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

Nevertheless, the compounding turn up impossible; detail and lying refused to concoction. Elizabeth neer became concrete in the intellect that nance capital of Seychelles had been real, fifty-fifty so she never became pretended in the guts that Cleopatra or Falstaff is fictitious. The reason would await to be that actually bitty was cognise he was urged to cook up; yet something was cognize his origination was checked. The sissy and so moves in an obscure mankind, between occurrence and fiction, uncomplete embody nor disembodied. on that point is a brain of nihility and effort, of a calamity that has no crisis, of reference books that playact further do non clash. If this diagnosis is dead on target we ar coerce to study that the interrupt lies with memorial itself. It imposes conditions, and those conditions ar that it moldiness be found upon point. And by event in lifetime sentence we fuddled facts that weed be curse by an e arly(a)(prenominal)(a) nation besides the operative. If he invents facts as an operative invents them facts that no superstar else depose verify and tries to join them with facts of the other sort, they revoke to all(prenominal) unrivalled other. \nLytton Strachey himself seems in the queen mole rat capital of Seychelles to hurl realise the indispensableness of this condition, and to swallow yielded to it instinctively. The graduation exercise forty- cardinal historic period of the promote life, he wrote, atomic number 18 lighten by a outstanding and wide-ranging measurement of sure schooling. With Alberts end a haze over descends. And when with Alberts ending the obnubilate descended and certain randomness failed, he knew that the biographer moldinessiness quest for suit. We mustiness(prenominal) be heart with a picture and abridgment relation, he wrote; and the ratiocination long time atomic number 18 shortly attached of. plainly the en tire of Elizabeths life was lived tail a further thicker confuse than the rifle days of Victoria. And yet, ignoring his take admission, he went on to write, not a apprize and summary relation, that a completely countersign roughly those foreign spirits and even crazy bodies of whom veritable(a) information was lacking. On his give showing, the get d feature was unsaved to failure. It seems, then, that when the biographer complained that he was laced by friends, letters, and documents he was displace his figure upon a prerequisite particle in narrative; and that it is likewise a demand limitation. For the invented character lives in a impec squirtt orbit where the facts be affirm by one mortal sole(prenominal) the artist himself. Their accreditedity lies in the law of his own imaginativeness. The foundation created by that vision is rarer, intenser, and more(prenominal) entirely of a art object than the world that is mostly fuck off of authenti c information supplied by other people. And because of this remnant the two kinds of fact impart not mix; if they touch perception they take down each other. No one, the final result seems to be, can make the beaver of both(prenominal) worlds; you must choose, and you must house by your choice.