Tentația jurnalului intim
The temptation of the diary

Summary/Abstract: This dossier examines the marginal status and gradual rehabilitation of diary writing within Romanian literature, a genre long regarded with suspicion or outright disdain by critics and readers alike. From G. Călinescu’s categorical rejection of the intimate diary as a minor, narcissistic form to Eugen Simion’s influential attempt to legitimize it as a complex literary and cultural phenomenon, the text traces the fluctuating prestige of diaristic writing. It highlights several historical waves of Romanian diary literature: the interwar boom associated with the Criterion generation; the near-erasure of confessional writing under totalitarian regimes; the cautious revival in the 1980s; and the post-1989 proliferation of journals addressing trauma, exile, creation, illness, and existential crisis. Far from being a secondary or parasitic genre, the diary emerges here as a fully autonomous literary form, capable of preserving lived time, articulating subjectivity, and signaling cultural maturity through self-reflection and introspection.

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