The Mystic of Sex

Anais Nin wrote this story in 1930 and used it as a starting point for her first book, D.H Lawrence: An Unprofessional Study, which she published in 1932.

She writes that Lawrence is "against tepid living and tepid loves" and that he resented the lack of feeling in people and even more so, the lack of expression of feelings.

This made me think of relationships between two people who view living and loving very differently from each other. Does it make sense for a sensitive person, full of feeling to be in love with another person who strongly believes there is no reason to ever cry or to express any "negative" emotion such as sorrow, frustration, anger? Does it make sense for a person who believes life is a beautiful gift to be with a person who needs to be high to enjoy life or who needs to fill, fill, fill life with empty experiences to feel any bit of satisfaction from it? What kind of living is this? It's not tepid but it seems as though some people keep life at arm's length when they don't allow themselves to feel. They shut down, put up their guard,escape, employ defense mechanisms, run away whenever life presents any issues perceived as undesirable.

Sex is tightly intertwined with emotions and feelings and the expression of them. Suppression of emotions and feelings causes one to live inside his/her head rather than in the world and leads to alienation between two people because they are unable to connect. Over time, they drift further and further apart from each other until they realize they are living separate lives. There is no choice but to sever their tie unless one of them rises up to try to save the relationship. Maybe if we can understand our opposite we can open ourselves up to infinite possibilities beyond what we ever imaged could be possible. It's worth a try anyway.

D.H. Lawrence, part 6

Anais Nin wrote her first book in 1932: D.H. Lawrence, An Unprofessional Study.

She writes about Lady Chatterly's Lover in the last chapter of the book and notes Lawrence's concept of marriage: "marriage is no marriage that is not basically and permanently phallic, and that is not linked up with the sun and the earth, the moon and the fixed stars and the planets, in the rhythms of months, in the rhythms quarters, of years, of decades and of centuries. Marriage is no marriage that is not a correspondence of blood. For the blood is the substance of the soul, and of the deepest consciousness."

She writes further that Lawrence told us: "the affinity of mind and personality is an excellent basis of friendship between the sexes, but a disastrous basis for marriage." There's got to be chemistry not found in a brother/sister or mother/son relationship. You can't sleep in separate beds; you've got to maintain the intimacy and closeness that lovers have. You've got to turn each other on and express yourselves physically.

D.H. Lawrence, part 5

Anais Nin wrote her first book in 1932: D.H. Lawrence, An Unprofessional Study.

In the chapter called "Fantasia of the Unconscious" D.H. Lawrence considers psychology. Anais writes, "he expressed the instinct that there was a moment for clarity, the utmost clarity, but also a refuge from clarity in his favorite 'darkness,' the yet unrevealed, the still living mystery." Lawrence believed that science could lead to mass production of the unconscious - that it would produce formulas people could memorize and live by and that all behaviors could be categorized. He says, "while the soul really lives, its deepest dread is perhaps the dread of automatism." His belief is in the spontaneous soul.

In the chapter entitled "Kangaroo" Anais writes of Lawrence's feelings of isolation: " Why is there so little contact between myself and the people whom I know? Why has the contact no vital meaning?" We all crave a connection, but it's not something that can be planned or forced; it tends to happen spontaneously, organically, naturally. Anais writes further that although Lawrence feels a sense of freedom, he also feels an emptiness, a lack of meaning. There is a struggle within him and a revolution; through instinct and vision he can surrender to it and experience it. She explains that intuition is not something rational and cannot be explained to other people and maybe not even to oneself. One becomes inarticulate when trying to explain instinct. In the end, these inner revolutions create our souls. They generate ideas. They make us realize who and what we care about.

D.H. Lawrence, part 4

Anais Nin wrote her first book in 1932: D.H. Lawrence, An Unprofessional Study.

In the chapter called "Women in Love," Anais says that Lawrence's characters cannot be understood without the "artist-key" because they are creators and poets, just as he is. They are not "normal" people.

Birkin is a projection of Lawrence. Anais writes, "The visible is less important than the invisible, the unknown, the inarticulate."

Birkin asks Ursula: "What are you? What am I? What is love? What is the center of our life?" He tells her what he wants: "What I want is a strange conjunction with you  - not a meeting and mingling, but an equilibrium, a pure balance of two single beings - as the stars balance each other."

Another character in the book is Hermione, who believes she stands for spiritual truth. However, she is empty and has no center. She is uncreative in art and in living.

Gerald is a handsome man who has had many mistresses but has never loved. Birkin asks him what the center of his life is, and he responds by saying there is no center. "It is artificially held together by the social mechanism," he says. Birkin suggests the love of one woman could be the center of one's life. Without love, Gerald is limited, empty, hollow, miserable on the inside while appearing full of riches on the outside. He represents the man's world - the outside, mindless sensuality.

Both Birkin and Gerald ultimately desire to be fulfilled in woman. Birkin and Ursula marry, and though he is happy and loves her deeply, he is not fully satisfied. He must continue to evolve, renew, become.

D.H. Lawrence, part 3

Anais Nin wrote her first book in 1932: D.H. Lawrence, An Unprofessional Study.

There is a chapter in it I love called "In Controversy." Many people think of Lawrence as a man who wrote only about explicit, sexual material. I remember in high school, studying the classics, and both Lady Chatterly's Lover and Sons and Lovers were on the list - the teacher warned us of their nature. I'm not sure if anyone chose these classics on which to do their book report. As for me, I chose Dicken's Great Expectations....

Is it "pornography?" Is Lawrence "enslaved by sex?" These days, on network TV, it is allowed to show scenes of a very violent nature and yet, women's breasts and buttocks of men and women are not allowed to be shown. What does this say about our culture? It the human body something that should be hidden? Is the expression of love something that should not be public? Is sensuality a bad thing?

The chapter closes with a reference to Lawrence's Fantasia of the Unconscious and the concept of the open road. Leave fate to the open road. That's the only way the soul comes into its own. By taking the open road. Not by fasting or by meditating or by exploring the heavens or by ecstasy. Take to the open road, and you will find your soul.

D.H. Lawrence, part 2

Anais Nin's first book was called D.H. Lawrence, An Unprofessional Study and was published in 1932. She wrote that Lawrence was a naturally religious man who had an instinctive sense of religion and said, "One can save one's pennies. How can one save one's soul? One can only live one's soul. The business is to live, really live. And this needs wonder." One character in Kangaroo says, "if a man is truly a man, true to his being, his soul saves itself in that way."

Lawrence further said, "great religious images are only images of our own experiences, or of our own sate of mind and soul." He worships the sun and the moon and goes on pilgrimages as part of his religion.

Anais writes a short chapter on Lawrence's take on death. One of his characters feels that emptiness in life (i.e. death in life) is worse than physical death. She feels the body is only one manifestation of the spirit and when you die, you move on to the invisible.

In a chapter called "Woman," Anais states that the core of a woman is her relation to man. Most men create the images and patterns, and a woman's role is to carry them out to please the men. The exception is women who are artists; they can create the images and patterns themselves. Lawrence says the men's images and patterns aren't that good in the first place.

Lawrence says there are two kinds of women: cocksure - up-to-date, modern women who have no doubts, and hensure - old-fashioned, demure women who go about their duties. He says there is no perfect relationship between man and woman because there is always conflict when each carries out his or her individuality. We think in terms of how things should be based on our own individuality rather than trying to understand how things are from the other individual's perspective.

In Kangaroo, a marriage is observed; the wife is smiling at another man and the husband is fine with this. They are husband and wife, and as long as she honors this connection/root between them, he does not care what she does with the rest of herself because there is a part of each of them that does not belong to the other. This part does not need to be asked about or even known because if it were, neither person is free. As long as the husband and wife are growing from the same root, all is good, even when there is resistance. In fact, Lawrence thinks resistance is good - the give and take creates strength, balance and unison.

Lawrence says, "Human love, human trust, are always perilous, because they break down. The greater the love, the greater the trust, and the greater the peril, the greater the disaster. Because to place absolute trust on another human being is in itself a disaster, both ways, since each human being is a ship that must sail its own course, even if it go in company with another ship." There are two ships and two captains in a relationship between two people.

D.H. Lawrence, part 1

Anais Nin had a fascination with D.H. Lawrence, probably because she felt they were like-minded. He awakened her sexually, and she looked at her marriage and men differently after reading him. She was so affected by him she wrote her first book, D.H. Lawrence, An Unprofessional Study, in 1932.

She writes that one must approach Lawrence with intellect, imagination and with physical feeling, in other words, with both body and soul, because he is a passionate poet. Anais quotes him as saying, "if a man loves life" he is obedient "to the urge that arises in the soul." Lawrence has an artist's eye, much imagination, and wants to experience everything and creates characters in his books that portray this; they are artists. He felt that what the body felt was real and natural; the mind interfered with the body by creating what it deemed as right and wrong. Listen to the body and let it lead us to fulfill our dreams. Openly express our feelings. Follow the flame. Be intuitive, sensitive. Participate in life with feeling.

Anais writes that "life is a process of becoming, a combination of states we have to go through. Where people fail is that they wish to elect a state and remain in it. This is a kind of death." Lawrence's philosophy was to live life deeply even when it is filled with failures and contradictions.
Swing from one extreme emotion to the next as poets do. Go through experiences then you'll have understanding.

Lawrence feels that human relationships between lovers involves finding a balance, leveling it out. Many relationships see-saw during interim periods before they achieve this balance and will likely continue to see-saw throughout the duration of the relationship as life happens to each person. There is a desire for connection, but it is difficult and takes time and patience and endurance and perseverance.

Anais loves to delve into analysis: she writes, "the first analysis of an event or a person yields a certain aspect. If we look at it again, it has another face. The further we progress in our reinterpretation, the more prismatic are the moods and the imaginings coordinating the facts differently each time. People who want a sane, static, measurable world take the first aspect of an event or person and stick to it, with an almost self-protective obstinacy, or by a natural limitation of their imaginations. They do not indulge in either deepening or magnifying."

She further states "the imagination is a constant deformer." Think of all the imaginary conversations and interactions you've had with people - all in your mind. Reality is so different from our obsessions. But what is life without wild imaginations that lead to dreams that transform you?

The Mystic of Sex

Anais Nin wrote this essay about D.H. Lawrence in October, 1930 under a pseudonym. It became the basis for her first book, D.H. Lawrence: An Unprofessional Study.

In it, she describes Lawrence as "against tepid living and tepid loves. He resented the lack of feeling in people, or what is worse, the lack of expression of such feelings; he wanted a fulfillment of physical life equal to the mental; he wanted to reawaken impulse, and the clairvoyance of our intuitions." He had an emotional knowledge that appealed to her.

She understood him; she identified with him; his words resonated with her. Even though Lawrence writes about sex, he does so with sensitivity, as a poet would. Anais writes that "he described perfectly two sides of life: the sexual and the mystical." The physical and a second world.

Anais Nin's study of D.H. Lawrence helped her discover herself, both as a writer and as a woman.

A Slippery Floor

This is the last story in the Waste of Timelessness and Other Early Stories collection. In it, a woman named Anita who seems to represent Anais Nin is a Spanish dancer: "she wanted a fantastic destiny instead of a wise one, brilliance instead of harmony, endless voyages, the perpetually shifting ground of stage life, rather than security."

Anita's mother in the story seems to represent her father in real life: "I had a Mother I have never known who never denied herself of any whim, however much it hurt others. She left home on account of one of them. I just got it into my head I would be as unlike my Mother as possible." Anita's mother is an actress and always uses this as an excuse for her behavior.

After a few months of performances, a woman appears in Anita's dressing room after the show. It is her mother, who goes by her stage name of Vivien and who approves of Anita because of her profession; Vivien feels she and Anita have a bond. Her mother invites Anita to her home for supper. Then, she invites Anita to live in her home. Before long, Anita meets Norman, her mother's lover.

Vivien has affairs with other men but always goes back to Norman. He is about ready to leave her for good and is intrigued by Anita. Before long, Anita is posing for Norman who is an artist. They talk and spend time together and develop feelings for each other.

Anita wants to find out how alike or different she and her mother are. She approaches her mother and tells her there is a man who loves her, but he is with another woman; she asks for advice. Her mother tells her not to think of the other woman, not to let anything get in the way of love.

But Anita doesn't want to be like her mother; she wants to resist the temptation of taking another woman's man. She leaves her mother's home. Vivien believes that Anita has been cruel but can't see the cruelty of her own actions. Norman is hurt by Anita's leaving and tells Vivien he is leaving her to find Anita. Vivien is left alone.

There's A Slippery Floor out there. Take care of the feelings of others or you'll fall down as Vivien did.

A Spoiled Party

Mrs. Stellem wanted her party to be perfect. She dressed for it; she planned for it. Then a stranger - a woman - came to the party, and Mrs. Stellem became obsessed with who this woman was, who invited her, why she was here. The stranger was costumed beautifully and smiled constantly.

As the party wore on, it became ruined by the stranger. No one laughed while she was around; conversations ended in her presence. The party was dying much too soon, so Mrs. Stellem approached the stranger to ask her to leave.

When she looked into the eyes of the stranger, Mrs. Stellem could see that the strange woman could see right through her. She could see that her home, clothes, friends and marriage were a joke and not powerful or successful at all.

Faithfulness

This story has a couple of parts. In the first part, Aline is visited by Alban, a man she met at a party. He notes that her eyes are "tragically discontented," that she makes concessions to her husband (e.g. there are Economic Magazines lying around), and that she is "mentally unaccompanied." He predicts that she is going to have a lonely life of domesticity and that she is already so unhappy. The cure, he says, is friends.

After he left she reflected on what he said. It was true that she spent most days talking to herself. She began to look at her husband differently. She noted that he wore heavy suits and talked little and did things systematically.

In the second part of the story, Aline and her husband go to a party at Mr. Bellows' home; her husband gets tired, and they go home early. Bellows comes to Aline's home when her husband is away and plays musical portraits that he feels resembles various people. For Aline's husband, the music is scholarly and precise. He plays a portrait of Aline and her husband together - a "fantastic strain. In the middle of it he stopped with a violent dissonance." Bellows tells Aline that he could tell she doesn't love her husband.

When her husband comes home, she expresses anger that someone insists she doesn't love him, that she bravely hides her unhappiness. Her husband responds, "You dear, faithful, honest, little wife." How ironic.

The Peacock Feathers

This story is about peacock feathers bringing back luck when kept in the house, a superstition that holds true today, especially for actors and musicians.

A woman singer is given peacock feathers as a gift after a performance. Her husband of many years wrote her a farewell note shortly thereafter. She continued singing, met a composer, and one day at a concert he killed himself while she was singing. The episode ruined the applause she would normally have received.

She kept the peacock feathers and wrote her memoirs. They were received poorly and seen as calculated; she blamed the peacock feathers because she had written the memoirs with a pen made out of one of them.

The woman smoked a long pipe she was offered in a Hindu home. When she stopped smoking, she lost energy, looked old, lost her beautiful singing voice, but she continued smoking because it lulled her.

Her life was destroyed, and she was able to blame the peacock feathers.

The Idealist

They meet in an art class where Edward insists the class is drawing the wrong model; he feels they should be drawing Chantal instead. She agrees that the model has "an awful lot to dispose of" and has drawn a more refined version of her.

Edward criticized Chantal's drawing tools and helped her select more appropriate ones at a shop. They go for coffee at the Viking afterwards where she realizes he views her as someone from another time and place rather than the woman she actually is. He is idealizing, dreaming.

They have discussions about books and art and feel "mental communion."

One day the class realizes the model is cold and hungry. Edward becomes obsessed by the model; he needs her and cannot be satisfied. Chantal is no longer his ideal.

Tishnar

This little story is about a woman who dreams of being invisible, of being left alone, of being in another world, and when her dream finally comes true, she realizes she doesn't want those things at all.

It's a foggy day in Paris; the woman is walking, and things seem as if in a dream. She boards a bus and realizes it is destined for "another world" and won't stop until it gets there. She pleads with the conductor to stop, let her get off the bus. He says that people often make the same mistake she has been: wishing to be taken away.

But when they realize what they are leaving behind, they realize they really don't want to go.

Alchemy

This is Anais Nin's "Great Writer" story, which she finished in December, 1930. She felt it was good and was satisfied with it, but Titus, her editor, did not like it, and it was rejected by Vogue.

In the story, visitors come to the home of the "great writer." They notice the front gate to the home which is not exactly as described in the book - the books describes a gate which is a composite of this gate and the neighbor's. They recognize the servants from the stories, although some of their traits are not exactly as described in them.

The great writer's wife greets the visitors and admits she has been the muse for three of his characters and that their white poodle was the muse for children he described in his stories. The visitors leave the home and realize the great writer takes elements from his real life and mixes them (like a chemist would) to create new elements, thus turning ordinary people, places, and things into something extraordinary.

Our Minds are Engaged

This is a story written by Anais Nin around 1930. It seems to be drawn from her relationship with her cousin Eduardo.

The woman in the story is fragile, pale, timid, working on a play, with a carefully arranged home that serves as a background to her "imaginative costumes," reading D.H. Lawrence.

The man in the story uses "feline gestures," has a "lavish voice," has been in love with both women and men. He wants a weak woman, a woman like the woman in the story used to be when she was a teenager when they met. She has grown into a woman who knows and understands herself and is no longer weak.

The woman and man were never lovers. They had an intellectual connection, and once that was formed, it was awkward to evolve towards a physical connection. They talked about art and writing, dreams and fulfillment.

Their relationship has never been defined, has tension, needs resolution. She realizes in the end that he is not capable of loving her. He wants to dominate. He wants to be the better writer. She has become a strong woman, and they both know it. A relationship as lovers would never work. Resolution has been reached.

Red Roses

A woman wanted, "desired most painfully," red roses. She could not wait patiently for them to come to her naturally, in time, delivered by someone else when THEY were ready to send them. She needed them now when SHE was ready.

She had them delivered to her home, marked, "from your lover." The beautiful red roses lit up her poor, decrepit house. She cannot bear the joy the red roses bring to her; she feels like a woman now, having been sent red roses by a man, a lover. She has changed. Her desires have been fulfilled and she cannot bear it. The pleasure was too great.

She takes the red roses to the church and offers them there.

A Dangerous Perfume

This is another story written around 1930 and published in 1977 in "Waste of Timelessness." As with many of her stories, it appears to be about Anais Nin herself.

Lyndell is the character which I believe represents Anais. She is wearing "her most becoming costume," attending to some uninteresting business which does not make her happy: meeting with a former landlady. When Lyndell lived in the apartment, "she had enlivened it with vivid colored pottery, silk hangings and colored lamps." Now it was dull and gray.

The landlady was upset because the apartment still smelled of Lyndell's perfume and couldn't be lived in anymore, couldn't be slept in. The perfume reminded the landlady of Lyndell and her "splendid dresses" and "strangely altered face." The landlady is jealous of Lyndell because she creates around herself "a sort of misty and treacherous atmosphere." She tells Lyndell, "everything about you looks beautiful. You have a gift for setting, for poses, and gestures, for clothing yourself. Your voice has a peculiar tremor, and your face is haunting."

The landlady wants to be like Lyndell, wants to be interesting and have interesting experiences, such as entertaining men who are not her husband. When  the landlady learns that the man Lyndell entertained was not a lover, that he only kissed her once, it changes her entire perception of Lyndell and the apartment and the perfume, and she now feels the apartment can be lived in.

The Dance which could not be Danced

This is a story by Anais Nin written in late 1929 or early 1930, which was published in 1977. It is only two pages long, but is filled with several words which are not part of my vocabulary:

violaceous - of a violet color

sybaritic - luxurious, sensual, voluptuous

sibilance - having a hissing or hushing sound

paradic - paradise?

sylphidine - sylphide? one of the world's oldest surviving romantic ballets

refulgent - shining brightly

There was a man standing in the shadows, outside of life. Life was gathered around the fountain, where women carried jugs of water on their heads. This vision caused a myriad of sounds and feelings in his head, and he called it a dance. In the layers of sound, everything became clear to him, and his tears were washed away.

A woman danced within herself, where no one could see her, to music which no one could hear. It became a smooth livingness, "a dance within a dance, a dream within a dream, stretching to infinity, with the perpetual cadence of inviolate dancing, inviolate living."

Is this an awakening? Or a death?

The Russian Who Did Not Believe in Miracles and Why

This is another story published in 1977 and written around 1930. It is about a woman and a man who meet in a café in Paris, just before he plans to throw himself into the Seine. He explains, "I'm through. No more money, and no more hopes of getting any."

The woman encourages him to start a new life by looking at life differently, where anything could happen, by moving to a new home, by making new friends, by changing. She says, "only desire it, and it works like Aladdin's lamp." And don't use money as an excuse.

She tells him she has had a boring life on the outside, but an exciting one on the inside. He tells her she should become a dancer, and they agree to meet again to see how both of their lives have changed.

Months later, they meet again, and she is a dancer in the chorus. Nothing has changed with him. He tells her his story: a woman once met him when he was down on his luck as he is now and changed him, by believing in him, which brought out his play-writing talents. When he became happy and successful, she lost interest in him and left to work on the next case.

The man wants to wallow in pity and wants the woman to stop believing in miracles and wallow with him.