Diary of Anais Nin, Volume 1

by Anais Nin

  He accused me of literary living. This has always amused me. Men can be in love with literary figures, with poetic and mythological figures, but let them meet with Artemis, with Venus, with any of the goddesses of love, and then they start hurling moral judgments.

  At thirteen I wrote: "Is there anyone who will understand me? I do not understand myself."

  But I know I am not what Artaud believes me to be.

  From my childhood diary:

  Time does nothing to my companions in school. For me each day is a novelty, and it seems to me that my character changes every day. If I do rise at the same time, I have different impressions each day. Even if I wear the same dress, it seems to me that I am not the same girl. Even if I repeat the same prayers during one year, each time they appear different to my interpretation, and I understand them differently.

  Today I began a new story called "Heart of Gold" and I am mixing a great deal of mystery with it.

  In front of me there is a deep abyss, and if I continue to fall into it, deeper and deeper, how long will it take me to reach the bottom? I imagine that life is such an abyss, and that the day I strike bottom will be the day I cease to suffer. One of these days I will say to my journal: "Dear Diary, I have touched bottom."

  The question is: am I like everyone else?

  I say to Henry: "I am not going to lie any more. Nobody is grateful for my lies. Now they will know the truth. And do you think Allendy will like what I have written about him better than what I said to him or implied by my evasions? Do you think Marguerite will prefer to know what I think of her in place of what I have told her? Truth is death-dealing, as your truths are death-dealing, Henry. You killed June psychically with your brutal honesty, as you would kill anyone you wrote about. People may not appear to be injured, but they are, irretrievably so, by a certain knowledge.

  "I have always believed in Bergson's 'mensonge vital.' The trouble is not with my lies; the trouble is that we were all brought up on fairy tales. We were poisoned with fairy tales. Women expected love to always take a lyrical form, a romantic expression. We have all expected wonder, the marvelous. You yourself wrote me a few days ago: 'I expected so much, so much of the world and it all fell short.' I was more poisoned by fairy tales than anyone.

  "Only I decided to work miracles. I decided that when somebody said: 'I want' that I would fulfill this want. I decided to be the fairy godmother who made things come true. And to some degree I succeeded. My faith in you has strengthened you miraculously. Only don't forget, fairy tales are based on lies. I wanted everybody to have everything they wanted! The mistake I made was to encompass too much. I could not make everyone happy, take care of everyone. I had to let some down, and they hate me for it. I over-estimated my strength. When I told a lie it was a lie which gives life."

  "I admit that your faith nourished me," said Henry. "I could not have done anything if you had been unbelieving, and without enthusiasm."

  "And to my faith I add perception. My faith in you was no illusion. Look at the work you have done. Today Lowenfels praised you, and Cummings."

  "You may be lying to me."

  "Don't forget I have always let you read the diary until you yourself stopped."

  "Most of the time," said Henry, with his usual candor, "I am just an egoist, too full with my own ideas to take in any more."

  From my childhood diary, at age thirteen:

  At times I have sensations which I cannot explain, impulses I cannot control, impressions I cannot shake off, dreams and thoughts contrary to the usual dreams and thoughts of others. When I read a book I discuss it with myself, I judge it, I find its qualities or its faults, I begin to think such deep thoughts that I get lost, weary, I no longer understand myself...

  And after a visit to a woman writer who encouraged me:

  I am not mad, I do not think of impossible things. I am not stupid, I may be good for something one day.

  And if I do get easily saddened, it is because, as my mother says, I have inherited a dramatic soul, more easily given to sadness than to joy.

  I tell Joaquin and Thorvald so many stories that my mother said my imagination is like Niagara Falls in its richness and continuous movement.

  ***

  In my eyes, my father has the beauty, the proud and magnificent beauty of my dreams...

  So that my dreams may be my own, so that they may never become real, so that I may always call them back to keep me company, to help me live, I keep them in the deepest part of my being or in the most secret pages of my diary.

  To my father:

  There is an emptiness, a void in our life which only you could fill.

  Alas, why must I change so much? I feel nothing today. I am cold and do not understand religion at this moment and I know, I understand, that it is my exalted nature which also causes these sudden coldnesses for what I adored and into which I poured all the strength of my passion...

  Yes, I am light, I am not persevering, I am passionate...

  My father asked me to come down to Valescure for a few days and drive back to Paris with him. When I arrived in Valescure my father met me alone, but it was impossible to detect on his face what his feelings were. Always the same impenetrable mask, the cold mask. When he takes his glasses off, the myopic blue eyes have a yearning, clinging look. It is only later that I discover he has not slept the night before.

  At the hotel Maruca is waiting for us. This time I see her more clearly and I appreciate her. Small, plump, beautifully formed, a Tanagra with a boyish face, a humorous small uptilted nose, a little girl's light voice, frankness and directness. The quick, determined gestures, the simplicity. She was warm and I responded to her.

  She took me to my room. She watched me with affectionate curiosity, to see what had become of the little girl she knew at Arcachon who had slept in her bed while my mother went to close the house at Uccle after my father's departure. I gave her the perfume I brought. We have a talk later, while my father takes his siesta. She is expansive, natural, feminine, a Japanese wife. Paderewski invites us to dinner. Father demanded that we dress up. Delia, a friend, said it was absolutely ridiculous to dress up in the summer, in a hotel which was half deserted. But we dressed up.

  Paderewski seems to be standing in a spotlight, because he is all in white, and the light touches up his white hair. He bowed over our hands like a king. Charm. A noble face. Gentle blue eyes which are keen and aware. He was accompanied by his doctor and his secretary, who were furious because my father had dressed in full regalia while they wore Riviera open shirts. I mention this because it was characteristic of my father. When he first came to Paris, married, poor, to play for Vincent d'Indy, he dressed up. D'Indy was displeased, because all the other pianists were so ragged, shabby, and soiled. But, all dressed up like a window mannequin, my father could still play Bach as d'Indy had never imagined. "Where did you learn?" asked d'Indy. "Out of old manuscripts and my own logic," answered my father.

  And now he was talking with Paderewski, enchanting him with grace, wit, and erudition. He was under the spell of my father's charm, he himself being a man of enormous romantic charm. It was a beautiful encounter. Paderewski looked like the man of the legends, like the many photographs of him at the piano, playing, with his long hair floating. The courtliness, the romantic attitude, the individualism: they shone from his white hair, his radiant rosy skin, his long fingers.

  He has an amazing memory for details. When talking of the cities where he had given concerts, he mentioned the exact number of inhabitants. Speaking of my father he said, "He is l'homme complet" He said, "Anaïs is your most successful creation." He has dignity, pride, wisdom. A romantic figure.

  I describe him fully because this is a vanishing race. He embraced my father at the end of the dinner as if he were decorating him, thanked him for the red roses my father had ordered to be scattered all over the table. As I went up in the slow cagelike elevator, he looked up at me warmly and gallantly and said: "You have a beauty of other times."r />
  The next day we are packing. My father is marking road maps. We are driving alone to Paris. Delia is looking at me. She has the brilliant shining eyes of a little girl in the body of a fifty-year-old woman. Maruca gives me instructions as to how to take care of my father. "He must have his siesta after lunch. He must rest."

  The car is ready. Lunch in Saint-Canna. Heat. Flies. Night in Aries. There is a noisy fair under my window, and I hear the "Habañera." The water of the bath runs so slowly that I begin to do other things, and I forget about it when my father knocks at the door to come and have breakfast. As we are sitting in the dining room, I see the water of the overflowing bath coming down the tile stairs like a Versailles fountain.

  My father gives me another Herr Professor lesson. "When you travel, you must give up all your exigencies. Accept and laugh at everything. Abandon all your habits." He has not noticed that I have none! He laughs, tolerates and accepts everything but dirt. Extreme dirt angers him. So he writes in the Livre d'Or of the hotel, following many distinguished signatures: "This place is full of shit."

  Over dinner it is he who talked. He was urging me to live for myself, to give up the parasites, the Bohemians, the failures. "Believe me, I have done all that. Just like you. The failures are not due to any injustice, but to an inner defect. It is always caused by the person himself. Yes, I know, you think you are doing an act of justice. But they will only suck you dry, wear out your energy, nourish themselves on your ideas. After being the most compassionate man in the world, I say to you today: Let the weak ones die, let them commit suicide. You have explored many dark regions. They are dangerous for a woman."

  He talked in a general way.

  "I didn't tell you at first, but I was terribly concerned about your life and your friends. What dangers you have skirted!"

  At the table he observed the manias, tics, idiosyncrasies of people, their ridiculous or absurd ways. Yet he will caress a mangy cat or overtip the waiter.

  On the balcony, where he was taking a sunbath, I discovered the beauty of his feet. Small and fine, so delicate, like a woman's. They seemed to be treading space, not earth. His feet were the most vulnerable, most revealingly delicate fragment of an otherwise steely, taut body. Like an intimate revelation. Achilles heel, the reason, perhaps, for the mask. The reason for the tense will, the imperious tyranny, the erect bearing. The armor of his will. When I saw his feet he became a human being and I felt less in awe of him. I was glad to wipe the perspiration from his face while he was driving. Perfection has precious-stone incandescence which frightens. I am less afraid of his cold, death-dealing criticalness.

  Under the superficial surface, there are mysteries, never-ending depths, unknown regions, extending infinitely, unseizable because of his need to create an ideal figure. He has to see, in the eyes of others, an idealized figure. He cannot bear a true mirror. I see him as a sensual, burning flame in bowls of Lalique crystal.

  I wore an organdie blouse of salmon rose with a black costume. The organdie fluttered and perked gaily in frills, like fluttering feathers, transparent and blooming. My father said, "You look as if you would fly away."

  My father picks up a scarab on the road so it will not be run over. He talks to me as we walk in the sun the next morning.

  Two aspects: one of severity, one of sudden tenderness. Pride makes him silent. But he is full of wit and inventiveness. He is sad at my mother's unjust descriptions of him. His father did not love him. His mother loved him too well. His first love betrayed him. Isolina. Unforgiven. She had red hair, and was vivid and beautiful. But while he was in Cuba she married suddenly, did not wait for him. He talked at length on his disillusion with rescue work. He devoted himself to the talent of La Argentina, discovered her, pushed her, composed music for her. Devoted himself to Andres Segovia, to the Aguilar Quartet. He culled only ingratitude. He begs me to live only for myself. The failures. They are an incubus. They feed on your mind, weigh you down, cheat you.

  There must be an accord between his writing, his music, his life. He regrets not having been mercenary. He spends too much time helping others.

  The rigid forms of his life. Tact. Politeness. Promptness at meetings. On time always. "If I had transgressed in money matters, my music would not have been as pure. I could not have upheld such severe standards in music, philosophy, life. Every detail is important to the whole."

  He caused me a great shock by saying, "Henry is a weakling who is living off your virility." He judged Henry's weakness from his love of ugliness, bad smells, strong odors, strong excitations. He says it is a sign of impotence, of perversity. Real sensuality has no need of stimulants.

  After a few days we started on the journey back in his car. Saint-Canna was as hot as a tropical town. There were walls of blue stucco in the hotel, as in Cuba, and this reminded him of life there. "I could never wear espadrilles as fashionable people are wearing here in the south, because I associated them with poor Spaniards who came to Cuba seeking work." "He came in alpargatas" was a derogatory phrase often used to describe the first Spaniards who came to Cuba seeking their fortune.

  He is kind to animals. But he is full of will. "You have to twist events to your desire." He has all the stoicisms and forcefulness, heroisms, except the one which impelled him to marry my mother for her strength, her faith and devotion and sustenance. His walk supple, erect, royal.

  My father organizes life, interprets it, controls it. His passion for criticism and perfection paralyzed me. Henry's absence of criticalness liberated me. But when it goes too far, it becomes a disintegrating force, and one cannot build with it.

  The rigid walls of my father's constructions terrified me. What a horror of walls, discipline, confinements, controls. When I was telling my father, amusingly and gaily, my experiences as an artist's model at sixteen in New York, and painting in the liveliest colors my first appearance at the Model's Club in Watteau dress, my father interrupts me to say, "Why do you say Watteau? In French it is Vateau." When I first met him I feared he would not like my house at Louveciennes. When he said, "C'est bien. It has charm," I was relieved. Yet under the severity there was a well of love.

  I would have liked my love for my father to be relaxed. The seventh day, I called it, asking him to rest from this effort at perfection. We both struggled so hard to recreate ourselves, to grow, aiming always higher, rejecting yesterday's self. If today my father could only say to himself and to me, "C'est bien," how enjoyable it would be.

  ***

  Sadness. My maid Emilia leaves me to get married. We kiss weeping. Emilia, who passed unnoticed, yet whose faithfulness, loyalty, devotion have served me deeply and helped to make a difficult life possible. Emilia, disorderly, absent-minded, sympathetic, understanding, indefatigable, with a strange, blind approval of my life and of me.

  Service with idolatry and uncanny insight. I repaid her with the same affection and she was happy with me. Her secrecy, her unquestioning attitude. Her blind acceptance of me, her enjoyment of the life in my house, of what the artists brought to the house, of my inventions, the colored stones or the painted horoscopes on the attic's slanting walls, the copper mobile of the astrologie changes in the sky which I kept up to date, as one keeps a clock. Emilia, with her Goya face, an asymmetrical face, the forehead bulging out, the black hair oily, straggly, the big Spanish eyes heavily lidded, the sweet voice, the orphan smile, her singing while she worked.

  Her only romance before that of her present fiancée had been the courtship by a young Japanese valet when we lived on the Boulevard Suchet. He had come to see me and had made me a ceremonious speech: Emilia had saved so much, and he had saved so much, and he thought it would be a good marriage of convenience. He did not seem to love her at all, and I had misgivings. He seemed to be planning for a little café in Japan, in his home town.

  I felt unsure that Emilia would be happy. "She is such a hard worker," he repeated admiringly. As if Emilia had been my daughter, I worried, but did not want to oppose the marriage. I su
ggested that he wait until Emilia had the proper trousseau: hand-sewn underwear, dresses, sheets and pillow cases in the old-fashioned Spanish tradition. I bought Emilia materials, and a beautiful wooden wedding chest and encouraged her to sew, embroider, crochet, petit-point all her clothes for a bride. She was adept at all this, patient, and worked at it during spare moments and in the evening. The Japanese valet was invited to come and visit the treasure chest. But this took time. And before Emilia had terminated the trousseau, she had discovered that he did not love her. The trousseau was now going to be used for a devoted Spanish husband who adored her.

  ***

  I dream that I am in a train. My journals are in a black valise. I am walking through the cars. Someone comes and tells me the valise with the journals has disappeared. Terrible anxiety. I hear that a man has burned the journals. I am furious and I have a great sense of injustice. I ask to have the case brought before a court; the man who has burned my journals is there. I expect the lawyer to defend me. The judge sees immediately that the man has committed a crime, that he had no right to burn the journals. But the lawyers do not talk or defend me. The judge becomes apathetic. Nobody says anything. I have a feeling that the world is against me, that I have to make my own defense. I get up and make a very eloquent speech. "In those journals you can see I was brought up in Spanish Catholicism, that my actions later are not evil; just a struggle to react against a prison." I talk, I talk. I am aware that everybody is aware of my eloquence, but they say nothing. One of the judges interrupts me to correct my language. I say: "Of course I am aware that I cannot talk pure legal French. I beg you to forgive my inaccuracies." But this does not deter me from continuing a passionate defense and accusation. But everybody remains inert. The extent of my despair awakens me.