Journey through the labyrinth of self …

I do believe I am returning to my former book-geek self … at last. And in the process, currently, I am falling in love with Anais Nin.

I read both of the stories of Poe’s that were recommended to me and I have to say that it’s true … ‘The Domain of Arnheim’ is indeed a detailed description of ‘The Voyage of Life Youth’ painting by Thomas Cole. Beautiful beautiful thing … beautiful Poe (Lydecker – I have found ‘Narrative of A. Gordon Pym’ and will give that a good read soon.)

Kate Chopin’s ‘The Awakening’ left me a little rattled. Following it up with Anais Nin’s diary is not helping … or is helping … whichever way I care to look at it at any given time.

From the Introduction to Volume 1 of The Diary of Anais Nin:

“… To be sure, Anais Nin writes at length, and often with startling candor, about her relationships, her friends and acquaintances, the ‘famous’ and the ordinary people who have crossed her path. She is, indeed, ‘authentic, passionate, explosive.’ But her concern is not that of the literary gossip. She does not simply treat us to another ‘keyhole’ view of the literary life.

The true significance, the uniqueness, the ‘revelation’ of her diary is of another kind. Certainly, Miss Nin provides much important and valuable biographical, and autobiographical, detail to our knowledge of an artistic era, she portrays and records with flashing insight people, conversations, events. … The ‘revelation’ of Miss Nin’s diary, essentially, lies in the fact that here, for the first time, we have a passionate, detailed, articulate record of a modern woman’s journey of self-discovery. …

… The diary is a log of her journey through the labyrinth of self, of her effort to find, and to define, the woman Anais, the real and the symbolic one who balances ‘between’ action and contemplation, involvement and self-preservation, emotion and intellect, dreams and reality, and who sometimes despairs of ever reconciling these disparate elements.

… “There are always, in me,” she noted soberly at the age of 29, “two women at least, one woman desperate and bewildered, who felt she was drowning, and another who would leap into a scene, as upon a stage, conceal her true emotions because they were weaknesses, helplessness, despair, and present to the world only a smile, an eagerness, curiosity, enthusiasm, interest”.

While the world watched with fascination the gay, charming, intelligent, mysterious Anais, the other women in her — the shy, the strong, the practical, the unsure, the observing, the detached, the childish — clamoured for recognition in the pages of the diary. It is the gathering place of her fragmented self, her retreat from the demands of living.”
David said once that reading my blog was like reading a kind of an e-Diary of Anais Nin … full of beautiful things, private and deeply personal. Now I guess I understand what he meant. Not that I could ever compare my self to her in any way at all. No. She is a wondrous writer – I could only dream of being a writer like her .. I am nothing like her … let’s just say my ideas on fidelity and relationships are rather different 🙂 The only comparison that can be made is in subject matter … the striving to understand the self. And I’ve done barely any of that for quite a while now. I’ve just “been sat” as Raggyanna says 🙂

I imagine that will change … and I will be back to my restless, searching, striving self before long (self deprecating smile).

And I found my green stone. It mysteriously appeared on one of my bookshelves. No excuses now.