I have just finished rereading Peter Gay’s magnificent biography, Freud: A Life for Our Time. I first read it about sixteen years ago, soon after it appeared in 1988, but I recently picked up a used copy of it, and I read it far more carefully this time. I am not a Freudian, and Gay --- for all his profound admiration of Freud --- is merciless in detailing his inconsistencies, evasions and flaws, but oh, what a man! And Gay’s biography is perfection incarnate: in fact, the only biography that I have ever read which can rank with it is Richard Ellmann’s incomparable biography of Oscar Wilde.
Both Ellmann and Gay are highly literate men, writing for a select few in a shamelessly post-literate age. I resonate with their style, and I deeply appreciate their brilliance and wisdom, which heartens me like a warm fire on a cold winter night. When the painter Whistler took John Ruskin to court for slandering his art, the defense attorney set up one of Whistler’s Nocturnes in court and asked Whistler, contemptuously, just how long it took him to paint that picture. To which Whistler replied: “All my life.” One can say the same thing about Gay and Ellmann’s biographies: the talent, the experience and the wisdom of a lifetime went into them. And oh, how smoothly they pour into the mind, like honey! In my darker moments, I have to ask: will we ever see biographies like these again?
