Plain Talk

By Mursi Saad El-Din

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I suppose it makes a lot of difference if you read a biography of someone you know. True I don't always have the opportunity of getting the books as soon as they are published. But, no doubt, a good book review can whet one's appetite and eventually lead to its procuring.

I have in front of me reviews of two biographies: a biography by Stephen Smith of critic and short story writer V S Pritchet entitled A Working Life, and Pablo Neruda: A Passion for Life by the English poet laureate Andrew Motion.

As it happens, and I'm not blowing my own trumpet, I met the writers whose biographies are reviewed. As I mentioned in a previous column my membership of both the English and Egyptian PEN gave me unique opportunities to meet writers from all over the world. Besides, as deputy secretary-general of the Afro- Asian Writers Bureau, I also had many chances to meet writers from the two continents.

It is a fact that both in England and in America it is the time of memoirs, biographies and autobiographies. Although there is currently a strong tendency for publishing this form of literary work, the issue had been subject for discussion many years ago, in 1956 to be exact. During the London 28th Congress of International PEN, one of the round table discussions centred around "history and biography". A number of leading historians took part, including A L Rowse, B H Liddell Hart and E M Forster, to name but three.

But I have chosen the intervention of the French writer André Maurois whom I had great pleasure of meeting, both during the London Congress and when he visited Egypt at the invitation of Tharwat Okasha during his tenure as minister of culture. I still keep a book Maurois gave me: Aragon's Le Fou d'Elsa in which Aragon acknowledges his debt to the famous Arabic love story Majnoun Laila.

Anyway, Maurois believed that the task and technique of the biographer resemble both that of the historian and of the portrait painter. What the portrait painter tries to do is to look "for some sort of resemblance. But above all he must paint a fine portrait." Now the historian, like the painter, has a dual task: not only to give real facts, but also to organise these facts intelligibly.

The biographer, according to Maurois, must satisfy the same dual requirement. He must give us a faithful portrayal of "a soul bent on its journey through life and he must give us a fine book".

A biographer must read everything, weigh everything up and sift all the evidence, look for hidden meanings and, above all, consult original documents, letters and diaries and archives. But it is important that a biographer choose a subject who appeals to him, because he is "a splendid, interesting or picturesque character. Once the facts are assembled, the next step is to put them in order and, above all, eliminate anything unnecessary."

A biographer must be honest in the presentation of his subject. There are many unreadable biographies because the author has tried to paint his hero all in white or all in black. Every man, says Maurois, even the most steadfast, has his weaker moments. If you suppress them, all resemblance and likelihood vanish immediately. The biography must also portray the secondary characters with care. "No one, man or woman, fights through life alone. People are surrounded by loved ones and hated ones, by aides as well as adversaries. They too must take part in the changes which time effects on our hero and be part of the story."

Finally Maurois believes that a biography must contain a lesson. No literary medium, he says, is as rich in moral teaching. But the moral in it must remain implicit. Aesthetics and ethics complement one another: "This is the technique of biography," ends Maurois. "It is also the technique of all art."