JOIN USDo you write a diary to keep a record of what happened that day? If you have tried, but been unable to stick to it, don’t worry, you’re in excellent company. J K Rowling candidly admits that she’s never managed to keep a journal for more than two weeks. However, there are others with whom journaling is a way of life.
One of the earliest known diarists is Marcus Aurelius, Roman Emperor 161-180 AD, who wrote about his ideas on Stoic philosophy. He wrote them down as a source for his own guidance and improvement, when he was campaigning in different parts of the Roman Empire. These have been translated from Koine Greek in which he wrote them, as Meditations.
The oldest diaries in existence come from Middle Eastern and East Asian cultures. Li Ao was a scholar who maintained a diary of his journey through Southern China sometime in the 9th century AD. The earliest surviving Arabic diary belongs to Ibn Banna in the 11th century.
Literacy was a stumbling block to journaling, and therefore, up until the 20th century, it was mostly the middle and upper classes that maintained diaries. The removal of that block has opened the door to all who want to express themselves through their diaries.
But, whatever the age, a diary is something which instantly presents a conundrum. It is a place where the diarist records his deepest, darkest secrets. The bond between a diary and its writer is sacred, not meant to be violated. Yet...
The instant you write the thoughts down, it becomes readable and shareable. As Adam Phillips, the essayist, says, “If you really believed in privacy, you wouldn’t write anything down.” A diary is open to prying eyes, judgment and criticism, both during and after the diarist’s life. It is a secret you yourself end up revealing. It is a bench with the sign ‘Wet Paint: Don’t Touch’ on it, which we all know to be the greatest temptation in the world. You reveal your most intimate thoughts in black and white, and ask others not to read it because it will be devastating to all around... and expect to keep it secret during your lifetime and after? Are you kidding?
While you’re grappling with this dilemma, let us look at some famous and infamous diaries, and interesting entries.
Everyone knows about The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank. This is a perfect example of a diary that was meant to be read. Anne first started writing a personal journal in 1942, but in 1944, the Dutch Government was planning on collecting letters and diaries after the war to show the plight of the Dutch people. Anne wanted to be a famous writer, and thought her diaries would give her the necessary start. She recorded her experiences when she and her family were in hiding during the German occupation of the Netherlands in World War II. When it was discovered and finally published in 1947, it told the world of Anne’s thoughts and feelings on her life, as well as how she viewed the world around her.
A journal is an outpouring of a person’s thoughts, unexpunged or unplugged. So it is not surprising that many contain thoughts, ideas or information that are explicit or taboo in current society. Therefore, quite a few diaries have been burnt by successors of the writers. Outstanding among those are of Marquis de Sade, whose journals revealed his dark and deviant thoughts. Though his family tried to suppress the publication of his journals, and his son ordered them to be burned after his death, two of the four were published.
There is also the case of Charles Dodgson, better known as Lewis Carroll. The writer of Alice in Wonderland wrote an extensive set of 13 journals since his childhood. After his death, there were many rumours regarding his personal relationships. However, none of these could be proved from his diaries, simply because pages for those dates were missing. Four volumes were also found to have disappeared mysteriously.
Lord Byron, the romantic poet, was also ‘mad, bad, and dangerous to know’ in his time. His tumultuous life, as recorded in his diaries, was also consigned to the flames of the fireplace by his publisher, John Murray, rather than have other lives burned by its revelations.
Also, there were diarists like Evelyn Waugh and Philip Larkin, both English writers, who burnt their diaries themselves, seeking ultimate privacy.
Of the diaries that survive, there are some unusual ones.
It is surprising that Andy Warhol’s diary was not written by himself, but by his secretary Pat Hackett. From 1976 to 1987, Warhol would phone Hackett daily to discuss the previous day’s events. These included a mundane list of his expenditures and also chatting about life in general. Warhol’s ideas, recollections of parties, people and events, and his comments on friends and foes alike — both flattering and otherwise — were later published as a book. The picture he painted of the cultural landscape of the time is an invaluable part of the history of the era.
Documenting the present
Not all diary entries are made in books, either. A soldier in the American Civil War, Solomon Conn, purchased a Greffuhle violin in 1863, when he was part of Company B of the 87th Indiana Volunteers. Bizarrely, he re-purposed it into a diary. On the wood of the back, the right and left sides, he inscribed a list of over 30 battles, skirmishes and visited locations. Interesting fact — he couldn’t even play the instrument: he’d bought it for the unit.
Remarkable Mexican artist Frida Kahlo personalised her diary with vivid paintings. Her journal is as flamboyant in its wonderful pictures as it is with its ideas.
What makes a diary more interesting than a work of fiction is that it not only reveals an incident, but also what the writer thought of, about and during the incident. Novelist Rebecca Westcott is spot-on when she says that ‘seemingly irrelevant, mundane comments can say a lot about a person’.
In some cases, it proves to be an uncanny predictor of the future. An entry of intent: Ernest Hemingway’s diary at age 9 shows an entry which he ends with an impressively blunt statement which proved prophetic: “I intend to travel and write”. To the end of his days, he was always looking for adventure, and his books are classics today.
We all know of the classic novel Moby Dick written by Herman Melville. It was inspired by the story of a small ship called the Essex that sank after it was attacked by a huge sperm whale. Melville met the captain of this ship in 1852, a year after the publication of Moby Dick. He chronicled his impression of the captain: “To the islanders, he was a nobody — to me the most impressive man, tho’ wholly unassuming, even humble — that I ever encountered.”
Once Harry S Truman wrote after visiting with a public figure, “This man not only wants to run the country, but the universe and the entire Milky Way.”
Of course, diaries are best known for chronicling events.
In the 1840s, a group of American pioneers going west to California found themselves trapped in the Sierra Nevada mountains at the onset of winter. Known as the Donner Party, they had to resort to cannibalism on dead members of the group to stay alive. One of the group, Patrick Breen, wrote of the conditions and hardships they had to endure. His words in February 1847, of the first day the members of the Donner Party resorted to cannibalism, are chilling: “Mrs Murphy said here yesterday that she thought she would Commence on Milt and eat him. I don’t think that she has done so yet; it is distressing.”
In contrast, there is an entry of achievement: Robert Peary reaches the North Pole. His entry is a reflection of what each one of us feels when we win after a long struggle. “The Pole at Last!!! The prize of 3 centuries, my dream and ambition for 23 years. Mine at last. I cannot bring myself to realise it. It all seems so simple and commonplace, as Bartlett said “just like every day”.”
It is also true that what seems to be big news in retrospect may not have been very impressive when it was happening. So it was with the first airplane flight. News of the very first airplane flight was received by Milton Wright, father of Orville and Wilbur Wright, the two men who invented the first successful airplane and took part in the first historic flights. On December 17, 1903, Milton Wright wrote in his diary of receiving the news by telegram. But more interesting is his entry on the next day, Friday, December 18, 1903: “The Enquirer continued following headlines on the Wright’s flying. Dayton Journal and Cin. Tribune contain nothing! Though I furnished press reporter the news.”
Another interesting diary entry is the one made by the French Emperor, King Louis the XVI, on July 14, 1789. It reads: Rien. (Nothing.) That was the day the French fortress and prison in Paris called the Bastille was stormed, and the day the French Revolution began. He was to die by the guillotine on January 21, 1793.
But when the king said, ‘Nothing happened’, he wasn’t talking about the political events. The King, along with his wife Marie Antoinette, was in fact very aware of the unrest that was sweeping France. However, at the time, he was on a Royal hunt, so he either meant that the hunt did not happen that day, or that he hadn’t killed an animal. So, context is very important when reading diaries.
Candid confessions
There is also a record of a great man admitting to a great mistake. Linus Pauling, an outstanding scientist of the 20th century, had a close relationship with another such scientist, Albert Einstein. They had many conversations which were unfortunately never recorded. However, after their very last meeting on November 16, 1954, Pauling made an entry in his diary. He says he left the house, but stopped on the sidewalk and wrote two sentences in his notebook, ‘in order that I would not forget just what he had said to me.’ One of the sentences is very telling. Einstein reportedly said, “I made one great mistake in my life — when I signed the letter to President Roosevelt recommending that atom bombs be made; but there was some justification — the danger that the Germans would make them.”
People reveal what they really are when they write to themselves in their personal diaries. That is why diaries are full of poignant words that unmask the soul.
On February 14, 1884, Valentine’s Day, and the fourth anniversary of his marriage to Alice, Teddy Roosevelt lost both his mother and wife. His diary entry consists of a large X and a simple sentence: “The light has gone out of my life.”
Novelist Nathanial Hawthorne had a very good marriage with artist Sophia Peabody. They shared a journal, each writing in it and passing it on to the other to write in their turn. Once a journal was done, they’d simply start another. A romantic entry from their marriage journal dated August 5, 1842, written by Hawthorne, reads, “A rainy day — a rainy day — and I do verily believe there is no sunshine in this world, except what beams from my wife’s eyes.”
Yesteryears actress Marilyn Monroe presented a figure of perfection to the world. But inside, she was a seething mass of insecurity, unhappiness and fragility.
Her diaries reveal this very pathetic woman who had to struggle to look beautiful, happy and carefree. When her marriage with her third husband Arthur Miller was ending, her diary entry reads, “Starting tomorrow, I will take care of myself, for that’s all I really have, and as I see it now, have ever had.”
Diaries of perfectly anonymous people are important too. They reflect the everyday lives of people, including their concerns and feelings about their surroundings. For example, the diary of Samuel Pepys, written between January 1660 and 1669, is a treasure trove of life in Britain in those days, including an account of the Great Fire of London.
Another diary kept by George Pegler, headmaster of the British School in Earith, England, in 1850 reflects his concern about students with poor discipline which he says is because ‘the parents are so indifferent about good moral training at home. They furnish us with very unruly subjects.’
Not surprisingly, many of the diarists in the past were women. In the United States, women recorded the events of the Civil War, the journey west to California and Oregon, and even an account of an unmarried anthropologist, Alice Cunningham Fletcher, who spent six weeks with a Native American tribe called the Sioux. Many of these diaries can be read online these days.
Today, journaling is a part of many people’s lives. In fact, in the West, many teachers make their elementary school students write journals to improve their handwriting. This leads to some fun revelations when they are read, later in life.
A woman, Blake Buchholz, found a really old diary of hers where she had listed her criteria for a husband: ‘He better like me and the children!’ Another gem reads, ‘I love soup and I hate my sisters.’ Then the realisation of an 8-year-old girl: ‘I do not have puberty yet.’
These days, blogging is a way of journaling, but without the attendant privacy. If you choose to write down your innermost thoughts and opinions for the consumption of the seven-billion-plus people out there, there is a good chance that you may be fired, and/or get divorced. But it is also a wonderful opportunity for you to connect with like-minded people and start conversations about your experiences and things that matter to you.
Online diaries or personal blogs have become commonplace today. In an interesting project called ‘One Day in History’, major heritage organisations in England and Wales asked residents of the UK to write an online diary of what they did on October 17, 2006. The diaries were then stored at the British Library.
The most well-known blogger is Malala Yousafzai, who began blogging about her life in the Swat Valley of Pakistan under the Taliban. Her straight-writing on all that was going on around her earned her a worldwide audience, a bullet in the face, and finally a Nobel Prize for Peace — all before she turned 18.
One final thought on journaling in the words of Walter Scott: ‘What is a diary as a rule? A document useful to the person who keeps it. Dull to the contemporary who reads it, and invaluable to the student, centuries afterwards, who treasures it.’
Happy journaling!