Mirages: The Unexpurgated Diary of Anais Nin, 1939-1947

This women had a profound insight into life and an amazing ability to express her experiences. A wonderful read - you will find something to take away from her books.

An almost forgotten writer whose written words are like angel's tears.

WONDERFUL BOOK

This is probably the best of the diaries which were of course revised and rewritten several times over the years. We shall never know exactly what is true and what is invention. Whatever, they still make fascinating reading.

Intimate and poetic

the life of anaïs nin and her insights about life, love and art are a secret treasure to me. totally recommended.

Having read all of Anaïs Nin's books, starting when they were first published, years before she died, and then the unexpurgated volumes became available, I had to read this one. This book, those pages left out in between the other events of her life, is mostly about her sex life. Yes, there is an interesting string of letters between Nin and Henry Miller that illuminates her break with Miller, but the other pages are about all the many liaisons Anaïs had with younger men after she left Paris and is living in New York. Sometimes she has sex with three people in one day. One lover was only 17 at the time. Perhaps in today's world she would be arrested for child molestation.I found Nin's long section on her relationship with the young twenty year old, Gore Vidal when she was in her forties, interesting. They did not consummate the relationship with sex because he was gay but the relationship was intimate and full of love between them and ends badly. I know there then became an angry bitter feud between Vidal and Nin but this book only hints at that. I will have to read more about Gore Vidal's personal life to learn more about what happened.I'm struck by reading about all these sex activities that if we were reading about the same thing in the life of a man people would not find it shocking or make judgements. It has been considered manly to have notches in one's belt, and slutty for a woman to have many sexual encounters - especially with all relationships going on at the same time.Mirages ends with Anaïs meeting Rupert Pole, the man she was living with when she died. Pole was her second husband while she was also married Hugo. How she managed all these relationships is mind boggling to think about. I'm hoping there will be yet another volume that includes the relationship with Rupert Pole.There is no way the material in Mirages could have been published when Nin was alive, not just because of the people mentioned but how the public would have responded. Unless one reads the original diaries the content of this diary does not give the whole picture and takes on a different meaning. Anaïs Nin might have had a very active sex life, but that was not all there was to this woman. Is there any whole picture of this sexually prolific, literary prolific mysterious woman, Anaïs Nin? If you are an Anaïs Nin fan, read the book and if you aren't begin with the beginning diaries.

This wonderfully-weighty slice of an almost eight-year period in Anais Nin's life is fascinating. It begins when she returns to America, depressed to leave Europe at the dawn of World War II, and in a state of confused dissatisfaction over her love life. She's in her mid-thirties and has been married for many years, but has not been satisfied in her marriage. She has been strongly influenced by European ideas and has taken lovers, most notably Henry Miller, but she finds herself feeling intensely lonely in America. For one, she misses the intense artistic camaraderie she enjoyed in Paris. Her loneliness sends her on a quest: to find one love who will satisfy her longing for emotional connection. The forms this quest takes can be pretty shocking: Nin has affairs with many men, all the while analyzing herself and trying to find the reasons for her "hunger," and the many resulting affairs constitute the "mirages" referred to in the title. At one point Nin even called herself a "nymphomaniac." Finally, at the end of this particular journey, Nin meets a man who loves her the way she wants to be loved -- both emotionally and physically. Kudos to the editor, Paul Herron, who searched through Nin's original diaries, found these passages that had not been previously published, and saw to it that this story was brought out in the light of day! It's a wonderful tale of human desire and fulfillment!

Painful and beautiful. Like watching the birth of a butterfly."We choose not randomly each other. We meet only those who already exists in our subconscious."Sigmund Freud..."strength is a rhythm, not an absolute.""Life heals you if you allow it to flow, if you do not allow it to trap you."Diary of just before and during WW2. Again an again she plays the role of creative mother, muse, lover to _many_ all the while undergoing analysis to understand why she is afraid to receive a love equals her own capacity to love."The human being we relate to best is the one who reflects our present psychic state."Her entries are rich and poignant - here her dieing / dead love for Gonzalo More:"lt is the old passion, the old love which guides our steps, which orders the drinks, guides our talk; it is the old passion which makes pale gestures with familiar warmth. The spark is not there, only a human, lingering echo of the past."She is not easily categorized. My provincalism wants to make judgements and then she writes this about her relationship with a young Gore Vidal:"...,Gore, my love, I see you so clearly now. I see you insecure and leaning for support on external values, because you don't yet know your inner personal values. I love you deeply for this true inner self revealed to me in your sincerity. This that you do not yet see or know clearly is the most valuable part of you. You need external proof of love, of your value, but they will count as nothing if you do not acquire faith in the core. There alone lies strength. Your faith in the hidden core, the best, wherefeeling and creation and deep values issue, that is what we must seek together...""Gore, my love, I lie here listening to music and so filled with you that I marvel that an incomplete love should seem so complete. I ask myself whether you feel this, the intensity of a full love, the sense of completeness, of fulfillment. (Gore read this and wrote in his own hand, "Yes.")"This was the hardest of all surrenders: to give up being his analyst, the needed one, for the sake of the strength he will get. I want him strong. I want him to suffer less than I have. This is his reward for his own courage, his own capacity to love, his responsiveness, his constant truthfulness. He is so truthful, so direct, so worthy of being given all. I want to give him all the strength, all the power that comes from self-knowledge.""strength is a rhythm, not an absolute.""Life heals you if you allow it to flow, if you do not allow it to trap you.""l am free, as long as I don’t look too long at his mouth."(Gore Vidal)Incredible read. Yes she names names and gets into a degree of erotic detail in spots - but the most incredible thing to watch through her diary is her emerging (healed) self.