ROLAND BARTHES
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a certain pleasure in rediscovering, thanks to these lines, the events they
relate, and even more, the inflections (of light, of atmosphere, of mood)
they bring back. In short, at this point no literary interest (save for
problems of formulation,
i.e.,
of phrasing), but a kind of narcissistic
attachment (faintly narcissistic-let's not exaggerate) to
my
doings
(whose recall is inevitably ambiguous, since to remember is also to
acknowledge and to lose once again what will not recur). But still, does
this final indulgence, achieved after having traversed a phrase of
rejection, justify (systematically) keeping a journal?
Is it worth the
trouble?
I am not attempting any kind of analysis of the "Journal" genre
(there are books on the subject), but only a personal deliberation,
intended to afford a practical decision: should I keep a journal
with a
view to publication?
Can I make the journal into a "work"? Hence I
refer only to the functions which immediately come to mind. For
instance, Kafka kept a diary in order to "extirpate his anxiety," if you
prefer, "to find salvation." This motive would not be a natural one for
me, or at least not a constant one. Nor would the aims traditionally
attributed to the intimate Journal; they no longer seem pertinent to me.
They are all connected to the advantages and the prestige of "sincerity"
(to express yourself, to exp lain yourself, to judge yourself); but psycho–
analysis, the Sartrian critique of bad faith, and the Marxist critique of
ideologies have made "confession" a futility: sincerity is merely a
second-degree image-repertoire. No, the Journal's justification (as a
work) can only be
literary
in the absolute, even if nostalgic, sense of the
word. I discern here four motives.
The first is to present a text tinged with an individuality of
writing, with a "style" (as we used to say), with an idiolect proper to
the author (as we said more recently); let us call this motive: poetic.
The second is to scatter like dust, from day to day, the traces of a period,
mixing all dimensions and proportions, from important information
to details of behavior: don 't I take great pleasure in reading Tolstoy's
journal to discover the life of a Russian nobleman in the nineteenth
century? Let us call this motive: historical. The third is to constitute
the author as an object of desire: if an author interests me, I may want
to know the intimacy, the
small change
of his time, his tastes, his
moods, his scruples; I may even go so far as to prefer his person to his
work, eagerly snatching up his Journal and neglecting his books.
Hence I can attempt-making myself the author of the pleasure others
have been able to afford me-I can attempt in my turn to seduce, by
that swivel which shifts from writer
to
person, and vice-versa; or, more
