Diary of Anais Nin, Volume 4

by Anais Nin

With this she destroyed her power as analyst.

  She also exposed herself to the loss of our faith by confiding all the contradictions between her psychological wisdom and her personal life. Her seeking to redirect her life into channels not natural, and not genuine to her, to adopt our life and ways rather than seek her own, create her own world, made her a fallible human being, whom we loved, but could not rely on.

  If her marriage should fail, she will need her work more than ever. Most of my talks with Frances are now filled with concern over Martha.

  Notes on Caresse Crosby: Elizabeth Arden-pink. The inside of a Venus sea shell. Bedroom boudoir-pink. Bathroom full of pink negligees and chemises. The same colors on books, apartment rooms, garden grilles, letter box, writing paper. Max Ernst painted her as a petticoat. Le boudoir disparu. The motion, mouvement perpetuel, due to her saying "yes" to all life.

  Caresse still saying "yes, yes"—the essence of her mobility and response. Carlyle's Yes and No man.

  Rewrote story of Hans Reichel ["The Eye's Journey"] for Dyn magazine in Mexico City.

  Circle magazine published my letter to Luise Rainer.

  ***

  I must repay Samuel Goldberg's loan for printing the second edition of Under a Glass Bell. I owe money to Martha Jaeger, to the doctor, to the drugstore. Three hundred and sixty-five dollars to Thurema Sokol, who helped so generously with the moving of the press.

  Work at the press at least eight hours a day. Went to the New School to see a Russian film about experiments on dogs: severing their heads, replacing them, seeing them dead, their hearts on a platter, and then revived. I was with Charles Duits and Frances. We were chilled at the prospects of science's control of life and death. We had a feeling of awe and sacrilege. Advance of science's power over death?

  Henry sent a thousand dollars, the first large amount he ever earned, which helped me pay off debts; with the rest he bought a cottage in Big Sur.

  Printed a thousand pages of Under a Glass Bell. Party at Moira's Saw Leo Lerman again. Conversations with him are similar to those with Conrad Moricand. A witty fencing, a skillful dodging, a game, peripheral and delightful. He is a past master at verbal fireworks. It is with Frances that I have deep and evolutional talks. We talk to understand ourselves and others, to interpret, to dissolve pain, to create counterpoisons to pain and disillusion. Tom Brown's silences and his inability to truly look at one, to allow one to read his eyes, his furtive exits, entrances, vanishings, make him seem ghostly.

  Gonzalo's pride at mastering the new press: "I made it work, and without lessons either."

  The Haitian Flag Dance in a big hall. One is carried back to the eighteenth century. The older Haitians are dressed formally: long dresses, gloves, fans, shawls, evening suits. They sit formally in chairs set against the walls.

  They watch the younger people dance in a modern way. Then, when the time comes, they rise and dance a minuet as at the French court. Sedately and slowly, with dignity and stiffness. But without Albert Mangones, the dream of Haiti seems to have vanished.

  Gonzalo and Ian Hugo worked on the cover, using the engraving press. Later, I separated the good from the bad pages with Thurema and Josephine Premice. Worked together gaily until midnight.

  Made packages all day. Cut covers. Took books to bookbinder.

  We printed a lithograph by Käthe Kollwitz for a book cover. Caresse Crosby came to see the press. Dinner with Jean Wahl, a teacher of philosophy who survived a concentration camp. This experience has left him dead in spirit. He is among us, but not with us. He is always dressed in black, in the shrunken style of French suits. It is as if no love or friendship can restore his life.

  Every now and then I feel I should transform the diary, as Proust did in his life and memories. But the danger is that then some element is missing, what Martha finds missing from my novels: warmth and humanity. They were lost in the metamorphosis into myth, or fiction. How can I do this? Martha feels it will be a long time before people know enough about the unconscious to understand my writing. The truth is I get lost in the richness of the diary, and need to make great efforts to synthesize and organize it. I get lost in the abundance, and the labyrinth. I should begin slowly, gradually, and the themes may emerge later, by accretion.

  [June, 1944]

  Began to write a new book, This Hunger. Wrote portrait of Stella, in part inspired by Luise Rainer.

  Henry sends me a visitor, Harry Herkovitz. He says "Anis," the way Henry did. He has been a sailor. He is dark, intense, lean, and wrote a strange story, influenced by Edgar Allan Poe, about ravens attacking a traveler. He tells me he asked Henry to leave him all his manuscripts and letters. But Henry evaded the issue. In our first talk he saw me as a composite of June,* myself, and the women in House of Incest. I realized he did not see me as I am, that he was seeking a myth. He was calling on an Anai's as described by Henry, which bears no resemblance to reality.

  Expansion, flowering. Frances says I am a very creative person in a relationship, but she has the same effect on me. I am working on the new book, and talking with Charles Duits, whose poetry I do not understand. He comments on my changeableness. Always a new person, always a different person. I have become adept at "unblocking" not only myself, but others.

  Printed more engravings. Saw a Russian movie with Gonzalo. There was a time when every Russian film I saw paralyzed my work, but this time I did not feel arrested by the comparison. The contradiction was resolved. Every war and every revolution kills and maims emotions and sensibilities. Someone has to restore these currents. Someone has to resuscitate these people killed by massive doses of pain.

  Harry said he could not feel the death of thousands he witnessed in China, but the death of one person affected him deeply. We are in danger of destroying feeling by the immensity of the horrors committed. I hold on to the protection of individual life.

  As you mature, these paralyzing conflicts and choices cease to block you. They are resolved by a larger perspective.

  I see Charles Duits, Edmund Wilson, John Stroup, Harvey Breit.

  My only strength is the strength of wholeness, of total feeling. That is what 1 am writing with. Harry tells me he is the symbolic son of Henry. He was born in the same district of Brooklyn. But he is the adventurer, the seagoing man, the lean, dark, ardent Jew. He was writing about June and Henry as a study of illusion in love. I did not want to see him anymore. I want to be liberated from this past. He is plunging me back into the past. I told him so over the telephone. He pleaded. He wrote a love letter (to June, Anai's, Sabina, Djuna, Alraune, Isolina, etc.). After two weeks, I let him visit again. Mona, June, Alraune had disappeared. I said: "Now it is Harry talking, not an imitation of Henry." He started his own book, not a book on Henry, June, etc. He is violent, primitive, and confused.

  Gonzalo is the one who lives glued to the radio, who gives us all the news. A few days ago we celebrated the Allied landing in Normandy. What will happen now? We talk about it. It haunts our nights.

  At the same time, because he only has one life, the one he shares with the present, in history, because he is not creating an antidote to the poisons of history, Gonzalo has no hope. He is crushed by events. He has no inner life to sustain and alchemize events.

  I visited Martha and her husband at their mountain cabin. The quietness of the mountains, the still-life quality of their lives, the heavy eating, and the enclosure within their anxieties was torture. I had a feeling of oppression. I was listening to both their confessions. Martha was asking me to help her husband, and he was asking me to help her, but it would take years to reverse the process of their disharmony. "Martha does not live with her body. I am sensually starved," from him. And Martha, in her distress, wants to place her husband in my hands: "He can be influenced by you, I trust you." In the winter he had tried to commit suicide.

  "Martha, when I was in trouble, I turned to a doctor. Why don't you and your husband do the same? A friend cannot help."

  ***

  I came b
ack to the madness of Harry. He lives with the life of Henry interwoven with his own and cannot disentangle them. He says: "Save me from the emptiness of June." (His June is a ballet dancer.) I refused. I said: "I won't combat the symbol of June again and again. You must do it alone. When you are free, come back to me." He has the word destruction on his lips.

  This is a false drama, or a secondhand one. It stems from Henry's writing, from identification. He almost repeats Henry's words: "I want to write, I want to work, and she (the ballet dancer, replica of June) will not let me."

  But I am not the same Anai's. I cannot go on repeating the same drama. I am not going to sustain one half of Harry in his war against his other half.

  "Once, in some dingy city, I lay on a couch and read Henry's description of your diary, and I felt: 'I must know this woman.' My fear was that you might have been trapped in Europe."

  "But I am not the same woman, Harry."

  He is young, and his hunger is immense. He lays his manuscripts on my knees when he comes, an offering. The pages are all horror, violence, terror, crime and punishment. It is an animal world. He seemed so gentle and soulful. What venomous fury in the writing. Lust, crime, madness. His writing full of flaws and falsities. The self-seeking of the instinct. The thwarted primitive.

  "I was born in hunger and deprivation."

  "But that is no reason to inflict this on others, devastate and shrivel the world until it is again as you first saw it."

  Hunger has always tempted me, as a barren field tempts the sower. But this time I was able to resist. One can escape habitual patterns. Harry has a dream of love and work which requires my presence. I am supposed to be the answer to his hunger.

  "I will not go to sea again, into war and danger, into suicide. I will stay and write," Harry says.

  And then his "June" came to see me. She was not June at all! He had cast her as June. She was vulnerable, and loved Harry deeply. She was aware that he fictionalized her. She understood. "Because I know he does that, I wanted to come and see if he had also invented you, and the overwhelming bond between you. I wanted to know if it was a delusion. If it is real, I will surrender, because you are good for his writing."

  She looked at me so honestly, I could read everything: devotion, selflessness.

  "I'm glad you came to me. Harry is a dreamer. He is still living Henry's life. There is no such bond between us. I responded at first to echoes from the past. But the real Harry I do not know. Perhaps because I am a writer, I can make him want to write. But you are completely different from June; I can see you are not destructive, and you have insight. I will help you. To begin with, there is no great love between us. It is an illusion he has. You are the woman in his life."

  I never saw a woman show so clearly the effect of being delivered of pain. She sparkled with new faith and confidence.

  "It is not I who stands in the way of Harry's love for you, but Harry himself who is filled with Henry's life and does not yet know who he is. The stronger spirit of Henry has filled him; he is filled with quotations and fiction. He is trying to live Henry's life. Your task will be to restore him to reality."

  We embraced like sisters.

  Letter to Henry:

  I left without speaking to Harry about the wrongness of his taking from you. I feel I should no longer comment on these things. I always knew that the day you obtained what you wanted (a year of peace from the money problem, time to write) you would throw it all away on the wrong people. I am quite ready to give up my share but I know that this too will go to some weak or worthless person. Your last letter sounded sad. Your "protector" probably heard about your giving to Harry and others, keeping only $25. He may have felt badly that he was not really helping you. Your first thought should have been of your own work. This income which should and could have meant your freedom you handled so that today you write me you are relieved to no longer have it. Is it guilt that makes you unable to receive? But why do you give always to the wrong person? Futile words. We have discussed this often enough.

  [July, 1944]

  Moira rented a big house in Amagansett and invited us all for a long weekend. Four days of calm, warmth.

  I gave myself to the sea. The sea and the sun restore my strength, always.

  But it was a painful moment when we all sat at the beach, suntanned, in brightly colored suits, hair flowing, gay, and a few yards behind us sat the philosopher, the professor from the Sorbonne who had been in a concentration camp. He wore the same black, tight, shrunken suit, a black hat and big dark glasses, black shoes and black socks. He was staying with the Zilkas, and we tried to welcome and befriend him. But we could not heal him, bring him back to life. He sat far from us, never undressed, and rarely joined us.

  Bomb attempt on Hitler failed. Depression, discouragement. We had hoped for his death so often.

  The second visit at Moira's became unbearable. She had invited Martha Jaeger, her husband, and Charles Duits. She said: "In this house everyone is free." But when we refused to go with her to a cocktail party, she was angry. She left us, saying: "There is very little food in the icebox. You will be sorry." We decided to sit around the kitchen table and spend the evening reading Finnegans Wake aloud. Charles read the banquet scene. We savored every word as if it were food. We found the sounds delectable. When Moira returned, she found us sitting contentedly, still reading, and not suffering from hunger.

  When we return from the - beach we ask: "Is there anything we can do?" Still in our bathing suits, we help in the kitchen. Only when Moira does not need us anymore do we shower and dress for dinner. Moira is proud of her cooking and likes to attend to the final touches herself. I washed my hair and put on a white dress. As I walked down the stairs Moira said: "Anai's, it is your turn to take out the garbage."

  "I'll change my dress."

  "No, Anai's," said Charles Duits. "I'll take the garbage out."

  Moira introduced me to the Syrian poet Berthie Zilka. She will study writing in English with me, but we are to publish her poems in French.

  We began work on Zilka's collection. Gonzalo designed a beautiful book. For the head of each poem James Woodward designed a delicate tracery, like a modern interpretation of Syrian designs.

  U.S. troops have broken through at Saint-Lô.

  [August, 1944]

  I feel stronger for having recognized quickly the negative, the destructive, and for not allowing myself to be submerged or victimized by a fruitless combat against the confusion of Harry's mind: his wild statements, his inaccuracies, his erratic impulses. I was able to recognize them in time.

  Seeking to break the friendship with Harry, I became more and more aware that he is disintegrated, chaotic, unbalanced. He says: "I want to read all the diaries. I want to know the secret of woman, to incorporate this knowledge into my writing. I feel I must know it. No other woman can give me the truth. Then I will possess knowledge." He spoke like a predatory invader. He complained: "Everything is locked to me. First you, and now the diary." The nakedness of his greed, audacity, and aggressiveness made me recoil.

  "I asked Henry to leave me everything in his will. I am his son."

  I finally said one day: "You cannot learn, love, or create by stealing. You have to create yourself first, and your work, and then bonds are born of this, genuine ones, and people exchange their treasures. You can't force things."

  Liberation of France!

  JOY. JOY. JOY. JOY. JOY. JOY. JOY. JOY. JOY.

  Such joy, such happiness at the hope of war ending. Happiness in unison with the world. Delirious happiness.

  At such times we are overwhelmed by a collective joy. We feel like shouting, demonstrating in the street. A joy you share with the whole world is almost too great for one human being. One is stunned before catastrophe, one is stunned by happiness, by peace, by the knowledge of millions of people free from pain and death.

  For days we could not work. Then we returned to the press and finished Zilka's book. It has a red suede cover, to match the
sensuous quality of the poems. She is a good poet, with new accents, new sensations which come from her Syrian background.

  We dream of returning to France.

  I would like to convert the diary into a long novel. From it I have already borrowed the themes of Winter of Artifice and Under a Glass Bell. I do want to dramatize the conflicts of woman. Conflict between maternal love and creation. Between romanticism and realism. Between expansion and sacrifice.

  The conflicts of woman in present-day society. Theme of development of woman in her own terms, not as an imitation of man. This will become in the end the predominant theme of the novel: the effort of woman to find her own psychology, and her own significance, in contradiction to man-made psychology and interpretation. Woman finding her own language, and articulating her own feelings, discovering her own perceptions. Woman's role in the reconstruction of the world. The women who will appear in the novel: the masculine, objective one; the child woman of the world; the maternal woman; the sensation-seeker; the unconsciously dramatic one; the childish one; the cold, egotistical woman. And the healing, intuitive guide-woman. The evolution will be from subjectivity and neurosis to objectivity, expansion, fulfillment.

  [September, 1944]

  The physical as a symbol of the spiritual world. The people who keep old rags, old useless objects, who hoard, accumulate: are they also keepers and hoarders of old ideas, useless information, lovers of the past only, even in its form of detritus?