THE DIARY OF ANAIS NIN: 1931-1934

This is a section of the 150 volume, 15,000 page diary which Henry Miller, Anais Nin's very close friend during the above years, extravagantly prophesied would be classed with the ""revelations"" of St. Augustine and which Otto Rank, her second psychiatrist during these years, called her ""opium habit."" It is indeed a compulsive confessional, a font for her extremely subjective sensibility through which she cultivates ""moods, feelings, psychic states."" Along with the autointoxication of words, there is a narcissistic self-indulgence: ""And what is my true nature? Is mine idealism, spirituality, poetry, imagination, sense of beauty, a need of beauty, a fundamental Rimbaud innocence, a certain purity?"" Question she does, through all these pages in which it is ""not only the woman Anais (who) has to speak but I who have to speak for many women."" Perhaps-- but beyond those who have an interest in Anais Nin the writer (the diary opens with the book she writes on Lawrence in 16 days) there will be those interested in her relationship with Miller, who at this time was very much involved with an actress, June, who fascinated and frustrated (""mutual murder"") them both. Extensively also she records her relationships with both analysts, with the poet Artaud, and her father (much of her trouble). Anais Nin has (had?) her coterie who perhaps may be willing to bear with this ""person turned inside out, flowering to the utmost, through my senses, mind, emotions"" more than the general reader.