Anaïs Nin - The Early Diary of Anaïs Nin, Volume 2 (1920-1923)

Copyright1982 by Rupert Pole as Trustee under the last will and testament of Anas Nin
Preface copyright1982 by Joaquin Nin-Culmell

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The Library of Congress has cataloged the print edition as follows:
Nin, Anas, 19031977.

Linotte, the early diary of Anas Nin.

Vol. 2pub. with title: The early diary of Anas Nin.

Vol. 1 translated from the French by Jean L. Sherman.

Includes index.

Contents: [1] 19141920v. 2. 19201923. 1. Nin, Anas, 19031977Diaries. 2. Authors, American20th centuryBiography. I. Title II. Title: Early diary of Anas Nin.

PS3527.I865Z522 1978 818'.5203 [B] 7720314

ISBN0-13-152488-2(v. 1) AACR2

ISBN 0-15-627248-2 (v.2 pbk.)

e ISBN 978-0-544-39638-8
v1.0814

It is now well known that Anas Nin kept a diary from 1914 to 1977. The original journals comprise more than 35,000 handwritten pages with no erasures and almost no corrections. Until 1947 Anas wrote in bound volumes that she called diary books. (After 1947 important correspondence had grown too large to be recorded in the pages of diary books, and, with a few exceptions, Anas wrote her diary on loose sheets of paper.) When she began to edit the diaries for publication, she numbered these books from one to sixty-nine.

This second published volume of Anas Nins Early Diary is drawn from books nine to nineteen, covering the years 1920 to 1923. These diary books were usually inexpensive date books with allowance for a page a day. Anas ignored this arrangement and wrote as much or as little as she pleased for each entry, which she usually dated accurately but sometimes identified only as Monday or Evening. Books fifteen and seventeen are larger and more luxurious than the others and are bound in leather. These were given to Anas by her cousin Eduardo Snchez and are inscribed respectively: To my lost princess... Time can never crumble a true devotion!! E.S. and To Anas from one who is economical in diariesEduardo, The Mysterious! I am presenting this diary to you, but I fervently hope that it will, when stored with your secrets, run away and come back to its original owner. So, I pray you, cuisine, not to clasp it in chainsit may come back! Quien sabe?

The opening page of volume eighteen contains Anass first title for a diary book: Journal dune Fiance. Almost all of the later diary books had titles (see Volume VI of The Diary, pages 5556); the titles were written when Anas first opened a new diary book and were usually prophetic.

The present volume was prepared from a typescript made by Anas in the late 1920s. As she typed, she left out passages she considered schoolgirlish or those in which she went on a little too long about nature. Most of these deletions have been respected, but in some instances significant material has been restored. The editorial approach is the same as for Linotte. Cuts have been made in repetitious passages, extended quotations and routine entries of little interest to the reader. Also, Anass arbitrary and frequent use of capitals and exclamation points has been kept to a minimum. Occasionally a cloudy passage has been edited for clarity.

As with Linotte, the material is presented as it was written, chronologically, and in Anass astonishingly sound but distinctive English, which was subject, as she herself realized, to the influence of whatever author she happened to be reading. At times, the chronology is confusing. Anas, never able to resist the lure of a new diary book, sometimes wrote in it before she had finished the old one. Then, fearing that the feelings of the old diary might be hurt, she would go back and fill in its blank pages at the end.

Anas wrote that Spanish was the language of her ancestors, French the language of her heart, and English the language of her intellect. Occasionally in this diary, the first that she wrote in English, Anas unconsciously lapses into the language of her heart. Because her father did not read English, she continued to write to him in French and copied most of these letters in her diary. Faced with her fathers constant corrections, she once playfully included in one of her letters an entire page of accents, punctuations and other torments of the French language, writing you may put them wherever you wish! She resorts to French also, for reasons of discretion. The frank sensuality of Marie Bashkirtsevs journal so shocked her that she confided to her diary, I can only write about this book in French. Her comments and other long passages in French have been translated by Jean L. Sherman. Short passages in French or Spanish have been left as they occur in the text and appear in footnotes translated by Anass brother Joaquin Nin-Culmell.

Joaquin was also most helpful in resolving questions concerning people and events of the period. We are grateful to him and to others, especially Ian Hugo (Hugh Guiler), who assisted in the preparation of this volume. But the real guidance came from Anas herself, particularly during the last years of her life.

Rupert Pole

Executor, The Anas Nin Trust

Los Angeles, California

October 1981

[Beginning ]

Anas Nin, c. 1922

The Nin house in Richmond Hill

A. N.s brother Joaquin

Rosa Culmell Nin

A. N.s brother Thorvald

Joaquin Nin-Culmell

Miguel Jorrn

Enric Madriguera

Eduardo Snchez

Hugo Guiler

A. N. as a model, 1922

A. N. as a cover girl

A. N. as Cleopatra, 1922

[Beginning ]

Hugo Guiler

A. N. with Juan Mann

Rosa Culmell Nin with Mann

Finca La Generala, Havana

A. N. in Havana

A. N. in Havana

A. N, in a Cuban newspaper

A. N.as a Gibson girl

A. N. in Havana

A. N. in Havana

A. N. and Hugo Guiler in Havana, 1923

Anas and Hugo Guiler

This volume of Anas Nins Diary and two yet to come bridge the important gap between Linotte (volume I of The Early Diary, 19141920) and the diary volumes already published (volumes I to VII, 19311974). They are significant for many reasons but primarily because they introduce and describe for the first time the man Anas referred to as my husband, my lover, my collaborator. The axis of my life. He who made my own work possible with much harder work than my own, whose faith breathed life into me. Better known to Anass readers as Ian Hugo, the gifted illustrator of many of her novels and an artist in his own right, Hugh (Hugo) P. Guiler carefully nurtured Anass growing mastery of English and offered her that rare combination of courageous literary criticism with glowing support for her talent. His devotion to her was complete, and her love for him would, as she put it, outlast time. The birth and growth of this relationship in Richmond Hill (Long Island, New York), which culminated in marriage, is the main subject of this second volume of The Early Diary.