Why did George Bernard Shaw tell such a lie?

◎ Lin Yi

Facts are the basis of the biography. But what are the facts? Where is its boundary range? Nietzsche once said, "There are no facts, only interpretations." "If the facts cannot be defined, what is the basis for the interpretation?

Biography is a branch of Western literature, has a long tradition of writing, for a long time, people follow the "Plutarch" writing method, that is, according to the ancient Roman historian Plutarch's praise of Greco-Roman celebrities, emperors, nobles, orators, etc., and strive to highlight the great cause of the master' outstanding, outstanding, and historical storm, the biographer must tell people the greatness of the great man, must explain the moral purpose of the hero deeds listed by the author.

This biography of heroes remained popular into the Victorian era of the 19th century, reflecting the heroic cult values that embraced the market. If living in the Victorian era and being a very prestigious celebrity, it is inevitable that there will be considerable attention to his biography and posthumous reputation, then, in fact about his life, will there be fiction or forgery?

The Shaw biography does not study the ethos of Shaw's time, and in the mid-to-late 19th century, celebrities generally attached great importance to the voice of biography, for example, Richard Wagner paid more attention to and was more controlling than George Bernard Shaw. Readers can read the "Biography of Wagner" written by the French contemporary biographer Ulrich De Luna, which has worked hard to break the "Wagner myth" and revealed the problems of "myth" writing in biographical writing more concisely and thoughtfully.

In contrast, "The Biography of Shaw" is slightly inferior in terms of depth of excavation and breadth of vision. However, readers who are interested in Shaw can still get closer to the real Shaw, and for readers like me who have developed an interest in biographical "facts", this work is also quite interesting. The author's own original intention may have mixed these two interests.

The author of The Shaw biography is A.M Gibbs, professor emeritus of English at Macquarie University in Sydney and a member of the Australian Humanities Institute. He is the world's leading Shaw authority, has published numerous books and articles on Shaw, and is one of the founders of the International Shaw Society Association. His major publications include The Art and Thought of George Bernard Shaw: Critical Essays, George Bernard Shaw: Interviews and Memories, House of Sorrow: Overtures and Revelations, and The Shaw Chronology. Therefore, we can trust the degree of professionalism that the author presents in the creation of this biography.

"Shaw Biography" adopts the usual linear writing of biographies, starting from the background of the Shaw family, what kind of family Shaw was born in, what kind of education he received, how he grew up in his adolescence, and then entered the social circle after society, career development, setbacks and gradual success, and the interpersonal circle in the process, career, love, family, etc. The outline of biographical writing is roughly the same, depending on the ability to collect materials and the ability to distinguish between false and true from materials, so that biography and history are also close, but it is the history of a person. This biography is thick and heavy, there is enough material to support the author's arguments and thorough arguments, and the author's ability to analyze in detail is also very good.

The foothold of the biography clearly indicates the attitude of the author. In the introduction, the author quotes the metaphor of the "conch" that delivers the message, emphasizing that Shaw's lifelong efforts to ensure that the biographical conch remains firmly in his hands, and even in his autobiographical collection called Sixteen Self-Portraits, published at the age of 93, he still stubbornly tries to control the stories related to him. In the final chapter, the author again highlights the extensive revisions and reuses of George Bernard Shaw's autobiographical work in his later years, and Shaw's public claim that "all autobiographies are lies" to draw attention to his work.

The middle part of the book is clearly a search for ways to decipher the truth and lies in George Bernard Shaw's prequel and materials. In general, the growth of celebrities can be divided into two parts, namely before and after becoming famous.

The deeds before fame are little known, materials are scarce, and biographers mostly copy and quote their own accounts from celebrities' own memoirs or accounts of their early years, but this part is actually the most watery. Wagner's biography emphasizes this in particular, pointing to Wagner's "art of disguise" in his early life and his deliberate slander of relatives and friends who helped him in the early days. The Biography of Shaw is also very rewarding in excavating shaw's early life, Shaw is not as bad as Wagner, but the elements of disguise and fiction he made are not few.

In terms of family origin, Shaw emphasized the degree of poverty of the original family economy; in the relationship with his parents, Shaw always said how ruthless the father was, and the mother was a serious and stereotyped housewife who did not know how to educate her children. But in fact, George Bernard Shaw was born on July 26, 1856 in Dublin, Ireland, to a family of grain wholesalers, who were not well-off, and were by no means poor, and had several domestic servants employed in the family. Relying on letters and diaries from shaw's relatives and friends, records and documents of the time, the author deduces the inconsistencies in Shaw's personal statement, and concludes that Shaw's father was a cultured squire, and his mother, as a soprano singer and hostess, was also loved by those around him. George Bernard Shaw's early years were quite well-developed, which was the basis for his later success.

So why did George Bernard Shaw lie like this? The author points to the miracle of George Bernard Shaw consciously creating "personal struggle" or "genius.". It is a pity that the author did not continue to dig deeper, digging out the value background of the entire era similar to Wagner's biography.

However, this is enough to know some of the real situation of George Bernard Shaw. The second half of the work focuses on his interactions with the women in his life and the influence of these women on his work. The author analyzes the psychological motivation of love behind Shaw's interest in Don Juan, and also analyzes the perception of women and his lovers at that time or in the past revealed in works such as "Pygmalion", and analyzes the interaction between reality and works. Since the women Shaw interacted with were mostly educated and knowledgeable young women, who left a large number of letters, diaries and even published works telling their own stories with Shaw, the narrative of the second half was almost like listening to the defense of all parties, all parties were well prepared, and the puzzle gradually gathered to draw the true trajectory of the second half of the master's life.

The writing method of "Shaw's biography" can be described as a typical way of writing contemporary biographical writing. The authors do not care about the personality and moral significance of the biographer, the collapse of the "idol", they care about the philosophical ideas of "breaking" and "standing" to guide the investigation, "against the trend" to reinterpret history, re-clarify established impressions, let people open their eyes first, and then learn how to see.