I want to spread myself on lots of paper, turn it into lots of sentences, lots of words so that I won't be walked on.- Anais NinNin's Incest is an explosive, emotional confession; an illuminating self analysis and in-depth psychological study of her soul. Relentlessly probing and insightful, Nin details and analyzes dreams and daily events, shedding light on her exhaustive need for love, in part due to the vacuous hole in her psyche left by her father's abandonment of the family when she was still a very young girl. Nin bares naked the sexual and pathological desires not only of herself but of well-known figures to whom she had strong attachments - Henry Miller, Otto Rank, Antonin Artaud, René Allendy , among others - all who seem like father-figures themselves. To Nin, to experience love meant to keep a balance between her independence and interdependence, her singularity and dual nature. Her own assessment of her dual nature is explained with the precision of a professional psychologist, as she describes the controversial liaisons with her estranged father, Joaquin - a self styled Don Juan.Joaquin: "I had a dream of you which frightened me. I dreamed that you masturbated me with jeweled fingers and that I kissed you like a lover. For the first time in my life I was terrified."Anaïs: "I also had a dream of you.""I don't feel toward you as if you were my daughter.""I don't feel as if you were my Father.""What a tragedy. What are we going to do about it? I have met the woman of my life, the ideal, and it is my daughter! I cannot even kiss you as I would like to. I'm in love with my own daughter!"Nin's writing aesthetic is hypnotic: the unrestrained style in which she reports events have both dreamlike and authentic qualities; fantastic yet real, allusive as well as explicit. She dares to write about such tabooed feelings and acts never before printed in women's books. In heated episodes of seduction, she becomes the 'bad' girl her father desires - she becomes in effect his double, a Donna Juana.(view spoiler)["Let me kiss your mouth." He put his arms around me. I hesitated. I was tortured by a complexity of feelings, wanting his mouth, yet afraid, feeling I was to kiss a brother, yet tempted— terrified and desirous. I was taut. We kissed, and that kiss unleashed a wave of desire. I was lying across his body and with my breast I felt his desire, hard, palpitating.Ecstatic, his face, and I now frenzied with the desire to unite with him ... undulating, caressing him, clinging to him. His spasm was tremendous, of his whole being. He emptied all of himself in me ... and my yielding was immense, with my whole being, with only that core of fear which arrested the supreme spasm in me. (hide spoiler)]
If you’re not up for reading Anaïs Nin’s entire catalogue (which is what I plan to do, eventually), Henry and June is probably the book to dip into for a taste of her journals: it captures the passion and joie de vivre that she’s famed for. But while I loved that book, I think I enjoyed Incest more.Admittedly, it is really, really long (~200,000 words), with an unevenness of writing that can be frustrating. There are times when you’re dying to know what’s been happening and Nin simply chooses not to record events in any detail. It’s also, obviously, missing a real beginning or end.Nonetheless, it’s an extremely compelling book, with a fantastic cast of characters. It became akin to my daily soap opera for the few weeks that I was reading. I would find myself dying for someone to discuss it with – not to examine its literary merits, but simply to gossip about the action as if it were an episode of EastEnders. Oooh, do you think Anaïs is finally going to leave Hugo? etc.In terms of action, there’s a lot more that goes on in this book than Henry and June. Anaïs’s relationship with her father obviously forms the book’s central point, but the flings and flirtations that she conducts with Allendy, Artaud and Rank also add interest. Though the book lacks the structure of a novel, there is an unexpectedly horrendous moment of drama near the end that acts as a climax, and the book is not entirely without conclusion.Nin’s prose remains a joy in which to immerse yourself. I’m not someone who ordinarily dogears pages, but I find myself doing it all the time when I read Nin’s diaries, because there are so many exquisite passages that I want to return to in order to read over and over again.
What do You think about House Of Incest (1958)?
A wild, intense assault of images. Visceral and raw. Thoroughly female and savage, in the best sense. I can't help but go back to it from time to time. Certain passages still thread through my mind with such power. "I am constantly reconstructing a pattern of something forever lost and which I cannot forget." "She was spreading herself like the night over the universe and found no god to lie with." I feel a deep, creative kinship with Nin for her common love and use of certain symbols: trees, eggs, blood, birds, etc. But most of all, we share a propensity to relate life experiences to the physical nature and processes of woman's body: pregnancy, birth, labor, cycles, nursing, motherhood, purpose in natural pain, etc. Oh, my dear, undone poetess. Be forewarned, Nin is not for the faint at heart. But if you have a taste for NIN and Tori Amos from time to time, this is prose you can sink your teeth into.
—Shannon
الحسنة الوحيدة التي خرجت بها من قراءتي لرواية " بعيدا من الضوضاء ، قريبا من السكات " هو معرفتي بالكاتبة أناييس نين .سأكون مخطئة إذا قلت أنني فهمت ما تقصده نين ف تلك الرواية ، لا في الحقيقة هى ليست بالرواية ، إنها بلا أحداث أو سياق متماسك ، يمكن القول إنها هلاوس أو ثرثرة أو شذرات أدبية ، ورغم عدم فهمي الكامل لمقصد الكاتبة إلا أنني استمتعت كثيرا أثناء قراءة هذا العمل وشعرت ف الكثير من الأحيان أنها تعبر عني بشكل أو بآخر .ولكن يجب ع من يمر بحالة اكتئاب عدم قراءة أي عمل لأناييس نين ، لقد وقعت ف هذا المحظور ولكني وللغرابة استمعت خلال ساعتي القراءة !
—Aliaa Mohamed
I wanted to rate the book 5 pages after I started. Rating the book was the only conceivable action that would reflect how much I was blown away or shocked by what humans are able to write. I rarely rate books even the ones I really really like. But for my first Anais book, I learned a lot about the human condition. Well, not a lot. and maybe not about the human condition and more about myself. It is crazy walking in her stream of thoughts I was able to forget the messiness of my head. Despite the lovely experience of reading this book, I have to admit, I learned gazzilion new words. I stared a lot reread many sentences and ignored some because .. I am definitely going to read other Anais books but not any time soon.
—Haya Farah
