Despite its title, Tagebuch is not a diary. Instead it is a notebook of texts compiled over several years, including Frisch’s exercises in writing and thinking: impressions of particular days, attempts to clarify a question that occupies him, imaginative sketches and even fairly advanced scenarios for literary works. Frisch remarkes: “Die Form des Tagebuchs, so wie ich es für mich entwickelt habe, [...] ist eigentümlich für den Verfasser meines Namens” [“Diary form, as I have developed it for myself, is peculiar to the author bearing my name”]. Following the early serialisations of his diaries in the leading newspaper, Neue Zürcher Zeitung, and in Blätter aus dem Brotsack [Leaves from the Knapsack, 1939], Frisch began to develop a unique sub-genre which was fresh, functional and modernist. It provided a frame for...
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Citation: White, Alfred D.. "Tagebuch 1946-1949". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 25 July 2005 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=13976, accessed 05 December 2025.]
