Customer Reviews

Anais Nin Herself: Read Selections from Her Diaries, 1931-34

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For the most part I really love these recordings. Anais Nin's voice is beautiful, dreamlike, and ethereal. These readings are soothing and lovely. The only exception is, as The Rebecca Review mentioned, side three, the recording for August 1934. This is a very, very difficult recording to listen to because it describes what I believe people had, at the time of publication of the censored diaries in the 1960s, interpreted to be Anais Nin's stillbirth. It is perhaps the most disturbing bit of writing I have ever read (or heard). Lines like, "Then I heard the bones cracking.... This child is not a child but a demon laying half-choked between my legs," are just more than I can bear.

It was not until the publication of the uncensored diaries in the 80s and 90s that readers realized the full significance of this episode. Not only was this not a stillborn but a very late-term abortion, the father of the child is not certain. It could've been Anais Nin's husband Hugo; Henry Miller, Gonzalo More, and psychoanalyst Otto Rank are other possibilities. And that is perhaps the one saving grace of this truly callous episode (not once does Anais comment on what this ordeal must've been like for the child, so content is she to portray herself as the victim and dramatic heroine), the knowledge that this would not have been a good situation for a child to be born into. As the uncensored versions of her diary have since revealed, among the candidates for father of this poor aborted child was, horrifically, Anais Nin's own father. In this light, aborting the child may've been the greatest mercy possible. Who knows what birth defects it could've suffered.

Overall, this is a wonderful recording. I really love the description of Anais Nin's hometown of Louveciennes, France. And the description of her time in Fez is wonderful. I have always had an affinity for Muslim cultures (I even attended a mosque for a time in my late teens and almost converted), and I love to hear about travelers' experiences in the Middle East. If only that dreaded side three had been left on the cutting room floor and in its stead we had been treated to Anais Nin's beautiful descriptions of June Miller, then this would really be a flawless set.

Nin manages to portray everyday life with a romance,depth,colour and indeed frailty that appeals in its' honesty.