Diary of Anais Nin, Volume 2

by Anais Nin

  Ivan was sitting on a park bench. A hobo addressed him. He did not answer him. The clochard said: "Et moi qui croyais que tu étais de la cloche." ("And I who thought you were one of us.")

  When I was thirteen I wrote in my diary: "What I call making a heaven for myself is making a heaven for others."

  Henry is in a blaze of activity. People. Letters. Hopes. Reviews. New friends. Ideas. Tired eyes. Cannibalism: "What was it you read me the other day about a brooch without stones? That was a marvelous image."

  "Don't steal it, I need it for my portrait of Helba."

  "I won't," said Henry, but he made a note of it.

  He is collecting addresses. He wants to communicate with the whole world. Like a telegraphist, I said. Laughter. Lao-tze Miller, I call him. The Chinese rogue. He was having dinner at some Dutch people's home. I asked: "What are they like?" He answered they were boring, but they knew a lot of people.

  In the morning I write letters, I try to sell my Indian sari dress because I am out of money. I continue to copy diaries for Denise Clairouin.

  I get deeply tired because everything touches me, I am never indifferent. Indifference or passivity are impossible to me.

  Louveciennes is dead. It was dismantled. I never wrote about its last days. When I wanted to enter a new cycle and move to Paris, into a modern apartment with modern furniture, I had to part with Louveciennes and its furnishings. I was told there was no other way but to sell everything at auction. When I arrived I found the auctioneers had moved everything out in the front yard, and were holding the auction out of doors. I had no clear idea of what an auction meant. I was appalled to find it advertised in the local papers and by the village town-crier, the man in uniform who drums to attract attention and then reads the local news on the square. The gates were wide open. A crowd had gathered to look over everything.

  Beds, curtains, carpets, tables, desks, chairs, bookcases, pillows, bedspreads, all the intimate furnishings of a house so much loved and lived in, so saturated with memories. It seemed to me that when strangers opened the drawers, words would come out, that when they shook the curtains, one would hear the voice of Artaud, Allendy, Joaquin, Henry and June, my father, Jeanne, others. I was standing in the courtyard, in the crude daylight, while the auctioneer stood behind my desk and banged on it to obtain silence. The crowd was composed of neighbors, workmen, peasants, and a few big-house owners. They had always been curious about my life and my house. They touched the curtains, felt them, opened all the drawers. What I minded most was their lying on my bed, the big Spanish-Moorish bed I had first seen in an antique shop on the Rue de Seine, wanted to have for years and could not afford, watched through the window fearing it might be sold, and was able to buy only a few years ago. Its nacreous-pearl and copper inlay shone in the sun. People tried it out for softness and for size. It was as if they had invaded my house, my life, pried into my intimate secrets. I began to feel that the furniture was an extension of my body, that it still contained the imprint of those who had touched it. It seemed wrong to be selling it to strangers. I could not bear it. To the astonishment and horror of the auctioneer, I began to bid against the buyers. I was buying back my bed, my bookcases, my desk.

  There was a murmur of anger in the crowd. They had come to pick up bargains, and to amuse themselves, and I was not playing the game properly!

  By the end of the afternoon I found myself the owner of some of my furniture again, which I kept in storage until I found the houseboat. It was perfect for the houseboat.

  But what a tragic-comic day. Each object auctioned off contained a fragment of my past. I had regrets for the passing of time and the death of homes, objects, and the change and passing of feelings and attachments. When it grew dark, and the sale was still going on, the empty house lit up by naked bulbs shone out once more like a mosque, with its gorgeous colors in contrast to the grey muted village, shone out once more, warm, sparkling, and then died. Everybody was carrying away the furniture I did not dare to keep, mirrors, lamps, curtains, and all the traces of my life here were scattered in different homes, never to be seen again.

  It was a sacrifice to the need of those I take care of, and to my desire for giving, stripping my life down to essentials, and Louveciennes had become a luxury.

  Last night Moricand was talking about astrology and saying: "There are large wave lengths, and small ones, there are short wave lengths and long ones, in people's psyche." He talks of the psyche in terms of ocean, waves, vibrations. He does possess the language of the poets.

  At the same time Evreinoff is gesticulating. One can see in the mirrors the faces and candles repeated to infinity. Colonel Cheremetief is the entremetteur who delights in mixing people. He murmurs old dates of Russian history while new history is being made across the river Seine by the left wing. We can hear the shouts, the fermentations, the songs on the loud-speakers. Gonzalo is there. He is an idealistic Marxist. He defends the downtrodden. I could be there if I could accept bloodshed and violence. Gonzalo saw the Indians of Peru maltreated by the whites. The half of himself which is Indian takes the side of the oppressed always.

  Gonzalo has gestures like an animal. He never rubs his face with open hands, but with closed fists as a cat does with his paw. His eyes are slanted like a cat's. He wrinkles his nose as cats do.

  Gonzolo tells me about the Russian Revolution.

  I do not understand him when he says: "Moricand is a victim of capitalism. Artaud is a victim of capitalism."

  He talks about dynamic as against static philosophy. Marxism as a dynamic philosophy. He paints the world in constant evolution and revolution.

  "Gonzalo, I hate injustice. I am in sympathy with your Marxism because it is idealistic. I can die for any faith which is idealistic. But now the Russian Revolution is split, corrupt, divided. The organization of the world is a task for realists. The poet and the workman will always be the victims of power and self-interest. No world will ever be run by an idealistic team because by the time it begins to function it ceases to be unselfish. When the Catholic Church became a force, a power, an organization, it ceased to be a religion. The realist, the man of power and greed, always conquers over the humanist. Greed wins out. The world will always be ruled by the materialist."

  Gonzalo does not believe this. He talks about Spain. For him, to go or not to go and fight in Spain is a constant conflict. "The wounded are coming back. Roger is wounded. I must go, I must go."

  Later he points to my need of giving, and tells me it would be more effective if it were impersonal. He thinks the way I do it now is self-destructive and ineffectual. "You're just palliating misery which must come to a head, get worse, or no one will solve it."

  He left me to meet Artaud. He is helping Artaud translate a book on the Tarahumare Indians' rituals.

  After listening to Gonzalo talk about Peru, I wrote:

  One never walks along level paths, one is always rising as upon a stairway, an eternal and wearisome stairway towards black skies, made of gigantic stones, square stones, set one on top of another, a stairway which wears one out because the stones are cut higher than a man's footstep can encompass, they are made for giants, those whose faces are carved in granite, those who drink the blood of sacrifices, those who laugh at the efforts of Lilliputian men. Men tire, taking such tall steps, and the Indians walk downhill with their shoulders bowed down by invisible maledictions. Everywhere, he finds footsteps, traces of large footsteps. Could they have been made by men wearing white boots? Up there, where I lived, the world began, and the world ends. Here were drowned continents, men who never saw the daylight. There is no sea, but because of the altitude one hears the rhythm of the blood. The wind is sharp enough to cut off a head, and the clouds are pierced by windstorms. The lava from the volcanoes freezes in the shape of dead stars, the dew burns where it falls. Clouds of smoke and steam rise from the earth's cracks. Here the world is born.

  I have a superstitious belief that when Gonzalo has finished telling me about his
childhood, he will get up and go and fight in Spain.

  Henry says about what he has written on the diary, on House of Incest and on Winter of Artifice: "I don't know whether it has anything to do with the books, but it's damned fine writing!"

  I wrote about Black Spring, that it represented an effort to seize life on all levels, including the dream which obsesses the poet.

  Henry leaped, shouted, said it made him feel like sitting at the typewriter immediately.

  ***

  Gonzalo tells me that one of the secrets of his attachment to Helba is how much she needs him, all that he had to do for her, for her work which he admires, and I ask him if he believes that devotion to a few human beings is less important than dying in Spain. We have both sought devotion to others.

  He loves the pages on Peru which I wrote in Spanish, as he told them, but I add something to them which he does not understand. I see him as a mythological character, torn out of nature, planted incongruously in Paris.

  When I enter a roomful of people, I feel a strong malaise which warns me that I cannot stay, a real anxiety. Places and people I am not made to be with, because I cannot stop feeling. I cannot be with cynics, with debauchees, with callous, hard-boiled, or superficial people. I may see below the surface of Henry, I may know there is a tender Henry, but that does not obliterate the brutal and insensitive people he likes around him.

  I can see myself walking into a roomful of people, and the one who will come towards me is the one troubled, unable to attend the function at which we are both present.

  This time, at the apartment of Denise Clairouin, it was a young man who wanted to travel through far-off countries and who could not achieve his desire. He was sad. He spoke to no one, until he selected me as a confessor. Did he guess that I would say: "Do like the Spanish dancer, who can dance her entire dance on a table. Choose a table to dance on, to travel on. Keep dancing on the same spot. One does not have to travel. There are other voyages. Right in Paris, one can go anywhere. You can live with the gypsies, as Blaise Cendrars did, you can fall in love with a Tahiti an girl, you can live on a houseboat and get the same ecstasy from imaginary travels." He began to laugh. "You think so quickly. You answered me even before I formulated my question. I love the Orient."

  "There are veiled women right here in Paris. You can live in the mystery if you refuse the European habit of puncturing all the mysteries."

  "Are you happy?"

  "I am happy, but I would be happier if it did not take so many separate things to make me happy."

  "I want to run far away, to get away from the 'self.'"

  "The self will follow you everywhere. It is your shadow."

  "How do you get rid of it?"

  "Give it to another. Give yourself up."

  We looked around the room to find who he could give himself up to. Ponisowski and his Russian cousin. Britton Austin, an Irish actress, Beltran Masses, a blonde model, a timid young writer, a Japanese woman. The rooms were full of wonders from all over the world. I heard Spanish, Russian, German. Mrs. Stuart Gilbert has the delicate face of Marie Laurencin's women. When she talks, her eyes are fixed on you, but her lips modulate, sensitive and tender.

  I have the power to abstract myself totally from my immediate surroundings and to throw myself into an imaginary life at will.

  Moricand, with a folder of horoscopes, is saying to me and to Paul Fort, the young man who wants to go to the Orient: "There is something so soft and smooth and non-resistant about Pisces that it often gives a wrong impression. Pisces does not believe that the truth is the best thing to tell and consequently, since they hate to hurt, they substitute what they believe to be a cosmic truth for lesser truths. The connection of this sign with enchanters and with enchantment is very plain. Unworldliness, self-sacrifice, romantic ideals, inspiration, because of glimpses of a larger consciousness."

  Paul Fort was amazed. He began to guess how I entertained myself "on a table." "So that is how you travel," he said. I left him talking with Moricand.

  [November, 1936]

  Gonzalo has definitely entered into his activities as an agitator, writer, talker, leader of eighty South American intellectuals. He is close to Pablo Neruda, to José Bergamín. I heard Neruda read his own poems. José Bergamín, a Catholic philosopher, is trying to balance Catholicism on one hand, and Marxism on the other.

  Gonzalo's passion about politics, his vehement speeches, his sincerity are not without effect on me. I was won over to his Marxism.

  "Strange," said Gonzalo, "that even though you were so far from all this, it was you who urged me to fulfill myself, and brought on my desire for action."

  I sat down and typed twenty-four envelopes of propaganda for Republican Spain. I took the envelopes to him. But I cannot share his faith. It seems Utopian and naive. Gonzalo has the illusion that Marxism will rearrange the world. I do respect his illusion. I will help him. I have been a spiritual anarchist.

  If I still cannot believe in systems, I do believe in people. I believed in Henry, and I believe in Gonzalo's deep desire to cure the evils of poverty.

  Gonzalo is hungry for heroic living. His strength and pride are aroused. I do like those who are willing to turn the world upside down for a new faith, a new effort, a new attempt to cure corruption.

  He will stop cooking for Helba and Elsa, stop listening to their whining, stop washing laundry for them. It was because of the puerility of his personal life that he drank, to forget.

  Gonzalo's vision is affecting mine. Before I knew Gonzalo, dinner at Maxim's with wealthy people was an aesthetic experience. The place all in red, sensuous plush, exquisite crystals, candles, crockery, the courtesy of the waiters, the elegance and beauty of the dresses. I never really saw the people close up. I saw them as one sees a Viennese waltz in a film, or on a stage. Crystal chandeliers, music, animation, rhythm. Lyrical moments. This time my eyes opened and I saw their faces, their gestures, saw expressions I had never noticed. The rich and the nouveaux riches, the aristocrats and the tycoons. I saw irony, arrogance, greed, malice, mockery, self-satisfaction, shallowness. And when I questioned the value of each person at the table as individuals, I could not find any.

  Gonzalo plans to hold a meeting in the houseboat. He and Pablo Neruda are inviting all the Latin Americans to come. Anaïs, go out and rent chairs for the plotters!

  Men think they live and die for ideas. What a divine joke. They live and die for emotional, personal errors, just as women do.

  The monster I have to kill every day is realism. The monster who attacks me every day is destruction. Out of these duels come transformation. I have to turn destruction into creation over and over again.

  Letter to one of my patients in New York:

  I understand your desire to know me. Analysis forces one to wear a mask of objectivity. The effect of it depends on one's detachment. Only sympathy is permitted. I feel that you pierced through that mask very well. I feel that you knew me as well as I knew you. Even if I answered your questions and told you more about my life, it would not add to your intuitive knowledge of me. Besides, I suspect there is a lot of affinity between our emotional attitude towards life, and towards love, because I always seek, as you do, to realize as fully as possible all that I imagine, or carry within myself. I seek richness and fullness. I like the Gide quotation. But notice that he says: "He can do nothing for the happiness of others who does not know how to be happy himself." Which is precisely it. That is why it seems paradoxical sometimes to see that the joyous and egotistical man can make others around him joyous by contagion, not by giving. But that is joy. Happiness, which is deeper, and vastly different, is what one can give without possessing it oneself. I never helped so well, or gave as much life to others, until I myself had conquered whatever blocked me. You know, I went through a real hell, five or six years ago, I only count (or myself six yean of human fulfillment. All the rest was a struggle. You now want to know if I am happy. I am very happy. It is a precarious and dangerous happiness,
because of what is happening around me. I am always tightrope dancing. I need abundance, and I want to hurt no one. I live in a furnace of affections, activities, and reveries. The happiness does not lie in the factual happenings, or what I do, but in what is aroused in me and what is created out of all this. I live simultaneously a physical and a metaphysical life. You write me that the world of the poet and the world of political action seem to conflict. If the poet is working, writing, creating, that is his job for the moment, and there lies his strength. Neruda has power today only because he is Neruda, the great poet. But I see no reason why minor poets, or idle poets, or writers who are not writing, I see no reason why, if they have any blood inside of them, why they should not participate in the re-construction of the world. But if Proust had delivered speeches, written propaganda and talked all night with his comrades, he would have accomplished less for the destruction of false values than he did by satirizing a decadent society. Today in Russia they are reading Proust. It is a question of semantics. There are two kinds of dynamite. One invisible, one visible. Men who are not metaphysical need to employ concrete dynamite. The artist is right to employ satire. Those who are not effective in their art do well to learn how to use real dynamite.