ANAIS NIN
You may know of her quotes before you actually know of her.
"I postpone death by living, by suffering, by error, by risking, by giving, by losing."
"And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom."
The attributor of such quotes was the French-born writer Anais Nin, who lived from 1903 until 1977. She is often associated with that controversial American writer, Henry Miller, most famous for his work "The Tropic of Cancer," as well as the accompanying "Tropic of Capricorn." The two had a long-standing relationship, besides the considerable difference in age. Jeffrey Bartone, Edinboro University professor of English, wrote his dissertation on Nin. He spoke to the Spectator about the writer's disputed legacy and why she just haven't been given her rightful due yet.
"She was just as great as the people she hung out with," he said, in respects to the crowd Nin made herself privvy to, with the likes of the aforementioned Miller and novelist Lawrence Durrell, who is best remembered for his "Alexandra Quartet."
Nin produced a variety of writings during her colorful lifetime, including works of fiction such as the "Cities of the Interior," "House of Incest" and "Delta of Venus." She produced a study of the British writer D.H. Lawrence, titled "D.H. Lawrence: An Unprofessional Study," which Bartone said was "before is time. "
But she is most noted, most acclaimed for her diaries, which were published during the latter half of her lifetime and received much acclaim, for a while, at least.
Bartone termed what Nin did as "life writing," in the tradition of giants such as Marcel Proust (who was previously profiled in the Spectator).
"She was so disciplined," he said. Nin would revise the several published editions of her diaries painstakingly, even taking what some might consider to be creative liberties (which is partially the reason she got into hot water during her last days). She would even spend her last day carefully editing her diary. Nin kept one from the age of 11 onwards.
"She made it into a really beautiful life-long stylistic exercise," said Bartone.
And it was a labor that paid off well in the end. The diaries, though, weren't entirely true to life - and that was something Nin ended up being attacked for. She mixed truth and fiction, much like writers in recent days have, such as James Frey in "A Million Little Pieces" or Augusten Burroughs' "Running With Scissors."
Bartone defended this choice by Nin, but also noted why critics were so adamantly opposed to her decision: "She promoted her life along with her literature," he said.
And what a life it was! She met some of the most creative people of her age; her diary "Henry and June" was immortalized in the 1980s film of the same name, which starred Uma Thurman as Miller's wife June, a figure that Nin (in her diaries) became obsessed with. Her life, indeed, was a "spectacle"- and reading her diary? While it may at first seem voyeuristic, it certainly is tempting.
In time, though, the fervor the diaries stirred died down, with the gradual deaths of the people involved (Miller would die in the 1980s, for example, outliving Nin).
Nin, in a move that was, again, ahead of her time, embraced a life of exploring sexual and spiritual freedom. She believed getting to know oneself was important before aligning oneself with causes.
In the wave of feminism of the 1960s and 1970s, this was seen as an attack, a call to ignore politics, when, as Bartone stressed, it really wasn't. In fact, as he suggested, it was "complementary."
And with the recent "revisiting of feminism," Nin has become less of a deceased firestarter.
This aside, though, Bartone (as others in the literary community believe too) feels she hasn't given her proper time to shine as a writer, due to the fact that her legacy is mostly her diaries and lingering attitudes about that.
Most people see a diary as a secondary study of a person's life, Bartone explained, something to read as a guide to where they cultivated their inspiration from. In Nin's case, though, her diaries are read as her foremost creative entit, and also, a sexist belief that diaries are purely "a woman's notebook."
In Nin's case, though, the critics couldn't be more wrong. She may have stretched and played with the truth, but in such a way that should be pardoned (as people are quick to pardon, say, Ezra Pound's antisemitism) and let the writing speak for itself.
As Nin herself said: "If you do not breathe through writing, if you do not cry out in writing, or sing in writing, then don't write, because our culture has no use for it."
There's no better way to say it than that.
MARCH 17, 2010
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