Category: Pepys Diary erasure project

Starting January 1, 2013, this is a daily exercise in erasure poetry based on the 17th-century Diary of Samuel Pepys. Why this work? Its language is admirably concrete, with recurring words and turns of phrase shaped by the exigencies of Pepys’ original shorthand. In thought and content it stands at the beginning of the modern era: the first truly confessional piece of literature by a man equally fascinated by religion and science, and whose curiosity encompassed everything from music-making and theater to mathematics, accounting, politics, fashion, and carnal pleasures. And last but not least, the 1899 Wheatley edition is available online in a website that is really a model for how to present literature on the web. It was my desire to read it day by day that led to this project, which I view not as erasure but as discovery—a kind of deep (mis)reading. Pepys was a sexual predator and an architect of British colonialism who personally profited off the slave trade, so any less than an engaged, critical reading of the diary, in this day and age, would be irresponsible. From a secret diary, these are the secret poems hidden even from the author himself.

I began compiling the erasures into free ebooks in 2017. Here are 1664, 1665, 1666, 1667, 1668 and 1669, and from my second attempt, here are 1660 and 1661.

Posted on by Dave Bonta

Twickenham

erasure of a page from Pepys' diary

[I went to Twickenham to sit
I went to Twickenham to think
alone in a closet
I played on my flageolet
till the bell-man came by with his bell
and left my wife and the maid a-washing still.]


Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Monday 16 January 1659/60.

Posted on by Dave Bonta

Nothing day

erasure of a page from Pepys' diary (Photoshop eraser tool version)

~OR~

erasure of a page from Pepys' diary (MS Word blacklighting version)

[Nothing
going to dinner to hear news to his house to my house to the coffee house
going on.]


Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Saturday 14 January 1659/60. Two weeks in, I thought I’d see what this would look like if I used the eraser tool in Photoshop instead of the highlighting tool in Word. I like it better, but it’s more time-consuming to generate, so I might end up sticking with the “blacklighting.”