Samuel Johnson's “Life of the Poet Richard Savage” — A Paradigm for a Type

Two hundred and three years ago, the English lexicographer wrote a benevolent and human biography of his friend, the destitute poet Savage. Savage and Johnson have a strange fate in literature: were it not for Boswell's biography of Johnson, the latter were forgotten as conversationalist, only to be remembered as scurile personality** and compiler of an outdated work on semantics. Were it not for Johnson's reflected fame, Savage would have been forgotten even more.

Johnson bases his biography of Savage on one fact exclusively: his mother rejected the child, did not acknowledge its very existence, even persecuted it with pathological hatred. That unusual and dramatic event is made responsible for practically everything which happened later in Savage's life. It makes for a good story; unfortunately, one little fact marres the conclusion: Savage found out only around the age of seventeen about his noble descent, and his mother's cruel attitude. Since we know through Freud's lifework that the child's psyche is formed much earlier, the whole premise collapses, on which Johnson bases his conclusions.

In spite of that simple, though decisive, fact, Johnson's biography of Savage is worth' reading and studying: he gives a perfect description of a masochistic parasite. We have only to substitute the term “psychic masochism”, everytime