THE DIARY NOVEL:

NOTES FOR THE DEFINITION OF A SUB-GENRE

The study of the diary novel has been neglected. 1 Whereas several
excellent investigations of the journal intime and its privileged themes and
techniques have appeared in the past twenty years,2 I do not know of
any systematic - or even less than systematic - examination of the diary
novel, the techniques it necessitates, the narrative preoccupations which
make it unique. 8 The diversity of diary novels is, of course, remarkable:
La Symphonie pastorale, Doctor Glas, The Diary of a Rapist, Diario de
un solter6n penitente, La Nausde are all considered to be diary novels and
yet differ not only in themes and intentions but also in structure, in narra-
tive syntax, in the formal devices they favor and exploit. The very fact
that we speak of diary novels, however, is enough to make one think that
they constitute a sub-genre, a species, a particular subset of the set of all
fiction, and that, as such, they are specifically characterized by certain
features not found in other types of fiction.
It is not a superficial journal shape - very generally speaking, I mean
by that a text divided into a certain number of sections each preceded
by a more or less specific date - it is not a superficial journal shape which
particularizes a diary novel. I say this not only because a third-person
narration respecting that convention, or a fictional log, a ledger, a cash-
book, would not constitute a diary novel, but also because some well-
known diary novels do not adopt that exterior shape: think of Mauriac's
Le Noeud de vipdres or again of Elspeth Huxley's The Red Rock Wilder-
ness, in which not a single date appears as a section heading yet which
presents a narrator rather faithfully keeping a diary. One could add fur-
ther that some first-person novels which exhibit the superficial features of
a journal and come fully equipped:with dates as section headings are
often not thought of as diary novels, because they lack certain traits
distinctive of the genre: good examples would be Wuthering Heights or
Malraux' Les Conqudrants.
Nor do the narrative techniques dictated by a journal form set diary
novels apart from all other fiction. These techniques pertain, of course,
to the three fundamental dimensions of any narrative, that is, the narrator,
his mode of narration and his narratee (his fictional addressee): The
diary novel is a roman personnel, an Ich-Roman, a first-person novel in
which the narrator is a protagonist in the events he records. Needless to
say, many first-person novels the narrator of which is also the main
character are not fictive diaries: Great Expectations, Invisible Man, La
Coscienza di Zeno, A la recherche du temps perdu.
What is more characteristic of a diary novel is the narrative mode it
exemplifies. In many novels, the narration is posterior to the events re-
ported; in some others, it is simultaneous with these events; and in a few,
478 Gerald Prince- The Diary Novel

it can be anterior to them. But in the diary novel, the narration is frag-
mented, as it were, and inserted between various sequences of events.
A diary novel always implies several narrative occasions: the narrator
does not tell a story in one sitting; he relates series of happenings in at
least two different instances (but, actually, in many more) and there is no
diary novel in which a narrator, deciding to keep a diary, writes one entry
then abandons his project. More specifically, each narrative instance does
not usually continue a story begun in the preceding entry or complete a
description of events started earlier, but, rather, it describes incidents
having occurred since the preceding entry. This characteristic mode of
narration, however, is not found in diary novels only. Epistolary novels
too provide good examples o f what G6rard Genette has called narration
intercal~e :5 they are constituted by a series of different letters written at
different times and frequently relating incidents having taken place in
between letters. Moreover, some epistolary novels are constituted of
letters which all come from the same fictitious pen, with Lettresportugaises
and La Vie de Marianne being among the most celebrated examples.
What about the narratee in a diary novel? Presumably, the writer of a
journal intime writes for himself only or, at the very least, he does not
write with a specific reader in mind, a reader to whom he would regularly
show his diary, for whose benefit he would mention or suppress certain
details, whose questions he would answer, whose suggestions he would
follow. Now, it is very common indeed for diary novels to contain pas-
sages underlining not only the essential loneliness of the diarist but also the
fact that his writing is a very private matter intended to remain very
private: " . . . I sit here scribbling in the lamplight pages no one will ever
r e a d . . . " (Journal d'un curd de campagne); " . . . I am writing for myself
only" (Journal de Salavin); "I keep a diary merely because I enjoy
writing, I don't intend to show it to anyone" (The Diary of a Mad Old
Man). This feature of diary novels, though it is found in many other
works - J6r6me, in La Porte ~troite, writes for his own edification and so,
presumably, does Bardamu in Voyage au bout de la nuit - this feature
would distinguish them from the fictional species with which they have
most in common technically, that is to say, the epistolary novel: the latter
is made up of texts composed for someone, addressed to someone who
may or may not answer, texts which contain an appeal, start or pursue a
dialogue, represent a possible tool of communication between two
eonseiousnesses. However, the narratee is not very much more than an
ornament in such "epistolary monodies ''6 as Wieland or Edgar Huntly.
Besides, and more importantly perhaps, although many fictitious diarists
seem to be writing for themselves only, many also write for other readers.
In Journal de Salavin, for instance, the protagonist, who wants to escape
the mediocrity of his existence, decides to keep a diary which will record
his struggle for transcendence. Though he often claims to be writing strict-
ly for himself, he is constantly thinking about possible readers: his wife,
GeraM Prince - The Diary Novel 479

his mother, his colleagues, his boss. He gradually finds out that noone is
willing or able to understand his ambition, that noone constitutes a good
reader. He himself comes to the point where he cannot read what he
writes, lie terminates his diary.7 Similarly, for a long time, the protagonist
of Le Noeud de vipkres addresses himself to others and his tone, his style
and the kind of details he discusses in his diary vary according to the
reader he has in mind. At first, Louis writes for his wife Isa; soon, he
decides to write for his illegitimate son, Robert, then for all of his children;
it is only very slowly that he comes to understand fully that he should be
writing mainly for himself, that he is his own most important reader.
But an even better example is provided by Junichiro Tanizaki's The Key
in which Ikuko keeps a diary that she knows is frequently read by her
husband and writes it in such a way as to influence his behavior, transform
him and, finally, kill him: " I was trying to lure him into the shadow of
death. I wanted him to think I was gambling my own life, and that he
ought to be willing to risk his. From then on my diary was written solely
for that purpose."
The narrative techniques resulting from the journal form, though they
characterize diary novels to a certain extent, do not therefore set them
apart from all other fiction. What makes a diary novel unlike any other
kind of narrative is, rather, a theme - or, more precisely; a complex of
themes and m o t i f s - which may be more or less important in a given
diary novel but which is present in any work considered to be represen-
tative of the genre. I am not speaking of such topics as loneliness, authen-
ticity, loss of self, quest for self or affirmation of self, which are so prom-
inent in many fictive (and non-fictive) diaries but are also found in
many other works. I am speaking of the theme of the diary, the theme of
writing a diary and its concomitant themes and motifs. Why does the
narrator begin keeping a diary? Roquentin states, in La Nausde: " T h e
best thing would be to write down events from day to day. Keep a diary
to see c l e a r l y . . . I must tell how I see this table, this street, the people,
my packet of tobacco, since those are the things which have changed.
I must determine the exact extent and nature of this change"; the pro-
tagonist of Anne Marie Selinko's Ddsirde notes: " I am starting my future
history tonight, because I'm so excited I can't get to s l e e p . . . " ; and Sala-
vin, in Journal de Salavin, starts writing as part of a remarkable attempt to
transform his life totally and become a saint. What does writing mean to
the narrator, or come to mean to him? To Roquentin, it becomes a way of
giving time a shape, of conferring a rhythm upon a formless and seem-
ingly interminable present; to Doctor Glas, it represents a proc~s-verbal
of the moral trial he is going through, a cross-examination of his interior
voices; to the young writer in The Journal of Arthur Stifling, it slowly
turns into a prose version of his poem " T h e Captive"; to Johannes Vig,
in Martin Hansen's The Liar, it is a higher road for reaching truth through
deceit; and to Jacques Revel, in L'Emploi du temps, it proves to be an
480 Gerald Prince - The Diary Novel

effective defense against the malefic powers of Bleston. Where and when
exactly is the diary written? Doctor Glas says, in his August 2 entry for
example, that he is at his writing-desk, sitting by an open window, with
the moon shining and the lamp burning "in the lee of the night-breeze
which with its gentle hush fills the curtain like a sail"; and Tchulk~iturin,
in The Diary of a Superfluous Man, a gives us periodic time and weather
reports and, in one instance, states: "Things are bad. I write these lines
in bed. The weather has changed suddenly since yesterday. To-day is
hot - almost a summer day." What does the diary look like? The prota-
gonist of Richard Haydn's The Journal of Edwin Carp writes: "I fear the
actual paper is of rather poor quality. Already I notice that some of my
heavier pen strokes are beginning to blur. However, this minor flaw is
more than compensated for by the exquisitely hand-tooled leather jacket
which Maude has made for i t . . . " ; and the mad old Tokosuke Utsugi
notes: "I write in large characters, with a brush, so that my script will be
easy to read." a How did the diary come to be published? Charles Pooter
tells us, in the Introduction to The Diary of a Nobody: "Why should I
not publish my diary? I have often seen reminiscences of people I have
never even heard of, and I fail to see - because I do not happen to be a
'Somebody' - why my diary should not be interesting. My only regret is
that I did not commence it when I was a youth"; in The Red Rock
Wilderness, Duncan Colquhoun decides to publish his son Andrew's
private journals in order to put and end to fantastic stories circulating
about him and clear his name; and we know from an Editors' note to
La Nausde that Roquentin's diary was found among his papers and pub-
lished without alteration.
The origin of the diary, the circumstances of its publication, its physical
shape, its dialectical relationship with the narrator: some or all of these
problems, as well as others related to them (what is the diarist's state of
mind as he writes? how often does he reread his own entries? where does
he keep his diary?), some or all of these problems are examined t o a
greater or lesser extent in every work considered to be a diary novel. Even
in novels like Susan Chitty's Diary of a Fashion Model, Chaim Bermant's
Diary of an OM Man, or Octave Feuillet's Journal d'une femme, in which
the journal form seems to be adopted mainly for convenience, such themes
and motifs crop up. The very beginning of Journal d'une femrne, for in-
stance, rather comically shows how well-established certain conventions
of the diary novel are: "Properly speaking, the one signing these pages is
only their editor. How they were entrusted to him, how he was authorized
to publish them, what slight modifications were imposed upon him, these
are so many questions which will disturb the reader very little if this auto-
biography interests him, and even less if it does not"; and in the remain-
der of the narrative, especially towards the end, many topics associated
with the diary novel are exemplified.
Rather than constituting a unique subset of the novel simply because
Gerald Prince- The Diary Novel 481

o f the narrative techniques it uses, the d i a r y novel - like the detective

novel, the gothic novel, o r the historical novel - really acquires its specifi-
city f r o m certain themes, certain motifs, certain concerns with which it
can be strongly linked. Indeed, it is the interest t h a t every d i a r y novel
shows, to a greater or lesser degree, in the question o f h o w w o r d s on a
series o f pages b e c o m e a certain t y p e o f text, it is this interest which
explains - in part, o f course, a n d a l o n g with o t h e r p r e o c c u p a t i o n s _10
the p o p u l a r i t y o f the d i a r y novel in the twentieth century. F o r it is p e r h a p s
the m o s t o u t s t a n d i n g characteristic o f twentieth century literature t h a t
m u c h o f it b e c a m e m o r e a n d m o r e explicitly c o n c e r n e d with the m e a n i n g
o f the writing o f a text. Doctor Glas, Journal intime d'A. O. Barnabooth,
Le Noeud de vipdres, Journal d'un curd de campagne, La Nausde, L'Emploi
du temps, The Diary o f a Mad Old Man, Quaderno Proibito, Stiller, The
Liar are so m a n y twentieth century masterpieces e x a m i n i n g - aside f r o m
a variety o f o t h e r topics - the significance o f the w r i t i n g o f a d i a r y a n d
the circumstances s u r r o u n d i n g it. It is also, I think, this interest which
p a r t l y explains w h y the d i a r y novel seems to have lost, in the p a s t few
years, m u c h o f its attractiveness to so-called serious writers, p a r t i c u l a r l y
in F r a n c e where it was once so alive. Since a r o u n d 1960, " w r i t i n g t r a n -
sitive" has been r e p l a c e d b y " w r i t i n g i n t r a n s i t i v e " as a privileged
l i t e r a r y t h e m e ; writing a diary, writing a specific k i n d o f text has been
r e p l a c e d b y writing.

University o f Pennsylvania GERALD PRINCE

Notes
1. An earlier version of this article was presented at the Miami University Compara-
tive Literature Symposium (November 3, 1973).
2. See, among others, Mich~le Leleu, Les Journaux intimes (Paris, 1952); AIain
Girard, Le Journal intime (Paris, 1963); Gustav Ren6 Hocke, Das europiiische Tagebuch
(Wiesbaden, 1963); and Peter Boerner, Tagebuch (Stuttgart, 1969).
3. Bertil Romberg devotes an interesting chapter to the sub-genre in his Studies in
the Narrative Techniquesof the First-Person Novel (Stockholm, 1962). See also G6rard
Genette's suggestive remarks in Figures III (Paris, 1972), pp. 229, 234, et passim.
4. On the narratee, see Gerald Prince's "Notes Towards a Preliminary Categorization
of Fictional 'Narratees'", Genre, IV, 1 (March 1971), 100-106; "On Readers and Lis-
teners in Narrative", Neophilologus, LV, 2 (April 1971), 117-122; and "Introduction ~t
l'6tude du narrataire", Podtique, no. 14 (avril 1973), 178-196.
5. See FiguresllI, p. 229.
6. The term is Jean Rousset's.
7. On this subject, see Gerald Prince, "Salavin et ses lecteurs ou Le roman du
roman", The French Review (forthcoming).
8. Turgenev's The Diary of a Superfluous Man is, of course, a short story rather than
a novel. I refer to it because it is a remarkable work and because I wish to indicate that
my comments on the diary novel would apply to short stories or novellas exploiting
the diary form: Journald'un homme trompS, Le Horla, or The Journal of a Parish Clerk.
9. Whereas so many narratives try to conceal what has been called, by Roland
Barthes and others, the pratique de l'~criture, the diary novel frequently stresses even
its more superficially trivial aspects.
10. For instance, and most importantly perhaps, the variations in time of an indi-
vidual's malaise vis4t-vis himself, the Other and Existence.