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Journals: Then and Now
By Madonna Dries Christensen
Keeping a journal is as old as time. Anyone, of any age, can do it. The repository can be as ordinary as a Big Chief school tablet, a spiral notebook, or a fancy monogrammed leather volume. The musings can be articulate and detailed or rambling and free-flowing, with little attention to grammar or punctuation. Writers might carry a journal in which to scribble images, character sketches, scenes, and dialogue to be used later.
The diversity of journal keepers includes celebrities and the homeless, cloistered nuns and monks, intellectuals and raging fanatics, octogenarians and little girls penning romantic secrets to Dear Diary and hiding the books from the probing eyes of siblings and parents. The most famous of these youthful writers is, of course, Anne Frank.
Other diaries kept during World War II have surfaced over the years, documenting the Holocaust. Petr Ginz, born in Prague to a Jewish father and non-Jewish mother, was sent to the Jewish ghetto Terezin (Theresienstadt) in 1941, at age 12, and later to Auschwitz, where he perished in a gas chamber at age 16. During his time in Terezin, Petr published a weekly underground magazine, Vedem (we lead). The content was recited in the Boys’ Room on Friday evenings, with one boy standing guard outside the door. Petr also wrote novels, and painted and kept a diary. Before leaving Prague for Terezin he wrote:
28. November 1941 (Friday) At school in the morning. The Mautners, who live on our floor, have to go to Terezin with thousands of others. Reach, Ervin Mautner, and many others. Mr Mautner went to the Jewish community, to ask whether it isn't a mistake (he is already fifty years old and sick). In the late afternoon, we went for a walk in the city across Charles Bridge, Klarov, and Belcredi street.
29. November 1941 (Saturday) With Popper by the slaughterhouse in the morning; at grandmother’s in the afternoon. Mr Mautner has been to the community, apparently it was no mistake. So, he has to go to Vystaviste as soon as Monday December 1. In a month, the entire Mautner family will have to follow him.
24. December 1941 (Wednesday) My father, Uncle Milos, and Slava received a notice, to be ready when it snows to clear it away. At grandmother's in the morning; took a walk with Popper and Eva in the afternoon.
In another entry, before leaving Prague, Petr noted what he had packed in his luggage: I took a stock of paper (including this notebook), linoleum, small knives for lino-cutting, and an as yet unfinished novel entitled The Sage from Altai, that at that time already comprised 260 pages. I wanted to finish it in Theresienstadt. Tenderly I packed it with other items, and perhaps I shall be blamed that I feared for these items more than for all the other things
Petr’s diary continued through 1942. Years later, found in a house a man had rented, they eventually came into the hands of Petr’s sister, Eva, (later Chava Pressburger). She published the collection as My Brother’s Diary. She wrote in the prologue, “My encounter with Petr's diary and other notes he wrote in these books was very emotional. It preoccupied me for a long time. I sat thinking for many hours in our quiet home, the home in which my husband and I raised our two children and in which we today spend most of our time. In front of me lay notebooks, suddenly now at home with me too. From time to time I turned their pages, leafing through them. At other times, I only stared at them when a jumble of thoughts passed through my head.”
She added, “Publishing My Brother’s Diary gives me a certain kind of satisfaction. It contains a brief indication and perhaps testimony about the meaning of Petr's life. Here is his testimony about this horrible, wrenching period of time, written in his own words.”
Immigrants at sea recorded their journey, as well as ship’s captains, who kept detailed logs. John Winthrop, who in 1630 led a group of English Puritans to the Massachusetts Bay Colony, wrote in June:
Friday, 11. The wind still SW., close weather. We stood to and again all this day within sight of Cape Anne. The Isles of shoals were now within 2 leagues of us, and we saw a ship lie there at anchor, and 5 or 6 shallops under sail up and down. We took many mackerels, and met a shallop which stood from Cape Ann towards the Isles of Shoals, which belonged to some English fishermen.
Pioneer men and women, trekking across the country by covered wagon, kept records. They revealed pleasure over ordinary occurrences as well as excruciating grief over extraordinary events happening on the barren plains and windswept prairies and in deep hollows in the mountains. Scores of these writings have been the basis for fiction or have become a treasured part of family records. They are not only personal records, but a collective history of this country.
A Trip Across the Plains in ‘45 by Mrs. Burnett (nee Lucy Jane Hall)
My father, Lawrence Hall, was elected captain of our train, and we started on our way with thirty wagons and about fifty men.
A wedding occurred in our company. The bride’s cake was made with turtle eggs found in the creek. The event was celebrated by a dance on the grass under the stars.
Near Ft. Boise the Indians made an attempt to attack our train and stampede the stock, but failed through the prompt action of my father, who ordered the teams unhitched and the wagons formed in a circle with the tongues of each run under the wagon just forward, making a strong barricade. The oxen were put inside, each driver standing by his own team. The women and children were also inside by the wagons. All the available men were outside standing with guns drawn. The captain walked out alone toward the Indians with his gun in one hand and a white flag in the other. He motioned the Indians not to come any nearer or his men would fire upon them. The Indians turned and ran away as fast as their horses could go. They had fine horses. The men were nude and painted.
On June 13, 1805, Meriwether Lewis wrote in his journal:
My fare is really sumptuous this evening; buffaloe's humps, tongues and marrowbones, fine trout parched in meal pepper and salt, and a good appetite; the last is not considered the least of the luxuries.
Charles Chestnut kept a journal, in which he wrote:
May 29, 1879
It is the dream of my life to be an author! It is not so much the monstrari digito, though that has something to do with my aspirations. It is not altogether the money. It is a mixture of motives. I want fame; I want money; I want to raise my children in a different rank of life from that I sprang from. In my present vocation, I would never accumulate a competency, with all the economy and prudence, and parsimony in the world. In law or medicine, I would be compelled to wait half a lifetime to accomplish anything. But literature pays—the successful. There is a fascination about this calling that draws a scribbler irresistibly toward his doom. He knows that the chance of success is hardly one out of a hundred; but he is foolish enough to believe, or sanguine enough to hope, that he will be the successful one.
Genealogist Jean Reiners Johnson says: “I loved my locked diaries in the 1960s and it's wonderful still having them. There is a notation from when I first met Randy and how much I liked him, and many more sappy teenage pages of yearning and angst. There are little newspaper clippings and a couple of autographs of people who later became famous. (Freddie and the Dreamers, I think, and maybe Chad and Jeremy.) I saw them at the auditorium, and went backstage to meet them.”
Journals and diaries were once considered sacred, for the writer’s eyes only (unless found by a snooper). But privacy is not as coveted as it once was; we live in a tell-it-like-it-is society, an open confessional of cyber blogs and social networks.
Writer Garrison Keillor says this is not necessarily a bad thing. “The Internet is a powerful tide that is washing away some enormous castles and releasing a lovely sense of independence and playfulness … millions of people have discovered the joys of seeing yourself in print; your own words! the unique essence of yourself, your stories, your jokes, your own peculiar take on the world. Out there where anybody can see it. Wowser. Unfortunately, nobody is earning a dime from this. So much work, so little pay. It’s tragic.”
Tragic? That’s a strong word, but anyone who has been a perspiring writer for any length of time knows that it has always been true––so little pay. Nevertheless, I say welcome to the club. Write, write, write. A blog might contain the worst drivel ever written, but the writer has the right to expression, to be heard, to leave his mark. We who write online are not dominated by publishers who reject our work, or accept it and edit with a heavy hand and change the meaning of what was intended. Like journalists down through the ages, we are leaving a record of events and everyday happenings as we view it right now.