Thursday | 16 January 2025 | Reg No- 06
বাংলা
   
Thursday | 16 January 2025 | Epaper

Popularity and acceptability of autobiography

Published : Sunday, 24 January, 2021 at 12:00 AM  Count : 3977
Chinmay Prasun Biswas
As an important part of literature autobiography gains popularity, thousands of copies are sold if it is unauthorised i.e. not censored by the author. If there remains any influence then he always discards the bad sides of his life. Very few people are courageous enough to expose the evil sides of own life. If autobiography is kiss and tell, i.e., baffling of own secrets, divulgence of personal scandals or misdeeds then the dimension becomes wide. If readers come to know that great persons are not only storehouse of neatness, they are also flesh and blood people and victims of six inherent passions, readers become delighted. Sale of book increases.  

James Dewi Watson's The Double Helix was published in 1968. It was already known that base of life on the earth is DNA (Deoxyribonucleic acid) but nobody had any idea about its structure. Effort to discover it became a subject of competition   among scientists. Surpassing others Watson and his colleague Francis Harry Compton Crick succeeded in recognising the shape of DNA in 1950. As a recognition of it they were awarded Nobel Prize in 1962. Along with them there was another researcher - Morris Hew Fredrick Wilkinson. The Double Helix is a story   of that invention and different incidents of Watson and Crick's life. In that sense, The Double Helix is an autobiography. Not only readers, even Crick was   scandalised after reading Watson's candid writing but why? Watson has described not only his desire for female companion but has also described the story of Frick. He did not forget to expose how much foolish Frick was in this field.

 The Double Helix became a trendsetter. Many  others were inspired to follow that style. Among   them two Nobel laureate scientists were important. The first one was Salvador Edward Lubion, Ph D guide of Watson. His autobiography, A Slot Machine, A Broken Test Tube, was published in 1984. In preface he acknowledged his pleasure at reading the autobiography of his student. An autobiography should contain confession. In his autobiography Lubion described his mental depression in detail. The second one was John Richard Philips Fineman. Watson gave him the script to read. He became delighted to know the ups and downs and competition of Watson's research. In 1985 Fineman wrote his autobiography--Surely You are Joking, Mr Fineman. He described his amusing nature and varieties of experience in his book. Such an experience was proposing a stranger woman to go to bed which the woman surprisingly accepted.  

It will be foolish to assume that such open confession in autobiography is a modern concept. Autobiography of Johannes Kepler, a 16thcentury German astronomer, is unimaginable even in 21stcentury. About himself he wrote - my mother conceived me at 4-37 p. m. on 16th May, 1571. Calculation says that she was pregnant at the time of marriage. Because of premature birth (32 weeks, 24 days, 10 hours) I was weak at the time of birth and throughout life.    

The words of Jean-Paul Sartre, written at 69 in 1974, are remarkable in this connection. It is acknowledged as a masterpiece of self analysis. Among many other events he has not concealed his first experience of masturbation. Probably for this reason it is said that autobiography requires courage. Without courage it may be at best a tale of life, not autobiography. Due to absence of courage Einstein's autobiography stands at the total opposite pole though his life was also eventful. Love with headmaster's daughter at early age, marrying another elder classmate without his parent's consent and divorcing her after a few years with two children, second marriage with an in-law widow sister but ahead of it deep love with her daughter - all these things happened in his life whereas his autobiography doesn't contain the slightest reference to these events but why this hide and seek?  

Professor Hans Gutfriand of Hebrew University, Jerusalem and Mr. Jargen Ben, Director of Max Plank Institute for History of Science (two Einstein experts) tried to trace out the reasons. They have written--Einstein on Einstein, Autobiographical and Scientific Reflections. Through this book we come know that Einstein wrote   autobiography twice. One in 1955 on the occasion of centenary of his Zurich Federal Institute of Technology, just two weeks ahead of his death. Gutfriand and Ben published its first English translation.  Einstein's best known autobiography was published in 1949 at the insistence of Paul Arthur Thrix, a professor of Philosophy who edited volumes on living philosophers--The Library of Living Philosophers.  7th volume was on Einstein. Handwritten at the age of 67, this autobiography of Einstein was simply a booklet of 46 pages with headline Autobiographicathos (German) and Autobiographical Notes (English). As written at 67, Einstein humourously called it his obituary.

 At the outset he hinted that he was not at all interested in personal affairs. As informed by Gutfriand and Ben - Einstein mentioned elsewhere that autobiography is written normally out of extreme love towards oneself or from bad relationship with others. What did Einstein want to write? Using the word 'mere' ahead of personal misdeeds he clarified the nature of his autobiography. He intended to write about his invention. In this connection he has referred to two incidents of his boyhood. First one when his father bought a compass for him. Turned to any direction one hand stands fixed towards the north. Einstein, a boy of 5, thought that there might be some mechanism in the world beyond our knowledge. Second one was at 12 when he started reading geometry that only argument can lead towards a concrete truth. There is no reference to place in this autobiography but Gutfriand and Ben have shown how deeply time influenced this writing.  
 
Record shows that Einstein started writing autobiography in 1946, just one year after the devastating incident of Hiroshima and Nagasaki occurred. Civilisation was endangered. Worried Einstein was then above all personal matters. However, Gutfriand and Ben assumed that two books inspired Einstein. One was Scientific Autobiography by German scientist Max Plank and the other was The Story of My Experiments with Truth by Mahatma Gandhi. Both the books tell the story of marching towards a definite goal through an unstable time.
The writer is a former Commissioner of Taxes






LATEST NEWS
MOST READ
Also read
Banning outdoor New Year parties
BAC in higher education in Bangladesh
It's time to end the bloodshed in Yemen
Plastic waste threatens environment and biodiversity
Fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory export control is an important guarantee for globalization
Rapists still having a field day in Bangladesh
Int’l cooperation with BRI
Olaf Scholz: Agenda of Germany’s new leader
Editor : Iqbal Sobhan Chowdhury
Published by the Editor on behalf of the Observer Ltd. from Globe Printers, 24/A, New Eskaton Road, Ramna, Dhaka.
Editorial, News and Commercial Offices : Aziz Bhaban (2nd floor), 93, Motijheel C/A, Dhaka-1000.
Phone: PABX- 41053001-06; Online: 41053014; Advertisement: 41053012.
E-mail: district@dailyobserverbd.com, news©dailyobserverbd.com, advertisement©dailyobserverbd.com, For Online Edition: mailobserverbd©gmail.com
🔝
close