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Title: Diary of Anais Nin, 1947-1955 by Anais Nin, Gunther Stuhlmann ISBN: 0-15-125593-8 Publisher: Harcourt Pub. Date: 1974 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $7.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.33 (3 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: Beautiful writing that I use as meditations
Comment: THE DIARY OF ANAIS NIN: VOLUME FIVE 1947-1955 contains beautiful writing. Anais (pronounced "anna - EESE" ["EESE" as in "lease"]) has a very unique writing style, a result of her Spanish and French background, her fondest for extremes, and frequent disregard for correct grammar and punctuation.
The downside to her beautiful prose is that often it is hard to follow what she is talking about. Though I am a huge fan of Anais Nin, I always struggle with her writing, particularly these "expurgated" diaries; because they were so heavily edited they seem very choppy at times. Anais also was not in the habit of sticking to one topic per paragraph. And it is common for one paragraph to be completely unrelated to the previous. I often become so bewildered that I have to put the book down. (It also doesn't help that I was only two when Anais died in 1977, meaning I am often completely unfamiliar with the topics she discusses.)
I now use her diaries as meditations, and am content to read a passage or even paragraph at a time. It no longer bothers me that I often get lost. One paragraph, or even one sentence, often contains enough beauty to make it unimportant that I have no idea what she's talking about (many things I have understood have not been nearly as beautiful). She just had an awesome command of language! My favorite passage in Volume Five is on the very first page where she describes her time in Acapulco. It's stunning poetry! I've never seen anyone else write like this.
I would certainly agree that previous knowledge of Anais's life is helpful in appreciating her diaries and all other works. I am currently reading ANAIS NIN: A BIOGRAPHY by Deirdre Bair. Ms. Bair's book has been incredibly helpful in understanding Nin's work. I recommend Bair's biography of Nin in addition to THE DAIRY OF ANAIS NIN: VOLUME FIVE 1947-1955.
Rating: 5
Summary: Poetic and Precise
Comment: When reading an Anais Nin diary, I am in some conflict. At first I can't wait to see what her next diary contains and I want to rush through one to get to the next. Then, once I start reading, I am so captivated I end up reading passages again after completing the work. The descriptions are so intensely vivid and poetic.
In this volume, Anais looks at the world with less innocence and more horror, with less joy and more sadness, with less acceptance and more desire for change. Here she is less self-absorbed and as her writing progresses she seems to conquer various demons.
Much of the writing in this volume is a perfect example of the sheer beauty of her writing. There is definitely a switch from self absorption to a full appreciation of life and its intricate forms. Perhaps here she realized this was going to be published, so she starts to hide various emotions and feelings of desire, but then again these are not the full diaries, all the more the pity. This is an expurgated version.
I loved her descriptions of the sea:
"The sand did not seem like sand, but like powdered glass which reflected the light. The sea folded its layers around me, touching my legs, my hips, my breasts like a liquid sculptor with warm hands." Pg. 14
In 1947 she has fallen in love with Acapulco, Mexico. As she sits in the sun the warmth washes over her diary. It is the start of many a journey. From Acapulco to San Francisco and then to New York and a visit to Paris.
She explains her experiences in lucid detail. She explains the contrast between N.Y. and Mexico and longs for the sun and sand. She worries about her rejections and even says:
"In the face of so much rejection of my work should I abdicate?" pg. 78
What writer has not felt this way? She is so honest, yet her creative energy propels her forward. To her, writing is breathing, healing, her intoxication. When she doesn't write, she feels her world shrinking. She feels trapped. There are moments lost in time due to the frenzied pace of her life.
Although she can write beautifully without the assistance of substance abuse, what she writes under the influence of a drug on pages 256-258 is rather informative. What a brilliant mind to be able to recreate every nuance of experience with a pen.
From 1947-1955 Anais also goes through life changing experiences. Her parents pass onto the next life and she undergoes a major operation. During this time she also struggles with critic opinion and publishers who can't understand her very soul. Which she pours out in page after page for their approval.
Here, Henry and Anais write a few letters. Her life is following a different path and Henry is a memory, yet still a friend.
Surrounded by artists, she dances through life as if an observer of all she dances through. When she encounters pain, she observes it and analyzes its components, then looks forward with a sense of optimism, dancing again towards beauty.
Her astute observations and interest in psychology are fascinating. There are pertinent issues so very human, almost unbelievable real-life experiences and life and death struggles of the soul.
Anais Nin is real, open and can at times describe the word in metaphors so beautiful, they take your breath away. Her words are alive and fuse with your own creative energy.
She says what many of us have difficulty saying.
When I read her diaries, I am hungry to dive deeper. Many authors never even swim towards the ocean Anais is willing to explore in great depth.
Rating: 3
Summary: Anais's Excellent Adventure
Comment: This volume is number five in the original series of Nin's published expurgated diaries. (As the major players in Nin's life have passed away, and libel suits have become a lessening concern, her literary executor has begun releasing additional volumes from the same time periods as the expurgated works containing previously suppressed material, which makes talking about a "series" confusing at times.) Volume Five finds Nin in America after World War II, during the era of the Feminine Mystique, living what has to have been a fairly expensive lifestyle on both coasts, plus Mexico, with no visible means of support. Knowing more of Nin's actual biography than she is willing to divulge in this volume helps in understanding this puzzle--she was married to two men at the time, one in New York, one on the West Coast.
This volume appears to have been written with more care than the 1944-47 volume, perhaps because with Nin's second marriage she was no longer spending as much time compulsively "ensorcelling" younger men. Nin dates her entries by the month or season of the year, and they appear to be written with reflection, rather than in the heat of the moment. This suggests also that the entries may have been more heavily edited, either before they were ever incorporated into the diary or later, for publication. This raises an interesting question for which there is no answer: If a diary is edited by the alteration of text, as opposed to the deletion of uninteresting or controversial matter, should it still be considered a diary? How much editing can be done before a work becomes no longer a diary but a series of essays? It depends on what the definition of "diary" is, of course, but I think there is a good argument that this volume is no longer a bad diary, as volume four was, but a fairly good series of essays.
A number of interesting events happen in Nin's outer life in this volume that are engagingly described. She goes to Mexico and describes her exotic life there quite beautifully. She copes with the death of her mother. She has an interesting literary friendship with James Leo Herlihy more than a decade before his great success as the author of the book _Midnight Cowboy_. She drops acid under laboratory conditions (in 1955!).
Nin doesn't seem as whiny about her inner life as she did in volume four of this series. Her ongoing struggles with lack of literary recognition are thus easier for at least this reader to take in stride than in volume four. Nin also appears to achieve some sort of psychological breakthough with her therapist of that period, Dr. Inge Bogner, and, as Nin describes it, achieves objectivity. Whatever it was, she seems less frantic at this juncture in her life.
Because Nin has a track record of being somewhat slippery, it is always a great temptation to read her diary volumes in tandem with her letters, biographies...and fiction. Therein lies the rub with her constant complaints about her lack of literary recognition. Although I respect her ambition to show psychoanalytic process in her characters, I just find that she mastered the diary genre much more than the fiction forms she attempted. Read Amy Bloom's and Peter Kramer's fiction, not Nin's, if you want intense psychological fiction, but do read Nin's diary.
Verdict: pretty good, but hard to appreciate fully unless you know a lot about Nin and her work.
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Title: The Diary of Anais Nin: Vol. 1 (1931-1934) by Anais Nin ISBN: 0156260255 Publisher: Harvest Books Pub. Date: June, 1969 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
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Title: The Diary Of Anais Nin, Volume 2 (1934-1939) by Anais Nin ISBN: 0156260263 Publisher: Harvest Books Pub. Date: 25 March, 1970 List Price(USD): $20.00 |
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Title: The Diary Of Anais Nin, Volume 7 (1966-1974) by Anais Nin ISBN: 0156260352 Publisher: Harvest Books Pub. Date: 14 October, 1981 List Price(USD): $20.00 |
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Title: The Diary Of Anais Nin, Volume 6 (1955-1966) by Anais Nin ISBN: 0156260328 Publisher: Harvest Books Pub. Date: 03 November, 1977 List Price(USD): $20.00 |
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Title: Linotte: The Early Diary of Anais Nin (1914-1920) by Anais Nin ISBN: 0156523868 Publisher: Harvest Books Pub. Date: 10 March, 1980 List Price(USD): $26.00 |
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