This month in This Awful Awesome Life we are celebrating the birthday of Anaïs Nin, a French-born American novelist, diarist, essayist, and writer of short stories and erotica.
Angela Anaïs Juana Antolina Ross Edelmira Nin y Culmell was born to Cuban parents in France on February 21, 1903. She died in Los Angeles, California on January 14, 1977, of cervical cancer.
Nin’s father, Joaquin Nin, was a composer and her mother, Rosa Culmell, was a classically trained singer. After spending her early life in Spain and Cuba, she spent about fourteen years in Paris before coming to the United States in 1940 to become an established author.
Nin started writing journals when she was an eleven-year-old and continued this habit until her death at the age of seventy-three. Many of these journals were published during her lifetime. These journals detailed her marriages to Hugh Parker Guiler and Rupert Pole though references to Guiler were removed at his request before publication. Guiler and Nin married in 1923 and lived in New York. In 1947, Nin met former actor Rupert Pole in a Manhattan elevator on her way to a party. He was sixteen years her junior. They began a relationship and moved to California together. They married in 1955 even though Nin and Guiler were still legally married. According to friends, Nin often referred to her bigamy as a “bicoastal trapeze.”
In 1966, Nin had her marriage to Pole annulled because of legal issues arising from both of her husbands trying to claim her as a dependent on their tax returns. Pole and Nin continued to live together as man and wife, but Nin allegedly had multiple affairs with men and women during this time.
Nin’s most famous affair was with American novelist Henry Miller (Tropic of Cancer, Tropic of Capricorn, and Black Spring). The two reportedly shared a bohemian lifestyle. Miller met Nin and Guiler in Paris while he was working on Tropic of Cancer. Miller was penniless and Guiler and Nin supported him financially through the 1930s including renting an apartment for him. Nin and Miller (who was also married) became lovers and she financed the first printing of Tropic of Cancer in 1934.
Nin was also romantically linked to Austrian psychoanalyst Otto Rank and American writer Gore Vidal (Myra Breckinridge and Lincoln). Rank was one of Sigmund Freud’s closest collaborators in the 1920s and early 1930s.
In addition to journaling, Nin acted in several films, authored novels, essays, short stories, and volumes of erotic literature. Nin’s work gained popularity with the feminist movement. During the 1960s, she was in great demand as a lecturer although Nin refused to call herself a feminist.
In 1973, she received an honorary doctorate from the Philadelphia College of Art. She was elected to the United States National Institute of Arts and Letters in 1974 and in 1976, the Los Angeles Times named her Woman of the Year. Much of her work was published after her death.
The 1989 Italian film, La stanza delle parole, was based on Nin’s journals about Henry Miller and his wife June. In 1990, Philip Kaufman directed the 1990 American film, Henry and June based on Nin’s journals. Portuguese actress Maria de Medeiros portrayed Nin in the film.
Selected Works by Anaïs Nin:
Diaries
The Diary of Anaïs Nin (7 volumes)
The Early Diary of Anaïs Nin (4 volumes covering 1914-1931)
Henry and June: From a Journal Of Love
Incest: From a Journal of Love
Fire: From a Journal of Love
Nearer the Moon: From a Journal of Love
Mirages: The Unexpurgated Diary of Anaïs Nin (1939-1947)
Trapeze: The Unexpurgated Diary of Anaïs Nin (1947-1955)
The Diary of Others: The Unexpurgated Diary of Anaïs Nin (1955-1966)
A Joyous Transformation: The Unexpurgated Diary of Anaïs Nin (1966-1977)
Novels:
House of Incest (1936)
Winter of Artifice (1939)
Cities of the Interior (1959 - 5 volumes)
Collages (1964)
Short Story Collections:
Waste of Timelessness: and Other Early Stories (written before 1932, published 1977)
Under a Glass Bell (1944)
Delta of Venus (1977)
Little Birds (1979)
Auletris (2016)
Nonfiction:
D.H. Lawrence: An Unprofessional Study (1932)
The Novel of the Future (1968)
A Woman Speaks (1975)
In Favor of the Sensitive Man (1976)
Conversations with Anaïs Nin (edited by Wendy M. DuBow, 1994)
The Mystic of Sex: Uncollected Writings: 1930-1974 (1995)
Photo Credit:
By Elsa Dorfman (1937–2020)DescriptionAmerican photographerDate of birth/death26 April 193730 May 2020Location of birth/deathCambridgeCambridgeAuthority file: Q5367400VIAF: 66091182ISNI: 0000000114928860ULAN: 500048248LCCN: no98087693GND: 122980530WorldCat, CC BY 2.5, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=1653083