Womens & Words

In my opinion, Anaïs Nin's entire life, at least in its excesses, is linked to her father Joaquim, with whom she identifies completely. This father, who introduced her to carnal pleasure as a child and who, twenty years later as an adult, has become a man she desires. This total incestuous fusion takes place within the framework of a shared passion for love, revealed in unambiguous epistolary exchanges, true love letters, the words of a "chosen" incest, at least a consensual one. Even today, Anaïs Nin remains a scandalous person in her words, which do not fit in with the current discourse of free speech to combat the scourge of incest. Reading her, we realize that these words are like the confessions of a patient in a psychoanalyst's office, and that they were not necessarily intended to be read. To claim to be in love with incest and to love sharing one's loves remain the words of an extraordinary personality, an incredible author with a wide erotic range and certainly an overflowing imagination that many psychoanalysts have been and still will be able to concern themselves with.

 

Beyond all these erotic experiences, Anaïs Nin was a woman of her time, who knew she had to develop her creative impulses, and who felt she had the makings of a writer with a different sensibility. She is always hopeful that her poetry, short stories and novels will be appreciated.

 

"IT'S AN APPALLING CONFLICT BETWEEN MY FEMININE SIDE,
WHO WANTS TO LIVE IN A WORLD RULED BY MEN
BY MEN, TO LIVE WITH A MAN,
AND MY CREATIVE PART, CAPABLE OF CREATING A WORLD OF HER OWN,
A RHYTHM OF HER OWN, A RHYTHM THAT SUITS NO MAN."

 

Anaïs Nin, November 13, 1935

 

Anaïs Nin offers a genuine reflection on the writer and writing, nourished by the exciting period in Paris she shared with Henry Miller, notably at the Villa Seurat in Montparnasse:

 

"WE WRITE TO TASTE LIFE TWICE,
IN THE MOMENT AND IN RETROSPECT." 

Diary, february 1954

 

Anyone seeking to write a story or a book receives powerful messages from Anaïs Nin:

 

"IF YOU DON'T BREATHE THROUGH WRITING,
IF YOU DON'T SHOUT THROUGH WRITING,
IF YOU DON'T SING BY WRITING,
THEN DON'T WRITE,
BECAUSE OUR CULTURE HAS NO USE FOR IT."

 

Anaïs Nin, Diary, february 1954

 

That same year, she explains:

 

"THE DIARY IS LIKE LIFE ITSELF,
AN UNFINISHED WORK.
SOMETIMES I WISH I COULD LIVE LONG ENOUGH
TO FINISH IT IN DETAIL,
TO MAKE IT A PROUSTIAN WORK.

 

As for me, I retain this beautiful, more global thought on art:

 

"ART'S FUNCTION IS TO RENEW OUR PERCEPTION.
WHAT IS FAMILIAR, WE STOP SEEING.
THE WRITER DISRUPTS THE FAMILIAR SCENE AND,
AS IF BY MAGIC, WE SEE A NEW MEANING."

 The Novel of the Future

 

In fact, his literary fame came with the publication of his redacted diaries in 1964.
By 1966, he was already a success. Venus Erotica, his erotic short stories written in New York in 1940 as a purely dietary endeavor, would earn him worldwide success by the time of his death in 1977. Under the original title, Delta of Venus: Erotica, they were published in New York by Harcourt Brace Jovanovich. They were published in France in 1981.