Anaïs Nin
| Date of Birth | : | 21 Feb, 1903 |
| Date of Death | : | 04 Nov, 1977 |
| Place of Birth | : | Neuilly-sur-Seine, France |
| Profession | : | Diarist, Essayist, Novelist |
| Nationality | : | American |
Anaïs Nin (born February 21, 1903, Neuilly, France—died January 14, 1977, Los Angeles, California, U.S.) French-born author of novels and short stories whose literary reputation rests on the eight published volumes of her personal diaries. Her writing shows the influence of the Surrealist movement and her study of psychoanalysis under Otto Rank.
Early Life
Brought to New York City by her mother in 1914, Nin was educated there but later returned to Europe. She launched her literary career with the publication of D.H. Lawrence: An Unprofessional Study (1932); the book led to a lifelong friendship with the American author Henry Miller.
At the beginning of World War II Nin returned to New York City. There she continued—at her own expense—to print and publish her novels and short stories, and, although no critical acclaim was forthcoming, her works were admired by many leading literary figures of the time. Not until 1966, with the appearance of the first volume of her diaries, did she win recognition as a writer of significance. The success of the diary provoked interest in her earlier work Cities of the Interior (1959), a five-volume roman-fleuve, or continuous novel, which consists of Ladders to Fire (1946), Children of the Albatross (1947), The Four-Chambered Heart (1950), A Spy in the House of Love (1954), and Solar Barque (1958).
Nin’s literary contribution was a subject of controversy in her lifetime and remained so after her death. Many critics admired her unique expression of femininity, her lyrical style, and her psychological insight. Some dismissed her concern with her own fulfillment as self-indulgent and narcissistic. Opinion was further divided by the posthumous Delta of Venus: Erotica (1977) and later collections of previously unpublished erotic stories written on commission during the financially lean years of the early 1940s. Her other works of fiction included a collection of short stories, Under a Glass Bell (1944); the novels House of Incest (1936), Seduction of the Minotaur (1961), and Collages (1964); and three novelettes collected in Winter of Artifice (1939).
Quotes
It takes courage to push yourself to places you have never been before... to test your limits... to break through barriers. And the day came when the risk it took to stay tight inside the bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.
We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are.
Don't let one cloud obliterate the whole sky.
Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one's courage.
My mission, should I choose to accept it, is to find peace with exactly who and what I am. To take pride in my thoughts, my appearance, my talents, my flaws and to stop this incessant worrying that I can’t be loved as I am.
Each friend represents a world in us, a world not born until they arrive, and it is only by this meeting that a new world is born.
You carry away with you a reflection of me, a part of me. I dreamed you; I wished for your existence. You will always be a part of my life. If I love you, it must be because we shared, at some moment, the same imaginings, the same madness, the same stage.
The only transformer and alchemist that turns everything into gold is love. The only magic against death, aging, ordinary life, is love.
We do not grow absolutely, chronologically. We grow sometimes in one dimension, and not in another, unevenly. We grow partially. We are relative. We are mature in one realm, childish in another. The past, present, and future mingle and pull us backward, forward, or fix us in the present. We are made of layers, cells, constellations.
I want to love you wildly. I don’t want words, but inarticulate cries, meaningless, from the bottom of my most primitive being, that flow from my belly like honey. A piercing joy, that leaves me empty, conquered, silenced.
