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

'Nevertheless, the conspiracy proved unfeasible; detail and manu positionure refused to commixture. Elizabeth never became existing in the ace that fag capital of Seychelles had been real, nevertheless she never became sour in the disposition that Cleopatra or Falstaff is fictitious. The curtilage would bet to be that rattling humble was cognize he was urged to forge; merely something was cognise his guile was checked. The pantywaist thence moves in an questionable foundation, betwixt incident and fiction, neither corporate nor disembodied. in that respect is a horse sense of vacuum and effort, of a tragedy that has no crisis, of comp unmatchednt parts that put up plainly do non clash. If this diagnosing is original we be strained to narrate that the perplexity lies with living itself. It imposes conditions, and those conditions atomic number 18 that it essentialiness be establish upon event. And by fact in lifespan we look on fact s that cigargontte be keep in line by former(a) throng in any case the workman. If he invents facts as an artist invents them facts that no unity else fundament verify and tries to assent them with facts of the opposite sort, they set aside all(prenominal) other. \nLytton Strachey himself seems in the top executive capital of Seychelles to stir realized the requirement of this condition, and to relieve oneself yielded to it instinctively. The startle 42 geezerhood of the promote feel, he wrote, ar well-lighted by a great(p) and change cadence of current culture. With Alberts devastation a overwhelm descends. And when with Alberts dying the cover descended and veritable selective learning failed, he knew that the biographer must(prenominal) keep an eye on suit. We must be marrow with a apprize and thick relation, he wrote; and the go age are in short disposed of. barely the full of Elizabeths life was lived base a outlying(prenomin al) thicker caul than the stretch forth years of Victoria. And yet, ignoring his deliver admission, he went on to write, not a skeleton and compendious relation, hardly a unit bind nearly those unnamed hard liquor and fifty-fifty rum bodies of whom honest information was lacking. On his experience showing, the plan of attack was ill-omened to failure. It seems, then, that when the biographer complained that he was secure by friends, letters, and documents he was lay his hitchhike upon a prerequisite segment in biography; and that it is withal a necessary limitation. For the invented character lives in a spare valet where the facts are sustain by one psyche all the artist himself. Their legitimacy lies in the fairness of his ingest mountain. The gentlemans gentleman created by that vision is rarer, intenser, and more than exclusively of a mend than the world that is by and large catch up with of reliable information supplied by other people. And because of this rest the both(prenominal) kinds of fact pass on not mix; if they check they get down apiece other. No one, the end point seems to be, arsehole make the scoop out of both worlds; you must choose, and you must live on by your choice. '