Series Overview: Best Of the Diaries of Anaïs Nin & Linotte/Volume 1

The diaries of Anaïs Nin were a huge influence on my life in my early twenties. In honour of this, I'm going to start a mini series of 'Best Of' focusing on her diaries and other writing.

It has been my experience that sometimes, when I am very lucky (or maybe it's fate?) the exact thing I needed comes into my life. In my early twenties, that particular thing was the diaries of Anaïs Nin (1903-1977).

After I graduated from UBC in 2012, I was in a bit of a turmoil (you know, as most twenty-somethings are). I decided I didn't want to pursue a career in a field that I had been training for for five years. I was devastated to discover that the educational institution I had given so much of my energy, time, passion, and of course, money, to didn't love me back and at one point in time even wanted the likes of me gone. I was leaving an unsafe living situation, and my relationships with my remaining immediate family were collapsing for what would prove to be about a five year period. I looked at all this and realized I had very little idea of  how to be a woman, how to be an adult. 

Something inside called me to find and read Nin's diaries (I actually rented all of them from the UBC libraries), and fell in love with her writing, as generations of women had before me. I committed again to keeping a diary, which I had been doing on and off in various forms since I was a child. In a span of two years, I read I think about ten of her diaries as well as a few books of her gathered letters and lectures. 

For me, Nin had and found strength in something that I personally felt I lacked -- she was all water, emotion, passion, acute feeling, and one helluva good writer to boot. I think Taisia Kitaiskaia nailed it when she named Nin the, "Undine of Introspection, Opulent Dreams, and Voyages," in her own book Literary Witches: A Celebration of Magical Women Writers. Nin was super femme and smart af, she was nearly exactly the woman I thought I wanted to be.

Nin's legacy and example is by no means perfect, but at the time her words were exactly what I needed. I mentioned in my latest video that I think it's a good practice to keep throwing out ideas until something sticks. Similarly, I believe that sharing something that was meaningful to you might inspire something in someone else. Anaïs Nin's work meant the world to me, who's to say it might not spark something in one of you reading this post?

As such, I have decided to commit to a series of ten posts sharing quotes of Nin's that inspired me over the years (pretty much a Best Of mini series). You'll see these posts often pretty lengthy. Know this: I read the books that I borrowed from the library, and then painstakingly typed out quotes that I then saved for myself all these years in documents on my computer. That's how much her writing meant to me! 

As with the regular Best Of series here on the yak occidental, I will be presenting her quotes as they were written in her work, without my own comments or what the particular quote meant to me. After all, the intention of the series is to inspire you readers, we don't need my influence cluttering things up.

Without further ado, let's have a look at some meaningful quotes from Linotte: The Early Diary of Anaïs Nin (1914-1920), which is the first of four volumes of her early diaries.

Painting above: The Artist's Daughter with a Parakeet (c. 1890) by Berthe Morisot

How sweet it is to be able to say, I belong to Jesus.

p.37

Now let’s talk seriously. In February I will have a birthday, 12 years old. 

I am so old! It’s high time for me to become a little woman. 

I have tried so often to do that, and then for the least thing 

I get angry and I must start over again. I get back on my feet, 

but the road is slippery. Be careful. 

Yes, I am a big girl and I must become perfect.

p.40

Mr. Villemin’s words haunt me. He who knows one language is one man,

 he who knows two is two men. I would like to be ten strong men, 

I would like to know how to fight and help France. 

Unfortunately, I realize with sadness that I am only two children,

 and a female at that. When shall I be the equal of at least one man?

p.55

When I die on earth, it will happen, as it sometimes does to two lights 

that are lighted at the same time: when one goes out, 

the other burns more brightly. I will be extinguished on earth 

but will be relighted in infinity. For the moment, I live in both and both 

are two weak lights for a soul can’t have a harbour, 

just as it can’t have two masters. That is my belief and doctrine. 

p.117

There is a lot in myself that I don’t understand, but there 

are other things that I understand now. If I feel sad about nothing, 

it is because a “dramatic soul,” as Maman says, is struggling within me, 

and it surrenders to sadness more easily than to joy. 

If I love poetry, it’s because I have a soul made for poetry. 

My habitual dreaminess, my impatience have nothing to do 

with my intelligence, but rather my disposition. 

One of these days, I shall talk about the things

 in myself that I don’t understand.

p.154

Painting above: The Mother and Sister of the Artist (c. 1869-1870) by Berthe Morisot

Another thing I think about a lot, and always as one thinks about life’s problems,

 is the road that I am going to follow. Nothing guides me in my choice, 

but everything makes it more difficult: my lack of talent, my lack of dexterity,
of common sense, of initiative; and no advice, no scolding can interrupt 

the dead calm that confronts me each time that I look for a way 

to launch my bark in the midst of the tempest. 

Sometimes it seems as though I shall always remain 

on the wrong side of the ocean that one has to 

cross to reach the other side, cross it or drown.

p.250

Where does this loneliness of the soul come from? 

This happiness far from pleasure? 

This perfect contentment with my fate? [...] 

If I have attacks, sometimes it’s because my illusions 

disappear too suddenly and that hurts me, 

sometimes it’s because my faith in the beauties 

of life seems to be disappearing, but otherwise I am perfectly contented

[...] but that supreme satisfaction with solitude belongs to me alone, 

as long as I have my own family and Maman’s relatives.

p.296

So I should believe in youth and in physical and moral health in life, 

which is a truly sublime task, since it asks only that one understand and love it. 

I have a strong tendency toward melancholy, observation, philosophy, 

toward being shut up in my shell, physically powerless and morally sick. 

For my mind is unhealthy when it is mournful, 

always looking out for a strong emotion to make it alive.

p.425-26

Painting above: The Artist's Sister at a Window (c.1869) by Berthe Morisot

Sometimes I think the thing that moves me the most, 

that makes my whole being sing, 

that always remains stamped on my heart and soul, 

is not love but Beauty [...] What can I say? 

I can’t think about those things, I can only feel them.

p.426

Duty again. Oh, heavens, I had never thought about that. 

Everything on earth seems to turn around a centre, 

the centre of the Circle. 

Apparently, anyone who loses his way loses his balance. 

Then in spite of what the poets say, Life is scientific? 

A circle, with a point in the centre: Duty. 

We revolve around it, to the end. 

Then we leave the circle noiselessly, 

while the others keep on turning.

p.426

We can travel through great labyrinths of wonder together. 

Only do not look inside of you too much, 

there is nothing as unfathomable as our own minds and hearts,
 and there is a source of great fun in the 

observance of other people’s 'outsides.'

p.470