Page 3 - The Thief's Journal

The Thief's Journal Jean Genet
This page copyright © 2004 Olympia Press. http://www.olympiapress.com
Journal du Voleur was first published in 1949 in a privately printed edition of four hundred copies. A slightly modified version was published in the same year by the Librairie Gallimard. The present translation follows the original and only complete text, though it incorporates a few footnotes which the author added to the later edition.
Copyright
1954 by B. Frechtman and The Olympia Press, Paris
FOREWORD
Not all who would be are Narcissus. Many who lean over the water see only a vague human figure. Genet sees himself everywhere; the dullest surfaces reflect his image; even in others he perceives himself, thereby bringing to light their deepest secrets. The disturbing theme of the double, the image, the counterpart, the enemy brother, is found in all his works.
Each of them has the strange property of being both itself and the reflection of itself. Genet brings before us a dense and teeming throng which intrigues us, transports us and changes into Genet beneath Genet's gaze. Hitler appears, talks, lives; he removes his mask: it was Genet. But the little servant−girl with the swollen feet who meanwhile was burying her child — that was Genet too. In
The Thief's Journal the myth of the double has assumed its most reassuring, most common, most natural form. Here Genet speaks of Genet without intermediary. He talks of his life, of his wretchedness and glory, of his loves; he tells the story of his thoughts. One might think that, like Montaigne, he is going to draw a good−humored and familiar self−portrait. But Genet is never familiar, even with himself. He does, to be sure, tell us everything. The whole truth, nothing but the truth, but is it the sacred truth. He opens up one of his
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