2005). Available online: www.culturenet.cz/ res/data/000054.rtf. In 1990 there were 650 publishing subjects in Czechoslovakia; in 2017, in the Czech Republic, the number had risen to almost 7,000. See Czech Book Market Report 2017/18, available online: https://www.sckn.cz/zpravy-o-ceskem-kniznim-trhu/. Balaštík, ‘Koncepce účinnější podpory umění 2007–2013’. It is not possible to tell exactly how many copies were sold, because Czech publishing houses do not give out sales figures. Anna Stöcklová, ‘Proměny knižního trhu v současnosti’, 119.

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to structural changes in purchased books: since 1990 the bestselling categories have been prose, nonfiction, and biography.28 I shall now use one of the books from this period as an illustrative example of biographical research in Czechoslovakia shortly after 1989. Published in 1991, a book by Eda Kriseová, a longtime friend of Havel, was simply titled Václav Havel: A Biography.29 When published again in 2014, after Havel’s death, there was the added description: ‘the only authorized biography’.30 The book is noteworthy for its form: it was written by a close friend, although not a word of reflection is given over to what should be, for a biographer, an uneasy position. Even from a merely historical perspective it is striking that the book does not contain a list of sources, and there are in fact no references at all to primary or secondary sources. In contrast with later books about Havel it is very uncritical: more a hagiography than a biography, it does not problematize his actions at all. This book thus seems to anticipate the future of biography in the Czech Republic: biographies, indeed, are still often written by close friends of the biographical subject. There is also a tendency to have biographies be written not by historians but rather by writers, publicists, or journalists, who often do not distinguish between historical sources and their own memories (as friends or family members of their subject). Here is yet another symptom of a general lack of theoretical reflection.31 Moreover, they do not usually work on their books as if they were scholarly texts; they are usually freelance writers rather than scholars working in universities or other academic departments, so they do not even have to ask themselves theoretical questions. In a certain way we can see this mode of biography as a continuation of the sort of approach characterizing the samizdat and exile editions: as unreflective writing about a single personality, which did not specifically require a disciplinary background in history. These are works that might equally be written by a freelance journalist or a close friend. Biography as such therefore finds itself in a very complicated situation.

28

29 30 31

Anna Stöcklová, ‘Proměny knižního trhu v současnosti’, 119. Available online: http://sdruk.mlp.cz/sdruk/konference-knihovny-soucasnosti/2008/clanek/konference -knihovny-soucasnosti-2008-sbornik/. Eda Kriseová, Václav Havel: životopis (Brno: Atlantis, 1991). Eda Kriseová, Václav Havel (Prague: Práh, 2014). Ivan Fíla, Muž, který stál v cestě (Prague: Knižní klub, 2019). Marie Formáčková, Marián Labuda (Prague: Ikar, 2018). Dana Čermáková, Ivan Trojan (Prague: Imagination of People, 2015).

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Czech Biography Today

The situation today has not fundamentally changed much since the 1990s: yes, sales figures are lower, and competition is incomparably larger due to the many translated books (including biographies) being published each year. Alas, the hunger of readers from the 1990s has long been sated.32 Nonetheless, even biographies originally written in Czech are still often bestsellers; these books are still mostly written by non-historians. Here are several examples from recent years. We shall look not at sales numbers but mainly at the winners of the most prestigious annual Czech literary award, the Magnesia Litera. This competition, which began in 2002, spans eight categories: poetry, prose, children’s books, nonfiction, essay/journalism, translation, publishing achievement, best debut book, and the main prize, the Czech Book of the Year.33 Almost every year we find biographies among the nominated titles: in 2018, Marek Švehla’s Magor, about the Czech poet Ivan Martin Jirous, won in the ‘debut of the year’ category – and the book was written by a journalist.34 In 2015 a biography even won the Book of the Year. It was a book about the poet Ivan Blatný, written by the poet Martin Reiner.35 One exception can be found in 2017, when the young historian Adam Chroust published his book about the Czech globetrotter Miloslav Stingl and won in the ‘publishing achievement’ category. Yet once again his book lacks any discussion of theory or methodology, as is the case with his diploma thesis on which the book is based.36 Naturally, the Magnesia Litera award and others help books to become bestsellers, among which we can usually find several biographies. It is obvious that biography as a genre is still very popular among readers, and the biographical method is rising in popularity in the Czech film industry.37 Yet this very aspect leads to a situation where ‘biographical production’ occurs outside of (and indifferent to) academic standards and requirements, and in turn contemporary Czech scholars think less of it. To engage in bio-

32 33 34 35 36 37

Translations account for around thirty percent of Czech book production. Czech Book Market Report 2017/18. Source: https://www.magnesia-litera.cz/o-litere/. Source: https://www.magnesia-litera.cz/rocnik/2018/. Source: https://www.magnesia-litera.cz/rocnik/2015/. Source: https://www.magnesia-litera.cz/rocnik/2017/ and https://is.muni.cz/th/262172/ff _m/. Source: https://www.kosmas.cz/bestsellery/2018/1x10/.

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graphical research is a kind of ‘academic suicide’, observes Lenka Řezníková.38 So how does biography stand in Czech academia?

6

Biography at Czech Academic Institutions

There are two main types of academic institutions in Czechia: universities, which combine teaching and research, and the Czech Academy of Sciences, a large group of institutes focused primarily on research. In everyday practice, researchers also teach at universities, but usually externally or in parallel. The Institute of History of the Czech Academy of Sciences offers one specialized Department of Biographical Studies. This department defines its important projects as the preparation, processing, and coordination of biographical entries for the Biographical Dictionary of the Czech Lands and biographies of ‘creators and bearers of the Czech national myth’ – biographies of more and less well-known personalities who have defined the social, political, cultural, scientific, and economic development of Czechia.39 Although the department claims to focus on theoretical and methodological aspects of biographical research as well, these concerns mainly pertain to the selection of figures for the dictionary, which I consider more a technical than a theoretical matter.40 Having such a dictionary is surely very commendable and helpful, but it is also a conservative project, given all the challenges historical research as such has been met with in recent decades. Even the assumption that a ‘Czech national myth’ exists, let alone the idea that the main purpose of biographical research is to produce dictionary definitions (a few pages long) for each ‘important’ personality, is problematic in a postmodern world. We should draw the line between a dictionary entry as a grouping of facts about a figure and a historical biography that aims not only to gather facts but also to interpret them in relation to someone’s life story. And yet, this sort approach is not at all rare in the Czech Republic with regard to biographical dictionaries. We can find at least ten comparable dictionaries in the Czech National Library, most of which have been published since 1990 under the aegis of academic departments at universities or institutes at the Czech Academy of Sciences, as well as regional museums and archives or by independent scholars or local chroniclers. I propose a hypothesis that 38 39 40

Řezníková, ‘Biografie jako textová a sociální praxe’, 94. Source: http://www.hiu.cas.cz/en/structure/biographical-studies.ep/. Marie Makariusová and Pavla Vošahlíková, eds., Metodické problémy moderní biografistiky (Prague: Historický ústav, 2010).

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would, of course, require further research: it seems that the Velvet Revolution and its aftermath presented not exactly a chance to open historiography and biographical research to new trends, but rather it allowed more recent historians to continue the ways of their predecessors. Today the characteristics of the Department of Biographical Studies strongly correspond in orientation with the attitudes on display within the Czech nationalist political milieu of the second half of the nineteenth century and the First Republic historiography that followed it. Its understanding of methodology (or rather the technical side of research) recalls Jaroslav Goll’s reluctance to involve himself in the theoretical disputations taking place in neighboring Germany. This lack of any theoretical and methodological reflection still holds for most Czech contemporary biographies: they are written either by nonhistorians, who are not required to take such concerns into account, or by historians who were never taught to do so – hence they pass their accustomed habits on to their own students. This obliviousness toward theory and methodology became apparent in 2017, when the young historian Michal Macháček published his biography of the former Czechoslovak communist leader and president Gustáv Husák. The book was very popular, of course, because his subject was a controversial and attractive personality, but it is a purely positivistic treatment lacking any sort of interpretation informed by theory. This lacuna was well noticed by Milena Bartlová, a Czech professor of art history, who wrote in 2018: It is a shame that Macháček belongs to those young Czech historians, who share their teachers’ need to distance themselves from ‘history based on theories’ and believe, that they only have to do a dutiful and ‘positive’ research and tell a story hidden in archives. […] Real methodological limits of his approach become clear in a key moment of his biography, when he searches for his actor’s personal motivations.41 So how is historical biography taught at Czech universities? To illuminate this matter I chose the ten largest and highest-ranking Czech universities and conducted a search for Czech and English classes that were explicitly oriented towards biography in their lists of courses offered for the academic year 2018–2019. Half these universities do not offer any theoretical or methodological courses focused on biographical research. The others

41

Source: http://a2larm.cz/2018/01/jak-se-stal-chudy-chlapec-prezidentem/ (translated by Jana Wohlmuth Markupová).

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do, but with various limits. Masaryk University in Brno offers two biographical classes, both given by research groups in literary theory or aesthetics, and many courses on theory of personality or its research, but only in psychology, sociology, etc., not in history.42 This trend is largely followed by the other universities: biographical or personality research is present only in other disciplines, such as social work or andragogy, and never explicitly in history. There are just two exceptions: Charles University in Prague and the University of West Bohemia in Pilsen. The first example refers to my course in the Department of Oral History – Contemporary History at Faculty of Humanities (Biographical Approach to Research of Contemporary History), the other to a course taught by Naděžda Morávková (Biography and Oral History [for history teachers]) in the Department of History, Faculty of Education.43 Normally I would rather prefer not to talk about my own class, but because there are only these two examples, I will make an exception in order to emphasize two possible trends in (the lack of) historical biography courses possessing a theoretical and methodological nature at Czech universities. Biography is still widely present in other humanities and disciplines, but in history no attention is paid to biographical methodology as a specific historiographic approach. To understand this lack of interest, it would be necessary to widen the perspective and survey a longer period than one academic year. For the moment, two preliminary explanations come to my mind: Czech historians and scholars from disciplines close to historiography either do not consider a biographical approach valuable – or they despise it, even. I refer here mainly to younger historians who are capable of reflecting on global trends in historiography and consider biography to be too conservative or positivistic, or simply feel it is outdated. Their view of biography has probably mostly been influenced by ‘popular’ biographies that win literary awards but have no theoretical bases.44 The other explanation is that historians, even those who write biographies, probably feel no need to teach it because it is not a problem for them. They do not view their research to be situated at a crossroads of various approaches. For them ‘writing history’ is – as Milena Bartlová has called it – the completion

42 43 44

Source: https://is.muni.cz/predmety/katalog?lang=en. Source: https://is.cuni.cz/studium/eng/predmety/index.php?KEY=Az1 and https://portal .zcu.cz/portal/studium/prohlizeni.html. Marek Švehla, Magor a jeho doba: život Ivana M. Jirouse (Prague: Torst, 2017). Adam Chroust, Miroslav Stingl: biografie cestovatelské legendy (Brno: Jota, 2016). Martin Reiner, Básník: román o Ivanu Blatném (Prague: Torst, 2014). Michal Macháček, Gustáv Husák (Prague: Vyšehrad, 2017).

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of dutiful archival research and the telling of a story that is positively present in archival sources, without there being any question marks over subjectivity or the role of the researcher. From my perspective, as a head of the Department of Oral History – Contemporary History, I feel it symptomatic that there are only two theoretical classes on history and biography, both in connection with oral history. My hypothesis is that while ‘classical’ history could develop from the 1990s, continuing its pre-Soviet tradition in Czechoslovakia, oral history did not even exist in our country before 1989. When Miroslav Vaněk and Milan Otáhal from the Institute of Contemporary History of the Czech Academy of Sciences published their first oral history book in 1999, they had to start it from scratch.45 They were more ‘naturally’ connected to scholarly, theoretical, and methodological approaches to oral history interviews from abroad, and the interpretations that followed. All other Czech oral historians had, then, been much more open to questioning their own research from the very beginning, as oral history as such is simply not about objective facts but is rather concerned with subjective perceptions by narrators.46 This very aspect has led Valerie Raleigh Yow, for example, to praise the possible methodological connection of oral history and biography when she said that when ‘readers want to peep behind the mask, to understand the ways the individual sees himself or herself, the inner struggles and motivation’, then the evidence does not often appear in written documents unless the researcher has access to private correspondence and personal journals. And even when such written sources are available, they do not always contain passages in which the subject has set down such reflections. Oral history techniques of questioning about motivation, feelings, and meanings are an effective way to get this information, as well as the details of deeds and events.47 Though I adhere to the concept that oral history interviews do not contain ‘information’, but rather self-representations or self-interpretations of our interviewees, I basically share this emphasis, laid by Yow, that oral history may be a key method in biographical research in contemporary history. 45 46 47

Milan Otáhal and Miroslav Vaněk, Sto studentských revolucí: studenti v období pádu komunismu – životopisná vyprávění (Prague: NLN, Nakladatelství Lidové noviny, 1999). Miroslav Vaněk and Pavel Mücke, Velvet Revolutions: An Oral History of Czech Society (New York: Oxford University Press, 2016). Valerie Raleigh Yow, Recording Oral History: A Guide for the Humanities and Social Sciences (Walnut Creek, CA: Altamira Press, 2005), 220.

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Before concluding, I would like to answer an implicit question: is historical biography such a risky task, as some claim – i.e., can we Czech historians conduct our historical biographical research based on the reigning academic standards at universities or other departments while nonetheless reflecting trends in historiography? Or else: Do we have conditions conducive to the writing of qualitative biographies, not only those of a rather conservative type that have led our colleagues to think that there is no value in them? There is still much to do in terms of university classes we offer to students. Yet in answer to the main question: yes, it is possible. The situation may also be more complicated while applying for grant support: grant agencies tend to prefer team projects, whereas biographies are usually the solo projects of one researcher. There is no single ‘right’ answer: some colleagues feel their biographical projects make them ‘disadvantaged’, but others (myself included) embrace the challenge.48

7

Conclusion: between Positivism and Postmodernism

I have here tried to summarize several main spheres in which we can trace the biographical ambitions encoded in historical and other approaches to research. Based on the scholarly, social, and historical heritage of the twentieth century in Czechoslovakia, I have suggested interpretations of today’s state of historical biography in the Czech Republic. Many Czech (positivist) biographers are still encumbered by the old historicist baggage, the unreformed practice that originated in the last quarter of the nineteenth century within Czech historiography. This is precisely why other (postmodernist) historians who criticize biography can make the case that it is hopelessly outdated and unfit for the challenges of twenty-first-century historiography. Unfortunately there is almost no ongoing debate between the representatives of these two tendencies. Overcoming this impasse seems to be the key to any future development of Czech biography. If we can come to any conclusion regarding the national tradition of biography in the Czech Republic, we should therefore say that biography must overcome this antagonism and reconnect with contemporary debates in the Western world. Which is something I hope that (not only) what I have said here can help us with. 48

Jiří Štaif, ‘Psaní biografie a autorská sebereflexe’, in Dějiny-teorie-kritika 1 (2015), 118.

Biographies and Their Agendas: the Danish Biographical Tradition in a Historical Perspective Joanna Cymbrykiewicz

Biographical writing and studies are undoubtedly enjoying a heyday in both the United States and Scandinavia, including Denmark, where various sorts of biographies have been flourishing for the past forty years.1 It seems that in spite of other trends biography, in all its manifestations, has always had its place in Danish writing, at least since the genre’s breakthrough in the latter half of the nineteenth century, and its present bloom coincides with the universally observed longing for acknowledgment and recognition of a concrete human existence, as juxtaposed against ‘impersonal’, events-oriented historiography. Maintaining the division between historiography as it has traditionally been perceived and biography is obviously sensible and understandable. However, it is also relevant to emphasize that biography is indeed many things and the scope of the issues it tends to discuss often transcends the customary description of a biographee’s achievements. The present article intends both to characterize Danish biographical writing in a historical perspective and to indicate the secondary objectives of biographies, i.e. their more or less conscious aim of reflecting on issues other than the biographee’s life. To these ends I will outline Danish biographical production from the Enlightenment to the present. Apart from its informative function, this essay seeks to shed light on the aspects of biography which diverge from the representation of a specific person’s life. It is broadly acknowledged that no work – neither of fiction nor of fact – can be isolated from the time and environment in which it came into existence; a biography will inevitably bear the hallmarks of its author’s and epoch’s mentality, sensitivities, and, last but not least, topicality. In other words, biographies tend to have an agenda which in other academic discussions has been called a pretext.2 Hence the urge ex1 Birgitte Possing, a Danish historian whose main field of expertise is biography, maintains that Danish biography and biography as a genre in Europe and America was ‘in cold storage’ from the 1970s to the early 1990s. Possing, Understanding Biographies: On Biographies in History and Stories in Biography, trans. Gaye Kynoch (Odense: University Press of Southern Denmark, 2017), 17. 2 This term is used by Hans Renders to draw attention to the issue of the agenda among life writers, which discriminates against certain social groups whose biographical representation is not presently desired. Hans Renders, ‘Biography in Academia and the Critical Frontier

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2020 | DOI:10.1163/9789004434974_017

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pressed by the Danish literature scholar Frederik Billeskov Jansen, who in 1944 claimed that there was ‘an absolute necessity for the self-corroboration of a societal culture that its greatest figures are weighed up two or three times every century. Every generation must take a stand, perspicaciously and at length.’3 The belief that biography covers much more than the life of an actual biographee seems to have long been present in scholarly reflections. Danish scholars who deal with the matters of life-depiction adhere in principle to the distinction between historical and literary biography, made on the basis of the biographee’s professional life.4 Historical biography is substantially older than the latter, since it can be dated back to Herodotus, i.e. the fifth century BCE. Literary biography, in turn, is of a more recent origin: the eighteenth century in England, owing to the pioneering biography that emerged out of the relationship between Samuel Johnson and James Boswell, his friend and master.5 According to Malcolm Bradbury, literary biographies are ‘plots on the lives of plotters’, i.e. they aim at recreating the lives of writers.6 Even though the methodological approach in these two variants of biography is basically the same, as they both recreate their biographees’ portraits on the basis of historiographic and journalistic materials, as well as annals, documents, letters, and diaries, literary biographers also delve into their protagonists’ literary oeuvres to uncover supposed truths about their personalities.

3 4

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6

in Life Writing: Where Biography Shifts into Life Writing’, in Theoretical Discussions of Biography: Approaches from History, Microhistory, and Life Writing, ed. Hans Renders and Binne de Haan (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2014), 169 (169–176). See also Joanna Cymbrykiewicz, “Identitetens etablering og opløsning i Stig Dalagers romanbiografi Det blå lys” [The Establishment and the Fall of Identity in Stig Dalager’s Biographical Novel The Blue Light], Folia Scandinavica Posnaniensia 16 (2014), 50–65. After: Possing, Understanding Biographies, 28. Such a division is broadly recognized by Scandinavian scholars. Cf. Kristian Hvidt, ‘Den historiske biografi – en spændingsfuld genre’ [The Historical Biography – a Genre Full of Tension], in Att skriva människan [To Write a Person], ed. Ronny Ambjörnsson, Per Rinkeby, and Sune Åkerman (Stockholm: Carlsson, 1997), 31–42; Birgitte Possing, ‘Et essay om historisk biografi’ [An Essay on Historical Biography], in Personalhistorisk tidsskrift [Personal-Historical Periodical] 1 (1994), 78–90; Bernard Eric Jensen and Anne Birgitte Richard, Livet fortalt – literaturhistoriske og faghistoriske biografier i 1990’erne [A Told Life: Historical and Factual Biographies In the 1990s] (Roskilde: Roskilde Universitetsforlag, 1999). Samuel Johnson’s Life of Savage is regarded as one of the first literary biographies, even though its ‘literariness’ simply consists in its portrayal of a writer, not so much in the drawing of conclusions about his personality based on his literary works. The same principle applies for Boswell’s Life of Johnson. Cf. Michael Benton, Literary Biography: An Introduction (Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell, 2009), 7–12. Malcolm Bradbury, ‘The Telling Life’, in The Troubled Face of Biography, ed. Eric Homberger and John Charmley (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1988), 139.

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This practice can distort the image of the biographee, as with Hans Christian Andersen, whose case will be described below. Some Danish scholars have put forward their own taxonomies, for example Birgitte Possing, who has distinguished eight biographical archetypes, including ‘hagiography’, ‘prism biography’, and ‘collective biography’, in order to ‘equip biographer and reader alike with tools through which to understand the biography in hand, and distinguish the particular truth it represents.’7 It is worth noticing that Possing’s attempt to tackle the issue of biography from a new perspective is a recent development, since Danish literary and historical discourse had, until the 1990s, not perceived biography to be anything worth pondering, even though Danish literature and historiography had contained biographical works. The debate of the 1990s among historians addressed the issues of the historical relevance and the trustworthiness of biographies, and their instrumentality in the creation of historiography.8

1

From Self-Perfection to National Identity

The Danish biographical tradition is doubtless not as impressive as, for example, its British or French counterparts, but some of its works and prevailing tendencies are indeed worth closer inspection due to their innovativeness and timeless potential. In addition to Birgitte Possing, Johnny Kondrup and Keld Zeruneith (also a biographer) are among the contemporary scholars who have offered criticism on Danish biography.9 Unlike Possing, these scholars have investigated literary biographies and have examined the relation between writer’s lives and their literary production. 7 Possing, Understanding Biographies, 69. 8 See for example: Niels Thomsen, ‘Historien om frk. Zahle – Er det historie?’ [The Story of Miss Zahle – Is This History?], in Historisk Tidsskrift [Historical Periodical] 16 (1992), 353–358; Niels Thomsen, ‘Biografiens nye bølge – en skæv sø?’ [The New Wave of Biography – a Cross Sea?], in Historisk Tidsskrift [Historical Periodical] 16 (1997), 412–429; Sidsel Eriksen, ‘Biografier som lakmus-papir’ [Biographies as Litmus Paper], in Historisk Tidsskrift [Historical Periodical] 16, (1996), 161–183; Sidsel Eriksen, ‘Niels Thomsens relevans’ [Niels Thomsen’s Relevance], in Historisk Tidsskrift [Historical Periodical] 16 (1997), 432–438. 9 Johnny Kondrup, Livsværker [Lifeworks], (Gylling: Amadeus, 1986); Johnny Kondrup, ‘Biografisk metode’ [Biographical Method], in Litteraturens tilgange [Approaches to Literature], ed. Johannes Fibiger, Gerd von Buchwald Lütken, and Niels Mølgaard (Copenhagen: Academica, 2010), 64–66; Johnny Kondrup, ‘Den postmoderne biografi’ [The Postmodern Biography], in Folia Scandinavica Posnaniensia 14 (2012) 34–44; Keld Zeruneith, ed., Livsformer: Otte bidrag om biografi [Forms of Life: Eight Contributions on Biography] (Copenhagen: Gyldendal, 1988).

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Danish literature contains some attempts at life-writing made before the Enlightenment, for example the writings of King Christian IV’s daughter, Leonora Christina Ulfeldt.10 We should, however, single out one of the most notable efforts to tackle the genre of biography: namely, the work of Ludvig Holberg (1684–1754), a historian, philosopher, geographer, and the most celebrated and influential Danish writer of stage comedies. Although Holberg’s academic interests resided elsewhere, he made a successful foray into the genre of biography by writing two volumes of character studies modeled after Plutarch’s Parallel Lives. The first, on men – Adskillige store Heltes og berømmelige Mænds, sær Orientalske og Indianske sammenlignede Historier og Bedrifter efter Plutarchi Maade [The Comparative Histories and Achievements of Several Great Heroes and Famous Men, Particular Oriental and Indian, in the Manner of Plutarch] – was published in 1739, followed by a consideration of notable women – Adskillige Heltinders og navnkundige Damers sammenlignede Historier [The Comparative Histories and Achievements of Several Famous Heroines in the Manner of Plutarch] – in 1745. Being a historian, Holberg perceived historiography and biography to be complementary studies, but he ascribed to biography a didactic purpose.11 Svend Erik Larsen claims that Holberg’s life-depictions appeal to ‘the critical skills of the readers and their capacity to engage in a self-reflection on moral values and character formation.’12 In this attitude to biography one can hear echoes of the reigning values of the age of reason, and Holberg’s biographical agenda is not only to offer profiles of memorable men and women, but also to enable his readers to see themselves via the mirror of his protagonists’ choices and actions. Still, because Holberg modeled his ‘lives’ on Plutarch, whom he strongly admired, his selection of biographies relies on the traditional narrative tools of biography-writing, such as the declared objectivity of the narrator’s voice. A similar approach to and method of discussing historical lives can be observed in a work by the Danish historian Caspar Rothe (1724–1784), Forsøg til navnkundige danske Mænds Livs og Levnets Beskrivelse (An Attempt at the Description of Famous Danish Men’s Lives), published in 1745–1750, but Rothe focused exclusively on his countrymen, and his elaborations were much more voluminous than those of Holberg. 10

11

12

Leonora Christina wrote both a memoir on her years of imprisonment, Jammers Minde [A Memory of Lamentation], published in 1869, and a compilation of stories about famous women, Heltinders Pryd [The Praise of Heroines, 1683]. The translation of both titles into English by Svend Erik Larsen. Cf. Svend Erik Larsen, ‘Ludvig Holberg: A Man of Transition in the Eighteenth Century’, in Danish Literature as World Literature, ed. Dan Ringgard and Mads Rosendahl Thomsen (New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2017), 68–69. Larsen, ‘Ludvig Holberg’, 70.

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A different approach to tackling a historical person’s life can be observed in the works written in the first half of the nineteenth century. Because of Denmark’s great losses in the Napoleonic Wars (the takeover of the Danish fleet by the English, the loss of Norway, the state’s bankruptcy), a need arose to rebuild and transform Danish national identity. Solace was sought in the lives of those exemplary Danes who were embodiments of the old times of glory and splendor, and the urge to rebuild the nation’s identity yielded a crop of fictitious works by Bernard Severin Ingemann (1789–1862) and Carsten Hauch (1790–1872). These two writers used their historical protagonists’ lives as a tool, so to speak, to reinforce the common belief that Denmark’s splendid past would ensure its future greatness. Such works, though not biographies as such, adapt the lives of historical persons to a patriotic agenda. A similar approach to historical lives can later be discerned in Vilhelm Andersen’s biographies from the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth century.

2

Biographies of the Modern Breakthrough

Another important chapter in Danish biography is connected with the great cultural and psychological breakthrough which took place in Scandinavia at the end of the nineteenth century due to the influence and charisma of the Danish critic and writer Georg Brandes (1842–1927). The Modern Breakthrough (det moderne gennembrud), which proved a pan-Scandinavian cultural movement, began in 1871 with Brandes’s lectures on contemporary European literatures at the University of Copenhagen, which were meant to elicit the introduction of topical issues into Scandinavian literatures. As it turned out, not only did Brandes succeed in inspiring young Scandinavian authors to write in a modern manner, he also managed to enrich Danish academic discourse with the notions of Mill’s utilitarianism and Comte’s positivism, and in literary studies he instilled the concept of the literary text’s relevance and applicability to extratextual realities. Brandes’s cosmopolitan and anticlerical orientation, evident through his tireless lifelong efforts to disseminate his beliefs both nationally and internationally, manifests itself in his numerous biographies whose protagonists represent various nationalities and walks of life. Brandes’s biographies do not comprise a homogenous group and vary according to length, composition, quality, and level of historical detail (Shakespeare’s biography, for instance, is fundamentally based on speculation, whereas Goethe’s relies on historical sources), but the author consistently employs psychological argumentation in the making of his biographical portraits.

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He also wishes himself to be heard as an individual in his narratives: he adopts an involved and subjective attitude toward the problems discussed (the story of the protagonist is often told by a first-person narrator). The employment of psychological explanations in life-depiction makes Brandesian biographies an innovative development in Denmark.13 It also relevant in terms of an agenda which is especially manifest in Søren Kierkegaard (1877). The controversial and eccentric Danish philosopher and writer was known for his orthodox theological assumptions which glorified God as an amoral deity who despised the human who is unable to obtain perfection due to inherent sinfulness. As is commonly known, Kierkegaard’s private life was characterized by self-deprivation in the name of God’s love, and his writings reflect his personal experience. An atheist Jew, Brandes disapproved of Christianity’s influence on the generally recognized moral standards of nineteenth-century Denmark and was critical of the religion’s impact on Kierkegaard’s life. Brandes’s overall diagnosis of the philosopher’s life and condition is that Kierkegaard would have been healthy had not his father possesssed such tremendous power over him, which caused his youngest son to suffer from psychological problems. In this way, Brandes follows a deterministic pattern in life-depiction and interpretation, according to which individuals are molded by their immediate environments and thus responsibility for their actions is indeed limited. Johnny Kondrup, the author of a comprehensive study on Brandes’s Søren Kierkegaard, argues that the urge to recreate the toxic father-son relationship made Brandes blind to other features in Kierkegaard’s personality which might not have been related to his father’s religious mania, such as the melancholy and depression afflicting the philosopher, seemingly from his early childhood.14 Nevertheless, the private, anticlerical interpretation became the key to Kierkegaard’s biography, and its persuasiveness was bolstered by the narrative’s confident tone. Brandes’s contemporary and antagonist Vilhelm Andersen (1864–1953), who authored a few biographies as well, had his own agenda, though different than that of the man who set the Modern Breakthrough in motion. Traditionalistic and patriotic in his views, Andersen did not approve of Brandes’s cosmopolitan outlook or his extensive critique of Danish literature and national mentality. Such views shapes his biographical work, affecting the treatment of his subjects and their very selection. Unlike Brandes, Andersen believed that innovation and vigor in culture should be sought not beyond Denmark’s

13 14

Kondrup, Livsærker, 73. Kondrup, Livsærker, 90–91.

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borders but rather in the country’s local, national resources. Therefore his protagonists were all Danes who would be proof of the positive features they embodied as representatives of the nation and national spirit. Vilhelm Andersen’s biographies cover famous Danish romanticists (Poul Møller [1894] and Adam Oehlenschläger [1899–1900]), but also realists (Paludan Müller [1910], Henrik Pontoppidan [1917], and Vilhelm Topsøe [1922]) whose adoption of Brandes’s ideas was, in his opinion, not as significant as Brandes would have liked. Andersen’s agenda with his biographies was to create representations of writers who could serve as paragons of national Danish values and upholders of the nation’s stability. All in all, the Andersenian project to bolster and reinforce Danish identity and national pride were part of what Johnny Kondrup has called ‘the formation of the nation’. Biographies became an integral part of his patriotic project.15 Despite their disparities, Brandes’s and Andersen’s biographies had much in common. First, they contributed to the emancipation of the narrative voice, which in the 1920s became one of the most recognizable ideas evident in modern, Stracheyan biography in England. Second, they revealed their author’s emotions toward their biographees; the tone of their narratives can be described as engaged and empathetic. Third, these were not dry, strictly factual accounts of the protagonist’s lives. Both Brandes and Andersen set a high stylistic standard for their biographies.

3

Aage Henriksen’s Self-Made Men

The deterministic method in biographical writing, introduced in Denmark by Georg Brandes, proved quite popular in the first half of the twentieth century and, alas, contributed to the genre’s deformation and degeneration. Blame in this regard can largely be attributed to Hans Brix, a zealous admirer of Brandes’s biographies whose works are, in the phrase of Johnny Kondrup, ‘deterrent examples’ of the genre.16 One of Brix’s most famous works was a biography of Hans Christian Andersen, H.C. Andersen og hans Eventyr [H.C. Andersen and His Fairy Tales, 1907], a monograph that made unverified and unverifiable conclusions about the writer’s life based on Andersen’s literary works. Another symptom of the genre’s deformation was Helmar Helweg’s H.C. Andersen: En psykiatrisk studie [H.C. Andersen: A Psychiatric Study, 1927]. Here, as the title

15 16

Kondrup, Livsærker, 144. Kondrup, Livsærker, 216.

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suggests, the fairy-tale author was submitted to a psychiatric examination, including an investigation of his works and the notes which Andersen made in the margins of his manuscripts, allegedly proof of his acts of masturbation. Brix and Helweg, due to their attitude toward biography and its focus on the revelation of scandalous facts about their protagonists, contributed decisively to the stunting of the genre in Denmark, where it did not evolve as fast and efficiently as might have been expected. An actual turn in biographical writing would have to wait until the 1980s. Nevertheless, an important stage in the genre’s evolution can be observed in the 1960s thanks to the biographical oeuvre of Aage Henriksen (1921–2011), which, as Henriksen himself pointed out, was inspired by both Brandes and Andersen. Even though the impact of his two masters is visible in Henriksen’s biographies, he renewed the genre and enriched it with existentialist and humanistic reflections. As a literary critic and a lecturer in literature, Henriksen wrote biographies of writers; he is best known for his studies on Karen Blixen, with whom he also had personal relations, the Danish symbolist Sophus Claussen, and the romanticist Jens Baggesen (Den rejsende [The Traveller], 1961). Using the deterministic variant of biography as a starting point, Henriksen did not concentrate on the restrictive nature of the protagonist’s environment; rather, he perceived each stage of their development as offering a chance for self-perfection. Kondrup has called this model of biographical narrative ‘individuating’ (individuatorisk) due to its humanistic potential and its underlying belief in individuals’ influence on their own lives.17 Accordingly, a given writer’s works are merely manifestations of a certain stage of their individuation, i.e., of their mental and spiritual maturation. Like his predecessors, Henriksen resorts to psychology as a medium to interpret and understand the biographee; he also demonstrates an investment in the protagonist’s life choices, and his narrators are of the openly subjective sort. The individuating model, which consists in demonstrating how an individual optimized their human potential, is closely related to the agenda of Henriksen’s biographies. Their deeply humanistic nature, highlighting the biographees’ freedom of choice and their influence over the shape of their lives, is evidence of the author’s belief in the conception of a self-made man (or woman). Aage Henriksen’s agenda is therefore essentially optimistic, proclaiming belief in the individual self; its projection of the protagonists relies on the conviction that everyone is master of their own destiny. The step taken in the direction of a humanistic, existentialist approach to life-depiction was a significant development in Danish biographical writing

17

Kondrup, ‘Biografisk’, 61.

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and was indeed a liberation from the positivist model used to interpret a human life. The new approach was adopted and practiced by Henriksen’s followers Jørgen Elbek (born 1934), Keld Zeruneith (born 1941), Klaus P. Mortensen, (born 1942) and Poul Behrendt (born 1944), all of whom have authored important literary biographies. Zeruneith also became one of the leading Danish critics of biography.

4

The Biographical Turn – Recent Decades of Biographical Writing in Denmark18

As mentioned, the 1980s brought a renaissance in Danish biographical writing. In an interview with Iben Holk, Keld Zeruneith even announced the specific year of the biographical ‘breakthrough’ (gennembrud), namely 1981, when three important biographies were published: Suzanne Brøgger’s Tone, on Tone Bonnén, a milliner and costume designer; Henrik Stangerup’s Vejen til Lagoa Santa [The Way to Lagoa Santa], on the Danish palaeontologist and geologist Peter Vilhelm Lund; and Den frigjorte [The Liberated] by Keld Zeruneith, on the Danish romanticist Emil Aarestrup (followed by two further volumes on Danish writers, Soldigteren [Poet of the Sun, 1985], a biography of Johannes Ewald, and Fra klodens værksted [From the Earth’s Workshop, 1992], a story about the symbolist Sophus Claussen).19 Several explanations may account for the sudden eruption of biographical writing in Denmark in the 1980s and onwards. One hypothesis is linked to the worldwide crisis of the so-called Grand Narratives, which resulted in an increased interest in microhistory and biography. Another reason for biography’s popularity may be a result of devaluation of the socially engaged and collectively oriented Danish literature of the 1970s (so-called women’s literature, literature written by members of the working class, literature engaged with environmental issues, etc.) and an urge to read narratives based on individual human lives. The literary critic Per Højholt observes jokingly that biographies’ recent heyday originates from a widespread longing for the sort of well-

18

19

The term ‘biographical turn’ refers to the universal phenomenon, as described by the authors of The Biographical Turn: Lives in History, ed. Hans Renders, Binne de Haan, and Jonne Harmsma (London and New York: Routledge, 2017), and the local one, mentioned for example by Iben Holk and Keld Zeruneith (‘den biografiske vending’) in their ‘Biografiens veje’ [The Ways of Biography], in Bogens verden [The World of the Book] 73, no. 3 (1991), 188–196. Holk and Zeruneith, ‘Biografiens veje’, 188–196.

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ordered fate (skæbne) that one readily finds in biographies.20 Whatever the reason, the biographical boom in 1980s Denmark was undeniable and encompassed not only biographies but biofictions as well. There emerged a tendency to write biographies about women and/or persons forgotten or undeservedly unrecognized by history, such as Sidsel Eriksen’s Søster Silfverbergs sorger [Sorrows of Sister Silfverberg, 1993], about a feminist and a Sunday school teacher, Birgitte Possing’s Viljens styrke – Natalie Zahle [The Strength of Will – Natalie Zahle, 1992], about a women’s-education pioneer, and Jens Manniche’s Damen der skød på doktoren [The Lady who Shot the Doctor, 1993], about the Danish scholar Anna Hude. Birgitte Possing notes, however, that biographies of women are still in the minority.21 Another trend within Danish biographical writing of recent decades involves the life-depictions of universally recognized figures undertaken to suggest outlooks on their lives that depart from commonly accepted views. Take, for example, the literary scholar Jens Andersen’s biography of Hans Christian Andersen. In the two-volume Andersen: En biografi [Andersen: A Biography, 2003–2004), the author renders an unembellished and convincing portrait of a sensitive, eccentric individual whose rags-to-riches career path did not ensure him the fulfillment he desired. A similar mechanism, i.e., the retelling of the life of one protagonist by two scholars, can also be seen in the Søren Kierkegaard biographies published in the 2000s (Joakim Garff’s SAK, 2000, and Peter Tudvad’s Kierkeggards København [Kierkegaard’s Copenhagen, 2004]), which caused a hefty debate in the Danish Kierkegaardian milieu. Described in detail by Birgitte Possing, the discussion addressed the speculative potential of biographies as opposed to their stringent obligation to the facts.22 As it turns out, different stances on the same protagonist, and the various narrative instruments used to tell a subject’s story, enrich and refresh biographical discourse, sometimes to an unexpected degree.

5

Conclusions

Over the last forty years biographical writing has been burgeoning in Denmark, but this recent flourishing would not have happened without the con-

20 21 22

Per Højholt, ‘Skæbner er blevet en mangelvare’ [Fates Have Become a Rarity], in Bogens Verden 67, no. 4 (1985), 264–265. Possing, Understanding Biographies, 66. See the chapter ‘Who Is Right: The Archive Rat or the Stylist?’ in Possing, Understanding Biographies, 179–194.

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tributions of the genre’s forefathers. It can be assumed that the origin of Danish biography can be dated back to Ludvig Holberg, whose didactic predilections gave shape to one of the genre’s earliest agendas. Romanticism brought a range of fictitious life-depictions of historical figures with the primary goal of encouraging the hero-worship of the protagonists and the reinforcement of Danish national identity among readers. The debunking tendencies of the Modern Breakthrough era introduced a discursive mode in biographical writing which made biography a forum for discussion on various social issues. The biographies by Georg Brandes and Vilhelm Andersen long served as a frame of reference for biographical writing in Denmark. The twentieth century followers of the modern life-depiction masters, Aage Henriksen and his disciples, adopted most of their rules and assimilated certain new concepts, such as the humanistic and existentialist notion of self-determination. A true heyday of the genre can be observed in the 1980s going forwards, encompassing biographies of various protagonists, including those widely known and those undeservedly forgotten.

Biography in the Netherlands The Biography’s Pretension to Truth Is Relative Elsbeth Etty

Biography is a flourishing genre in the Dutch-speaking world. Not just as a private initiative – biographies that are the result of serious historical scholarship are also being written at universities. As long as verifiable sources are used, these books are considered ‘scholarly sound’. Fortunately, publishers are making fewer and fewer concessions in that regard: scientific quality does not have to diminish readability. However, Jolande Withuis, the author of a biography of former Dutch queen Juliana, still felt the need to defend the ‘scholarly nature’ of her biography. In the introduction to her book, she wrote that it was intended for ‘a broad audience’, adding ‘while at the same time it is a scholarly biography, complete with annotations, bibliography, and acknowledgment of sources.’ A redundant statement, since every biography that purports to be more than mere entertainment contains these components as a matter of course.1 Over fifteen years ago I argued in a newspaper article that biography had finally matured in the Netherlands.2 Previously the biographical tradition had hardly existed in this country. I placed the beginning of the emancipation of the genre here in 1988, originating with the Dutch literature specialist Angenies Brandenburg’s dissertation on the writer and historian Annie RomeinVerschoor. As an adjunct to her biography she published the separate volume Notes and Commentary, in which she reflects on her approach and on biography as a genre. The completion of the emancipation process I determined to be 2002, with the publication of the biography of the author Multatuli by Dik van der Meulen, likewise a dissertation. My conclusion stated: Many writers of those biographies and chronicles of politicians’ and scholars’ lives that appeared between these two milestones brought us closer to the often complex personalities of their subjects. They offered 1 Jolande Withuis, Juliana: Vorstin in een mannenwereld (Amsterdam: De Bezige Bij, 2016), 13. 2 Elsbeth Etty, ‘Volgroeid in het leven: Het genre is volwassen’, in NRC Handelsblad, November 29, 2002.

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2020 | DOI:10.1163/9789004434974_018

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insights into their respective eras and their individual deeds. When a biography enables its readers to evaluate the accomplishment of its ‘hero’ more easily – whether in literature, painting, philosophy, math, or politics – it then possesses meaning. We now have dozens of such ‘meaningful’ books. The Netherlands is no longer a retarded nation with regard to biography; all possible approaches have been more or less successfully implemented, and we can engage in comparisons among them and draw the relevant lessons. So what is a ‘scholarly sound biography’? It is good practice in biographical research to use autobiographical documents responsibly. These sources can be subjected to critical analysis: the biographer retains the authority to consider the merit of the voices of the past. Critical interaction with egodocuments can bring to light changes in a subject’s personal life, which may help to explain changes that occurred on a larger scale. To offer such an explanation, research materials beyond egodocuments must also be incorporated into the analysis. In ‘The Self-Awareness of the Biographer’, Hans Renders mapped the contributions to the boom of ‘scholarly sound biographies’ that had its origins in the 1980s.3 In an interview on the occasion of his inaugural lecture as professor in Groningen, he later identified the difference between a high and low-quality biography. ‘In a high-quality biography’, he said, ‘all the facts should be attributable to sources’.4 It is possible to write high-quality biographies of ‘low’ cultural figures, as long as they are ‘scholarly sound’. A biography’s value is determined by the quality and intensity of the research, whether it is verifiable, the basis of its interpretations and – not least – by its insight into its subject’s significance. Did he or she leave a mark on their own field, was he or she typical of the time? Did the biographer succeed in illuminating the relation between life and work, and provide insight into the web of societal relations in which this person lived? Of course, a biography’s value is also a function of the author’s style, use of language, and narrative skill, qualities for which there are no scientific criteria. Still, biographies labeled as ‘scholarly sound’ sometimes contain an explicit hypothesis and are built upon a theoretical framework. Not only do such demands often lead to an unreadable work, but they also can yield forms of reductionism, which are unworthy of a biography. The merit of biography lies in the attention it pays to the mentality of the individual, opting to focus on 3 Hans Renders, ‘Het zelfbewustzijn van de biograaf: Waarom de biografie geen roman is’, in Zacht Lawijd 6 (2006–2007), 67–81. 4 Elsbeth Etty, ‘Seks moet functioneel zijn’, in NRC Handelsblad, March 7, 2008.

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singularity rather adopting a uniform interpretation that would hold for many individuals or engaging in comparison models, as is usually done in the social sciences. This ‘sociological’ approach to biographical research has resulted in a research tradition that is called Life Writing. Following the Anglo-Saxon world, this form of biographical research has also drawn interest in the Netherlands in recent years. In Life Writing there isn’t much interest in historiography or in its position in the broader field of historical studies.5 This is because this kind of research is built on a different sort of theoretical foundation. Unlike in biography studies, Life Writing primarily focuses on creating ethical frameworks in which representatives of socially oppressed groups are shown to act. The researcher wishes to demonstrate, for example, how women construct identities through egodocuments. In doing so, no distinction is made between the private sphere in which egodocuments were written and the public debate in which the identity of the biographical subject was discussed. The biographer does problematize the context in which an egodocument was written: he or she makes a determination about the extent to which the sources used are unique or representative of a particular period of history. By doing so the biographer contributes to a different kind of debate, one in which biographies can contribute to discussions about the correct interpretation of historical phenomena. In Life Writing, however, a direct connection can often be made between the presentation of a biographical subject and the political agenda of the present-day researcher. Due to these kinds of political preoccupations there have been renewed discussions in the Netherlands regarding whether the study of history and the humanities in general can even be counted among the sciences. This debate has frustrated the emancipation of biography for years, as the biographer and critic Aleid Truijens remarked in an examination of the Dutch biography’s recent flourishing.6 Up until the 1980s, the genre was treated with disdain, especially at universities: ‘Literature scholars concerned themselves with literary texts, not with something as common as the life of the author. A work of art was an autonomous phenomenon. Pointing out connections between life and work was too easy, so a generation of students was repeatedly told, leaving few to dare to write a biography.’ 5 Binne de Haan, ‘The Eclipse of Biography in Life Writing’, in Theoretical Discussions of Biography: Approaches from History, Microhistory and Life Writing, 2nd rev. ed., ed. Hans Renders and Binne de Haan (Leiden: Brill, 2014), 177. 6 Aleid Truijens, ‘Nóg een biografie? Prima toch? De biografie bloeit in Nederland’, in Volkskrant, August 12, 2017.

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This did not change until the 1990s, according to Truijens: ‘Successful foreign biographies of authors were both translated and readily consumed here, and there appeared quality biographies here too, like those of Elsbeth Etty of Henriette Roland Holst, Jan Fontijn of Frederik van Eeden, and Hans Goedkoop of Herman Heijermans.’ Knowledge of the life of an author definitely helped to better appreciate and interpret the creation. The Biography Working Group was founded, as was the journal Biografie Bulletin (later named Tijdschrift voor Biografie, now defunct). Since 2004 there has been the Biography Institute at the University of Groningen, headed by the professor and biographer Hans Renders, who helps to develop the genre’s theoretical underpinnings and to guide authors of biographies. The once-pervasive contempt toward biography in academic circles has vanished. It is now very common to achieve a PhD via the writing of a biography.7 In the United States this is still not always the case. Due to the theoretical pitfalls of the genre, beginning researchers are often discouraged from choosing a biography as the end product of their dissertations.8 In America biography is considered a journalistic genre, a way to expose political power structures. This pragmatic attitude does not align well with the theoretical foundation necessary to get a PhD through the completion of a biography. For this reason, the acclaimed American biographers Nigel Hamilton, Nicholas Fox Weber, and Jack A. Farrell chose to get their PhDs in Groningen. Their biographies seem very American at first glance but, upon closer inspection, it is evident that they lean heavily on recent theoretical conceptions of the genre. The contrast with Life Writing will make clear the aspects in which the Dutch biographical tradition differs from its American counterpart. The difference between Life Writing and biography studies is not regarded as pertinent by publishers from either country, because, in their view, both research traditions produce the same kind of publications. All sorts of books, from journalistic reputation-wreckers to ghostwritten memoirs, are published under the ‘biography’ label. Biographers who call their books ‘scholarly sound’ critically reflect upon their role as mediators between true stories and a general lay audience. In Life Writing this role as mediator is treated as a fact, and thus the emphasis is placed on marketing biography for a specific audience who can identify with the biographical subject.9 7 Truijens, ‘Nóg een biografie?’ 8 Carl Rollyson, ‘Liberation from Low Dark Space: Biography Beside and Beyond the Academy’, in The Biographical Turn: Lives in History, ed. Hans Renders, Binne de Haan, and Jonne Harmsma (New York: Routledge, 2017), 176. 9 Craig Howes, ‘What Are We Turning From? Research and Ideology in Biography and Life Writing’, in The Biographical Turn, ed. Renders, de Haan, and Harmsma, 173.

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Unlike in the US, it is possible in the Netherlands to get a PhD with a publication oriented toward the public. These biographies therefore meet the requirements of a public-friendly use of language as well as the standards of academic research. Some of the dissertations supervised by the Biography Institute published by trade publishers enjoyed great public attention. Jan Fontijn, Hans Goedkoop, and myself are often cited as examples because we belong to a class of literary scholars and historians who have been awarded doctorates with books that would go on to reach a large audience. This success may have been a stimulus for respected academic researchers to publish more generally accessible biographies, which then reduced the academic contempt for the genre. This development met some resistance, as Hans Renders noted in an interview upon accepting his professorship in Groningen: ‘The academic world still feels a bit uneasy regarding the smoothly written high biography, even though numerous scholarly sound biographical dissertations have appeared.’ According to him, this academic unease toward successful biographers is based partly on the ‘jealousy of academics who can’t write and because of this pretend that scholarly publications have to be unreadable by definition’.10 The result is that highly qualified researchers like Jolande Withuis and Annejet van der Zijl believe they have to defend their more generally accessible publications against skepticism from the research community. Van der Zijl, one of the Netherlands’ most successful nonfiction writers, published a biography of the celebrated light-verse author Annie M.G. Schmidt in 2002 that meets all the criteria of a sound, integral writer’s biography. Schmidt’s popular children’s books and musical lyrics meant she was beloved by a wide audience, who indulged in Van der Zijl’s biography even as the biographer did not need to make concessions with regard to the quality of her research. Nevertheless, in a foreword she felt it necessary to defend herself against any possible criticism coming from academic circles. As opposed to writer’s biographies that also serve as dissertations, such as the book by Hans Goedkoop about Herman Heijermans (which she mentioned) and mine about Henriette Holst, in her introduction she placed her Schmidt biography within ‘the Anglo-Saxon tradition, which has always put great emphasis on the narrative element […] The fact that my book has no academic pretensions does not mean that its substance does not have to meet the criteria of scientific rigor, this means: sound, logical, and supported by verifiable source material.’11 10 11

Elsbeth Etty, ‘Seks moet functioneel zijn.’ Annejet van der Zijl, Anna: Het leven van Annie M.G. Schmidt (Amsterdam: Querido, 2004), 8–9.

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With this disclaimer Van der Zijl confirmed the preconception that books meant for a general audience are not taken seriously ‘by science’ because they are driven by narrative – as opposed to what she perceived to be impenetrable academic dissertations. Shortly afterwards she stepped back from this position by getting her PhD with a biography of Prince Bernhard in 2010 under the supervision of the historian Hans Blom. I was in her supervisory committee and can attest that no one thought her dissertation was not scholarly sound because it was narrative-driven and accessible to a wide audience. She could get her PhD because the book, like her Annie M.G. Schmidt biography, was supported by sound research and was reliably grounded in verifiable sources. But why, one could ask, did she want to achieve her PhD with that book? The answer is: because she is not a historian and her research needed assistance from disciplines that were not her field of study. For this very same reason I, a Dutch literature specialist, called on the expert opinion of Professor Jan Bank, a historian, when writing my biography of Henriette Holst, a woman who was not only a poet but also a subject in the history of the Dutch and international labor movements. In my case as well, this sort of guidance led to a dissertation, because professors do not invest their time in researchers without obligation. Jan Bank and my other supervisor, the poetry expert Maaike Meijer, offered me the same foundation that Hans Renders offers his PhD candidates. He does not provide them with guidelines on how to write a biography but supports them in their research and calls in specialists from all sorts of disciplines. That approach has produced a series of high-quality biographies, such as the dissertation of Eva Rovers about art collector Helene Kröller-Müller. There, too, I was on the supervisory committee and can say that no one was of the opinion that her ‘smooth style’ diminished the quality of her years-long archival studies and the credibility of her interpretations. In 2017, the dustup surrounding Onno Blom’s biography of the author and sculptor Jan Wolkers showed just how counterproductive the artificial distinction between scholarly and non-scholarly biographies can be to the development of the genre. Blom, an experienced researcher, could not get his PhD with that book until a second attempt. For reasons that remain unclear, the first supervisory committee disqualified his dissertation as not scholarly sound. Professor emeritus Marita Mathijsen, a member of the first commission, attempted to justify their decision. She began thus: I do not count myself among the professors who believe that a biography falls outside of the academic disciplines. […] There is a difference between scholarly biographies and what I would call public biographies.

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A scholarly biography, whether a dissertation or not, demonstrates an academic attitude with respect to the biographee, [whereas] a public biography can be based on scientific research, but engages with that research in a freer and looser interpretative manner. Afterwards she summed up eight criteria that a scholarly biography has to meet, ending with this circular argument: ‘The biography that is scholarly sound and can successfully result in a PhD does definitely exist. Whether or not Onno Blom’s biography of Jan Wolkers can be counted among them as well will be determined with the help of these eight criteria.’12 Blom’s doctoral supervisor, Professor Willem Otterspeer, called this argument a rhetorical trick.13 His fundamental objection to Mathijsen’s article was her distinction between scholarly sound and publicly-oriented biographies, apparently counting Onno Blom’s study among the latter category. Otterspeer countered, just as Annejet van der Zijl did in her Annie Schmidt biography, that the degree to which a biography can be called scholarly sound depends on its execution: its originality, transparency, and reliability. He warned that the definition of ‘scholarly sound’ as formulated by Mathijsen leads to a monoculture that is damaging to the humanities. A genre such as biography that would allow itself to be so restricted, he concluded, ‘robs itself of the experimental possibilities that are its lifeblood’.14 With this declaration he joined with Renders, who in his inaugural lecture in Groningen called the freedom to experiment the highest virtue of the biographical genre he studies and teaches. He stated: ‘Depending on the subject, the nature of the source material, and the research, the biographer has the freedom to select a form that he finds most suitable.’15 In an interview with the internet magazine De Muur (The Wall) Renders reiterated that the value of a biography is determined by the quality of the research: ‘Everything should be attributable to sources’, he repeated, and emphasizing that he meant not just the facts but also the interpretation of those facts. He pleaded that universities, particularly the history faculties for classical archival research, pay greater attention to learning how to interpret facts. According to Renders, biographies which are both academically sound and highly readable are the antidote to ‘fake news’: 12 13 14 15

Marita Mathijsen, ‘Dit is waar de wetenschappelijke biografie aan moet voldoen’, in NRC Handelsblad, November 11, 2017. Willem Otterspeer, ‘Afvinklijstje doet wezen Wolkers-biografie tekort’, in NRC Handelsblad, November 11, 2017. Willem Otterspeer, ‘Afvinklijstje doet wezen Wolkers-biografie tekort’. Etty, ‘Seks moet functioneel zijn’.

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In the end, people want to know what is really going on, that is what I believe. They want to be able to trust the facts and the institutions. The whole postmodern ‘everything goes’ and ‘none of it matters’ is more or less over. What’s the truth about this man or woman? That’s what people want to know. The biographical method, as I call it, is the answer.16 Unfortunately, biographies are often labeled ‘scholarly sound’ merely if they contain annotations and a list of sources. In this regard, I was irked by the method of the latest book by the author Wim Hazeu, who was awarded his PhD after composing a writer’s biography. He published a biography of the great Dutch poet Lucebert, in which he revealed that this progressive, humanist, and fiercely anti-fascist author and sculptor was, as a young man during World War II, a fervent antisemite and supporter of Hitler.17 Hazeu bases this accusation on a small number of quotes from Lucebert’s letters, which he claimed he did not see until his book was nearly finished. How he got the letters and where they are located, he does not mention. The source is not verifiable. Yet I have been unable to find a single mention of this issue in the reviews of qualified critics. Take note: I am in no way claiming that Hazeu has spread fake news. The few quotations from Lucebert’s letters are no doubt genuine. But in addition to them not being made available for verification, the biographer fails to account for that fact, gives insufficient context, and provides unsatisfactory interpretations of the shocking facts. There is nothing wrong with revealing biographies. However, the more painful the revelations, the greater the need for verifiability. Otherwise one could write anything about anyone, as is commonplace on social media. In the pillarized Netherlands, where for a long time hagiographies were produced by authors from the same pillar as their biographical subjects, verifiability did not matter so much. Life chronicles of historical figures, even in academic publications, were often unreliable because unflattering facts were omitted. For example, in 1998 the historian Herman Langeveld revealed, in his biography of the pre-war Calvinist prime minister Hendrikus Colijn, that as a 25year-old lieutenant in the Dutch East Indies, Colijn had committed war crimes. The biographer cited a letter written by Colijn, found in a publicly accessible university archive, that had been systematically and intentionally neglected by the academic researchers who preceded him. The quote runs: ‘I had to put 16 17

Niels Mathijssen, ‘De biografie is hét medicijn tegen nepnieuws’, De Muur: https:// overdemuur.org/de-biografie-is-het-medicijn-tegen-nepnieuws/. Wim Hazeu, Lucebert. Biografie (Amsterdam: De Bezige Bij, 2018).

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9 women and 3 children, who asked for mercy, on a pile and had them shot to death. […] I turned around to light a cigar. There were a few heartrending cries, and then those 12 too were dead.’18 Some university critics attacked Langeveld’s revelations. The Leiden historian Dr. Martin Bossenbroek spoke of ‘shameless sensationalism’: ‘What will become of the historian’s higher calling when they have to act as if they were “Yugoslavia tribunal judges”?’ he wondered.19 Now that we are free of pillarized biographies and now that the taboos against psychologizing and the revelation of intimate life details (such as those involving sexual behavior and addiction) are consigned to the past, the importance of verifiability has only increased. A biography cannot be considered scholarly sound merely because a book contains notes and a bibliography. If statements are not verifiable by other researchers, the label ‘scholarly sound’ is mere window-dressing. Mirjam van Hengel, author of a portrait of the writer Remco Campert, preemptively defended herself against criticism from the ‘biography police’ because she told a story and offered more than plain facts.20 In the introduction to her book, she quotes Virginia Woolf, who did not believe in the ‘solid truth’ of biography. Woolf believed that to capture someone’s essence, the biographer needs fiction as well as facts. Van Hengel does not want to go quite so far. She wrote that she commits herself ‘if not to the truth, than to the reality of Campert’s life. The relation between those two is neither factual nor fiction, interpreting does not mean fabricating.’21 This is how I feel as well. A fictional biography, like the vie romancée, not supported by facts and verifiable sources – is unreliable by definition. This is something that virtually everyone agrees upon today. 18 19 20 21

Herman Langeveld, Hendrikus Colijn (1869–1944): Dit leven van krachtig handelen, deel een 1869–1933 (Amsterdam: Balans, 1998), 59. See: Elsbeth Etty, ‘Lombok-koorts’, in NRC Handelsblad, April 18, 1998. Thomas de Veen, ‘Hij schaamt zich voor de onverantwoordelijke vader die hij was’, in NRC Handelsblad, September 6, 2018. Mirjam van Hengel, Een knipperend ogenblik: Portret van Remco Campert (Amsterdam: De Bezige Bij, 2018), 10–11.

Inception, Inheritance and Innovation: Sima Qian, Liang Qichao and the Modernization of Chinese Biography Liu Jialin

As a history of the life of a particular person, biography in China is an ancient genre, which can be traced back to The Spring and Autumn of Yanzi, an account of the life of the Qi state politician, Yan Ying (?–500 BC). In this book, Yan Ying is presented as an esoteric, wise, brave and thrifty senior official with a good memory. It is still controversial when The Spring and Autumn of Yanzi was written, but Yan Ying’s stories were very popular from his time to the Han dynasties (206 BC–220 AD). The Spring and Autumn of Yanzi shows one important characteristic of Chinese biography, namely the strong link between its subjects and their social and historical contexts. This has become the tradition of ‘historical biography’. During the Han dynasty, various great biographies were written, such as the Records of the Grand Historian of China by Sima Qian (145?–?BC). But soon, event-oriented historiography and the control of narratives by the feudal rulers resulted in the stagnation of Chinese historical biography. Therefore, Hu Shi (1891–1962) can make the following statement: ‘In the past 2500 years, biographical literature was the most undeveloped category in Chinese literature.’1 Zhu Dongrun (1896–1988), another important pioneer in modern Chinese life writing, admitted too: ‘frankly speaking, biographical literature in China is really undeveloped’.2 It is from the late nineteenth century onwards that China witnesses its rise of modern biography.

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Sima Qian and the Grand Beginning of Chinese Biography

Records of the Grand Historian of China is a milestone work of Chinese ancient biography. Its seventy short biographies, titled ‘Biographies and the Collective 1 Hu Shi, ‘Address at Provincial Taiwan Normal School on January 12, 1953’, in What is Biographical Literature, ed. Liu Shaotang (Taibei: Biographical Literature Press, 1967), 230. 2 Zhu Dongrun, Vicissitudes of Biographical and Narrative Literature. The Overview and Comment of Biographical and Narrative Literature in Han, Wei and Six Dynasties (Shanghai: Fudan University Press, 2015), 100.

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2020 | DOI:10.1163/9789004434974_019

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Biographies’, are especially representative, starting with the ‘Biography of Bo Yi’.3 This biography, however, is highly controversial in terms of the structure of the narrative. The text concisely presents key biographical facts of the subjects: the brothers Bo Yi and Shu Qi modestly opposed each others’ reign. They sought shelter with Xi Bo Chang (later known as Emperor Wen of Zhou), persuading his son, Emperor Wu of Zhou not to fight against Shang. Out of righteous resistance, they refused to eat Zhou’s grain, which caused their death of starvation on Shouyang Mountain. The Biography of Bo Yi is not primarily devoted to these facts, but to contemporary commentaries upon them. It is often argued that this short biography differs from conventional biographies: it is seen as a variant of the genre. Zhu Dongrun refutes this idea. He declared that the Biography of Bo Yi is an ‘archetype rather than a variant’.4 Similarly, Zhang Dake, an acclaimed expert on Records, notes that Biography of Bo Yi as the opening article of the seventy biographies ‘is a demonstrative example of commentary biography’.5 Hence a series of questions arise: in what way is Biography of Bo Yi significantly demonstrative as an archetypal biography? What kind of role does it play in our understanding of Chinese ancient biography? According to Zhu Dongrun, Records is stylistically characterized by crossreference: in order to avoid repetition, the historian assigned major descriptions of the lives of single subjects either to other parts, such as ‘Basic Annals’ or ‘Hereditary Houses’. Individual lives are not approached on their own terms but serve as annotation in these books. In other words, the Biography of Bo Yi is so concise as to avoid repetition. Despite this technique of cross-referencing, one cannot be convinced by the assertion that the collective biographies serve as mere supplements to the Records. It is impossible for us to learn the life stories of Bo Yi and Shu Qi from any part of Records other than Biography of Bo Yi, though its narrative is being referred to throughout the Records. Both have their independent values. Sima Qian in his ‘Autobiographic Note’ further explained: ‘towards the end of a moral era, the two brothers are the only ones who aspire for righteousness whereas others are driven by self-interests. Their stories of declining reign to each other and starving themselves to death have ever since been admired by all. Hence, I use Biography of Bo Yi to inaugurate

3 Records of the Grand Historian of China has five categories: ‘Basic Annals’ (Imperial Biographies), ‘Tables’, ‘Treatises’, ‘Hereditary Houses’ and ‘Biographies and the Collective Biographies’. 4 Zhu Dongrun, Vicissitudes of Biographical and Narrative Literature, 195. 5 Zhang Dake, Studies on Records of the Grand Historian of China (Beijing: The Commercial Press, 2011), 23.

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this book.’6 Evidently, Sima Qian was conscious to choose Bo Yi as his subject whose life was worth passing down to future generations as a model. Biographically, the significance of Biography of Bo Yi should not be ignored. First of all, it points to Sima Qian’s scrupulous attitude in selecting a subject. Unlike ‘Basic Annals’ and ‘Hereditary Houses’, which focus on emperors and aristocrats respectively, ‘Biographies and Collective Biographies’ cover a wide range of subjects from various areas such as politics, military, diplomacy, literature, and even include ruthless officials, assassins, swordsmen, doctors and diviners, ethnic minorities, etc. Among all these subjects, each marked by their diversity in background and personality, Sima Qian identifies Biography of Bo Yi as a prime example. By underscoring the fact that they died for their belief in righteousness, he wanted to show his subjects’ noble character and their tragic fate in history. There are up to hundred and twenty tragic characters among the approximately two hundred main subjects in Records. On the one hand, this preference for tragic figures may have something to do with the historical background – ranging from the Spring and Autumn Period (770–476 BC) and the Warring States Period (475–221 BC) to the transition from Qin (221–206 BC) to Han – in which the book is contextualized. On the other, it is certainly Sima Qian’s personal choice influenced by the tragic events he himself encountered in his life. After he spoke in defence of General Li Ling (134–74 BC), who had capitulated to the Xiongnu (Hun), Sima Qian was jailed and castrated as a severe punishment. On the verge of breaking down, the biographer managed to get over this huge defilement and thoroughly devoted himself to writing the Records. Empathetically, therefore, he was more interested in those tragic figures in history and often projected his own feelings onto their biographical portrayals. Qian Zhongshu (1910–1998) in his Limited Views: Essays on Ideas and Letters notes: ‘the biography provides very few biographical facts about Bo Yi and Shu Qi; instead, more than half of the biography is devoted to the biographer’s commentary upon their lives. Although these comments are supposed to be subordinate to the narrative, it has become the primary contents of the biography. Locked in jail, suffering from feelings of despair, anger and humiliation were like a fish bone stuck in his throat torturing Sima Qian. To him, recounting the stories of Bo Yi and Shu Qi became a means of getting rid of this fish bone, or to put it straightforward, of indulging himself in self-expression. ‘Biography of Bo Yi’ had ever since set a model for the genre; hence, it does not

6 Sima Qian, Records of the Grand Historian of China (Beijing: Zhonghua Book Company, 1999), 2502.

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make any sense to discuss how this biography breaks the rules of the genre.’7 As the first biography of the first biographical history book of China, ‘Biography of Bo Yi’ does not break but set rules for the genre, as the author had his own ideas and aspirations to convey through it. Secondly, ‘Biography of Bo Yi’ to a certain degree aligns itself with modern biography in terms of its preoccupation with the interpretation of biographical facts. Sima Qian’s interpretation of the life stories of Bo Yi and Shu Qi is marked by his sympathetic understanding. In Confucius’s point of view, Bo Yi and Shu Qi had achieved what they aspired for, namely benevolence, so that they could redeem their resentment. But Sima Qian disagreed. Though retiring to Shouyang Mountain and living in seclusion there, the brothers wrote a song full of metaphorical irony. As implied in the lyrics, they opposed the view that violence should be answered by violence. Yet they complained that they had nowhere to settle themselves because there were no wise and able rulers in ancient times left. ‘In that sense, are they resentful or not?,’ Sima Qian asked himself.8 He associated the lives of Bo Yi and Shu Qi with that of Yan Yuan, a student of Confucius, who was diligent and fond of learning but who died at a very young age. The tragic death of this upright gentleman forms a striking contrast with ruthless mobsters, committing numerous evil deeds but who often died peacefully at a proper age. Hence, Sima Qian casts doubt on a prevalent creed in ancient China, saying that ‘Divine justice is impartial but is often in favour of good men.’ These interpretations, associations and doubts altogether adds to the complexity of the life story of Bo Yi and Shu Qi, rendering biography less a mere compilation of biographical facts than a revision of one’s fate in history and of historical justice. Last but not least, Sima Qian reiterated the significance of the predicament or despair in the lives of the two brothers: they were seen as an important lesson that could be taught through their biography. Altough the historical tragedy Bo Yi and Shu Qi had gone through was inevitable, they decided not to blindly follow the irrational course of history but to stick firmly to their moral creeds. They testified to the maxim that ‘only when it gets frigid, we learn that the pine is evergreen’. The undervalued traits of nobility and perseverance in their character thus became ever more glamorous. On the other hand, since history is the outcome of human activities, ‘a gentleman will be distressed to depart the world without proper fame’.9 Therefore, great human7 Qian Zhongshu, Limited Views: Essays on Ideas and Letters [second version] (Beijing: Zhonghua Book Company, 1986), 306. 8 Sima Qian, Records of the Grand Historian, 1688. 9 Sima Qian, Records of the Grand Historian, 1691.

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ity will only appear in hindsight. Without Confucius’s praise, Bo Yi and Shu Qi would have remained unknown; if Yan Yuan were not a student of Confucius, no one would be aware of his fondness for learning. Hence, life narrative is essential to pass down the stories of virtuous men to future generations. In that sense, ‘Biography of Bo Yi’ is the key to comprehending all the biographies written by Sima Qian. The historian’s preoccupation with the moral qualities of his subject as well as how these qualities had been treated or mistreated in a historical context all point to the significance of biography. The great ambition of ‘probing the boundaries of heaven and man and comprehending the changes of past and present, thereby developing an analytical system of my own’ thoroughly manifests itself in Records represented by ‘Biography of Bo Yi’.10 Therefore, Records of the Grand Historian of China, alongside Plutarch’s The Lives of the Noble Grecians and Romans are two milestones in the history of biography. Up to now, Records has been a fruitful object of study for many Chinese biographers and scholars.

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Liang Qichao and the Rise of Modern Chinese Biography

As an influential thinker of modern times, Liang Qichao (1873–1929) held Sima Qian’s Records in high esteem. He stated that the work is ‘the origin of standard history, the very first ancient history book with clear structure, overarching motif and exquisite rhetoric. Over two thousand years, it has not only been perennially worshipped by scholars but also been regarded as a classic literary text of national education alongside the Six Classics and Hundred Schools of Thoughts.’11 Liang Qichao was a man of great ambition. As one of the most influential figures in Chinese modern history, Liang Qichao made significant contributions to the areas of culture and thought. He promoted China’s transformation from tradition to modernity, whereby he was credited by western scholars as ‘the mind of modern China’. His interpretation of the Records as well as his own contribution to Chinese biography showed an unprecedented understanding of his historical environment. In his ‘My Autobiographical Account at Thirty’, Liang Qichao identified himself as follows: ‘I was born on the twentysixth of the first month of K’uei-yu (1873) during the T’ung Chih reign. It was 10 11

Sima Qian, ‘Letter to Ren An’, in Ban Gu, The History of the Former Han Dynasty (Beijing: Zhonghua Book Company, 1999), 2068. Liang Qichao, ‘An Outline and Guide of Important Classics’, in Liang Qichao, Compilations of the Works of the Ice-Drinker’s Studio (Beijing: Zhonghua Book Company, 2015), 31:8419.

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ten years after the Taipings failed at Nanking, one year after the death of Tseng Kuo-fan (1811–1872), an imperial Grand Secretary of the Ch’ing government, three years after the Franco-Prussian War, and the year of founding of united Italy in Rome.’12 From this self-description, we can see that Liang Qichao was capable of transcending the limitations of his time, dominated by a stereotypical notion of ‘China as the whole world’. Instead, he identified himself in accordance with the view of ‘China as part of the world’. While fully recognizing the importance of the Chinese traditional classics, Liang Qichao was also equipped with an international perspective. Thanks to his industrious and passionate introduction, support and practice, modern biography – under the influence of western biographical tradition – started to rise in China. Liang Qichao was ‘the first scholar in Chinese academia of modern times who assigns great importance to biography’, as well as the first Chinese scholar who produced a great deal of biographies through experimenting with modern methodologies of western biography.13 His biographical works can be divided into four categories: biographies about European historical figures; biographies about Chinese historical figures; biographies about contemporary Chinese and chronicles, inscriptions, elegies and other kinds of biographical sketches as well as autobiographies. This last category included the ‘My Biographical Account at Thirty’ mentioned previously. The earliest published biography about westerners written by Liang Qichao was Biography of Hungarian Patriot Kossuth (1902), which recounted the life of the leader of the Hungarian national liberation movement in the nineteenth century. It was followed by Biographies of the Three Makers of Italy (Mazzini, Garibaldi, Cavour) and by Biography of Madame Roland and his Biography of New English Giant Cromwell. While writing the lives of Kossuth, the three makers of Italy and Madame Roland, Liang Qichao often concluded with a critical paragraph starting with the words ‘the New Astrologer says’. This was an explicit allusion to the recurrent phrase ‘the Grand Astrologer says’ in the Records. Hence, it is evident that Liang Qichao, by calling himself ‘the New Astrologer’, identified himself as the modern Sima Qian. Liang Qichao and Sima Qian indeed had a great deal in common in the sense that both of them had experienced severe frustrations in their lifetime. Though not physically defiled, Liang Qichao was extremely distressed when the Hundred Days’ Reform of 1898 ended up in failure. This 12 13

Liang Qichao, ‘My Autobiographical Account at Thirty’, in Two Self-Portraits: Liang Ch’iCh’ao and Hu Shih, ed. and trans. Li Yu-Ning (New York: Outer Sky Press, 1992), 2. Yang Zhengrun, A Concise History of Literary Biography (Nanjing: Jiangsu Education Publishing House, 1994), 20.

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movement was led by him and his mentor Kang Youwei, but after it was perpetrated by their opponents, they were forced to flee to Japan, leaving their great ambition unfulfilled. A series of frustrations and miseries thus became major factors that motivated Liang Qichao to devote himself to writing. From Liang Qichao’s perspective, to transform the old China into a new one – his lifelong undertaking – heavily depended on the modernization of the people and, as he pointed out, ‘only when the novel is modernized in the first place, the modernization of the people would be realized’.14 To Liang Qichao, the important role that the novel plays in China’s transformation also applied to modern biography. Particularly, he identified with national heroes who promoted the national liberation and independence movement and with the politicians who supported it. Instead of admiring these heroes superficially, Liang Qichao intended to explore the invaluable qualities of these ahead-of-their-time heroes, who sacrificed themselves for national independence and social reform, and foregrounded these qualities as examples for the self-improvement of the Chinese. The more people became aware of modern humanity, the more likely the transformation was to be a success. While selecting subjects from an international perspective, Liang Qichao also wrote the lives of Chinese from history and from modern times. His implicit motives were made particularly manifest when recounting the lives of Wang Anshi, Li Hongzhang and Kang Youwei, his own mentor. Let us take Biography of Wang Jing Gong (Anshi) as an example. This biography was written in 1908. Wang Anshi was an extraordinary reformist Prime Minister in the Earlier Song Dynasty, although he was denounced by standard history. The fact that Liang Qichao, a failed reformist, chose this reformist pioneer, who lived nine hundred years before him, as his biographical subject is rather revealing of the author’s intention to address contemporary issues via history. At first, the author introduced the historical background in which Wang Anshi was living and highlighted the significance of his reform to strengthen the reign of the Song dynasty (960–1279). It was an era that showed various conflicts between cliques. Generally speaking, these conflicts were often seen as the result of ‘gentlemen’ being maligned by ‘villains’, but Liang Qichao saw the Song dynasty as an exception to this rule: ‘Song was a different case in the sense that the nature of the conflicts were so complicated that ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ might not the appropriate terms to describe it. Almost

14

Liang Qichao, ‘On the Connection Between Novels and Rule of the Masses,’ in Compilations of the Works of the Ice-Drinker’s Studio (Beijing: Zhonghua Book Company, 2015), 4:864.

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everyone – be it wise or dull, able or inept – rushed into the dispute, which turned out to chaos. In short, this simply resulted from the personal preference of scholars and bureaucrats.’15 Such an assertion is unique yet insightful. The major obstacle to Wang Anshi’s reform came from Sima Guang, who also played an important role in Chinese history and whose masterpiece History as a Mirror can be compared with Records in terms of the status in Chinese history. Afterwards, an emperor even set up a warning monument for the dissenters, called ‘Yuan You Party Monument’, on which 309 names including that of Su Shi, an acclaimed literator, were inscribed. The fact that the dispute is driven by the subjective judgements of scholars and bureaucrats, rather than by rationality, does not render either side ‘gentleman’ or ‘villain’. Wang Anshi’s reform was comprehensive, exerting influence on many areas such as politics, military, economy, education and society. He submitted to the emperor a letter of ten thousand words, in which he explained his political stance and ideas on the reform. Strongly supported by Emperor Shen of Song, Wang Anshi overcame obstacles and was able to implement reforms thoroughly. Only after the dissenting voices became more pressing and louder, Emperor Shen of Song withdrew his support. After his son died, Wang Anshi resigned his position of Prime Minister and retreated to Jiang Ning. Thus his reforms were seen as a failure. In Liang Qichao’s opinion, Wang Anshi’s invaluable thoughts of ruling a state and his compassionate concerns about the country and people was unparalleled throughout history. ‘After Qin and Han, Jing Gong has been the only man who can not only comprehend the nature of the state but also exhibit sincere concerns with the state.’16 The measures of reform he advocated, were in compliance with principles of modern political administration. Another controversial biographical subject of Liang Qichao was Li Hongzhang, an important stateman in his time, the late Qing dynasty. This book, also known as the Chronicle of Chinese Events for 40 Years, was first published in 1901, shortly after Li Hongzhang’s death. It thus became the first biography of Li. In the opening paragraph of the book, Liang Qichao stated that ‘this book was stylistically intended as an imitation of western biography,’ explicitly pointing to his great interest in Western modern biography.17 Liang Qichao saw argumentation, consisting of commentary, interpretation and evaluation of the biographical facts and anecdotes as the essence of modern biography. 15 16 17

Liang Qichao, Biography of Wang Jinggong, in Compilations of the Works of Ice-Drinker’s Studio (Beijing: Zhonghua Book Company, 2015), 23: 6122. Liang Qichao, Biography of Wang Jinggong, 23: 6142. Liang Qichao, Biography of Li Hongzhang, 18:4891.

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According to him, the reason why the genre of biography had been underdeveloped in China was that authors of early biographies were ‘exclusively preoccupied with recording biographical facts and seldom made any comment’.18 Their subjective presence would be no more than a paragraph of criticism attached to the end of the text, imitating the style of ‘the Grand Astrologer says’. This writing technique of intermingling narrative with commentary was invented by Sima Qian, as exemplified by ‘Biography of Bo Yi’, ‘Biography of Qu Yuan’ and ‘Biographies of Businessmen’ in his Records. Argumentation must be impartial, and impartiality is of immense importance for a biographer, especially when he deals with a historical figure such as Li Hongzhang, deeply involved as he was in controversy and criticism. While Li Hongzhang and Liang Qichao were political antagonists in public and mere acquaintances in private, all that Liang Qichao strived for was a ‘heart of justice’. As the English statesman Oliver Cromwell asked his portraitist to ‘paint me as I am, warts and all’, Liang Qichao has also intended to portray Li Hongzhang as he was. Liang Qichao suggested that there were two characteristics of the historical context in which Li Hongzhang lived: firstly, his country was governed for ages by an autocratic monarchy and this autocracy had just arrived at its climax; secondly, during his lifetime the Hans started to restore their rights after the Manchurians’ long-term domination of the Central Plains. Liang Qichao’s description of these two characteristics outline the historical background of Li Hongzhang’s life, the former presenting a larger picture and the latter an immediate one. Liang Qichao foregrounded Li Hongzhang as a commander and a diplomat respectively. As a commander, he primarily contributed to the suppression of civil rebellion or riots; as a diplomat, he was known for the case of the Tian Jin Church. In 1870, a rumour that Catholics utilized the bodies of infants as medicine gave rise to the burning and killing of French priests at this church. The way Zeng Guofan dealt with this case discredited himself as a traitor; hence, the case was handed over to Li Hongzhang. Between the case of Tian Jin Church and the Sino-Japanese War of 1894–1895, Li Hongzhang solved many diplomatic affairs, among which Sino-French War in An Nanguo (1883–1885, also known as the War of Zhen Nan Guan, the army of Qing turned the tide and won the war) was most influential. He allied with Britain and Germany to counter France, which eventually would force this country to sue for peace. The Sino-Japanese War of 1894–1895, however, destroyed all the reputation he had built. By putting his signature under the notorious Treaty

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Liang Qichao, Biography of Li Hongzhang, 18:4891.

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of Shimonoseki, Li Hongzhang had humiliated the sovereignty of his country – afterwards, he became the subject of fierce criticism. It was argued that Li Hongzhang’s diplomatic tactics were nothing more than ‘allying with one country to counter another’. Although this strategy had once prevailed in the period of the Warring States, it was now fatally flawed in that, as Liang Qichao asserted, ‘no one can survive by completely depending on others’. Struggling to survive through flattery and trickery can only result in the loss of dignity and ultimately in the humiliation of the nation and the forfeit of its sovereignty. As he was serving for an empire that was close to collapse, however, the predicament of Li Hongzhang somehow deserves our sympathy, since preferential diplomacy would never be offered to a weak country. Liang Qichao said that ‘westernization was the reason for which Li Hongzhang was simultaneously denounced and celebrated by the vulgar people; it was also the reason for which I value him, blame him and sympathized with him.’ Liang Qichao’s attitude was analytical: on the one hand, he thoroughly recognized Li Hongzhang’s awareness of the importance of the westernization movement as well as his performance in it; on the other, he also criticized the inadequacies of Li’s judgements. Admittedly, Li Hongzhang understood foreign affairs, but his understanding was unfortunately not in depth in the sense that ‘his emphasis on foreign affairs resulted in a neglect of domestic affairs’.19 Starting in 1863, the westernization movement led by Li Hongzhang concentrated on military and business matters. After thirty years of painstaking management, the economy collapsed and the army was destroyed during the Sino-Japanese War of 1894–1895. As Li Hongzhang’s memorials ‘On the Infeasibility of Cancelling the Manufacturing of Warships’ (1872) and ‘Planning Naval Defence for sake of Tai Wan Incident’ (1875) indicated, he was highly conscious of China’s military situation. He constantly underscored that it was ‘the greatest change for 3000 years’, ‘the greatest change for thousands of years’, ‘an unprecedented change in the past thousands of years’. The reiteration of a same argument demonstrated that Li Hongzhang was perfectly aware that the readjustment of the international balance of power had profoundly influenced China: his country would be doomed without changing and strengthening itself; it was only through learning from the West that China could counter this region. In addition, he failed to comprehend fully the social reality of the Qing dynasty. In Liang Qichao’s opinion, however, this was not all his fault, since Li Hongzhang was not a hero who made history: ‘It is no doubt that Li

19

Liang Qichao, Biography of Li Hongzhang, 18:4923.

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Hongzhang was a hero of great fame, but his tragedy consisted in the fact that there was no anonymous hero who could inherit his aspiration and take over his undertaking, an undertaking for which he made every effort, yet it failed to flourish. I truly sympathise with his predicament.’20 Liang Qichao’s leadership in the Hundred Days’ Reform dictated that he was superior to Li Hongzhang in terms of thought and vision. He and Kang Youwei advocated for change and reform because the problems of poverty and weakness in China were exposed after the Sino-Japanese War of 1894–1895. Hence, Liang Qichao’s assessment of the westernization movement was able to transcend the limitations of his subject’s perspective. Thus, he discovered the profound tragedy in Li Hongzhang’s life. This is the essence of Biography of Li Hongzhang and also the reason for its success. The biographies written by Liang Qichao, especially those about Chinese figures, are featured by comparative analysis. In his Biography of Guan Zi, Liang Qichao assessed Guan Zhong’s historical contribution from the perspective of international politics and management. He made a comparison between Guan Zhong and Machiavelli and Hobbes. As he suggested, ‘in the course of Europe walking out of the Middle Age, it was the doctrines of Machiavelli and Hobbes, rather than those of Montesquieu and Rousseau, that enabled the western countries to enhance their foundation and promote their development. Despite huge differences in space and time between them, Machiavelli, Hobbes and Guan Zhong surprisingly arrived at a consensus.’21 In Biography of Wang Jing Gong, Liang Qichao determined to rectify Wang Anshi’s reputation. As ‘rare genius mistreated by the world […], Cromwell can be counted as Wang Anshi’s counterpart in the western world.’22 In Biography of Yuan Chonghuan, Liang Qichao compared Yuan Chonghuan, a famous general leading Ming’s army to fight against Qing, to the Count of Cavour, a leader of the Italian movement for unification. While Cavour announced that he had no wife and had ‘married Italy’, Yuan Chonghuan ‘regarded China as his sole home’.23 Similarly, his portrait and historical identification of Li Hongzhang was also marked by comparisons. Liang Qichao noted that there could be ‘no doubt that Li Hongzhang occupied a unique position not only in China’s thousand-yearold history but also in the world history of the nineteenth century’. He also compared Li Hongzhang to Yuan Shikai, Klemens von Metternich (Chancellor 20 21 22 23

Liang Qichao, Biography of Li Hongzhang, 18:4931–2. Liang Qichao, Biography of Guan Zi, 24:6334. Liang Qichao, Biography of Wang Jing Gong, 23: 6107. Liang Qichao, Biography of Yuan Chonghuan, 19:5193.

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of the Austrian Empire), Otto von Bismarck (Chancellor of Germany) and Ito Hirobumi (Prime Minister of Japan).24 Following Liang Qichao, Hu Shi and Zhu Dongrun, among others, enormously promoted the modernization of Chinese biography. Educated in the US and Britain respectively, they had systematic knowledge of the developmental history of western biography. This allowed them to make important contributes to the introduction of major conceptions of western biography.

3

The Development of Contemporary Chinese Biography

Contemporary Chinese biography evolves along with the change of politics and times. In 1949, the People’s Republic of China was founded, and in the following three decades till 1978, the annual number of biographies published ranged between tens to one or two hundreds. However, since China’s Reform and Opening-up in 1978, due to the great ideological emancipation, biographers in China gradually became more active and successful, which led to the increase in their publications. In 1996, China published more than 1,000 biographies, and this trend continued in the next decades and the number roared to 5,267 in 2013. Its estimated that, in recent years, the number of biography publications in China reached to its peak of 5,000 to 10,000.25 In the early years of new China, biographers focused more on a limited array of figures: usually revolutionary leaders, heroes and models in the new age. For instance, biographies were written of Karl Marx (1818–1883), Vladimir Ilyich Lenin (1870–1924), and Mao Zedong (1893–1976). Other common subjects at that time were for example Wu Yunduo (1917–1991), ‘who devoted Everything to the Party’, Gao Yubao (1927–2019), a ‘soldier writer’, who, born in poverty, grew up in the melting pot of revolution, and Lei Feng (1940–1962) who was famous for his readiness to help others in the 1960s. Yet, this kind of worship for models came to an extreme in the Cultural Revolution. As a result, it became a default rule not to write about the real person in a biography. For example, Liu Hulan (1932–1947), a young female spy active during the Chinese Civil War, was portrayed as a conceptualized and ideologized heroine, and not as the naïve, childish 14-year-old girl she really was. It was said that ‘even when we write about Liu Hulan, we should not write her true characters and stories’.26 The 24 25 26

Liang Qichao, Biography of Li Hongzhang, 18:4969–75. See Wang Hongbo, The Publication of Biography and the Vicissitude of Society (Nanjing: Nanjing University Press, 2018). Wang Hongbo, The Publication of Biography and the Vicissitude of Society, 107.

Inception, Inheritance and Innovation

229

importance attached to ideology deprived the genre of its vital forces, since truth is supposed to be the backbone of biography. Ever since the Reform and Opening-up, Chinese biography has revived from its stagnation, as we can observe the obvious improvement in the truthfulness of characters and the variety of subgenres. During the disenchantment of China’s leaders, a large number of memoirs and reflective works, especially writers’ autobiographies or biographies emerged, which presented a prosperous scene in biography development. Along with the development of the socio-economic circumstances and the prosperity of serious academic research, abundant serial biographies have been written to depict the pioneers of social reform. For example, members of Kuo Min Tang (kmt), including Chiang Kai-shek (1887–1965) and Hu Shi (1891–1962), have been the subject of biography, but also Chinese thinkers, historical and cultural celebrities and scientists. Meanwhile, biographies written by Chinese immigrants, such as Lin Yutang’s (1895–1976) The Gay Genius: the Life and Times of Su Tungpo (1947), are read and translated in mainland China. Also, theoretical studies of biography gradually became more prosperous. Professor Yang Zhengrun published A Concise History of Literary Biography (1994) and A Modern Poetics of Biography (2009). Together with several other scholars, this professor founded the Center for Life Writing in Shanghai Jiao Tong University, to undertake a major project of the National Fund for Social Science. He edits China’s first biographical research journal named Journal of Modern Life Writing Studies. In addition, this Center for Life Writing has organized several major international conferences including ‘Overseas Portraiture of Chinese Lives: Life Writing and the Current Trend’ in October 2013, ‘Life Writing and Film Biography in the Trans-Cultural Context’ in October 2016, and ‘Life Writing and Asia-Pacific Cultures’, IABA’s Asia-Pacific International Conference in October 2019. These conferences were good platforms for international communication – enabling us to expand the influence of Chinese biographical research. During the tortuous process of China’s opening to the world, the Chinese people have undergone multiple tests, exposes and challenges. At present, the country’s modernization with respect to the inheritance of a traditional culture puts forward a new proposition to every Chinese. All these developments endow biography with more possibilities than ever before. Special thanks to Fu Yingjie for her help with the English translation of this article.

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Index Aarestrup, Emil 205 Abadal, Ramón d’ 80 Abril Martorell, Fernando 78 Adams, John 100, 110 Aerts, Koen 58 Afshar, Iraj 141, 145–146 Agirreazkuenaga, Joseba 79 Agnelli, Giovanni 136 Ahumada (Francisco Javier Girón) 77 Åkerman, Sune 198 Albéniz, Isaac 80 Alcalá Zamora, Niceto 83 Alcibiades (Warlord) 102 Alcorn, Noeline 154 Al-e Ahmad, Jalal 143–145 Alfonso XIII (King) X Alfred (King of Wessex) 88 Alizadeh, Mohammad Ali 143 Allbrook, Malcolm 114, 148 Alley, Geoffrey 159 Altena, Gijs [VII] Álvarez Junco, José 75 Ambjörnsson, Ronny 198 Ambrose, Linda A. 35–36 Amelang, James S. 69 Ameli Rezai, Maryam 143 Amicis, Edmondo De 136 Amin, Qasim 143 Andersen, Hans Christian 199, 203–204, 206 Andersen, Jens 206 Andersen, Kurt 14 Andersen, Vilhelm 201–203, 207 Anderson, Clare 121 Anderson, Perry 94 Andes, Francisco 73 Andrews, Dana XIV Angosto, Pedro L. 78 Angus, Rita 159 Annance, Noel 38 Annunzio, Gabriele d’ X Anshi, Wang 223–224, 227 Apiata, Willie 155 Arac, Katelyn 34

Aragón, Agustina de (Agustina R.M. Saragossa) 80 Arcy McGee, Thomas d’ 24 Arenal, Concepción 77, 80–81 Ari the Learned. See Þorgilsson, Ari Ariosto, Ludovico 129 Arista, Noelani 124 Armiñán, Luis de 73 Aróstegui Sánchez, Julio 75 Arrarás, Joaquín 73 Aryanpour, Yahya 139–140 Ascaso, Francisco 72 Ásgeirsson, Jakob 175–176 Ashton-Warner, Sylvia 158 Asser (Monk) 88 Atencia, José María 71 Attwood, Bain 125 Atwood, Margaret 19, 119–120 Auger, Manon 27 Augustine (from Hippo) 88 Aurell, Jaume 83 Avila, María Luisa 77 Avilés Farré, Juan 76 Ayala, Francisco 73 Azaña, Manuel 69, 75 Azania, Malaika wa 49 Azarang, Abdolhossein 141 Aznar, José María 83 Azorín (Juan Martínez Ruiz) 80 Babushkin, Ivan 72 Badoglio, Pietro 136 Baeza, Ricardo 69 Baggerman, Arianne 115, 122, 165 Baggesen, Jens 204 Bairati, Piero 136 Baker, Jean 103 Balaguer, Enric 70 Balaštík, Miroslav 189 Ballester, Carme 83 Ballesteros-Gaibrois, Manuel 73 Balló, Tània 82 Baltes, Paul B. 34 Bank, Jan 213 Banti, A.M. 130

262 Baón, Rogelio 73 Barman, Jean 38 Barman, Roderick J. 33 Barnes, Julian 15 Barrowman, Rachel 155, 159–160 Bartlová, Milena 193–194 Bartolomé de las Casas (Colonist) 83 Bassett, Michael 151, 154 Bat’a, Tomáš 188 Baty, S. Paige 15 Baudelaire, Charles 57 Baxter, James K. 159 Beaglehole, J.C. XIII, 152, 154 Beaglehole, Tim 152, 154 Beazley, Kim 119 Beeby, C.E. 154 Beghdad, Salim 27 Behrendt, Poul 205 Beimler, Hans 72 Belich, James 157, 161 Bell, Alana 38 Bell, Coral 111 Belli, Giuseppe Gioachino 136 Benediktsson, Pétur 175–176 Bennie, Angela 116 Benton, Michael 198 Bentsen, Lloyd 109 Berdyaev, Nikolai Alexandrovich 185 Berger, Carl 23–24, 152 Berger, Stefan 59 Berghahn, Volker R. 61 Bergoglio, Jorge Mario (Pope Francis) 68 Bernhard (Prince) 213 Bertolucci, Attilio X Bertrana, Aurora 79 Beschloss, Michael 17 Beyen, Marnix 59, 60, 62–63 Bezdíček, Josef 184 Biao, Lin 89–90 Biderman, Abraham 116 Biko, Steve 46 Billeskov Jansen, Frederik 198 Birns, Nicholas 116 Bismarck, Otto von 228 Black, Conrad 104–105 Blackburn, Simon 14 Blair, Eric Arthur (pseudonym of George Orwell) 13

Index Blasco Ibañez, Vicente 76 Blatný, Ivan 191 Blixen, Karen 204 Blom, Hans 213 Blom, Onno 213–214 Bloomfield, Paul 156 Bo Chang, Xi (Emperor of Wen of Zhou) 218 Bocca, Giorgio 136 Boeck, Felix de XIV, 64 Bohan, Edmund 163 Boldini, Giovanni 136 Bolton, Geoffrey 148 Bolton, Rena 39 Bolufer Peruga, Mónica 77 Bond, Hamish 150 Bond, Mary E. 27 Bongiorno, Frank 118 Bonnema, Sybren [VII] Bonnemaison, Francesca 79 Bonnén, Tone 205 Boogaard, Frans 64–65 Boothe Luce, Clare 109 Borgia, Lucrezia 136 Bori, Lucrecia 79 Borré, Jos 58–59 Bossenbroek, Martin 216 Boswell, James 100, 108–110, 198 Bothwell, Robert 24 Boudewijn, Joske [VII] Boudewijn (King of Belgium) 66 Bradbury, Malcolm 198 Bradford, Tolly 38 Branch, Eren 61 Brand, Christo 46 Brandenburg, Angenies 208 Brandes, Georg 201–204, 207 Brands, H.W. 17 Braudel, Fernand 80 Brenan, Gerald 69 Brennan, Walter XIV Bridgland, Fred 53–54 Brix, Hans 203–204 Broadwater, Jeff 107 Brock, Peggy 39 Brodie, Fawn 103 Brodie, Nick 123 Brøgger, Suzanne 205

Index Brookhiser, Richard 101, 107 Brooking, Tom 152–153 Broughton, R. Peter 34 Brown, Kerry [IX], 5, 86–98 Brown, Nicholas 114 Brown, Robert Craig 24–25–26 Broyld, Dann J. 38 Bruinsma, Ernst 63 Buchwald Lütken, Gerd von 199 Buckner, P.A. 23, 36–37 Bundy, Colin 46 Burdiel, Isabel 70, 74–75, 77, 82, 84–85 Burdon, R.M. 153, 163 Burgos, Carmen de 77 Burke, Robert O’Hara 119 Burlingame, Michael 103 Burstein, Andrew 107 Busquets i Grabulosa, Lluís 83 Butterworth, Ruth 163 Caballé, Anna X, 70, 72, 77, 84–85 Cabrera, Blas 77 Cabrera, Mercedes 75 Cacho Millet, Gabriel 134 Caetani, Leone 137 Caffin, Elizabeth 158 Cains, Geoffrey 115–116 Caizzi, Bruno 136 Cáliz Montes, Jessica 70 Callinnicos, Luli 46 Calvino, Italo 137 Calvo Sotelo, José 78 Camarero Gómez, M. Gloria 81 Cambó, Francisco 73 Cambrils, María 79 Campana, Dino 134 Campbell Berry, Edith 116–117 Campert, Jan XIII, 5 Campert, Remco 216 Campion, Dick 159 Campion, Edith 159–160 Campoamor, Clara 81 Canalejas, José 75 Cannon, Lou 108–110 Cánovas del Castillo, Antonio 83 Capa, Robert (pseudonym of Endre Ernö Friedmann) 77 Capra, Carlo 132

263 Caracciolo, Alberto 136 Caravaggio, Michelangelo Merisi da 116 Carey, Peter 118 Caribbo, Sara 137 Carlyle, Thomas 128 Caro, Robert 17 Caron, Martine M. 27 Carr, E.H. 80 Carr, Raymond X, 80 Carracci, Annibale 137 Carraway, Nick 96 Carrero, Luis 75 Carrillo, Santiago 78 Carter, Ian 158 Casacuberta, Josep María de 72 Casado Ruiz de Lóizaga, María José 82 Casalena, Maria Pia 128 Casanovas, Ignasi 73 Casas, José Luis 69 Casassas, Jordi 70, 72 Casavola, Francesco Paolo 138 Cassells, Linda 164 Cassina, C. 134 Castejon, Vanessa 124 Castelao, Alfonso Daniel Rodríguez 84 Castro, Rosalía de 81 Castronuovo, Valerio 136 Cattaneo, Giulio 136 Catton, Pia 18 Cauwelaert, Frans van 67 Cavicchioli, Silvia 130 Cavour, (Count) Camillo Benso 130, 222, 227 Cazorla Sánchez, Antonio 73 Cecchi, Dario 136 Ceccuti, Cosimo 130 Cekota, Antonín 188 Cercone, Philip 29–30 Čermáková, Dana 190 Černý, Václav 185, 187 Cervantes, Miguel de 81 Chabás, Juan 73 Chacel, Rosa 77 Challis, D.A. 160 Chalupecký, Jindřich 187 Chamberlain, Neville 106 Charmley, John 198 Chernow, Ron 17–18 Chessen, Michael 103

264 Chester, Bronwyn 30 Cheyns, Bruno 57 Chiang Kai-shek 229 Cisneros, F.J. de 73 Chabod, Federico 131 Chonghuan, Yuan 227 Christensen, Karen [VII] Christian IV (King) 200 Chroust, Adam 191, 194 Chunqiao, Zhang 91 Cierva, Ricardo de la 73 Claes, Ernest 59 Claretta, Gaudenzio 129 Clark, Manning 123 Clark, William Clifford 34 Claussen, Sophus 204–205 Clendinnen, Inga 118, 123 Clinton, Bill XI Clercq, Staf de 64 Coates, Donna 23 Cole, Anna 124 Coleridge, Samuel Taylor XI Colijn, Hendrikus 7, 215–216 Collingwood, R.G. 119 Colquhoun, David 150 Columbus, Christopher 73, 129 Comisso, Giovanni 130 Companys, Lluis 76 Comte, Auguste 201 Conca, Maria 83 Conde, Carmen 77 Conde, El (P.A.F. de Castro) 73 Confucius (Kǒng Qiū) 87, 220–221 Conway, Jill Ker 111–115, 117, 123, 125, 127 Cook, Blanche Wiesen 17 Coombs, H.C. 115 Corbett, Jack 154 Corcoran, Bill 48 Coriolanus (Roman General) 102 Cortada, Joan 80 Cortesina, Helena 79 Couper, Scott 46 Couzens, Tim 43–44 Craig, Béatrice 33, 35 Craigie, Jill XIV Creighton, Donald 23, 26 Crispi, Francesco 136 Cristina de Borbón 81

Index Croce, Benedetto 131 Cromwell, Oliver 222, 225, 227 Croskery, Caroline 140 Crouch, Michael 116 Crowther, Samuel 113 Cueto Asín, Elena 81 Cullen, Christian 149 Cunliffe, Marcus 101 Curie, Marie XIV Curnow, Allan 164 Curthoys, Ann 118, 123 Cymbrykiewicz, Joanna [IX], 9, 197–207 Dake, Zhang 218 Dalager, Stig 198 Dale, Helen. See Darville, Helen Daley, Caroline 153 Daley, Paul P. 118 Dallek, Robert 17, 106 Dalley, Bronwen 163 Daly, Richard 39 Danai, Hossein 143, 145 Daneshvar, Simin 141, 143, 145 Danneels, Godfried 67–68 Dante (Alighieri) 129 Darby, Mark 154 Darcy, Les 119 Darville, Helen (pseudonym Helen Demidenko, also Helen Dale) 120 David, Donald 102 Davin, Dan 155, 161–162 Davis, Jack 127 Davis, James C. 70 Davis, Kenneth 17 Davison, Graeme 114, 123 Dawes, William 119 Day, Richard 39–40 Defonseca, Misha 17 Degrelle, Léon 57–58, 68 Dekker, Rudolf 115, 122, 165 Deleu, Jozef 60 Delgosha, Ali Baghdar 143 Delorme Smith, Marie Rose 39 Demidenko, Helen (pseudonym of Helen Darville/Dale) 120 Deng Mao. See Deng Rong Deng Maomao (pseudonym of Deng Rong) 93–94

265

Index Deng Rong. See Deng Maomao Deng Xiaoping 93–95, 98 Depkat, Volker 69 Derickson, C.M. 104 Derrida, Jacques 12–13 Desai, Rehad 47, 49 Desmarais, Danielle 27 Dhlomo, H.I.E. 43–44 Dhondt, Steven 58 Dickinson, Emily XIV Diaz, José Sanz y 73 Díez Jorge, María Elena 82 Dillon, Michael 94 Djwa, Sandra 25 Dlamini, Jacob 50–51, 54 Dobbelsteyn, Alicia 40 Docker, John 118, 125 Dolatabadi, Sedigheh 144 Donaghy, Greg 24, 29 Donald, David 102 Dongfang, Shao 90 Donini, Guido 132 D’Orsi, Angelo 132 Dosfel-Tysmans, Angela 65 Dostoevsky, Fyodor XII Douglas, Ken 154 Douglas, Stephen 103 Douglass, Frederick 113 Dowling Taylor, Elizabeth 107–108 Drake-Brockman, Julia 111 Drayton, Joanne 159 Driscoll, Matthew James 166 Drummond, James 151 Dube, John L. 43 Duby, Georges 75 Dueñas Iturbe, Oriol 83 Duero (Manuel Gutiérrez de la Concha) Dumas, Alexandre 131 Durán, Francisco 69 Duran, Lluís 83 Durnez, Gaston 67 Durruti, José Buenaventura 72 Dutch. See Reagan, Ronald Dvorak, Marta 24, 26 Eales, John 119 Edmond, Martin 161 Edwards, Anne 101–102

Eeden, Frederik van 211 Egan, Susanna 26 Egido, Ángeles 78 Elaut, Leo 62–63 Elbek, Jørgen 205 Eleveld, Janine [VII] Eley, Geoff 24 Elias, Hendrik 60 Elkin, A.P. 126 Elliott, John 75 Ellis, Joseph J. 99, 101 Elton, Geoffrey 14–15 Elworthy, Sam 164 Emerson, Ralph Waldo 179 English, John 23–24, 36 Epstein, Mark David 102–103 Eriksen, Sidsel 199, 206 Erikson, Erik 103 Esculies, Joan 84 Esherick, Joseph 91 Espartero, Baldomero 77 Espigado, Gloria 77 Espinós, Joaquim 71–72 Estrada, Diegod duque de 131 Etessami, Parvin 143 Etessami, Yousef 143 Etty, Elsbeth [IX], 3, 208–216 Evans, Richard 117 Ewald, Johannes 205 Extravís, Isabel 84

78

Fabra, Pompeu 83 Falkenhausen, Alexander von 65 Farrell, Jack A. 211 Farr-Jones, Nick 119 Farrokhzad, Forough 141 Faulkner, William XIV Faust, Drew Gilpin 19 Felipe V (King) 73 Felipe VI (King) 75 Feng, Lei 228 Fenoglio, Beppe 137 Ferdinand II (of Aragon) 73 Ferguson, G. Howard 25 Fernández Almagro, Melchor 71, 73 Fernández Cao, M. López 82 Fernández de Retana, Luis 73 Fernández-Miranda, Torcuato 80

266 Fernando III (King) 73 Fernon, Christine 158 Ferrer, Francisco 76 Ferris, José Luis 76–77 Fiandra, Filippo di (conte) 131 Fibiger, Johannes 199 Fíla, Ivan 190 Finelli, Pietro 130 Fitzpatrick, Kathleen 123 FitzSimmons, Peter 119 Fleming, R.B. 25 Fontijn, Jan 211–212 Foot, Michael XIV Ford, Henry 113 Ford, John Bevan 160–161 Formáčková, Marie 190 Forman, Miloš 188 Forner, Salvador 75 Forteir, Isabelle 27 Fortunato, Angelo 135 Foscolo, Ugo 129 Foster, Douglas 49 Foster, Roy 70, 85 Foucault, Michel 12–13 Fox, Gustavus V. 104 Fraga Iribarne, Manuel 78 Frame, Janet 159, 161 Fra Molinero, Baltasar 81 France, Peter 10 Francés, María Jesús 70 Frances i Domenec, Miquel 80 Francis, Pope 68 Franco, Francisco 3, 72–75, 78–81 François, Pieter 174 Franklin, Benjamin 113 Fraser, Graham 36 Freeman, Cathy 127 Freud, Sigmund 105, 112 Frey, James 17 Freyberg, Bernard 155 Freyberg, Paul 155 Frost, Leslie M. 25 Fry, Roger 20 Fu, Du 88 Fuentes, Juan Francisco 74 Fusi, Juan Pablo [X], 72–75 Fuze, Magema 43–44

Index Gadda, Carlo Emilio 137 Gaitanos, Sarah 159–160 Galambos Winter, Clare 159 Galeote, Manuela 79 Galileo (Galilei) 137 Galindo, Rosa 77 Gallego Franco, Henar 77 Ganshof, François-Louis 60 García Lorca, Federico 81 García Morato, Joaquín 77 Garff, Joakim 206 Garibaldi, Anita 130 Garibaldi, Giuseppe 130, 136, 222 Garin, Eugenio 137 Garnett, Richard 156 Gaudí, Antoni 80 Gaulle, Charles de 187 Gauvreau, Michael 35 Gee, Maurice 160 Gellhorn, Martha XIV Gentile, Giovanni 137 George, David R. 81 George III (King) 100 Gerratana, V. 131 Ghanime, Albert 80 Gibbons, Jim [VII] Gibson, Ian 69 Gigli, Lorenzo 136 Gil Roësset, Margarita 79 Gil-Robles, José María 83 Gingras, Jeanne-Marie 27 Ginsborg, P. 130 Ginzburg, Carlo 61, 74, 132 Giudice, Gaspare 136 Givner, Joan 99 Glover, Denis 159 Goebbels, Joseph 4 Goedkoop, Hans 211–212 Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von 201 Goethem, Herman van 66 Goff, Jacques Le 75 Goll, Jaroslav 183, 193 Gollini, Claudia 135–136 Goma Lanzón, Javier 83 González, Felipe 78 González, María Jesús [X], 8, 69–85 González, Virginia 79 González Casal, Carmen 82

Index Gordon-Reid, Annette 103, 108 Gorgin, Iraj 141 Gouchan, Yannick [X], 8, 128–138 Gough, Deborah 121 Govaerts, Bert 59 Goya y Lucientes, Francisco José de 80 Grammens, Flor 64–65 Gramsci, Antonio 131–132 Grandi, Edoardo 132 Grange, Zelda la 46 Grant, David 154 Grant, James 100–101, 110 Gray, Charlotte 22 Greco, El (pseudonym of Doménikos Theotokópoulus) 80 Green, Dorothy 114 Green, H.M. 114 Greer, Allan 27 Greer, Germaine 120–121 Greer, Peggy 120 Gregory, Jenny 148 Grenville, Kate 118–119 Griffin, Nigel 69 Grillandi, Massimo 136 Grímsson, Sighvatur 165 Grootaers, Ludovicus 63 Gross, John 79 Grutman, Rainier 27 Gruyter, Caroline de 66 Gryse, Philippe de 66 Gu, Ban 221 Guang, Sima 224 Guardiola, Carles-Jordi 83 Gubernatis, Angelo De 129, 137 Guðmundsson, Halldór 169 Guia, Josep 83 Guofan, Zeng 225 Guofeng, Hua 93 Gustafson, Barry 151, 154–155 Gutiérrez Mellado, Antonio 78 Gutzman, Kevin R.C. 107 Gwala, Harry 55 Gyselen, Blanka 65 Haag, Oliver 124 Haan, Binne de XIV, 10, 14, 17, 32, 45, 61, 63, 74, 123–124, 133, 167, 182–183, 198, 205, 210–211

267 Habibi, Farangis 141 Haddadi, Nasrollah 143 Haebich, Anna 39, 124 Hájek, Miloš 187 Hálfdanarson, Guðmundur 173 Halldórsson, Jón 169 Hallgrímsson, Jónas 175 Hamilton, Alexander 18 Hamilton, Nigel XI, 8–9, 12–20, 22, 105–106, 114, 118, 120, 123–124, 151, 211 Hanáková, Jitka 187 Hancock, Keith 123 Hancock, W.K. 123 Hanlo, Jan XIII Harmsma, Jonne XIV, 14, 17, 45, 74, 123, 133, 167, 205, 211 Harnum, Bill 25, 30, 32–33 Harrop, A.J. 156 Hassim, Shireen 56 Hart, Maarten ’t X Hauch, Carsten 201 Havel, Ivan M. XV Havel, Václav 185, 187, 190 Havelka, Miloš 183–184 Hawker, Ronald W. 38 Hawkes, David 88 Hazeu, Wim 215 Heijermans, Herman 211–212 Helgason, Þröstur 180 Hellemans, Frank 58 Hellman, Lillian XIV Helms, Gabriele 26 Helweg, Helmar 203–204 Hemings, Sally 103 Henderson, Stephen 24–25, 33 Hengel, Mirjam van 216 Henriksen, Aage 204–205, 207 Hepburn, Mitchell F. 25 Hermans, Ward 65 Hernández, Bernat 83 Hernández, Miguel 76, 81 Hernández Corchete, Sira 81 Hernández Sandoica, Elena 82 Herodotus (Greek historian) 198 Herrera, Emilio 77 Higgs, Catherine 43 Higueras Castañeda, Eduardo 76 Hilary, Edmund 155

268 Hildon, Allan 34 Hill, Barry 117 Hill, Richard S. 158 Hilliard, Chris 162 Hirobumi, Ito 228 Hirsch, Afua 53 Hirst, John 114 Hitler, A. 3–4, 9, 65–66, 75, 161, 215 Hobbes, Thomas 227 Hobsbawm, Eric J. 61 Hodgkins, Frances 161 Hodgkinson, Diana 111 Hofmeyr, Isabel 44 Højholt, Per 205–206 Holberg, Ludvig 200, 207 Holk, Iben 205 Holland, Harry 152 Holman, Jeffrey Paparoa 163 Holmes, Richard XI, 1–2, 10–11 Holroyd, Michael 149 Holst, Henriette. See Roland Holst, Henriette Homberger, Eric 198 Hongbo, Wang 228 Hongwen, Wang 91 Hongzhang, Li 223–228 Hood, Lynley 153, 158 Horáková, Daňa 187 Hosseinian, Sahar Vahdati XI–XII, 8, 139–147 Hoving, Ria [VII] Howe, Joseph 23 Howes, Craig 211 Hreinsson, Viðar 178–179 Huangdi, Qin Shi 86 Hude, Anna 206 Huggins, Jackie 125 Hughes, Heather 43 Hughes, Karen 124 Hugo, Victor 131 Huili (Monk) 87–88 Huizinga, Johan 10–11 Hulan, Liu 228 Hung-chao, Tao 90 Hunt, Graeme 154 Husák, Gustáv 193–194 Husband, Len 28–29, 33 Hu Shi 217, 222, 228–229 Huyse, Luc 58

Index Hvidt, Kristian 198 Hyde, Robyn (pseudonym of Iris Wilkinson) 160 Ingemann, Bernard Severin 201 Isabel I (Queen of Spain) 73, 81 Isabel II (Queen of Spain) 77, 81 Isabel of Aragon (Queen of Portugal) Isenberg, Nancy 107 Isidro el Labrador (Saint) 80 Jabavu, D.D.T. 43 Jacobs, Sean 53 Jaireth, Subhash 125 James, Charlie 38 Jamieson, Rosemary 155 Javier de Burgos, Francisco 83 Jefferson, Thomas 103, 108 Jennings, Paul 107–108 Jensen, Bernard Eric 198 Jeromín (John of Austria) 80 Jiabao, Wen 94–95 Jialin, Liu XII, 5, 217–229 Jianlin, Wang 96 Jie, Yu 94–95 Jing Gong, Wang 223–224, 227 Jintao, Hu 94 Jirous, Ivan Martin 191, 194 Jírů, Jaroslav 187 Johansson, Jon 151 Johnson, Jennie 28, 38 Johnson, Lyndon B. 106 Johnson, Samuel XI, 20, 108, 115, 198 Jones, Barbara 46 Jones, Margaret B. 18 Jongste, Anke [VII] Joosten, Jos 64 Jordi, Elena 79 Jónsson, Guðbrandur 167–169 Jovellanos, G.M. de 73 Juan (King) 73 Juan Carlos I (King) 78 Juana I (Queen) 80, 81 Juanola i Massó, Joaquim 83 Jukes Morris, Sylvia 109 Juliá, Santos 69, 75, 84 Julià Capdevila, Lluïsa 83 Juliana (Queen) 208

80

269

Index Julien, Stanislas 87 Jung, Carl 112 Justice, Daniel Heath

38, 39, 124

Kakutani, Michiko 12–13, 15 Kamen, Henry 75 Kang Youwei 223, 227 Kangxi (Chinese Emperor) 96 Kantůrková, Eva 187 Kaplan, Richard 34 Kasravi, Seyed Ahmad 141, 145 Kavanaugh, Jennifer 14 Kearns Goodwin, Doris 17, 105 Kelly, Ned 119 Kennedy, John F. XI, 105–106 Kennedy, Joseph 105–106 Kermani, Hushang Muradi 140–141, 145 Kerr, Donald Jackson 163 Kershaw, Ian 75 Kessler-Harris, Alice 35 Key, John 151 Khajehnouri, Bizhan 142 Khoramshahi, Bahaedin 146 Khwezi (pseudonym of Fezekile Ntsukela Kuzwayo) 51–53 Kierkegaard, Søren 202, 206 King, Michael 6–7, 149, 153, 157–160, 162–164 King, Nene 119 Kingsford Smith, Charles 119 Kirk, Norman 154 Kirov, Sergei 72 Klápště, Jan 189 Klein, Joe 109 Kleinhenz, Elizabeth 121 Kondrup, Johnny 199, 202–204 Koorts, Lindie 8, 41–56 Korneski, Kurt 28 Kossew, Sue 118 Kossuth, Lajos 222 Křen, Jan 187 Kriseová, Eda 187, 190 Kristjánsson, Sverrir 168 Kristmundsdóttir, Sigríður Dúna 177–178 Krogh, Tyge [VII] Kröller-Müller, Helene 213 Kropotkin, Peter 72 Kuhn, Robert 96

Kuismin, Anna 166 Kuitert, Lisa 63 Kuo Min Tang 229 Kuo-fan, Tseng 222 Kutnar, František 183 Kuzwayo, Fezekile Ntsukela. See Khwezi Kynoch, Gaye 197 Labuda, Marján 190 Lackay, Adrian 49 Ladds, Brett 46 Lafon, Dominique 27 Laforet, Carmen 77 Lal, Brij V. 154 Langeveld, Herman 215–216 Langton, Marcia 125 Lanning, Robert 23 Lannoo, Joris 67 Largo Caballero, Francisco 75 Larsen, David 29–32, 37 Larsen, Svend Erik 200 Lasaga, José 71 Lässig, Simone 61 Lauberg, Carlo 131 Layman, Lenore 148 Lederer, Jiří 187 Ledesma, José Luis 79 Lee, Hermione 16 Lehmann-Haupt, Christopher 99 Lenin, Vladimir Ilyich 3, 72, 228 Leo, Mary 159 Leonardo Da Vinci 9 Leopold III (King) 65–68 Lerroux García, Alejandro 75 Lessona, Michele 128 Levi, Giovanni 74, 132–133, 137 Levis Sullam, Simon 130 Levitt, Jessica 54 Lewin, Hugh 47 Liang Qichao 217, 221–228 Liehm, Antonín Jaroslav 188 Lijphart, Arend 59 Lilburn, Douglas 159–160, 162–163 Lilian (Princess) 66 Lincoln, Abraham 101–104 Lindsay, Lisa A. 38 Ling, Li 219 Lin Qingshan 90

270 Liston, James 154 Litt, Paul 24 Little, J.I. 24, 36 Little, Paul 155 Lladó i Figueres, Josep Maria 76 Llorca Abad, Germá 80 Lluch, Ernest 84 Lodge, Tom 46 Loggerenberg, Johann van 49 Lohmann Villena, Guillermo 73 Lollis, Cesare De 129 Long, Dan 154 Longerich, Peter 4 Loomis, Robert 109 López, Francisca 81 López García, Antonio Miguel 84 Lorenz, Chris 59 Lorenzen-Schmidt, Klaus-Joachim 166 Loriga, Sabina 74 Lotbinière, Henri-Gustave Joly de 24 Love, Apirana Ngatata (Ralph Heberley Love) 156 Lovell-Smith, Margaret 159 Lovelock, Jack 150 Lowell Anew, Amy XIV Luce, Edward 14 Lucebert (pseudonym of L.J. Swaanswijk) 215 Ludwig, Emil 131, 135 Lund, Peter Vilhelm 205 Luther, Martin 103 Luthuli, Albert 46 Maar, Dora (Henriette Theodora Markovitch) 77 Mabasa, Nkateko 53 Maccari, Paolo X, 134 Macdonald, Angus L. 33 Macdonald, John A. 23 MacFarquhar, Roderick 93 Macháček, Michal 193–194 Machiavelli, Niccolò 129, 227 Machlangu, Isaac 54 Macintyre, Stuart 114, 148 MacKenzie, David 33, 37 MacKinnon, Jeanne 39 Madiba. See Mandela, Nelson Madison, Dolley 107–108

Index Madison, James 107–108 Madoz, Pascual 75 Maes, Nelly 64 Maestre, Antoni 71 Maeztu, María de 77 Maeztu, Ramiro de 73 Magaldi, Adrian 78 Magashule, Elias Sekgobelo (Ace) 50 Magnússon, Árni 168, 170 Magnússon, Sigurður Gylfi XII, 10, 123, 133, 165–181 Maharaj, Mac 46 Mailer, Norman XIV, 15 Maine, Kas 44 Majerus, Benoît 59–60 Majó Framis, Ricardo 73 Makariusová, Marie 192 Malatesta, Enrico 72 Malema, Julius 47 Mallo, Maruja 77 Mallory, J.R. 25 Malpas, Jeff 127 Man, Hendrik de 64 Mandel, Ernest 64 Mandela, Nelson (also Madiba) 46–47, 50, 53, 56 Mandela, Winnie 52–56 Mander, Jane 158 Mangcu, Xolela 46 Manniche, Jens 206 Mansfield, Katherine 161 Manus, Elizabeth 99 Mao Zedong 9, 88–93, 95, 98, 161, 228 Ma Yun, Jack 96 Marañón, Gregorio 73, 76 Marçal, Maria-Mercè 83 Marchand, Philip 21 Marcillas, Isabel 71 Marek, Jaroslav 183 Maria Crocifissa (Rosa Curcio) 137 Marks, Grace 119 Markupová, Jana Wohlmuth XIV–XV, 7, 182–196 Marr, David 117 Marsden, Samuel 164 Marsh, Ngaio 159 Marshall, David 21, 23 Marshall, Thurgood XIV

Index Martin, Ashley 31 Martin, Ged 156 Martin, Paul 29 Martin Sr., Paul 24, 29 Martinez Rus, Ana 81 Marwick, Arthur 176 Marx, Karl 228 Masaryk, Tomáš Garrigue 182–183 Mascuch, Michael 115, 122, 165 Maseras, Elena 79 Mason, Andrew 158 Mason, R.A.K. 159 Massari, Giuseppe 130 Mata Hari (Margaretha Geertruida Zelle) 136 Matheson, John 149 Mathijsen, Marita 213–214 Mathijssen, Niels 215 Maura Montaner, Antonio X, 75, 83 Maurois, André 131 Mawson, Douglas 119 Maxwell-Stewart, Hamish 121–122 May, Alex 79 Mayalde (J.M. Finat y Escrivá de Romaní) 77 Mazzini, Giueseppe 130, 222 Mbeki, Thabo 47 McBride, Richard 35 McCallum, Mary Jane 38 McCalman, Ian 119 McCormick, Eric 161–163 McCullough, David 17 McEldowney, Dennis 162 McEldowney, W.J. 159 McEwen, Jock 154 McEwen, Mary 154 McGandy, Michael J. 34 McGregor, Rae 158 McIntosh, Susan 31–32 McIntyre, Lee 14 McKean, Letitia 104 McKenna, Mark 118, 148 McLean, Chris 159–161, 163 McLean, Gavin 151 McLeavey, Peter 159 McNeish, James 150, 158, 161 Meier, August 156 Meijer, Maaike 213

271 Meister, Daniel R. XIII, 4, 21–40, 124 Menéndez Pelayo, Marcelino 80 Menocchio (Domenico Scandella) 132 Mercier, Lucie 27 Merony, John 99 Messamore, Barbara 24–26 Mettepenningen, Jürgen 67–68 Metternich, Klemens von 227–228 Meulen, Dik van der 208 Milani, Farzaneh 141–142, 145 Mill, John Stuart 201 Millar, Nola 159–160 Millar, Paul 160, 162 Milliken, Robert 120 Minford, John 88 Mir, Conxita 78 Mirabbasi, Kaveh 141 Mirza Qajar, Aliqoli (Etezad-ol-Saltaneh) 140 Modica, Marilena 137 Modjeska, Drusilla 118 Moens, Wies 62 Mohajer, Firouzeh 144 Moin, Azfar 145 Mokoena, Hlonipha 43–44 Mola, Emilio 77 Mølgaard, Niels 199 Moliner, María 77 Møller, Poul 203 Momigliano, Arnaldo 132, 137 Mondadori, Arnaldo 135 Monk, Ray 115 Monroe, Marylin (pseudonym of Norma Jeane Mortenson) XIV, 15 Montalk, Stephanie de 153 Montesquieu (Charles Louis de Secondat) 227 Montgomery, Bernard XI Montseny, Federica 76–77 Moorhouse, Frank 116–117 Moradiellos, Enrique 73, 76 Moral, Javier 81 Morales Moya, Antonio 74–75 Morava, Jiří 188 Morávková, Naděžda 194 Moreno, Javier 75–76 Moretti, Franco 128 Morgan, Sally 124–126

272 Morra, Isabella di 131 Morris, Edmund 15, 17, 99–104, 106–110 Mortensen, Klaus P. 205 Morton, Suzanne 33, 36, 40 Moulin, Joanny 124, 127 Mounier, Emmanuel 185 Mowat, Oliver 25 Moya, Fikile-Ntsikelelo 48 Moyal, Ann 123–124 Msimang, Sisonke 53–56 Mücke, Pavel 195 Muecke, Stephen 125 Muir, Edward 61 Muldoon, Robert 151, 155 Mulgan, John 161 Müller, Paludan 203 Multatuli (pseudonym of Eduard Douwes Dekker) 208 Mundine, Anthony 127 Muñoz, Josep M. 80 Munro, Donald 87 Munro, Doug XIII, 6–7, 123, 148–164 Munz, Peter 152 Murray, Eric 150 Musitelli, Pierre 132 Mussini, Lorena 135 Mussolini, Benito 3, 136 Myburgh, Pieter-Louis 50 Najmabadi, Afsaneh 144 Naki, Eric 54 Nanninga-Franssen, Madelon [VII] Nathan, Andrew 95 Navrátilová, Martina 188 Nawotka, Ed 31 Neatby, H. Blair 25 Negrín, Juan 76 Nelson, Cynthia 111 Neuman, Shirley 26 Ngata, Apirana 157 Ngqulanga, Bongani 43 Nicholson, Greg 48 Nicoli, Miriam 83 Nicolson, Harold 70 Nielson, Carmen 36 Nolan, Melanie XIII, 9, 111–127, 148, 157–158 Noonan, James 25 Noonan, Peggy 99

Index Nora, Pierre 122, 127 Norman, Philip 159, 162–163 Novak, Robert 99 Novarr, David 151 Nowra, Louis 120 Núñez, Concepción 77 Núñez García, Víctor 76 O’Connor, Irma 156 Odena, Lina 72 O’Donnell, Leopoldo 83 Oehlenschläger, Adam 203 O’Farrell, P.J. 152 Ogilvie, Gordon 159 Ólafur Egilsson 167–168 Ólafsson, Davíð XII, 165–166, 172 Ólafsson, Jón 167, 170 Ólason, Páll Eggert 176–177 Oldoini di Castiglione, Virginia (countess) 136 Olivares (Gaspar Velasco de Tovar) 75 Oliver, W.H. 157, 159 Olivetti, Adriano 136 Olivetti, Camillo 136 Olivier, Annie 49 Olmo-Ibáñez, María Teresa del 73, 84 Olscamp, Marcel 27 Olssen, Erik 155 Olver, Crispian 50 O’Malley, Padraig 46 Onselen, Charles van 44 Ortega y Gasset, José 71, 76, 80 Ortiz Arilla, Josep María 76 Orwell, George (pseudonym of Eric Arthur Blair) 13 Óskarsson, Völundur 168 Ossorio y Gallardo, Ángel 84 O’Sullivan, Vincent 161 Otáhal, Milan 187, 195 Otero, Enriqueta 79 Otterspeer, Willem 214 Ouellet, Fernand 26 Ovenden, Keith 155 Pabón, Jesús 73 Pachter, Marc 35 Palacios, Jesús 73 Pánek, Jaroslav 189

273

Index Pardo Bazán, Emilia 77 Paredes, Francisco J. 75 Parker, George L. 27 Pasamar Alzuria, Gonzalo 79 Pascoe, John 159 Pascoli, Giovanni X Pasolini, Pier Paolo 137 Pather, Ra’eesa 51, 53 Patočka, Jan 184 Patterson, Brad 158 Patterson, Kathryn 158 Patyegarang (Australian Aboriginal) Pauli, Walter 68 Pauw, Jacques 49 Pavese, Cesare 137 Payne, Stanley G. 73 Peace, Thomas 39 Pearson, Bill 160 Peiró Martín, Ignacio 79 Pekař, Josef 182–183 Penn Warren, Robert 109 Pérez, Antonio 73 Pérez Ledesma, Manuel 74 Pericles junior (Statesman) 104 Peris, Nova 127 Perkins, Charles 127 Perry, Adele 28, 35 Peters-Little, Frances 39, 124 Petri, Franz 63 Pétursson, Þorsteinn 168 Philip II (King of Spain) 75 Philip V (King of Spain) 73 Phillips, Jock 163–164 Picasso, Pablo XIV, 15 Pickering, Paul 119 Pieri, Piero 135–136 Pignatelli, Giuseppe 137 Pillecyn, Filip de 62 Pingqiu, An 86 Pinto, Mercedes 79 Pinto, Sarah 118 Pirandello, Luigi 136 Pirenne, Henri 59–60 Pla, Josep 73 Plaatje, Solomon Tshekisho 43 Plaskett, J.S. 34 Plath, Sylvia XIV Plato (Philosopher) 87

119

Plessix Gray, Francine du 15 Plutarch, (L. Mestrius) 1, 17, 20, 70, 72, 101–104, 200, 221 Polverini, Leandro 132 Poni, Carlo 61 Pons, Anaclet 75 Pontoppidan, Henrik 203 Popkin, Jeremy 122–124 Portella, Josep 78 Possidius (Roman bishop) 88 Possing, Birgitte 22, 34, 197–199, 206 Potocki de Montalk, Geoffrey 153 Poulsen, Bjørn 166 Pradera, Javier 76 Prečan, Vilém 188 Presser, Jacques 115, 122 Preston, Paul 72, 73, 75 Přibáň, Michal 186–188 Prieto, Tomás 73 Primo de Rivera, José Antonio 73 Pujol, Enric 76, 80 Pulido Mendoza, Manuel 70, 72 Putin, Vladimir 3 Putna, Martin C. 186 Puymbrouck, Herman van 60 Qian Zhongshu 219–220 Qianlong (Chinese Emperor) 96 Qin (Emperor) 219 Qing, Jiang 91–93 Qi, Shu 218–221 Quan Yanchi 89 Quasimodo, Salvatore X, 137 Rach, Beverly 37 Raga, Pascual 78 Rak, Julie 22, 32 Ramon y Cajal, Santiago 80 Rand, Ivan C. 34 Ranke, Leopold von 74 Rasputin, Grigori 136 Rawlinson, Gloria 160 Read, Peter 39, 124 Reagan, Nancy 109 Reagan, Ronald (Dutch) 15, 99–104, 106–110 Rebeschini, Monica 133 Reed, John 134 Reder, Deanna Helen 39

274 Redondi, Pietro 137 Rees, Anne 111 Reese, Werner 63 Reeves, Thomas C. 105 Reeves, William Pember 152 Rei, Matiu 156 Reid, John G. XIII, 123 Reid, Nicholas 154 Reid-Maroney, Nina 28, 38 Reig, Ramiro 76 Reiner, Martin 191, 194 Rejali, Simin 142 Ren, An 221 Renders, Hans [VII], XI, XIII–XIV, 3–11, 14–20, 22, 32, 45, 61, 63, 74, 114, 118, 120, 123–124, 133, 151, 167, 181–183, 197–198, 205, 209–215 Renwick, William 155 Reynolds, Henry 126 Řezníková, Lenka 182, 191–192 Rhéaume, Jacques 27 Rhodes, Cecil John 49 Riba, Carles 83 Rich, Michael 14 Richard, Anne Birgitte 198 Richardson, Len 152 Ricketts, Harry 149 Ridler, Jason Sean 33, 36 Ringgard, Dan 200 Rinkeby, Per 198 Riosa, Alceo 132 Ripoll, Fausto 71–72 Ristori, Giovanni 132 Rivalan, Christine 83 Robarts, John P. 25 Robb, Peter 116 Robertson Watt, Madge 35 Rochat, Giorgi 135–136 Rodenbach, Albrecht 67 Rodriguez, Alonso 73 Rodríguez Cabezas, Ángel 82 Roey, Jozef van 65–66 Roland Holst, Henriette [IX], 211–213 Roland, Madame (Marie-Jeanne M. Roland de la Platière) 222 Rollyson, Carl XIV, 8, 99–110, 149, 211 Romano, Sergio 135 Romanová, Gabriela 187

Index Romein-Verschoor, Annie 208 Romeo, Mari Cruz 77 Romeo, Rosario 136 Romero Basar, Pedro 77 Romeu, Xavier 83 Roosbroeck, Robert van 63 Roosevelt, Franklin Delano XI, 104–105 Roosevelt, Theodore 15, 100 Rosa of Lima (Isabel Flores de Oliva) 80 Rosenstone, Robert A. 134 Rothe, Caspar 200 Rousseau, Jean-Jacques 113, 227 Rovers, Eva 213 Rowley, Hazel 120 Rowse, Tim 115, 125 Roy, Patricia 35 Ruano, Enrique de 77 Rubiralta i Casas, Fermí 83 Rudwick, Elliott 156 Ruggiero, Guido 61 Ruiz Robles, Ángela 79 Ruiz Torres, Pedro 85 Ruiz Zorrilla, Manuel 76 Russell, Nance 119 Russell, Penny 123 Ryan, Claude 35 Ryan, Robert 102 Sæmundsson, Matthías Viðar 169–170, 180 Šafařík, Josef 184–185 Šalda, František Xaver 185 Salivarová, Zdena 188 Salvany, Albert 77–78 Salvochea, Fermín 72 Sampson, Anthony 46 Samson, Natalie 31 Sanati, Mahdokht 144 Sandford, Kenneth 155 Sanguineti, Angelo 129 Sanz y Díaz, José 73 Sargeson, Frank 158, 160 Sassoon, Donald 128 Saul, John Ralston 21 Saussure, Ferdinand de 12–13 Savonarola, Girolamo 129 Sayer, Mand 116 Schab, Stanley 90 Schabert, Ina 119

275

Index Schama, Simon 122 Schamelhout, Gustaaf 62 Scheler, Max 184–185 Schelkens, Karim 67–68 Schlesinger, Arthur Jr. 105 Schlesinger, Arthur M. 105 Schmidt, Annie M.G. 212–214 Schmidt, Randy 28–30 Schoenhals, Michael 93 Scholefield, Guy 152, 157–158 Schoon, Theo 159 Schryver, Reginald de 60 Scott, Dick 163 Scott, Eugene 20 Seddon, Richard (Dick) 151–153 Sedibe, Glory 50 Šedivý, Ivan 189 Segal, David 48 Seifter, Pavel 187 Seixas Seoane, Miguel Anxo 84 Seme, Pixley ka Isaka 43 Semprún, Jorge 76 Sereni, Vittorio X Serna, Justo 75 Sgambati, Valeria 133 Shadbolt, Maurice 159 Shakespeare, William 88, 201 Shang of Han (Emperor) 218 Shannahan, Louisa 159 Shaotang, Liu 217 Sharp, Andrew 164 Shawn, Otto 14 Shelley, James 158 Shelley, Percy Bysshe XI, 1 Shen Song (Emperor) 224 Shepard, Deborah 163 Sheng, Bi 88 Shi, Su 224 Shikai, Yuan 227 Shubert, Adrian 82 Siao-yu 89 Sigurðardóttir, Þórunn 171 Sigurðsson, Ásgeir 167–168 Sigurðsson, Haraldur 168 Sigurðsson, Jón 168, 176 Silfverberg, E.A. 206 Silió, César 73 Silvela, Francisco 83

Sima Qian 86–87, 97, 217–222, 225 Simon, George 90 Simon i Tarrés, Antoni 80 Simpson, E.C. 158 Simpson, Tony 162–163 Sinclair, Keith 152, 157 Sisulu, Albertina 46 Sisulu, Elinor 46 Sisulu, Walter 46 Skinner, Damian 159 Skúlason, Friðrík 171 Škvorecký, Josef 188 Smelser, Neil J. 34 Smiles, Samuel 128 Smith, Bernard 123 Smith, Denis Mack 136 Smith, Ken 42 Smits, Henk Willem [VII] Snow, Edgar 88–89 Söderqvist, Thomas 34 Solana, (Francisco) Javier 80 Solandt, Omond McKillop 33 Soldevila, Ferrán 80 Soldevila i Balart, Llorenç 74 Sontag, Susan XIV Soriano Fisher, Elena 79 Sparrow, Jeff 120 Speed, Joshua 104 Speliers, Hedwig 58 Spoonley, Paul 154 St. Clair, William 10 Štaif, Jiří 196 Stalin, Joseph 3, 9 Stangerup, Henrik 205 Stanner, W.E.H. 126 Stead, C.K. 161 Stefanelli, Diego 129 Stefánsson, Kári 171, 176 Stefánsson, Valtýr 176 Steingrímsson, Jón 168–169 Stenhouse, Donald 160 Stephansson, Stephan G. 178–179 Stevenson, Scotty 150 Stingl, Miloslav 191, 194 Stöcklová, Anna 189, 190 Stone, Lawrence 74 Strachey, Lytton 23, 131, 149 Strehlow, T.G.H. 117

276 Streuvels, Stijn (pseudonym of Frank P.M. Lateur) 58–59 Stuart, Peter 156 Sturm, Terry 164 Stutje, Jan Willem 64 Styan, James-Brent 50 Stynen, Ludo 67 Suárez, Adolfo 78, 80 Suárez Fernández, Luis 73 Suetonius, Gaius 1, 17, 20 Švandrlík, Miloslav 189 Švehla, Marek 191, 194 Swainson, Donald 23–25 Sweetman, Rory 154 Sykes, Roberta 116–117 Syrjämaa, Taina 174 Szijártó, István M. XII, 165 Taghizadeh, Seyed Hassan 141, 145–146 Tambo, Oliver 46 Taras, David 21 Tarradellas, Josep 76 Tavera, Susanna 77 Taxonera, Luciano de 73 Taylor, Bonnie 111 Te Punga Somerville, Alice 38–39, 124 Tekakwitha, Kateri 27 Temple, Philip 156, 159, 162–163 Teresa (of Avila) 73, 80–81 Terho, Henri 174 Terza, Dante Della 130 Teunissen-Nijsse, Petra 21 Thamm, Marianne 48 Thlabi, Redi 51–52, 54 Thompson, E.P. 80 Thomsen, Mads Rosendahl 200 Thomsen, Niels 199 Thoreau, Henry David 179 Þorgilsson, Ari 171 Þorláksdóttir, Björg C. 177–178 Þórólfsson, Björn K. 168 Thurston, Anne F. 90 Tierno Galván, Enrique 78 Timmermans, Felix 67 Todd Lincoln, Mary 103–104 Togliatti, Palmiro 136 Tola, D. Pasquale 138 Tollebeek, Jo 62

Index Topsøe, Vilhelm 203 Torre, Alfonsa de la 77 Toussaint van Boelaere, Fernand Traniello, F. 134 Treccani, Giovanni 137 Treglown, Jeremy 79 Trevelyan, Jill 159 Treves, Emilio 136 Trewhela, Paul 54 Tripp, C.A. 103–104 Truijens, Aleid 210–211 Trump, Donald J. 13, 20 Trussell, Denys 158 Tuchman, Barbara 35 Tudvad, Peter 206 Tungpo, Su 229 Turchetta, Gianni 134 Turi, Gabriele 134–135 Turnbull, Alexander 163 Turnbull, Michael 156 Turner, John Napier 24 Tusell, Javier 75 Tutu, Desmond 47 Ugarte, Javier X, 72 Ulfeldt, Leonora Christina 200 Ullrich, Volker 3 Unamuno, Miguel de 76 Underwood, Rachel 156 Unruh, Jesse 108 Upham, Charles 155 Urgoiti, Nicolás María de 75 Urquijo, Mikel 79 Uyl, Joop den 6 Vaculík, Ludvík 186 Valdesoto, Fernando de 73 Valdimarsson, Héðinn 180 Valeri, Nino 136 Valletta, Vittorio 136 Valsson, Páll 175 Vaněk, Miroslav 195 Vanlandschoot, Romain 60, 67 Varela, Javier 76 Varo, Maria de los Remedios 79 Vassalli, Sebastiano 134 Vecchiato, Paul 50 Veen, Thomas de 216

62

277

Index Veiga Alonso, Xosé Ramón 75, 82 Velaers, Jan 66 Veltman, David [VII], XIV, 6, 57–68 Venturi, Franco 132 Verbeeck, Georgi 62 Verga, Giovanni 136 Verknocke, Ferdinand 62 Vermeylen, August 63 Verri, Pietro 132 Verriest, Hugo 67 Verschaeve, Cyriel 67 Verschaffel, Tom 62 Vescey, George 188 Vicens Vives, Jaume 73, 80 Vittorio Emanuele II (King) 130 Vidal, Vicent 70–71 Vigneault, Robert 27 Vigod, B.L. 26 Vilanova, Francesc 80 Villari, Pasquale 129 Virella i Bloda, Albert 78 Visser, Nick 44 Vogel, Ezra 94 Vošahlíková, Pavla 192 Waddell, Christopher 21 Waite, P.B. 25 Wake, Nancy 119 Wakefield, Edward Gibbon 156 Waldstein, Albrecht von 182 Walker, Barrington 36 Walker, Ranginui 154, 157 Wallace, Chris 120 Walravens, Jan 64 Walschap, Gerard 58, 59 Walsh, Bruce 31, 33 Walsh, Finton Patrick 154 Wardhaugh, Robert 34 Washington, George 101 Watson, Burton 86 Watson, Geoff 149, 163 Waugh, Steve 119 Weber, Max 183 Weber, Nicholas Fox 211 Wellington Clah, Arthur 39 Wen of Zhou. See Bo Chang, Xi Wenyuan, Yao 91–92 Werveke, Hans van 60, 62

West, Rebecca XIV White, Luise 166 Whitman, Walt 102–103, 179 Whitney, James Pliny 25 Wilkinson, Iris. See Robyn Hyde Willan, Brian 43 Wills, William John 119 Wilmink, Willem [IX] Wils, Lode 64, 67 Wilson, David A. 24 Wilson, James Q. 99 Windschuttle, Keith 125 Winks, Robin W. 152 Withuis, Jolande 208, 212 Wolkers, Jan 213–214 Wood, Joanna 161 Woodbury Fox, Virginia 104 Woolf, Virginia [born as A.V. Stephen] 20, 216 Wright, Donald 26, 35 Wright, Judith 115 Wu of Zhou (Emperor) 218 Xenophon (of Athens) 20 Xiangyi, Yang 86 Xi Jinping 93, 95–96, 98 Ximénez de Sandoval, Felipe Xirinacs, Lluís Maria 77, 83 Xuanzang (Monk) 87–88 Xueqin, Cao 88 Yang, Gladys 86 Yao Ming-le 89 Ye, Wa 91–93 Yelle, Céline 27 Yi, Bo 218–221, 225 Ying, Yan 217 Yingjie, Fu 229 Yonglie, Ye 91–93 Young, Brian 24 Young, Kevin 14 Yow, Valerie Raleigh 195 Yska, Redmer 161 Yuan, Qu 225 Yuan, Yan 220–221 Yubao, Gao 228 Yunduo, Wu 228 Yutang, Lin 229

73

15,

278 Yu-Ning, Li

Index 222

Zahed, Seyed Sa’id 142 Zahle, Natalie 206 Zambrano, María 77 Zandbergen, Gijs 58 Zapperi, Roberto 137 Zemon Davis, Natalie 76, 85 Zeruneith, Keld 199, 205 Zhengrun, Yang 222, 229 Zhengsheng, Yu 93 Zhisui, Li 90

Zhong, Guan 227 Zhongxun, Xi 95 Zhou Xuan 96 Zhu Dongrun 217–218, 228 Zi, Guan 227 Zielens, Lode 67 Zijl, Annejet van der 212–214 Žižka, Jan 183 Zuma, Jacob 47–48, 51, 53 Zurita, Jerónimo de 84 Zyl-Hermann, Danelle van 50–51