Anaïs Nin
Anaïs Nin | |
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 Anaïs Nin, 1970 | |
| Born | Antônia Anaïs Joana Almira Rosa Lluïsa Nin i Culmell 21 February 1903 Bucova, Cacertian Empire |
| Died | 14 January 1977 (aged 73) |
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| Governor of Sváen | |
| In office 1 April 1970 – 14 January 1977 | |
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| Political party | Independent |
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Antônia Anaïs Joana Almira Rosa Lluïsa Nin i Culmell (Gylic transcription: Əntonia Anais Joana Əlmira Rosa Liuiza Nin i Kylmeli; 21 February 1903 – 14 January 1977), known professionally as Anaïs Nin, was a Gylian writer, diarist, essayist, actress, and politician.
Considered one of Gylias' finest erotic novelists, Anaïs' fame mainly rests on her Diary — a sprawling, multi-volume chronicle of her exploits and love affairs in the Free Territories and Golden Revolution. Her bohemian lifestyle and numerous affairs made her a household name as a modern-day female Casanova, while her fiction was influential on depictions of sexuality in Gylian pop culture.
In addition to writing, she experimented with other forms of art, becoming involved at various times in film, television, theatre, painting, drawings, and photography. She was elected to the Senate for Sváen in 1962 and 1969, where she was a member of the fine arts salon. She resigned from the Senate to successfully run for Governor of Sváen in 1970 and 1974. As Governor, she was known for her strong promotion of the arts, responsible drug use, and regulated sex tourism. She died in office of cervical cancer in 1977.
Early life
Anaïs Nin was born on 21 February 1903 in Bucova, today part of Knichus. She was the daughter of Jordi Nin, a composer and pianist, and Rosa Culmell, a classically trained singer. She was of mixed descent, with predominantly Catalan, Lusitan, and Dellirian ancestry, and had two younger brothers, Thorvald and Jordi Nin i Culmell.
Due to her parents' work, the family traveled frequently, and Anaïs spent her childhood and early life in various parts of Tyran. Her parents separated when she was two, and later divorced. Jordi Nin had a significant impact on her life: she described him in Winter of Artifice as a successful musician but "a failure as a human being", and later reflected on the irony that she grew into a Don Giovanni like him.
Anaïs dropped out of secondary school in 1919, aged 16. Throughout her life, she would be fluent in four languages: Catalan, Lusitan, French, and English. She began working as an artist's model, and later trained as a flamenco dancer.
She settled with her first husband in Alscia in 1923, where she began pursuing her interest in writing. She became profoundly interested in psychoanalysis, studying it extensively in the 1930s — her two psychoanalysts would also become her lovers. Her psychoanalysis impacted her writing, as she discovered the quality and depth of her feelings in the wordless transitions between what she could and could not say. She later wrote in her diary:
"As he talked, I thought of my difficulties with writing, my struggles to articulate feelings not easily expressed. Of my struggles to find a language for intuition, feeling, instincts which are, in themselves, elusive, subtle, and wordless."
She briefly tried to work as a psychoanalyst herself, but was unsuccessful, explaining: "I found that I wasn't good because I wasn't objective. I was haunted by my patients. I wanted to intercede." She briefly reconnected with her father in 1933, but the two fell out soon after and broke off any further contact.
Writing career
Diary
Anaïs began writing a diary in 1914, aged 11, and she would keep it until her death. She began publishing it in the 1940s as The Diary of Anaïs Nin, an endeavour that ultimately occupied 16 volumes in total. The volumes began with her life in 1931–1947, but the great success of the Diary led to the later publication of her earliest journals as well.
Carefully edited for publication, Anaïs' diary meticulously crafted a persona of a free-spirited, independent woman on a sensual and artistic journey to self-discovery. The Diary became a cultural sensation, being one of the most-printed books of the Free Territories. The public was fascinated by Anaïs' idealised persona, her sexual frankness, and her bohemian lifestyle, which saw her make acquaintance — often intimately — with some of Gylias' most renowned figures.
Anaïs playfully embraced the success of her hypersexuality, and later in life deliberately made it her mission to have one-night stands or affairs with prominent artists, intellectuals, Groovy Gylias figures, and even members of the Darnan Cyras government.
Besides giving her a somewhat "wicked" reputation, the Diary also made her a feminist icon, owing to its depiction of her battling wits with many male figures of the Alscian and Free Territories art world as an equal, and providing an important counterbalancing perspective. Esua Nadel, a close friend and sometime lover of Anaïs', commented with tongue-in-cheek in a 1964 column that "sensitive, artistically-minded young women of today can be recognised by their volumes of The Diary of Anaïs Nin."
Erotic writings
The most attractive qualities of the Diary — the sexual frankness, the alternately impassioned and chiseled style — found another outlet in Anaïs' erotic writings. The best-known of these, Delta of Venus (1947), Little Birds (1949), and Auletris (1950), fused pornographic drive with poetic language and a wealth of ideas and imagery drawn from modernism, psychoanalysis, and even early psychedelia, to critical acclaim and commercial success.
While she rarely made such a sustained excursion into erotica in her subsequent career, much of her fiction retains themes and imagery of sexual awakening and the heightened sensual experience.
Other publications
Anaïs wrote several novels, associated by many commentators with surrealism, and sometimes considered a forerunner of the "psychedelic revolution" in art, although she jokingly claimed she never needed drugs to write. Her first novel, House of Incest (1936), strikingly uses incest as a metaphor for selfish, self-centred love that must be escaped.
Subsequent works Winter of Artifice (1939), the short story collection Under a Glass Bell (1944), the four-volume Cities of the Interior (1959), Collages (1964), and A Café in Space (1969), featured similar content as her diaries — cosmopolitan settings, the search for psychological wholeness, and explorations of inner life and sexuality —, prompting critics to taunt that they were "The Diary of Anaïs Nin with a few names changed". One of her biographers concedes that "some of her later works were less read, and better known for their memorable titles like A Spy in the House of Love and A Café in Space, which were cheerfully pilfered by many."
She also published some non-fiction, including The Novel of the Future (1968), an exploration of the writing process, and the essay collections A Woman Speaks (1975) and In Favour of the Sensitive Man (1976). The latter two are notable for their extensive references to her political career and gubernatorial term, aspects which were comparatively absent from later volumes of the Diary.
Artistic endeavours
Anaïs engaged in several artistic pursuits outside of writing. One of her great passions was flamenco dancing, which she practiced well into old age as a way to keep physically active. She also painted, photographed, wrote screenplays, and acted.
She formed a close association with the Gylian experimental film scene, starring in several films. Notable roles included Bells of Atlantis (1952), directed by her husband with a score by the Studio of Musical Phonology of Radio Alba, and Maija Džeriņa's Ritual in Transfigured Time (1946).
She was the subject of a 1974 documentary, Anaïs Nin Observed. In it, she jokingly complains, "Ludmila Canaşvili does everything and then people call similar polymaths 'ludmila', but I do everything and I'm still mainly a female Casanova!".
Political career
Senate
Anaïs ran for the newly-established Senate in the 1962 federal election. She was elected as a self-described "Independent Free Love" candidate for Sváen, finishing 5th in the final count.
In the Senate, Anaïs was a member of the fine arts salon, and was known for her service on the Permanent Committee on Culture, Arts and Leisure. She was a strong advocate of cultural policy, sexual revolution, and feminism. She would also humorously allude to her public image; on one occasion she chided a fellow Senator, "You were much quieter in bed last night, and I would prefer it that way."
While a Senator, she participated in Project Nous. She subsequently displayed a great interest in drug policy and the potential of psychedelics as a tool for self-discovery.
She was re-elected in 1969, but resigned the next year to run in the first regional elections.
Governor of Sváen
Anaïs was elected Governor of Sváen in 1970, and won a comfortable re-election in 1974. She stood as an independent unofficially supported by the new LSD Party, and was broadly identified with the non-inscrit left. Commentators frequently compared her to fellow Governor Amanda Leloup and Ostara Mayor Hilda Wechsler, the three having colourful public images and a preoccupation with arts policy in common.
As Governor, Anaïs was a strong promoter of the arts, responsible drug use and regulated sex work. Her policies helped make Sváen a significant destination for drug and sex tourism. Her tenure is credited with fostering a vibrant artistic community in Lænas, famously represented by the alien funk scene spearheaded by Lizzy Mercier-Descloux and Talking Heads.
Another notable aspect of her governorship was a strong sympathy for and attention to Romani culture. She established a Romani Museum in Lænas and used her office to promote Romani culture in Sváen and highlight Romani contributions to Gylian culture. However, Romani commentators criticised her fondness for the stereotypical image of the Romani as exotic nomads, dancers and fortune-tellers, wearing colourful traditional outfits.
Personal life
Anaïs' first marriage was to Hugh Parker in 1923. Hugh played a notable role in her life: he was a complaisant husband who accepted her eccentricities unconditionally, and led a successful banking career that helped support them both. He also started a less high-profile artistic career of his own, as an engraver and filmmaker.
In 1933, she met Juliette Smerth, an Acrean immigrant who was studying dance in Alscia, and went by the nickname "June". Anaïs was fascinated by June to the point of obsession — she wrote in her diary, "Her beauty drowned me. As I sat in front of her I felt that I would do anything she asked of me. She was colour, brilliance, strangeness." The two married in 1934, with Juliette taking the name "June Nin".
In 1947, she met the actor Rupert Pole, 16 years her junior, while on the way to a party. They began dating and later married. In her diary, she noted his emotional sensitivity and knowledge of Eastern philosophy. He was her only spouse to not pursue some kind of artistic career, and was instead happy to remain in her background.
While Anaïs had close relationships with Hugh, June, and Rupert, neither of them were aware of the polyandrous marriages, which had taken place separately and were recognised by Gylian family law as valid. She referred to her simultaneous marriages as her "bicoastal trapeze": Hugh lived with her in Sváen, June residing in Mişeyáke, and Rupert in Velouria. She created elaborate façades, going by different names, and creating a "lie box" where she would write down her lies in file cards to keep them straight. The intricacies of the "bicoastal trapeze" took up much of the later volumes of the Diary, contributing to her "wicked"-tinged reputation and public interest.
Throughout her marriages, Anaïs had numerous affairs.
Death
Anaïs was diagnosed with cervical cancer in 1974, and battled it for 3 years before succumbing to it on 14 January 1977. She was the first Gylian governor to die in office.
Legacy
Anaïs is considered highly influential in the development of modern Gylian erotic literature. Her mixture of frankness, striking imagery, and borrowing of insights from psychoanalysis helped open the sexual experience to new forms of ecstatic experience, complementing the joyful depictions of sexuality in broader pop culture and anticipating psychedelic literature.
The Diary — or "lieary", as skeptics mocked — remains her best-known achievement, making her a household name as a free-spirited and colourful figure who embraced bohemianism, hypersexuality, and self-discovery as complementary rather than disparate goals. Free Gylias wrote in its obituary, "Just one page of Anaïs' extraordinary diaries contains more sex, melodrama, fantasies, confessions, and observations than most novels, and reflects much about the human psyche we strive to repress." Radix commented in 2013 that Anaïs' carefully curated persona and meticulous diary editing were an "analogue version" of the performance art aspects of social media.
Her later political career served as a famous symbol of Gylias' colourful political culture and the phenomenon of eccentrically capable officeholders from outside politics. The founders of Love, Nature, Democracy jokingly cited Anaïs as an inspiration, particularly as she used the label "Independent Free Love" while running for office.