Anaïs Nin
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224865118
2008-07-10T19:27:13Z
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{{Refimprove|date=December 2007}}
{{Infobox writer
| name = Anaïs Nin
| image = Anais Nin.jpg
| imagesize =
| caption = Portrait taken in New York City in the 1970s
| pseudonym =
| birthname = Angela Anaïs Juana Antolina Rosa Edelmira Nin y Culmell
| birthdate = [[February 21]] [[1903]]
| birthplace = [[Neuilly-sur-Seine|Neuilly]], [[France]]
| deathdate = [[January 14]] [[1977]]
| deathplace =
| occupation = author
| nationality = Spanish-French
| period =
| genre = journals
| subject =
| movement =
| notableworks =
| spouse = [[Hugh Parker Guiler]], [[Rupert Pole]]
| partner = [[Henry Miller]]
| children =
| relatives = [[Joaquin Nin]] (father), [[Joaquin Nin-Culmell]] (brother)
| influences = [[Marcel Proust]], [[André Gide]], [[Jean Cocteau]], [[Paul Valéry]], [[Arthur Rimbaud]]
| influenced =
| awards =
| signature =
| website =
}}
'''Anaïs Nin''' {{IPA2|ana'iːs nin}} (born '''Angela Anaïs Juana Antolina Rosa Edelmira Nin y Culmell''') ([[February 21]] [[1903]] - [[January 14]] [[1977]]) was a [[Cuba]]n-[[France|French]] [[author]] who became famous for her published [[journal]]s, which span more than 60 years, beginning when she was 11 years old and ending shortly before her death. Nin is also famous for her [[erotica]].
== Early life ==
Anaïs Nin was born in [[Neuilly-sur-Seine|Neuilly]], [[France]], to two artistic parents. Her father, [[Joaquin Nin]], was a [[Cuban]]<ref>[http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9A06EFDE1238F931A15756C0A962958260 "Her Cuban father was a celebrated pianist and composer"]</ref><ref>[http://www.enotes.com/salem-lit/diary-anais-nin "Joaquin Nin, a prominent Cuban pianist and composer"]</ref> pianist and composer, and her mother Rosa Culmell<ref>[http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/anaisnin.htm Anaïs Nin<!-- Bot generated title -->]</ref> was also Cuban,<ref>http://www.morbidoutlook.com/nonfiction/articles/2001_03_anaisnin.html"</ref> but of [[French people|French]] and [[Danish people|Danish]] ancestry and was a classically trained singer. 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.<ref>''Diaries, Volume 1, 1931-1934''</ref> After her parents separated, her mother moved Anaïs and her two brothers, Thorvald Nin and [[Joaquin Nin-Culmell]] from Barcelona to [[New York City]]. According to her diaries, ''Volume One, 1931 - 1934'', Nin abandoned formal schooling at the age of 16 and began working as a [[model (person)|model]].
On 3 March 1923, in [[Havana, Cuba]], she married her first husband, [[Hugh Parker Guiler]] (1898-1985), a banker and artist, later known as "Ian Hugo" when he became a filmmaker of [[experimental film]]s in the late 1940s. 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]].
== Personal life ==
According to her diaries,''Volume One, 1931 - 1934'', Nin shared a [[Bohemian]] lifestyle with [[Henry Miller]] during her time in Paris. There is no mention of her husband in that edited edition. In 1939, Nin and Hugh Parker 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 in ''Bells of Atlantis'' (1952), a film directed by Guiler under the name "Ian Hugo" with a soundtrack of [[electronic music]] by [[Louis and Bebe Barron]].
In 1947, at the age of 44, she met and began living with [[Rupert Pole]] (1919-2006), sixteen years her junior. On 17 March 1955, she married him at [[Quartzsite, Arizona]], returning with Pole to live in California.<ref>Bair biography, 1995 and IMDB.</ref> Guiler remained in New York City and was unaware of Nin's second marriage until after her death in 1977.
After Guiler's death in 1985, the unexpurgated versions of her journals were commissioned by Pole.<ref>[http://www.latimes.com/news/obituaries/la-me-pole26jul26,0,7114784.story?coll=la-home-headlines]{{Dead link|date=March 2008}}</ref>
Nin 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]], [[André Gide]], [[Jean Cocteau]], [[Paul Valéry]], and [[Arthur Rimbaud]].
== Journals ==
Anaïs Nin is perhaps best remembered 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, [[psychoanalysis|psychoanalysts]], and other figures, and wrote of them often. Moreover, as a female author describing a primarily masculine constellation of celebrities, Nin's journals have acquired importance as a counterbalancing perspective.
== Erotic writings ==
Nin is hailed by many critics as one of the finest 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 rare, with a few notable exception such as the work of [[Kate Chopin]].
According to Volume I of her diaries, 1931-1934, published in 1966 (Stuhlmann), Nin first came across erotica when her mother and two brothers returned to Paris in her late teens. They rented the apartment of an American man who was going away for the summer, and Nin 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 and pornographic narratives for an anonymous "collector" for a dollar a page, somewhat as a joke.<ref>[http://www.geocities.com/arsenio_grilo/a_nin_1.html DELTA OF VENUS, by Anaïs Nin<!-- Bot generated title -->]</ref> Nin considered the characters in her erotica to be extreme caricatures and never intended the work 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 both as a woman and an author. This relationship is mentioned by Jewel in "Morning Song," from album <i>Pieces of You</i>. An apocryphal rumor 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 Henry Miller's wife, June. In her unexpurgated journals, she wrote that she had an [[incest]]uous relationship with her father, and refers to experiments with bisexuality, and sexual relationships and 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 United States [[National Institute of Arts and Letters]] in 1974. She died in [[Los Angeles, California]] on [[January 14]] [[1977]]; her body was [[cremation|cremated]], and her ashes were scattered over [[Santa Monica Bay]]. Rupert Pole was named Nin's [[literary executor]], and he arranged to have new unexpurgated editions of Nin's books and diaries published between 1985 and his death in 2006.
In 1990 [[Philip Kaufman]] directed the film ''[[Henry & June]]'' based on Nin's novel ''[[Henry and June]]'' from ''The Journal of Love – The Unexpurgated Diary of Anaïs Nin, 1931-1932''. She was portrayed in the film by [[Maria de Medeiros]].
==Quotes ==
*"Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one's courage."
*"We don't see things as they are, we see things as we are."
*"This diary is my [[kief]], [[hashish]], and [[opium]] pipe. This is my drug and my vice."
*"...for no one has ever loved an adventurous woman as they have loved adventurous men."
*"And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom."
*"I do not want to be the leader. I refuse to be the leader. I want to live darkly and richly in my femaleness. I want a man lying over me, always over me. His will, his pleasure, his desire, his life, his work, his [[sexuality]] the touchstone, the command, my pivot. I don’t mind working, holding my ground intellectually, artistically; but as a woman, oh, God, as a woman I want to be dominated. I don’t mind being told to stand on my own feet, not to cling, be all that I am capable of doing, but I am going to be pursued, fucked, possessed by the [[will (philosophy)|will]] of a male at his time, his bidding."
*"How wrong is it for women to expect the man to build the world she wants, rather than set out to create it herself."
*"I postpone death by living, by suffering, by error, by risking, by giving, by losing."
*"Each friend represents a world in us, a world not possibly born until they arrive, and it is only by this meeting that a new world is born."
*"I am an excitable person who only understands life lyrically, musically, in whom feelings are much stronger as reason. I am so thirsty for the marvelous that only the marvelous has power over me. Anything I can not transform into something marvelous, I let go. Reality doesn't impress me. I only believe in intoxication, in ecstasy, and when ordinary life shackles me, I escape, one way or another. No more walls."
*"Something is always born of excess: great art was born of great terror, great loneliness, great inhibitions, instabilities, and it always balances them."
==List of works==
* ''[[D. H. Lawrence: An Unprofessional Study]]''
* ''[[Collages (Anaïs Nin)|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 (novel)|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 (book)|Incest]]''
* ''[[Fire (novel)|Fire]]''
* ''[[Nearer the Moon]]''
==Notes==
{{reflist}}
==References==
* [[Deirdre Bair]], ''[[Anaïs Nin: A Biography]]'' (New York: [[G. P. Putnam's Sons|Putnam]], 1995) ISBN 0-399-13988-5
== See also ==
{{Literature Portal}}
*[[List of Cuban American writers]]
*[[List of Cuban Americans]]
==External links==
{{wikiquote}}
* [http://www.anaisnin.com/ The Official Anaïs Nin.com]
* {{imdb name|0632405}}
*[http://web.mac.com/retrofocus/iWeb/art/anaisnin.html Unofficial Anaïs Nin website (brand new host in 2007 but online since 1995)]
* [http://www.oldkewgardens.com/ss-2-homes-0125.html Anaïs Nin]
* [http://www.sexualfables.com/the_house_of_incest.php ''The House of Incest'']
*[http://www.roberthaller.com/firstlight/hugo.html Ian Hugo]
*[http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/30/us/30pole.html Fox, Margalit. (30 July 2006). "Rupert Pole, 87, Diarist's Duplicate Spouse, Dies", ''The New York Times'']
*[http://www.myspace.com/1574526 Anaïs Nin on Myspace.com]
{{DEFAULTSORT:Nin, Anaïs}}
[[Category:1903 births]]
[[Category:1977 deaths]]
[[Category:American diarists]]
[[Category:Bisexual writers]]
[[Category:California writers]]
[[Category:Cuban-Americans]]
[[Category:Cuban American writers]]
[[Category:Danish Americans]]
[[Category:French Americans]]
[[Category:French diarists]]
[[Category:French women writers]]
[[Category:LGBT writers from France]]
[[Category:People of Catalan descent]]
[[Category:French Roman Catholics]]
[[Category:Cuban Roman Catholics]]
[[Category:American Roman Catholics]]
[[Category:Spanish-Americans]]
[[Category:Women diarists]]
[[Category:Women writers (20th century)]]
[[Category:French erotica writers]]
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