The Second Sex? Part II Anaïs Nin

 

     Anaïs Nin is one of my favourite writers. Her courage to defy the boundaries of female sociably acceptable behaviours makes me wonder what is possible to achieve and discover about women needs and desires. For those who are not familiar with her work Nin was one of the first women known to explore fully the realm of erotic writing, and certainly the first prominent woman in the modern West known to write erotica. Before her, erotica acknowledged to be written by women was rare, with a few notable exceptions, such as the work of Kate Chopin. 

      According to Volume I of her diaries, 1931–1934, published in 1966 (Stuhlmann), Nin first came across erotica when she returned to Paris with her husband, mother and two brothers in her late teens. They rented the apartment of an American man who was away for the summer, and Nin came across a number of French paperbacks: "One by one, I read these books, which were completely new to me. I had never read erotic literature in America… They overwhelmed me. I was innocent before I read them, but by the time I had read them all, there was nothing I did not know about sexual exploits… I had my degree in erotic lore."

      Faced with a desperate need for money, Nin, Miller and some of their friends began in the 1940s to write erotic and pornographic narratives for an anonymous "collector" for a dollar a page, somewhat as a joke. (It is not clear whether Miller actually wrote these stories or merely allowed his name to be used. Nin considered the characters in her erotica to be extreme caricatures and never intended the work to be published, but changed her mind in the early 1970s and allowed them to be published as Delta of Venus and Little Birds.

        Anaïs Nin is a source of inspiration and Woman self-discovery her work after the explosion of the feminist movement in the 1960s gave feminist perspectives on Nin's writings of the past twenty years, which made her a popular lecturer at various universities; although she has always disassociated herself from the political activism of the movement. I leave here one of her most known poems, and my wish that you too find something interesting about this writer that I truly admire.

Risk

And then the day came,
when the risk
to remain tight
in a bud
was more painful
than the risk
it took
to Blossom.

Nin, Anaïs