Fire: From "A Journal of Love" The Unexpurgated Diary of Anaïs Nin, 1934-1937

Rating:
Summary: Interior decorating of the heart
Review: "This is not a lie. I was starting to tell lies and struck a truth! Very often I tell lies that are deeply true."
-Anais Nin, January 17, 1937

Diary opening with a visit to New York accompanying Dr Otto Rank. Searches for release from Rank. Back to Paris, Henry, Hugh, and to find Gonzalo More. Desriptions of interior worlds built for Hugh, Gonzalo, and Henry. Beautiful. Houseboat on the Seine, "Nanankepichu", Villa Seurat, Louveciennes.

Rating:
Summary: Exploring the Inner Bad Girl
Review: Anais Nin was raised a devout Catholic and to earn her family's love she was expected to be demure, self-sacrificing, hard-working, and chaste. When her father abandoned the family she assumed, as children sometimes do, that he had left because she wasn't "good" enough. She played the role of "good girl" for twenty years in response. Then all hell broke loose.

What I believe is different about FIRE is that it reveals Anais's explorations and experiementation with her inner "bad girl" in a way that she had only just begun in HENRY AND JUNE and INCEST. In it she is still married to Hugh and involved with Henry Miller, but in FIRE she has a relationship with the famous analyst Otto Rank that takes some treacherous twists and turns. Her writing is as wonderful as ever. For the Nin fan, this diary is yet another must-read.

Rating:
Summary: ANAIS NIN BRAVERY SHE FREELY WROTE ABOUT EROTICISM
Review: As follower of Anais' Diaries (expurgated or not) and her novels I would like to express my admiration and my curiosity for her amazing literature and her rare personality, motivated again by "Fire". I believe that Anais was able to enjoy sex simultaneously with several men, each one of them however, playing an appropriate , no transferable, role: Hugh (husband),Joaquin Nin (father-lover),Eduardo Sanchez (cousin-brother), Henry Miller (friend-lover), Gonzalo More (lover-friend) and others. Occidental society usually attribute this promiscuous behavior only to men.As Anais shows, this may happen also among ladies, perhaps more often than accepted . Indeed, these "faults" may be heavily damned and punished by society when perpetrated by ladies. Probably Anais was the first woman , brave and courageous enough , to describe her own experiences and feelings about eroticism and sensuality written from a female point of view. Actually, looking at her inner mirror she describes herself with delicacy , ever avoiding disgusting pornography. I believe that Anais spent her life searching a Big One Love . As a result she found many "Love" and many Lovers . The sum of them never reached totality. Her Love was her fantasy and her invention, hence endless and inaccessible. On the other hand, in this and other books Anais masterly present unknown, almost domestic features and characteristic of the personality of several men and ladies who were outstanding representatives in art, literature, theatre, politics as Neruda, Alberti, Dali, Allendy, Rank, Gore and others.