Nin Anaïs - Trapeze

TRAPEZE

SWALLOW PRESS BOOKS BY ANAS NIN

FICTION

Children of the Albatross

Cities of the Interior

Collages

The Four-Chambered Heart

House of Incest

Ladders to Fire

Seduction of the Minotaur

A Spy in the House of Love

Under a Glass Bell

Waste of Timelessness and Other Early Stories

Winter of Artifice

NONFICTION

D. H. Lawrence: An Unprofessional Study

Mirages: The Unexpurgated Diary of Anas Nin, 19391947, edited by Paul Herron

The Novel of the Future

A Woman Speaks: The Lectures, Seminars, and Interviews of Anas Nin, edited by Evelyn J. Hinz

SWALLOW PRESS BOOKS ABOUT ANAS NIN

Arrows of Longing: The Correspondence between Anas Nin and Felix Pollak, 19521976, edited by Gregory H. Mason

Writing an Icon: Celebrity Culture and the Invention of Anas Nin, by Anita Jarczok

Recollections of Anas Nin by Her Contemporaries, edited by Benjamin Franklin V

TRAPEZE

The Unexpurgated Diary of Anas Nin

1947-1955

Preface by Paul Herron

Introduction by Benjamin Franklin V

Edited by Paul Herron

SWALLOW PRESS / OHIO UNIVERSITY PRESS

Athens, Ohio

PUBLISHED IN ASSOCIATION WITH SKY BLUE PRESS

Swallow Press

An imprint of Ohio University Press, Athens, Ohio 45701

www.ohioswallow.com

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. This book contains material protected under International and Federal Copyright Laws and Treaties. Any unauthorized reprint or use of this material is prohibited. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, scanning, PDF download, recording, blogging, internet posting, content syndication, e-mail or by any information sharing, storage and retrieval system without express written permission from the publishers, except by a reviewer or scholar who may quote brief passages in a review or article.

Digital trade edition published by Sky Blue Press, San Antonio, Texas, USA. Inquiries about worldwide electronic sales from all digital trade vendors should be directed to Sky Blue Press (skybluepress.com).

Print edition and institutional digital edition published by Swallow Press/Ohio University Press, Athens, Ohio (www.ohioswallow.com). To obtain permission to quote, reprint, or otherwise reproduce or distribute material from Swallow Press / Ohio University Press publications, please contact our rights and permissions department at (740) 593-1154 or (740) 593-4536 (fax). This book may not be circulated in any other binding or cover.

1st Edition. Unexpurgated.

All content unless otherwise stated, copyright 2017 The Anas Nin Trust.

This edition published by arrangement with Sky Blue Press.

Introduction copyright 2016 Benjamin Franklin V.

Preface copyright 2016 Paul Herron.

Excerpts from The Diary of Anas Nin, Volume Four: 1944-1947 (copyright 1971 by Anas Nin) used by permission of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

Excerpts from The Diary of Anas Nin, Volume Five: 1947-1955 (copyright 1974 by Anas Nin) used by permission of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

All photographs copyright The Anas Nin Trust, unless otherwise noted.

Printed in the United States of America.

Swallow Press/Ohio University Press books are printed on acid-free paper .

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Sky Blue Press Electronic ISBN: 978-0-9987246-0-7

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Nin, Anas, 19031977, author. | Franklin, Benjamin, 1939 writer of introduction. | Herron, Paul (Paul S.), editor.

Title: Trapeze : the unexpurgated diary of Anas Nin, 19471955 / preface by Paul Herron ; introduction by Benjamin Franklin V ; edited by Paul Herron.

Description: Athens, Ohio : Swallow Press, 2017. | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2016051835| ISBN 9780804011815 (hardback) | ISBN 9780804040778 (pdf)

Subjects: LCSH: Nin, Anas, 19031977Diaries. | Authors, American20th centuryDiaries.

Classification: LCC PS3527.I865 Z46 2017 | DDC 818/.5209 [B] dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016051835

Dedicated to the memory of Rupert Pole

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The editor gratefully acknowledges Sara Herron, Benjamin Franklin V, John Ferrone, Denise Brown, and Kim Krizan for their guidance and dedication to this book.

Correspondence from James Leo Herlihy used by permission of the James Leo Herlihy Literary Estate.

Anas Nin, 1950s

TABLE OF CONTENTS

by Paul Herron

by Benjamin Franklin V

PREFACE

Trapeze was transcribed from the handwritten diary of Anas Nin, which was no longer kept in bound journals, but mostly on loose paper. When Nin left New York with Rupert Pole in 1947, she reported that she had put her diary into the vault. During her long trip to California, she kept no diary, no notes... the account of the voyage found in The Diary of Anas Nin, Vol. 4, 1944-1947 is based on recollection long after the fact. Trapeze contains only original material.

Because the paper was loose, oftentimes it became out of sequence. Once the entire collection was transcribed, a significant amount of detective work had to be done to put it back in orderand one extremely valuable aid in this endeavor was a massive calendar Nin kept that was found in her Silver Lake house recently. It not only assisted in sequencing, it also filled in some of the long and mysterious gaps in the diary. Nins diary-keeping had become erratic and intermittent due to her bi-coastal life, the constant swinging between a husband in New York and a lover in California. A habit she developed was the use of her eight-hour flights to record the events of the previous month or two, and these passages were often very long and detailed. But sometimes she went for months without writing anything at all, and thats where the calendar became critical... in Trapeze, entries from the calendar are used to identify where Nin was or what she was doing during those gaps. Even so, there are events found neither in the diary nor in the calendar, such as Nins visit to Gore Vidal in Antigua, Nicaragua, in 1947, and they therefore do not appear in this volume.

Once everything was in sequence, then the true editing could begin, the elimination of repetitions, irrelevant correspondence, etc., but Nins prose remains intact except in cases of misspellings or serious grammatical errors; sometimes translations of obscure phrases or terms in foreign languages are provided. The transcription of some 4,500 handwritten pages of the original diary yielded nearly 1,400 typewritten pages, from which this volume has been edited.