The whole view that art is self-expression pure and simple,
the transcript of personal feelings and experiences, is demonstrably
false. Even when there is a close relationship between
the work of art and the life of an author, this must never be
construed as meaning that the work of art is a mere copy of life.
The biographical approach forgets that a work of art is not
simply the embodiment of experience but always the latest work
of art in a series of such works; it is drama, a novel, a poem
"determined," so far as it is determined at all, by literary tradition
and convention. The biographical approach actually obscures
a proper comprehension of the literary process, since it
breaks up the order of literary tradition to substitute the life
cycle of an individual. The biographical approach ignores also
quite simple psychological facts. A work of art may rather embody
the "dream" of an author than his actual life, or it may
be the "mask," the "anti-self" behind which his real person is
hiding, or it may be a picture of the life from which the author
wants to escape. Furthermore, we must not forget that the artist
may "experience" life differently in terms of his art: actual experiences
are seen with a view to their use in literature and come
to him already partially shaped by artistic traditions and preconceptions