The Diary of Anais Nin Volume 5 1947-1955: Vol. 5 (1947-1955)

I just finished a book I didn't want to read, The Journals of Anaïs Nin: Volume Five (1947-1955). I had planned to read it, and its time came, but I just didn't feel like it. Happily, it took me about two pages to change my mind and enjoy this book in a little less than a week. Anaïs Nin was born Angela Anais Juana Antolina Rosa Edelmira Nin y Culmell in France in 1903 to composer Joaquin Nin, who was of Cuban and Spanish background, and his wife, Rosa, who was Cuban, French and Danish. After Joaquin abandoned the family, the family moved to the United States in 1914. With the disapproval of her mother, Nin began work as an artist's model to help pay the family bills, and then returned to Europe in 1923. She studied psychoanalysis under Otto Rank, practiced as a lay analyst and underwent therapy with Carl Jung for a time. Nin is also well known her for lovers, Henry Miller, Otto Rank, Gore Vidal and Edmund Wilson. She was married, I believe, twice, once to Hugh Guiler, who looked the other way regarding her affairs, and once, bigamously, to Rupert Cole. Nin's fame these days is primarily as a diarist, and there seem to be two veins of her diaries, those she published in an expurgated form in ten volumes, which remain popular, and another five-volume series of unexpurgated journals that focus on a shorter window of time around the decade of the 1930s. This book is from the former series, and is copyrighted in 1974. I have no idea where I got it. Nin also wrote fiction, and I've read two of her fictional works, Spy in the House of Love and Delta of Venus. I also have read a biography, Anaïs: The Erotic Life of Anaïs Nin by Noel Riley Fitch. She was a peripheral literary figure during most of her lifetime and she died in 1977. The main focus of her work seems to be psychological realism, and as she grew older, she seemed to see her diaries as the primary outlet of that stream of thought. As she writes in a letter to Max Geismar, copied into her journal in the winter of 1954-1955, "I only need to continue my personal life, so beautiful and in full bloom, and to do my major work, which is the diary. I merely forgot for a few years what I had set out to do." This diary focuses on various themes of her life during this time, her struggle to get Spy published (she ends up self-publishing it), her travels and time spent living in Mexico, her friendships with Geismars and Jim Herlihy, her psychoanalysis with a Dr. Inge Bogner, and a return to the focus of her work as a diarist. She includes wonderful interludes about her life in Acapulco; a return trip to Paris, which is deliciously recounted with her nostalgic expectations sometimes being born out and sometimes failing; letters to and from Henry Miller; the fruit of her work with Bogner; and the story of her last days with her mother before Rosa's death from a heart attack. This last is touchingly told, and she follows her feelings about both her parents to see how she reclaimed their charact

THE DIARY OF ANAIS NIN: VOLUME FIVE 1947-1955 contains beautiful writing. Anais (pronounced "anna - EESE" ["EESE" as in "lease"]) has a very unique writing style, a result of her Spanish and French background, her fondest for extremes, and frequent disregard for correct grammar and punctuation. The downside to her beautiful prose is that often it is hard to follow what she is talking about. Though I am a huge fan of Anais Nin, I always struggle with her writing, particularly these "expurgated" diaries; because they were so heavily edited they seem very choppy at times. Anais also was not in the habit of sticking to one topic per paragraph. And it is common for one paragraph to be completely unrelated to the previous. I often become so bewildered that I have to put the book down. (It also doesn't help that I was only two when Anais died in 1977, meaning I am often completely unfamiliar with the topics she discusses.)I now use her diaries as meditations, and am content to read a passage or even paragraph at a time. It no longer bothers me that I often get lost. One paragraph, or even one sentence, often contains enough beauty to make it unimportant that I have no idea what she's talking about (many things I have understood have not been nearly as beautiful). She just had an awesome command of language! My favorite passage in Volume Five is on the very first page where she describes her time in Acapulco. It's stunning poetry! I've never seen anyone else write like this. I would certainly agree that previous knowledge of Anais's life is helpful in appreciating her diaries and all other works. I am currently reading ANAIS NIN: A BIOGRAPHY by Deirdre Bair. Ms. Bair's book has been incredibly helpful in understanding Nin's work. I recommend Bair's biography of Nin in addition to THE DAIRY OF ANAIS NIN: VOLUME FIVE 1947-1955.