Abstract

Desire, at a given stage of your life […], for a book that you’ll put Everything in: the Whole of your life, your sufferings, your joys, and therefore, of course, the whole of your world and perhaps the whole of the world.This paper explores the autobiographical desire for a complete, comprehensive recording of a life. As long ago as 1762, Diderot wrote in a letter to his love, Sophie Volland: How is it, I asked myself, that […] nobody has the courage to keep for us an exact register of all the thoughts running through his mind, all the movements of his heart, all his sorrows, all his pleasures, and countless centuries will pass without us knowing whether life is a good or bad thing […]....