Diaries, like authors' letters, move from the private sphere into literature: sometimes alongside, sometimes instead of actual works. Milán Füst began his early diary notes with the injunction: "To be burned in the event of my death!" Yet after a few years he considered his notes to be the main work of his life, similarly to Ferenc Karinthy, who published the parts he found most interesting.
The Petőfi Museum of Literature holds the diaries of the legendary diarists of Hungarian literature, Géza Csáth, András Fodor, Milán Füst, Zsigmond Móricz, László Cs. Szabó and Miklós Szentkuthy, and even the manuscript diaries of Sándor Márai and László Nagy are held as deposits, while diary-like records, periodic diaries and calendars can be found in almost all bequests.
The exhibition shows many aspects of writer's diaries, their types, the booklets they were written into, for how many years they were written, how they ended up in the museum and how history turns into private history in them.
Curator: Andrea Borbás
Graphic design: Andrea Csuport
Designer: György Mihalkov
