The Diary of Anaïs Nin, Volume 3: 1939-1944

The Diary of Anaïs Nin #3

by Anaïs Nin, Gunther Stuhlman (Editor/Preface)

This candid volume from the renowned diarist covers her years of struggle, and eventual triumph, as an author in America during World War II.

Genres: Nonfiction, Memoir, Biography, Diary, Classics, Autobiography, Womens

348 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1969

About the author

Writer and diarist, born in Paris to a Catalan father and a Danish mother, Anaïs Nin spent many of her early years with Cuban relatives. Later a naturalized American citizen, she lived and worked in Paris, New York and Los Angeles. Author of avant-garde novels in the French surrealistic style and collections of erotica, she is best known for her life and times in The Diary of Anaïs Nin, Volumes I-VII (1966-1980).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ana%C3%...

Reviews

[Katie · Rating 3 out of 5]

This journal was written in New York after Nin had fled Paris and the Nazis in 1940. She doesn't though have much to say about the war, living as she seemed to do in an ivory tower. Now and again there was a brilliant insight but mostly I found this pretentious, a kind of self-conscious posturing on the part of Nin as if she was insecure about her status as a writer. Therefore, it didn't so much read as a journal as a kind of exam paper. Often she uses abstractions to express herself. She also came across as a bit vain about her generous nature and talent and seemed loathe to acknowledge any darkness or negativity in her character. This meant I didn't really learn much about her, except for how she wanted to be seen at face value. On the evidence of this I can't say I feel inspired to read any of her fiction.

[Rowena · Rating 5 out of 5]

“Night. The stars and the moon impassive, undisturbed, eternal. A little of their impassivity flows into me. They are consoling. They reduce the intensity and acuteness of human sorrow.” - The Journals of Anais Nin, Volume Three

I love reading diaries in general and Nin’s are probably my favourite. I love the things she values in life; meaningful relationships, art, literature, music, culture. And not to mention she is the most feeling writer; her rich inner life comes across very well in her writing.

Nin has moved back to the USA following the break of World War 2. Having to leave Louveciennes, a place that she loves, where she writes and knows people is not easy for Nin. She experiences culture shock in the States and finds it difficult to integrate. Her European-style writing isn’t well-received in the States; it’s considered too surreal and flaky. As a result, she finds it difficult to publish and ends up printing her own books with a printing press.

I think this may be my favourite volume of Nin’s journals yet. During the first two volumes, Nin seemed to me a sort of ethereal being; a superwoman even. In this volume she was a bit different, a bit more “real.” Perhaps it’s to do with her homesickness, the outbreak of war, and also age, which often comes with realization after all. In this case, it’s the realization that she’s everyone’s “mother”; people take and take from her (and I have to say she’s a bit of an enabler too), very few give back. It was so sad to see so many of her “friends” sucking her dry, Henry Miller included. Feeling under-appreciated and overwhelmed, Nin suffers from fatigue and illness:

“I fell into a trap because of my compassion. At what point does self-injury begin?”

I always find it fascinating to see the famous people Nin met and what she thought of them. In this volume she met Dali and Tennessee Williams among others.

Her exhortation of the artist in society is something I appreciate. A reminder that we all need art in our lives.

“To say that the artist is not serving humanity is monstrous. He has been the eyes, the ears, the voice of humanity. He was also the transcendentalist who X-rayed our true states of being.”

As always, beautiful and engaging writing. I read this diary in record time, considering how busy I am.

[Lolly K Dandeneau · Rating 4 out of 5]

I had read Anais years ago, but forgot to add it to Goodreads 'read' books. Some have speculated some of her 'journaling' was embelished but most journalists (or diary writers) always write to some audience (like Rebecca Mann wrote eons ago "reading my journals one would wonder at how great I seem", or something to that effect. I love Nin's musings and nothing I write will ever do Anais and her journals justice. Raw, painful, insightful... her journals cover everything. Like most people, my journals pale in comparison and my life seems unlived and small :) and yet, like her, many of us are afflicted with the disease of Diariest, it's a compulsion and why not? Why not? Like her, my journal too has become a part of my soul. All women should read Nin at some point in life, and hell- men should too. If for no other reason than to be entertained by her writing about famous men, some before they were famous. No one can accuse that she didn't put herself out there, and how many of us could be as vulnerable, without hiding behind some fictional character when we write?

[Luke · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5/5

The enormous difference between the relationships you need, and the one you deeply want. The need is created out of an accumulation of negativities, planted by traumatic experiences: fears, doubts, anxiety, dependence, weakness in certain realms, inadequacy, incompleteness. A certain relationship can remove the fear, calm anxiety, supply a certain completion, replace a loss, fulfill an organic insufficiency, lull an insecurity, supply a substitute love.
But it may not be the love one would want if free of all these negativities. A negative element dictates the choice, much as a climbing plant seeks a wall to rest on, and prevents a positive choice.

I don't read Nin for the sake of engaging with honest self-reflexive insight. However much she praises her own sensibilities when it comes psychoanalysis and introspection, comparing certain early pages of this volume of hers to certain later ones reveal her to be either a liar, a fool, a hypocrite, or merely someone being changed by a system that they scoff at the existence of. What I do read her for are the beautiful instances that she sometimes hits upon as represented above, as well as for the window onto history that diverges enough from the usual white male rendering of such to be fascinating, but is also familiar enough to not pose me too much struggle. This is a writer who regularly namedrops Proust and Artaud while praising her own acceptance of Black people (all the while complaining that Josephine Baker has been given a palace while she has not), but there are also certain names, largely of women, that seem to deserve as much, if not more, attention than Nin has gained herself in these quarantined days, if only judging from her portrayal of them and their works. Still, completely ignore social systems in favor of interpreting the entire universe on the basis of literary tropes one too many times, and even I will grow rather tired of being told that the solution to everything is to give Nin enough money to render her favorites into writing esteemed by the cultivated mainstream. I'm still bent on finishing the rest of the series for reasons of pleasurable expectation as well as practical completionism, but I'm glad that I won't be taking the next step till next year.

That is my essential reason for writing, not for fame, not to be celebrated after death, but to heighten and create life all around me.

We choose the verdict and then proceed to substantiate the fact.

If Nin had stuck to these principles all the way through to the very end where a critical review in the New York Times throws her into utter ecstasies, this would have made for a very good entry in her grandiose sprawl of a diary. As it stands, she observed the detrimental effects of poverty on her physical and mental wellbeing, commiserated with the Black communities in her area, amazingly benefited from having a woman be her psychoanalyst in place of extremely misogynistic men (not that women can't be misogynistic, but there was a certain humanizing sympathy that simply wasn't present in previous professionals), and then rushed back to her European aesthetics and cultural exotification and called it a day. Much as I appreciate her mentions of Mabel Dodge Luhan, Etsu Inagaki Sugimoto, Marija Jurić Zagorka, and Eibhlín Dubh Ní Chonaill, these are individual tidbits, not the kind of grand universal theory that Nin certainly thought she was convincingly espousing. Much as people who aren't white stop being such an oasis in an alienating foreign landscape when they go against her creative whims (publicly confusing Chinese for Japanese seven years after the Nanjing Massacre and accompanying imperial invasion and then believing herself an innocent target of hatred when a Chinese person doesn't approve), her sympathies only extend to the poor and/or workers, whether white collar or blue, when they don't think to question the status quo. As per usual, most of it was very pretty, and it was nice when Nin started waking up to the fact that her taking on too much of what we would call emotional labor (along with no small amount of unreciprocated financial offerings) was leaving her a nervous wreck. Too bad she still wasn't so badly off that she would have had to welcome the solidarity of other women, rather than pay another analyst to tell her how to artistically deal with her anxiety and depression.

The healthy they speak of is hygienic sterility. It rejects the experience of life, maturity, ripeness, risk. They refuse to evolve, ripen, alter, out of fear of death,. They try to cheat time and remain young by standing still and remaining virgin. They think that one remains young but not living, not loving, not erring, not giving or spending or wasting one's self.

Virginia Woolf, Richard Wright, Pearl Buck, Tennessee Williams, Stefan Zweig, Djuna Barnes, Carson McCullers, Rebecca West, Henry Miller, William Faulkner, Dorothy Canfield, Sherwood Anderson: all either live through or around these pages here, and those are only the ones that I personally recognized in one way or another. Some of Nin's estimations of these varied literary figures amuse (her being continually counseled to write another 'The Good Earth' was especially hilarious), others infuriate, and I'm not sure whether it's ironic or sordid that the writer she had no time for up until the moment said writer filled her pockets with rocks and walked into the Thames is the one who is evoked in this volume's concluding literary triumph. I've seen the phrase 'writing for writers' thrown about on one highfalutin list or another, and part of what keeps me coming back is this minute, unorthodox view of the owners of names that have become monolithic in my time, if not entirely equally across the board. Less a blast from the past than the sort of scintillation one gets from a pinewood scented candle that one lit and then forgot about, so I suppose this is my voyeuristic way of hobnobbing with the literarily famed and fortunate who, as is usually the case with the personages I esteem, are all long dead. So, Nin may not be the best fit for my own reading tastes, but who else is going to give me this kind of weird well-written window into the past?

Paul Rosenfield is writing his biography. He asked me: "Where do I begin?"
I said: "Name, first of all, all the wishes you had, and then tell which ones came true and which ones did not."

P.S. This is the period when Nin composed a great deal of the erotica that forms the mainstay of her reputation today, and I have to wonder, judging on the pedophilia that was left in, what was affronting enough to be left out.

[Marc Lamot · Rating 2 out of 5]

Interesting as a personal testimonial and a historical document. A free woman struggling with the new environment she finds in the United States. Contains erotic tales that she writes for money.

[Jess · Rating 4 out of 5]

Reading Anais Nin is always like a homecoming to me. I reconnect to my emotional self in a very strong way when I read her; I become more human and am able to access the beauty in the world more deeply. I love reading about her struggle and learning process to relate to the world as a woman and as an artist; how to understand the mode of describing what surrounds her and is inside of her in the diary versus the mode of creating for her novels. This is something I struggle with in my own writing and when I read Anais's work I feel more able to see the balance between living naturally and living artfully.

[valerie slaughter]

It’s become a tradition to start the new year off with Nin, and I wouldn’t have it any other way.

“Focus on the present. Accept a quiet happiness, the absence of fever.”
Ever the resolution I think. Happy belated new year everyone 🥂🪐💌📚

[Rosanna · Rating 5 out of 5]

Anais è a New York, ‘straniera di passaggio’ a causa della guerra in Europa.
La fatica del trapiantarsi, di ricostruire il proprio piccolo mondo interiore, in una situazione di povertà non solo materiale. Visse inizialmente un senso profondo di perdita, di ‘abbandono’, rilevando quanto l’America fosse un posto ‘freddo’, senza anima, tutta concentrata sul ‘sociale’ e non sulla coscienza individuale, sui fenomeni di massa e non sulla persona.
Anais è dunque ‘ferma’, impegnata a guardarsi intorno e a sognare il Vecchio Mondo, a soffrire per esso, senza cedere alla disperazione, nonostante la sua scrittura venga percepita come ‘malsana’, decadente, inutile.
Nessuno vuole pubblicarla e così crea la sua piccola tipografia e ritorna alla psicoanalisi.
Belle le pagine in cui descrive il lavoro manuale, il contatto fisico con ogni singola lettera, con ogni parola, ogni foglio di carta, la tenerezza che prova per la capacità di…maneggiare la letteratura, ‘costruendola’. Ne è appagata malgrado la fatica fisica ma è nel sentire la stanchezza del vivere che riscopre la propria forza e, affidandosi ad una psicoanalista, comprende chi è stata Anais fino a quel momento.
Mirabili le considerazioni sulla forza creatrice delle donne. Sfiora solo l’argomento ‘guerra’ non per indifferenza ma per allontanarla il più possibile da se stessa e da chi ama. Cerca di superarla creando, sopportando le lacrime ‘con grazia’. Anche lei un ‘cuorcontento’, sempre più consapevole del proprio ruolo e di quello dell’Artista e di come si fosse, fin lì, fatta prosciugare dai bisogni degli altri.
Carrellata di nomi, nuove conoscenze e amici storici, sempre i suoi ritratti poeticamente psicologici, dove forse si annida il non pubblicabile.
Nel 1944 la guerra non è ancora finita e il terzo diario termina con quella che sembra una nuova attitudine, Anais che parla ad Anais: “Chiudi per un attimo porte e finestre sul mondo, rivolgiti al diario per tutte le sue annotazioni musicali, e comincia un altro romanzo.” (pag. 431)
A me direbbe ‘spegni la TV, leggi un nuovo libro e cucina’.

“L’Europa è decadente. Devi essere felice di trovarti in un paese sano.”
“Quel che tu chiami decadente”, le risposi, “è il coraggio di sperimentare tutto della vita.”

“La costante relazione a delle figure (le masse) sembra distruggere il senso di umanità [...]”

“Se ereditiamo i tratti caratteriali perché non dovremmo ereditare anche i ricordi?”

“Se la gente conoscesse meglio la psicologia, avrebbe riconosciuto in Hitler un assassino psicotico. Le nazioni sono nevrotiche e i loro capi possono essere psicotici.”

[...] il simbolismo…è la chiave di un universo più vasto, del nostro inconscio, una chiave per le botole che danno sull’infinito.”

[...] il contatto sessuale…è il contatto con l’ignoto. C’è un orgasmo dell’anima stessa, una spinta terribile verso l’alto, che va al di là del corpo. Il corpo rappresenta l’unica barriera alla completezza, così torniamo ancora al corpo dell’amato per rinnovare questa ascensione.”

“Il linguaggio del sesso deve ancora essere inventato. Il linguaggio dei sensi deve ancora essere esplorato.”

[...] e mi chiesi se i nostri concetti artistici non nascessero da una fonte misteriosa come il disegno delle nostre cellule ematiche.”

“La fonte del potere sessuale è la curiosità, la passione.”

“Ci sono tanti sensi minori che si buttano come tanti affluenti nel fiume del sesso, arricchendolo. Solo il battito unito del sesso e del cuore può creare l’estasi.”

“Siamo crudeli quando qualcuno rifiuta di sostenere il ruolo che gli abbiamo assegnato. Giudichiamo una persona solo in accordo al suo rapporto con noi.”

[...] pare che l’uomo punisca sempre ogni tipo di crescita. così la donna che intende crescere si sceglie un uomo passivo e sottomesso che non interferisca con la sua crescita, con la sua evoluzione. Ma alla fine, la debolezza di lui la distrugge.

“Questa è una fase nell’evoluzione della donna. Ella vuole deviare la sua forza dalla maternità biologica verso altre forme di creazione.”

“E’ un problema profondo, difficile, per una donna essere in comunione spirituale con il cosmico. lo può raggiungere soltanto con una maternità universale oppure come sacerdotessa-prostituta.”


Mi fermo qui, troppe linee blu che avrò modo di rileggere, mi attende il quarto Diario.

[Pearl · Rating 5 out of 5]

Anais has officially entered her ivory tower era. I don’t mean that I think she’s spoiled. She’s escaped Paris and the Second World War, and obviously struggles, not just with impersonal America and a New York which never quite opens up to her, but with herself, her artist ‘children’ and with her place in this unfolding world.

Like her, I’m a little sorry she didn’t experience this transition into maturity in Europe. She says as much, citing America’s love for youth and tabula rasa, and longing for the appreciation that would have flowed to her and her friends, because of their age, in pre-war Paris.

Her diary as such becomes a curious mix of diluted and pointed. She has many false starts at community, meets a whole new cast of American friends, powerful and strange in their own ways, but none of them ever catch her in their shiny nets for long. She always retreats, back into Henry Miller’s letters from California, back into her printing press with her number one mystical son Gonzalo, and back into her diary.

She’s still an incredible person, and it’s wonderful fun sitting on her shoulder as she bypasses social conventions, and strikes like a silver arrow at the heart of the people she’s interested in. It’s fascinating entering social underworld, after underworld (high class orgies at fancy country houses, New England artist beachtown summers, the pressed-flower fragrant parties of the Haitians) with Anais as your eyes. The people she meets glow under her attention.

I will take a little break from reading her diaries now, but I’m already looking forward to volume four.

[sofi]

18/9/25. Lectura postpuesta hasta nuevo aviso. Anaïs, volveré, necesito encontrar el momento perfecto para encontrarnos.

[Lo Inga · Rating 2 out of 5]

Känner mig kluven

[Zoé · Rating 3 out of 5]

Plus qu'un trois mais pas encore un quatre
Bien qu'il y ait un bon nombre de passages qui m'ont mené à de bien belles fins, je peine à trouver un intérêt continu dans la lecture de ses journaux. Je peine à les contextualiser hors de leur prose.

[Rachel · Rating 5 out of 5]

"I need a medicine man who will solder my body and soul together, which splits at every separation. The doctor says it is the flu. He cannot see the body is empty, the fire is gone, I am a king without a kingdom, an artist without a home, a stranger to luxury, to power, to bigness, to comfort. I lost a world, a small human world of love and friendship. I am no adventurer, I miss my home, familiar streets, those I love and know well." (p.11)

"It isn’t good to stay too long in the polluted air of history." (p.27)

"America is in even greater danger because of its cult of toughness, its hatred of sensitivity, and someday it may have to pay a price for this, because atrophy of feeling creates criminals." (p.28)

"The nights lie around us like an abyss of sensual warmth, awakening the senses, almost palpable. They are like a caress on the skin. Wherever the earth can breathe, our bodies breathe, too, and the pulse of nature sets our own pulse beating." (p.43)

"I do not want to become hard and callous as other people are doing around me. They shrug their shoulders and don another layer of indifference." (p.48)

"If people knew more about psychology they would have recognized in Hitler a psychotic killer. Nations are neurotic, and leaders can be psychotic.
The ivory tower of the artist may be the only stronghold left for human values, cultural treasures, man’s cult of beauty." (p.49)

"We live in an era of destruction. Destruction and creation are sometimes balanced: great wars, great cultures. But now destruction is predominant. People die for systems that are masks for personal power and gain. Against them I close the door of a small but loving world, cells of devotion, care, work, to fight the disease and madness of the world. A small world has sometimes defeated great systems born of delusions." (p.50)

"Man is forbidden to concern himself with anything but the struggle for bread. If his capacity for dreaming, imagining, inventing, and experimenting is killed in the process, man will become a well-fed robot and die of spiritual malnutrition. The dream has its function and man cannot live without it." (p.52)

"When I gave a sensuous or poetic-erotic description, the client would complain, so I began to write tongue-in-cheek, to become outlandish, inventive, and so exaggerated that I thought he would realize I was caricaturing sexuality. But there was no protest." (p.58)

"I have an unfortunate weakness. I cannot bloom in the cold, the impersonal. So I withdraw." (p.66)

"Not all of us were intended to be tied down to the daily humdrum work. Some of us who rejected monotonous daily tasks developed a magnificent gift for living." (p.75)

"The symbolic interpretation is the only one which expands, enlarges the world, makes it boundless, illimitable. All others reduce it. Marxism is a reduction to the practical. Dreams, mysteries, myths, symbols, are as necessary as bread." (p.76)

"…we cannot live forever only in the actual and the present, or we stifle. The realm of the literal is a prison." (p.86)

"When one is uprooted, transplanted, there is a temporary withering. I always panic at this and think it permanent. I thought my life was shrinking." (p.87)

"I have a feeling that Pandora’s box is the mysteries of woman’s sensuality, so different from man’s and for which man’s language is inadequate. The language of sex has yet to be invented." (p.100)

"If you live as a poet the poet’s duty is to maintain his power to create the marvelous by contagion. If the poet maintains himself inside a dream and is able to communicate this capacity to others by osmosis, well and good. But he should not step out of this dream to preach, to meddle with political and practical constructions. Let him remain a poet and reveal magic coincidences and magic possibilities. The one who has the vision is not necessarily the one who knows how to actualize or embody this vision." (p.113)

"Here I get a feeling of invisibility. You walk by and everyone either does not see or pretends not to see." (p.127)

"Joy is a foam, an illumination. When I am dancing it seems to lie outside in an illusory garden. When I am in the garden it explodes from the house. When I am traveling it settles like an aurora borealis over the land I am leaving. When I stand on the shore I see it bloom on the flag of a departing ship. Joy is in the street fair, but when I arrive it folds its tent, tidies its costumes, starts its motor. Have I ever possessed it? At moments, a joy which came in the form of ecstasy, ecstasy in lovemaking, a soaring, a lyrical flight, joy at beauty, at desire, at creation. But it is rare and fleeting. I want a joy that takes simple colors, street organs, ribbons, flags, not a joy that takes one’s breath away and throws one into space. Not a joy like the mystic’s ecstasies or the poet’s ecstasies which lift one into an atmosphere others cannot breathe with you. There are so many joys, and I have only known the ones that come like a miracle and tough ordinary life with light." (p.134)

"I thought, with me he will be different. Knowing my struggles, he would not burden me. But he did. Furthermore, he demanded a harshness equal to his own. If I have to manufacture an equal hardness, then I do not want any friendship on such terms. I want to be able to trust, not live in perpetual self-defense." (p.169)

"When these things explode, one gets the shock of people who were asleep, for none of us were informed enough to predict or prepare ourselves. We were all caught sleeping, dreaming, loving, working." (p.176)

"…if the world loves war and destruction I won’t go along with it. I will go on loving and writing until the bomb falls. I am not going to quit, abdicate, and play its game of death and power." (p.177)

"I want to work. I have no time for battles. The relationship to handcraft is a beautiful one…You live with your hands, in acts of physical deftness…At the end of the day you can see your work, weigh it. It is done. It exists." (p.185)

"Discovering others’ weakness is not going to prove your strength. We all have weaknesses. The knowledge of human weakness is what gives friendship its humanity. You must seek another protagonist. I do not thrive on war. War to me is the greatest weakness of all." (p.186)

"Out in the world: fifty English soldiers bayoneted after surrendering. Women raped by the Japanese. Bali invaded, Java invaded. Paris bombarded by the English. India rebelling against the English. Ships torpedoed. Pictures of Polish dead, camp victims, slow starvation, torture, murders. That is the world outside.
And what can one do but preserve some semblance of human life, to seek the not-savage, not-barbaric forms of life." (p.188)

"In writing, my only discipline has been to cut out the unessential." (p.192)

"My underground success continues from person to person, fervent, secretly and quietly." (p.205)

"There is a fear that the development of women will make her less of a wife, a mate, that they might lose her. Frances is attentive to Tom’s writing, concerned over his struggles. Tom is not concerned with Frances’ expansion or gifts. The same with the other women I know." (p.215)

"He bound her femininity as the Chinese bound their women’s feet. He polished her language, her manners, her impulses." (p.227)

"And don’t tie it up, your work, with the idea that it is the solution to our economic ills. Do it for its own sake, purely. Enjoy it!" (p.232)

"The drama of woman’s development is very painful, for in each case the man seems to punish all growth. So the woman intent on growth chooses a yielding, passive man who will not interfere with this growth, with her evolution. But in the end, his weakness destroys her." (p.234)

"You encompassed too much. You had no sense of reality about the body- the limitations of the body." (p.239)

"Woman communicates with the cosmos, the cosmic, through the earth, through her maternal self. So you become the all-mother, giving out endlessly. You attempted the infinite with a finite human body." (p.240)

"The magic consists of the fact that the changes you affect within yourself in turn affect others.
Anxiety breeds anxiety, doubt breeds doubt, fear breeds fear. As you get free of yours, there is a chain reaction on all those around and close to you. Tranquillity is contagious. One only thinks of the contagiousness of illness, but there is the contagion of serenity and joy. Neurosis is the real demon, the only real possession, the real evil force in the world. And it is curable." (p.246)

"My imagination pulls me out into the night always. I want to be everywhere. Lying down, I am missing the heart of passion, drama and adventures." (p.254)

"“More light” is what Goethe meant to say. The atoms themselves are composed of light. How then, could there be more LIGHT? Yet you accomplished this miracle of which Goethe, dying, dreamed. You create more light by seeing more light." (p.284)

"There are very few human beings who receive the truth, complete and staggering, by instant illumination. Most of them acquire it fragment by fragment, on a small scale, by successive developments cellularly, like a laborious mosaic." (p.294)

"Stories are the only enchantment possible, for when we begin to see our suffering as a story, we are saved. It is the balm of the primitive, the way to exorcise a terrifying life." (p.296)

[ethan d · Rating 5 out of 5]

I've been reading this book for more than 4 months. Isn't that kind of crazy? I know a part of it is because I'm an inconsistent reader. Also, a part of my unconscious brain was probably doing everything in its power to stall me from finishing this book because it was one of the three books I brought with me to Europe in October. But I really did love it and I'm so happy that there is still so much of hers that I have yet to read. She was truly wonderful and so ahead of her time; I have so many lines and passages underlined and saved for later use, whatever those eventual uses may be. It is a diary but it can work as a novel; that's what I love about it so much. Sure, I'm not the fondest of Henry miller as a person—he is mentioned quite a bit—but he is still such an interesting character. I want to write something about these people. I want to modernize them. The relationships between her and her friends at the time are written about beautifully and are so, so fascinating; I want to experiment with what they would look like today.
I feel lucky while reading her.

[Andy · Rating 4 out of 5]

In this volume of Ms. Nin's memoirs she left her Parisian home for the culture shock of Manhattan (New Yawk! New Yawk!), hanging with Greenwich Village legends like Edgard Varese, queer poet Robert Duncan, actress Luise Rainer (Mrs. Clifford Odets!), Max Ernst, and the infamous Dr. Max Jacobson.

I was crushed to read that my poetry hero Kenneth Patchen was a rude prick and, by Nin's account, a worker's comp fraud in every classic sense of the word. If you can climb a fire escape and slip through a transom into Anais' flat to hustle her for cash, then his bedridden cripple act is a load of slacker bullshit.

The second half of the volume drags and even reduces itself to too many transcribed letters from Henry Miller and his love for California (I never knew). I still enjoyed this but there were times when I thought Nin lost her way in preparing a linear narrative of events.

[Sarah Foulc · Rating 5 out of 5]

To me she’s the best

[Juanma · Rating 5 out of 5]

• The very process of the diary is that of life itself, not devouring but nourishing, not transformed by art but passing through your body, your senses.
• "If you cannot control your demons, whoever or whatever they are, you do harm to others. I found the way to cage mine, that was all. Anger, jealousy, envy, revengefulness, vanity. I locked them up in a diary.
• All of us have our demons. Mine is caged in the diary. That may be why I so often dream that the diary is burning.
• We all have a thousand faces then, and stand on turnstiles for each person.
• Writing is part of living, part of the life function.
• An apt, accurate, perfectly carved phrase can give me the pleasure of a perfect harmony.
• He is tense and nervous. His black, fiery glance is more like a stab than a glance.
• I always feel ineffectual in political battles because it is a cynical world in which one can win only by force or trickery, and both are unnatural to me.
• Stories are the only enchantment possible, for when we begin to see our suffering as a story, we are saved.
• To breathe freedom I had to live close to my shadows, my primitive shadows. They lived it all out for me. Deeply, I approved them.
• It does seem a solid law, that the more one believes in oneself, the more the world believes in you.
• But now I must write to keep my small world together.
• I cannot talk I can only talk through my writing. I am mute in life. I must write. In writing I talk with others, I touch them.
• Like Proust, I shall have to manufacture some handicap so as to be able to write instead of being consumed.
• I am not a saint, I am neither good nor bad, neither are you good nor bad, neither was June good nor bad. We have demons, and we let them destroy us or we tame them."
• I am swift like an arrow, I move directly towards my aim.
• Very often I would say I rebelled against this and that. Much later it occurred to me to question this statement. Instead of rebellion could it be that I was merely asserting my own belief?
• In creation I would reveal what I am, or all the truth.
• It is not only the neurotic who lives by irrational impulses rooted deeply in his experience, but everyone.
• We live in an era of destruction. Destruction and creation are sometimes balanced: great wars, great cultures. But now destruction is predominant.
• People die for systems that are masks for personal power and gain. Against them I close the door of a small but loving world, cells of devotion, care, work, to fight the disease and madness of the world.
• "I can't see anything bad about you. Anxiety is not a flaw.
• "Luise, it's not that I don't see the demon in you, we all have one. It's that I believe it can be defeated, tamed, sublimated, used for creation.
• If I knew what to do politically, I would act. But being helpless in that direction, I create a space in which people can breathe, restore their faith and strength to live.
• "When the self is troubled it demands attention, as a fever does. You will not be able to forget yourself while the self is in distress.
• "In love nobody wins, Luise."
• Thus, some people appear to us like paper cut-outs, one-dimensional, voiceless, merely because they have a blank way of looking at one, because their eyes convey nothing, not even the reflective quality of a mirror, and one feels anonymous.
• What I cannot overcome is my own conviction that all one has must be shared, given, everything from physical to spiritual possessions, knowledge, discoveries, intellectual acquisitions, techniques, secrets...
• the changes you affect within yourself in turn affect others. Anxiety breeds anxiety, doubt breeds doubt, fear breeds fear. As you get free of yours, there is a chain reaction on all those around and close to you. Tranquillity is contagious, peace is contagious.
• One only thinks of the contagiousness of illness, but there is the contagion of serenity and joy.
• Martha Jaeger's face is all compassion. Her eyes are clear. She knits while I talk. She receives me at the door with playfulness, as if we were going to begin a game instead of a serious talk. She shows hesitations. She does not pretend to know all.
• I study my three gods of the deep: Dostoevsky (instinct-unconscious), Lawrence (instinct-unconscious), Proust (unconscious-analysis).
• As human beings we are rapidly losing our capacity for real feeling. We are growing cold and insensate even as we draw closer together.
• In a corner sat a Negro who seemed carved of wood. So definite his features, his stiff, straight grey hair cut like a brush, his lean, rigid figure. A voodoo figure, imposing.
• As a work of art A book is judged almost entirely by a person's need, and what people respond to is either a reflection of themselves, a multiple mirror, or an elucidation of their time, a concern with their problems, fears, or a familiar atmosphere which is reassuring by its familiarity.
• His skin is the color of coffee with much milk and a touch of gold. His mouth is full, soft and sensuous. His hair dark and softly waved.
• She tried to dress me like a lady, to formalize my hair. I let her, as if I were a doll, knowing I would soon return to my Bohemian freedom.
• In a Chinese shop I bought a Japanese paper parasol which I wear in my hair. So delicately made, with colored paper and fragile bamboo structure. It tore. I repaired it with tape.
• My wanderlust has quieted down. The near has become the marvelous. My vision, arranged to observe only the distant, focused on the immediate.
• I feel at times as if I were living in a Kafka nightmare of closed faces, silence, inexpressiveness. People do not reveal themselves, they do not seem even present. I miss the warmth and flowering which creates bridges.
• When the artist is forced to enter the immediate present, he loses his own peculiar perspective which enables him to connect and relate past, present, and future.
• To say that the artist is not serving humanity is monstrous. He has been the eyes, the ears, the voice of humanity. He was always the transcendentalist who X-rayed our true states of being.
• There are all the preparations for birth, the preparation for the poem, for the novel; they are announced, about to be written, but never take form.
• You will be told that what I write is confused, without order, and I will tell you that my book is not concerned with the problems of art but with the problems of this world, with the problem of life itself, yes, of life itself.
• You must from now on, be more than one, many people, as many as you can think of....
• Everything negative should die. Jealousy as the negative form of love, fear the negative form of life.
• I write every day. I wrote about the Rue Dolent, Pedrito, the clubfooted shoemaker who loved to watch people walking by his cellar shop. He could see only their feet. Pages on Paris life. Atmosphere. I do not know yet where they are leading me.
• The studio is A-shaped, and flooded with light. Next to my bed, I have a bookcase filled with books on one side, and on the other a table I bought in an antique shop. It is painted with scenes from Spanish history, and the top of it is like a tray with handles of wrought iron. Two lanterns are stuck at each end.
• What is happening in the world is monstrous. Just as people are learning the use of gas masks, I feel I have to wear a mask of oxygen-giving dreams and work to keep alive the cells of creation as a defense against devastation.
• If people knew more about psychology they would have recognized in Hitler a psychotic killer. Nations are neurotic, and leaders can be psychotic.
• Gonzalo has not been caught in the great machine of political ideologies which sacrifices individual lives for theories that pass, crumble, change, and are corrupt at the core.
• Against hatred, power and fanaticism, systems and plans, I oppose love and creation, over and over again, in spite of the insanity of the world.
• At Dorothy Norman's formal dinners I meet many important people, but the conversation is always an ideological argument. People do not give of themselves. It is all impersonal and social.
• But for Gonzalo the solution to all problems lies outside. I go to the other extreme and blame myself for everything and never consider myself a victim of anything but my own weaknesses.
• Dreams, mysteries, myths, symbols, are as necessary as bread.
• Face this suffering, for all the real suffering can save us from unreality. Real pain is human and deepening. Without real pain you will remain the child forever.
• We are all seeking to live in the present, to find our life in the present. We have forbidden each other to talk about the past or to live in the past.
• I love the full expressiveness, the giving to others of what most of us cannot manifest.
• I begin to look at everything that happens as a fascinating drama, a tale happening to someone else.
• In the face of death, one asks oneself invariably: Did I see enough, hear enough, observe enough, love enough, did I listen attentively, did I appreciate, did I sustain the life?

[Lavon · Rating 5 out of 5]

A beautiful soul.

I read Volume I (1931-1934) awhile back and first got a glimpse of Nin. Her relationship or friendship or however one wants to describe it with Henry Miller was very platonic but deeply invested emotionally in the first volume. I also believe June, Henry’s wife at the time, played a vital part in that. Age as well. In Volume III (1939-1944), you witness Nin and Henry’s understanding of each other through a series of letters and visits. You see how the two don’t pay attention to each other’s negatives. They appreciate each other for themselves. Always willing to go the extra mile for each other. But that was also a common trait with Nin and the people that surrounded her. She overlooked people’s faults and would give them her last dollar.

At one point in the diary, she is asked to write erotica but minus the feelings, emotions, love, etc. A special request made by a paying customer. You can see during the process of her writing these stories how painful it was on her. Love making without the love. She later on, after a few stories, decides to write and tell the individual that she no longer can provide such service because it is essentially detrimental to her writing and whole purpose of living.

A lot more is packed into this novel than what I’ve given. But a very well written book to say the least.

[Gresi · Rating 5 out of 5]

Tutti sognano ma non ricordano, non ricordano quel mondo di ghiaccio e di calore bruciante. Essi vivono soltanto nelle morti di una grigia insonnia.


Di Anais Nin scrissero:

“ Creatura alata che soffre di quella vena allucinogena tipica dei surrealisti le cui immagini trasmettono qualcosa, fungono da dimora di segreti inossidabili”:
Ciò che più mi ha colpito di questa frase fu la capacità veritiera di mettere d’accordo gli eccessi, le stravaganze di una certa estremizzante vita bohemiana con il bisogno di eccezionalità d’una élite borghese educata, colta, aperta, liberale. Giunta nella mia vita con ammirazione, magnetismo, coinvolgimento, vittima di deliqui passionali e stilistici che si inseriscono come diapositive in un album di esperienze di vita i cui colori hanno svariate sfumature.

Evidentemente tali sfumature di cui parlo non dedicano allo studio del sesso più attenzione di quel che era già stato intavolato nei diari precedenti e in qualche altro romanzo dell’autrice, ma in una feroce e vacua perdita di sensi - in mancanza di qualcosa che possa appagare definitivamente - nessuno prima di Anais Nin mi travolse con tale impeto. C’è da dire che, consapevole delle tematiche che trasudano altri suoi testi, sono stata spronata e messa alla prova. In una manciata di giorni non ho potuto approfittare della possibilità concessami, mettendomi alla prova. Come? Non leggendo, quanto ascoltando. Ascoltando quella voce dolce, sensuale, non ancora del tutto libera ma virtuosa, che mi ha condotta in una New York segreta, velata, protetta, intima come una stanza. Disegnata all’intimità che alleggerisce ogni coscienza, disapprovando l’interesse di un individuo per la sua crescita e il suo sviluppo. Il mondo esterno era arenato in una storia interminabile di onori, coincidendo con l’amore e la tenerezza del cuore.

Il diario, sussurro di un anima appassionata, funse da gridi di dolore della stessa autrice per lasciarsi sfuggire la vita umana per mania di perfezione e schizofrenia. Diari che divengono antiromanzi in quanto si divertono con forza crescente nella rielaborazione del suo vissuto, nel calore creativo della creatività come terapia alla nevrosi. Scrivere come esporsi o specchiarsi dinanzi al proprio IO. Fagocitando ogni cosa, rappresentando una storia in cui chi legge avrebbe potuto giudicare con gli occhi di chi scrive, ma ciò che se ne ricava non sono altro che tanta sofferenza, la creazione come fantasia. Qualcosa di effimero ma tattile che è legato indissolubilmente alla psicoanalisi poiché rimedio universale utile per qualunque malanno. Il passato si scontra con un processo pianistico, cioè audace e intenso, proiettato in un luogo in cui si tende a costruire una sua identità visiva, poetessa che caritatevolmente ha saputo vedere la violenza a distanza, non così vicina all’abdicazione quanto sfuggendo alla vita pur di sentirla.

Mi sono persa in un mondo apparentemente così piccolo ma gigantesco, così umano e pieno di amore e amicizia, avventura a cui è mancata la sua casa, la sua famiglia. Il suo relazionarsi col mondo esterno avrebbe annichilito o rafforzato il suo IO a seconda degli improvvisi e bruschi dilemmi esterni, tra cui intercorre una sorta di opacità un’insieme di esistenze che sembrano esserne del tutto privi. La Nin fece di ciò sintomo, compreso intimamente e attraverso cui è possibile comprendere la massa e la sociologia. Da una mancata conoscenza dell’essere umano, così isolato e unico, le relazioni umane sembrano atrofizzate, la creazione di un mondo materialista in cui l’artista entra in comunicazione col prossimo affinché doni alcuni significati. In questo caso, recuperare l’emozioni del genere umano, partendo da se stessa e creando nuove gioie in armonia con un certo contrappunto emotivo.

Brillando di drammaticità, con qualcosa che è in contrasto con le sue esperienze, inquieta ma esaltata da ricordi acutissimi e dal desiderio di poter rivivere ogni cosa, questi diari donano una visione lucidissima, tessono arazzi ricchi di scene d’amore, letti spessi da trapunte piumate che accolgono sussurri, una certa eloquenza fisica. letti che dirigono a un’orchestrazione dei sensi e ispirano un rapporto armonioso, contrapposto a elementi umani e musicali. Registrare il mondo, sostituendolo non come una semplice immagine quanto forma fisica in cui il sesso ha un ritmo insistente, l’amore è un’emozione, uno stato d’animo colorato, ricco di aforismi, assiomi, variazioni, in cui l’anima avrebbe virato verso qualcosa di oscuro, ossessivo.

Il capitalismo aveva sottratto l’immaginazione, il sogno, poichè laboratorio dell’inconscio dove la psiche esiste e procrea e dove la natura intima dell’uomo può creare e vivere, questa terza raccolta di diari non divine solo congiunzione fra anime quanto epidemia fra artisti, espediente per guardarsi dentro, in cui l’esterno è lontanissimo da qualunque congiunzione. Soggetta ad uno stato di psicoanalisi che assolve e dissolve le allucinazioni, i mondi costruiti della Nin hanno a che fare con dissolvenze false, sovrastrutture che ristabiliscono la vita a seconda di ciò che è più umanamente semplice. Da tale analisi inevitabilmente ne sono uscita guasta, condizionata da problemi che effettivamente non mi appartengono ma che ho avvertito come miei, spinta a raggiungere una certa libertà, una crescita maggiore, non raccomandando la rivoluzione dei sensi quanto spingendo l’uomo ai limiti del combattimento. Una maggiore fusione di vita, fantasia, sogno, azione che scorrono all’unisono e donano qualcosa di vivo. Divorante, estraniante, ammaliante, immenso che nella sua piccola forma di distruzione ha nutrito la mia piccola anima, ha trasformato l’arte come forma possibile ed espressiva. Con l’aura lucente di una donna che, nonostante sia trascorso qualche giorno, acceca i miei occhi e che conserva il suo potere meraviglioso nel contagio di parole che presto o tardi hanno finito per fagocitarmi. Rinchiudermi in una bolla di sogno in cui ho potuto comunicare per osmosi, esaltata dalla sua profonda ispirazione, la negatività abbattuta, la sofferenza soppiantata dalla realtà, navigante di una chiatta in cui ho circumnavigato l’infinito.



La poesia è un processo di evaporazione e distillazione. Raggiungere la quintessenza è raggiungere il significato più profondo di una storia.

[Gresi e i suoi Sogni d'inchiostro · Rating 5 out of 5]

Tutti sognano ma non ricordano, non ricordano quel mondo di ghiaccio e di calore bruciante. Essi vivono soltanto nelle morti di una grigia insonnia.

Di Anais Nin scrissero:
“ Creatura alata che soffre di quella vena allucinogena tipica dei surrealisti le cui immagini trasmettono qualcosa, fungono da dimora di segreti inossidabili”:
Ciò che più mi ha colpito di questa frase fu la capacità veritiera di mettere d’accordo gli eccessi, le stravaganze di una certa estremizzante vita bohemiana con il bisogno di eccezionalità d’una élite borghese educata, colta, aperta, liberale. Giunta nella mia vita con ammirazione, magnetismo, coinvolgimento, vittima di deliqui passionali e stilistici che si inseriscono come diapositive in un album di esperienze di vita i cui colori hanno svariate sfumature.
Evidentemente tali sfumature di cui parlo non dedicano allo studio del sesso più attenzione di quel che era già stato intavolato nei diari precedenti e in qualche altro romanzo dell’autrice, ma in una feroce e vacua perdita di sensi - in mancanza di qualcosa che possa appagare definitivamente - nessuno prima di Anais Nin mi travolse con tale impeto. C’è da dire che, consapevole delle tematiche che trasudano altri suoi testi, sono stata spronata e messa alla prova. In una manciata di giorni non ho potuto approfittare della possibilità concessami, mettendomi alla prova. Come? Non leggendo, quanto ascoltando. Ascoltando quella voce dolce, sensuale, non ancora del tutto libera ma virtuosa, che mi ha condotta in una New York segreta, velata, protetta, intima come una stanza. Disegnata all’intimità che alleggerisce ogni coscienza, disapprovando l’interesse di un individuo per la sua crescita e il suo sviluppo. Il mondo esterno era arenato in una storia interminabile di onori, coincidendo con l’amore e la tenerezza del cuore.
Il diario, sussurro di un anima appassionata, funse da gridi di dolore della stessa autrice per lasciarsi sfuggire la vita umana per mania di perfezione e schizofrenia. Diari che divengono antiromanzi in quanto si divertono con forza crescente nella rielaborazione del suo vissuto, nel calore creativo della creatività come terapia alla nevrosi. Scrivere come esporsi o specchiarsi dinanzi al proprio IO. Fagocitando ogni cosa, rappresentando una storia in cui chi legge avrebbe potuto giudicare con gli occhi di chi scrive, ma ciò che se ne ricava non sono altro che tanta sofferenza, la creazione come fantasia. Qualcosa di effimero ma tattile che è legato indissolubilmente alla psicoanalisi poiché rimedio universale utile per qualunque malanno. Il passato si scontra con un processo pianistico, cioè audace e intenso, proiettato in un luogo in cui si tende a costruire una sua identità visiva, poetessa che caritatevolmente ha saputo vedere la violenza a distanza, non così vicina all’abdicazione quanto sfuggendo alla vita pur di sentirla.
Mi sono persa in un mondo apparentemente così piccolo ma gigantesco, così umano e pieno di amore e amicizia, avventura a cui è mancata la sua casa, la sua famiglia. Il suo relazionarsi col mondo esterno avrebbe annichilito o rafforzato il suo IO a seconda degli improvvisi e bruschi dilemmi esterni, tra cui intercorre una sorta di opacità un’insieme di esistenze che sembrano esserne del tutto privi. La Nin fece di ciò sintomo, compreso intimamente e attraverso cui è possibile comprendere la massa e la sociologia. Da una mancata conoscenza dell’essere umano, così isolato e unico, le relazioni umane sembrano atrofizzate, la creazione di un mondo materialista in cui l’artista entra in comunicazione col prossimo affinché doni alcuni significati. In questo caso, recuperare l’emozioni del genere umano, partendo da se stessa e creando nuove gioie in armonia con un certo contrappunto emotivo.
Brillando di drammaticità, con qualcosa che è in contrasto con le sue esperienze, inquieta ma esaltata da ricordi acutissimi e dal desiderio di poter rivivere ogni cosa, questi diari donano una visione lucidissima, tessono arazzi ricchi di scene d’amore, letti spessi da trapunte piumate che accolgono sussurri, una certa eloquenza fisica. letti che dirigono a un’orchestrazione dei sensi e ispirano un rapporto armonioso, contrapposto a elementi umani e musicali. Registrare il mondo, sostituendolo non come una semplice immagine quanto forma fisica in cui il sesso ha un ritmo insistente, l’amore è un’emozione, uno stato d’animo colorato, ricco di aforismi, assiomi, variazioni, in cui l’anima avrebbe virato verso qualcosa di oscuro, ossessivo.
Il capitalismo aveva sottratto l’immaginazione, il sogno, poichè laboratorio dell’inconscio dove la psiche esiste e procrea e dove la natura intima dell’uomo può creare e vivere, questa terza raccolta di diari non divine solo congiunzione fra anime quanto epidemia fra artisti, espediente per guardarsi dentro, in cui l’esterno è lontanissimo da qualunque congiunzione. Soggetta ad uno stato di psicoanalisi che assolve e dissolve le allucinazioni, i mondi costruiti della Nin hanno a che fare con dissolvenze false, sovrastrutture che ristabiliscono la vita a seconda di ciò che è più umanamente semplice. Da tale analisi inevitabilmente ne sono uscita guasta, condizionata da problemi che effettivamente non mi appartengono ma che ho avvertito come miei, spinta a raggiungere una certa libertà, una crescita maggiore, non raccomandando la rivoluzione dei sensi quanto spingendo l’uomo ai limiti del combattimento. Una maggiore fusione di vita, fantasia, sogno, azione che scorrono all’unisono e donano qualcosa di vivo. Divorante, estraniante, ammaliante, immenso che nella sua piccola forma di distruzione ha nutrito la mia piccola anima, ha trasformato l’arte come forma possibile ed espressiva. Con l’aura lucente di una donna che, nonostante sia trascorso qualche giorno, acceca i miei occhi e che conserva il suo potere meraviglioso nel contagio di parole che presto o tardi hanno finito per fagocitarmi. Rinchiudermi in una bolla di sogno in cui ho potuto comunicare per osmosi, esaltata dalla sua profonda ispirazione, la negatività abbattuta, la sofferenza soppiantata dalla realtà, navigante di una chiatta in cui ho circumnavigato l’infinito.

La poesia è un processo di evaporazione e distillazione. Raggiungere la quintessenza è raggiungere il significato più profondo di una storia.

[Janet · Rating 5 out of 5]

The story continues as Anais moves to New York for the duration of the war. My favorite stuff in this is her friendships with women: the fragile and lovely actress Luise Rainier, Gotham Book Mart's brave individualist bookseller Frances Steloff, and the surrealist patrons, millionairesses Caresse Crosby and Peggy Guggenheim. I loved seeing how her frustration at publishing Winter of Artifice with a commercial publisher leads her, not to defeat, but to purchase a printing press and with assistance of the handsome, limpet-like Gonzalo, prints the book herself, which sells through the Gotham Book Mart to collectors--giving an object lesson to today's concern about the dematerialization of the printed work. Will the book itself go back to becoming a collector's item, finely printed and bound, made only for the few?
Love the wealth of thoughts about men and women, about prose and poetry... like a bolt of silk that just keeps unfolding.

[lucía linares · Rating 5 out of 5]

Una Anaïs madura, encontrándose, superándose

“Las noches yacen a nuestro alrededor como un abismo de calor sensual, despiertan los sentidos, llegan a ser casi palpables. Son como una caricia en nuestra piel. En todos los lugares donde la tierra puede respirar, también nuestros cuerpos respiran, y las pulsaciones de la naturaleza ponen en movimiento nuestro propio pulso. Las noches tropicales son hamacas para los amantes”

“Decir que el artista no está sirviendo a la humanidad es monstruoso. El artista ha sido los ojos, los oídos, la voz de la sociedad. El artista ha sido siempre el trascendentalista capaz de dar con sus rayos X una imagen de los verdaderos estados de nuestro ser”

“Creo que lo maternal, la madre que había en mí, ha sido completamente devorada, hasta el último trozo, y ahora está muerta”

“La interpretación simbólica es la única que ensancha y amplía el mundo, la única que lo hace ilimitado e ilimitable. Todas las demás lo reducen. El marxismo es una reducción a cuestiones prácticas. Los sueños, los misterios, los mitos y los símbolos son tan necesarios como el pan”

“Trato de explicarles que la crueldad es resultado de la impotencia, que solo matan los que no pueden hacer el amor” !!!!

“Las necesidades de la gente me van a volver loca. Se que ellos mismos crean algunas de estas necesidades mediante actos de autodestrucción. ¿Por que actúan todos ellos de manera autodestructiva y luego vuelven a mi a pedirme ayuda? ¿Por que están tan dispuestos a hacerme llevar cargas? ¿Por que no sienten deseos de liberarme o protegerme? ¿Por que les doy amor y comprensión? ¿Por que creen que responderé a sus peticiones? Me siento enferma cuando tengo que rechazar una carga”

"-Siempre es igual- dice
- Si hay amor nunca es lo mismo- le digo. Lo que ocurre dentro no es siempre lo mismo, es como la música, que cambia continuamente. Si hay amor, hay un millón de variaciones, un millón de noches, un millón de días, estados de ánimo, disposiciones, caprichos cambiantes, un millón de ademanes a los que la emoción da mil colores, pero que también son teñidos por el amor, la alegría, el miedo, la valentía, el triunfo, las revelaciones que hacen más profundas el surco, las creaciones que ensanchan puntos de vista, que afilan sus penetraciones. El amor es suficientemente vasto..."

"Hablas de sufrimiento, de alejamiento, de retirada. Enfréntate a este sufrimiento, porque todo verdadero sufrimiento puede salvarnos de la irrealidad. El dolor verdadero es algo humano que nos hace ser más profundos. Sin verdadero dolor serías un niño toda la vida. La leyenda de Ondina cuenta que llegó a tener un alma humana el día que lloró por un amor humano"

"En la vida soy muda. Debo escribir. Al escribir hablo con los demás, los toco. Quiero que publiquen mis obras. Cuando no me las publicáis, selláis mis labios, me metéis en una tumba, negáis mi existencia. Amo el mundo, y me desterráis a mi pequeño universo personal"

"Ya no hay música ni risas. Solo oigo el viento del otoño que sopla en las hojas. Sobre la escalera de la biblioteca seguían cayendo hojas, pero ya no son mías. La caída otoñal de mis hojas ha terminado"

"Una y otra vez, he navegado hacia la alegría. Pero no ha llegado nunca a estar en la misma habitación que yo; siempre al otro lado del camino, siempre cerca de mí, aunque inalcanzable... ¿Llegaré alguna vez a alcanzar la alegría permanente?... La alegría es como la espuma, es una iluminación. Cuando bailo parece que la alegría está fuera, en un jardín ilusorio. Cuando estoy en el jardín, estalla en el interior de la casa. Cuando viajo, se posa como una aurora boreal sobre la tierra que dejo atrás. Cuando estoy en la playa, la veo florecer sobre la bandera de un barco que se va...La he poseído alguna vez. En algunos momentos. Una alegría que venía en forma de éxtasis, el éxtasis al hacer el amor; un planeo, un vuelo lírico; alegría ante la belleza, el deseo, la creación. Pero es infrecuente y huidiza. Quiero una alegría de colores sencillos, organillos callejeros, cintas, banderas, en lugar de una alegría que te deja sin aliento y te lanza al espacio"

"Cuando me contaba su vida con Odets, me di cuenta de que nunca podremos llegar a entender por qué se aman las personas. Y es que cada uno de nosotros mostramos al amante un aspecto que los demás desconocen. La transformación es obra del amante, y es a este a quién damos nuestro yo más completo, nuestros más secretos dones. Los que nos quedamos fuera, no llegamos nunca a ver ese ser humano engrandecido, que aparece bajo el foco de un amor intenso (...) Porque el amor no solamente es capaz de descubrir una personalidad en potencia- que no ha nacido todavía, que está enterrada o disfrazada- sino también de hacerla surgir a la luz"

"Tengo un tipo de valentía que tú no comprendes. Estoy muy lejos de ser ciega, muy lejos de ser indiferente, y no pienso conformarme con una desesperación impotente y pasiva. No sumaré más desesperación a la desesperación del mundo. Trabajo en la búsqueda de contravenenos. Si supiera qué es lo que hay que hacer en el terreno político, actuaría; pero como estoy desamparada, creo un espacio en el que la gente pueda respirar, logre restaurar su fe y reunir nuevas fuerzas para seguir viviendo"

"El místico busca la unión con Dios, y el poeta la unión con todo lo que ama. El místico tiene que renunciar al mundo físico. El poeta es el amante que canta aquello que ama"

"-Quiero alejarme del yo, de lo personal. El análisis suele prestarle mucha atención al yo.
- Cuando el yo sufre hay que prestarle atención, como cuando se tiene fiebre. No podrás olvidar, hasta que el yo deje de padecer. El análisis no es una concesión, es una disciplina cruel, es un duro enfrentamiento. Pretender que puedes olvidarte de tu yo, es jugar al juego del avestruz"

[Jennifer]

I picked this up at a bookstore in San Francisco. Didn't realize until after I bought it that it's part three in a volume of six. So far I've just read the preface, which is obviously not autobiographical. I actually like that I'm starting in the middle of her life. Sounds like she had the romantic life of a vagabond. I'm gonna be a different person after I read this.

[Cassandra Litten · Rating 5 out of 5]

Anaïs Nin’s diaries are essentials in my collection. They are treasures. I read them over and over, I turn to them when I feel lost, when I have questions, when I second guess myself as a writer. Anaïs and her words are vital to my existence.

[Sarah]

Eh, it's a diary. She repeats herself a lot.

[Tyler Kwon · Rating 5 out of 5]

Having gathered together the fevers, the conquests the passions, having pulled in the sails of my ever-restless, ever-wandering ships of dreams (Henry will become a famous writer; Gonzalo will accomplish something of which he can be proud; Moira will be unveiled and become a modern woman; Frances will escape tuberculosis and enter a full life; the press will publish marvelous books and will triumph over the underworld, lower-depths writing), having garnered, collected, called back from the Tibetan desert my every roaming soul, having rescued my spirit from the webs of the past, from the stranglehold of responsibility for the lives of others, having cured myself of the drugs of romanticism, surrendered the impossible dreams and called back an exhausted Don Quixote, I close the window, and the door, and open the diary once more.

I call back from its consultations with the oracle analyst, a weeping dreamer, disconsolate idealist, a seeker of heightened moments only, and take her for a tour of home, the softly lit studio, the present, the bed, the food, the rest. The dissolved, the dispersed, the given Anaïs must rest from pyres of sacrifice, from holocausts of possessions, wishes, and planning of other lives. Focus on the present. Accept a quiet happiness, the absence of fever.

Even an obsessed adventurer, always seeking for expansion on unchartered land, must come to terms with happiness, pale flame after heightened moments, but unconsuming, a pale flame which resembles the dawn rather than the fiery sunsets of tropical countries, dawns I perceived and longed for at times when caught in the infernal chambers of atonement. Passionate living is heaven and hell, and the homecoming felicity.

The body and soul rest in their moorings, the anchor is no longer being dragged against its will through an uprooted life which must learn both to keep afloat and to stay moored without pulling unreasonably at the forces of gravity which keep it from shipwreck. Sancho Panza, the diary, grows fat and well-nourished, but the Quixote cannot alone carry out its vision of a perfect and human world.

For the first time I have conquered restlessness, my imagination does not wander to all the far places and towards all the far strangers, questing, expecting what?

For the first time my body and soul are together, and the sound of a window closing, a door closing, is no more alarming than the wings of an icon closing over a figure praying.

I can bear to listen to music, it is not a provocation to more adventures, a pursuit of ghosts, a tracking down of mirages, an embracing of the void. This is no mere interlude to an uneasing hunger and curiosity but a possession of the present and the near I have neglected, and now for the first time I appreciate the haven, the repose, the softly closed window and door which say: 'Everything is here, in the present, on earth.' Let distant ecstasies and imaginings no longer lure me on.

With the Haitians, with oracle analyst, I recaptured my own nature and the sources of joy. The Haitians came to remind me that the telling of stories is the only balm, the only drug, the only permanent, indestructible, constant, ever-inhabitable island. The long, protracted farewell to Henry, who sought Shangri-La in California, the difficult act of setting each other free, all of us who lived in a little Paris cell of fraternity, setting Gonzalo free of shame, and relinquishing those who could not be rescued, the building of the press to sustain the writing and to by-pass all bitterness, self-sufficiency, the telling of the adventures and the printing of them, cell and nucleus of imagining, acting, carrying out the visions, balanced by a pause, by a recognition that storytelling diverted one's attention from loss, partings, hurts.

It was not necessary to stay awake all night, like the children in Haiti, to catch the mapau tree which moves in the night. The mobile mapau tree is the storyteller's game with his memory album, his moving around the characters to see them from all sides. Close the door and window upon the world for a moment, turn to the diary for all its musical notations, and begin another novel.

OMG

[Jacob Hurley · Rating 3 out of 5]

This diary covers Nin's life in New York at the start of WW2 (having to leave the city she preferred, Paris), and the publication of her book The Winter of Artifice. Aside from writing, which she discusses only a little here, it seems Nin mostly did two things: go to parties, and talk with Henry Miller. With the latter, she mostly recites one-sided conversations wherein Miller developed his wild views, although Nin seems to imply that his reflections are an extension of the same attitude they both shared, and that his novels are the ultimate expression thereof; the real meat of the diaries seems to be in her minglings with various New York debutante-artists of the 40s -- she meets Dali, Artaud, etc, sees Citizen Kane, and spends a great deal of time discussing her close friendship (and sexual relationship) with poet Robert Duncan, which abruptly ends after he decides to identify solely as a homosexual. Duncan, by her analysis, an 'hermaphrodite', based on his ability to be manly in sex with women, but feminine and submissive in sex with men. Her portraits of random people she meets are sharp psychoanalyses and wonderful James-like characterizations, all with constant reference to the psychological themes of DH Lawrence, and later Proust, as she reads him over the course of the volume.

These diaries, of course, are the redacted version that Nin edited and authorized in her lifetime for publication, feeling that her writing here was the finest expression of her artistry (and more palatable for the public, after her erotic and surrealist tales sold poorly). Indeed she seems primarily remembered as a diarist ... it's unclear if that applies to these authorized diaries, or the 'unexpurgated' diaries published after her death, which go into great depth about her infidelities, incest, and other sexual misadventures -- indeed, in the volumes she herself edited, she censored almost every indication that she was married throughout all these affairs. All the same, it seems to me that Nin refers constantly in these pages to her 'real work', here only summarized, which was a deeper and richer project of psychoanalysis and lifestyle; it would seem both her diaries and fiction were both mere offshoots of an lived work of art, something like a more socialite Goethe, at least as she conceived of it herself.

If her fiction, then (as I argued in my review of Delta of Venus, and Nin herself reflects here), is mostly an edifying stimulation, then these diaries are a more privatized expression of her attitude; it makes for pleasant reading, again quite like listening to a friend discuss their own experiences. Whether this would justify anyone but obsessives reading the fifteen or so of these diaries published is probably another question ...

[Mighty Aphrodite · Rating 5 out of 5]

Lasciarsi alle spalle Parigi, la sua atmosfera bohémien, raccolta, intima, familiare, per approdare nella pragmatica e fredda America che – per la seconda volta – si rivela l’unico luogo in grado di accoglierla e proteggerla da una guerra che sta per scoppiare in un’Europa ormai dilaniata.

La prima volta che aveva visto New York, Anais Nin aveva undici anni e scappava da un’altra distruzione senza ritorno: il matrimonio dei suoi genitori si era infine disgregato, il legame con suo padre si era spezzato e, per anni, quel filo invisibile che Anais Nin avrebbe disperatamente voluto riannodare, sarebbe rimasto a oscillare nel vuoto di una vita a metà.

Spaesata e senza punti di riferimento, Nin approda a New York stringendo a sé i volumi dei diari che è riuscita a far espatriare: questi sono la sua unica àncora, il suo unico sguardo su un passato che non esiste più, su legami che possono rivivere solo nei suoi ricordi, nelle lettere degli amici che per anni hanno popolato la sua esistenza; un’esistenza artistica, volta all’ampliamento della conoscenza del proprio io, senza paura o pudori.

Circondata dalla freddezza americana, da un pragmatismo che non ha nulla di reale, Anais Nin sembra sfiorire, chiudersi su sé stessa: all’ansia per una guerra che lascia sul terreno milioni di morti, alle preoccupazioni economiche che la assediano, si aggiunge, poi, il profondo e inestinguibile dolore dovuto all’indifferenza della critica per le sue opere, giudicate troppo europee per essere pubblicate in America; troppo europee per una nazione che sta cercando ad ogni costo di emanciparsi dalle proprie origini, che sta provando a creare il proprio presente e il proprio futuro disconoscendo il passato dal quale proviene.

Continua a leggere qui: https://parlaredilibri.wordpress.com/...

[Sam · Rating 5 out of 5]

Anaïs Nin’s writing is magical and beautiful like nothing else. Her diaries for years were a guiding light in my life. Nowhere else had I found illumination into what it means to be an introspective woman who yearns to go deeper with life. I have found much relation in her work. She is an undervalued writer, but her assessments of people, including many well known artists, her articulation of emotions, and her intricate descriptions are a kind of philosophy on their own.

The fact that people still demonize her for having affairs and solely focus on how she was an “immoral woman” just goes to show how sexist our society continues to be. The things she did that people criticize are things most, if not all, male artists have done (namely having multiple affairs and not being honest about it). Yet I rarely see anyone criticizing male artists for that kind of behavior. Rarely is she recognized for her innovative writing and brilliant mind. For her courage to write about the erotic in the most beautiful ways, her intelligence in articulating the experience of anxiety and neurosis before that was common at all, her analytical mind that captured the personas of those around her.

Some say the diaries are not entirely accurate, but whose diary would be? It’s her perception. Perhaps there’s imagination involved as well, as would be natural for a creative person. Each volume of the Diaries and fascinating, lovely, and delightful to read, and illuminates the deeper parts of the self.

If you are an artist, an introvert, an introspective intuitive woman, an observer, someone who wants to be fulfilled by life, then Anaïs Nin’s work will be a true ally in your life.

[Greta · Rating 2 out of 5]

I started at the beginning and have read all of Anaïs Nin's diaries up to now but it's becoming more and more of a slog to get through them. Previously she had some insight into her own and other people's psychology and motivations, and her life, her thoughts, and the people in it were interesting. In this volume there's just a lot of name dropping, gossip, and her own ego stroking. Her writing style is also starting to grate on me. She writes like she's making a list: words, phrases, sentences all lined up exposing her thoughts, musings, opinions. And I find no pleasure in reading about other people's dreams, which she records regularly. They make no sense to me. This volume is also comprised of numerous transcriptions of other people's letters. Since Henry was travelling about she kept him in the picture this way. The whole thing was rather disjointed and abstract and it was difficult to feel like I was getting any real insight into her. Perhaps she really didn't have any of that herself. Her claim that "If you cannot control your demons, whoever or whatever they are, you do harm to others. I found the way to cage mine, that was all. Anger, jealousy, envy, revengefulness, vanity. I locked them up in a diary" led me to believe maybe she should've kept them locked up because I can't really see the point of reading about all that. I have three more volumes that I purchased when I thought it would be a good idea to read all of her published diaries but now I'm thinking it wasn't such a good investment after all.