Diaries, Journals and Notebooks
Leonardo da Vinci’s notebooks have probably brought him more
renown with academics than the fifteen paintings he made in his life time. Filled
with investigations of anatomy, botany, geology, mathematics and inventions for
bridges, flying machines, war machines, submarines, musical instruments, they continue
to be relevant today. A small hand bound notebook was always tied to his belt
at all times, ready to jot down ideas, observations and a to-do list.
The pocket notebook was also a fixture of many writers,
scientists, soldiers and statesmen, including Darwin, Hemmingway, Beethoven and
George Lucas. It came to be seen as a masculine, accessory.
Maugham kept a writer’s notebook in which he wrote sketches
of people he met who might make it into his next novel. Frieda Kahlo, Paul Klee
and Picasso’s notebooks, like that of most artists were not only part of the
creative process but were also a “friend” in difficult personal times. Picasso
said “Painting is just another way of keeping a diary.” The diaries of Anne Frank,
Samuel Pepys, Captain Scott, Nelson Mandela are considered literary as well as
historical texts.
The diary is a more personal form of a notebook. Since it is
rarely intended to be shared, it can be candid, expressive and unfiltered. Oscar
Wilde famously said “I never travel without my diary. One should always have
something sensational to read in the train.” Virginia Woolf observed that
writing for no audience – writing just to write – is great practice. “It
loosens the ligaments.” Walter Scott writes “What is a diary as a rule? A
document useful to the person who keeps it. Dull to the contemporary who reads
it and invaluable to the student, centuries afterwards, who treasures it.”
Coming across old diaries and letters has a breath-catching
intimacy no conversations or anecdotes can live up to. One enters, as if by
invitation, into the personal life of the diarist. It’s a startling experience
to see life through another’s eyes. Diaries and letters have increasingly
become primary sources not just for sociologists and psychologists, but for
historians revising the politically motivated histories of the past. Despite personal biases and a degree of
opacity, events recorded can be compared and authenticated. A letter from my
father’s uncle starts with how painful his legs were and then, at the turn of a
page, is a harrowing description of the massacre during the annexation of
Hyderabad Deccan after the Partition of India.
The Mughal Emperors, clearly aware of making history, recorded
every aspect of their lives, from Babar to Aurangzeb. Babar would sit in his
tent after a day of battle writing his diary revealing a sensitive poetic mind.
Through his diaries we learn about the people and landscape of 16C India, the
Hindu ascetics of Bagram, that there were rhinoceros, and the first account of
the famous Kohinoor diamond. His grandson,
Akbar, not only chronicled his own reign, he honoured the founder of the empire
he inherited, by commissioning the translation of Babar’s
memoirs from Chagatai into Persian, and inviting an array of the best miniature
artists to illustrate it.
Queen Victoria’s private journals kept from the age of 13 to
her death in 1901 are an unusual insight into the personal emotions of a ruler -
"Here I sit lonely and desolate, who so need love and tenderness”.
Pillow books or zuihitsu,
written by women in medieval Japan, diaries written by the wives of European colonists
and early American settlers are valuable accounts of everyday life. A detailed diary
kept by Mrs. R. C. Germon, during the 1857 siege of Lucknow is a vivid account
of the impact of the Mutiny on besieged British residents. Ghalib’s letters of the
same period present the devastating impact on Dehli’s local residents.
Libraries keep large sections of diaries and letters for
researchers. The ancient texts of India
are not in a time frame and it is difficult to separate fact and myth. We turn
to the journals of travelers such as Nearchus 326–324 BC, Megasthenes 302 -298 BC, the unknown author of Periplus written
somewhere between 1-3 AD, Fa Hsein 399-414
AD, Xuanzang in the 7th century, Al-Beruni in the 11th century, Marco Polo in
the late 13th century, and British and French accounts from the 17th
– 20th centuries.
The genre of aap beeti
or autobiography, is widespread, but filtered in a way diaries are not. As we mark
70 years of the partition of India, there has been a flurry of interviews of the
partition generation on both sides of the border. Pakistan itself has gone
through dramatic changes in its seven decades that have not been officially recorded
except for the dry facts of dates and events. While we still have three adult generations
from the inception of Pakistan, diaries need to be collected of each era and
memoirs written. The Citizens Archive of Pakistan has begun the process, but it’s
a slow process. We all have old photographs, elders in the family, letters and diaries.
Even the younger generation need to realize they are making history, and value
their experiences and observations by recording them.
Durriya Kazi
July 21, 2018
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