ANAIS NIN: LITERARY PERSPECTIVES Also by Suzanne Nalbantian AESTHETIC AUTOBIOGRAPHY: FROM LIFE TO ART IN MARCEL PROUST, JAMES, JOYCE, VIRGINIA WOOLF AND ANAISNIN SEEDS OF DECADENCE IN THE LATE NINETEENTH­ CENTURY NOVEL THE SYMBOL OF THE SOUL FROM HOLDERLIN TO YEATS Anais Nin Literary Perspectives Edited with an introductory essay by Suzanne Nalbantian Palgrave Macmillan ISBN 978-1-349-25507-8 ISBN 978-1-349-25505-4 (eBook) DOI 10.1007/978-1-349-25505-4 ANAISNIN Preface, editorial matter and Chapter I copyright © 1997 by Suzanne Nalbantian Chapters 2-18 copyright © 1997 by Macmillan Press Ltd Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 1997 978-0-333-65087-5 All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. For information, address: St. Martin's Press, Scholarly and Reference Division, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010 First published in the United States of America in 1997 This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. ISBN 978-0-312-16523-9 ISBN 978-0-312-16524-6 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Anai's Nin : literary perspectives I edited with an introduction by Suzanne Nalbantian. p. em. Chiefly papers originally presented at a conference held at Long Island University, Southampton campus, in 1994. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-312-16523-9 ISBN 978-0-312-16524-6 (paper) I. Nin, Anai's, 1903-1977--Criticism and interpretation. 2. Women and literature-United States-History-20th century. I. Nalbantian, Suzanne, 1950- PS3527.1865Z54 1996 818'.5509~c20 96-30849 CIP Contents Acknowledgements vii Notes on the Contributors viii Preface Suzanne Nalbantian xiii Introduction 1 1 Aesthetic Lies Suzanne Nalbantian 3 2 Anai:s Nin, My Sister, and Letters to Hugh Guiler (Hugo), from Joaquin Nin-Culmell, 26 December 1978 and 3 October 1979 Joaquin Nin-Culmell 23 Part I Dream Cities and Other Inscapes 3 Cities of Her Own Invention: Urban Iconology in Cities of the Interior Catherine Broderick 33 4 Art, the Dream, the Self Harriet Zinnes 52 5 Anai:s Nin, the Poet Anna Balakian 63 6 Renate's Illusions and Delusions in Collages Marie-Rose Logan 79 Part II Psychoanalysis in Nin's Writings 7 Beyond Therapy: The Enduring Love of Anai:s Nin for Otto Rank Sharon Spencer 97 8 Anai:s and Her Analysts, Rank and Allendy: The Creative and Destructive Aspects Valerie Harms 112 v vi Contents 9 Anai:s Nin's Journal of Love: Father-Loss and Incestuous Desire Suzette Henke 120 Part III Gender Readings of the Fiction 10 The Men in Nin's (Characters') Lives Philip K. Jason 139 11 Birth and the Linguistics of Gender: Masculine/ Feminine Lajos Elkan 151 12 Erato Throws a Curve: Anai:s Nin and the Elusive Feminine Voice in Erotica Edmund Miller 164 Part N Japanese Voices on Nin 13 Anai:s Nin's Words of Power and the Japanese Sybil Tradition Atsuko Miyake 187 14 Anai:s Nin's Femininity and the Banana Yoshimoto Phenomenon Toyoko Yamamoto 199 15 Between Two Languages: The Translation and Reception of Anai:s Nin in Japan Junko Kimura 211 Part V The Genesis and Dissemination of Nin's Works 16 Speaking with Your Skeleton: D.H. Lawrence's Influence on Anai:s Nin Lawrence Wayne Markert 223 17 Black Snow in Winter: Anai:s Nin in Paris­ The Lawrence Durrell Connection Corinne Alexandre-Garner 236 18 The Selling of A Spy in the House of Love Benjamin Franklin V 254 Index 279 Acknowledgements I wish to thank Long Island University for hosting the confer­ ence I directed on Ana'is Nin at its Southampton Campus in 1994. From that three-day gathering most of the papers for this vol­ ume emerged. I am also grateful for the released time granted to me by my university for compiling and editing this volume. The library at C.W. Post College has been an active and open research avenue, especially in making promptly available to me publications as I needed them. I also wish to thank, most spe­ cifically, Mary Van Pala, the administrative secretary of C.W. Post College's English Department, who assisted me in running the conference and who devotedly helped prepare the manu­ script for publication. Her diligence is unsurpassed. My continuous thanks go to my husband-scholar, David S. Reynolds, who is a constant source of support and encourage­ ment - not to mention his technical computer assistance! I also wish to acknowledge my editor at Macmillan, Charmian Hearne, whose interest and feedback have kept this book on schedule. My utmost thanks go to the enthusiastic and cooperative con­ tributors to this volume, many of whom were present at the conference and who remain closely bonded in their study of Ana'is Nin. Included in this group is Ana'is' quixotic brother Joaquin Nin-Culmell, who adds a living link and immediacy to the author in question. vii Notes on the Contributors Corinne Alexandre-Gamer has taught at Paris X University since 1978 where she is Associate Professor. In 1985, she published a book on Lawrence Durrell's Alexandria Quartet: Le Quatuor d' Alexandrie: fragmentation et ecriture. Etude sur I'amour, Ia femme et I'ecriture, and has participated in various collections of essays on twentieth-century writers. She is also the author of the arti­ cle on Lawrence Durrell in The Encyclopaedia Universalis (1991) and has published widely in various journals in the fields of literature and psychoanalysis. Anna Balakian is Emerita Professor of French and Comparative Literature at New York University and former Chair of the De­ partment of Comparative Literature. As a specialist in the fields of surrealism and poetics, she has written numerous essays in literary and scholarly journals including several on Ana'is Nin. Her two latest books are The Fiction of the Poet (From Mallarme to the Symbolist Mode), 1992, and The Snowflake on the Belfry: Dogma and Disquietude in the Critical Arena, 1994. Catherine Vreeland Broderick is Professor of English at Kobe College in Nishinomiya, Japan. She holds degrees in Compara­ tive Literature from the Sorbonne and the University of North Carolina and has lectured and published widely on Ana'is Nin, Japanese diary literature, Japanese iki (chic), social semiotics and computer-assisted literary text analysis. Lajos Elkan, educated in Budapest, Hungary, Lausanne Univer­ sity, Switzerland, at the City University of New York City and Columbia University, is Professor of French and Chairman of the Foreign Languages Department at C.W. Post Campus, Long Island University, New York. His publications include a book, Les Voyages et les Proprietes d'Henri Michaux, and several articles on Paul Claudel's poetry and theatre, and on the semiotics of poetic and pictorial languages. viii Notes on the Contributors ix Benjamin Franklin V is Professor of English at the University of South Carolina. He has written and edited more than fifteen books. Among his publications on Nin are the following: Anai's Nin: A Bibliography, 1973, Anais Nin: An Introduction (with Duane Schneider), 1979. The most recent among his numerous Nines­ says are: 'Appearance vs. Appearance in the Diary of Anais Nin', in The New Courant, 1996, 'Noli Me Tangere: The Structure of Ana'is Nin's Under a Glass Bell' and he has edited a volume of short pieces: Recollections of Anais Nin by her Contemporaries (1996). Valerie Harms has written a variety of books, most recently The National Audubon Society Almanac of the Environment/The Ecology of Everyday Life, 1994 and The Inner Lover, 1992. She has long been an intensive journal consultant and teacher of Jungian studies. With Adele Aldridge she founded the Magic Circle Press which published Harms' book Stars in My Sky containing a long essay about Ana'is' early manuscripts. Harms also collaborated with Ana'is when the Magic Circle Press published Ana'is' stories in a volume called Waste of Timelessness and Other Early Stories, which appeared in 1977, the year of Ana'is' death. Suzette Henke is Thruston B. Morton, Sr Professor of Literary Studies at the University of Louisville. She is author of Joyce's Moraculous Sindbook: A Study of 'Ulysses', James Joyce and the Pol­ itics of Desire and co-editor of Women in Joyce. Her publications in the field of modem literature include essays on Virginia Woolf, Dorothy Richardson, Ana'is Nin, Doris Lessing, Linda Brent, Janet Frame, Keri Hulme, Samuel Beckett, E.M. Forster and W.B. Yeats. She has just completed a study of 'women's life-writing' in the twentieth century entitled Shattered Subjects: Women's Life-Writing and Narrative Recovery. Philip Jason is Professor of English at the United States Naval Academy. He edited an early volume of Nin's selected writings, Anai's Nin Reader, 1973. Most recently he has published Anai's Nin and her Critics, 1993 and The Critical Response to Anais Nin, a retro­ spective collection of reviews and essays, 1996. He is author of numerous articles on Nin, as well as several volumes of poetry and bibliographies of nineteenth-century American poetry and literature of the Vietnam era. X Notes on the Contributors Junko Kimura is a poet, translator and professor of English at Hokkaido Musashi Women's Junior College in Sapporo, Japan. She has translated five of Anai:s Nin's works. The series entitled The Anais Nin Collection contains her Japanese translations of D.H. Lawrence: An Unprofessional Study, House of Incest, Winter of Arti­ fice, Under a Glass Bell and Collages.