Diary of Anais Nin, Volume 1

by Anais Nin

  Dr. Allendy has written Le Problème de la Destinée (Etude sur la Fatalité Intérieure). He believes in destiny being motivated from within and directed by unconscious tropisms. Deep and unknown impulses push the individual towards repetitive experiences. Man tends to project those patterns outside of himself and to place the blame for all that happens to him on external forces.

  Man can control his destiny, says Allendy, to the extent that he becomes aware of these tropisms, but it requires a real initiation, similar to Buddhist discipline which enables disciples to escape their karma through knowledge. Psychoanalysis can overcome what we call bad luck, or tragedy, or fatality.

  He was born in 1889 in Paris. He studied medicine, later practicing in hospitals. His thesis in 1912 was on "Les Théories Alchimique dans l'Histoire de la Médecine." He is interested in homeopathy and astrology and founded the Société Française de Psychanalyse.

  I went to the Sorbonne to hear him lecture. He is tall, bearded.

  He does not look French at all. He is a Breton, but he looks like a Russian peasant. It is interesting that he studied Russian as a young man, and later traveled through Russia and organized a welcome-committee for Russian students.

  Marguerite has tried to persuade me to see him too. She reminds me that in New York I had a breakdown. But I feel that all I needed was to live, and if I were neurotic I would not have written a book, or created a beautiful house, or dared to live full as I am doing.

  "I have no brakes on," I said. "Analysis is for those who are paralyzed by life."

  Today, for the first time, I rang the bell of Dr. Allendy's house. I was led by a maid through a dark hallway into a dark salon. The dark brown walls, the brown velvet chairs, the dark red rug received me like a quiet tomb, and I shivered. The only light came from a greenhouse on which it opened. It was filled with tropical plants, surrounding a small pool with goldfish in it. A pebble path circled the pool. The sun filtered through the green leaves gave a subdued greenish light, as if I were at the bottom of the ocean. It seemed apt to leave ordinary daylight behind for the exploration of submerged worlds.

  Dr. Allendy's office was soundproofed by a heavy black Chinese curtain, embroidered in gold thread with a few papyrus branches. When the time came, he slid a door open and then lifted the curtain and stood there, very tall, his eyes the most alive part of his face, the eyes of a seer. He has very brilliant, even, small teeth, and bold features. He is heavy, and his bearded face gives him a patriarchic air. It was almost a surprise to see him, a moment later, sitting quietly behind the Morris chair on which I sat, rustling note paper and pencils, and talking softly. It would have seemed more appropriate for him to be doing horoscopes, or preparing an alchemist formula, or reading a crystal ball, because he looked more like a magician than a doctor.

  We talked first of all about his books, his lectures, and my reaction to them.

  I talked about my work, and my life in general. I said I had always been very independent and had never leaned on anyone.

  Dr. Allendy said, "In spite of that, you seem to lack confidence."

  He had touched a sensitive spot. Confidence!

  Dr. Allendy rose from his chair and said, smiling, "Well, I am glad you can stand on your own feet, that you don't need any help."

  I started to weep. I wept. He sat down again.

  Confidence.

  My father did not want a girl. My father was over-critical. He was never satisfied, never pleased. I never remember a compliment or a caress from him. At home, only scenes, quarrels, beatings. And his hard blue eyes on us, looking for the flaws. When I was ill with typhoid fever, almost dying, all he could say was: "Now you are ugly, how ugly you are." He was always on tour, pampered by women. My mother made scenes of jealousy. When I was nine years old and almost died of an appendicitis not diagnosed early enough, and we arrived at Arcachon, where he was vacationing, he made it plain he did not want us. What he meant for my mother I also took for myself. Yet I had a hysterical sorrow when he finally abandoned us. I always feared his hardness and his criticalness. I could not bring myself to see him again.

  "And so," said Dr. Allendy, "you withdrew into yourself and became independent. I can see you are proud and self-sufficient. You fear the cruelty of older men, so, at the first sign of cruelty in anyone, you are paralyzed."

  "Can a child's confidence, once shaken and destroyed, have such repercussions on a whole life? Why should my father's insufficient love remain indelible; why was it not effaced by all the loves I received since he left me?"

  "You seem very well balanced, and I don't believe you need me."

  I suddenly felt a great distress at being left alone again, to solve my own difficulties.

  I asked if I might come again.

  There is a baffling thing about analysis which is a challenge to a writer. It is almost impossible to detect the links by which one arrives at a certain statement. There is a fumbling, a shadowy area. One does not arrive suddenly at the clear-cut phrases I put down. There were hesitancies, innuendos, detours. I reported it as a limpid dialogue, but left out the shadows and obscurities. One cannot give a progressive development.

  Is it that Dr. Allendy works with something which escapes consciousness?

  Dr. Allendy said, "Women have contributed nothing to psychoanalysis. Women's reactions are still an enigma, and psychoanalysis will remain imperfect as long as we have only men's knowledge on which to base our assumptions. We assume that a woman reacts like a man, but we do not know. Man's vanity is greater than a woman's—because his whole life is based on a manly cult of conquering, from the Dark Ages, when the one who could not hunt and was not strong died. His vanity is immense, and the wounds to it are vital and fatal."

  Psychoanalysis does force one to be more truthful. Already I realize certain feelings I was not aware of, like the fear of being hurt.

  I despise my own hypersensitiveness, which requires so much reassurance. It is certainly abnormal to crave so much to be loved and understood.

  I have written the first two pages of my new book, House of Incest, in a surrealistic way. I am influenced by transition and Breton and Rimbaud. They give my imagination an opportunity to leap freely.

  What do I feel when I see Henry's cold blue eyes on me? My father had icy blue eyes.

  Henry talks beautifully to me, in a cool, wise mood.

  "Sunday night after you left us, I slept a while and then I went out for a walk. I realized a terrible truth: that I don't want June to come back. At certain moments I even feel that if June should come back and disappoint me, and if I should not care for her any more, I would be almost glad. Sunday night I wanted to send her a cable telling her I did not want her any more. What I have discovered with you is that there can be friendship between men and women. June and I are not friends."

  We were walking to the Place Clichy, Fred, Henry and I. Henry makes me aware of the street, of people. He is smelling the street, observing. He shows me the whore with the wooden stump who stands near the Gaumont Palace. He shows me the narrow streets winding up, lined with small hotels, and the whores standing by the doorways, under red lights. We sit in several cafés, Francis Carco cafés, where the pimps are playing cards and watching their women on the sidewalk. We talked about life and death, as D. H. Lawrence talked about it, the people we know who are dead, those who are alive. Henry said, "If Lawrence had lived and known you, he would have loved you."

  At Clichy we were sitting in the kitchen with Fred. A small window looks down on the courtyard. We had finished a bottle of wine. We were smoking heavily, and Henry had to get up and wash his eyes with cold water, the irritated eyes of the little German boy.

  I could not bear this and I said impetuously, "Henry, let's drink to the end of your newspaper work. You will never do it again. I will take care of you."

  This had an extraordinary effect on Fred. His mouth began to tremble. He began to sob. He laid his head on my shoulder and the tears which rolled down his cheeks were enormou
s and heavy. I had never seen such tears. "Don't be hurt," I said, but I did not know why I said this. Why should he be hurt that Henry might be free of a job which was ruining his eyes?

  Henry did not understand either. "What is the matter, Fred? I believe you're angry because you think I washed my eyes before Anaïs to arouse her pity, to take advantage of her susceptibility."

  I met Henry and his friends at the café.

  Henry told me that Fred had not returned to Clichy the night before.

  "Don't take him too seriously," said Henry. "He loves tragedy. His feelings are very keen but all on the surface, all emotional, and they pass quickly."

  Later Fred joined us. We ate dinner together at a bistro. But Fred was depressed. Henry was deciding which movie we would see. Fred said he would not come with us, that he had work to do.

  Henry went to buy cigarettes.

  I said, "Fred, won't you come with us? Why are you so hurt?"

  "It is better I should not come. I am too unhappy. You know my feelings." He kissed my hand.

  A little later, as the red wine took effect, he threw off his mood to please me, and said, "Let's not go to the movies, let's go to Louveciennes."

  The three of us rushed for the train.

  It was only nine in the evening but everyone in the house was asleep.

  Magic.

  I felt the magic of my house lulling them. We sat by the fire. The fire made us talk quietly, intimately.

  I opened the iron boxes and showed them my journals. Fred seized upon the first volume and began to cry and laugh over it. Henry read all about himself in the red journal. We sat in the salon and read and talked.

  Henry and Fred were both at work when I arrived at Clichy for dinner. Henry was looking over fragments to be inserted in his book. The strength of his writing! The paradox between his gentleness and his violent writing. We all cooked dinner together. Fred had been typewriting pages about me. He made a beautiful portrait of me. He said, "Those are for everyone to read. I am going to write secret ones for you alone.

  "Do you like me, Anaïs," he asked pleadingly.

  "Of course I do, Fred."

  Henry is very gay. He is making plans for future books; he talks about Spengler, transition, Breton, and dreams.

  He has heavy "take-offs" and I sometimes suggest he begin somewhere else, to cut out laborious beginnings.

  It is these tranquil, relaxed hours with Henry and Fred which are the most fecund. Henry falls into a thoughtful quietness, musing, chuckling over his work. He has, at times, something of a gnome, a satyr, and a German scholar. At such moments his body appears fragile, and the energy of his writing and his talk and imagination seem almost too much for it. As he sits there sipping coffee, I see a new aspect of him: I see his richness, the impulses which blow like gusts and carry him everywhere, his letters to people all over the world, his curiosity, his exploration of Paris day and night, his relentless investigation of human beings.

  His charts on the walls are enormous, filled with names, incidents, titles of books, allusions, relationships, places, restaurants, etc. A giant task, a universe, if he can ever write it all.

  But June may come back and blow all this down like a simoom wind.

  There will remain the things Henry said which I cull here. He talks about God, about Dostoevsky, and the finesse of Fred's writing, which he admires.

  He can draw a distinction between dramatic, sensational, potent writing like his own, and the delicacy of Fred's writing. Can June perceive such nuances? Henry says, "She likes orgies, orgies of talk, orgies of noise, orgies of sex, orgies of sacrifice, orgies of hatred, orgies of weeping."

  Henry said, "Fred has a finesse which I lack, the quality of an Anatole France."

  "But he lacks the power you have."

  His passion runs through a chill, intellectual world like lava. It is his passion which seems important to the world today. It raises his books to the level of a natural phenomenon, like a cyclone, an earthquake. Today the world is chilled by mind and by analysis. His passion may save it, his appetite for life, his lust.

  Henry was telling me about a book I had not read. It was Arthur Machen's Hill of Dreams. I was listening, and suddenly he said, "I am talking almost paternally to you."

  At that moment I knew Henry had perceived the part of me that is half child, the part of me who likes to be amazed, to be taught, to be guided. I became a child listening to Henry, and he became paternal. The haunting image of an erudite, literary father reasserted itself, and the woman became a child again.

  I felt as if he had discovered a shameful secret. I ran away from Clichy.

  My childlike attitude towards older men. I can see nothing in it but immaturity, a need brought on by the absence of a father.

  [May 4, 1932]

  Dr. Allendy's office. His big desk, and a big shaded lamp. The wall where the window is, the window which looks on the street, is the one I look at as I sit on the armchair. On the arm of the chair is a small ash tray. Dr. Allendy sits behind this chair, where nothing betrays his presence except the rustle of paper and the sound of his pencil as he makes notes.

  His questions come from behind the armchair, disembodied, and so I can give all my attention to his words. I am not able to notice other things, his face, his clothes, his gestures. I have to concentrate on what he says.

  Dr. Allendy: "What did you feel after our first talk?"

  Anaïs: "I felt that I needed you, that I didn't want to be left alone again to face the problems of my life."

  Dr. Allendy: "It is quite clear from all you tell me that you loved your father devotedly, abnormally, and that you hated the sexual reasons which caused him to abandon you. For you felt his reason for having mistresses, for traveling away from you (even with the excuse of concert tours), the reason for your mother's unhappiness and scenes, the reason for his final departure, was sexual. This may have created in you a certain obscure feeling against sex."

  Anaïs: "Not against it, but a fear of being hurt through it, by it, because of it."

  He probes, asks questions, sometimes gives up an inquest into a particular theory, surrenders a theme of domination in favor of a theme of courting and fearing suffering from love.

  Anaïs: "It seemed to me that men only loved big, healthy women with enormous breasts. When I was a girl, my mother worried about my slenderness and quoted the Spanish proverb: 'Bones are for the dogs.' I doubted being able to please, or win a big love for myself, so I accepted what was given to me, gratefully. It was to forget this that I decided to be an artist, a writer, to be interesting, charming, accomplished. I was not sure of being beautiful enough..."

  At times Dr. Allendy laughs at what I say, at the way I say it. He says I have a sense of humor. But from my dreams he culls a consistent desire to be punished, or abandoned. I dream of a cruel Henry. I see men as sadists.

  Dr. Allendy: "This comes from a sense of guilt for having loved your father too much. I am sure that to make up for this, you loved your mother much more, later."

  Anaïs: "It is true. I was blindly devoted to her, loved her tremendously."

  Dr. Allendy: "And now you seek punishment. And you enjoy the suffering, which reminds you of the suffering you endured with your father. You were very jealous, as a little girl, of the women he loved."

  Dr. Allendy's statements sound unsubtle. I feel oppressed, as if his questions were like thrusts, as if I were a criminal in court. Analysis does not help me. It seems painful. It stirs up my fears and doubts. The pain of living is nothing compared to the pain of this investigation.

  Anaïs: "I cannot believe I had a fear of men. I was always very susceptible physically. It was only my romanticism, my desire for a real love, which prevented me from yielding to many temptations."

  Dr. Allendy asks me to relax and to tell him what goes on in my mind.

  Anaïs: "I am analyzing what you said, and I do not agree with your interpretations."

  Dr. Allendy: "You are doing my work, you a
re trying to be the analyst, to identify with me. Have you ever wished to surpass men in their own work, to have more success?"

  Anaïs: "Indeed not. I protected and sacrificed much for my brother's musical career, made it possible. I am now helping Henry and giving him all I can, to do his own work. I gave Henry my typewriter. There I think you are very wrong."

  Dr. Allendy: "Perhaps you are one of those women who are a friend, not an enemy of man."

  Anaïs: "More than that, I wanted to be married to an artist rather than be one, collaborate with him."

  There are ideas which Dr. Allendy abandons. But every time he touches upon the theme of confidence, he sees the turmoil and distress I feel. I lie back and I feel an inrush of pain, despair, defeat. Dr. Allendy has hurt me. I cry. I feel weak. It is time to go. I stand up and face him. His marine-blue eyes are very soft. He feels pity for me; he says, "You have suffered a great deal." But I did not want pity; I wanted him to admire me, to think me a unique woman.

  When I leave him, I am in a dream. If, behind the black Chinese curtain he looked like a powerful magician, at the front door in the daylight, he looks like a kindly, protective, gentle-mannered doctor. It seems symbolically right to enter his home and wait in a dark salon, to sit in a dark library, and then, having traversed these dark, fantastic, fearful regions, to emerge into daylight, into a neatly groomed garden, a quiet street.

  Dr. Allendy: "Why did you cry the last time?"

  Anaïs: "I feel that some of the things you said were true."

  Analysis is distasteful to me. I would prefer to tell Dr. Allendy simply about the day spent with Henry, and Fred. Fred's weeping when I said I would take care of Henry.

  I begin with docility but I feel a growing resistance to probing.

  Dr. Allendy: "Did you hate me for making you cry?"

  Anaïs: "No, I think I liked that. It made me feel that you were stronger than I."