Recently, my history professor told us to read the diary of a woman who lived and died during the period we are currently studying.
So I read it.
I guess the assumption about reading these kinds of sources is that they offer a uniquely personal social perspective--a catalog of emotions and events recorded by a voice that needs to be heard, unfiltered--for once, an "honest" account of what was.
But something made me really uncomfortable reading it. It wasn't the translation that made it seem dishonest. It wasn't even the hundreds of arbitrary footnotes or the laudatory introduction by some random scholar. It was the writing itself.
Who says diaries are honest? The few times I have tried to journal, I have always felt so fake. I choose the events I want to record without really knowing which ones are important. And when I stray from the here's-what-happened style and decide to get philosophical about things, I always write as if someone is going to read it later. Never is it truly a secret document. And if there is one place I would rationalize, it would be a diary, not a conference with a living person that knows how to pick out my inconsistencies and failures.
So yes, a diary can be valuable (both for historiography and as a practice in our own lives). But let's not pretend that it is honest--that we are honest.
I used to keep a journal regularly, and I find that the only way to keep it honest is by not writing as though someone else will read it later, but writing knowing that one day I'll pick it up and read it. Honesty can be achieved if you can write down what you want your future self to look back upon, remember, and understand with a new perspective.
ReplyDeleteBut that being said I totally know what you mean, there are times I find myself writing in my journal and imagining other people picking it up and reading it...