Writing for the Self: Ripellino’s Notebooks from the Sapienza Archive

This article examines the genre of personal writing, looking in particular at notebooks that contain scholarly annotations and intimate reflections. Research focuses on the specific case of Ripellino’s notebooks, written during his trips to the Soviet Union (from 1957 to the mid 1970s), and now kept in the Fondo Ripellino (Archivio del Novecento, Sapienza University of Rome). Contents of the notebooks are analysed in the frame of Ripellino’s creative and scholarly activity. Here, the fluidity of Ripellino’s writing allows for certain transits and passages between genres and styles, to a degree that cannot be found in other texts by the author, representing a form of life writing in the broadest sense (autobiographical note, simulated diary), with little regard for chronological accuracy (specific dates and places are rarely indicated), and emphasising impressions and sensations over information. The study highlights several linguistic units and descriptions that are repeated almost verbatim in the complex system of refractions comprised by Ripellino’s texts, offering a fascinating perspective on his writing style. The result is an investigation of the notebook as a fragmentary genre, able to give support to the scarcely explored field of the writing for the self in personal papers.