The Erotic Adventures of Anais Nin (2015) - full transcript

One of the fascinating
things about Nin,
is that she's the first,

she's the great forerunner
of women's confessional
sex writing.

You know at that period,
there wasn't a western woman
writing about sex.

She got up and brought
a long mirror,
and stood it against the chair.

The sight was enchanting.

She was a woman of tomorrow.
She wrote about being a woman,
what an orgasm was like,

what sex was like.
And she tried to find the words
to describe what it felt like.

She thought it was like the gum
plant leaf with its secret milk,
that the pressure of the finger

could bring out.

I think Anais Nin's erotica
is really unique.
You read her describing

women's bodies as though they're
flesh and fruit,
there's a real poetry to her.



I will not rest until I have
told of my descent,
into a sensuality,

which was dark,
magnificent, wild.

Anais Nin's diaries described
all of her fascinating sexual
adventures and they were

the very explicit material,
that she mined for the short
stories, the novels,

the erotica.

She began to write them,
as a very young girl.

Anais Nin's diaries were
her lifeline.

I think they were
her secret friend,
I think the way she describes

them as a labyrinth,
is really telling.

She was born in France in 1903,
but the family later moved
to New York when she was 11.

Her father was Cuban,
and a womanizer,
he was a liar.

And she's this intense child,
who's been unwell,
who doesn't seem to have anyone

around who's like her.
She has these unhappy,
battling parents,

she's caught in the middle.



And then the father
abandons them,
and she's devastated.

But that
was when she began to write.

And so Nin starts to write
the journal as almost a kind
of set of letters,

or postcards to her father.

Entreating him,
to come and join the rest
of the family,

in New York.

But then she goes on writing
the diaries almost every day,
for the rest of her life.

And they set her off,
on this incredible journey
to become a great writer.

-Miss. Nin.
-What a pleasure
to meet you, please.

You're a real role model,
for women writers Miss. Nin.

Well, for all women.
And now the diaries.

I appreciate that they're
censored to protect people,
but Miss. Nin,

I'd like to know the truth
about your life.

And I have agreed to tell you
the whole story.

I thought my life would really
begin with my marriage
to Hugo Guiler.

There were problems at first,
the family were against it.

I was a skinny little
immigrant girl, a superstitious
catholic and he was,

from a wealthy,
protestant, banking family.

But we defied it.

And he was sent to work
in a Paris branch of the bank,

so we moved over there.

Louveciennes resembles
the village where Madame Bovary
lived and died.

It is old, untouched,
and unchanged,
by modern life.

On a clear night,
one can see Paris.

Behind the windows
of the village houses,
old women sit watching

people pass by.
The dogs bark at night.

My house is 200 years old.

Every day he goes to the bank,
I write in my diary.

I am young,
I am full of hope,
and dreams.

But I am innocent,
in particular, I am
sexually innocent.

On my wedding night,
Hugo was exalted and romantic,
he added wonderful words

of worship.

But he was inexperienced.

He worked his body against mine,
until he came,
all over my nightgown.

I was so amazed at the wetness.

I felt sad, vague.

I thought that he
did not love me.

He liked to get me to lie
on the bed with my clothes on,
and to raise my legs

so that he could look.

That was all he wanted,
to look up between my legs.

It was I who incited him
one night to push in,
until he broke through

the virginity,
and the blood came,
and it was done.

Hugo made no crisis before,
he didn't notice that I had
no time to grow moist.

He had to spread Vaseline
between my legs to penetrate me.

At such times I hated him,
I lay like one who had
been murdered.

She wanted to be
a good wife and,

couldn't understand initially,
this kind of,
very deep,

rooted sense of dissatisfaction.
It wasn't just
sexual dissatisfaction,

I think it was much more
diffuse than that,
she was just dissatisfied

with her life.

She felt that she was,
almost in prison.

You know a gilded cage,
of sorts.
But she was locked away,

with her books.
She really lived off of dreams,
off of her imagination.

I know that there
is more to life,
than sitting at home

polishing the furniture.
I know ordinary life
does not interest me.

I seek only the high moments,
I am in accordance
with the Surrealists.

Searching for the marvelous.
But the marvelous
does not happen.

I mend shops, prune trees,
polish furniture,
I am not living.

But I am not like Madame Bovary,
going to take poison.

Instead, I am going to Paris.

I think if any of us,
had a chance in a time machine,
to go to Paris,

in the 20's and 30's,
we would take it.

It was the center of the globe,
the artistic globe,
at that time.

And for Nin,
it was just a train ride away.
So, with Hugo away all day,

she'd just go and wander
the streets of this
bohemian paradise,

of pre-war Paris.

Paris must have been
extraordinarily exciting
in the 1920's and 30's,

a time of incredible social
mixing, glamor, creativity.

And then she began to take these
dancing lessons in Paris,
which began as an escape

from boredom,
but turned into something
much more thrilling.

Later my Spanish dancing
teacher fell in love with me.

He had the power
to make me dance.

Below the dancing studio,
there were little
dressing rooms.

And as I stood against
the dresses and shawls,
he lifted my skirt,

and kissed my sex,
until I grew dizzy.

[moans]

I take pleasure
in my transformations.
Few know many women

there are in me.

When ordinary life shackles me,
I escape one way,
or another.

No more walls.

Nin did experience herself,
as an amazing person,

trapped in a very bourgeois,
and bland,
and stale existence.

But she began to realize
the possibility for another
kind of life.

And Hugo sensed,
that she was changing.

Hugo accompanies me
to all the salons.

He buys me everything
that I want,
but I am not happy.

Imprisoned I feel I am
a day-tripper from the village.

I press my nose,
to the window of life.

I feel I am becoming two women.

One who is kind, loyal,
pure of thought.
But then there is another.

She is restless and impure,
acting strangely, lucid,
wandering, seeking life

and wanting to taste all of it.
Without fear, restraint,
principle, a demon.

-I just wonder how far
she will go?
-You would never do wrong.

-You would never jeopardize
our relationship.
-I want experience.

[moaning]

Hugo is clearly one of those men
who finds his wife so erotic,
such a kind of incredible

sexual geisha;
that eventually his desire,
is more stimulated,

by seeing her being this goddess
for other men.

But he never actually agrees
to her having affairs.

He just doesn't want to know
the truth,
and so she lies to him.

They find this way,
of making their marriage work.

Dreams, are necessary to life.

The earth is every day opaque,
without dreams.

I have days of illuminations,
and fevers.

I want to be a writer,
who reminds others
that these moments exist.

Throw your dreams into space,
like a kite,
and you do not know what

it will bring back.
A new life, a new friend,
a new love?

She needed a life to write about
and she needed someone
bold, confident, and who could

help her become a writer.

And then Henry Miller arrives,
and he's all those things,
and he's not necessarily

the world's most attractive man,
but he's charismatic,
and he needs her.

The first time I read
something of Henry,
it was like a bomb

in me exploding.
I knew straight away,
that he was a great artist.

I wanted to meet him,
and our lawyer knew him,
so I invited him to a meal.

He is a man who life
intoxicates, who is floating

on self-created euphoria.

He is immersed in writing
his book,

sleeps anywhere, a railroad
station waiting room, a park;

he lives from day to day,
buying, begging, sponging,

he is almost a hobo.

The relationship between Anais
and Henry Miller
is really interesting,

they clearly had quite
a riotous, rivaled friendship,
where they

challenged each other.
And he was much older than her,
but he hadn't been

published yet,
and he was living this
down and out life,

writing his first novel,
Tropic of Cancer .

Anais gets restless here
during the day,
on her own.

I'm always restless.
Things just keep carrying
me away.

I feel like as though,
my hair is being pulled into
the stars again.

The moment I am deeply rooted,
I have to utmost desire
to uproot myself.

I close my eyes for an instant,
to see him by some other
inner eye.

-You don't want a real bird?
-No, I prefer antique ages.

I'm waiting to find a unique,
strange bird.

One that I've seen
in my dreams.

But as yet,
I have not found it.

He has no typewriter,
I give him mine.

He gives me a world of writing,
parts of his book,
as he writes it.

Notes on the backs of menus
in small restaurants,
and Chevy quarters.

A torrent of realism.

I too love everything
that flows, rivers, sewers,

lava, semen,

words, sentences.

I love the words of hysterics.
And the sentences that flow on,
like dysentery,

and mirror all the sick images
of the soul.

His writing is treacherous,
and dangerous.

At sixteen,
I wrote in my diary,
that I had dreamed

of putting myself,
under the protection
and nobility of a great writer.

Henry was such a man.

Hugo is worried he will
lose me to Henry,
I tell him he won't.

I'm devoted to Henry's
work only.
I separate my body from my mind.

To begin with,
they weren't sleeping together,
but they did have this strong

creative relationship.

She saw that Henry Miller
was dedicated to being a writer,
so he had discipline,

he had rigor.

Henry read my work,
he tells me I write like a man,
with tremendous clearness.

His imagination is relentless,
and fertile, a demon loose
in the world.

You have your version
of the world,
as somewhat monstrous,

and I have mine.

But I'll fight you Henry Miller,
I'll fight your realism,
with all the magical forces

of poetry.

Art is art,
the paradise,
the only paradise.

Paradise is a place
with white feather palm trees,
with formulas,

with glass fishes,
silk lined balls,
invisible music,

dishes shaped like stars,
costumes of cellophane,

paradise was artifice.

Would you mind,
telling me about,

-June, Henry's
extraordinary wife?
-I didn't know Henry well.

I admired his mind,
his work enormously,
but well,

that paled into insignificance,
when I met June.

I saw for the first time,
the most beautiful woman
on earth.

Her beauty drowned me.

A startling white face,
burning eyes,
my first sight of her,

I felt that I would do anything
mad for her.

Henry feared,
she was color, brilliance,
strangeness.

Over dinner,
she and Henry told all
their secrets,

their sex, their fighting.

You see we're at war
with each other,
Henry and I.

Oh, and one time,
we hired a room where,

I could be a prostitute,
with a client,
and he could watch.

-Remember Henry?
-[laughing]

-He watched me with women.
-[laughs]
Don't all men like that?

I guess not.

By the end of the night,
I was like a man,
terribly in love with her face,

and body,
which promised so much.

I think June had,
a huge influence on Nin.

Her shamelessness you know,
she speaks really coarsely,

and she's a complete fantasist,
she lies all the time.
One time she's telling Nin,

that she was raised
in the circus.
And then you never knew

when she was going to arrive,
and you never knew when
she was going to leave.

June and I live life,
as theater.

We love costumes and changes
of self's, and wearing masks,
and disguises.

But I always know what is real,
thanks June.

Come here!

She has the body of the women,
who climbed every night
upon the stage of music halls,

and gradually undressed.

Beautiful.

Oh I want to dance
for you Anais.

I am fascinated by her eyes,
and mouth.

Her discolored mouth,
badly bruised.

I do not make out her words,
I see ashes under the skin
of her face.

Disintegration, she is dying
before my eyes.

Truth comes from confessions,
in the darkness of the bedroom,
or from,

violent tearing of masks.

I want to kiss her
fantastic beauty and say,
"I dreamed you,

I wished for your existence".

A few days later we went
to the theater,
outside smoking in the interval,

I tell her,
"you are the only woman
whoever answered

the demands in my imagination".

She answers,
"it's a good thing for me,
I'm going away".

What, what, what, what,
what, what?
She had to go back to New York,

for a while.
June would soon unmask me.
I am powerless,

before a woman.

I want to kiss you.

After June,
filled with June,
I could not bare Hugo reading

the newspaper,
and talking about trust funds,
and a successful day.

He was immensely lovable,
and warm,
but I could not come back.

The love between women,
is a refuge,
an escape into harmony.

In the love between
a man and a woman,
there is

resistance, conflict.

I am trapped between
the beauty of June,
and the genius of Henry.

Every encounter of June Miller,
that we have is this,

very exciting, charismatic,

androgynous, kind of stalky,
earthy figure, who was very
very attractive.

So there was this
tantalizing flirtation,
and kissing but not evidence

of a full sexual relationship.
Just this powerful attraction,
on Nin's side.

When June left,
she went back to New York.

I waited sometimes
where we used to meet,
expecting to feel again

the joy of seeing her walk
towards me,
out of a crowd.

I went for a massage,
the masseuse was small
and pretty.

I saw her breasts
when she leaned over me,
small but full.

I was stirred, madly.

Aware of the frustration
of my desire.

I knew that June did not
reach the same sexual center
in me that a man reaches.

So what then had she
moved in me?

But there is no life in the love
between women.

The animal strength
which satisfies women,
lies in brutal men.

In the realists,
like Henry.

A letter from Henry,
I received one every day.

Deep down,
I'm afraid of this man.
His sensual being,

the ferocity enveloped
in tenderness,
his ever rich mind.

Writers make love
to what they need.

-Henry wrote to me,
I could-
-stay here all night writing.

I see you before me constantly,
with your head down,
and your long lashes

lying on your cheek.

It seems to me,
that from the very moment
when you held out your hand,

I was yours.

I met Henry in a small dark bar.

Suddenly he leans over,
and engulfs me
in an endless kiss.

I do not want the kiss to end.

Later a small dark room,
so shabby like an alcove,

the richness of Henry's
voice and mouth.

The feeling of sinking
into warm blood.

And he overcome with my
warmth and moisture,

Slow penetration,
with pauses and with twists,

make me gasp with pleasure.

I have no words for it,
it is all new to me.

That afternoon in Henry's room,
was like a white hot furnace.

Before I had only the white heat
of the mind and the imagination,

now it is of the blood,
sacred completeness.

I come out dazed in a mellow
spring evening,
and I think,

now I would not mind dying.

So it was Henry Miller,
who awakened you?

Sexually.
And who inspired your work,
your writing,

and you inspired his?

It was my writer's soul,
that loved Henry.

He was doing his best writing,
there was,
such a splendor to it.

I want to feel your presence
for a few hours.

To feed you,
cool you,

fill you with every breath
on earth of the trees
which reap the blood.

I realized that I don't want
you to come back.

As a muse,
I couldn't have asked for more,
and yes as a woman,

I was fully awake,
and then fully alive.

I have only three desires now.

To eat, to sleep,
and to fuck.

I want to dance.

I want drugs.
I want to bite into life,
and be torn by it.

And as soon as she begins
to have fantastic sex,

she realizes,
this is what I can write about.

I mean she just breaks free,
and unleashes the shackles.

Of both her imagination,
and her body.

But, you aren't a published
writer yet,
you're just a woman writing

a diary.
You still had your nose pressed
against the window,

you're a banker's wife,
a muse,
but you're

serving them dinner,
and giving them money.

I believe someone called you a,

little bourgeois banker's wife?

While I was writing the diaries,
they were my material.

And, I was learning to create
art out of them.

To describe an adventure?

I come back to Hugo pleased,
and so joyous.

He says,
"I have never been
so happy with you".

I am always concerned with Hugo,
as though he were my child.

It is because I love him best,
I wish he was 10 years old.

I cheat him, I deceive him,
yet the world does not sink into

sulphur colored mists.

I just cry and laugh.

He desires me,
my conscious dies
at that moment.

Hugo bears down on me,
and I immediately obey
Henry's whispered words,

I close my legs about Hugo,
and he exclaims in ecstasy,

"you're driving me wild".

Henry whispers to me,
what my body must do.

I obey,
and new instincts rise in me.

I am woman,
a man has made me submit.

How did you conceal this
from your husband?

Wasn't, keeping a journal
a dangerous thing?

Well yes, and,

there came a time,
that Hugo found it.

One day he read my diary,
the red one.

I told him that it was fiction.

Hugo finds the diary
about Henry,
in which Nin is talking wildly

about their love making,
and how sensual she feels
when she's with Henry.

She becomes terrified that,
the life that they
have built together,

is going to be shattered.
And so she tells Hugo,
that this diary,

the diary that he has read,
is a diary of her fantasy life.

And that there
is a second diary,
which is the real, diary.

I ran quickly,
bought a green journal,

while he was at work,
I wrote quickly and secretly,
to bring it up to date.

The imaginary account,
of my sensual life.

Does writing about this,
extremely unconventional
web of relationships

also justify it?
Does it absolve you of any
issues of morality?

Well you see,
it allowed me to live and,

to watch myself live,
at a distance.

I called it,
the double monde .

It turned me
into an observer, reporting.

Did it make your
betrayals bearable?

Perhaps some things are
buried in the bone.

And then June Miller
came back from New York.

June arrived last night,
I was stunned.

I am like a person drowning.

And I found no pain,
at the sound of her voice,

no bliss.

June is my adventure,
and my passion,
but Henry is my love.

I cannot face them both.

At first,
June had wanted to fight me.

At the first sight of my eyes,
she trusted me again.

On the bed with June,
she began to kiss me saying,

"how little you are,
I could break you in two.

We kissed
each other, passionately.

her light moth kisses
showered on me,

she said,
"you look beautiful now".

I said, "let me see your body".

I was aware of a standstill,
June said "not yet".

I ought to strangle you.

She began to extract
confidences from me.

I was wary,
I depicted the quality
of my love for Henry,

while deforming completely
the facts about him.

What a superb game,
the three of us were playing.

Who is the demon?
Who the liar?
Who loves the most?

What has he done for me?

They had both betrayed her,
so Anais Nin herself,

had a sort
of sexual involvement
with June.

But it was very twisted.
And it resulted in the end
of Henry and June's marriage.

So Anais now got Henry
all to herself,
and they could just be

writers together.

June told Henry "I know
everything, that you love Anais,
and Anais loves you".

June left and,
and Henry rushed over to me.

And we plunged into work.

There is in our relationship,
both humanists,
and monstrosity.

Our love is humane,
I sense when he is cold,
I get him blankets.

But our work,
is monstrous.

When we write
we heighten,
exaggerate, color,

There are satanic joys,
known to writers only.

June is a story teller.

Dragged in our romances.

I, begin to notice
discrepancies in her stories.

Childish lies,
she lives without magic.

He is rewriting his novel,
Tropic of Cancer ,
immersed in the past.

I gave him my ideas on June,
and he uses them.

When June leaves
with great dignity,
it's as though Anais and Henry

say to themselves,
"alright well,
let's really destroy her.

Let's take who this person was
as a human being,
and write her as a character".

And so I feel like Anais Nin,
and Henry Miller got famous,
off the back of writing

about June Miller.

And it says something
about how cruel writers
can somehow be,

I think they both did her over.

I think that she considered
herself to be a diarist,
and had fantasies

of being a published author.
But I don't think it was until
she met Miller,

That she really began to realize
that as a possibility,
for herself.

What she wants to do,
is put sex into writing.

She can't stop writing,
she can't stop having sex,
she can't stop gathering

experiences to herself.
She needed the writing
to make sense of the experience.

But also,
she was having the experience,
to do the writing.

A woman artist,
has to feel creation and life
in our own way,

or in our own womb.
She has to create something
different from a man.

To create within
the mystery storms,
and terrors of sex,

women must not fabricate,
she has to descend
into a real womb and,

and expose its secrets,
and labyrinths.
She's the mermaid with her

fish tail dipped
into the unconscious.

So this way of life simply,
carried on?

Yes when,

when Hugo went away on business,
Henry would come and live
with me in the house.

Did you feel much guilt?
I know you had therapy
throughout this time.

Well yes,
I had therapy for many years.

This here gave me absolution,
and helped me to see,

I should feel no Catholic guilt.

It was a great influence
on my writing.

Jung said "proceed
from the dream outwards",
and that is always how

I've tried to write.

I say this is a wild dream.

But it is this dream,
I want to realize.

Life and literature combined.

Love, a diamond.

You with your chameleon soul,
giving me a thousand loves.

Being anchored always
in no matter what storm,
home wherever we are.

In the mornings,
continuing where we left off.

Resurrection after resurrection.

When, Anais experienced
that first taste,

of sexual pleasure,
and sexual fulfilment,
it blew the doors wide open.

And she,
had a glimpse into what
is essentially a very mysterious

part of human life.
That we still to this day,
are not particularly

comfortable in talking about.

So she went on an odyssey,
searching to throw off

the fevers and the shackles.

Through various men.

So you had freed yourself
from guilt,
and now you could do

as a man does,
and take many lovers.

It was not just Henry Miller,
was it?
There are others too,

Gonzalo, the South
American revolutionary?

Oh, Gonzalo.

[foreign language]

Then you're my tiger of dreams.

My tiger,

[foreign language]

-What do I have to do?
-He whispered,
while we danced.

You are the perfume
and essence of all things.

You have bruised your head,
against the world's reality.

You don't see the city,
houses, men,
you see beyond.

But I don't want,
always what is beyond.

I want this world.

This world but,
with grandchildren,
and heroism.

I want to go to Spain
with you now,
I want to see war.

When she met Gonzalo,
interestingly he was,

in a sense,
the traditional Spanish man.

And he brought out,
the passive, feminine,

woman in her.
And she thoroughly enjoyed it.

And I think she was
also attracted to what,
initially seemed to be his,

radical politics,
and his fieriness,
and his kind of seriousness,

and his passion.
Which was a counter point,
both to Henry and to Hugo,

I would say.
In terms of temperament.

Here is Gonzalo,
ardently breathing out
the fire of revolution.

He wants to kiss me wildly,
and talk vehemently.

With Gonzalo I entered
that dream of communism,
its essence.

The white ghost of communism,
as it must have been in Russia.

Little idiot Anais,
you're given a spider web,

and you want to make a sail
out of it,
and sail a boat.

Oh I want a boat,
I want to get outside
of the world with Gonzalo.

He is a pirate, an anarchist,
lover, and warrior.

Anais Donclay,
at dawn he must put
on his armor.

He will leave you for a crusade.

So what did Gonzalo feel in you?

The writing, the diaries.

I was surrendering
to great passion,
and reporting back

through the diaries,
the experience of a woman.

Revolution is another orgasm,
sainthood is another orgasm.

They are made of wafers,
on the lip,
of blood and wounds,

experiencing while blabbering
odd or dead words,
in epilepsy,

or insanity.
All pulsations leading
to explosion.

Gongs of pleasure,
sound in church bells,
or death mills.

I wanted a houseboat
on the sand,
to look Gonzalo and to write.

I wrote on the title page,
Les mots flottants ,
the floating words.

I had to find
a houseboat for them.

Was Henry jealous,
of Gonzalo?

Yes, and they both fought
desperately for my attention.

There was a Saturday night,
when Henry insisted that
I was with him,

so Gonzalo insisted
on the same night.

That evening,
I put a sleep drug
in Henry's tea,

and by 10 o'clock,
he was asleep.

I dressed,
and crept to Gonzalo.

And he was so frightened,
by what Henry would do,
if he woke,

that he couldn't perform.

At 5:30 am,
I rushed back to Henry.

He hadn't woken,
the luck of the bandits.

I gave Henry everything
that he wanted and,

then went home and gave
Hugo a gift.

Was it just sex or love?

I had at that time an,

emotional love tapeworm,
never enough.

When you vibrate
deeply, sexually,

when you love passionately,

then it is like a warm current,
in the body,
which creates a warm contact

with all.
I feel so many people.

Physically, amorously, cause
I am in a state of warmth,

like a mystic,
it is immensely overflow.

But mainly it was
Gonzalo More, Henry Miller,
and my husband Hugo

They were the three main men,
during my lady time in Paris.

It feels as if Paris,
was a love affair too.

That all this,
couldn't of happened
anywhere else.

Well there was,
there was such a magic
about Paris.

The smell of pate, and charcoal
burners, tobacco,
and cafe o'lait,

and the people.

We went to the madness
club house,
with an omelet,

with a big pockets.

And then to play chess
at the cafe,
where the old actors

meet for a game,
to the tunes of those tired
classical musicians

playing quartets,
and we stayed until dawn.

As the tired prostitutes
wore down,
and the music inside of me.

I feel the mad hope of jazz,
it ended in my blood.

[radio broadcast]

England is determined
that the violence must cease.

Premier Deladier told
the foreign affairs commission,
to the chamber of deputies

that France does not wish
to live any longer,
in the state of insecurity,

prevailing in the last
few years.
And both Allies,

have said that they cannot
trust the word of the present
German government.

The bombs aren't
literally falling around her,
but they might as well be,

at that point.

It suddenly dawns on her,
that perhaps being in Europe,

in the midst of World War II,
is not the best idea.

At the first air raids,
I would not hide.

I wanted to encounter war,
and feel its burning face.

A shell fell in my courtyard,
Hugo was ordered back
to the United States.

It was time for us to leave
for New York.

The parting from Paris,
the parting from a form of life,

from mysterious nights,
the menace of war,

the sound of anti-aircraft guns,
of airplanes passing,
of sirens.

When Gonzalo came to see me,
I was weeping.

I felt too wrenching from Henry.

I carried the diaries,
in a little blue cloth bag.

The time on the train,
was so long and sad.

A glimpse of the tragic face
of Spain, its hunger, its ruins.

At the frontier,
locked up in the cloth bag,
lies the hidden story

of these eight years.

When I felt so uprooted,
torn, split,

I reread two volumes,
and felt again,
the force of my life,

the fire of it.
I warmed myself,
to my one flame.

It was,
I felt small and sick,
and powerless at that moment.

I think Paris was
this gorgeous bubble,
I think the war was

a real reckoning.

And it was reality,
slamming down.

So Anais Nin goes to New York,
which she describes as,

brutal, and mechanistic,
and hard, and full of concrete,
and poverty, and strife.

She describes American
as robots,
and she is rootless.

New York,
I feel like a ghost.

Hugo's bank takes care of us,
so I enter a palace
of Byzantine luxury.

The more comforts, warmth,
luxurious beds, service,

the lonelier I feel.

As one can only feel
in a palace.

I landed in my diaries,
but without my soul.

The machine in Europe,
it is killing people,
and here it is canning them.

It would have been better
for all of us to die in flame,
than this kind of death.

And then the others arrived.

Gonzalo, and Henry,

I paid their fares,
their rents.

I was overstretched financially,
but I felt responsible
for them all.

But you managed,
you supported them all.

With a little bit of help,
you see Henry was offered
100 dollars a month,

to write erotic stories
about a wealthy client.

At first he wrote all these
wild stories but,

but then he got annoyed,
because of course he wanted
to do his proper writing, so

so he suggested that
I give it a go.

I wrote a few stories,
and sent them off and,

and then I received
a phone call.

It's fine,
but leave out the poetry,
and the descriptions

of anything but the sex.
I just want the sex.

So I began to write,
a bit tongue in cheek.

I was so outlandish
and inventive,
I thought it would be too much.

I spent days studying
the Karma Sutra.

And listening to friends'
most extreme adventures.

And what does the beast do?

I had a feeling that here
was a Pandora's box which,

contained women's sensuality.

So different from a man's,
and from which man's language,

seemed inadequate.

-Would you like me to read
some of the stories?
-Please.

She remembered Martinez,
the flick of his tongue
covering the distance,

from the pubic hair
to the buttocks.

How do I look to him,
she asked herself.

she got up and brought
a long mirror,
and stood it against the chair.

Then she sat down
in front of it,
and slowly opened her legs.

The sight was enchanting.

She thought it was like
the gum plant leaf,
with its secret milk,

that the pressure
of the finger could bring out.

The odorous moisture,
that came like the moisture
of the seashells.

Women discovered
in Anais Nin's writing,
a kind of delicacy,

and a poise and intelligence,
that are really unique.

It wasn't about how do
men see women?
It was about how do,

women see women?
How do,
women experience the world

and experience their sexuality?

She described a woman being able
to pleasure herself,
for herself, with herself.

And, also men were there,
but it was women

as the center
of everything.

And with her fingers,
she opened the two little lips
of the vulva.

And she began stroking it,
with cat like softness,
back and forth.

She writes in her sort of,

dream state.
She just slips into this
far more, free fall,

impressionistic state.
Which is quite original,
it's sexy,

there are no boundaries.
There's bestiality,

there's paedophilia,
there's necrophilia,
there's lesbian scenes,

there's everything.
She's just running through
this gimmick of fantasies.

Some of it,
presumably based
on her inexperience.

While writing the erotica,
I remembered this,

I was seven or eight years,
my father always took us
to the attic to be whipped.

We all hated this,
and begged to be forgiven.

Now I ask myself,
if the hand that administered
the powerful spankings,

must have awakened
a region of pleasure.

I never before was aware,
of a link between them.

Until one night I entered
one of those booths,
where they show erotic films.

And I saw a scene where
a woman bent another over,
and began spanking her sharply.

I felt the most
amazing pleasure.
I grew wet between the legs,

and began to palpitate,
almost reaching orgasm.

I entered into a period,
of erotic madness.

Some were young,
too young.

Deliver me from obsessive love.

People think I only crave
love or worship.

Nobody knows I am crying out
for my very existence.

I only exist in the body
of my lover.

How can I go anywhere, alone?

I have written not to be alone.

I see her as this,
quite broken individual.

Who had lots of pathologies,
which are clearly
survival mechanisms.

She's not,
she's not this abusive woman,

who's deliberately
mistreating others,
she's someone who is skating

on thin ice, psychologically.

With huge amounts of ambition,
and desire, and energy,
and of course,

you know what does a woman
have to sell,
if she's got nothing?

Her sexuality,
because there's nothing left.

As she started getting
into the affairs,
I myself was a young woman,

and was shocked.
And I had to grapple with my own

feelings of judgment.

When it came to reading about
her affair with her father,

I, threw the book
across the room.

And, had to take
a few deep breaths.

I await my father
with deep joy and patience.

I recognize in him the king,
the leader of the mental world
I had created alone.

I am dazzled,
his hair was perfumed,
his nails immaculate.

She meets him again,
when she's 33,
and he's about 53.

And he is a dashing man,
who flirts with her.

Now what a fascinating thing,
for her to,

perhaps turn the tables,
on him.

He was watching me, constantly.

He said, "what a tragedy
I meet the woman of my life,

and it is my daughter".

We looked at each other,
as if in a dream,

we kissed,
and that kiss unleashed a wave,
of desire.

"We must avoid possession",
he said,
"but oh let me kiss you".

He uncovered himself,
and with a strange violence,

I lifted my negligee,
and lay over him.

Anais he cried,
"I've lost my god".

Were you happy?

Happy?

I have never described before,

the act of self-murder,
which takes place after
my being with someone.

A sense of shame,
for the most trivial defect.

Lack, sleep, error,
for being too passionate.

For not being free,
or being too impulsive.

For not being myself,
or being too much so.

-That is, very touching,
it sounds so-
-Desperate.

It was.

I had finished with Gonzalo,
and, I had finished with Henry,

Hugo was more of
a brother to me,
most of the time.

And the diaries?
At this point everyone,
knew about them,

but they didn't get published.

The thing that,
made me very sad was that,

everything that I wrote,
the stories, the novels,
originated from the diaries.

But I couldn't get the diaries
past the censor.

She suddenly changes
from the person who only wants
to have love affairs,

and see where that takes her,
to being someone that says
now I want to get this work

out and no one will take it.

So she just buys her own press,
and publishes her own work.

Gonzalo was a trained printist,
so he helps,
but she types it,

and hand cranks all
the work herself.

Work has degraded me,
I have no time for obsessions.
I began typesetting.

I go to work regularly
at the press,
morning and afternoon.

Setting by me,
printing by Gonzalo.
We work with fervor,

and intensity.

June, 1942,
the book was finished at 11:45
at night.

My brother once described me as
a still hummingbird,
determined to be famous.

And I was determined,
20 years of work behind me.

I wrote to colleges,
asking for invitations to speak,
and I sent them copies

of my books,
and photographs, and,

and slowly,
very slowly I began to get
a following for my fiction.

And by the end of the 1940's,
she had quite
a few things published.

Short stories, novels
like House of Incest,
and Winter of Artif ,e

and some volumes
of the early diaries.

And on these university tours,
she was met with a lot

of avid,
young feminist students,
in particular.

Who had been very inspired
by the diary,
and by the sense

that Nin had lived,
what seemed impossible
at the time,

this truly liberated life,
as a woman.

And so for certain feminists,
she was somewhat of an icon.

You said you're still
with your husband.

-Do you sort of muddle along?
-Not muddle along as a person.

-Oh I'm sorry, I didn't.
- F. Scott Fitzgerald said
that there are no second acts,

in American lives.

Of course we know that
he is wrong.

He looks like Hugo,
20 years ago.

Everybody says that.

His name is Rupert Pole,
he works for the forestry
commission in California.

I have two husbands,
it's complicated.

What's really interesting
about Nin,
is that from the 40's onwards,

she has two husbands.
One on the east coast,
Hugo the original husband,

one on the west coast,
Rupert Pole.
And she flies between

the two husbands.
Neither of them know
about each other.

In her day it was so shocking,
that it could never come out,
so she had to have

two check books,
two sets of prescriptions,
either side

of the Atlantic,
she had to have a lie box,
so she knew what she was telling

each husband.
She's behaving like a character
in her book,

so she's maintained
these facades of lies.
And she has these

multiple diaries where
one of them,
is the real diary.

In which she writes about
what she's truly getting up to.
And the other one

is just like a prop,
in a drama.
What's astounding really,

is that she was able to keep
those two lives going
for so long,

we're talking around
about 30 years,
that she kept up,

this traveling back and forth.

The salacious details
of her life,
tend to obscure

how good a writer
she actually was.
And you don't get to be

a New York Times best seller,
without being a good writer.

People wanted to read
this stuff,
and people still want to read

this stuff.

And that's a testament,
I think to the power
of her writing,

and how interesting
her ideas are.