Nin, Anaïs

❮  Poetry & Prose  ❮  Books / People

Anaïs Nin was one of the key diarists of the 20th century. Her most famous work though was Delta of Venus. According to Penguin Modern Classics, this book was as influential and revelatory in its day as Fifty Shades of Grey is today. Delta of Venus is now considered to be a groundbreaking anthology of erotic short stories. Each of the 14 stories is written in a vibrant and impassioned prose that literary critics say, evoke the essence of female sexuality in a world where, “only love has meaning.”

Anaïs Nin
The role of a writer is not to say what we all can say, but what we are unable to say.

Do not seek the because – in love there is no because, no reason, no explanation, no solutions.

Nin’s diaries chronicle her search for fulfillment in what was often for women a painfully restrictive era (I’d say to be a woman today is still pretty fucking difficult, men love to objectify and control the ‘fairer sex’ [sic]*). She began these diaries in 1914 at the age of eleven and kept writing them until she passed away, some 60 years later.

In 1936 she published House of Incest a 72-page novel, where she vividly narrated incidents with her father that highlighted the inappropriate physical relationship she had with him. The book contemplates a dream that she calls ‘hell’, a hell that she wants to break loose from, a nightmare that she wants to wake up from, but seems to be trapped within.

We do not see things as they are, we see them as we are.

Anaïs Nin is said to have classified herself into the erotica genre without any sense of shame and is now considered to be one of the boldest female writers of erotica, with a renowned ability to project astutely both ‘masculine’ and ‘feminine’ characters (indeed, she may be one of the best full stop, can you name a better fe/male writer of erotica? Fifty Shades was also penned by a female author).

You cannot save people, you can only love them.

* It’s an unfortunate fact that throughout history women have often been valued based largely on their looks. The term ‘fairer sex’ also implies delicateness. The phrases is now considered dated and, when used, may also have humorous (sic) intentions. The phrase’s etymology is ever so interesting!

‘sic’ used in brackets — [sic] — after a copied or quoted phrase is used to point out that while the phrases may be misspelt, odd or erroneous it is true to the original author’s words. Think of Donald Trump’s June 2019 Tweet ‘cocked and loaded.’ The usual idiom is “locked and loaded”, for which dates back to WWII and means literally: to prepare a firearm for firing by pulling back and ‘locking’ the bolt and loading the ammunition, and figuratively: to ready oneself for action or confrontation.



READING LIST ETC.

WRITERS POETS
PHILOSOPHERS PSYCHOLOGISTS

POLITICAL FIGURES
BOOKS OF FICTIONNON-FICTION BOOKS

I was dead, deader than dead because, I was still alive.
Ways of Escape>
— “I was dead, deader than dead because, I was still alive.”

The Prophet is a book of 26 prose poetry fables written in English by the Lebanese-American poet and writer Kahlil Gibran. The Prophet has been translated into over 100 different languages, making it one of the most translated books in history. Moreover, it has never been out of print.
The Prophet
— “If you love somebody, let them go, for if they return, they were always yours. And if they don’t, they never were.”

The Essential Rumi, by Rumi ~ e.g. ~ “Lovers don't finally meet somewhere. They're in each other all along.”
The Essential Rumi
— “Lovers don’t finally meet somewhere. They’re in each other all along.”
 .
Paradise Lost
Paradise Lost
Simone de Beauvoir (1908–1986) was a French writer, philosopher and political activist. She is known for her 1949 treatise The Second Sex, a detailed analysis of women's oppression and a foundational tract of contemporary feminism.
The Second Sex
1984
1984
Delta of Venus
Delta of Venus
A Room of one's own
A Room of One’s Own
War and Peace is the 1869 novel by Russian author Leo Tolstoy. It is regarded as a classic of world literature. (The novel chronicles the French invasion of Russia and the impact of the Napoleonic era on Tsarist society through the stories of five Russian aristocratic families.) Tolstoy said War and Peace is "not a novel, even less is it a poem, and still less a historical chronicle." Tolstoy regarded Anna Karenina as his first true novel.
War and Peace
Brave New World (1932) is a dystopian novel by English author Aldous Huxley. Set in a futuristic World State, whose citizens are environmentally engineered into an intelligence-based social hierarchy, the novel anticipates huge scientific advancements in reproductive technology, sleep-learning, psychological manipulation and classical conditioning that are combined to make a dystopian society which is challenged by only a single individual: the story's protagonist (one Bernard Marx). In 1999, the Modern Library ranked Brave New World at number five on its list of the 100 best English-language novels of the 20th c.
Brave New World
Beloved is a 1987 novel by the late American writer Toni Morrison. The novel won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1988 and, in a survey of writers and literary critics compiled by The New York Times, it was ranked the best work of American fiction from 1981 to 2006. The work, set after the American Civil War of 1861 to 1865, was inspired by the life of Margaret Garner, an African American who escaped slavery by crossing the Ohio River to Ohio, a free state. Garner was subsequently captured and decided to kill her infant daughter rather than have her taken into slavery.
Beloved
Moby~Dick
The Grapes of Wrath

ENGLISH LIT.

The English language
“Elizabethan era” / “Love letters”
French in English / Latin in English
Anthology / Chronology / Terminology
Phrases & idioms (with their etymologies)
Literary criticism: analysing poetry & prose
Glossary of works, writers and literary devices:
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