Example from The Autobiography: The Intimate Diaries
Drafting / / July 04, 2021
Private diaries reveal in their authors an intention to be honest with themselves, to know each other rather than to judge themselves morally. As a model of this genre, we have The Diary of Anne Frank. The girl Anne Frank tells herself about her life, she does it without thinking about the opinions of future generations, she writes with indisputable authenticity. Let's look at a few lines from her diary.
Saturday, June 20, 1942.
"I haven't written for several days: I needed to reflect, once and for all, on what a Diary means. It is a unique feeling for me to express my thoughts, not only because I have never written yet, but because it seems to me that, later, neither I nor anyone else would be interested in the confidences of a thirteen-year-old schoolgirl. Anyway, that is irrelevant. I want to write and even more to probe my heart about all kinds of things. "The role is more patient than men." This saying came to my mind one day of slight melancholy when I was getting bored as much as I could, my head resting on my hands, too upset to decide to go out or to stay at home. Yes, indeed, the paper is patient, and, as I presume that nobody will worry about this worthily titled hardboard notebook Diary, I have no intention of ever letting it read, unless I find in my life the friend to whom show it to him. Here I have arrived at the starting point, at the idea of starting a Diary: I have no friend.
In order to be clearer, I explain myself better. No one can believe that a thirteen-year-old girl is alone in the world. Of course, it is not entirely accurate: I have parents whom I love very much, and a sixteen-year-old sister; I have, in short, about thirty comrades and, among them, the so-called friends; I have an abundance of admirers who follow me with their eyes, while those who, in class, are ill-positioned to see me, try to grasp my image with the help of a pocket mirror. I have family, kind uncles and aunts, a nice home. No. I'm not missing anything, apparently, except the friend. With my comrades, I can only have fun and nothing else. I never get to speak with them more than vulgarities, even with one of my friends, because it is impossible for us to become more intimate; therein lies the difficulty. That lack of confidence is perhaps my real flaw. Anyway, I am faced with an accomplished fact, and it is quite pitiful not to be able to ignore it.
Hence the reason for this Journal. In order to better evoke the image that I forged of a long-awaited friend, I do not want to limit myself to simple facts, as so many do, but I want this Diary to personify the friend. And this friend will be called Kitty. "(Cf. Complementary bibliography, N? 20)