Sources and Artifacts: Some Comments on the Articles by Michael Millgate and Christine Wiesenthal

Sources and Artifacts:Some Comments on the Articles by Michael Millgate and Christine Wiesenthal Ramsay Cook (bio) Professor Wiesenthal begins with the salutary reminder that "bio-graphy," like René Magritte's famous pipe, is not a "life" but rather an "artifact," "a thing made," a "representation." Professor Millgate, while insisting that biographers go to the sources "direct or documentary," has an equally salutary reminder for biographers that might be put this way: those sources are also "artifacts," "things made," "representations," more pipes that are not pipes. Both scholars, in different ways, challenge the view that writing a biography is simple. Why might it seem simple? A biography, unlike the history of the disintegration of the Ottoman Empire, the social consequences of industrial-urban growth, or the rise of modernism, has a definite beginning and ending, a birth date and a death date. That seeming simplicity may explain why there are historians—indeed, they may be the dominant group these days—who take the view that biography is not really a serious form of historical writing. They contend that biography exaggerates the importance of an individual while underestimating the social, political, and economic factors that rarely coincide with an individual life but have much more permanent long-term consequences. [End Page 83] Others would add that while economic growth can be measured and demography quantified and foreign policy disentangled through critical examination of statistics and documents, important elements of biography, perhaps the most important—what I will call the subject's "inner life"—can rarely be documented even where, as in the case of Mackenzie King, voluminous diaries exist. A recent review by Julian Barnes of a new biography of Flaubert and another translation of Bouvard et Pécuchet reminded me that those two lovable clowns abandoned their attempt to write a biography of the Duc d'Angoulême, admitting their inability to understand even the emotions and actions of the people in their own household (Barnes 12–15). Exterior facts were easy but "il faut les compléter par la psychologie. Sans imagination, l'Histoire est défectueuse" (Flaubert 200). So they turn to historical novels—without much more success. Biography may be simple, but for that very reason it offers only a superficial entry into the past, so say the critics. While these are serious questions about the status of biography as an historical genre—questions with which both the papers we have heard this afternoon wrestle—I want to try briefly to explain my own position as General Editor of the Dictionary of Canadian Biography / Dictionnaire biographique du Canada (dcb/dbc). Let me begin by telling you what we ask of our authors. I quote from our "Directive to Authors": Biographers should endeavour to provide a readable and stimulating treatment of their subjects. Factual information should come from primary sources…. Biographies should not be mere catalogues of events, nor should they be compilations of previous studies of the subject. The achievements of the subject should be seen against the background of the period in which they lived and the events in which they participated. Relevant anecdote and/or quotation should be used discreetly to illuminate character or personality.… Finally, the biographer should offer … an evaluation of the subject's achievements or failures, strengths and weaknesses. Does this, when performed satisfactorily, ensure that the dcb/dbc publishes biographies that escape through the horns of the biographical dilemma, as posed in Bouvard et Pécuchet? My answer is this: it does as much as possible and, moreover, is a fair description of the formula used by most successful biographers—successful in the sense of creating as accurate and compelling a representation of a chosen figure and his or her context as is possible. Even so, such a biography may remain a "half-life." [End Page 84] The two parts of our "Directive" that contribute most to my conviction that biography is history are these: "sources" and "context." Michael Millgate quite properly insists that a thorough canvass of all the available sources is the first essential step in writing a scholarly biography. Christine Wiesenthal agrees. Both also recognize there are serious problems with almost every type of source whether written or...

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