Sketch about the intimacy of the self in autobiographical fictions

Abstract

We undertake a short research of how it is possible to penetrate into the intimacy of the self of a cultural man, how to reveal, if it can be revealed, the existential man, using some writings belonging to the biographical genre, namely diaries. In the case of the critic Eugen Simion, we primarily use an endoscopy of the Parisian journal, Time of Living, Time of Confession (1977), and the German journal, The Defiance of Rhetoric (1985), and sometimes we also use involuntary confessions sprinkled in other writings, such as Conversations with Petru Dumitriu (1994). We try to answer the question in what measure the subject matter of these journals is based, in Michel de Montaigne’s saying, on the revelation of the singularity or the authenticity of the self, because the quoted philosopher says “the matter of these essays is myself”. And, in the case of Eugen Simion, the man who built for himself a cultural destiny, can we still detect the material of the self on which the cultural man was built?

Keywords

• biographical genre
• confessive writings
• the critic eugen simion
• the philosopher m. de montaigne
• cultural man