Best Of Anaïs Nin's "Early Diary, Volume 2"

Here is a selection of memorable quotes from The Early Diary of Anaïs Nin Volume 2 (1920-1923).

Painting above: Les fleurs dédaignées (c.1925) by Hilda Rix Nicholas

This is the second instalment in a special 'Best Of' series on the yak occidental. For the series overview and quotes from Volume 1 of Anaïs Nin's early diaries, see here.

I must not, I must not idealize people. It is unjust to them, and unjust to me also, 

but until what age am I going to be totally blind?

p.9

As I grow wiser, or I think I am growing wiser, I adhere longer and more tenaciously to each of my idols, until their fall awakes me...to begin all over again. Had I been a man, I would have been an eternal lover. Being a woman, what am I? The future will tell. Only, I am in love, because my heart is awake to every vibration, to every touch of nature and humanity. I feel, always, from day to day, sorrow and joy. I live and dream love.

p.23

Fortunately I am not another girl. I prefer being the loneliest girl in the world 

rather than welcoming people I do not admire.

p.39

There I stood, a seventeen-year-old young lady and yet a child. I stared at myself. Yes, of course, my eyes are odd and large, and what on earth makes them seem like two big question marks? And not a drop of rouge--how silly of me. I should have painted my lips a little too. Add to this my tam-o’-shanter, my velvet jacket with its immaculate white, round collar-how school-like, and unladylike! I should have worn a silk dress with my small French shoes and my lace hat.

p.45

Were I made into a pie, I know that at the time to be eaten, blackbirds would fly out of me, and bluebirds, and catbirds, and doves, all confused in their personalities and species, because my mind is indeed a sad state of contradictions and ecstasies and doubts.

p.49

Oh, I feel it, I feel it in my darker moods! I feel I am leaving my girlhood behind me; I feel the woman in me, the knowledge, the experience. I am losing my insouciance; perhaps I am losing the enthusiasm that bubbles over when I am happy, and that is so seldom. I think too much, I seek too much, I expect the impossible. I rebel and doubt. Am I still a young girl? Oh, no. In a few months I have wept more than during all my life. 

If only it would come slowly, that growing, dark, heavy reality, 

but sometimes it seems to destroy the work of a lifetime in one day!

p.63

Painting above: Sylvia and Friend at Mosman (date unknown) by Hilda Rix Nicholas

Year after year, I record in my Diary my adventures in the world of men and women and my longings for other things. I am growing older, perhaps more civilized, less timid, prettier (who knows), but my heart is true to the dreams of my girlhood.

p.116

I have dreams, dreams which are finer than anything I have ever done or said, and I do not want them to die. It is my better self, the self of my ideals and resolutions struggling against the dreamless self with its faults and defilings, and they struggle in your pages. Your mere power of reflecting is worth more to me than all the sermons and advice in the world. You are the strongest help I have to fulfill my vision to achieve womanhood.

p.165

We two meet on mountaintops. are brought together by gusts of wind, and our thoughts melt into one another like passing clouds.

p.197

To amuse? We are not made for that alone. Heaven knows what burdens Woman bears in this world. Heaven also knows the tenderness of Woman’s heart, which makes it capable of more kindliness than man’s. I wish almost that it were not so, for few men, I believe, understand. They think we are romantics.

p.198

At first I asked myself what I had learned in the university. I placed all the answers to this question in a corner of my mind. Then for a few minutes I dwelt on the number of things I did not know. Then I compared, and became perplexed. Still, as I walked with my face upturned toward the sky, I thought of all I had to say, of all the things stirring within me. Inexperience, youth, all seem things which I must conquer, alone, and only one comforting thought remains, that I have learned the rudiments of my art and that I shall spend the summer writing [...] Why should I shrink and stand back and doubt myself? All around me people are writing my thoughts, my ideals, my observations. I read books of which I might have written a few pages. I thought of the Essay on Self-Reliance, and, tramping through dusty roads at twilight, I formed many resolutions.

p.201

When I contemplate the possibilities, what may be brought forth from this communion with books, my spirit feels a million times more freedom; it soars into such infinite distance that what is left behind can only sit and marvel. Mine is a double joy--the pleasure I find in the flight of fancy and the pleasure I find in this mind which has been given us to see into something; the mind that asks, doubts, and proceeds in its own way to seek the truth, the answer--philosophy; the kind which makes us reflect meditate, ponder, inquire and find.

p.237

At this very moment I see everything so clearly, as if my own thoughts themselves were thrown on the ground before me instead of their reflection, as so often happens. I can truly seem them, strongly defined, not phantoms, shadows, clouded and vague reproductions of thoughts, and therefore misleading. Could I but set them down as I see them!

Somewhere I have read of a universe expanded, enlarged by poetry, by reading. No one can grasp the truth in such words who has not spent a few hours alone with books, pen and paper. It is this dilation of the imagination and the soul. It is such a great, great feeling that one’s heart does not hold it; it overflows, and one wonders if human beings were made to receive such strong emotions.

p.238

Painting above: The Summer House (c.1933) by Hilda Rix Nicolas

I wonder how often I contradict myself. But I am not ashamed, for in no other way can I hope to attain, at least practice, the cultivation of clear thinking. I wonder, too, how often, in thinking, I wander to the left and right for long hours, groping for the direct path and reaching it only once or twice out of a thousand trials. What matter. All this ink and paper will harm no one, and it keeps me out of mischief.

p.262-63

At a time like this, I could lay down my pen forever. I could say, sadly, that by letting others speak for me, everything in my soul could be identified and explained--all my thoughts could be described, and better than I can do myself. But no. I admit there are many similarities, many repetitions, many things already written and written very well--almost everything, all but one. I believe that every living creature has been endowed with a mystery to unveil, which no one else can touch and understand. One’s self. In spite of all that has been said, done, thought and felt in this old world, each of us is different. Certainly there are reflections, surprising similarities, comparisons, resemblances. But, oh, I am sure, absolutely sure, that deep, deep within each of us there are new things to be discovered. And as long as there is a mystery, however small, there must be someone to explore it, to experiment. Each one of us has a mystery, each his own. We all have immeasurable depths; we undergo evolution, and on the ruins grow other chimeras and other new impulses. For all this, words are needed. In brief, as long as man lives, literature cannot perish. Will it grow? Who knows!

When I think of this, I take up my pen again. I stop reading Marie’s Journal and look deep within myself. What I see surprises me. I am quite different, not an echo of another soul, another personality. I am myself. I am different. Oh, how sweet to think that poor though one may be, there are great riches in each of us. Possessing something that no one can take away but that one can give freely. To give, one must write, and I shall. I think I understand better why we have to bear the humiliation of seeing others carry off something we thought ourselves had created. It gives us courage and the desire to climb higher, closer to the Ideal---so high that no one can outdo us .

p.292

Yet I am no reader of human hearts, in this art I am the eternal blunderer. But what I know of Hugo seems born in me, a thing of mystery,  the age-old knowledge which is woman’s very own gift and blessing and called by some: intuition.

p.402

Alone, suddenly deprived of Mother’s guidance and sane counsels, thrown upon my own resources, here my real self must appear and assert itself. 

It did, and making its acquaintance thoroughly amused me and gave me a sense of security and ease. I am in safe hands while I trust to myself. I mean this new individual now ruling me, a firm, resolute, grave, almost sensible creature become almost troublesome with her overflowing sense of power and the longing to use it, whose fingers ache to create, whose spirit yearns to reach and  move upward and onward, whose constant outcry is: 

I can and I will!

p.434

If to be wholly woman means to be an incomplete, imperfect writer, well then I know which way to set my course. I shall be Woman, in all its entity and perfection, and succeed in that--and the other will come of itself and follow like a satellite and never be quite lost or quite recovered or quite perfect, if you will, and yet not quite dead either.

p.446

Painting above: Autumn's Evening Glow (c.1942) by Hilda Rix Nicohals

There is no other punishment on earth for High Expectations than that of finding them unfulfilled. On the other hand, to some it brings about the discovery of riches never possibly found without earnest and diligent research. High Expectations are maps to Treasure Islands throughout the world. They help us to raise our sails and set course on life’s high seas--and sometimes bring us safely to port.

p.448

The finite human mind must of  necessity remain baffled by the infinite mysteries of religion. That the intellect should question, prove and doubt is only natural, but when it strikes upon the wall of its limitations, it should take refuge in interpretation through faith guided by the highest instincts in human nature--those of need and trust.

p.450

The substance of what the world tries to teach woman is this If you have a mind, make a secret of it, or bury it in some secret place, but for heaven’s sake do not use it. It is of no use to you in religion; it will spoil you and stands in the way of your piety and virtuousness. It is of no use to you in love, for men detest women who think, and like meek, gentle, ignorant spirits. And women, fearful of losing what is dearest to their hearts, learn to pray and sew and cook and the art of pleasing and being good and useful. The one who defies such teach (I!) revolts and willfully chooses to follow her inclinations, is constantly beset by difficulties and has her moments of tremor, when it seems as if she had made an irrevocable choice between what is dear to her as a woman  and what is said to satisfy philosophers, writers and artists--between affection and devotion, and knowledge and creation. Yet in the end she conquers. And among the gifts showered upon her is that of a love that surpasses all loves and contains in itself all the beauty and wisdom and glory of creation.

p.450

Hugo wounds me deeply by some of his ideas. I am still discovering him and finding him  utterly bewildering. I want to understand his point of view without accepting it. There is no need of surrendering one’s idea to obtain harmony, but one must make room for others.

p.464

Experience, if it embitters instead of sweetens, softens, melts, if it it weakens instead of inspires us, if it degrades and debases instead  of ennobles and purifies, has then proved stronger than our character and superior to our intellect. We should pass through and above it, enriched and not impoverished by the crucial test and lifelong struggle. 

p.471

I am sharply conscious of the contrast between my past and present life. 

Long ago, it seems to me, beloved, I was rich with life’s intangible gifts: 

love, understanding, unity, talent and intelligence... 

Daily I thank the gods I belong to no country, 

that I love none enough to be blinded by its faults.

p.501-502 (in a letter to Hugh)