In 1958, an 18-year-old girl spent the summer at a Catholic camp, where she had her first sexual experience. Years later, now a writer, she wrote about that time:
“I didn’t write a single word that summer. That is what’s unforgivable. Not the lack of resistance, not the fact that I went there but that nothing remains. NOTHING. This void is the shame of my life.”
This is a quote from A Girl’s Story by Annie Ernaux, French writer and Nobel laureate in literature. Her documentary-style prose gives personal experience the weight of collective meaning: the intimate becomes political. Ernaux insists that to not write is to betray. To leave it unrecorded is to let memory disappear.
In my personal life, I tend to think the same way: if I don’t write, I feel like I lose a part of myself. You can read my diaries about being an egg donor here. I managed to put this part of my life into words. How precise that is, I can’t say but at least some fragment of memory remains. Still, I know there’s so much that words can’t capture.
This missing fragment, a blank page, a lost part of experience became the starting point for this essay. Why do we keep diaries? Why do we preserve these texts, despite their intimacy, awkwardness, even pain? And who is it really addressed to?
How did the diary emerge?
The diary as we know it – individual narrative with a chronological structure – only became possible when there were accessible writing materials and a regular, measurable understanding of time. Paper and ink were originally used for spiritual or bureaucratic purposes, not personal reflection. So, we may say private writing is a by-product of modernity.
In 18th-century Europe, printed calendars with blank spaces for notes began to appear. This marked the beginning of dated writing: from the Latin diarium – a daily record. At the same time, Enlightenment values, rising literacy, industrialization, and growing individualism shaped a new way of experiencing the world.
People were thrown into rapid change. Writing became a way to anchor reality, to turn it into a story. In Robinson Crusoe, Daniel Defoe’s character apart from surviving on an island, creates a calendar, tracks time, and writes down what he eats and builds.
Why do we keep diaries?
The Diary as mirror, ritual, or confession
Philippe Lejeune, one of the key theorists of autobiography, conducted a study in 1988 in which he asked people to describe their diary-keeping experience in one word. Some described it as a mirror, a cigarette, an island, a ritual, a confession, and so on. Behind these descriptions, one can understand the different purposes of keeping a diary.
Anyone who’s ever tried to start a diary knows this struggle: how to begin. Many start by recounting their day, some address a fictional reader, others begin by explaining that they are, in fact, writing a diary.
In my opinion, a diary isn’t pure stream of consciousness, but maybe an attempt to shape the chaos of experience. In that sense, it’s a daily ritual of self-witnessing: a cigarette, a sentence, an island.
The Diary as a way not to disappear
Between the 1st and 19th centuries, people’s idea of “self” slowly changed from something like a ghost or spirit, to a soul, then to an independent person, someone who expresses themselves, and finally to a concept shaped by social or biological forces. (Peter Heehs, Writing the Self: Diaries, Memoirs, and the History of the Self)
People might write diaries because they want to be remembered as individuals, or to capture what life was like in their times, and their role in it. For that, they need to feel a sense of “I”.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau, in his Confessions (published in 1782), said:
“I am alone. I know my own heart and I know people. I’m made differently from anyone I’ve met; I dare to say I’m not like anyone else. Whether nature did well or badly by me can only be judged by reading my confession.”
Within this framework, the diary becomes a tool for “being oneself” and “holding on” to that self.
The Diary as confession
From a young age, Leo Tolstoy kept dozens of notebooks. And in them, he is a man constantly at war with himself. He documented his weaknesses, bad habits, failures.
“Ivanov came, talked to him too long (cowardice). Koloshin (Sergei) came to drink vodka, didn’t send him away (cowardice). Asked Ozerov something stupid (habit of arguing) and didn’t say what I needed to (cowardice). Didn’t go to Beklemishev’s (lack of will). At gymnastics, didn’t climb the rope (cowardice), and didn’t do one exercise because it hurt (softness).” (Leo Tolstoy, Personal Diary, 1851)
Many personal diaries take on this form: not as self-love, but as self-discipline. The diary isn’t always a space of acceptance.
Do we write only for ourselves?
At first glance, a diary is the most intimate kind of writing: no editor, no witnesses. Just you and the page. But in practice, diaries almost always imagine a future reader: real, hypothetical one or even your future self.
One of the fundamental questions about diaries concerns their status as truthful accounts. Are they honest confessions, or are they carefully constructed narratives?
Philippe Lejeune’s concept of the “autobiographical pact” suggests that the diarist promises the reader a truthful self-portrait. However, diaries are often not intended for public consumption at the time of writing, complicating this pact.
Anne Frank’s diary exemplifies this tension between authenticity and literary construction. It was written by a young girl hiding from persecution during World War II, a firsthand witness to injustice and fear. Yet, this diary is also a literary work: Anne Frank revised and edited her writings after hearing a radio broadcast calling for wartime diaries to be submitted for publication.
This is precisely why Anne Frank’s diary is often seen as a fascinating literary text, but not entirely authentic. A reliable diary edition is one where whole sections might be cut, but the original wording is preserved.
And yes, one might say Anne Frank wasn’t trying to present herself as an “ideal person”, so apparently she was “authentic”. But not everyone wants to be remembered as perfect. Some want to be remembered as witty, or as a deeply understanding girl, even if that image is shaped unconsciously.
“I know, I know what you’re going to say, Kitty! ‘Anne, are these really your thoughts? Do you really write this? You, of whom the ‘upstairs people’ said such dreadful things? You, who suffered so much injustice?’ Yes, Kitty, this is me!”
(The Diary of Anne Frank, 1947)
In philology, it’s called the “double code” of writing: one code for yourself, another in case someone reads. This is why diaries often appear ambiguous: we encrypt, we explain things to ourselves that we already know, we leave gaps, because maybe we might be read.
The last page
In her novel A Girl’s Memoir, Ernaux writes:
“This is the last time my body belongs to me.”
A diary can be read as a quiet way of resisting time: it preserves what would otherwise be lost. Each entry becomes a testimony not only of life itself, but also of one’s perspective on it. Perhaps this is why diaries are so valuable – they hold onto the fragile sense of self, which changes, but never repeats.
