“The thing is to free one’s self: to let it find its dimensions, not be impeded” journaled Virginia Woolf in A Writer’s Diary, published posthumously in 1953. Writing a diary is certainly an opportunity which many writers, for example Sylvia Plath, Susan Sontag, and Franz Kafka, have taken to express their more intimate and indeed unimpeded thoughts, opinions, and feelings. Equally, reading a writer’s diary is important for gaining insight into the historical context in which a writer lived, deepening an understanding of their motivations and intentions behind their fiction, and humanising the authors themselves. Diary writing- and reading- is crucial to grasping the idea of the “free self” Woolf sets out to find through diarising.
Among the many authors with diaries, Sylvia Plath stands out as a diarist whose personal reflections attract the attention of readers willing to understand the inner struggles behind her tragic story. One reader recalls the “mesmerising descriptions of what depression actually feels like”, whilst journalist Jacqueline Rose implores “no potential writer trying to haul themselves from bed, drudgery or distraction into writing should miss [reading the journals]”. The ability that diaries such as Plath’s have to educate readers on the real, lived experience of depression is powerful. Diaries, as the innermost, private thoughts of a writer, are significant tools in connecting readers with authors; one reviewer writes that “every word of hers is like a punch in the gut of realisation… her ability to describe feelings I feel yet didn’t realise is so beautiful.”
Arguably, Plath’s poetry similarly details her experiences of poor mental health: how are diaries any more significant than poetry? Perhaps the answer lies in Virginia Woolf’s A Writer’s Diary, edited and compiled by her husband Leonard (against her wishes) in 1953. An avid diarist, Woolf began documenting her life at the age of 15 and continued semi-consistently until just four days before her death in 1941. Most intriguingly, her diary focused not only on the mundanity of her everyday life but also her scribbled thought processes and spontaneous contemplations on how her diary writing should be. Woolf imagines “something loose knit and yet not slovenly, so elastic that it will embrace anything… I should like it to resemble some deep old desk… in which one flings a mass of odds and ends”, something in which she could write “as the mood comes or of anything whatever”. Before her death, Woolf ordered Leonard to destroy her documents; if he had, we would have half the inspiration that Woolf has provided us with today- but we would also understand her intention behind her diary writing much better. To Woolf, diaries are an entirely personal space for expression, to “free one’s self” to “not be impeded”. Published poetry, however, is by nature performative. Attention is paid to the aesthetic via intentional literary devices.
Reading poetry can offer us certain insight into an author’s feelings, but it cannot shake the fact that often an element of performativity is overhanging. Reading diaries, particularly Woolf’s, remind us of the importance of writing for writing’s sake, to ignore the imaginary judgemental reader looking over our shoulders as we journal.
Illustration by Neve Healy