Diaristic writing in the face of pain Eugénie’s Journal and Maurice de Guérin’s Cahier vert

This article brings together two diarists from the early nineteenth century. It studies the relationship between writing and pain in Eugénie’s Journal and Maurice de Guérin’s Le Cahier vert. It shows how diaristic writing is affected by suffering and it verifies which of the two texts is more marked by pain and in which the expression of pain is more vivid. The fact that the diary is kept by a man or a woman adds value to the expressiveness of pain. The indication of the virtues of writing puts literature on an equal footing with medicine, the pen becoming a therapeutic tool in its own right.