#literature blog

[newvision]

— Ocean Vuong, from Night Sky with Exit Wounds

[storyofthenauseouseye]

The Duality of Woman: Anais Nin

Vogue Magazine, Anais Nin talks about being a woman, 15 October 1971

Anais Nin is a woman of duality. It's been a well-known fact for those who know or love her that she is truly a two-sided coin. She said it herself in her book Henry and June,

"I will always be the virgin prostitute, the perverse angel, the two-faced sinister and saintly woman"(bookquoters.com).

From her intense marriages to two different men on opposite sides of the country, to her literary career, to even her personal reflections and essays, Nin was a figure bathed in duality. How does one split the image of Anais Nin ideally in half? You just have to find the seam between diarist and eroticist.

The Diarist

Anais Nin is most well-loved by her adoring fans because of her published diary. As a young girl, Nin wrote her father a letter begging him to return to the family he had abandoned (The Anais Nin Foundation). This was the beginning of Nin's diary, which would be published in seven volumes, with four unexpurgated diaries later appearing after their original publication.

Her diaries were incredibly personal, full of secrets and thoughts she never thought would come to light. The biggest secret within these diaries was that she was married to two different men simultaneously, something she would remove from the diaries upon initial publication. Years later, Nin compiled the removed sections into one volume, the first of her unexpurgated diaries. It was called Henry and June, and detailed the letters and writings the two shared. The duality of Nin stretched throughout every aspect of her life.

These highly intimate journals struck twentieth-century American women directly in their souls. As one journalist famously put it in an article for The Conversation,

Anaïs Nin dreamed, in all senses. She dreamed of lives and possibilities. She dreamed in slumber and allowed her dreams to leak into the day. As I regularly committed the cardinal social sin of recounting my dreams over breakfast, she seemed a soulmate across oceans and generations (Gorman).

These teenage girls and their daydreams were instantly hooked on Nin's likeminded wonder and splendid prose. She became a sensation after the diary publications almost instantly, giving her a decent seat in literary history.

It wouldn't be long until something else gave her another boost of fame.

Ramon Casas, Decadent Young Woman. After the Dance, 1899

The Eroticist

In the late 1970s, Anais Nine published three volumes of erotic short fiction, each containing approximately ten stories. Despite their popularity, the term erotic is a tad inappropriate. Although she wasn't a follower of the transgressive art movement like Georges Bataille, Anais Nin's erotic stories are more disturbing and controversial than actually arousing.

Nin wrote about such topics as sexual abuse, incest, pedophilia, and other forms of sexual violence within her stories. These works would go on to shock and challenge readers even today (Maza).

Lost Lenore Antiques, Anais Nin ~ Little Birds and Delta of Venus ~ 1st Edition Books ~ Vintage Erotica, 27 August 2021

Works Cited

The Anais Nin Foundation. “bio — The Anais Nin Foundation.” The Anais Nin Foundation, https://theanaisninfoundation.org/bio. Accessed 11 December 2023.

Gorman, Alice. “The book that changed me: journeying to the self with Anaïs Nin's sensual, transgressive diaries.” The Conversation, 25 April 2022, https://theconversation.com/the-book-that-changed-me-journeying-to-the-self-with-ana-s-nins-sensual-transgressive-diaries-176135. Accessed 11 December 2023.

Maza, Sarah, and Paul Herron. “Swinging: The Double Life of Anaïs Nin.” Public Books, 19 February 2018, https://www.publicbooks.org/swinging-the-double-life-of-anais-nin/. Accessed 11 December 2023.

Nin, Anaïs. “Quotes from Henry and June: From "A Journal of Love"--The Unexpurgated Diary of Anaïs Nin by Anaïs Nin.” BookQuoters, https://bookquoters.com/book/henry-and-june-from-a-journal-of-love-the-unexpurgated-diary-of-anais-nin. Accessed 11 December 2023.

Further Reading

[selenepluto]

There's a Japanese legend that says your present face is the face of the one you loved the most in your past life.

[guayaba-podrida]

... el alma se le cristalizó con la nostalgia de los sueños perdidos. Se sintió tan vieja, tan acabada, tan distante de las mejores horas de su vida, que inclusive añoro las que recordaba como las peores

Gabriel García Márquez, Cien años de soledad

[thistlelearns]

13.1.23 - sometimes living is quite ok <3

[fragmentsofgrief]

— Sylvia Plath

[shadowydoes]

Tengo muchas cosas que decir sobre Llámame por tu nombre de André Aciman que estoy abrumada. Por lo mismo me he tardado en darle una reseña.

El libro, en general, me gustó, en especial su prosa. Elio cuenta LA historia de amor de un verano que lo cambió. Lo hace ya con años de separación pero no por eso sus sentimientos y su pasión es menor. Su estilo de narrar es mucho de ‘enséñame, no me digas’. Nos muestra lo mucho que ha pensado sobre esto en sus largos párrafos llenos de preguntas y en cómo se detiene y expande hasta en los más pequeños detalles. También sus descripciones evocan a los sentidos de manera que encaja muy bien con las emociones del narrador.

Otra cosa que me gustó mucho es la cantidad de referencias literarias y culturales que hacen los personajes. Aprendí varias cosas investigándolas cuando estaba anotando el libro. Además que no se sienten de que están ahí nada más, si no que quedan con los personajes.

La mera razón por la que no le pongo un 5/5 es la cuestión del age gap. Más que nada porque el hecho de que uno de 17 años se involucre con uno de 24 no parece tener importancia para los personajes. El centro del libro es ese amor que te marcó para toda la vida y por más que se sienta como el correcto, nunca lo será. Pero yo no puedo dejar de pensar que Oliver está trabajando en su maestría y Elio va a empezar su último año de prepa.

Pos bueno, me encantó esta frase:

Encontramos a Cupido en todos los lugares de Roma, pues cortamos una de sus alas para forzarle a volar en círculos.

★★★★/☆

[romanticassociations]

@romanticassociations 🕊

[milady-of-amethyst]

Hello readers!

I’m here again to introduce you all to another beautiful account that you may not have heard of before.

@agelesslibrary !!!

If you’re looking for the dark academia aesthetic, beautifully orchestrated quotes from classic literature, interesting insights on the position of dark academia as a community and culture, and ravenously gorgeous poetry strung together by the author’s own two hands, then look no further!

I have fallen in LOVE with Taskeen’s culture and aesthetic. Especially her new poetry anthology “Forbidden Feelings,” where she explores the “negative” emotions of humanity and shines grace and light onto the universality of the human experience.

Seriously, anyone who’s interested in poetry at ALL should take a look at her work. She’s truly

INCREDIBLE!!!

Taskeen’s separate blog, “The Poet’s Path: A Blog About Books, Poetry, and the Journey of Self-Discovery,” is soon to be the icing on the cake of an already budding new author! I just know it. ❤️

[mitskey]

—Margaret Atwood, “Half-Hanged Mary”

(for @griefyards )

[newvision]

— E. M. Forster, from a Room with a View

[thegentleintellectual]

What does it feel like to be lonely? It feels like being hungry: like being hungry when everyone around you is readying for a feast. It feels shameful and alarming, and over time these feelings radiate outwards, making the lonely person increasingly isolated, increasingly estranged. It hurts, in the way that feelings do, and it also has physical consequences that take place invisibly, inside the closed compartments of the body. It advances, is what I’m trying to say, cold as ice and clear as glass, enclosing and engulfing.

Excerpt From: Laing, Olivia. “The Lonely City.”

[selenepluto]

Selcouth

(adj) something strange, rare, unfamiliar and yet marvelous.

[guayaba-podrida]

Biblioteca

Cien años de soledad // Gabo

Create Dangerously // Edwidge Danticat

Dreaming in Cuban // Cristina García

La casa de la laguna // Rosario Ferré

El amor en los tiempos del cólera // Gabo

Navegación: Colombia, Cuba, Haiti, Puerto Rico

[chlosthoughts]

If music be the food of love, play on.

William Shakespeare, Twelfth Night

[halocline4]

when you do not contact me i maliciously hope you are not doing well.

when i don’t see the light of your windows,

i do hope

that you are bored listening to your cool friend

or tired

or out of coke to feel fun.

when i am standing strong

or rather lying or sitting

moderately resistant

to the temptation of making sure

you are still there alive

i hope that you are not bored

that you found someone

or someone found you -

good luck with that tho.

that way

the parting would be mellowed

by the bittersweet refusal

of any responsibility

for single-handedly

fucking things up.

it would kind of excuse

your unwillingness

to be with me.

because it might look like

(in my self-preserving delusion)

that it was just not made to happen.

and spare

from flagellating

meself:

hunting for blackheads

of my personality‘s

imperfections;

and demagoguing about

what could have i fixed

to witness it functioning,

to contemplate

the denkbild

of me

being worthy

of you

even imagining

the slightest chance

of falling in love

in actual

not drunken

fucked up high

but actual

falling in actual

goddamn you fucking insecure narcissist

of falling in love with me

second half of 2022