José Saramago - Último Caderno de Lanzarote

"Two reasons led me, more or less consciously, to write a diary: firstly, the circumstance of having left my country to live on this distant island; secondly, the need, which I had never experienced before, to 'retain' time, to force it, so to speak, to leave as many signs of its passage as possible.

'Lanzarote Notebooks' is like a long letter sent to those who remained on the other side, but it is also a way (vain, useless, perhaps even desperate…) of pretending to prolong life through an obstinate 'writing down' of the days.The 'Notebooks' are not a laboratory, although they are not lacking in reflections on the literary 'making'; they are not a record of world events, although comments on current affairs abound; they are not a collection of data for a future biography, although they continue to say what I do and what I think." Like all diaries (like all writing), the "Lanzarote Notebooks" are a narcissistic exercise, but, contrary to popular belief, Narcissus doesn't always like what he sees in the mirror in which he contemplates himself…»