Anaïs Nin

Anaïs Nin in the mid-1970s.

Anaïs Nin IPA: [ana'iːs nin] (February 21 1903 - January 14 1977) was a French-born author of Spanish, Cuban, and Danish descent who became famous for her published journals, which span more than sixty years, beginning when she was eleven years old and ending shortly before her death. Anaïs is also famous for her erotica, which not only proves sensual, but also acts as a study of sexuality in its perfection and flaws.

Her first husband was Hugh Guiler, a banker and artist, whom she married as a young woman in the 1920s. Rupert Pole, whom she married in 1955 while still married to Guiler, was a forester and the step-grandson of architect Frank Lloyd Wright. After the death of Hugh Guiler in 1985, the unexpurgated versions of her journals were commissioned by Rupert Pole. [1]

Early life

Anaïs Nin was born in Neuilly, France. After her parents separated, her mother moved Anaïs and her two brothers, Thorvald Nin and Joaquin Nin-Culmell from Barcelona to New York City. While still a teenager, Nin abandoned formal schooling (at the age of 16) and began working as a model.

On 3 March 1923, she married Hugh Parker Guiler (1898-1985). The couple moved to Paris the following year, where Guiler pursued his banking career and Nin began to pursue her interest in writing. Her first published work was a critical evaluation of D. H. Lawrence called "D. H. Lawrence: An Unprofessional Study." She also explored the field of psychotherapy, studying under the likes of Otto Rank, a disciple of Sigmund Freud.

According to Volume I of her diaries, 1931 - 1934, published in 1966 (Stuhlmann), Anaïs was living a Bohemian lifestyle with Henry Miller. There is no mention of Guiler in that edited edition.

In 1939 Nin and Guiler moved back to New York City.

Nin appeared in the Kenneth Anger film Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome (1954) as Astarte, the Maya Deren film Ritual in Transfigured Time (1946), and a film directed by Guiler under the name "Ian Hugo", Bells of Atlantis (1952).

She entered into a second marriage to Rupert Pole, which took place in Quartzsite, Arizona on 17 March 1955, before she and Pole returned to live in California. Guiler remained in New York City and was unaware of Nin's second marriage until after her death in 1977.

She often cited authors Djuna Barnes and D. H. Lawrence as inspirations. She states in Volume One of her diaries that she and Henry Miller drew inspiration from Marcel Proust, Andre Gide, Jean Cocteau, Paul Valery, and Arthur Rimbaud.

The Journals

Anaïs Nin is perhaps most famous as a diarist. Her journals, which span several decades, provide a deeply explorative insight into her personal life and relationships. Nin was acquainted, often quite intimately, with a number of prominent authors, artists, and psychoanalysts, among other famous figures. Her journals portray these persons in a profound depth of analysis and frankness of description. Moreover, as a female author describing a primarily masculine constellation of celebrities, Nin's journals have acquired importance as a counterbalancing perspective.

Erotic writings

File:Anais-nin.jpg

Portrait taken in NYC in the 70s

Anaïs Nin is hailed by many critics as one of the finest examples of writers of female erotica. She was one of the first women to really explore the realm of erotic writing, and certainly the first prominent woman in modern Europe to write erotica. Before her, erotica written by women was virtually unheard of, except for a few writers such as Kate Chopin.

According to Volume I of her diaries, 1931 - 1934, published in 1966 (Stuhlmann), Anaïs first came across erotica when her mother and two brothers returned to Paris in her later teens. They had rented the apartment of an American man who was going away for the summer, and Anaïs came across a number of French paperbacks: "One by one, I read these books, which were completely new to me. I had never read erotic literature in America...They overwhelmed me. I was innocent before I read them, but by the time I had read them all, there was nothing I did not know about sexual exploits...I had my degree in erotic lore."

Faced with a desperate need for money, Nin and Miller began in the 1940s to write erotic/pornographic narratives for an anonymous "collector" for a dollar a page, somewhat as a joke. [2] Nin considered the characters in her erotica to be extreme caricatures and never intended for the erotica to be published, but changed her mind in the early 1970s and allowed them to be published as Delta of Venus and Little Birds.

Nin was a friend, and in some cases lover, of many leading literary figures, including Henry Miller, Antonin Artaud, Edmund Wilson, Gore Vidal, James Agee, and Lawrence Durrell. Her passionate love affair and friendship with Miller strongly influenced her as both a woman and an author. An apocryphal rumour abounds that Nin was bisexual, promulgated by the Philip Kaufman film, Henry & June. Although this rumor is widely believed to be false, Nin's journals leave many questions about her relationship with June Miller, Henry Miller's wife. In her unexpurgated journals, she wrote that she had had an incestuous relationship with her father, and she refers to experiments with bisexuality, and sexual relationships and sexual experiences with women.

Later Life and Legacy

In 1973 she received an honorary doctorate from the Philadelphia College of Art. She was elected to the National Institute of Arts and Letters in 1974. Anaïs Nin died in Los Angeles, California on January 14 1977. Her body was cremated, and her ashes were scattered over Santa Monica Bay.

In 1990 Philip Kaufman directed the film Henry & June based on Nin's novel Henry & June from The Journal of Love — The Unexpurgated Diary of Anaïs Nin, 1931-1932, though many dedicated fans of Anaïs Nin were more than disappointed with the film's inaccurate portrayal of her life.

Trivia

Her paternal great-grandfather fled France during the Revolution, going first to Haiti, then New Orleans, and finally to Cuba where he helped build that country's first railroad (source: Diaries, Volume 1, 1931 - 1934).

List of works

• D.H. Lawrence: An Unprofessional Study
• Collages
• Winter of Artifice
• Under a Glass Bell
• House of Incest
• Delta of Venus
• Little Birds
• Cities of the Interior, in five volumes:
  • Ladders to Fire
  • Children of the Albatross
  • The Four-Chambered Heart
  • A Spy in the House of Love
  • Seduction of the Minotaur
• The Diary of Anaïs Nin 7 volumes
• The Early Diary of Anaïs Nin 4 volumes
• The Novel of the Future
• In Favor of the Sensitive Man
• Henry and June
• Incest
• Fire
• Nearer the Moon

A famous quote by Anais Nin is "We don't see things as they are, we see things as we are".

References

• Bair, Deirdre: Anaïs Nin: A Biography. New York: Putnam 1995. ISBN 0-399-13988-5
• Fitch, Noël Riley The Erotic Life of Anaïs Nin. New York: Little, Brown, 1993. ISBN 0-316-28428-9

External links

• The Official Anais Nin.com
• Unofficial Anaïs Nin website (brand new host in 2007 but online since 1995)
• Delta of Venus
• Little Birds
• Anaïs Nin
• The House of Incest