Espace confiné et imaginaire littéraire : le journal intime d’écrivain en temps de crise

Abstract

This article examines a contemporary illustration of the journal d ’écrivain en temps de crise (writers’ diaries in times of crisis) through a series of articles published online in the magazine Télérama at the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic and entitled: Journal de confinement [Lockdown Diary] (March 23– April 10, 2020). In my analysis, I address writing strategies and topics specific to this particular form of diary: the pathos of sadness; the authors’ status as connaisseurs and observers; writing shaped by a proliferation of flashbacks and cultural references; the topos of a daily life viewed as a spectacle; a new perspective on the time-space relation, one where temporality becomes subservient to spatiality (since the diarists concentrate essentially upon intimate space). Textual analysis of the corpus shows a significant change in what is considered as a primary factor leading to the writing of a journal: the legitimate will for isolation articulated by lonely, “rétractile” writers. As proven by the authors of the Télérama articles, in times of crisis a writer’s diary testifies to the authors’ will to expand their perspectives, and their acute, conscious perceptions of the surrounding space.