This article considers self-portrait and inner journey, strategies created by Michel de Montaigne, in two representative XXth century Colombian writers: Fernando González and Hernando Téllez. It is intended to examine strategies in self figuration and narrative about the own life, in order to show the confluence of a tradition related to diaries and confessional writing, intersected by criticism, meditation, essay and fragment. Finally, the article tries to indicate, in both cases, how important self figuration is, in order to quest for aesthetic dimension of Colombian essay.