The literary genre of the Journal intime appears in France in the 19th c. Previously, many diarists kept and left records of their daily doings and observations, which are of great interest to the historian; notable examples include the 15th-c. so-called Journal d'un bourgeois de Paris, the court diary of Dangeau, the 18th-c. journal of E.-J.-F. Barbier, or the livre de raison of the 16th-c. Normandy squire Gouberville, which is presented by Le Roy Ladurie in his Le Territoire de l'historien (1973). A particular variant is the travel journal; these are very numerous, two of the best-known being Montaigne's Italian journal and Montesquieu's account of his European travels. There are also many more recent journals containing principally an individual's observation of his or her social world, e.g. Hugo's Choses vues, the diaries of the Goncourt brothers, or Léautaud's formidable Journal littéraire.
As in the case of Léautaud, it is often difficult to distinguish between ‘spectator’ diaries and the true journal intime. The latter is above all a prolonged exercise in regular introspection—‘un registre exact de toutes les pensées de son esprit’, as Diderot put it in a letter to Sophie Volland (14 July 1762). The Romantic concern for individual subjectivity provided a fertile soil for this new genre, but the diary also had an educative function, particularly for girls. Most private diaries remained unpublished and were little known before the work of Michelle Perrot and of Philippe Lejeune (Le Moi des demoiselles, 1993). In some cases, however, the diary was immediately recognized as a work of literature. The most striking figure is Amiel, who owes his fame entirely to his immense Journal; one may also cite the much admired diaries of Eugénie de Guérin and Marie Bashkirtseff.
Most celebrated journaux intimes are the work of figures who are well known as writers in other genres. Remarkable examples over the last two centuries include Maine de Biran, Joubert, Stendhal, Delacroix, Maurice de Guérin, Michelet, Barrès, Jules Renard, Gide, Pozzi, Du Bos, Mauriac, Jouhandeau, Green, and Sartre (Carnets de la drôle de guerre). In some cases the journal is less a place of self-scrutiny than a record of mental exploration, the most remarkable case being undoubtedly the Cahiers of Valéry.
Most diaries, even those of writers, have been published posthumously, not having been intended for the public eye. From the 1840s, however, with the publication of the journals of Maine de Biran, Joubert, and Eugénie and Maurice de Guérin, the journal intime attained the status of a literary genre, and from this time on, if not before, diarists have usually been conscious of writing not for themselves alone, but for future readers. In some cases, such as those of Gide, Mauriac, and Green, they began to publish their journals in their own lifetime.
[Peter France]
Bibliography
- B. Didier, Le Journal intime (1976)
The New Oxford Companion to Literature in French. Copyright © 1995, 2005 by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved.
