How to improve your journaling with the help of famous diarists.
In the past few years, journaling and self-authorship gained popularity among literary enthusiasts as well as people who took an interest in psychology, psychoanalysis, or self-development in general.
I would like to tell you about the best journals I’ve read in recent years and how they can help you improve your self-discovery journey.
- Witold Gombrowicz- Diaries (1953–1969)
Fleeing Poland shortly after the start of the Second World War, Gombrowicz settled in Buenos Aires, Argentina.
He started keeping a diary in order for him to record his reactions to the literary critics’ responses to his novels and the political climate which was ever-changing in Europe of the 1940s. In this Diaries you can find commentaries on philosophy, the role of a nation in the development and growth of an artist, the hypocrisy of the emigree writers of the Polish scene, the love-hate relationship between Gombrowicz and Poland, his admiration and disgust for certain novelists and much more.
Gombrowicz’s approach can help us to take the banalest aspects of life and turn them into studies about ourselves by taking a deeper look at how we react to day-to-day life. By recalling aphorisms and quotes, ideas, and characters from other novels, Gombrowicz shows us the power of our mind when tested with the upmost difficult questions on subjects we have dwelled on.
2. Gustave Flaubert- Memoirs of a Madman
Written by a young Flaubert, this short piece shows us that his famous nickname of “martyr of style” was well deserved.
Flaubert used to spend a week or more working on just one page, and by judging his Memoirs, we can have a glimpse of what he was about to become.
Memoirs deal mainly with the turmoil of being a young man, trying to balance morality, religion, and the lack of both, all the while committing oneself fully to the literary arts. Flaubert portrays with grace what youthfulness can do if it is wasted and how to prevent such a tragedy.
If you were not necessarily impressed by Madame Bovary, I would urge you to take a look at Memoirs and I promise you will have a completely new understanding of Flaubert as a novelist.
3. Karl Ove Knausgaard- My Struggle
Probably the most famous one in here, My Struggle fascinated the literary scene for the past 10 years.
Written without any inhibitions, but also with a lot of shame, My Struggle spans over 3,500 pages, detailing a family man’s everyday life, including the most boring and the most painful aspects of it.
Going from page to page, you can find a paragraph about making tea and another one about the death of a family member. From raising children and dealing with their tantrums, to descriptions of nature.
Knausgaard’s easy flowing prose combined with a thoughtful expression shows us why we all can produce high-quality literature only if we pondered about our lives in a different manner. By rising above the self, we can have a more clear view of what it means to be us, therefore making it easier to explain to others.
Whatever style or approach you choose, journaling will help you answer questions about yourself you’ve been asking for the longest time. Whether it is laboring on finding “the perfect word” or going on about your daily life, journaling is a solution that holds a lot of therapeutic power.
