Spring, 1971: Women's Movement

Flashback to the 1970's -- Anais Nin is giving lectures to feminist groups, and the second wave of the women's movement is at its height. (The first wave was in the 1920's and focused on voting rights among other things).

At one lecture, she "was subjected to outlandish attacks by aggressive women because I did not talk about the child-care center or equality in salary. I explained I was seeking to liberate them first of all psychologically so that they could produce the effective changes they wanted." She added that they are only adding to the fragmentation of the world because they do not know how to work in harmony. They are adding to hatred and division. It takes intelligent women to develop the human being and solve inequalities.

Anais receives a letter from a feminist who supports her and wishes that women like the aggressive women noted above would see beyond the details of the movement to true liberation, which comes from liking ourselves. She hopes that someday, they will understand, and encourages Anais to continue pursuing her dream.

Winter, 1970 - 1971: Musings

Anais Nin covers a variety of topics in this diary entry:

- she seeks permissions from Edmund Wilson and Gore Vidal for her portraits of them

- she states in a letter that she is now a political activist, though she didn't used to be

- she reads a script of Hermann Hesse's Steppenwolf

- she speaks of the "Christmas neurosis" - we want it to be magic, but it's false - people you haven't heard from all year suddenly send you a Christmas card

- some handicaps and pressures come from ourselves; examine this before we blame others for the traps in which we find ourselves

- "liberation is a state of mind, of being. It has to be achieved from within, and then it becomes an influence, it radiates outwardly, it achieves its energy and its aims creatively."

- she works 7:00 a.m. until midnight to keep up with letters and lectures and lists 25 places she has either lectured at or been invited to lecture

- "most women have felt what I have felt, but not all have actually been able to articulate it. The hardest things to write about are your emotions and intuitions."

- "very often, we fall into traps we set for ourselves, blaming our situation for our failure to act. We must become self-aware and self-honest so that we can deal with ourselves."

- she doesn't regret not having children. "I've created books, been a mother to people I have known, such as my students. I certainly don't think that every woman should have children, nor that women who aren't mothers are 'unfeminine.' Women shouldn't have to feel obligated to fulfill some obsolete definition of what a woman should be."

- "I put my energy in therapy as others do in religion or philosophy."

- she has coffee, toast, and eggs for breakfast

- she realizes she is helping women flower

Fall, 1970: Paris in the Fall

Anais Nin is in Paris again for a television show appearance. She rehearses for the show, visits relatives, and listens to a classical music concert playing in the Tuileries.

She has many readers now that the diaries are published and spends much time responding to their letters. She tells them how she has created her own world and decided who to let in, discarding who and what did not belong to her image of the outer world of which she dreamed, shutting out TV and the media who deal so much with sides of human nature she doesn't want to let into her world.

Summer, 1970: Return to Paris

Anais Nin returns to Paris for the publication of the second volume of her Diary. She dines at the Coupole, Closerie des Lilas and Café du Dome. She visits her home in Louveciennes and finds it run down and neglected. She visits Villa Seurat and Place Clichy where Henry Miller once had a studio and an apartment. She walks through the Bois and along the Seine.

She plans to return to Paris on September 3, 1970 for television appearances.

Spring, 1970: Masculine & Feminine Traits

Anais Nin believes that all of us possess both masculine and feminine traits, and she would like to see us stop using those terms and just try to find balance and a way to live together. She says we all have days of courage and days of weakness and that we need interdependence. We can find liberation by loving each other and working together and joining forces and being true to who we are. Psychoanalysis, she says, is the only way to know who we are.

Winter, 1969 - 1970: Tumor

Anais Nin finds out she has a tumor in her uterus, and her alternatives are radiation, which has a 75% chance of healing, or surgery, which would leave her with two open holes in her body. She opts for the radiation and runs pleasant scenes and images through her mind during the six-minute duration of it, every day for three weeks. She is weakened by it and receives few visitors. She wonders, "Why now, when all my wishes are fulfilled?"

Fall, 1969: The Joys of Reading

We all love reading to expand our worlds, be entertained, learn, be inspired, be intrigued. Anais Nin writes a nice tribute to reading in this diary entry:

"The reading of books is in itself the most beautiful education of all. Because of reading I became acquainted with the entire world, physical, intellectual, historical, scientific. My life was expanded. The knowledge of what existed in the world, in other countries, of the possibilities and potentialities of life, prepared me for experience, for the unknown, for unfamiliar situations. Only by reading does one possess such a power to travel, to visit all the lands, to make friends with characters of all periods, so that one learns to observe the riches of the present and the possible loves and friendships around us. Through books, I discovered everything to be loved, explored, visited, communed with. I was enriched and given the blueprints to a marvelous life, I was consoled in adversity, I was prepared for both joys and sorrows, I acquired one of the most precious sources of strength of all: an understanding of human beings, insight into their motivations, I also learned from books how to enhance what needed to be enhanced, by understanding, and by aesthetics. Books are the greatest companions, confessors, confidantes, tutors, a source of pleasure, a cure for loneliness, and to find one, in the middle of an island in Tahiti, in the heart of the Moroccan desert, or at an airport where one is stranded for a night, is to find the friend who reminds us we are not alone."

Some of my favorite books in addition to everything by Anais Nin, Hermann Hesse, and May Sarton include The Stranger by Albert Camus, The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath, A Moveable Feast by Ernest Hemingway, and The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand.

What are your favorites?