Writing an Icon. Anita Jarczok
and strategic decision.
The first installment of the series, The Diary of Anaïs Nin, 1931–1934 (hereafter Diary 1), gives an intimate picture of a bohemian coterie in France, features Henry Miller together with his eccentric wife, June, and describes Nin’s commencing adventure with psychoanalysis. Writing and psychoanalysis are therefore two leading themes of Diary 1, and they frame Nin’s self-presentations. Because of the simple fact of being the first in the series, and therefore probably the most frequently read one, Diary 1 was incredibly influential in shaping Nin’s further career. First of all, because it sold, it made the publication of further volumes possible. Second, it launched the first set of representations of Nin. The story of Nin’s life in Paris between 1931 and 1934 contained in the first Diary and later elaborated in two unexpurgated volumes, Henry and June and Incest, has been frequently exploited in popular culture. The Miller-Nin-June trio captured the imaginations of readers especially powerfully, and as a consequence, Nin’s relationship with Henry Miller became one of her most recognizable “characteristics.” For these reasons, the present analysis centers on Nin’s self-portraits in Diary 1, while later volumes are brought into consideration only when an indication of how these portraits developed or changed is necessary.
The second installment of Nin’s journal, The Diary of Anaïs Nin, 1934–1939, published a year after the first one, in 1967, continues the story of Nin’s life in Paris. With the third volume, the setting moves across the Atlantic, and volumes 3–6 cover the years Nin spent in the United States. Diary 3 begins in 1939 after the outbreak of World War II with Nin’s departure from France and her arrival in New York. Diary 6 ends with Nin’s announcement of the publication of the first volume in 1966. Volumes 3–6 are far less coherent than the first two installments. While Diary 1 and Diary 2 are well constructed and read more like a novel or an autobiography than a diary, with the third part this semblance of coherence begins to dissipate: Nin inserts many articles and reviews and frequently quotes her correspondence. In Diary 3 and Diary 4, Henry Miller’s letters prevail. In his letters, which are usually full of praise toward the addressee, Miller mentions how much Nin’s help means to him, lists other enthusiasts of Nin’s writings, and encourages her not to give up her literary work. In Diary 5, the role of Nin’s admirer and supporter is taken over by another writer, James Herlihy.
Nin’s Diary always bridges at least two cultural perspectives: the times when the Diary took its first shape (for example, the 1930s, in the case of the first installment) and the times when it was revised, published, and read by the public (thus, “the sixties,” understood here broadly as the period stretching beyond an actual decade and encompassing the years 1958 to 1974). Consequently, while analyzing Nin’s Diary and her self-portraits included in it, we must take into account both discourses that accompanied the production of her text and cultural contexts that enabled its successful consumption, because “to ‘read’ a text or a work of art,” as Lisa Rado argues, is to “eavesdrop upon, to hear snatches of a much larger cultural interchange.” In the rest of this chapter I trace how the culture of modernism, psychoanalytic discourse, the myth of the bohemian artist, and interwar perspectives on femininity and creativity shaped Nin’s self in the diary. I also try to explain why Nin’s Diary, rejected for three decades, found its audience in the sixties.16
Naturally, Nin’s self-portraits, just like the cultural discourses that shaped Nin’s journal and influenced its success, are not limited to the ones discussed below. It would be extremely difficult, verging on the impossible, to present all self-portraits and to disentangle all cultural exchanges that contributed to the creation of Nin’s self and to point out how these corresponded with the culture of the sixties, so only the most prominent portraits and the most obvious cultural references are examined.
Nin the Writer
The first volume of the Diary can be divided into four parts according to the people who prevail in them. Thus, the first part features Henry Miller and his wife, June; the second introduces the psychoanalyst René Allendy; the third describes Nin’s acquaintance with the French poet and actor Antonin Artaud and recounts Nin’s reunion with her father; and the fourth one is largely devoted to her other analyst, Otto Rank. This division, with a new character introduced at regular intervals, was undoubtedly intentional. It was a result of a long editing process (described in the previous chapter), and the following comment made by Nin about the revision of the first installment may serve as another proof that she diligently planned her journal: “The balance is what is difficult to achieve. For instance, there may have been too much of Allendy, yet later it turns out the contrast was necessary to bring out the larger vision of Rank.”17 It must therefore be emphasized once again that Nin took great pains over the revisions of her journal.
The first Nin encountered in Diary 1 is Nin the writer—a portrait that would be strongly developed in the following five volumes of the expurgated series released during Nin’s life. Diary 1 opens with a description of the French village, Louveciennes, where Nin lives, and Nin’s house. Like a skillful novelist, Nin sets the scene for the events that will take place. The first few pages are abundant in literary allusions and comparisons. Nin compares Louveciennes to the village where Madame Bovary died, describes a village character as “one of Balzac’s misers,” mentions Maupassant’s fondness for Louveciennes, and likens people commuting to Paris on old-fashioned trains to Proustian personages (Diary 1, 3). The literary ambience is therefore perceptible from the very beginning.
After reading these opening pages, we can clearly see that Nin’s Diary is not what its label may suggest—a collection of spontaneously penned daily entries—but a well-structured and beautifully written work of literature. Nin’s self-presentation as a writer therefore takes place on two levels: first, through the text and texture of the Diary, which serves as the best evidence that what readers hold in their hands is the work of a fine writer; and second, through her direct self-portrait of herself as a writer.
As far as the latter is concerned, Nin introduces herself as an aspiring writer. One of the first things she relates is that she has finished her book D. H. Lawrence: An Unprofessional Study and that she is not interested in an ordinary life of mending socks, canning fruit, and polishing furniture. She seeks moments of exaltation, and they occur while she is writing (Diary 1, 5). Moreover, anyone familiar with the plot of Madame Bovary knows that the heroine of this novel is unhappy within the confinement of her marriage. Nin, therefore, implicitly hints at her domestic imprisonment—implicitly because, apart from the preface, her husband does not appear in Diary 1 (he does appear in later volumes but always under the pseudonym Ian Hugo, never as Nin’s husband). However, she also states that unlike Madame Bovary she is not going to commit suicide. Writing prevents her from this tragic step. She presents her writing as the only means to escape “a beautiful prison” of her existence, to bring a state of hibernation to an end, and to start living more fully (Diary 1, 7).
Throughout Diary 1, Nin talks at length about her attempts at writing. She describes her experiences of composing her prose poem House of Incest, the collection of novelettes The Winter of Artifice, and the preface to Miller’s Tropic of Cancer.18 She also devotes a lot of space to discussions of a writer’s nature. She endows writers and artists with a special role and portrays them as special, chosen, and unique. She states that whenever she writes she is in “a state of grace” and experiences “illuminations and fevers” (Diary 1, 5). Her creative sensibility brings on “states of ecstasy” that others can only achieve through drugs (37). And although at some point Nin compares writing to pains of childbearing—“No joy. Just pain, sweat, exhaustion”—in general, she presents writing as a very gratifying experience (315).
Providing such idealistic descriptions, Nin contributes to the construction and maintenance of the tradition that has regarded writers as creative geniuses, superior to other people. Nin’s idea of an author is grounded in the romantic, and in effect modernist, notion of an artist as a lonely, insightful, misunderstood, and frequently underrated genius, who sets him/herself (although when Nin talks about the artist in general she always uses a male pronoun) against society. And Nin