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.
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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...!
