Dear Diary...

Diarists are chroniclers of their time. From Samuel Pepys to Joe Blogs with his homespun blog musings, almost everyone has attempted to keep a diary ­ with a varied level of success, of course. Yet it’s the simple medium of the diary that manages to captivate generation after generation to create, publish, read and treasure. Samuel Pepys, Anne Frank, Charles Darwin, Queen Victoria, William Blake, Robert Frost, Sylvia Plath, Leo Tolstoy, Virginia Woolf and Henry James are all regarded either as prominent figures due to their diaries, or those who had achieved literary recognition and their diaries further elaborate upon their work, motivation and inspiration.

Mae West once added this gem to the lore of the diary: ‘I always say, keep a diary and someday it’ll keep you.’ Anyone who has dabbled with a diary or blog will know this to be true. If you keep it up, you’ll soon become consumed with a passion for documenting the quotidian. Fancy yourself as the next Franz Kafka? Well, don’t follow his lead verbatim, such as his famous June 1st diary entry ‘Wrote nothing.’

Diaries fascinate, and the admirable recent novel, The Assassin’s Cloak provides evidence of this through compilation of entries from 170 diarists by Irene and Alan Taylor. Quoting the profound and the obscure, in Spanish translations, Italian translations and a vast array of translations from other languages.

In fact, many of the most influential diaries work most effectively in their English translation. Take the World War II Battle of Attu diary of Imperial Japanese Army surgeon, Paul Nobuo Tatsuguchi. The translation of the diary from Japanese has been quoted extensively by Western historical sources of the battle, and like Samuel Pepys and Anne Frank, serves as an insight to this particular period in history as well as the individual’s personal involvement.