'Proceed from the dream outwards..' That was Jung's credo and Anais Nin [born 20:16 GMT, February 21 1903, Paris. Click here for chart] adopted it, not just in her writing but in her life too. The life of dreams, of imagination, the inner life - she knew their importance, at a time when few people recognised this. All the many books that are around nowadays, that could be loosely called 'self help' and personal growth, take it as given that the inner self or Self, Overself, Higher Self is not the personality, not our rational minds, not our social conditioning, but something much greater than that; what it actually is defies definition, in the way that God does. But nowadays there are many books, suggesting many different ways of getting in touch with that Self; and many more telling the story or the journey of that discovery.

And that's what Nin was writing about - that ongoing process of discovery - using the material of her own life, own experience, emotions, ideas and insights; her life and her writing were really a voyage of discovery. She was also a pioneer, because not many people at that time gave much importance to the discovery of the Self. The analysts maybe, but not many writers; her writing became attuned with the Zeitgeist in the late 60s and 70s (along with Hermann Hesse).

Themes of unity and of duality crop up again and again in her writing. She was involved in the crucial work of trying to unite or at least include, many of life's polarities, in particular - that of the expressive/creative self and the analytical, interpretive self. Other polarities include male/female, assertive/receptive, intellect/emotions, dream reality and waking reality - we're all familiar with these. The fascinating thing is that we are all two people, or two polarities yet we spend a lot of time identifying with one and denying the other, sometimes projecting it onto some handy other or group of others.

But Nin recognised her fluctuating identifications and also recognised that both were her; her writing could not be categorised; she attempted to bring together both the creative imagination and meaningful interpretation. So she could not be defined as either a writer of creative fiction or a psychologist/philosopher. She was both of these - a true Uranian in the sense of going for both/and rather than either/or. But like many Uranian types she was ahead of her time so that a wider recognition of her work did not come until her life was nearly over. Nin tried to bring together the story and the interpretation, the elucidation, of the story.

Anais Nin's biographer, Dierdre Bair, says in the introduction to her book - 'The quality of mutability was what intrigued me most as I struggled to interpret the facts and events of her life.'

A creator of images, Anais refused to live within one or be defined by one. She had the chameleon-like quality of the Pisces energy, its ability to adapt and change colouring, according to external circumstances. When we look at her life what comes up again and again is not just her achievement - which was both voluminous and far-reaching - but also the fact that both it and the person herself, cannot really be separated from the emotional environment.

The chameleon changes according to the physical coloration of the environment. Nin changed according to the emotional colouring. Separation from the external world was not her forte - although she could and often did, feel isolated and alone; her philosophy was more one of immersion in the world; in that, she was a true Pisces who seeks oneness; oneness with the environment, oneness with others, oneness with the Self, the higher union of the mystics.

And from the rich diversity of her experience, she created something akin to a philosophy - a search for meaning in life, answers to life's deepest questions, through the explorations of feelings involved as we contact life. Her instincts were always to explore, to go further. She immersed herself in the moment, the place, the people, the feelings and connections. This seemed to be both partly as a means of understanding self and others - a way of finding meaning - and partly as a resource for her writing. For we have to remember the necessary solitude of the writer, when the focus switches to a relationship with the imagination.

Wherever she found herself, it seemed, that was the starting point of a journey, an exploration. She looked for a point of contact, where feelings could be shared, where people could reveal themselves to each other, where a place of intimacy could be found.

She was born in Paris, to two talented and very different people. Her father Joaquin Nin, part Spanish, part Cuban, was virtually penniless, though supported by his family. A musician, also involved in photography, he was 'filled with nervous energy', with ' a disconcerting gaze'; 'he believed he deserved unstinting homage and acclaim from women, but more so from the world at large'; he 'believed he was a genius' and needed to pursue his career in Europe. He realised Rosa Culmell could be useful to him - her father had money, prestige and social standing in Havana. Rosa was older, musically talented, intelligent and she adored him. She was also willing to back him up and help him in his career.

Rosa's father was not happy about the marriage but reluctantly gave his consent. Joaquin Nin was 23, Rosa, 31. She was part Danish, part French. She was well educated and travelled, and spoke fluent English and French. She was independent with a strong personality. She was also the mother figure for the rest of the family.

"My mother first saw my father in a music shop in Havana, Cuba. He was nineteen years old. He had come from Barcelona to escape from military service….. My mother was a society girl. Her father was the Danish consul in Havana………My mother was 27 years old and still unmarried. She had mothered all her three brothers and three sisters when her mother ran away…… While she was buying music, she heard the piano………She listened to my father play Beethoven's 'Moonlight Sonata'. He played Chopin particularly sensitively and romantically. For my mother it was love at first sight. For my father, I never knew. He once said 'Rosa's sister was prettier, but Rosa had a strength, a courage, a decisiveness I needed.'"

('Journals of Anais Nin, Vol 1')

After Anais' birth in 1903, Joaquin Nin resented Rosa's attention being given to the child, and found fault with Rosa. His career as pianist did take off, but their income did not greatly improve. Two years later, her brother Thorvald was born. Anais got typhoid fever. There were arguments at home, while Joaquin Nin was "charming for visitors", (Vol 1) and doted on by women. Joaquin Nin was "excessively finicky [and had] "a passion for perfumes and refinements……… .. He demanded a pristine wardrobe of starched shirts and impeccably pressed outer garments he could change several times each day" (Vol 1)

"Joaquin Nin was a great artist, but an egotist to boot, a tyrannical husband and an exacting father. Anais adored him passionately… .. " (Alfred Perles - 'My Friend Henry Miller')

In 1907 they moved to Berlin where their third child, Joaquin, was born in 1908. Then from 1909 - 1912 they lived in Brussels. Joaquin Nin began to beat Rosa and then, more often, the children. Anais writes of his 'coldness, sadism, unspeakable cruelties'

In 1912, Anais had appendicitis - the appendix burst, but she survived. In 1913 they moved to Arcachon in France as a warmer climate was advised for Anais. There, Joaquin Nin cultivated Maruca, (whom he later married), the young daughter of wealthy patrons - the scenes and beatings grew worse. Finally Joaquin Nin left and wrote later to say he was not coming back and would not support them.

Anais wanted to believe that he would come back. She came to be terrified of any parting, particularly from Rosa. By 1914, Rosa found she could not make enough money to support her family. Her sisters helped her and paid for their passage to New York. Anais started writing on the 17 day journey to New York and continued to write in her diary, every day after that.

The diary writing began as a letter to her father - despite his cruel - at times - treatment of his children, Anais was desolate at his departure and for some years, kept up the hope that he would return to them; she certainly wanted to keep in touch with him and though of course not all of the diary was sent to him, she did write him letters and was often disappointed in his replies which seemed to be mainly concerned with correcting her French. (At the time of their move to the USA, transiting Saturn opposed Anais' Uranus and Moon, Uranus was conjunct Mercury and Pluto trined the Sun).

A month after they arrived, she wrote 'I have made a resolution not to have any friends and not to be attached to anyone outside my family. One can't be sure of staying anywhere and if one leaves there is too much sadness.' 'She was a deep sea diver from the start' her brother Joaquin observed, much later, 'and the diary was her indispensable lifeline.'

There were several moves in the next few years, as Rosa tried to get cheaper housing. There was little structure in Anais's life - she was often ill and did not enjoy school. She left when she was 16. This left her free to dream and to write. She was very widely read (Emerson, Dickens, Coleridge, Scott, Plato etc)

Anais was "always very disturbed when someone says something nice, as though I didn't deserve to have people think I am good". (Vol 1) She was already aware of her double personality - the public Miss Nin and the private Linotte, who "is impossible and must be hidden, hidden" This is the key to her split life - what was 'hidden' in her went into the diaries, which she wanted others to read, wanted to express, yet was afraid of being exposed; she was aware to a far greater extent than most people, how much she created her own life - and for this awareness, as much as what she actually wrote, she was condemned as well as praised.

Her biographer talks about 'the problem that plagued her all her life; being unable to move from the journal into fiction'. This is not quite true as she wrote several works of fiction. They drew very heavily from her personal life - but our personal life, I would suggest, is the starting point. What Nin did in her writing was to explore that area of 'reality plus imagination'. Yet this 'inability' does seem to show up a certain area of her personality that comes through in her writing as well as in her life - a difficulty in letting go emotionally. She wanted her life to be "a dream made real" - this is a phrase she used throughout her life.

Her first love, a platonic one, was with her cousin Eduardo, who was also a dreamer, loved poetry and kept a diary. But his mother did not like their association and forbade them to communicate.

She met Hugo Guiler on March 12 1921. "The key to his character" she wrote "is patience....the most incredible, boundless, inimitable and exasperating patience in the world". She also noted "I believe Hugo controls and forces back much that is impulsive in him." Hugo's parents did not approve and actually disowned him, but after much heart-searching on his part, they got engaged and finally married on March 3 1923, in Havana.

Before her marriage Nin wrote "all my life shall be spent in giving him happiness...I promise he shall never be hurt through my fault...I shall think first of him and then of my desires and teach them to become his." But before getting married, another theme of duality arose, in regard to how to live her life - as an independent intellectual or a femme inspiratrice i.e. helpmate to a man. Can I be both she asks herself. "Is such a thing possible?" "Just the same" she says "I always compare my career as a bluestocking to a victory and marriage to a defeat"

And this theme of how much to help and support others, think of them and consider them, and how much to go for what is important to her, is one that goes on throughout her entire life (note the nodes in Aries/ Libra and 1st and 7th houses.)

Interestingly, before their marriage, Hugo wrote in his diary of his difficulty of being his true self with Nin. Each time he tried to be honest, she seemed so shocked that he became silent "for fear of losing your regard. It has almost seemed sometimes that I would have to be someone other than what I thought my best self in order to come up to your ideal of what I should be."

Transits for their marriage were - Jupiter trine Venus, Saturn conjunct Mars and trine Pluto, Neptune sextile Mars and Pluto very close conjunction with Midheaven; also, most importantly, progressed Sun was conjunct natal Venus. A year later, her progressed Moon was conjunct her Ascendant; Rosa and Joaquin left for Cuba at this time, leaving Anais in charge of the household; shortly after this Hugo secured a transfer to Paris, and they moved there at the end of 1924.

After their marriage Hugo supported not just Anais, but also her mother and brother Joaquin. His job at the bank gave him money and the opportunity to live abroad. In Dec 1924, when they moved to Paris, the transits at this time were - Jupiter conjunct Moon, Saturn semi-square Moon, through most of 1925, also Uranus conjunct Venus throughout 1925; Neptune exact inconjunct Venus.

Her father made efforts to regain her and Thorvald's affection, but she fell into a depression which lasted a year. (She did not adjust quickly to any major change of location)

"…when I returned to Europe after ten years in America, my father was at Le Havre to meet me….. I see before me a stranger… .. There is something wrong with his talk. It is artificial." (Vol 1)

She made attempts at writing a play and a novel but could not finish them. But she began to like Paris more. She took dancing lessons, which increased her social life. Dissatisfaction was inevitable as she tried to live only one part of the polarity, that of marriage. "I never, never want to hurt[Hugo]...But I cannot stay at home. I have a desperate desire to know life and to live in order to reach maturity. Our marriage has given me but one kind of knowledge. Unless I am mistaken Hugo, whose mind is always open to new ideas, whose mind tolerates mistakes when they are made in a sincere struggle for truths, Hugo will forgive me". "I feel that I must believe in myself because nobody else does, that only by stubbornness will I survive against other influences and pressure"

By 1930 she has got down to writing - she read DH Lawrence and was so impressed she wrote a book about him. They moved to Louveciennes, outside Paris - her biographer says 'if she had an abiding compulsion, it was for order. Everything - from the linen closet to her writing desk - had to be neatly filed, collated or arranged.'

Alfred Perles writes - "There was a kind of magical quality about the place...[Louveciennes] the villa, situated in the midst of a large garden and overgrown on all sides with ivy and lichen, gave a somewhat neglected impression, but the visitor soon realised that this impression was created on purpose, to heighten the enchantment....Entering the house, one passed from fairyland into the ambience of Spain. More than half the rooms were furnished in warm Moorish style; there was an abundance of fine crystal and beaten copper ornaments."

Anais was sending work out, but only getting rejections. She talked about getting a job but Hugo actively discouraged this, saying that his job at the bank would not allow this. She read Freud and Jung and started writing down her dreams.

On December 5 1931, Henry Miller and a mutual friend came to lunch. Her brother Joaquin's response was 'instant dislike'. Nin's was "he's a man who makes life drunk...he is like me". Hugo's - "I'm going to lose you to Henry" (Transits at this time were - Saturn conjunct Chiron, Jupiter inconjunct Venus; Uranus opposite Mars and Pluto opposite Chiron and trine Venus; it is also interesting to note that in this year, Nin's progressed Sun moved into Aries)

Miller became a frequent visitor; his wife June also came, then returned to New York. Miller taught briefly in Dijon and Nin sent him money, clothes and even a typewriter. On March 8 1932, she began a relationship with Miller, one which was to last for several years. Hugo suspected this and even looked in her diary. Nin persuaded him that what she wrote was not 'real', she'd made it up; Hugo went along with it, as he always would. 1932 was the year of her Saturn return and the publication of her first book - on Lawrence. But the reviews were disappointing.

She gave Miller half of her monthly allowance, that Hugo gave her; she found an apartment for him and Alfred Perles and bought them things. Miller criticized her writing and she listened.

Her inability to create fiction was one of the reasons she gave for entering analysis with Rene Allendy in April 1932. She wrote "I want him to say something unsubtle and formulistic because if he does there will be another man I cannot lean on and therefore will have to go on conquering myself and my life alone, without help."

Allendy asked her 'why she did not confide in others as they did in her, why she insisted on being so reserved, on not having good friends with whom she could relax and be herself. Was she afraid that if she were honest she would be loved less?' Yes, she replied. (This is very Moon in Capricorn)

Throughout 1932, June came and left again, asking for a divorce; its very possible that she'd heard of Miller's affair with Nin. Hugo got involved with astrology and there were, as always, money problems.

Her biographer writes 'Nin's diary writing changed abruptly in 1933, from journals of introspection about life and art to ones replete with violence, arrogance..they are often angry, bitter and cynical. The main topic is sex....she portrays herself as a woman shorn of reason, careening through life like an out-of-control bulldozer, riding roughshod over the normal boundaries of social behaviour...titles [of some of] her diaries [are] "schizoidie and Paranoia, "flagellation" and "Incest"'. It is interesting to note that it was in this year that her progressed Ascendant moved into Scorpio, and she became increasingly involved in the analysis that she had begun the previous year.

In 1933 Miller needed $600 printing costs for Tropic of Cancer. Nin asked Hugo for the money, which he reluctantly gave her, to give to Miller. This year too, her father came to see her and later invited her to stay at his hotel in Valescure. He gave his version of his life with Rosa (she was older, vulgar, yelled, made scenes etc) Nin wrote about him as the "solitary and obstinate visionary... of balance, fairness, logic.." Hugo drew up the father's chart and Nin records "..father's Moon is in my Sun [i.e. Pisces] the strongest attraction between man and woman"

In their next meeting 2 months later however, her father became critical of various things; of her French; for staying married; for supporting Henry. She began to see him in a less idealised light. Later that year she wrote "I am hellishly lonely. What I need is someone who could give me what I give Henry; this constant attentiveness...I make him gifts, I protect him.. he cannot do this...I have to turn to my [diary] to give myself the kind of response I need. I have to nourish myself."

In November 1933 she went to see the analyst Otto Rank. (Jupiter had just crossed her Ascendant; this really did open up a new world for her as she became an analyst herself the following year) At first Rank tried to make her give up the "opium-diary habit"; she tried, but it did not work. She was also working on what would become two novels - House of Incest and Winter of Artifice. She felt profound disillusion with her father.

In 1934 she became pregnant and eventually had a termination. Rank was leaving Paris for New York and asked Nin to go with him and to become an analyst as well. She sailed for New York in November (Jupiter trined her sun). When she arrived, she sent Miller money for his fare. Rank now admired her diary. She seems to have been good as an analyst, for she met up again with several of her clients when she returned to New York for good, in 1939. But one remembers her as 'soothing but scary; there was something about her that kept sucking me in, like an undertow. She was too needy. After a while I was frightened and never went back'. (During her time in New York as an analyst, Jupiter trined Midheaven, Saturn was conjunct the Sun - hard work and increased responsibilities - and Uranus trined her Moon)

Hugo had been working in London and in May he came to New York. Miller asked her to marry him, but she said no. She and Hugo then sailed for Paris and Miller followed. Nin went to Louveciennes, and Hugo back to London. But soon she longed for everything she'd left behind in New York. Miller was spending most of his time at Villa Seurat, getting on with his writing. She writes in her diary of "another evening and morning of the blackest misery" as she worked alone at Louveciennnes (Saturn was conjunct her Sun towards the end of '35)

She decides to go back to New York in '36, and live an independent life as an analyst (Uranus trined her Moon again in January '36, and sextiled her Sun) but in the end, she took Miller with her and did not practise as an analyst, though she did make some important literary contacts. They both returned in April. Henry said that the diary "harms the artist and kills the imagination". Nin said that "it is a friend, it makes me feel less alone"

After a holiday in Morocco with Hugo, she came back to copies of House of Incest, her first published novel. But again, reviews were disappointing - we note Saturn conjunct Venus at this time.

In the summer of this year, she meets Gonzalo Morales and his wife Helba. She also helps them financially. She rents a houseboat on the Seine, to work in, but financial and emotional demands of Henry and Gonzalo (whom she calls her children) drain her. Hugo is away a lot, as always, and one time at Louveciennes, in 1937 Nin writes "I cannot live alone because then I become diseased. My life gets unreal. I must confess I need Hugo's presence humanly....I like the day having order and pattern I must adhere to, but every night faced with solitude I cannot bear it. And now I know my diary was created not to be alone. What a weakness. I need this that I rebel against. I need this home which I say suffocates me, this husband I chafe against. I need all this web, ties, responsibilities, care, all that I curse as an artist". (Vol 2) When she wrote this, Saturn was conjunct her Descendant for the first time. We may not agree with her judgement of it as a weakness, but its clear that she was feeling alone and isolated.

In 1937 she bought a printing press and installed it in Gonzalo's studio. She found she enjoyed setting type, it inspired her ideas.

There were few reviews of House of Incest. Henry's reputation was growing and he also made efforts to get her published. Stories and diary excerpts were accepted by magazines; she met Laurence Durrell; she, Henry and Laurence had long conversations about life and art.

Early in 1938, Hugo moves permanently to London (Saturn conjunct her Descendant for the last time) Nin rents another houseboat and determines to turn the diaries into fiction. Hitler marches into Austria. Many people start to think about leaving. Hugo asks her to come to London; Maruca divorces her father, Joaquin. He turns to Nin for help, but she refuses to help him financially; Winter of Artifice was to be published by the Villa Seurat press early in 1939 (paid for by the Durrells)

Early in 1939, she visits Hugo in London. Her father Joaquin returns to Cuba where he spends the last 10 years of his life; whenever he wrote to her, asking for financial help, Nin did not reply.(the irony of that)

She found money to help Miller get to Greece and then to New York when war was declared; she also found money for Gonzalo and Helba to sail to New York as well. Hugo arranged a transfer to New York, joined her in Lisbon and they flew from there on December 9th. (Pluto was inconjunct her Sun and Moon, Jupiter about to go into her 7th house)

Once in New York, she made many literary and social connections. In the next few years, she questioned the way she lived and related to others. She asked herself "Is devotion to others a cover for the hungers and the needs of the self, of which one is ashamed? I was always ashamed to take. So I gave. It was not a virtue, it was a disguise." (Vol 3)

Henry moved to California because he did not like the New York literary life; he wanted Nin to join him. Yet, curiously, now that he was financially independent, she did not want him and at one point said that she wished she had attended to her own needs rather than helping Henry's. She is beginning to refuse to support people in the way she had before. At one point she says "I felt born on the rim of an eternally elusive world.. abandoned by those who are talking and laughing, as if they had left me out, whereas it is I who get cut off by my own nature and separateness" (Moon in Capricorn again)

In early 1942 she bought an old treadle press and found the enjoyment again, that she got from printing before. She was still trying to get her journals published but everyone was afraid of lawsuits and the problems of editing. By May the new edition of Winter of Artifice was finished and sold well (a few weeks later, Jupiter conjoined her Midheaven - then Uranus squared her Sun for several months). She had a breakdown and went into analysis with Martha Jaeger, a Jungian analyst. A tremendous amount of anger and bitterness came up. Jaeger tried to get her to see her own behaviour clearly, so she could see that her failures and inability to get success and recognition could to some extent, be self-created. Nin says "an act of independence seems to me will be punished by abandon[ment]. Men fear women's strength.. I have made myself less powerful" she felt that if her lovers believed she was stronger than them, they would "love [her] less".

So it comes back once again to a fear of loss of love and the polarity she recognised years ago, between being an independent writer and being a helpmate to a man or to others. She recognised that her desire to help others was not purely altruistic but was bound up with her own emotional needs; yet it involved suppressing her own creativity and independence; she also felt anger and resentment when the men she helped got recognition, which she did not get; this also meant that they no longer needed her - they were like children, who grow up and become independent.

By November 43, she falls into depression (Saturn squares Venus) and later gets bronchitis; Hugo's financial difficulties are so huge that he tells her 'it is up to you now to solve our economic problems'. She goes to work printing Under a Glass Bell and finishes on Feb 1944, when Uranus makes its last square to her natal Sun. The books sold, they were a success - many social invitations followed, and people commented on how she'd changed. What she felt at the time was that she was "bursting from the shell of [her] own persona-mask - becoming visible and audible", being "brought into daylight", the emotion was of "being constantly out of doors, in the daylight". She seemed to make that shift from dreaming of being a creative writer, while actually supporting men, to becoming the writer herself.

She wrote a good description of her own writing "Truth and reality are at the basis of all I write (I can always prove the incident which caused the writing, reproduce the character, the place) but because I insist on extracting the essence, on giving only a distilled product, it becomes a dream, where all reality appears only in its symbolical form."

Edmund Wilson the writer and critic made an acute observation (for the time) and praised her as 'one of those women writers who have lately been trying to put into words...the conflict created for women by living half in a man-controlled world against which they cannot help rebelling, half in a world which they have made for themselves but which they cannot find completely satisfactory'

She is invited to speak at various colleges and universities - there is less time for diary writing as her external life becomes greater. In 1946 Dutton publishes her 'Ladders to Fire'.

In February 1947 she met Rupert Pole, who was 28, good-looking, and who could express his feelings and talk about his inner self. He invited her to drive across America with him, to California. She and Hugo were having arguments and talking about a separation. (Saturn opposing Saturn) In late April, she left with Rupert, but made up a story to Hugo about going with a girlfriend (Uranus squared Venus during the trip)

Back in New York by September, she resumed her busy life, giving more readings and more social engagements. She met James Leo Herlihy, who became a life-long friend and confidante. In November, 'Children of the Albatross' was published.

On Christmas day Hugo resigned from the bank. He wrote 'I find I have some emotion about the event, which I suppose is natural after 28 and a half years of submission to authority.' He wrote to Anais 'I have never felt happier in all my life and I sing to myself all the time.'

Nin began what she was later to call the trapeze - spending time with Rupert in California, then back to New York and Hugo. Towards the end of '48 Hugo wrote and said he didn't want 'a mistress who can never be counted on...but a wife who is there, contentedly' but Nin had never been that kind of person and was certainly not going to become that now.

In 1950 'The Four Chambered Heart' was published and reviews were slightly better. She reverted to her old habits by regularly giving Rupert money, which Hugo had given to her (Rupert thought she earned it). Hugo had another job and was also making films which Nin helped to promote.

Friends advised her to get off the trapeze but she really did not want to. She started seeing Inge Bognor, Hugo's analyst. There seemed no resolution to the duality as both men gave her something she wanted very much. Nin says "I can't make my life whole - or my love single"

In 1953 she had a large cyst removed from her right ovary. In March '55 she married Rupert (Jupiter, Saturn and Uranus all trined Venus) but this was followed by anxiety, guilt feelings and nightmares. Bognor told her to accept responsibility for her actions (and get off the trapeze). This Nin could not do for it would have meant failure of her life (to live the dream). A Spy in the House of Love was published in 1956 but sales were disappointing. Nevertheless, for someone who felt difficulty in writing fiction, she had produced several novels in the past few years.

Her biographer writes 'all her life Anais remained confused about where individuality ended and selfishness began.'

For the next 2 years she worked on 'Solar Barque' her next novel. This appeared in 1958

In 1957 she read 'Justine' and got back in touch with Laurence Durell. She started writing for a magazine 'Eve', enjoyed it, but it was jettisoned in 1958 - more heart attack symptoms, but there was also the strain of living her dual life. More setbacks from publishers until Peter Owen agreed to publish 'Children of the Albtross' if Durrell wrote a preface for it (which he did). 'Two Cities' magazine agreed to publish a portion of the diary and this came out at end of 1959.

So her work is becoming more successful but her double life often made her ill with worry; she refused to accept any ultimatums from both men.

In 1959 Castro took over Cuba which had disastrous effects on Hugo's finances. More interest came in her writings; while she was glad of this, she was also afraid of her past - and present! coming to light. Women were curious about her life - men as well 'curiously, most were incarcerated in mental hospitals or prisons.!'

More writing appeared in magazines but her big break came when Alan Swallow, a Denver publisher, agreed to publish all her novels. She then published an edition of Henry's letters to her and he gave her the royalties.

In 1966 the first volume of the diary came out - she received good reviews, fan mail, requests for interviews and lectures. She was immensely busy from this point on, until her death in 1977. At this time she also told Rupert that their marriage was invalid because she has still been legally married to Hugo, still was and always would be. Her biographer wrote 'she believed herself honour-bound to provide Hugo with everything he needed for the rest of his life[because of] everything he had ever given her'. By 1969 she was settled in Los Angeles and saw Hugo rarely. By 1973, the paperback sales were high and her financial worries were over; she had become a major cult figure, even though some still criticised her work.

By 1971 she knew she had cancer. Rupert looked after her devotedly during the last years when she was in a lot of pain and could do very little. After telling Rupert everything about her 'double life' she felt " a peace I never knew, an absence of strain I never knew...for the first time living one life, one love". She died in January 1977.

 

WRITING THEMES AND AIMS

Nin's work is full of powerful and very relevant themes - duality and unity; the search for unity and truth; the world of dreams, its importance and effects; the desire to create something that is both fulfilling and accepted by others; the expansion of one's life, through writing - its alleviation of loneliness; the desire to record everything so it would not be lost; and the bringing together of both the creative and interpretive levels

While she eventually received recognition and acclaim, during her lifetime, she faced a lot of criticism of the diaries, or rather, of the writing of the diaries - from other writers - Miller, Perles,- from analysts - Allendy, Rank,

Alfred Perles in 'My Friend Henry Miller' quotes Miller as saying -

"living is more important than writing about life...you're not living in this diary of yours but merely petrifying your life. ..in a sort of reinforced hedgehog position from behind which you survey your existence. That's not living. Your journal is like a cocoon which you have spun yourself and in which you lie fettered and defenceless...In order to get the thing out of your system, the best way is to get it published. Then you can go on living instead of guarding a diary. That's what you've been doing all these years, keeping watch over it like a private detective shadowing your own private life. A diary of such proportions as yours keeps you living en marge while your real essential life is hidden under lock and key, safe as an heirloom in the bank..'

Eloquent indeed, and while there may have been some truth in this, many of us have reason to be grateful that Nin was strong enough or stubborn enough or persistent enough not to heed it.

While most people liked very much what they read, some objected to her 'portraits ' of them. But they were a huge success, once they were published. Possibly some of the criticism could have been from an establishment attitude that is critical of anything new or different; some of it a kind of authoritarian criticism either by writers or analysts who thought they knew best. It is interesting that there is no record of the women analysts she consulted criticising the journals.

Nin stood out in that she grappled with issues that were ahead of their time, particularly in the field of women's expected role in society. Of course throughout history there have always been women who have rebelled against this, and we only know of the famous ones or the ones in our own family history; but I think that the popularity of Nin's work was, to some extent anyway, because many women recognised their own struggles, thoughts, feelings and dilemmas in her writing.

Of course the issues of freedom from society's expected roles are relevant to everyone, not just women; as are the issues of connecting with the Self, of creativity and personal freedom; but the greatest impact of her writing was most definitely on women; yet when I read books that are available now on personal growth, self- realisation, connecting with the higher self, the creative self etc. I feel that many of her ideas are in there. I'm not saying she was the first by any means, to think of them - but she was one of the few to document them, at least so extensively.

The personal nature of what she wrote has tremendous appeal where so many people are trying to make sense of their lives ; where they notice a discrepancy between what others/society expect of them, who they thought they were and who they appear to be in their own inner world. If one's idea of self vanishes, this can be extremely disconcerting, leading to all kinds of questioning. And seeing how others have dealt with it, or even that others also faced this dilemma, can be heartening and inspiring.

The old authorities and structures have gone; the old identities have gone; old beliefs, old concepts of what is right and wrong; the old reassuring established structures, figures, religions, traditions. We're in the process, all of us, of exploring, finding out, thinking for ourselves, becoming our own authorities, not accepting any second hand versions of life. Daring to be who we are, not what someone else or society would like us to be; daring to follow intuition rather than follow orders; to step out of our conditioning and its restrictions.

And that's where Anais Nin is important. She followed her own path, which takes courage (for there will always be opposition); she suffered from the same doubts and severe anxieties we all feel especially when we're trying something new, leaving the familiar and the safe; she made mistakes, suffered setbacks and she never gave up.

"What we call our destiny is truly our character and that character can be altered. The knowledge that we are responsible for our actions and attitudes does not need to be discouraging because it also means that we are free to change this destiny. One is not in bondage to the past which has shaped our feelings, to race, inheritance, background. all this can be altered if we have the courage to examine how it formed us. We can alter the chemistry provided we have the courage to dissect the elements."

Anais Nin - Journals, Vol 1

"to place all responsibilities upon [the parents] is wrong...if they gave us handicaps, they also gave us their courage, their obstinacy, their sacrifices, their...strengths. Ee cannot forever await from them the sanction to mature...we cannot always place responsibility outside of ourselves, on parents, nations, the world, society, religion. Long ago it was the gods. If we accepted a part of this responsibility we would simultaneously discover our strength. A handicap is not permanent"

Anais Nin - Journals, Vol 5

"I found through psychology that when I put the blame on others I felt I was practically saying I am a helpless, passive victim. And it's a depressing thought. So the day I saw beyond that... I saw - no, not at all. I am the master of my destiny.. it is very easy to blame society or to blame the man, but it actually makes you feel even more helpless. Because that means that you are waiting for the man to liberate you or for the government...or for history"

Anais Nin - 'A Woman Speaks'

CHART - Themes of duality - there is the Libra Ascendant; but the 2 'selves' show up rather neatly I think, in the Sun, Moon and Neptune trines and sextiles, and the self that must be 'hidden, hidden' in the Venus square Pluto and Uranus and Moon.

Her biographer, Dierdre Bair wrote - 'She wrote of herself as being split into two women; the one she believed herself to be, "kind, loyal, pure, thoughtful";[and] her alter ego "restless and impure, acting strangely, loosened, wandering, seeking life and tasting all of it without fear, without convictions, restraint...a demon"

Venus in the 6th square Pluto could show some of her obsessive qualities regarding tidiness and order, as well as the hidden qualities of some of her relationships.

Venus square Uranus and Uranus conjunct Moon, the restlessness, the seeking for freedom - and the fact that she was forever moving house, except in the last few years of her life, when she lived with Rupert Pole; and from the time she lived in Paris she often had more than one domicile - an apartment in Paris which they lived in during the winter months, because the house at Louveciennes was too difficult to heat; the houseboat as well as an apartment; and of course, her coming and going between California and New York, for almost 30 years.

Moon in Capricorn shows both the rock-like and supportive qualities (she supported people financially since 1932, for the rest of her life and never forgot her debt to Hugo, when he was making hardly any money and she was just starting to earn large sums from her books) and the inner loneliness she periodically felt.

Sun and Jupiter in 5th house, points to her enormous creative output, the love of travel and inner sense of voyage and search for meaning, and also the need to be the centre of attention

The Saturn/Mercury shows, I think, the meticulous need to record, write down and communicate everything; shows too, how hard she worked at it. It may also point to the difficulty she had with language as English was not her first language. Saturn shows us what's important to us, what we take seriously; she took her writing and communication very seriously indeed. Saturn also shows us where we can be 'touchy' and she said herself that she could not take criticism of her writing -she took it very personally. She recopied and to a small extent, rewrote the entire journals - she found this very laborious, yet she still did it; she laboured meticulously at her work; yet she was also, as we have seen, ahead of her time in her ideas, so that her writing did not achieve popularity until shortly before her death.

Morelle Smith
Email: morellesmith@hotmail.com