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The Early Diary of Anaïs Nin #3
The Early Diary of Anaïs Nin, Vol. 3: 1923-1927
A bridge between the early life of Nin and the first volume of her Diary. In pages more candid than in the preceding diaries, Nin tells how she exorcised the obsession that threatened her marriage and nearly drove her to suicide. Editor's Note by Rupert Pole; Preface by Joaquin Nin-Culmell; Index; photographs.
320 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1983
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About the author
Anaïs Nin
355 books8,894 followersWriter 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%...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ana%C3%...
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Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews
April 24, 2022
This book was a culmination of the sweetest pictures of love and the fears that come along with that. Love of life and love of love, desire, want, need. It was perfect - to me. All her writing is perfect to me, I wish I could tell her that she is to me what many writers were to her. I wish I was fearless enough to write what she wrote. She depicts things beautifully. It has an air of innocence that her later diaries do not have, but innocence always underlined with understanding. Reading this after experiencing love in my life and at 20, the same way she was - was such a scenic experience.
July 19, 2012
In this book Anaïs Nin is a young married woman, but she is also a budding artist. She and Hugo married just after her 20th birthday, and she struggles with the push and pull every young couple struggles with. She and Hugo, or Hugh as she calls him in this book more often, perhaps a sign of increased maturity, decide to leave New York for Paris.
She discovers that, despite the fact she has origins there, A.N. despises Paris. She finds it dirty and stifling. She doesn't like what it does to her and Hugh. Hugh's vocation as a banker in Paris is exaggerated. She says that in New York, so many people are ambitious that Hugh feels less pressure to be so. But in Paris, where she characterizes men as weak, she thinks Hugh becomes a competitive and dominate force in business.
A.N. spends a great deal of time worrying over Hugh's creative life. While she has much time to write her first attempt at a novel and begin typing up pages of her old diaries, Hugh is exhausted by his job and mostly abandons creative pursuits. She comes to him with this worry in the following exchange:
... Hugh, while whispering, loverlike, sweeter things have ever been written, said: "When will you write again?"
"Do you miss it?" I asked incredulously.
"Yes. I feel part of the object of my work is lost. I work so that you make create—for both of us."
His support of her creative work is strong throughout the book, even if she says the sometimes "quarrel" for days. Still, she and Hugh agree that they have a marriage they are both happy with.
Eventually, she and Hugh do some travelling around Europe, and she finds these new locations much more amenable to her creative pursuits.
But back in Paris, she struggles to balance household work with her creative work. She measures out the days, saying she will devote half to housework and half to writing. Eventually, they make their way back to New York, where she finds it to be different from how A.N. remembers it.
She meets up with her friend Frances, now a reporter at a New York paper, and is shocked she is less engaged with creative work than she remembers her. This serves as a greater symbol for Nin, who often finds those around her are growing up and out of her youthful vigor for writing and reading, but she remains devoted.
Though A.N.'s third diary is themed around her early years in marriage, it's clear that the real narrative is her evolution as an artist. She balances her time and energy between her daily duties and her work as an artist. Again, we see her harsh self-criticism. She challenges that no critic could match her own evaluation of her work. In this volume, it's clear that Nin is on the verge of something.
She discovers that, despite the fact she has origins there, A.N. despises Paris. She finds it dirty and stifling. She doesn't like what it does to her and Hugh. Hugh's vocation as a banker in Paris is exaggerated. She says that in New York, so many people are ambitious that Hugh feels less pressure to be so. But in Paris, where she characterizes men as weak, she thinks Hugh becomes a competitive and dominate force in business.
A.N. spends a great deal of time worrying over Hugh's creative life. While she has much time to write her first attempt at a novel and begin typing up pages of her old diaries, Hugh is exhausted by his job and mostly abandons creative pursuits. She comes to him with this worry in the following exchange:
... Hugh, while whispering, loverlike, sweeter things have ever been written, said: "When will you write again?"
"Do you miss it?" I asked incredulously.
"Yes. I feel part of the object of my work is lost. I work so that you make create—for both of us."
His support of her creative work is strong throughout the book, even if she says the sometimes "quarrel" for days. Still, she and Hugh agree that they have a marriage they are both happy with.
Eventually, she and Hugh do some travelling around Europe, and she finds these new locations much more amenable to her creative pursuits.
But back in Paris, she struggles to balance household work with her creative work. She measures out the days, saying she will devote half to housework and half to writing. Eventually, they make their way back to New York, where she finds it to be different from how A.N. remembers it.
She meets up with her friend Frances, now a reporter at a New York paper, and is shocked she is less engaged with creative work than she remembers her. This serves as a greater symbol for Nin, who often finds those around her are growing up and out of her youthful vigor for writing and reading, but she remains devoted.
Though A.N.'s third diary is themed around her early years in marriage, it's clear that the real narrative is her evolution as an artist. She balances her time and energy between her daily duties and her work as an artist. Again, we see her harsh self-criticism. She challenges that no critic could match her own evaluation of her work. In this volume, it's clear that Nin is on the verge of something.
May 26, 2025
at times it was like looking in the mirror.
April 6, 2020
This took me a surprisingly long time to read given that I adored it! Perhaps there was a lot of savouring and mulling? This was beautiful, partly because it was so real, mixing discussions with artists and writers with complaints about her husband getting home late or not having enough money for curtains. Partly because I could recognise so much of what she was saying: about keeping a journal, about living artfully, even her views on Paris (which I also loathe). I felt like she had read my mind then found an infinitely better way of showing it back to me. I know I will come back to this one again.
November 13, 2007
I love her journaling style and her story telling, very earnest and very different from her later erotic work.
June 16, 2025
Wives are the same in all generations (then and now). Hormonal, Emotional, Imaginative, Dreamy ,Responsible. We play a lot of characters. A woman, a daughter, a Sister, a wife, a friend that some point in our life like A.N in her journal, we don't know what we want and need anymore. We become more conscious of everything in our life as we age. Questioning everything and giving meaning to each little things but at the end of the day, we love the "wife" character. We want this role I think above everything else despite it's challenges. We like the moods and experiences it brings.
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August 31, 2016"An artist gives without thought of himself; his whole soul he offers to the world."
"Criticism and misunderstanding, although my mind accepts them, push me into my shell again, wounded and quivering. I must forget myself and my sensitiveness."
"At night I sorrow with the weakness of a woman, when I should exult in the struggles of mind reaching out towards its visions." (16)
"Delicacy in woman is in character with her nature; in man it is one of those rare and priceless qualities which make him such a lover as are described in legends and fairy tales and which are entirely unbelieved and unexpected in a husband."
"One cannot help liking her--she was so genuine, so aspiring, so eager, but this is a case where the French attitude, so intolerant of unintelligence, so mocking of naivete, and immaturity, seems well deserved, even if it is cruel." (206)
French philosophy, French wit, scholarly and elegant, impeccable intelligence, impeccable style, guarantees of intelligence and wisdom. awful gravity and awful divinity of French literature.
"The French had the authority and the intolerance and the sharpness of the successful man." She cannot write in Paris because of the deep history of successful literature silenced her. Though I think she unfairly blames places for being themselves when it is something in her that is between places, uncontent, and wandering.
The U.S. is looking to Europe for wisdom and knowledge while Europe looks to the U.S. for advancement and newness.
The difficulty of dealing with unreasonable sensitivity.
"But then, why this conviction of the reality of art, why this feeling for color, for the stage, for costume, expression, gesture, for clay, for rhythms, for music, for movement, for words, for dreams? Why this exaltation at moments, these moments of marvelous faith in myself, why these secret aspirations, this responsiveness to life, this vision into the characters of others, this power of imagination working night and day, why this utter detachment from ordinary desires, ordinary friends, ordinary life, if I am not an artist." 245
Hugh shows her the importance of facts first, of knowledge as a foundation, but he fails to understand her as intimately as she understands him. Or, so she claims.
"Criticism and misunderstanding, although my mind accepts them, push me into my shell again, wounded and quivering. I must forget myself and my sensitiveness."
"At night I sorrow with the weakness of a woman, when I should exult in the struggles of mind reaching out towards its visions." (16)
"Delicacy in woman is in character with her nature; in man it is one of those rare and priceless qualities which make him such a lover as are described in legends and fairy tales and which are entirely unbelieved and unexpected in a husband."
"One cannot help liking her--she was so genuine, so aspiring, so eager, but this is a case where the French attitude, so intolerant of unintelligence, so mocking of naivete, and immaturity, seems well deserved, even if it is cruel." (206)
French philosophy, French wit, scholarly and elegant, impeccable intelligence, impeccable style, guarantees of intelligence and wisdom. awful gravity and awful divinity of French literature.
"The French had the authority and the intolerance and the sharpness of the successful man." She cannot write in Paris because of the deep history of successful literature silenced her. Though I think she unfairly blames places for being themselves when it is something in her that is between places, uncontent, and wandering.
The U.S. is looking to Europe for wisdom and knowledge while Europe looks to the U.S. for advancement and newness.
The difficulty of dealing with unreasonable sensitivity.
"But then, why this conviction of the reality of art, why this feeling for color, for the stage, for costume, expression, gesture, for clay, for rhythms, for music, for movement, for words, for dreams? Why this exaltation at moments, these moments of marvelous faith in myself, why these secret aspirations, this responsiveness to life, this vision into the characters of others, this power of imagination working night and day, why this utter detachment from ordinary desires, ordinary friends, ordinary life, if I am not an artist." 245
Hugh shows her the importance of facts first, of knowledge as a foundation, but he fails to understand her as intimately as she understands him. Or, so she claims.
June 7, 2011
A more succinct read than Vol. 2 with more emotional impact. Nin has grown up (or at least is working towards that, depending on your POV), and it's here that things start to get really interesting. Several events and decisions that play major roles later in her life are set up in these pages, like the gun introduced in the first act that will, of course, go off in the third. Nin's journals, although not technically a linear story, are as plot-driven as any real woman's journal could possibly be, reflective of a woman who actually lived. In earlier volumes, the wide-eyed naivete with which Nin presented hersef felt sincere, if overly dramatic, but here it begins to ring false, a very subtle change that makes one think that this was the point where she became a bit of a bitch. Love it or hate it, this contributes greatly to making her more interesting, less of a doll and more of a flesh and blood woman capable of experiencing and writing Henry and June. Excellent.
July 6, 2012
A subtle change takes over Anaïs's writing in this volume of her Diaries as she moves from New York to Paris. She also moves from being a single girl to a married woman with an awakening to who she is, what she needs and how she's going to live her own life. Before she lived for others, and while this is still the case, it's interesting to watch her eyes open and her awareness deepen with regard to the art that her life is. While reading her words in this volume, one is cognizant that Anaïs is not entirely aware herself of how she's growing and moving forward. It's a bit of a cliffhanger, this is, enticing the reader to follow up with the next volume to see where she goes from here.
April 11, 2017
This is what she wrote about journal writing: "It must be a free running of the faculties, a restful abandonment, a strengthening reiteration, a satisfying outflow of emotions, self-confession, self-critism, self-blame, a retention of beautiful things, of inspiring things and of knowledge, a following and unveiling of ideas, a development of philosophies, an exhortation to the fulfillment of individual perfection, a reminder of the clearer and higher moments in the intellectual life and of the kinder, nobler moments of the human life."
November 9, 2014
Probably the easiest so far to read. As per the other early diaries, there isn't really a story, rather Anais's musings about art, writing, and in this volume, being a new wife. My interest has continued and I keep my goal of reading all volumes of her diary at some point!
April 3, 2007
A very young and conservative Anais exploring what it means to be married and alone in Paris. A different kind of Anais that what fans are used to.
Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews