Abstract

French poet and writer Catherine Pozzi is a remarkable figure of the late 19th century and the period between the World Wars In 1893 at the age of 13 she won a little notebook from her grandmother and started a diarywriting practice she maintained until the end of her life except for a few interruptions This research stands at the intersection between intellectual history and literary studies It is focused on the role played by the castaway image developed by Pozzi as a self-reflexive construction in her diary As a reflexive and metaphorical image her castaway s wreck draws from three main motifs which are noticeable in her self-referential discourse the sadness of an ill-fated love affair with one of the most celebrated men of French intelligentsia namely Paul Val ry the impact of tuberculosis on her body and a frustrated intellectual vocation Based on Hans Blumenberg s views about metaphors and dialoguing with his theoretical construction I sought to understand how a self-referential statement acts on a discourse by resorting to the textual composition of a metaphorical image in order to be capable of representing the experience of a painfully stimulated conscience This image emerges as an intimate and unique element which can be interpreted as Pozzi s entries accept the wreck image as the reflexive form of a metaphorical destiny