The Diary of Anaïs Nin, Vol. 6

The Diary of Anaïs Nin #6

by Anaïs Nin

The final volume ends as the author wished-not with her last two years of pain but at a joyous, reflective moment on a trip to Bali. "One of the most remarkable diaries in the history of letters" (Robert Kirsch, Los Angeles Times). Edited and with a Preface by Gunther Stuhlmann; Index; photographs.

Genres: Biography, Memoir, Nonfiction, Diary, Autobiography, Classics, 20th Century

414 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1976

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

[Rowena · Rating 4 out of 5]

You can't help but really admire Nin's craft; she continued pressing forward and writing books in her genre despite people rejecting them as being too neurotic. But finally in Volume 6, Nin experiences the success she so deserves.

I'm still not sure why she felt the need to do LSD. I mean it’s not the first time I heard her talk about it but it does surprise me that she was willing to do that for her craft. Crazy or genius? Regardless of what I think, it was definitely a learning experience for her. Here's what she says about it:

"It was not humanly bearable, the separation from one's centre, the total voyage into an atmosphere, a rhythm, a space not in harmony with one's physical body. Yes, too strong a current. I think our dreams, reveries were meant to be absorbed organically and gradually, tempered by daylight, cushioned by humble occupations and drab interruptions..."

There’s a lot of correspondence in this book, correspondence between Nin and famous friends that she has, including Marguerite Young, Lawrence Durrell, and Henry Miller. There’s even an interesting correspondence between Nin and a poet who is in jail. This diary covers a longer time period than the other diaries.

As always, Nin touches on themes that concern me. One of her preoccupations was dehumanization, how we are becoming more robotic than human.

"All around me there is a keen interest in science fiction. Some of it appeals to me, but most of it contains a terrifying dehumanization. The human being is totally absent. There is an absence of human contact. Is that a prediction of the future, because of technology?"


One more volume left:)

[Janet · Rating 5 out of 5]

The great project of Anais Nin's life, her diaries, takes on a hall of mirrors quality in this volume (1955 to 1966) as we witness her editing the diaries THAT WE"RE READING, hoping for publication, pondering the questions of revelation--the concern that she not harm people still living--as well as the sheer weight of all those years, and whether that was the most valuable use ofher writing talent. It's highly gratifying to watch her finally finding a publisher for the highly edited diaries by the end of the volume after decades of struggle to be recognized and properly published.

"Gunther [Stuhlmann, her editor and great believer] was showing the edited diary (eight hundred pages) to publishers. Their reaction was hardly encouraging. Random House, after reading only 150 pages, felt the diaries would not be interesting to enough readers to make possible the scale of publication I had preposed. [the multi-volume work.]." OUCH.

And Peter Israel of Putnam writes her how fascinated he was with the diaries, engrossed, 'like characters in some great Proustian novel.... I have not quite finished these 800 pages but I am most of the way... and I find myself hoping that they never end...." But in the end, he passes, as did William Morrow.

How could she not become dispirited? "No faith in their personal reactions. Always the Sphinx: is this commercial? He will now try it on the salesmen, on the doormen, the elevator man, the night watchman... and then he will ask me to make it more like Candy, or more like Simone de Beauvoir, or more like Mary McCarthy, and yet keep it clean for the Ladies' Home Journal,, and perhaps rewrite it in the third person...make my father a taxi driver, for human interest, and instead of a stillbirth describe nine healthy children... I might perhaps have one of the characters have an alcoholic problem, make Joaquin a dope addict, to be in the trend..."

Nin's struggles for publication and recognition of her writings go back decades. She even founded her own press in order to publish many of her essential works herself--beautifully, but these were difficult to distribute as an independent press (the legendary Gotham Book Mart sold at least half of each edition) but in this volume we finally see a crack in the wall--a fortuitous meeting with Alan Swallow, the Denver publisher and literary visionary who offered her a publication deal for her novels that resembles contemporary author/publisher partnership.

But when it came to the diaries, he understood that his small press would never have the cash or the firepower to adequately launch such an endeavor. When her despair is at its height, "Alan Swallow spoke to Hiram Hayden of Harcourt Brace... Gunther gave a cocktail party. It was as this party that Peter Israel definitely turned down the diary, and Hiram Haydn said to me. "I love it. I will do it."

The first volume of the diary was published in 1966 and its publication met with an acclaim that would finally justify to her the years of devotion, labor and her oft-questioned focus (by herself as much as anyone) on upon herself as her subject matter. Was it neurotic to be so self absorbed? Should she be putting his effort into fiction instead? Morrow questioned her liquid, mysterious, sometimes veiled entries, complaining that it didn't have "the forthrightness and the sense of contact with real people that one expects from a journal. It was all as if it were half-fictionalized even as it was first being set down, and the form into which it has been edited strengthens this impression It reads almost like a loosely constructed novel. In short, we could not see that this would appeal to more than Anais Nin's present devoted but--we think--rather small audience..."

Of course, it was half-fictionalized, but it was her elusive flavor--which was her--that he found baffling.

But the moment was right, and she found her publisher. Who had a daughter, and understood the uniqueness of the project and the author, and was sure his enthusiasm would be shared by others. Which indeed it was.

Since Nin's death, the unexpurgated diaries have emerged, beginning with Henry and June, the content as she wrote it, without her hesitancy to reveal her personal warts, romantic juggling acts and prevarications (she's well known as having to keep a Lie Box so she could keep her stories straight, as shemaintained her marriage to Hugo Guiler through her many lovers and her bigamous second marriage.). I find it fascinating to reread the edited diaries after having read the unexpurgated--to see what Anais felt were the important observations and incidents, and what she felt the need to conceal. The edited diary is a work of art in itself, different from the unexpurgated as a perfume is from a cologne. It's fun to read both. I have not read the most recent unexpurgated volume, lovingly edited into print by Paul Herron in October 2021, which covers these samee years, called The Diary of Others, but look forward to it. But I tend to like to read the edited diary first and then fill in with the unexpurgated.

Volume 6 has real treats. As others have mentioned, Nin--along with other scientists, intellectuals and artists--was involved in the very early psychoanalytical experiments with LSD. It was still legal at the time, and we see the very beginnings of the psychedelia that came to mark the sixties so profoundly. She in fact was not a great fan of drugs as the way to reach the unconscious mind--she felt that the artists and poets had arrived at these states through their artistic experiences, that surrealism and poetry naturally tapped into the unconscious and that it was part of the human being. That as an unpoetic, mechanistic nation, Americans located the dislocation of the experience inside the drug, rather than inside the human being. It was a fascinating time and her response is completely her.

"At one party, Leary discussed a statement he had made, saying that there was no language, no way to describe the LSD experience. I did not agree. I mentioned poets. I mentioned Michaux; I mentioned the surrealists. All unknown to them. They were scientists, not poets. Huxley's plain, precise, methodical report was more trustworthy. They were making links with ancient religions but not with literature. I felt. For a while, it seemed confined to serious, dedicated, intensely scholarly people. It was like the small group around Andre Breton."

A fascinating time.

Anais Nin had a great capacity for friendship, and worked to develop relationships with the people--men and women alike--whom she admired or felt an affinity with. Here are filmmaker Maya Deren, and the novelist Marguerite Young (whose book Miss MacIntosh, My Darling now I have to read), novelist Lesley Blanch (Wilder Shores of Love), wife of Nouveau Roman novelist Romain Gary. Nin's correspondence was stupendous, and she has an uncanny ability to toss off an accurate and penetrating portrait, a landscape, an insight, with a depth and beauty in just a few lines.

Here's her take on aging in 1956--you can see why she was both a feminist hero and also an ambivalent figure, who nevertheless buys into many of the destructive archetypes she can see intellectually, but can't quite adopt. "There is a difference in the gaining of men and women which I hope one day we can eradicate. The aging of a man is accepted. He can age nobly like a prehistoric statue, he can age like a bronze statue, acquire a patina, can have character and quality. We do not forgive a woman gaining. We demand that her beauty never change. That charming, beautiful women I have known, is it because their aging is frowned upon that they do not age nobly?

"Italian women age nobly, Meican women. the culture accepts it. They cease to wear dresses which clash with their bodies and face. The charm of voice, laughter, the animation remain, but because we have associated femininity with silks satin, lace, flower, veil, a woman is not allowed to acquire the beauty of a stone piece. Cornelia Runyon aged I that noble way. There was no defeat, no disintegration but a passing into stone and leather, as if to acquire a statue's quality. The slightest wilting is tragic in women because we make it so. A woman's skin has to rival the flower, her hair has to retain its buoyancy, stinging does not constitute a new kind of beauty, hierarchic, gothic, classical. She can only seem incongruous, condemned, doomed among the silks and the flowers and the perfumes and the chiffon nightgowns, the white negligees. ... [her friend] Caresse Crosby gave me a shock when she appeared in a bright deep red dress, a buoyant dress, froufrou, walking lightly on very high heels, but then her face appeared like a ruined mural, eroded with time. The powder and the lipstick did not adhere to its dryness but seemed about to crumble off. The sadness was that not all of Caresse aged simultaneously; her voice and laughter were younger, and her marvelous enthusiasm for "Citizens of the World."

Yet the volume is also burdened by long correspondences with people I didn't care about--imprisoned writers and other people she was trying to help, she had a weakness for trying to fix people, save them from themselves--and then the anger and disregulation when they didn't adequately respond or appreciate her help.

But this life! I wanted to be there the night she saw a performance--a happening-- at the Museum of Modern Art of a "suicide machine" constructed by the scuptor Jean Tinguely, that shakes itself to pieces and collapses in a fiery heap. Alas, the fire marshal was so alarmed by what he saw that he put it out with a fire extinguisher.

and a wonderful section about the purchase of the Caresse Crosby archive --Caresse had invented the modern brassiere and had become a Peggy Guggenheim type eccentric and supporter of the arts, a close friend of Nin's. The strangeness to imagine your intimate letters to a friend under glass in a library.

"The librarian who was supposed to be interested in purchasing my diary originals is Pinocchio in person, short fat, with thyroid eyes popping with surprise, friendly, warm, expansive, drinking martinis by the dozen. He was gay and playful, though his is in charge of collecting rare books, in control of manuscripts and collections, the one in possession of many secrets, the one who slides open his drawers and shows you letters from James Joyce, Glenway Wescott, D.H. Lawrence, Henry Miller, Crevel, aldington, diaries, first editions, treasures, indiscretions, betrayals sold for gold. He had just purchased Caresse Crosboy's papers. He opened the drawer containing correspondence between caress and kay Boyle. I asked him if Caresse had not sealed these letters. He said: "Oh yes! they are sealed. But showing them to you is not treachery."

"I don't want to read them," I said, having already experienced the shock of seeing all my letters to Caresse under glass. Harry Moore, himself a victim, his letters to someone sold, lying there, with students, researchers, assistant librarians, biographers all over the library. Was this a cemetery, or a Manufacturer of Immortality? It chilled me. Biographers. D.J. Lawrences' contracts with publishers. What race of men feeds on others' lives. And will I be one of them in the unlocked files, with Pinocchio offering a visitor a look Ito the diaries?f "Goodies," says Pinocchio, commenting on those resources in the files. It all gave me a ghostly feeling. I see Miller's letters to Caresse, watercolors, Cartier Bresson photographs, snapshots, a painting fo the Mill, portraits of Caresse and Harry, Harry's diaries in red leather bindings, letters of Glenway Wescott, Tennessee Williams."...

"everything sold, recorded. Because they just bought her collection, the library has no funds for my diaries. And in a way, I feel relieved. To be just, am I not also recording secrets, and the secrets of Caresse's life are here in the diaries. But the activity of the librariens is now affecting writers: they write fewer letters. Beckett's intimate letters were sold at auction in London. A very honorable collector I know, who was a friend of Beckett's, bought the letter sand gifted them back to him. All of us so occupied in living, not aware of records. But letters will be reduced by use of the telephone, cables. Frighening to see one's friends becoming history..."

These volumes are much like one's fabulous grandmother's jewelry boxes overflowing with pieces, heaps of costume jewelry and as many real ones, some tarnished but much that is forever bright.

[ariella · Rating 5 out of 5]

As always, Anais articulates her careful, uncompromising dedication to the personal life lived deeply. She finally receives the widespread recognition she deserves in America and publishes the first volume of her diary.

I feel like the usual criticism of Anais' diary--that it is narcissistic, inconsistent, feminine indulgent, self-appropriating, fictionalizing--has its foundation in misinterpretation of genre. The diary is her universe of personal mythology unfolding. To examine the diary as an expression of singular truth, or as a feminist opposition to patriarchal structures, is to ignore its true purpose.

Anais is a 'religionist' at heart and would find herself at home among the Eliade school of thought, maybe….

"If all experience could pass through the censorship of art, it would achieve what the law has been unable to do. It would assert the need of beauty. It would teach that the only vice is ugliness, and it would automatically rid us of the caricatures of sex which would have been passing for eroticism and restore to sensuality its nobility, which lies in the quality and refinement of its expression, the refinement of wholeness."

[Mercury's Widow · Rating 5 out of 5]

Nothing short of amazing. I got to know her better through the journals than people I have known for years. I'm not sure of another writer who has had as big of an impact on me as Anais Nin.

[Mighty Aphrodite · Rating 5 out of 5]

I diari di Anaïs Nin sono un’esperienza profetica, uno slancio verso un futuro che ancora non è chiaro, ma che ci vibra intorno in fremente attesa di compiersi; un futuro che attende noi solo per esplodere in tutta la sua sfolgorante compiutezza.

L’esperienza di Nin non è solo quella di una scrittrice o di una artista, ma soprattutto quella di una donna, con tutte le contraddizioni e i dolori che un’anima femminile porta con sé.

Il diario diventa un riparo, un’esaltazione, un viaggio nel suo mondo interiore, nella sua vita personale fatta, tra le altre cose, di lavori domestici noiosi, scrittura ed eventi; non è, però, un mero esercizio solipsistico o un atto di becero egocentrismo. La scrittrice emerge dalla pagina con la forza dirompente di una vita vissuta a pieno nell’amore e nella bellezza; una bellezza che non ha niente a che vedere con il lusso, ma tutto con la realizzazione di un ideale: Nin ha rinunciato, infatti, con coraggio, alla comodità di una vita borghese per realizzare il suo sogno di una vita sincera, estetica, immersa nell’arte.

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

[Ciara · Rating 4 out of 5]

these books take a while to power through--i worked on this volume off & on for almost a week. it weighs in at 400 pages, & the publishers manage to pack a lot of words on to each page. it makes me realize how large fonts, pargins, & line spaces have grown in the last thirty years. no wonder we're living in an age of such itellectual complacency.

this volume spans a whopping eleven years, all of it spent living in the united states, mostly in california, with occasional jaunts to new york, where anis would undergo analysis. she writes seduction of the minotaur during this period, & partners with alan swallow, a small publisher who was willing to get her older backs back into print & try to get some american reviews & attention for her. i really enjoyed her writing about the creative process & working to finish her books, & the detail about working with a small publisher & the complication small/self-publishers face. i can relate, being a zinester! these parts of the book overflowed with book creative energy & practicality, which motivated me a lot to finish the writing for my new zine (another reason reading this book took so long--i was de-railed for some time doing my own writing & typing).

she also writes a lot about various filmmakers who approach her, wanting to adapt spy in the house of love to the big screen, but none of the script treatments pans out. she even flies out to sweden to meet a filmmaker working on "the sound of music," but she is displeased with his adaptation. she doesn't think any of the filmmakers truly understand her characters or the symbolism of her books. she's probably right, but--loosen the reins a little bit, lady. i don't know.

there is also a lot in this book about the correspondence she had with two writers in prison. one is serving a life stence for holding up a bank with a toy gun. he has rehabilitated himself in jail & is trying to get parole, but is denied. anaris & henry miller take up his cause, but to no avail. the other is a younger poet who is serving a ten-year sentence. he hasn't rehabilitated himself & intends to go back to a life of crime when he's out of jail. anais is sad that this criminal dude is being set free while the rebailitated writer is stuck behind bars. i liked her exchanges with the prisoners, although i was constantly annoyed by her being annoyed that the gifts she sent them in jail were returned to her--records of her reading, her own typewriter, etc. she writes about how she knows the rules but thought they'd allow her typewriter to be delivered anyway. if you know the rules, why did you bother? whatever. that's fine.

these books are pretty good for motivating a person to be creative when they are feeling kind of stuck. i relate a lot to anais's creative process, even though we obviously write about very different subjects. you definitely have to be in the right mood for these books, & if you read this one, you will have to be okay with reading A LOT about LSD & timothy leary. but it was the 60s, what were you expecting?

[Joel Duff · Rating 5 out of 5]

Mesmerizing self-analysis and philosophical reflection. And it builds to a penultimate crescendo with the cadence of a novel. Strip away the fashionable names and the portraits in this book retain a lucid and captivatingly intimate quality. Loved it.

[Vicky · Rating 4 out of 5]

This volume covers eleven years. Mostly it is Anaïs Nin continuing to print/distribute her books, then she meets Alan Swallow, who later connects her with Harcourt-Brace. I feel so happy that Nin publishes the first volume of her diary by the end of volume six.

Many letters and book reviews are excerpted here, and she maintains a correspondence with Jim Herlihy (writer/friend whose diary she feels connected to but as he becomes more successful, she disconnects from his work b/c it becomes more "superficial"), Roger Bloom (in prison for life for life for holding up a bank with a toy gun, tries to get parole, and cannot), an unnamed poet in prison for 10 years who is still pretty angry with the world. The letters were the slowest part for me to read through.

Nin reflects on her experience with LSD and writes repeatedly about how the drug's access to the unconscious is already something she can achieve as an artist. She's very serious about the role of the artist, so she's not really a fan of Aldous Huxley who advocates drugs, and she's disappointed by Allen Ginsburg who takes it for fun.

Oh! A person I wish to have read more about is Tracey Roberts, an actress that Nin describes as having red hair, large blue eyes, this engaging personality, talent. Nin wonders why Roberts isn't more successful but knows it's because she sabotages herself. "Oh I can't take this role because. . ." and so on. I'm very interested in this. Nin as someone who consistently works hard; Roberts as someone who won't let herself do it for fear of failure or something. Both of them have a "telephone friendship" in which they confide in each other, but when they meet face-to-face, there isn't much exchange, as if they are shy that they have both told each other too much.

[Courtney Turner · Rating 5 out of 5]

I thought Anais Nin was a femme fatale who had scandalous affairs and that her diary was like a little black book. Randomly picked up vol 6, and it is amazing. She is so insightful, deep, authentic. The things that she writes about are things that still are relevant now, about the challenges of a creative life, of staying true to one's voice, the ebb and flow of friendships, people who don't "get" you, crazy parents, one's inner demons. She has lyrical passages on visiting Paris and Venice. Her impressions of America vs. Europe are provocative. She writes about meeting Aldous Huxley, Alan Ginsberg, and other well-known people. It's like a precursor to blogging.

[Anne Mey · Rating 4 out of 5]

C’est le dernier tome du journal d’Anaïs Nin, je l’ai trouvé par hasard à Emmaüs ou autre je ne sais plus et quitte à lire du Anaïs Nin autant lire celui-ci même si ce n’est pas l’un de ses romans et que c’est le dernier tome de son journal. Je l’ai commencé pleine d’entrain au début de l’année mais j’ai mis toute l’année pour le finir en me motivant en décembre.


Son écriture est claire et simple et surtout elle est très ouverte et honnête avec ce qu’elle ressent et éprouve et partage tous ses soucis et ses frustrations autant que ses joies. Elle a traversé des époques où elle a lié des amitiés avec beaucoup d’artistes, elle a eu des affinités avec certains mais pas tous. Elle a éprouvé des difficultés à faire lire ses romans aux Etats-Unis alors que la sensibilité française semblait toute faite pour accepter son travail, c’était intéressant de voir les grandes différences entre les pays et l’influence que ça avait sur son travail et sa motivation. C’est un énorme travail qu’elle a fait de compiler ainsi des lettres, des articles qu’elle a écrit ou lus, elle partage ses découvertes théâtrales et cinématographiques autant que les livres et les auteurs qu’elle découvre et soutient. C’est dense et épisodique, à lire régulièrement mais modérément même si en en lisant tout plein d’un coup en fin d’année son style me laisser m’embarquer avec elles dans ses aventures plus qu’à d’autress moments de l’année.


C’est surtout d’elle-même qu’elle parle avec ses conversations avec sa psy et ses évolutions, mais elle prend le temps de décrire toutes les personnes qu’elle rencontre et avec qui elle noue une relation amicale. Elle dresse des portraits d’elleux nuancés mais toujours dans la compréhension humaine et au final de manière positive en respectant leur caractère même si parfois elle doit se résoudre à ne pas pouvir établir de relation plus proche avec les personnes.



Les thèmes abordés tournent beaucoup autour de l’écriture, de la reconnaissance du courant artistique et de la poésie dans les écrits. Du regard que les gens portent sur des oeuvres en essayant de les classer dans un style qui n’est pas le leur. On voit aussi l’analyse des histoires de couples, de la vie de jeunes gens et leurs choix et tout le métier d’éditeur et les difficultés à réaliser des projets, surtout dans le cinéma.



Ce fut long et c’est dommage parce qu’au final j’ai beaucoup aimé ma lecture mais l’ampleur de la chose était difficile à gérer pour moi. Par contre je suis encore plus intriguée par cette autrice dont j’ai rajouté les romans à lire et j’ai pris plein de notes sur des oeuvres dont elle parle tout du long de son Journal. Elle a une sensibilité, une honnêteté et l’envie d’encourager son entourage qui forcent l’admiration.

[Rosanna · Rating 4 out of 5]

Finito di leggere. E’ stata una piccola impresa, non sono costante, forse veloce, forse ho il tempo necessario, ma per leggere i diari di una vita serve costanza. Questo sesto libro mette a dura prova, è pieno di persone, di sogni, di lettere scritte e ricevute, di viaggi. E c’è Anais sempre più consapevole di Anais, della sua nevrosi, della sua arte, della sua guarigione attraverso la psicoanalisi, della sua consapevolezza di non piacere al lettore comune, la delusione verso gli editori francesi e americani.
Eppure sono giorni sereni, sereni come solo il ‘crescere’ interiore può donare al vivere nel proprio tempo e nei propri luoghi.
I Diari sono una ‘opera d’amore’, pensa Anais. E’ anche ‘il diario degli altri’ che descrive, per cui le si pone il problema del dire o non dire tutto, per non far del male alle persone amate e incontrate, ché non lo sopporterebbe. Ad un certo punto vorrebbe bruciarli, li riscrive invece, perché i Diari sono la chiave della sua narrativa, non può e non deve rinunciarvi. In quale cassetta di sicurezza si trova tutto il resto, mi chiedo.
573 pagine: non voglio dire altro, spuntappuntarmi solo la sua ammirazione per Simenon e Proust, il primo letto e conosciuto da tanto, il secondo sarà la prossima, (piccola da parte mia), impresa.

(pag. 36)
“Quello che desideravo di più era una vita d’artista - cioè, pochi beni, un ambiente semplice, un modo di vita semplice, che richiedesse pochissimo denaro e pochissimi compromessi.
ma purtroppo la vita di una donna è sempre un derivato, nel senso che è la professione dell’uomo a creare il punto di partenza, la cornice, l’atmosfera, e il disegno della vita.”

(pag. 572)
“Non sono indifferente ai drammi più grandi che ci pendono sulla testa, ma il dramma è ovunque lo stesso, microcosmo o macrocosmo. Non è mio destino vivere il dramma della Spagna, della guerra, della morte, dell’agonia, della fame. Il mio destino è vivere il dramma del sentimento e dell’immaginazione, della realtà e dell’irrealtà, il dramma che sta sotto agli altri, un dramma senza fucili, dinamiti, esplosioni. ma è lo stesso, è da questo che nasce l’altro: conflitto, crudeltà, vendetta, gelosia, invidia. In me tutto avviene in un altro mondo, in me stessa, me stessa come artista che ricorda ogni giorno di più quanto ogni giorno della mia vita ha radici nel passato. Non vivo oltre la guerra, il dramma che affretta la morte, accelera la fine. Vivo il dramma personale responsabile dell’altro, più vasto, e cerco una cura. Forse è un’agonia anche più grande vivere questa vita in cui la mia consapevolezza fa mille rivoluzioni mentre gli altri ne fanno solo una.”

[Nicko · Rating 5 out of 5]

A truly remarkable testament that a life well lived, well immersed into its intricacies and most of all, well documented is a life of resonating worthy to be looked up to. Anais, with her always poetic treatment of the language has yielded into life as if she is the "life" herself: her correspondences, her nuanced articulation on things such as how art affects our lives and why we need it and her dignified respect to the people submerged into her pages make this volume the most rewarding and deeply transforming. Thank you Anais for the gift of life.

[kathryn · Rating 4 out of 5]

I’ve read 315 pages of this 430 page book, but I’m counting this as read because it’s ridiculously dense, that it’s a diary format means it jumps from story to story and makes it hard to follow, and I just learned Anaïs Nin had an incestuous relationship with her father that, while not in this volume, makes everything she says a lil gross.

But there are glorious moments I’ve highlighted and screenshot and kept. So 4 stars, and I’m counting it as finished.

[Amanda · Rating 4 out of 5]

Personally, I find Anais Nin’s diaries far more fascinating and gorgeously written than her actual works (sorry!). Complex and engaging, these dense volumes are a great way to spend days (weeks — even months in my case) with one of erotic literature’s compelling writers. “You are mediocrity’s executioner” is an all-timer compliment, holy heck.

[L Baldo · Rating 5 out of 5]

Preciso voltar para ler melhor depois pois comprei todos em francês!! Mas nossa senhora que mulher. !!!

[Ashley Harbison · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ditto For The Last Time!

[Véronique · Rating 4 out of 5]

AYOYE MAN!

[Korana]

One of my favourites.

[Mairita (Marii grāmatplaukts) · Rating 2 out of 5]

Maybe earlier years are more interesting.... Anyway it`s quite interesting as long as she doesn`t go too far into philosophy and psychoanalysis. Gives good insight in 1950s cultural life.

[Charity Finnestad · Rating 5 out of 5]

Her series of six diaries are some of my favorite books of all time.

[Shade Aura Melanson · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love these books because I can totally relate to the author. very good writing, story and I can just relate with her on everything. great woman.

[Andrea · Rating 4 out of 5]

I don't think there's much more that can be said about Anaïs Nin's diaries. They're beautifully written and insightful. They give us the possibility to peak into a world populated by many of last century's favorite writers and artists.