by Anais Nin
Christmas in the air. Buying presents and my ticket for Los Angeles.
The Picasso painting of two figures tied to one breathing tube slipped into my writing once. I see why. Vicarious living is dangerous. And to Jim I said less seriously: "It gives sinus."
Jim incites me to improvisation because he responds to it. He takes up the themes and goes forth on his own. I still prefer his diary to his public writing.
At Black Mountain College, Richard Lippold, who was teaching art, felt a friendship for Jim, and said that his next large work would be dedicated to Jim. In 1949 he created Variation Number 7: Full Moon. It is beautifully exhibited in a dark room of the Museum of Modern Art, with the light only on the silver threads. Whether Lippold intended it or not, I saw in it a portrait of Jim. It is the perfect irradiation of swift and slender threads vibrating in all directions. It is a tower of antennae. Jim's words are so volatile, so full of improvisations that I cannot retain them. It is in talk that he scales all the musical edifices, in writing he is constrained by comparison. In talk he reveals the perfect wave receiver. What his writing will become, I don't know yet. He is handicapped by the false virility of American literature, he has difficulties in plunging inward. He is further hampered by a sense of taboos.
Before I leave the United States, escorted to the border by extradition laws against fantasy, I am going to leave a textbook on modern literature.
Jim makes me feel like writing because he has the power of levitation.
Jim reads some parts of the diaries avidly, and starts an answering rhythm in the code of today's language, and it is in his youthful, perfect receptivity that I measure the life-transmitting power of my life and work.
Jim says: "It is the only book I can read which gives me not only life but the knowledge of how to absorb experience, the chemistry itself of love and art perfectly wedded and perfectly told. The interplay between all the relationships, and the audacities, the courage..."
We met at the Museum of Modern Art on a sultry hot afternoon. I wear the light hemp shoes I found in Yucatán, a chartreuse handwoven skirt from Cuernavaca, a black cotton blouse. I carry a wicker basket.
With the greatest of ease we gain altitude, whether we are staling at Giacometti's Young Man or at Dufy, who makes the darkest night airy and transparent. Jim's talk, febrile and highly colored, seeks to return to me the waves of illumination he has received due to his open receptivity. No drinking necessary. The entire framework, senses, the mind, are all revolving within him, and the pleasure it gives me to see these luminous fireworks caused by my own profoundly buried inner fire is a sweet compensation for all the hours spent upon the diary, because it means I have received life and I have preserved it so that now it can be transmitted.
Jim is my spiritual son.
"When I get money from my book's publication," says Jim, "I will go and buy that castle in Mallorca which you told me about."
Louis Barron is deeply versed in electronics, as well as psychology, philosophy, ESP. Always mellow and smiling, he conceals his learning behind a hesitant manner. After working with Bebe and Louis Barron in San Francisco our friendship grew. The Barrons incited me to record all of House of Incest, which I was reluctant to do. I thought I did my best reading for them, but hearing it played back I found flaws and worked to eliminate them.
But the Barrons had no capital, no distributor, and the records sold badly. No one knew about them.
When they came to New York, they set up a sound studio and Sound Portraits became a profession. They made sound tracks for films.
When Ian Hugo filmed the prologue of House of Incest [Bells of Atlantis], they composed the electronic score and it matched the fluid images and narration. The three elements, sound, image, and music, fused. It was an unusual collaboration.
Today I heard a piece they composed to be played in Paris at a concert of musique concrète. I compared it to a Miró painting. It was light, whimsical, and full of rhythm.
This innovation had its inception in France with Edgar Varècse. It was called "organized sound." It was first used in a play, Maya, which I saw in the thirties. Jean-Louis Barrault used it for his play Columbus.
Louis and Bebe explain their electronic music:
This music is electronic music based on Cybernetics, the science which sets forth principles of behavior which apply both to machines and people. Among the better-known products of Cybernetics are the computers, popularly referred to as "Electronic Brains."
In applying this science to our music, we analyze a film in terms of its thematic and emotional content, as any film composer would. Then, instead of writing musical notes to express our feelings, we design special electronic circuits. We feed instructions to these circuits. The instructions inform them how they should react and interact to the sensations they receive from other circuits, and how they should react to their own behavior, which they sample through feedback loops.
This means that these circuits have an awareness of what other circuits are doing, what they themselves are doing, and what is expected of them by the designer—in this case the composer.
Therefore, in this music, not only the sounds are entirely electronic in origin (no microphones, musical instruments, or live sounds are used) but also the rhythms and some of the melodies and counterpoints are electronically structured, under the control of the composer.
The front room of their apartment on Eighth Street is completely filled with equipment. It is a jungle of electronic instruments, knobs, wires, as complex as the control panel of an airplane. It is separated from the living room by soundproof glass.
They keep open house, and I met many people there, Joseph Campbell, Jean Erdman, William Styron, whose writing I do not like, Peggy Glanville-Hicks, Barney Rosset, who does not like my work, John Cage, whom I knew for years, film makers, and many others.
With Louis and Bebe I found an easy, human relationship. They work with intense caring, and live a varied, chaotic, fecund existence.
[Winter, 1952–1953]
Maxwell Geismar fails to understand all departures from realism. He is not willing to see that the realist did not give us reality. There has always been in my life a series of ponderous, earthy men whose seriousness attracted me while it caused me distress. Max does not understand either poetry or surrealism. Is it my effort to connect with the earth? Is it the image of my earthy mother?
It is a relationship I hear in the Debussy Sonata. I hear the violin as a bird making desperate efforts at ascensions, and the piano, by its denser substance, not allowing the volatilization to take place. The piano asserts a ponderous body, which the violin seeks to transcend.
Thus my ties with Henry, with Rank, with Jakob Wassermann, and now with Max. And on the other side of them are the poets, Djuna Barnes, Joyce, the surrealists, who used their imagination to transcend contingencies, to reach elevations and freedom. I feel that I partake of both of these divided worlds, that if ever I can integrate them...
Max said: "If a system is corrupt, such as the literary system, how can we go on with our work without taking a militant step to achieve the power to impose certain values? It is as in politics, if it threatens the survival of human beings who have not been militant, then the human being is forced to become militant."
Meanwhile it is Aldridge and not Geismar who is made the critic's leader as editor of Discovery. Aldridge is truly an adolescent critic seeking to give final stature to adolescent writers, some of whom are not yet born. There is a word for the love of the dead, but no word for the American love of the fetus in the arts.
At this point I see everything clearly as if I, not Maurice Herzog, had climbed Annapurna, and without loss of gloves, fingers, and toes, could remain there a few minutes while the sun goes down.
Relationship to the airy young men (unreal, remote, nonhuman) is over because it was my relationship to a volatile, airy, nonhuman father. I now accept my friendships with serious, earthbound men, my comfortable relationship with women (my m
other having been the fixed, stable point of loyal love).
I carry my own weight, not of earth, but of guilt, the weight was in myself, not in the men.
The diary gave me a frightening mistrust of memory. Memory is a great betrayer. Whenever I read it, I find it differs from the way I remembered the scenes and the talk. I find scenes I had forgotten, thoughts I had forgotten, and precisions noted at the time have become foggy or vanish altogether.
Letter from Maxwell Geismar after reading a few volumes of the diary:
Yesterday and last night I read the last two sections with increasing admiration. I suppose, in spite of my laziness in things like friendship, my evasive generalities that allow me to avoid thinking, 1 will have to suggest why I think it is an admirable job, first rate, marvelous, in parts: impressive. The following points are only suggestions too: during the reading I had a series of things I wanted to tell you, good things, and which I should have taken down.
Along with my admiration for your writing, I have always had, as you probably felt, some reservations on the score of that materiality theme, which somehow I demand of the writers whom I admire; well, that count is removed, and how; you quite terrify me, and I suppose I was a little shocked, being conventional at heart, even while I admired the narrative in intellectual and definitely moral terms: moral in the real sense. What is fine really is not so much the purely physical descriptions but of course the descriptions of the emotional states that comprise the flux of love; these are absolutely brilliant. That is to say, both the description of the illusion or the exaltation, and then the accurate illumination of them, and why you originally felt them.... This is literature of the first order.
White Horse Tavern, New York. A truly Irish café with dark wood panels, mugs of dark beer and a mixture of artists and the underworld of the docks. Dylan Thomas frequents it. Louis and Bebe won a goldfish at an Italian fiesta and it swam in pink water. Peter Grippe talked of Willem de Kooning and Esteban Francis as painters and neighbors; of how after living for years in a basement, they were so happy to have found an apartment with a tree almost growing into the room that they forgot to unpack, stretched a blanket on the floor and got drunk in celebration of a tree.
***
Letter from Henry:
Chez Michel Simon
Dear Anaïs:
Just got your letter here in this strange place—Simon offered it to us in his absence. Met him in Paris for just a few minutes—and struck it off at once. Am going to Vienne (Isere) from here, then back to Paris and Brussels, then home. Frankly, I'm homesick. The first time in my life. There's nothing new for me in Europe and I don't want any more the cultural, intellectual life. Too too much talk, rehash, etc. Besides, I don't tee how Europe can survive much longer. The whole system is now crazy—it must collapse. Nothing has changed here, as I see it, except the fantastic cost of living. It's incredible. Worse than you may think. I have been marvelously treated everywhere—no complaints. But I am a different person and Big Sur is where I want to stay. I miss the children too—they mean more to me than places and people. All that divorce business has been tragic.
No, I did not want to mention your other books [in The Books in My Life] because it was not the moment—only singled out special ones, do you see. And I can't expand too much. Hachette took over Girodias edition and prints me in English. But Girodias, who is starting again, may get Plexus. Frankly, I don't care much any more who prints and doesn't print. The whole bloody business is a farce. I even begin to question the value of writing itself. If my book is a "success" as you say, it must be"intime."I worked as hard to launch it as I did with Cancer. Just as though nothing had happened in between. I almost believe it would be more "honorable" to tit back and beg for alms. Of course here I am taken seriously and enthusiastically. But I don't need it. I have no vanity left. This sounds discouraging. Forgive me. And I do hope your star continues to rise. All the best to you
Henry
P.S. My best and most reliable (also intelligent) publisher is Edmond Buchet of Correa, Paris. He's Swiss. If only you could bring yourself to publish the diary! Or unmutilated big fragments of it. Also—I spoke to Michel Simon about you—the houseboat, the monkeys in Paris, etc. A wonderful warm being, he!
In the air. A new kind of plane which makes the trip to Los Angeles in eight hours instead of eleven.
A white world outside. Clarity. Clarity. Recently I cannot bear the white expanse of my lucidities. Everyone else around me descends into chaos, inchoate lethargy, into fogs of the mind, temporary releases from lucidity. Some links, some bridges sustained and maintained by great effort are slipping from me. No rest, no refuge, no escape, no pause from awareness. A diamond lodged in the head, the unblinking eye of the clairvoyant. But altitude and strain wear out the heart. As the white clouds pass me, 1 think of this void between New York and Los Angeles in which I sit alone, a neutral state, a bridge of sighs, white sighs. When I come down again I will resume my humanity.
On the plane I had to take my shoes and stockings off, soaked by the rain before takeoff. The large airport umbrella almost carried me across the landing field.
I carried Spy in its final form.
High above, every form of life seems possible, only at thirty-thousand-feet altitude. And in cabins built against pressure. Pressurized cabins. When will I feel free of pressures?
We visited Lloyd Wright's completed chapel at Palos Verdes, near Los Angeles. The sun was pouring into it like a million saints' halos, the sea was glittering beyond the glass, the redwood trees were beginning to peep into the church. The beauty of glass expanded the spirit, let it loose among the clouds and in nature. What a poetic concept of a church. Not to enclose, in dimness, in stone, in tombs, with votive candles burning, but to free the spirit, to follow the clouds, to glitter with the sea, to grow from the earth richly scented with flowers and leaves. Incense and earth smells, the earth smell stronger.
There is Christie next door, an elfin child, a child of poetry. She has sweet parents, and two smaller sisters. She is old enough to be set free and she comes to tell me: "Anis, Anis, look, today I am a cowboy." "Anis, do you know something? Today I am a witch."
I hang up her joyous watercolors on my walls, and bring her mobiles to make. But today I had a shock: the school is teaching her to trace her drawings, and she is wearing a uniform with hat and gloves.
When she found out I did not have a child she said: "Today I am your borrowed little girl."
[February, 1953]
This time on the plane from Los Angeles to New York I could not sleep well because of the pain in my hip. For years I have gone to some doctor and said: "I have a pain here in the right ovary." They would examine me and say: "There is nothing wrong." I would be ashamed, thinking as I did as a child, on my way to my appendix operation, "Je suis une malade imaginaire. "This time the pain pierced my sleep and I said to myself I must do something about the pain. I went to Dr. Jacobson, who sent me to another doctor. He found a tumor as large as an orange. I was to be operated on Friday, January 29. I cannot have feared death for I made no preparations such as I always intend making about disposition of the diary.
Thursday I entered the hospital. Left alone, that night, I felt the loneliness, the stark humiliation and dangers. The nurse shaved me, which saddened me. I still did not know, did not want to know I could be cut. I thought the operation was going to be done through the vagina. Early Friday morning at six A.M. they put a homely white shirt on me. The New York University Hospital is dismal but medically good. I had a tiny room with two small, narrow windows. In extreme illness I get very passive, obedient, childlike, trusting. I surrender to others. The trip to the operating table which I am so familiar with was as usual accomplished in half sleep, half fatalistic submission. I felt sorry for the staff, having to get up so early in the morning, and told them so. "Doctor Anaesthesia" was the last person I saw. She said she had to give me ether instead of an injection because my blood pressure was low. I hate ether. Bu
t she helped me by saying: "I will take the mask off as often as you wish me to, until you feel comfortable with it. And first of all I will give you oxygen until you see how easy it is. And as soon as you make a sign I will remove the mask.' I was so grateful that she helped me, that she was not autocratic, that after two whiffs of oxygen I gave in, holding her hand. Mercifully at the second whiff of ether I was unconscious. How long ... it is like death. Total absence. Hours later, it seemed to me, I heard my name called. It was the nurse. I made a great effort to return. The feeling of having been very far away. I saw the doctor's face. I asked: "It wasn't cancer?" "Too soon to tell, we won't know until the tests are made."
I had a bandage over my stomach. I had been cut open. I had another scar. How I hate this surgery, butchering of one's body, scars. After that, pain, pain, pain. The night nurse ghostly, but so kind. Days of weakness, pills to sleep. Intravenous feeding. My arms blue and black from blood transfusions and dextrose, because I could not eat. A feeling that I had committed hara-kiri. Visitors. Presents. Feeling so weak it was an effort to talk. Jim, Lila, Dr. Brichta, Lawrence Maxwell, Ruth Witt Diamant. Weakness, weakness. But now they make you walk on the third day, slowly. And as I walked slowly along the dirty mayonnaise-colored hallways, I saw the patients whose doors were open. One very scholarly old man, whose night table was piled high with art books. His beautiful profile and long white hair and the art books aroused my curiosity. The nurse suggested we visit him.
