Autobiography
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| The 16th-century Italian artist Benvenuto Cellini, famed both for his sculpture and for his autobiography. |
An eventful life, or one in which something of considerable significance and value has happened, will possibly still concern us. The American Benjamin Franklin (1706-90) wrote an autobiography on his beginnings as a printer and on his self-education, which is particularly interesting because he became a diplomat, inventor, and statesman. The Story of My Childhood, born in 1880 by the American Helen Keller, is an account of how she overcame the appalling hardships of being blind, deaf, and dumb.
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| Samuel Pepys gave a vivid descrip- tion of the Fire of London . |
The autobiography will show a lot not just about the author but also about a time and people of importance he cared about. Prior to the emancipation of the serfs, the Russian Sergei Aksakov (1791-1859) drew a description of Russia and included some excellent character observations in his Years of Childhood (1858). The Italian goldsmith and sculptor Benvenuto Cellini (1500-71) wrote an autobiography which, with its passion and affection, gives a sharp impression of the vitality of his personality and a vibrant, though sometimes exaggerated, an image of the competition between the Florentine artists of the time; while the Mémoires du Duc de Saint-Simon (1675-1755) contain vivid accounts of the courts of L. Robert Graves' memoir, Farewell to All That (1929), deals mostly with his experiences as an officer during World War I.
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| Early Renaissance woodcut showing the Italian traveler Marco Polo, whose memoirs (1298) des- cribe his remarkable journey to China and the years he spent in the service of the emperor Kublai Khan. |
Of example, the autobiography writer may confine himself to a particular historical occurrence, or to writing literature or war memoirs that concern himself solely with the unique time surrounding his own life. British soldier and musician T. During World War I E. Lawrence (1888-1935) was sent to support the Mecca Sherif in his rebellion against the Turks. He commanded the Arab forces and performed several brave deeds about which he wrote in The Seven Pillars about Wisdom.
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| Dutch painter Vincent van Gogh included this sketch and description of a garden in Daubigny in a letter to his brother Theo (1890). Private documents, not meant for publication, are often the most revealing records of their writer's life and personality. |
The autobiography can be limited to the story of one element of the creeds or religion of the speaker. St. Augustine's Confessions (A.D. 354-430) describe his personal beliefs after his conversion to Christianity. The French political philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau's Confessions (1712-78) cover his life from infancy to the year 1765. It is one of the autobiographies ever written with the most profound candidness. The English Cardinal Newman (180 1-go) published Apologia Pro Vita Sua, history, and review of his moral life, in reaction to an attack on his theological views.
A life story can be told rather than in a memoir and is straight forward. In the manner of a novelist, the writer can set scenes and recreate dialog. The Russian author Maxim Gorki (1868-1936) uses the approach in his three-part memoir, My Youth, In the World, and Reminiscences.
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This
caricature by Eric Kennington depicts T. E.Lawrence, the British
soldier and writer who won fame as Lawrence of Arabia. Lawrence is
pictured pinning down and preserving like beetles the people he had described in his monumental autobiography The Seven Pillars of Wisdom. |
Diaries and letters are an autobiographical type too. Typically, they are not intended to be written and have a natural openness that is rarely seen in other forms of literature, because the writer is unaware of any audience. From 1409-31, a Paris Bourgeois' Diary of the 15th century, by an anonymous writer, was kept and intended only as a private and personal document; but it has become a source of tremendous interest in medieval life.
Samuel Pepys' diary (1633-1703) is a beautifully vivid and candid portrayal of his own life, and also of London in the mid-17th century, including an eyewitness account of the city's 1666 fire devastation. Anne Frank 's Diary is the poignant story of a young Jewish girl's reflections and emotions, hidden with her father during World War II from the Nazis.
Posts, which can also be candid and therefore highly self-revealing, arouse curiosity in an individual in almost the same manner that diaries do. The 15th-century Paston Letters remind us of the lives and relations of an English landowner family. Madame de Sévigné (1626-96) wrote to her family several hundreds of letters: a lively, running discourse on both private and public affairs in 17th-century France. The letters of D, the closer to our own day. H. Lawrence offers other glimpses of the brilliant, yet miserable, writer's temperament.
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