On Diary

Spiritual Journals in France from the Sixteenth to the Eighteenth Centuries

SPIRITUAL JOURNALS IN FRANCE FROM THE SIXTEENTH TO THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURIES The research I am sketching out here broadly covers the intersection between two sets of texts: 1) the “journal” or “diary” form, defined as a series of dated traces; that is, a practice of making notations extended over time: a single notation, such as Blaise Pascal’s Mémorial dated 23 November 1654 “from about ten o’clock until about midnight” is not, properly speaking, a journal; 2) spiritual writing, which deals with the relationship between man and God. My approach may appear reductive, forcing the immense range of spiritual writings (think of Abbé Brémond’s dense series of volumes on L’Histoire littéraire du sentiment religieux en France) onto the Procrustean bed of the “journal” form. However limited it may be, this approach is nonetheless illuminating because it addresses two important problems: a) from the point of view of spiritual writing: to what extent can writing a journal assist in the salvation of the soul? Does the diary belong to God or to the Devil? Is it advisable for a person to keep one? Does the journal have to be monitored; that is, guided by a directeur de conscience or spiritual director? And what should it contain? As we will see, the answers to these questions vary depending on the religion and the period. b) from the point of view of the diary and its history: what role has the spiritual journal played in the development of journal-keeping practice in general? Should it be considered the origin of the practice? Should it be considered the origin of the personal diary that appeared throughout almost all of Europe in the late eighteenth century? If religion did influence the rise of private writing , did it do so through the spiritual journal or some other avenue? In other words, is the personal diary the child or the cousin of the spiritual journal? Did the historical factors that transformed the idea of the individual and individual expression in the late eighteenth century also have an effect on religion and ordinary writing practices? “Les journaux spirituels en France du XVIe au XVIIIe siécle.” From “Problématiques de l’autobiographie .” Spec. issue of Littérales 33 (2004): 63–85. 62 On Diary I am deliberately turning the question in all directions. Georges Gusdorf and others have charged me with downplaying the religious origins of writing about the self. Sensitive to that charge, I wanted to look at the evidence and assess the situation. This leads me to add a third intersection in defining the subject of my study: 3) “in France”: in the vehement notes to his fine book, Lignes de vie, Georges Gusdorf also criticized me for not knowing German. That is one of my great regrets. But his remark led me to think that perhaps my lack of sensitivity to the religious origins of autobiographical writing owed as much to a national situation as to personal bias. Try looking in a library from the classical period (sixteenth to eighteenth centuries) for a spiritual journal written in French that was published at the time: you will find none. Even if you look for one that was published later, you will find very few. But in Germany or England, the situation is quite different. Of course, one might wonder whether it makes sense to use national language as a criterion for the classical period. Surely what matters in this field are distinctions between religions and religious orders? Large orders such as the Company of Jesus are international organizations, true enough. But it is also true that national cultures exist. In my field of study—the personal diary —there is a significant difference between France and England (to take a country whose language I speak). France lagged behind by over half a century: practices that were common in English from the mid-seventeenth century on did not catch on in France until the second half of the eighteenth century. So here I am at the intersection of these three areas: the diary, spiritual writing, and France, on the threshold of research that has just barely got under way and that I am perhaps not the best qualified person to carry out. Not only do I not speak German, but even in French, spiritual writing often strikes me as a foreign language. I confessed this earlier, when I was studying the diaries of young girls in the...