Illness and rewriting: the “business of writing” in Ricardo Piglia’s "Los diarios de Emilio Renzi"

Abstract

This article examines the effect of Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis suffered by Ricardo Piglia in the revision and rewriting of his diaries for their publication in Los diarios de Emilio Renzi. In addition to being a text addressing the relation between literature and illness and representing it, Los diarios de Emilio Renzi take the opportunity to interrogate their place of enuntiation, the writer’s profession, and the very act of writing a diary. Thus, the work builds illness as a place of enunciation. Piglia resignifies the diary as a genre  through a rereading of The business of living by Cesare Pavese and of the relation between diary and death. In this game of relations, Piglia proposes rewriting and illness as spaces where to redefine the ways of writing and a new business of living.