Nikki bungaku | & Writing
the Self
The fellowship of
the first person
first-person writings as
tools of self-construction
#memoriesfromdiaries
2nd January 1997
Well, the purpose of
this post is three-fold.
Firstly, it recollects the
day’s events that unfolded during my day today and gives a sneak peek into how I
had spent my day. (This year, I was a first-year undergraduate student of BA
English Literature).
The top ten things I did
today in that particular order are as follows –
1. Early morning, went to
my final driving classes, and took my rehearsal for LMWG today at 11.45 am.
(Driving Schools are
usually known for pampering the RTO Officials, and today was one such day). 😊
2. Then I went to Pasupathy
Shop to buy a black pen, since I had misplaced my pen.
3. Later, I met my close friend
Ani.
4. Posted letters to near
and dear.
5. Met my school teacher,
and my high school class mate B. Karthik.
6. Changed the glass crystal
and strap pin for my hmt watch.
7. Bought the month’s main
grocery items.
8. Bought this particular
diary for Rs. 65/-
9. Had refreshing barottas
en route home.
10. Bought the weekly
Tamil magazine – Anantha Vikatan which still continues to be my
favourite Tamil magazine even today. 😊 A free calendar was given as a compliment with this
issue.
Well, the pages of the
past, might sound anachronistic, by today’s standards.
For example, writing and posting
snail mail in the post box!
Judging by today’s
yardstick, the phrase, ‘posting letters’ might be considered
quite anachronistic!
The Cambridge English
dictionary defines anachronism as,
‘something placed in
the wrong period in history, or something that belongs to the past rather than
the present’.
So that brings us to the second
purpose of this post - to highlight the importance of
anachronisms to literary studies in general, and memory studies in particular; on
how anachronisms could serve as a powerful tool for the periodization of
history and memory.
Gerard Genette calls
them “narrative anachronies!”
For example, consider the
following two sentences –
‘I need to write an
inland!’
Or
‘I need to clean the
photos’
Well, writing
an inland and cleaning the photos have
become obsolete or anachronistic by all means!
Hence the above two sentences
might sound quite weird to anyone who hasn’t seen an inland letter anytime
in their lives or hasn’t known the process of ‘cleaning photos’ –
which involves taking their negatives to the photo studio, - being extra
careful not to expose them to light while removing the film roll from the
camera, etc.
Writing an
‘inland’ and the ‘cleaning’ of photos, could then be periodised or pigeon-holed
to a specific time-frame in history, that predates the arrival
of the email or the arrival of digital photos!
As eminent critic Scupin
Richard rightly points out,
Anachronism hence becomes
a lovely liasioning agent connecting the present with the past!
Finally, coming to the third
and most important topic now –
Well, why do you think one
needs to jot down their day’s events on to a diary?
The main reason is that,
these diary entries are a voice of your own!
They provide a microcosm
of your life, as you have lived it in your own terms! and how your character
and your personality are formed, acquired and influenced by the environment in
which you are placed.
In fact, a famous literary
movement of the late 19th and 20th centuries – American Naturalism – puts forth
a similar proposition.
According to the American
naturalists, then –
Our character is
inevitably shaped by the vast array of social conditions, heredity, and the
environment in which we are placed!
And since a diary
resonates the social conditions, and the environment in which the diarist is
placed, a diary, [like a novel], can provide a lot of enriching insights into
the character of the diarist as well.
In this process, the
diarist creates or constructs, either consciously or unconsciously, their
identity and subjectivity, under the watchful eyes of Time!
In the words of prominent
critic Scupin Richards,
Unlike memoirs that are
retrospective ‘self-writing’,
or autobiographies, that
are ‘introspective’ self-writing,
diaries are purely
‘reflective’ self-writing in nature!
The term ‘reflective’ in diary
writing would then intend to mean that,
I have to reflect back on
the day,
and write down what I had specifically learnt at the end of the day!
Reflective diary writing hence becomes
a strategic pedagogic tool both for the educator and for the pupil as well.
That apart, a reflective
diary helps in enhancing, enriching and fine-tuning one’s learning experiences
for the better!
And this is where, Peter
Heehs comes into the picture!
Well, the renowned American
historian, who’s done extensive studies on Sri Aurobindo, has written a
voluminous treatise on the concept of the Self, that’s simply phenomenal!
His impactful treatise on the ‘Self’
titled, Writing the Self: Diaries, Memoirs, and the History of the Self,
presents an enriching history of the idea of the ‘self’, told mainly with
reference to diaries, memoirs, and other forms of first-person literature,
which Peter Heehs calls, ‘fellowship of the first person’.
‘Writing the Self’ also has the
honour of being named the ‘Outstanding Academic Title for 2013’, by Choice.
The book offers ‘an account of
the self over the last two millennia’, in such a lucid and gripping narrative!
Says Peter Heehs – (excerpts
from his book, Writing the Self)
All of us feel we are
different than everybody else.
We see the world through our
own eyes, hear it with our own ears, touch it with our own hands.
We call this our “I,” our personal
identity, our self.
Giving Voice to the “I”:
The SELF: Memoir, Autobiography, Diary
First-person genres are of
special interest in the study of the self because they are, or at least profess
to be, immediate self-expression.
It is natural to think,
along with sociologist Alain Girard, that “among all written texts, it is those
in the first person that tell us most about the image of the self.”
Some critics go further,
suggesting that first-person writings are tools of self-construction: not just
accounts of what happened but ways of moulding the stuff of the past into
models of what the writers wish to be.
To such critics,
writing an account of one’s life is an act of self-creation.
Memoir, autobiography, and diary are
separate genres though there is a certain amount of overlap between them.
A memoir, as I use the
term, is a retrospective narrative about a portion of the writer’s life.
An autobiography is a long
memoir, covering most of the subject’s life up to the time of writing.
A diary is a document in which the
writer records his or her experiences, thoughts and feelings shortly after they
happen, in discreet entries, often dated.
Diaries differ from memoirs
in not being retrospective and in not having an explicit plot. They are written
from day to day, with the present as a moving vantage point and without any
knowledge of the future.
But the distinction between diary
and memoir is not absolute: many diaries became the bases of memoirs, many
memoirs have passages that read like diary entries.
Diaries and memoirs are important
sources for biographers and historians because they provide first-hand accounts
of public and private events and offer privileged access to the personality of
the writers.
It is hard for us to be honest
with ourselves, harder to be frank with others, still harder to write the truth
as we have seen it and preserve what we have written.
No one has spoken of this with
more perception than the novelist Fyodor Dostoyevsky.
As the narrator of his Notes
from Underground begins to write his memoir, he remarks –
“There are things in every man’s
past that he won’t admit except to his most intimate friends.
There are other things that he
won’t admit even to his friends but only to himself – and only in strictest
confidence.
But there are things, too,
that a man won’t dare to admit even to himself, and every decent man has quite
an accumulation of such things.”
Eighty years later, George Orwell
wrote –
“Autobiography is only to be
trusted when it reveals something disgraceful.”
By this standard, Jean-Jacques
Rousseau’s Confessions, the prototypical modern memoir, ought to be
regarded as trustworthy, since it contains many things that eighteenth-century
readers found scandalous!
Even more than the memoir,
the diary has been, in the words of critic Susan Sontag, an “exemplary
instrument in the career of consciousness.”
Diaries as we know them
today did not appear in Europe before the sixteenth century but they were
preceded by other sorts of verbal recording devices.
The Greeks had hypomnemata, wax tablets
on which they jotted down things they wanted to remember: ideas, quotations,
things said or observed.
The primary aim of early
diarists was to record what they observed, thought, and did. As the genre
developed, people began to use their diaries for subjective expression as well
as objective documentation.
Along with self-expression came
self-reflection, and along with self-reflection the desire for
self-improvement.
As the scholar Roger North
observed in the seventeenth century, for a man to keep a diary was a useful
“check upon all his exorbitancies,” since, “being set down they would stain his
reputation.”
Two hundred years later, Swiss
philosopher Henri-Frédéric Amiel wrote toward the end of his 17,000-page
Journal, “the chief utility of the personal diary is to restore wholeness of
mind and equilibrium of consciousness, that is to say, inner health.”
His remark could have
been taken as a watchword by the millions who have tried using diaries as parts
of self-improvement programs.
More recently, the Web has
made it possible for bloggers to upload their observations, confessions, and
harangues a moment after writing them.
Autobiographers, memoirists,
diarists, bloggers, and users of social networks share the urge to express
themselves or to create themselves through writing. All belong to what might be
called the fellowship of the first person!
And that’s how interestingly
the book develops on the concept of the ‘Self’, the ‘I’ and the fellowship of
the first person!
I would strongly recommend that
you read through this book to get a beautiful, holistic view of the concept of
the ‘Self’!
More power to Peter Heehs
and his ‘Self’-ie narrative!
And more power, to all ye daily diarists and bloggers who express yourself in such beautiful, creative ways every day...!
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