Aesthetic Autobiography: From Life to Art in Marcel Proust, James
Joyce, Virginia Woolf
and Anais Nin
Suzanne Nalbantian (1994)
Suzanne Nalbantian, in Aesthetic
Autobiography, seeks to define what she considers a new dimension of the
genre of autobiography -- fictional representation -- she describes the
autobiographical novelist as one whose motive, instead of revealing real life
events, experiences, locations and objects, “...is to hide, embellish and
transform” (Nalbantian, 2). The book is divided into three four general
sections: the first chapter is a history of autobiography, the second chapter
is a history of theory in regard to autobiography, the third chapter
defines her concept of “aesthetic autobiography” and the final chapters explore
four modernist writers -- Proust, Joyce, Woolf, and Nin -- writers she believes
best exhibit artistic use of memory. This book provides information that
enables us to better comprehend what an author accomplishes when they
purposefully use their own autobiographical experience for fictionalized
purposes.
Nalbantian writes
concerning these four authors: “I would argue that the four particular writers
scrutinized in the pages that follow -- two of whom are men and two women --
infused their lives artistically into their fiction in a manner without
precedent.” (viii) She finds that studying these authors together in a
comparative way in terms of autobiography, “...sheds a light on a common
aesthetics of transmutation in fiction” (viii). This word, transmutation, is
crucial to her understanding of the use of autobiography in fictionalized
works. She writes that there are many studies where there are “parallels
between their lives and fiction. Yet no parallels between such parallels have
been discussed” (ix) because the writers have been studied in isolation. Nalbantian’s goal, then, is to
“extract...the aesthetic element of transmutation” (ix). She discovers a
“transformation theory” (ix).
She
finds that these writers include self-reflexive commentary which are clues to
the interpretation of their work. In other words, these writers have actually
written about how they incorporate autobiography into their fiction. Instead of
placing autobiographical information into the novels for the reader to
discover, she finds that the “... principal motive for such dissemblance on the
part of the authors may well have been subterfuge” (ix) -- “they may have been
trying to hide certain facts…” (ix). Nalbantian analyzes the techniques used by
the writers such as: selection, substitution, distancing, abstraction, the
creation of composites, multiplication, diffusion, misrepresentation, and
mythification.
Nalbantian
distinguishes “autobiography proper” from “aesthetic autobiography.” She
presents a history of the formal genre and uses these paradigms “as a gauge for
the artistic ones” (x).
She delineates between these two very different
forms by stating that, “In the formal genre, writers coped with a certain
selection process as well, deciding what part of their lives to feature, but
the selectivity was very different from that of the novelistic orientation seen
in the fictional genre.” (x)
Chapter 1 Historical Paradigms
Formal
autobiography contains “...common internal laws, conventions and structures
[which] can be discerned and afterwards measured as a backdrop against the
sister genre of fictional autobiography.” (1)
The elements of formal autobiography are:
1. Distance between writing and the actual
events.
2. The author writes “on the assumption of
truth” (2).
3. The writer mostly writes about childhood
“recits d’enfance” -- and this includes Rousseau who “developed the genre as a
process of the organic growth of a personality from the seeds of early
childhood” (2).
4. The next memorable age recounted is the age of
“crisis” -- sixteen -- a “significant turning point in the development of the
personality in question” (3).
“The vividness of such incidents varies
according to the authors, yet they are potentials for what Wordsworth
calls ‘spots of time’, what Joyce terms ‘epiphanies’ or what Woolf describes as
‘scene making’...Whereas, for the most part, the literal transcription of them
is the concern of the standard autobiographer, the embellishment and
transformation of such scenes is the material for the aesthetic autobiographer”
(3).
5. “...a substantive element indigenous to the
genre,[is] that of parental relationships” (5).
Nalbantian notes examples of this formal
autobiography by historically moving through several key autobiographies:
1. St. Augustine and the “conversion narrative”
structure -- a “move toward self-discovery” (5).
2. Benvenuto Cellini’s Life --
“embellished with “novella-like detail of protracted plot description and
exaggerated drama” (7) -- a cultural artifact with little introspection.
3. Ben Franklin’s “exemplary patterns of
behavior” (8). Unlike Cellini, “Franklin avoids any digression or ornamentation
of event” (9).
4. Rousseau is noted as an innovative
autobiographer, in his Confessions and The Reveries of a Solitary
Walker to have as his aim an honest portrayal of his life. He wrote,
“...I have only one thing to fear in this enterprise; not that I may
say too much or tell untruths, but that I may not tell everything and may
conceal the truth” (10). Rousseau was a crucial influence on both Williamodwin
and Mary Wollstonecraft, influencing William Godwin in his memoirs
Wollstonecraft.
She notes that, “others have attacked Rousseau
for being limited to the expression of a unitary selfhood, based on the notion
of an essentialist self” (11). Nalbantian claims that, “Rousseau’s main
contribution to the genre is to use chronology in a new way, to trace the
succession of feelings, not of events” (13).
5. Nalbantian finds that Edmund Gosse, in
Father and Son (1907), approached an “intersection between what is still in
the category of the conventional genre and what was simultaneously developing
as an aesthetic one” (16). She notes that “whereas Joyce, as we shall see,
proceeds with the elaboration of the epiphany in fictionalisation, Gosse clings
to the factual basis of his moment of awakening, as he documents it with time,
place, and elaboration of sentiment” (17). She believes that in Gosse,
“Autobiography was on the verge of annulling the notion of single selfhood as
its basis, and a dialectical movement was about to replace the standard linear
chronology of the narrative” (17)
6. In Gide’s Si le grain ne meurt,
Nalbantian finds this contemporary of Proust opposed to “ Proust’s
secretive attitude toward his personal life” (17). Gide wrote of autobiography:
“The most annoying thing is to have to present as successive steps states that
occurred in confusing simultaneity” (18)
“I am lost if I confine myself to chronology”
(19).
7. Nalbantian credits Gertrude Stein with
innovation. She “seeks to eliminate the restrictions of the consciousness of
chronological time by absorbing into her autobiography the impression of a
continuous present” (20).
8. Another practitioner of the genre, Michael
Leirus, departs from chronology and uses “analogy, montage, collage and
myth” to achieve his own “truth telling” which he describes as ’the negation of
a novel” He compares himself to a torero who is in danger of annihilation
-- “the writing of autobiography involves the psychological risk of exposing
one’s obsessions and destroying one’s relationships because it is so dedicated
to truth telling” (21). Nalbantian notes that “The first section [of Leirus’s
book] entitled Biffures, nine years after L’age d’homme has
recently been translated as Scratches to stress the fragmentary nature
of the narrative as it digs further into disparate memories of his childhood
and the origins of his language” (22). She finds that, “Such fragments do not
culminate, as with the aesthetic writers, into the insight of an epiphany” (22).
9. Finally, she concludes with Sartre who
“continues in the line of those who seek to alter autobiography proper by
dismissing the notion of a unitary self” (23).
In
chapter two Nalbantian discusses theories of autobiography where, in general,
she traces a movement from the notion of an “...autonomous existence of a
pre-existing self…” (30) to deconstruction theory, “...Deconstruction had
emerged and had provided the grounds for a debate about autobiography” (30).
“Distancing themselves from the notion of a static psychology of a non-changing
self, these critics have viewed autobiography in terms of a perception theory
based on the notion of a dynamic self which is experiential and operational”
(36). She concludes by stating that in recent discourse a compromise of sorts
has been reached between deconstructionist and essentialist theory.
The
third chapter offers us Nalbantian’s “Theory of Aesthetic Autobiography.”
Nalbantian’s interest is in “the transformation of autobiographical data
into literary ecriture” (42). Novelists from the first half of the
twentieth century “drew out of their moi or self the ingredients to
project onto the ‘many’ with with which others can identify” (43). She
writes that “...we find an exploitation of those inner resources rather than
what had previously been in fiction the exploration of the outer world” (44).
Nalbantian distinguishes the aesthetic autobiography as “surpassing
elements of confession and embellishment which are part of the original form”
(44). Standard autobiographies are seen “in an historical chain through their
cultural and personal referentiality” (44) where “...the individual personality
of each writer remains transparent and inseparable from the work” (44).
Aesthetic autobiography, however,
“reclothe personal facts in poetic relations, in a re-presentation of the
person, not of the personality” (45). Nalbantian quotes TS Eliot who wrote, in
his essay “Tradition and the Individual Talent,” “The more perfect the artist,
the more completely separate in him will be the man who suffers and the mind
creates; the more perfectly will the mind digest and transmute the passions
which are its material” (45) She defines as the key to “aesthetic
autobiography,” “the transfer from the personal to the universal…the
personal is raised to the level of the mythic or universal” (45).
Joyce
wrote that the artist is detached from the art, ‘within or behind or beyond or
above his handiwork, invisible, refined out of existence, indifferent, paring
his fingernails’ (46).
There is a dynamic “between vita and the
artistic refabrication” (46). These artists, “drew from their personal everyday
life, cultivating perceptions selectively which could then be transposed into
their fiction. A primary facet of their art can be said to be an activity of
perception. Then comes the leap to what is literary” (49).
Nalbantian
mentions David Rubin’s book Autobiographical Memory where he classifies
different types of memory: ‘generic memory’, ‘flashbulb memory’,
‘epiphanies, auditory, olfactory visual memories’... and ‘engrams’ which
has been “defined as hearing a tune that leaves a trace until we die” (50).
Instead “of narrating, as does autobiography proper, isolated incidents
as single ‘crisis experiences’ or turning points with psychological
implications, these authors create from them representative scenes” (52). “
‘Scene making’ as Virginia Woolf called it, or ‘symbol making’ as Anais Nin
would say, figures in these novels to to transform such real incidents into
aesthetic ones” (52). “...the authors manipulate their recollected experience”
(52).
Nalbantian
describes these authors using transposed reality taken from-- family
relationships, places, objects (“ what Georges Poulet has called ‘le lieu
privilegie’ or ‘privileged place’ “ (53) -- “The manipulation of place, its
dislocation and amplification is another aspect of artistic transmutation in
the novels...artifacts such as steeples, trees, a musical phrase, the
madeleine, the Ballast Office clock, the lighthouse, Big Ben -- “Such details
may be in part the real remnants of life memories brought into new artistic
perspectives and given new meanings” (55).
Another
quality of aesthetic autobiography is that these authors are absorbed into more
than one of the characters he or she creates.
“The aesthetic self which is created in these
novels is shared by both characters and personae. It is interesting that Proust
is said to have split himself between the ‘social’ side of Swann and the
‘artistic’ side of the narrator. He is, of course, absorbed into other
characters as well who bear certain characteristics similar to his own.
Similarly, Joyce positions himself between the Jewish citizen Bloom and the
artist figure Dedalus, and in fact has their personalities fuse in a kind of
transmigration...Woolf moves from Mrs. Dalloway to Lily Briscoe, also
vacillating between her ‘social’ and artistic side, even to the point of
projecting an androgynous self in Orlando. As for Nin, she is in and out
of her various personae from Sabina to Lillian to Djuna, unable to transfix
herself in any one of them because of her multifaceted self” (57).
This gives us a way to look at the Bob Dylan
film. Nalbantian concludes that, “On the one hand, in the works of these
four authors, there is the proliferation of the self into selves through
characterisation; on the other hand there is the creation of a composite
aesthetic self emerging from that multiplicity to create a totality” (57).
She
notes, also, that in terms of time these writers do not follow any
chronological representation, “...these works undermine chronological time
through the frequent intervention of subjective time…” (56).
Nalbantian
closes this chapter by stating that, “Although the individual psychologies of
these writers are intriguing and can be regarded as components for their
fiction, ultimately those components are matter which is transformed” (61). She
writes that, despite the fact that they did use life material, “...they
construed literary methods to distance themselves from it” (61). The result is
artistic myth-making: “...the truth of facts were becoming the truths of
fiction” (61).
The final four chapters contain
an in-depth study and comparison of Proust, Joyce, Woolf and Nin. Although I
concur with Nalbantian in regard to these author’s aesthetic use of
autobiography in their writings, I do not think it unprecedented. I think of
Margaret Cavendish’s autobiographical inclusion of melancholy in The Blazing
World, Sir Walter Scott’s mythologizing of place in his depiction of clan
life in Waverley, and Thomas Hardy invocation of memory in his
creation of Wessex.
Brandi
Dr. Caldwell ENGL ---
Article Report
“The Ethics of Archival Research” by Heidi McKee and
James Porter delves into the growing issues of what is and is not ethical in
the research and publication of archival materials. Archives in and of
themselves create “ethical gray zones” between the researcher and subject being
researched; there exists the presence of a human behind the correspondence and
other documents available in the archives, but that person is no longer able to
speak for his or her wishes in modern time (60). The introduction of McKee and
Porter’s essay focuses primarily on what is considered archival documents and
the changing ideals which affect this designation- primarily the opening of the
canon to minority groups, alienated individuals, women, etc.
One of the primary questions the authors highlight is the
need for the researcher to situate himself or herself in time and space, to
consider critically what he or she is looking for, why the topic is of interest,
the positionality of the researcher and how this may affect the understanding
of the subject, and the ability/willingness to be flexible in drawing
conclusions based upon where the research takes the researcher. The purpose of research according to the essay
should not be solely “because I am interested in [topic],” because this focus
is too limiting and one-sided (64). One must always question “how personal and
professional experiences shape the questions [being asked], which methods and
methodologies are selected, why the research about an individual is important,
and what this information brings to the researcher’s field of study” (65). But
perhaps the most important question, I feel, in regard to biography and
autobiography is “what are the obligations to the person you are studying?”
which includes oneself in this subject matter as much as others (65).
Linda Bergmann faced this particular question in her
research on Marcia Tillotson- Tillotson’s letters expressly forbade their
publication, but her daughter decided ultimately that she wished for them to be
published. Bergmann was faced with the dilemma of either following the wishes
of the writer of the letters or her living daughter. She decided finally to
publish some of the letters after having read an article by Randy Cohen where
he affirmed “there are extraordinary cases when ethics compels us to disregard
the demands of the dead in order to serve the living” (65). The greatest issue
of researching someone who has died is the loss of that perspective, the loss
of the ability to include him or her in one’s research in order to confirm or
deny assumptions one makes through the provided documents.
What do we do when, for example, we explore the “lives of
vulnerable populations or individuals?” (67). In the cases of Native American
children who were forced to attend schools, would the children or the parents
consent to the release of the school records, case files, photographs, and
family correspondence (67)? McKee and Porter’s article argues in the negative,
but would the researching of these populations bring to light information which
would ultimately better lives or is the ethical cost too high? What of negative
exposure that may arise from published research, even upon the subjects the
researcher wished to “shine positive light upon?” (68).
One of the key issues is the distinction of what
information should remain private and what is acceptable to be public (69).
Shirley Rose, in her processing of the James Berlin Papers, felt that certain
private correspondence- an angry letter, tenure reviews, teaching evaluations-
ought to remain closed from the public for a certain period of time due to
their sensitive information (69). But here is another layer to the problem- not
only do we have to take into consideration the subject’s wishes, now we have an
archivist making ethical decisions about the material as well. What if we
disagree with the archivist in his or her decision to close or open certain
pieces of information?
There are certain legal issues present in archival
research, but the rights of the dead are very limited, often falling to next of
kin (71). Ultimately the question is “do the dead have personality rights?”
which legally, according to Roman and English tort law, they do not (71). “Personal
action dies with the person,” but the rite of passage of time still seems to
apply, though the farther out from the death of the individual, the less likely
a court would rule in favor of a libel suit (71). McKee and Porter also bring
up the question of how much time should pass before possibly sensitive material
is released, exploring the idea of chronological time which ends when the
individual has died or, for example, Swahili “zamani” time which includes the “period
which [the deceased] is remembered…after physical death by the living” (73).
How much do the feelings and opinions of surrounding third parties who may be
affected by the release of the archived materials matter and affect the
decision to publish?
One of the solutions is simply to ask those who may be
affected, should those people be other women if the subject might be sensitive
to women, other African Americans should the topic include them, etc.
“Consulting with the communities and cultures of the writers with whose
archival materials [he or she] is working” may be the easiest way to alleviate
some of the ethical concern, but the essay cautions also that these opinions
should not completely decide the researcher’s direction (75-76). If the
researcher feels strongly enough about a subject matter and has considered the
ethical issues at hand but still feels justified in his or her decision, then
despite contradictory opinions, he or she should continue forward.
The essay concludes by reiterating the importance of not
assuming that “their world is my world…or their view is my view” in drawing
conclusions from archival documents (76). “The key is to shift from seeing the
archive as merely documents to viewing the archives as persons” and taking into
consideration all of the ethical issues which would pertain to respecting other
people (77). A text “is an extension of the person…representing thoughts,
feelings, ideas, words, and even body,” but it is not exactly the person (78).
Even though it dealt primarily with archival documents, I
felt the same ethical issues arise in the writing of an autobiography or
biography. Biography writing would more closely follow the guidelines of
archival research in the exploration of a subject and his or her
correspondence. Should that individual be deceased, he or she can no longer
speak for him or herself in regards to the interpretation of the information.
Inferences have to be made through letters and interviews with survivors who
were intimately connected with that person to determine “truths” about his or
her life and wishes. But the question still remains- what if that person wished
for certain things to be kept private? What level of privacy is given to the
dead? Does that level depend on the type of information being exposed- one’s
personal letters to a loved one versus letters to the state? Does the subject’s
position in society affect the level of privacy accorded to him or her- teacher
in a school for at-risk teens versus president of a corporation or country?
With autobiography the same questions apply, but are
shifted slightly. Presumably a person writing on his or her own life has the
best perspective and opinion on what he or she wishes to include or exclude.
But what about those “third parties” in a person’s life? In telling “my” story
I would have to include those with whom I interact. Would they wish for me to
include everything I may choose to write about?
Who receives priority- the individual or the whole? What if my
perceptions about a situation are wrong and I drastically misinterpret something?
Obviously there are considerable more questions than there are answers; the
problem is perhaps ultimately undefinable because it is a human problem,
subject to human opinion and feeling, which is always in a grey area and
seemingly ever shifting position. But as McKee and Porter display in their
essay, the questions of ethics must be a t the forefront and be considered by
every researcher and write, for we have as much a duty to others as we do our
own projects.
http://www.ncte.org/library/NCTEFiles/Resources/Journals/CCC/0641-sep2012/CCC0641Ethics.pdf