Best of Anaïs Nin's "Early Diary, Volume 3"
Here is a selection of memorable quotes from The Early Diary of Anaïs Nin Volume 3 (1923-1927).
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| Painting above: Woman in an Interior (date unknown) by Agnes Goodsir |
Delicacy in a woman is in character with her nature; in man it is one of those rare and priceless qualities which make him such a lover as are described in legends and fairy tales and which are entirely unbelieved and unexpected in a husband.
p.18
I grow older by the minute---I feel it myself. I see so clearly what I want to write and how I want to write it. I don’t feel indecision about anything, somehow, and I tremble to observe my own assurance, the strength I feel while I create, the determination with which I reach out for certain things, the cool way I regard life when I write, the curious way that my idealism has been mixed with my fatalism, so that I can possess the soul of a dreamer and a cynic at the same time. Mind and spirit no longer quarrel to rule me--they have so closely united that I judge with my emotions and feel with my mind. Pretty soon I shall believe that there is no distinction between reason and emotion,
that ultimately they are one and the same thing.
p.34
Then, after all, our life here is an empty house out of which we made a home, with a certain number of customs and commodities which we adapted to our character. We have done nothing that is expected of young couples. We have rigorously selected our friends, we have practically no social life in the worldly sense of the word. If we go out, it is to a concert. When Eugene comes we spend the evening philosophizing.
Part of the day I am simply woman, working around the house.
p.47
With what pain I contemplate my changed relation to her--I, the once submissive, sweet daughter, who saw nothing, realized nothing, felt nothing, but my vague, inward world [...] And when I opened my eyes and became an individual myself and found ideas which opposed hers, then the calvary began. And to save me from unendurable pain, heaven willed that I should marry and have the courage to leave her home, to build my own where I could run for shelter [...] At first I suffered because Mother suffered. And then I began to see that she courted suffering and was alone to be blamed for it. Then I worried less and brooded and wondered. Now I am becoming hardened. Perhaps in this state I maybe help Mother more, and with a clearer head find a way to keep her happy.
p.61-2
And so, for the thousandth time, I reach the same conclusion: that sensitiveness and consciousness, though painful, are gifts from the gods, and they are to be appreciated.
p.65
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| Painting above: Woman Reading (c.1910) by Agnes Goodsir |
There is nothing beautiful about housework, and I an understand the restlessness and the dissatisfaction so many women feel now after having once tasted that independent work which freed them from drudgery. They were happier in business and in art than in the kitchen. To the woman with the least intelligence, there must come, at some time or other, the realization that housework is animal work and that there are other occupations in the world a thousand times more refined, more enriching, for which she is also suited and to which she has a right. [...] But the smell of dishwater, the stained fingers, and the violence of scrubbing are strong realities, and I cannot ignore them. Sometimes I wonder, when I hear all that men say about woman’s lack of logic, of intellect, of balance, whether God did not mean that we should be so stupid that we might, without a murmur, desire nothing better on earth than to bear children and do low, menial work. And the few of us who revolt, who aspire to be more than beasts of burden, are punished by the futility of our longing for emancipation. The very spiritual in us returns to us as punishment, because we want love and a home as ardently as the unawakened woman, and to have it we must work.
p.68
The Victim, who was specially created to suffer in the hands of Life because she expected such fantastic perfection form it, has now reached the third stage in the progress of her understanding. After being scourged with Evil in its worst form, the Parisian expression, she is beginning to smile bravely, to rationalize, to go forward in the meeting and mastering of it. She is showing a spirited resignation, a pitying smile, and continues to carry about a wistful face, but the eyes are no longer reproachful, nor the mouth unforgiving.
But I shall gather in myself those ideals I can’t find in others. I shall make them--in character, deeds, thought, written words, clay, dancing, furniture--in everything I touch. I desire perfection and beauty with all my soul.
p.261
Guinevere fooled herself. She believed in ideal love, and she believed that it was for he sake of it that she loved Arthur, and then ceased to love him, and loved Lancelot and then Galahad. But we know that she sought a triumphant expression of herself, a glorifying mastering of men by her beauty. We know that she wanted to be loved faithfully, although intellectually. And we know she often wore new dresses.
p.262
Some men live regretting the past epoch, or looking forward to the new. Some are contented with their own epoch. Some belong to none.
I belong to two. I am trying to reconcile them. I hold on to the best of Romanticism and admire the frankness and strength of our modern language. They will be fused in my life, my ideas, and my work--not harmoniously, but out of the struggle there will be born a supreme idea, the Ideal perhaps.
Because I keep what is today despised, sweetness and enthusiasm, my face seems young to the hard-eyed people around me. But I know I am not young inwardly, because I am living in pain and struggle, because two epochs meet in me, because my head belongs to old paintings and my spirit lives in the modern world, because one of my hands is pretty, smooth, decorative, and the other energetic, tense and strong, because my hair is long. I would choose long dresses if I could, and yet my phrases are short and my thoughts sharp, and my legs free and swift. I have nothing but an instinct to tell me what is beautiful. I cannot support all my choices with rational thinking [...]
I seek a new name for my religion which I know is not puritanism. My intense love of beauty separates me from puritans. With me, it is not a question of what is wrong and right. I love too fully, too richly, too intensely, too sincerely, to live by the force of shadowy words and laws. No, it is something else I feel.
p.264
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| Painting above: Portrait of Rachel Dunn (date unknown) by Agnes Goodsir |
And I realized that I was growing older and that my experiences, from now on, will often be secrets from the world, from my Love and from my friends.
p.73
Solitude, criticalness, antagonism, these give the imagination the sting which poisons and exaggerates what it touches. The realization that things are in reality small, trivial, ridiculous and weak comes when one accepts, by the act of turning to something worthwhile. The energy spent in suffering could be spent in the only thing which can serve to destroy the causes of such suffering--self-perfection, creation.
p.76
I shall truly end by being spiritually repudiated by all nations.
p.84
I had the most extraordinary experience. Working on my old journals, I felt that the reading of them made me good; I felt that I had no right to disappoint that ‘me’ of sixteen who believed so sweetly in all beautiful things, that I should do nothing today to hurt the strange being who exists in those pages. I would be ashamed to disappoint her when I see so clearly there the ideals in her own girlish words. I have actually created a being of long-lost sweetness and faith, of whom I stand in awe and whom I revere. I may laugh at her youth, but not for very long, for her sincerity silences me. Beautiful words written in the first flush of ardent aspirations, enthusiasms. They will guide me. If I can grow old while believing in them I will be able to stand before the Girl unashamed.
the entire January 14, 1925 entry
After all, I come back to writing, I come back to self-communion, I come back into the hopeless circle of self, which alone contains the answers of self.
p.149
Of the group of young people who at one time planned and aspired together, I seemed the most successful in the art of living. Is it possible that this is an illusion and that I have really failed? No, no. I have been weak in little things but not altogether wrong.
p.177
But who can condemn such handsome and cheerful rascals?
p.189
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| Painting above: Girl with cigarette (c.1925) by Agnes Goodsir |
This winter I would like to see if I can receive all experience without stumbling.
p.228
But then, why this conviction of the reality of art, why this feeling for colour, for the stage, for costume, expression, gesture ,for clay, for rhythms, for music, for movement, for words, for dreams? Why this exaltation at moments, these moments of marvellous faith in myself, why these secret aspirations, this responsiveness to life, this vision into the characters of others, this power of imagination working night and day, why this utter detachment form ordinary desires, ordinary friends, ordinary life, if I am not an artist?
p.245
We stayed to face our problems--demands of the bank, demands of friends. What is selfishness? When should one be true to human affections, when to ideals?
246
I’m unhappy. I am unhappy because I know perfectly well that the cynic is a coward. He foresees all barrenness so that barrenness can never surprise him. I began life in the opposite way. I foresaw all beauty so that life could perpetually surprise and whip me.
p.246-7
