by Anais Nin
His first impression of France was going to buy bread and having the baker woman say to him: "Mr. Wright, we read about you in the paper, you are a writer, is there anything we can do for you?"
He felt that he was becoming obsessed with the racial problem in America to the point where he could not develop as a writer. He was possessed by destructive antagonisms. He felt that if the constant humiliations of daily living could be removed he would be able to grow, expand, and fulfill his role as a writer.
He seems happier, more relaxed. We sit in a café and talk about his new works. He feels that a writer cannot forever write about the same theme, that the irritants of American life would have destroyed him.
At George Whitman's bookshop, when you stand on the upper stairway, there is an opening which enables you to see into the bookshop. I saw a gypsy woman stealing books. When I came down she insisted on reading my hand. She predicted I would have many children and never knew why I laughed.
In spite of being considered thieves, of being humiliated, of resorting to begging, gypsies' pride is not broken or corroded. It remains smoldering and strong. It is as though our morals were not acceptable to them, as if they lived by other values, and did not feel ashamed of their activities.
The Paris I loved is not dead. The lovers still love each other. The Seine still glitters with barges and boats. The fountains still play. The shopwindows are still dazzling displays of imagination and style. The galleries are crowded. The bookshops are crowded. The parks are filled with flowers, gardeners, and children. The shops are small and intimate and the shopkeepers attentive. The cafés are crowded. There are people who have time to stroll, time to sit out of doors, time to look at each other with curiosity. Conversation is still sprightly and entertaining. The taxi driven are witty, and the hobos are clowns and beg with charm. The skies are opaline, and the buildings engraving colors. Each stone has a his-story, and each house bulges with lives well-lived, deeply loved. There is a festive air, as with all people in love with pleasure. There is a patina of shared lives, through high literary articulateness. It is still the capital of intelligence and creativity, enriched by the passage of all the artists of the world.
[Winter, 1954–1955]
The homemaking skill of Stanley Haggart in such a transient, ephemeral, rootless city as New York was beautiful to see, because it was a physical replica of his gift for protection, care, and he was as sensitive to the emotional well-being of his friends as he was to creating an atmosphere of warmth and shelter anywhere and with little means. The grayest of cold-water flats was transformed. The simplest Long Island house rented for the summer would immediately become a place where you might want to stay. Disappointments or frustrations never changed the mood of hospitality and delight he created. One never knew of the difficulties; he was, according to the Varda philosophy, creating paradise for others. His personal sorrows or losses did not intrude. He acted as the fate for the mariners of New York City, predicting hopeful journeys by way of handwriting, offering faith and loyalties. It is no wonder he came to believe that his decorating of an apartment could repair disintegrating marriages, could reconcile estranged lovers, could heal children of discords. In his case it was true. The hearth. The home was the symbolic hearth. He lived with courage and style. He retained a youthful enthusiasm, curiosity, experimental openness toward experience and relationships. People gathered around him. He was himself the hearth which the city so often denied.
Once in Paris in the late thirties, encouraged by Maxwell Perkins' interest, I prepared according to his suggestion six hundred pages of excerpts from the diary. He had read one or two complete volumes, and thought selections could be published. But when he saw the excerpts he was disturbed; he felt it was a pity to do that, that it should be published in its entirety or not a all. Today I burnt these pages in the fireplace. If the novels are symbolic and composites, the diary at least must be intact. I must find a different way of editing.
Dream:
A vast church in a state of dilapidation as if it had been bombed. A small temporary building of wood had been erected like those wooden houses built by the workmen during construction of big apartment houses. It is subdivided into many rooms. In one room there is a play going on, but in such a limited space and completely hidden by low walls, beams, doors, narrow hallways et cetera. I am watching the play. There is a person seated on each side of me. Then I realized that from where I sat in the center I was the only one who could see the play clearly. I got up restlessly to see what could be done. I felt the player's work was wasted.
I awakened thinking I must remember this dream.
I feel the play only I could see, the work that is wasted, may be the diaries.
At New York City College yesterday, talking with the students. One of the professors commented on Henry's immaturity. I said: "It depends in what realm. He may not be academically mature according to your standards or ideologies, but in life, in the flow and vigor of his actual living force and experience, he is far more mature than any of your other pusillanimous writers who merely dip the end of their toes in life experience."
I had arrived incensed by Malcolm Cowley's fanatical narrow-mindedness on the obligation of the novel to treat only of political or historical BIG themes of the day, not themes unrelated to the essential function of American life! In other words, only power and war are of importance, not life, not human relationship, not psychology, not neurosis, not personal history. The Age of Mediocrity. Age of the Functional Novel.
In the New Jersey library there were two signs: "Useful Arts" and "Fine Arts."
Malcolm Cowley also urged novelists to "give up the inner world that has been enfeebled as a result of its isolation."
This is almost as obtuse as Cyril Connolly's remark on Miller: "He is the man of the street. It is too bad that his streets are in Paris and that they are lined with bordellos."
I told Dr. Bogner that after the lecture I was depressed. She finally uncovered that I am distressed because the tension I feel at facing the world (because of my fear of being hurt, mocked, rejected) blocked my natural human contact with the students. I kept the contact on an intellectual level. All the time, as in life, I am fully aware of the human sympathy which is imprisoned by my greater fear of vulnerability to derision, irony, or hostility.
Some of the sympathy must come through on other occasions or else people would not, as they invariably do, confess their intimate life to me. But in public I am tense. It is an ordeal, a tournament, not a pleasure. I fear attack.
Now after saying that America has a lack of contact, I find that in some cases it is I who do not make contact with the harsh aspect of American character.
The simplistic American concept that everyone concerned with politics is altruistic, and everyone concerned with development of the individual is egocentric, is an error which will have dire consequences. The quality of human beings diminishes each day because of this taboo.
If my work were merely egocentric would everyone feel they can confide in me, from the rough, uncouth woman hairdresser in Sierra Madre, to the old hobo who lived in a cabin in the mountains, to the taxi drivers, always and immediately; would everyone call me when in trouble, would I know every detail of Millicent's life, her feelings, her children's lives? Who would want to see an egocentric person alone (as everyone asks to see me) so they can talk intimately about themselves?
Dr. Bogner: She has patience and skill in teaching one how to expose one's projection of the personal drama onto an external situation. Today, for example, I finally understood why the social criticism constantly accusing the artist of egoism made me suffer, because as a child my mother constantly spoke of my father's selfishness, and we grew to dread any resemblance to my father. The idea of being selfish seemed the most horrendous of crimes. I was happiest when I acted unselfishly. Later I realized how many of the acts I considered altruistic were not truly so, and I became more sincere. But I have remained vulnerable to this particular accusa
tion, so prevalent in criticism today.
Dr. Bogner said what I said to the students: there is no objective novel. In fact there is no objectivity at all. Even a reportage on the waterfront is probably biased. As for example Schulberg's film On the Waterfront.
I am confused about selfishness and individuality because my father, who was selfish, deserted us and my mother, who was unselfish, was possessive. Consequently my father did not love us. My mother did. On such a primitive basis do we create our image of the universe.
An evening at the Brooklyn Public Library dedicated to Henry Miller's exhibit of watercolors. I was asked to be one of the speakers. The Ghouls and the Spectators. I don't know which are the more contemptible. The first feed on the artist only when he is dead (or at least very old) while refusing to feed the artist while he is alive.
The second stand passive, watching. The voyeurs of the Western world. Watching the artist's life, his loves, his struggles. Watching the critics and reviewers plunge their puritan and personal beaks into the artist while he is alive. They sit. They do not live, laugh, or love.
They are the dissectors, the taxidermists, the mummifiers, the embalmers.
Miller's watercolors sparkled with delight, delicacy, fantasy, a child's work, innocent and gay. They hung unframed. People talked. James Laughlin. Kay Boyle. The painter Abe Rattner. But no one entered the playfulness, the lightness, the aerial spirit of the watercolors. No one showed humor or osmosis, empathy or shared delirium. It was like a wake. I tried. I read Henry Miller's own statement on his watercolors where he juggled words as colorfully as he juggled colors. Later, because the discussion was going on as to whether the government should subsidize the artist or not, and it was all so serious and mournful, I tried again to stress the essential theme of Miller's contribution to the flow of life by reading my preface to Tropic of Cancer.
Instead of a celebration, I felt this was a premonition of gatherings to come when Miller would no longer be alive. It saddened me. I asked James Laughlin why he had not fought the battle against censorship (he had a fortune to do it with). He answered coldly: "I consulted my lawyers and they decided I had no chance of winning."
The librarian had wanted to avoid this theme. There was a policeman at the door. But people persisted in discussing this and nothing else.
One man insisted: "I get no insight into life from reading Henry Miller." I answered: "Perhaps insight is not what you need, what you need perhaps is to be immersed in living itself, in the living flow. Most of our writing today is dead."
I came away depressed and disturbed.
To see all that I knew as wild living and abundant creating, wild faith and wild desire and wild aliveness, to see it all exhibited on museum walls, and people immune to the messages of the watercolors, to see it as a wake.
The original intent of the evening had been to help Miller because he needs money.
Marino Ruffier, the librarian, said: "I must confess that I have not continued to read Miller. I was discussing this with my colleagues the other day. One of them suggested that there is a time when we read everything of vital importance to us, a formative period when we are seeking our way of life, our orientation. Then when your life has taken a certain form, the books which caused great changes one leaves alone. It is an experience already lived, done with." Fear of change?
Dear Henry:
You will hear about the exhibit at the Brooklyn Library from different people, but I want to tell you what a marvelous sensation I had seeing the new watercolors, many I had never seen, and all there, with the fantasy and delicacy and sensibility, the richness and airiness of tone, the fluid, melting transparencies. They were a joy to behold. Also they broke the sense of eclipse I have had all these years which made me unable to enjoy or read anything of yours, and I am glad of that. Ignited by the joyousness of the paintings I was able to navigate through the kind of evening I find utterly depressing, like a wake to me, the way people come to listen and look at what was done in moments of great beauty, fervor, and pleasure. Later I kept repeating, the ghouls and the spectators, the ghouls and the spectators, who do nothing courageous and tremendous for the living artist but who can only enjoy what the museum keepers and curators place in glass cases. This, of course, was not altogether fair. The truth is you had good friends there (it's the passivity I caricature, the inertia) and they may help you.
James Laughlin was seated at the back and I attacked him openly and firmly on why he had not fought a case for your work. He answered lamely about having abided by the advice of his lawyers.... It was also a disgrace, which I am sure he was insensitive to, that everyone there was concerned with your need of selling watercolors, which reflected on his lack of generosity toward his writers. The atmosphere was so somber that I decided to remind them of the pleasure you manifested in the watercolors and read them passages from The Angel Is My Watermark.
I don't know what the practical results may be as the sales have to be handled by others than the library, but Kay Boyle and her husband were there, and the Baradinskis, and several librarians, and a Spanish woman friend of Buñuel, and a Swedish woman who was told to read you because you were a pacifist. I said and did all I could in the discussion which followed. Kay Boyle was asked to speak but withdrew shyly. Ruffier was really courageous because he knew all the time that if there had been a scandal he might lose his job. And people did persist in discussing not the watercolors but censorship. But the evening passed without explosion. The watercolors on the walls shed a light of joyousness and lightness which I hope they will buy; but they cannot truly possess this as you did.
Exchange with James Laughlin: "You made me very happy writing a letter to a friend of mine in which you said my writing was deteriorating, because for years I have felt that your taste was deteriorating."
His hostility began way back in Paris, when he felt that I was the "poetic" or "mystical" influence which might turn Henry Miller away from the sort of writing Laughlin was interested in. He told people I was a dangerous influence. It showed how little he knew Henry, who could never be influenced by anyone, and how little he knew me in spite of the contents of my preface to Tropic of Cancer.
He came to see me at the houseboat and I had friends there from Peru who did not speak English, so I stepped out on the bridge and told him to come another time, that I could not see him that evening.
Back in America, everyone felt he was the logical one to publish me, but he persistently refused. He did not include me in New Directions, and only once admitted I was an avant-garde writer and he said he would let someone else, of my own choice, write about me. My choice was not fortunate: I chose William Carlos Williams, who did not understand my work.
Laughlin is not known for his generosity to writers. When Henry needed money to sail from Greece, he did not send any because he said Henry would drink it all away, something Henry never did, for he was never a heavy drinker at any time.
Letter from Henry Miller:
Dear Anaïs:
Was indeed moved by your letter about the exhibit. As a result I tat down and made several new ones, last few days—the best I ever made. I still give away most all I make. Now I am invited by my Japanese publishers to give a show in Tokyo-they guarantee to sell at least one-third of what I send. Rather unusual, what!
I also forgot to tell you that when in Paris, Eve and I visited the moving man in Louveciennes—and together we went to your house and took a photo outside. It didn't look the same. I went up and down the place three times before I recognized the place. But Louveciennes itself is pretty much as it was. And that man, Marius Battedou, is adorable. We had a good talk.
And now a word about Lotus di Paini, an author Moricand recommended to me long ago. See, if possible, her Les Trois Totemisations.(I'll send you a long clipping about her work—she died recently—if you like.) Moricand is dead, I hear. Have no details. But this Paini woman will certainly excite you, I think.
If you are coming back to Sierra Madre soon, t
ry to stop by and see us. Eve wants very much to meet you.
June, by the way, was taken to a mental institution some months ago. Must stop—mailman due any minute. Henry.
I wonder why Spy in the House of Love arouses such antagonism. Why can't people laugh at the characterizations of Cold Cuts, of Jay. I see Sabina as a portrait of modern woman, seeking to break taboos but still a prey to guilt. Why can't they read the poetry and hear the music and feel with her?
Larry Maxwell, commenting on my reading the preface to Tropic of Cancer at the Brooklyn library: "It was good that you read that, to remind people of what they seem not to have nowadays, capacity to live, to desire, to flow."
So much takes place within me each day that by comparison I find a paucity, a stinginess, a silence in people which drives me to excess. I would at times be less of a rebel if people did not seem so inert, cautious.
Am I creating my own isolation? It seems to me that most of my acts are acts of integrity. It is true I do not share with the many the cult of Dylan Thomas and T. S. Eliot. It is true I broke with The Living Theatre after seeing a play by Kenneth Rexroth, and another short piece by Gertrude Stein. I wrote a letter and asked that my name be removed from the list of sponsors.
But for these differences, do I deserve this solitary-cell treatment?
Those I call my relatives, Giraudoux, Djuna Barnes, Proust, Isak Dinesen, Anna Kavan, Pierre Jean Jouve, were they treated as I am treated now?
Dr. Bogner's concept is that if you are already angry you tune in on what feeds your anger and on the experience of other angry people. The anger is increased and multiplied. If you examine it at its source, the origin of it, you can deal with it alone, but not with a magnified anger out of one's control.
