Anaïs Nin (1903–1977) was a French-born American diarist, essayist, novelist, and writer of erotica.
Anaïs Nin (1903–1977) was a French-born American diarist, essayist, novelist, and writer of erotica. ◦ She was born to the Cuban composer Joaquín Nin and singer Rosa Culmell. ◦ She wrote journals prolifically from age eleven until her death, and the diaries record her marriages to Hugh Parker Guiler and Rupert Pole and affairs including with psychoanalyst Otto Rank and writer Henry Miller, both of whom profoundly influenced Nin and her writing. ◦ She did not achieve wider recognition until 1966, with the first of seven diary volumes. ◦ For eleven years she lived a bigamist's "bicoastal trapeze" between Guiler in New York and Rupert Pole near Los Angeles before confessing in 1966. ◦ She is credited as one of the first prominent Western women to write erotica fully; the *Delta of Venus* and *Little Birds* stories were composed in the 1940s for an anonymous collector at a dollar a page and published only in the 1970s. ◦ She lectured frequently at colleges in her final decade. ◦
Nin held that emotion, not intellect, is the engine of vision, and that nothing we do not discover emotionally will have the power to alter our vision. ◦ She believed that in moments of emotional crisis human beings reveal themselves most accurately, because the real self rises to the surface, shatters its false roles, erupts, and assumes reality and identity. ◦ She defined the writer's task as overthrowing taboos rather than accepting them, and argued that art is our most effective means of overcoming human resistance to truth, with the writer serving a role comparable to a surgeon whose handling of anesthesia is as important as his skill with the knife. ◦ Nin rejected the isolated-genius model of art in favor of mutuality, asserting that the isolated artist is always in greater danger of losing the very thing he or she was creating because the whole purpose of creation was really mutual. ◦ She extended the title "artist" to anyone who creates anything, including a house or a child. ◦ She held that intimacy is achievable with anyone provided you drop the persona, that terrible layer of false self which we adopt as a defense, and address the inner self, the vulnerable self, while taking the risk of sharing. ◦ She framed creative life as the work of dispelling fear. ◦ In 1972 she saw women as beginning to discover their identity for the first time, and she quoted Baudelaire that in every one of us there is a man, a woman and a child. ◦ She reframed the accusation of narcissism by explaining that she wrote down compliments not from vanity but because she needed them to keep going, needing the opinion of others to grow, and she came to see the diary's confession of weakness as its gift. ◦
Nin credited the diary as the technique that taught her craft, discovering through it how to capture the living moments, and she valued the diary's naturalness and spontaneity born of free selection, writing only of what she felt most strongly at the moment. ◦ To achieve perfection in writing while retaining naturalness, she found it important to write a great deal and fluently, as the pianist practices the piano, rather than to correct constantly one page until it withers, continuing to write until perfection is achieved through repetition in order to avoid performing an autopsy. ◦ She came to psychoanalysis as a tool to unlock her own creativity, studying first with René Allendy in 1932 and then Otto Rank, both of whom became her lovers. ◦ When she briefly practiced as an analyst she quit, finding that she was not good because she was not objective, haunted by her patients, and wanting to intercede. ◦ She admitted that fear governed even her own act of publishing, dreaming before publication that she opened her front door and was struck by fatal radiation, and she saw this fear as something we have to dispel. ◦
Nin viewed the novelist's role amid collective anxiety as refusing to share the paralyzing fear of nature that causes sterility, arguing that while we refuse to organize the confusions within us we will never have an objective understanding of what is happening outside. ◦ She saw emotional crisis as the moment when the real self rises to the surface, shatters its false roles, erupts, and assumes reality and identity, producing moments of wholeness and totality of the personality. ◦ She modeled the writer as a surgeon who must handle anesthesia as skillfully as the knife because naked truth is unbearable to most. ◦ She regarded the persona as a terrible layer of false self adopted as a defense. ◦ She saw creation as fundamentally mutual rather than solitary, and she believed that in every person there is a man, a woman and a child. ◦
Nin was a diarist, essayist, novelist, and writer of erotica. ◦ She credited the diary as the technique that taught her craft. ◦ She is credited as one of the first prominent Western women to write erotica fully, having composed the *Delta of Venus* and *Little Birds* stories in the 1940s. ◦ Her honest depiction and evaluation of female desire contributed to the cultural shift toward a sexual revolution. ◦ She lectured frequently at colleges in her final decade. ◦
Nin's diary was trilingual by design; she felt French was the language of her heart, Spanish was the language of her ancestors, and English was the language of her intellect, and she used whichever best expressed the thought. ◦ She described her struggles to articulate feelings not easily expressed and to find a language for intuition, feeling, and instincts which are, in themselves, elusive, subtle, and wordless. ◦ She borrowed the Irish word "furrawn" for the kind of talk that leads strangers to intimacy. ◦
Nin advocated dropping the persona and addressing the vulnerable inner self, yet for eleven years she lived a bigamist's "bicoastal trapeze" between two husbands before confessing in 1966. ◦ ◦ She framed creative life as the work of dispelling fear, yet admitted that before publishing her diary she dreamed she opened her front door and was struck by fatal radiation, showing that fear governed even her own act of sharing. ◦ She rejected the isolated artist in favor of mutuality, yet also acknowledged that she needed the opinion of others to grow and wrote down compliments to keep going. ◦ She sought psychoanalysis to unlock creativity and briefly practiced it, but quit because she was not objective, was haunted by her patients, and wanted to intercede. ◦
She held that intimacy is achievable provided you drop the persona, that terrible layer of false self which we adopt as a defense, and address the inner self, the vulnerable self, and take the risk of sharing. ◦ She valued what she called "furrawn," the kind of talk that leads strangers to intimacy. ◦ She saw the work of engagement as dispelling the fear that is in all of us. ◦