［Sweden］Monica Kjeldgaard Lauritzen

Bilingual Classics

THE ART OF LITERARY BIOGRAPHY
——Lecture at Yunnan University. April 6, 2016

［Sweden］Monica Kjeldgaard Lauritzen

A POPULAR GENRE

The Literary Biography – biographies about writers – is an old and popular genre. Why is this? I believe that there are many reasons.

For one thing – writers make us curious. They are well known public fi gures. If we have read their works we feel that we know them almost personally. And we know them as creative and imaginative. They have told us stories and introduced us to characters that have become parts of our own lives. They have widened our perspectives and made us reflect on our own situation. So we assume that they are also interesting as private individuals. This is often true – but not always.

What is certainly true is that writers are unusual people. Most of us are neither poets nor fi ction writers. The creative urge of a writer– the need to write has been so strong that it has overcome all kinds of obstacles. Such impediments may exist in political systems, religious beliefs, educational programs, conventional attitudes or simple prejudice – often combined to prevent individual men or women to express themselves freely.

So when the biography of a writer is a psychological exploration it also invites an analysis of the society in which he or she lived. It goes without saying that such a story has the potential of being very exciting.

All of this is certainly true about the two biographies that I have written: The Voice of a Woman and The Ways of Truth. They are about two prominent Swedish 19th-century women writers: Emilie Flygare-Carlén (born in 1807) and Anne Charlotte Leffl er (born in 1849). [I will call them Emilie and Anne Charlotte for short.]

When I began my work I was not aware to what extent Swedish middle class women in the 19thcentury were locked in by a cage of restrictions. In numerous handbooks there was for example widespread propaganda about the true nature of women. Women were assumed to be radically different from men. They had social and emotional potential, but not an intellectual one. From this followed that girls were trained for a domestic life as wives and mothers whiletheir brothers were trained for an active life in the public sphere.

So young girls didn’t need a proper education– regardless of their personality or talents. A bit of French, some music, painting and sewing was enough. For many intelligent girls this was a suffering. The possibility of intellectual growth and self-confi dence was taken from them.

In addition, the Lutheran church, which was then the official state religion of Sweden, declared that women were inferior to men and had to keep quiet in their presence. The legal system followed suit. Married women had no legal rights at all. Only gradually during the 19thcentury did women acquire legal and economic rights. The right to vote was given to Swedish women as late as 1921.

MY TWO BIOGRAPHIES

I became more and more curious: how had it been possible for these two women – Emilie and Anne Charlotte – to overcome all these obstacles and become successful writers?

Emilie was born into a family of seafarers and merchants in a small town on the West coast of Sweden. As a young girl she was taken sailing by her father along the coast, and at the age of 15 she was given command of her own cargo boat.

This was a unique experience for a girl at the time (the 1820’s) and it gave her a great deal of self-confi dence as well as an insight into the lives of people along the coast. In addition she could listen to many dramatic stories that sea farers would tell each others in her father’s shop or around the family dining table. This was material that she would use later when she became a fiction writer. She had little formal schooling but she loved to read romantic novels, translated from German, French and English. At an early age she began writing her own little stories. Her brothers and sisters laughed at her.

At the age of 28 Emilie had been married to a doctor, become a widow and then been abandoned by a lover. She had given birth to fi ve children of which three had died and one had been given away to relatives. She was desperately unhappy and stranded in her mother’s home with very little money to support herself and her 7-year old son. She needed distraction and a way to earn money. This is when she began writing her fi rst novel.

It was well written and conventional. She sent it to one of the rising publishers in Stockholm who liked it and passed it on to one of the rising publishers. This man decided to launch her on the market and made her move to the capital. As soon as arrived there, this pretty and talented woman was adopted by a circle of admiring young writers and critics, among them a man whom she chose for her second husband. At this time the support of sympathetic men was important – not to say CRUCIAL.

After seven novels she decided to make use of her childhood memories. She wrote The Rose on the Thistle Island. To this day, it is the novel that best catches the atmosphere of this region. It is also a dramatic novel. It is based on an old murder story and she combines this with a Romeo-and Juliet-type of love story and she also introduces smuggling, the hazards of shipping and the poverty of the fishermen. This was her breakthrough and reached a large and enthusiastic readership of both men and women.

In a later novel, A Merchant House on the West Coast, she describes the life of a merchant family in a way that probably – indirectly –inspired Thomas Mann for his Buddenbrooks. These two novels are Swedish classics.

But how did Emilie manage this at a time when women were supposed to be silent? It had to do, of course with her talent, her courage, her willpower, her working capacity and her supportive environment. But it was also a question of timing. When Emilie appeared on the literary scene in Sweden, the publishingbusiness was just emerging. Many people could read – so there was a potential market. A couple of entrepreneurs invented new forms of printing and distribution. New books were in great demand. And novels by women writers were an attractive novelty. Emilie was lucky in being one of the fi rst Swedish women to appear on the literary scene.

Around 1860 Emilie was a leading fiction writer in Sweden. But she had become slightly out of date. This was at least the opinion of younger writers like Anne Charlotte, who is the subject of my second biography. Born in 1849, she was younger than Emilie by two generations and had new and different literary ambitions.

She grew up in a middle class intellectual home in Stockholm. Like Emilie, Anne Charlotte began writing stories at an early age. But unlike Emilie she had a very clear yearning for an intellectual education. Her three brothers all became academics. Anne Charlotte had to leave school at fifteen. But she made up for this by reading current books on religion, politics, sociology and literary theory. Plus of course contemporary prose fi ction and drama.

At the age of 23 she married a lawyer. He was a kind and conventional man, but the thought of his wife appearing on the literary scene made him panic. So when Anne Charlotte had her fi rst play performed (anonymously) at the Royal Dramatic Theatre in Stockholm he did not dare to attend the opening night. She had to go with one of her brothers. This was in 1873. The play was a huge success. But Anne Charlottes’s definite break-through came around 1880.

At this time, Scandinavian society was changing rapidly because of industrial and technical innovations. Questions to do with class confl ict and emerging socialism were the talk of the day along with debates on overpopulation, prostitution, the institution of marriage and the situation of woman. Young writers wanted to make a difference for a better future. Anne Charlotte dealt with all these issues in short stories and on the stage. One critic named her“The literary lioness of the day”. In the mid 1880’s she was admired at home and abroad. Still today, her work feels fresh and modern.

But by 1887 the atmosphere had turned and become hostile. She was tired of her boring husband and she fled to Italy. In Naples she met and fell in love with a mathematician and nobleman. She divorced her husband and – after a long struggle with the Catholic Church – was allowed to marry him. In Naples she and her new husband were allowed a few happy years. A son was born to them. They were surrounded by intellectual friends, prepared to support her. Her works were translated into Italian and other languages. Her future seemed rich and promising. But then, in October 1892, at the age of 43, she suddenly died from appendicitis.

WORKING LIKE A DETECTIVE

As you can see, these two books are quite big. And they are based on a huge and varied material. The working process behind a literary biography is really that of an explorer – or a detective. You are driven by curiosity. You search for information in various ways, you bring this information together and you draw your conclusions. I believe, in fact, that the curiosity that pushes the biographer is one of the keys to the excitement that readers can draw from the fi nished works.

A biographer is always in search of personal material that the protagonist has left behind: letters, diaries, manuscripts, autobiographies allow for a view behind the scenes. The working process– and the result – depends very much on what you find. For these two biographies, the conditions were very different. Emilie had not left behind very much original material at all. In the case of Anne Charlotte, the material was over-rich.

For Emilie, I was lucky to trace a smallcollection of letters in Gothenburg. A distant relative of the writer had accidentally come across them and kept them in her home. I had them copied on CDs. Read closely these letters gave me a great deal of information. But the perspective was limited since the receiver was one and the same person – her brother. I also found a few manuscripts. But my main source had to be her two published autobiographies.

The problem with autobiographies is of course that they contain only the version that the writer herself wants to give to the afterworld. Many things are left out, other things are exaggerated, the representation is coloured in order to create specifi c effects. So I had to read these documents with caution, using them as starting points and checking them against other known facts.

The difference was dramatic for Anne Charlotte. In the Royal Library of Stockholm, there is a huge collection of papers about the Leffler family. I could read almost all letters between Anne Charlotte and her family, her friends and her lovers. I also had access to her diary, to many manuscripts, and to a short autobiography. I really had to choose what I felt was IMPORTANT.

Reading somebody’s private papers is an intimate thing. A kind of espionage.

I have constantly borne this in mind and tried to be as respectful as possible. But there is also another aspect: To what extent can you trust letters and diaries? A letter is coloured by the addressee. It does not offer the TRUTH –only the VERSION of the truth that the writer wants to give away. By combining and comparing different letters, the biographer can reach for a deeper understanding.

Manuscripts are fascinating, since they offer an insight into the workshop of the writer. There are only a few scraps of manuscripts left after Emilie. She burnt most of them. It is possible that she didn’t want the afterworld to know that her husband helped her to edit her manuscripts. Literature was then thought of as the result of divine inspiration. Today editing is normal procedure. Anne Charlotte had none of these qualms. Her manuscripts contain interesting information about the development of her works.

Besides the Royal Swedish Library, we have in Sweden a number of other offi cial archives that contain useful information for a biographer. We have, for example, church registers that go back hundreds of years. Here you can fi nd information about births, deaths and burials and marriages. In other offi cial registers you can fi nd facts about business activities, taxation, recidence etc. Most of this is now available on the Internet.

My research on Anne Charlotte led me to a very special archive: The Vatican Library in Rome. It is surrounded by extreme restrictions since they lodge historical documents dating more than a thousand years back. I was excited to find all the documents concerning Leffler’s divorce from her Swedish husband and the drawn out process leading to her second marriage. I was able to see and order copies of all these documents.

But what about the fictional work of a writer. Can it be used as a source for a life story? This is often very tempting. But I would say NO - defi nitely not. Writers of fi ction never use reality directly in their writing. This is simply not how they work. A striking character or environment is often created out of many different impulses. A particular scene may be the result of wishful thinking or pure imagination. So the contents of a novel is no proof that the writer has lived through anything like it. And it cannot be used as material for a biography!

What has been interesting for me, however, is to follow the emergence of a literary oeuvre in the context of a life. I have tried to trace how certain known events or traumas are refl ected in recurring themes. If you study a literary work in the context of the writer’s life it is often possibleto see unexpected nuances and simply understand it better.

Press reactions are yet another important source of information. In the Royal Library of Stockholm I have been able to read all the reviews and relevant articles to do with my writers. I have been especially curious about views to do with the sex of the writers. Were women writers read differently from men? Of course they were. The reading of reviews can be shocking. The study of old newspapers and magazines allows you to make a journey in time. The more you are familiar with the overall context of the life you are studying, the better you can understand and interpret the facts that you fi nd.

HOW TO FIND A STRUCTURE

The collection of information is exciting and you can easily spend a lot of time and effort on doing so. But at some point you have to choose a strategy for the presentation of your material. What story is it that you want to tell? You have to decide on a structure.

A THEMATIC PLAN is sometimes effective – especially if your main interest is the IDEAS of the writer in question. The drawback of a thematic plan is that you tend to move back and forth in TIME so that the reader looses track of the overall life story.

I f y o u p r e s e n t y o u r m a t e r i a l CHRONOLOGICALLY, you can benefit from the natural dynamics in the ambitions, successes and failures of the person you are portraying.

In my biographies, I have used a modifi ed, chronological presentation. I have tried to see the important stages in the social, emotional, intellectual and creative development of the two women. And I have made the different aspects of their lives interact. I have made breaks in my stories where I felt it was motivated. I expanded on certain periods while others were treated briefly. In both books I focused on relations or events that were decisive and charged with energy or emotion. This means, of course, that the books reflect my personal interpretation of these two lives.

In the book about Emilie there are five sections, each introduced by a portrait of the writer. This demonstrates the passing of time. In each section there are chapters about childhood, love life, family, friendships, publishing, politics and religion. Her literary work is discussed separately. In my book about Anne Charlotte there are eleven chapters, with subsections. The discussion of her literary work is integrated in the life story.

As for the physical shaping of the books, I was privileged to be published by Albert Bonniers förlag, which is the largest and one of the oldest publishing houses in Sweden. This meant that I was given professional support in the revision of my manuscript and the checking of facts. The layout was chosen with a view to clarity and elegance.

Notes and the extensive bibliography were arranged for maximum accessibility. Illustrations were important. In both books there are a number of photographs, which I have found privately and in various archives. Most of the pictures were gathered special sections – instead of being scattered throughout the text. This has the advantage of letting the pictures tell their own sub-story.

The covers are quite beautiful and carefully thought-out. The insides (fl y leaves) are thematic and aimed at creating an inviting atmosphere around the text. I should add that both books have an introduction where I explain the reason for my interest in the project, the nature of my material and the state of research.

MY ROLE AS NARRATOR

As you understand from what I have saidso far, my two biographies are very much My stories. I dug out the facts, I reacted to the material, I chose what I wanted to present to the readers and how I wanted to do this. This is of course always true about any biography. This means that the life story of a person may turn out very differently if written by two different biographers – with a their specific focus and sympathies.

Therfore I had to define my attitude as narrator. I wanted to be very clear about my relationship with the women I was writing about. On the one hand, I did not want my books to be impersonal, pseudo-objective reports. On the other hand, I certainly didn’t want to be intrusive, indiscreet or unfair. My ambition was to include my readers in a genuine dialogue between me and my protagonists. A meeting across the ages.

I also had to decide about what audience I imagined for these books. Were they going to be learned, academic books addressed to a small readership of specialists or did I want to reach a wider audience? I certainly wanted to reach as wide an audience as possible – of men and women, of young and older readers from various backgrounds.

I was lucky in my professional background. I started out as an academic at the University of Gothenburg, specializing in English-speaking literature. This gave me the training of working in archives and of text analysis. After leaving the university I worked for twenty years in Swedish Public Radio as a critic and producer. I learnt to express myself clearly and directly without academic jargon. In writing my biographies I could combine these professional skills and the actual writing became easy and pleasant. I collected my material, structured it, decided what I wanted to say – and said it as I would to my husband or to friends and listeners.

One day, walking through Stockholm with one of my grand-daughters, I told her about my biographies and about the changes that had occurred in the city since the 1860s. It must be exciting, she said, to live with two Stockholm in your head – one old and one new! She was right. That is exactly what I have been doing – living with two parallel worlds in my head. Writing a literary biography is very much a process of bringing a lost world back to life again. I personally feel more at home now than I did before in Swedish culture, history and literature. I am not uncritical – I understand it better. It has been important for me to recreate two women pioneers who have paved the way for later generations. I think of them with respect and gratitude. I hope and believe that my biographies communicate all this to their readers.

【About the author】Monica Kjeldgaard Lauritzen was born on the 26thof February 1938 in Lidköping, Sweden. She is a literary critic, writer of biography and journalist. She graduated at Department of Literature of Uppsala University in 1960 and studied at Sorbonne University in Paris 1961. She got Ph.D at University of Gothenborg in Sweden in 1971 with a dissertation titled as A Study of the Relations Between the Generations in the Novels of George Meredith. In the 1980s she did teaching and research work of literature at University of Gothenborg and published some books on Jane Austen. In the 1990s she worked as cultural journalist at Sweden State Radio and founded that Fiction Prize of Swedish State Radio. As a writer of biography, her main works are A Woman’s Voice (En kvinnas röst, 2007) which is about life and works of Flygare-Carléns (1807-1892)and The Roads of Truth (Sanningens vägar, 2012) which is about life and works of Anne Charlotte Leffler (1849-1892). The later was nominated for the August Literary Prize 2012 in Sweden and short-listed as one of the final five.In recent years Lauritzen has visited China several times and given lectures at People’s University in Beijing and Beijing University.