Fragments of a Journal

The book is not a classic diary: undated notes, fragments of memory, dreams and reflections run into one another. The first section is made of childhood memories of the village of La Chapelle-Anthenais in the Mayenne region. Ionesco lived there in the mill house with Baptist Baba, Jeannette Ana, Marie and Maurice: Baptist Baba, in a blue shirt with a whip around his neck, would harness his mare to the cart; in the army he shot off his thumb with a rifle and, although the military court acquitted him, it was suspected he had done it on purpose; the grandfather could not read or write and made notches on a board for his accounts.

The memories are made of small, vivid scenes: the school prize-giving, the teacher Monsieur Guene saying «don't shout so much, Ionesco», American soldiers billeted in the village living among the villagers for a winter, the singer who spoke good French and Jeannette Ana saying «but he is still an American!». When his mother takes the boy away to Paris — autumn, rain falling on the way to the station — Baptist Baba crushes a tear with the tip of his finger. «After that I could never see Jeannette Ana or Baptist Baba again».

The strongest part is the thought about time and death. At four or five Ionesco thought that he would grow old and die, at seven or eight that his mother would die; in La Chapelle-Anthenais he was «outside time, in a kind of paradise»; at eleven or twelve he began to sense «the end», and at fifteen or sixteen only the past remained and a tomorrow that had already begun to be «past». He tries to find the «present» again: two days in a new place equal thirty years spent in the same place, and speed is «hell itself».

The next section, «Taking Part in Ideas, Recognition», speaks of theatre. Ionesco writes that Brecht wants the audience not to be moved but to grasp the idea, and says every partisan writer wants to «capture» the reader: whoever is on the side of a party puts in his work a villain to punish and a good one to reward. He himself says «I am not a party man, but I am all of them» and chooses to treat the person by taking him out of class, race and «social sheath». Then comes a confession of one who cannot escape the thought of death and was happy only when drunk.

• The notes are not chronological: childhood memory, thought and essay pass into one another
• Small personal details (the thumb, notches on the board, a tear) make the memories vivid
• The thought of time and death is repeated as the main line of the book
• When writing about himself the author keeps a plain, half-confessional tone