Page 311 - Contribution To Phenomenology

304 MANO DANIEL

or chosen obscurity. Third, it would require a Zeitgeist exploration that
tries to incorporate the historical, cultural, economic, etc., contexts as they
pertain to the subject. In order to appreciate the historical context the
biographer must often develop a professional competency in the era in
which his subject lived and died and thus requires exhaustive, painstaking
research in the pertinent archival and printed sources. Finally, it would
require an articulation of existential statements that helped shape and
explain the subject's individual, idiosyncratic characteristics.
One of the clearest and most perspicuous attempts at forwarding
practical dictums that can be of use to the biographer in the exercise
of his craft is offered by Edel who, influenced by his preference for psy-
choanalytic techniques, offers four principles. One, "the biographer must
learn to understand man's ways of dreaming, thinking and using his
fancy." Two, "the biographer must struggle constantly not to be taken
over by their subjects, or to fall in love with them. The secret to this
rule is to learn to be a participant-observer." Three, it is incumbent upon
the biographer to "discover certain keys to the deeper truths of his
subject—keys . . to the private mythology of the individual." Four, since
.
"[ejvery life takes its own form," a "biographer must find the ideal and
unique literary form that will express it."^^
Only after the historical documentation has been collected, collated
and analyzed can the biographer undertake the task of reconstruction.
Only subsequently can the biographer recognize patterns emerging from
the life of the subject which can then be used to structure the text. This
retelling is highly selective, and imaginative. As Edel puts it,

the biographer is allowed to be as imaginative as he pleases, so long as
he does not imagine his facts. Saturated with facts, he may allow himself
all the adventures of literary artifice, all the gratifications of story-tell-
ing—save those of make-believe.^*

Biographers are not simply fact-gatherers. They must also interpret, judge
and present the material. The writing of a biography is necessarily not
just exigetical, but often isogetical. A biographer, fettered by fact, still
invents her form and, through discursive techniques, such as the use of
the narrative, metaphor, metonymy, flash-back scenes etc., and other dra-

^^ Leon Edel, "Biography and the Science of Man," 8-10.
^* Leon Edel, "Biography: A Manifesto," Biography 1.1 (1978), 1.