Jackson Knight: A Biography, and: Missing Persons: An Autobiography (review)

182 biography Vol. 2, No. 2 G. Wilson Knight, Jackson Knight: A Biography. Oxford: The Alden Press, 1975. 523 pp. £5.00. E. R. Dodds, Missing Persons: An Autobiography. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1977.202 pp. $13.50. These volumes represent opposite approaches to the crucial problem of the distance between a writer and his subject. Jackson Knight (1895-1964) and E. R. Dodds (1893- ) are in some ways comparable ; they were born into the same generation; both graduated from Oxford; both had academic careers in the classics; both are probably better known to others in their field (at least in North America) than to the public. A similarity between the books is that Dodds' subject is, of course, himself, while Wilson Knight's subject, the life of his only brother, closely involves his own life and that of his mother. And both authors wrote very near to, or just past, the age of eighty. Yet the books are vastly different, precisely because Dodds took into account and solved the problem of biographer's distance, while Wilson Knight has achieved virtually no such distance at all. Jackson Knight is known to the reading public for his very successful prose translation (published 1956) of Vergil's Aeneid in the Penguin Classics series. His mature life was devoted to Vergil, as Wilson Knight's has been to Shakespeare and Byron; four of his other books were about Vergil. This biography, an imposing gesture of fraternal and filial piety, is based almost entirely on Jackson Knight's letters and other family papers. Wilson Knight also relies on his own letters and papers, turning frequently to refer to a series of unpublished volumes of his own autobiography. The brothers' mother, separated from the father when both sons were serving abroad in the First World War, figures prominently in the narration. Their devotion to her, her ambitions for them, their financial uncertainty after her separation, the difficulties of finding apd launching careers—these themes necessarily involve both of the Knight brothers and their mother. The book, then, although it has the apparatus of a formal biography (photographs, bibliography of the subject's writings, foldout "Chart of Scottish Descent"), is better characterized as the reminiscences and memorial record of the surviving member of a closely-involved family trio. Wilson Knight's failure to find or maintain any distance from his brother's life or personality creates a stifling atmosphere in such a long book. Relying on family writings, newspaper clippings, pub- REVIEWS 183 lished memoirs by others and obituaries, or even testimonials solicited from friends, he is compelled to leave several matters obscure, events which would undoubtedly have been more persistently explored or more candidly evaluated by a more objective biographer. The circumstances and facts of the parents' separation, whose consequences plainly determined much of the character of the sons' mature lives, are difficult to grasp clearly because they are set forth solely from the mother's and sons' sides. Even more important to understanding Jackson Knight's life, I feel, was his service in World War One. This interrupted his career at Oxford; he was severely wounded; the amputation of a leg was contemplated; he suffered shock and later depressions ; he failed to win any public military distinctions; and, returning somewhat reluctantly to Oxford, he failed to win a First in his Examinations . The records on which he relies prevent Wilson Knight from devoting more than a few pages to these matters. He notes, for example, that it was not the family's habit to discuss bad news in letters . Yet as the reader moves ahead through the life these events begin to assume more fascination in retrospect. Jackson Knight clearly belonged to the generation which, in surviving the First World War, was severely disturbed by it. Yet the presentation of his life as a family chronicle prevents the reader from viewing it in a wider context. W. F. Jackson Knight used his mother's maiden name as his first name. Caroline Jackson Knight, the mother, will unfailingly fascinate readers. A lengthy section of this book, again because of the nature of Wilson Knight's sources, becomes an autobiography of his year in Toronto with his...