The notebook as intellectual form

Benjamin, Arcades Project

Leopardi, Zibaldone

Valéry, Cahiers

Weil, The Notebooks of Simone Weil

These are acts of creation, not just acts of compilation (though they the work of the latter can inspire the former), and they depart from the diary, from the personal journal, in their analytical and intellectual focus. They are more records of thinking than records of personal life. On the act of compilation, see also: commonplace book, formulary, gnomologium, hypomnema (include Erasmus’s Adages, Francis Bacon’s Promus, Locke’s A New Method of Making Common-Place-Books).

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