Take a photo of a barcode or cover
3.86 AVERAGE
3.86 AVERAGE
I just don't know. I loved it but knowing what comes next filled me with such a sense of dread I don't know that I can give it 5 stars, though truly it deserves nothing less. Isolated, it's gorgeous.
adventurous
challenging
emotional
inspiring
reflective
medium-paced
Beautiful, seductive, alluring prose. Sensual, erotic, a bit disturbing. An exploration of what it means to be a woman and the various facets of love
Content Warnings
Graphic: Incest, Sexual content
i simply cannot express how good this book was, nobody before wrote in such clarity about love, described the process of falling so natural etc.
You know the words by Kahlil Gibran “You talk when you cease to be at peace with your thoughts”? That is what journaling essentially is. Putting your thoughts in order, conversing with paper to create calmness in your mind.
At its best, a journal allows the dialogue between the subject and observer and produces this great inner dialogue with the consciousness. For some, journaling becomes a very creative way to arrange their views and to deal with the conflict of values. In extreme cases journaling becomes a way to distort their reality to fit their morals. We see this clearly in autobiographies and we see it very very vividly in journals by Anaïs Nin.
This is the uncensored diary from the years 1931-1932. Some of the previously published content has been left out to keep it tight. Compared to the censored version, this includes Hugo, her husband. The role of Hugo is of most interest to me in this piece. He really is there, is present in Nin’s life, loving and caring - and as a provider to the lot.
Nin confesses somewhere around the middle of this volume that she only includes stories that end up bringing her joy and she suppresses the true conflicts. This obviously is not utterly a work of fiction but it has enough twisting of motives to highlight elements of narcissistic fantasy. As an example Nin admits that she wants to forget the times her husband is being suspicious of her behavior thus she only occasionally mentions that he is jealous (but so loving and trustful). In contrast, according to her, Henry says he (Henry) sees the goodness in people and that is why he himself has to write raw and ugly to give it an edge, to give his life some edge. They seem to work in opposite ways creating and expanding their adventures. Literally they complement each other. Fred as a side character completes this circle with aesthetic approach. Some casual bystander might have deemed them as frantic alcoholics but they create their own realities.
For Nin the journals have become an obsession. Writing gives her validation to pursue happiness and wholesome expression as a woman at the cost of her marriage (and other marriages). It would be easy to moralize her. But as anyone, she has her reasons to behave the way she does. She has attachment injury from her childhood and she deals with that trauma the best she can with the resources she has.
She tells herself:
In reality she needs to feel herself as a faithful wife so she would have the safe haven to come back to after her escapades. In her censored journals she presents herself to be an independent woman but she always had the security and assets of her banker husband. Note that she boldly refers to herself as a writer while she still is (and remains for a long time) an unpublished one. With the means of literature she tries to grow past her trauma. She creates her own meanings, detaches herself from her responsibilities and loyalties, telling herself that she can do it in the name of art. Splitting her personality in these roles is her coping mechanism with what seems to be anxious attachment.
All this exchange she views to be romantic and artistic while she prepares herself the role of a mistress. Later she prefers to hear how she compares to the wife and jots down the parts she accepts.
Eventually Nin has to wake up to the notion that she is competing for attention and love now as she did as a child. With the means of this skillful writing she continues to see herself as a very loving person while deceiving her husband and being very generous (on his expense) to others around her. She can keep up this radiant self-image with a power of creative distortion as well as with new passions as the old ones fade away. I can not help to wonder if drinking helps her more than she likes to admit, too.
Actions mean less to her than words. She needs to find romantic meaning to actions through re-writing the events. She really loves her words and words can make up for everything - or tear things down. She shares her journal entries with her closest people but carefully selects who can read what. She is able to enjoy the feeling of openness and approval while she simultaneously keeps deceiving those who are left on the sidelines.
It is the best turn of events that her cousin talks her into seeing a therapist as her journaling feeds her narcissistic qualities. I could not help wondering if the sexual affair with cousin Eduardo was real or was he just used for reflection?
I would have hoped for some unbiased therapy for Hugo, since he is obviously still suffering from Nin’s previous affair and double betrayal. Nin translates Hugo’s trauma and pursuit of being an ideal husband as being a side effect of her glowing presence now that Henry has really touched her womanhood. Their shared therapist does not seem to succeed in remediating this misconception. Nin goes on writing that her digression only feeds to their passion in the marriage and that Hugo must never know the truth because only the words could wound him. Classic justification for someone committing infidelity.
She needs these men but fails to admit she is using them. She depicts passion larger than life to validate her choices. For her men are married, she can explain to herself that even if the affair ended she has not lost it. In her mind she is the winner in the face of life for being able to steal those moments for as long as they lasted. She even goes on explaining how she can cure these men so they will be better husbands. She romanticizes her own husbands trauma reactions, shattered trust and mental state as follows:
She has made herself the center of their world, she is the love. The men in her life need to carry on showing their devotion so she would feel complete and not flee into yet another man’s arms.
To me there are only victims in this story. I have been reading Miller. Now I would desperately need to hear Hugo’s version of his life with Nin.
Oh and about my rating of the book:
The theme of mental imbalance was interesting but the text was boringly repetitive in all its inconsistency (I love him, I never truly loved him, I cherish him, I feel nothing but pity and motherly caring for him, now I love him again, now I don’t love but this passion exceeds my limits, love and passion can not live together, our love is the strongest thing in the world) + bodily fluids. I enjoyed the main diary more. This felt so cheap and empty, scandalous. Creating suspense at the expense of the spouses, can not vote for that.
At its best, a journal allows the dialogue between the subject and observer and produces this great inner dialogue with the consciousness. For some, journaling becomes a very creative way to arrange their views and to deal with the conflict of values. In extreme cases journaling becomes a way to distort their reality to fit their morals. We see this clearly in autobiographies and we see it very very vividly in journals by Anaïs Nin.
This is the uncensored diary from the years 1931-1932. Some of the previously published content has been left out to keep it tight. Compared to the censored version, this includes Hugo, her husband. The role of Hugo is of most interest to me in this piece. He really is there, is present in Nin’s life, loving and caring - and as a provider to the lot.
Nin confesses somewhere around the middle of this volume that she only includes stories that end up bringing her joy and she suppresses the true conflicts. This obviously is not utterly a work of fiction but it has enough twisting of motives to highlight elements of narcissistic fantasy. As an example Nin admits that she wants to forget the times her husband is being suspicious of her behavior thus she only occasionally mentions that he is jealous (but so loving and trustful). In contrast, according to her, Henry says he (Henry) sees the goodness in people and that is why he himself has to write raw and ugly to give it an edge, to give his life some edge. They seem to work in opposite ways creating and expanding their adventures. Literally they complement each other. Fred as a side character completes this circle with aesthetic approach. Some casual bystander might have deemed them as frantic alcoholics but they create their own realities.
For Nin the journals have become an obsession. Writing gives her validation to pursue happiness and wholesome expression as a woman at the cost of her marriage (and other marriages). It would be easy to moralize her. But as anyone, she has her reasons to behave the way she does. She has attachment injury from her childhood and she deals with that trauma the best she can with the resources she has.
She tells herself:
“I really believe that if I were not a writer, not a creator, not an experimenter, I might have been a very faithful wife.”
In reality she needs to feel herself as a faithful wife so she would have the safe haven to come back to after her escapades. In her censored journals she presents herself to be an independent woman but she always had the security and assets of her banker husband. Note that she boldly refers to herself as a writer while she still is (and remains for a long time) an unpublished one. With the means of literature she tries to grow past her trauma. She creates her own meanings, detaches herself from her responsibilities and loyalties, telling herself that she can do it in the name of art. Splitting her personality in these roles is her coping mechanism with what seems to be anxious attachment.
Spoiler
The actual plot here is that Nin acquires a position between this married couple Henry and June by creating obsession about June. She then goes on building intimacy with June’s husband talking about June, bringing her own loving and lusting image before his eyes as a potential lover of his wife, fantasies revealed. They continue with sharing opinions and praise about June between them. As writers they allow themselves to do this intimate study, blinding themselves from the obvious consequences of deepening intimacy, binding them deeper into secrecy. Nin also uses dreams as excuses to introduce these sensual and sexual images to men around her. As much as she says she plots to seduce men, she is incapable of inspecting this kind of manipulation in others. She sees people lying around her and yet she seems to genuinely believe that she is the ultimate confident - the only one who can truly deceive but not be deceived. Somehow she escapes to see the couple's motives in talking harshly of each other as a possible scaring tactic and boundary building. She has this childlike and naïve quality in all her womanness.All this exchange she views to be romantic and artistic while she prepares herself the role of a mistress. Later she prefers to hear how she compares to the wife and jots down the parts she accepts.
Eventually Nin has to wake up to the notion that she is competing for attention and love now as she did as a child. With the means of this skillful writing she continues to see herself as a very loving person while deceiving her husband and being very generous (on his expense) to others around her. She can keep up this radiant self-image with a power of creative distortion as well as with new passions as the old ones fade away. I can not help to wonder if drinking helps her more than she likes to admit, too.
Actions mean less to her than words. She needs to find romantic meaning to actions through re-writing the events. She really loves her words and words can make up for everything - or tear things down. She shares her journal entries with her closest people but carefully selects who can read what. She is able to enjoy the feeling of openness and approval while she simultaneously keeps deceiving those who are left on the sidelines.
It is the best turn of events that her cousin talks her into seeing a therapist as her journaling feeds her narcissistic qualities. I could not help wondering if the sexual affair with cousin Eduardo was real or was he just used for reflection?
I would have hoped for some unbiased therapy for Hugo, since he is obviously still suffering from Nin’s previous affair and double betrayal. Nin translates Hugo’s trauma and pursuit of being an ideal husband as being a side effect of her glowing presence now that Henry has really touched her womanhood. Their shared therapist does not seem to succeed in remediating this misconception. Nin goes on writing that her digression only feeds to their passion in the marriage and that Hugo must never know the truth because only the words could wound him. Classic justification for someone committing infidelity.
“The truth is that this is the only way I can live: in two directions. I need two lives. I am two beings. When I return to Hugo in the evening, to the peace and warmth of the house, I return with a deep contentment, as if this were the only condition for me. I bring home to Hugo a whole woman, freed of all ‘possessed’ fevers, cured of the poison of restlessness and curiosity which used to threaten our marriage, cured through action. Our love lives, because I live. I sustain and feed it. I am loyal to it, in my own way, which cannot be his way.”
She needs these men but fails to admit she is using them. She depicts passion larger than life to validate her choices. For her men are married, she can explain to herself that even if the affair ended she has not lost it. In her mind she is the winner in the face of life for being able to steal those moments for as long as they lasted. She even goes on explaining how she can cure these men so they will be better husbands. She romanticizes her own husbands trauma reactions, shattered trust and mental state as follows:
“Hugo and I yield entirely to each other. We cannot be without each other, we cannot endure discord, war, estrangement, we cannot take walks alone, we do not like to travel without each other. We have yielded in spite of our individualism, our hatred of intimacy. We have absorbed our egocentric selves into our love. Our love is our ego.”
She has made herself the center of their world, she is the love. The men in her life need to carry on showing their devotion so she would feel complete and not flee into yet another man’s arms.
To me there are only victims in this story. I have been reading Miller. Now I would desperately need to hear Hugo’s version of his life with Nin.
Oh and about my rating of the book:
The theme of mental imbalance was interesting but the text was boringly repetitive in all its inconsistency (I love him, I never truly loved him, I cherish him, I feel nothing but pity and motherly caring for him, now I love him again, now I don’t love but this passion exceeds my limits, love and passion can not live together, our love is the strongest thing in the world) + bodily fluids. I enjoyed the main diary more. This felt so cheap and empty, scandalous. Creating suspense at the expense of the spouses, can not vote for that.
My god, she is irritating and self-congratulatory in her total dysfunction. I'd love her if she had any shred of self-awareness, but unfortunately, she's a vapid, shifty nobody and nothing. I don't mean to condemn her degeneracy, I condemn the way she identifies with "moral purity" despite having no idea what it means to be kind, and the way she throws absolutely everyone under the bus to serve her self-image. She is a hopeless, pitiable child through and through, and unfortunately, she can't even make her evil or confusion compelling. I can think of 70 cruel, frantically confused protagonists who are way more interesting. Let's not even bother with likability here, that's not the scale we're working with. Not sure why she's heralded as such a libertine goddess of sexual empowerment since she does not have even basic knowledge of female sexuality, let alone her own desires. She whirs in place like a truck in mud for 275 pages, circling around and around various lofty ideals with no sense of who or what she is. Infuriating at best. Has the appeal of a very slow train wreck, if you're into that kind of thing. There is almost nothing to appreciate here. Might be interested in her fiction, but considering she has the emotional depth of a teaspoon, I'm sure I won't get to it for a long time.
.25 points for lyricism, though it's all just various ways to state the same self-serving drivel. Recommended for die-hard fans of Walter White.
.25 points for lyricism, though it's all just various ways to state the same self-serving drivel. Recommended for die-hard fans of Walter White.
adventurous
emotional
reflective
slow-paced
i think any woman who feels she is on the cusp of a new understanding of what being a woman is should read this book and allow their hearts to be full.
emotional
reflective
slow-paced
emotional
reflective
sad
tense
slow-paced