More Nin

[wlotus]

Today I read Nin's House of Incest. I did not get it. It is a prose poem, and the imagery is beautiful...haunting. I like how she used words to paint pictures. I like how her descriptions of people were far more poetic than practical.

Sabina's face was suspended in the darkness of the garden. From the eyes a simoun wind shrivelled the leaves and turned the earth over; all things which had run a vertical course now turned in circles, round the face, around HER face. She stared with such an ancient stare, heavy luxuriant centuries flickering in deep processions. From her nacreous skin perfumes spiralled like incense. Every gesture she made quickened the rhythm of the blood and aroused a beat chant like the beat of the heart of the desert, a chant which was the sound of her feet treading down into the blood the imprint of her face.

In the 1994 foreward, Gunther Stuhlmann write there are obvious links between the various characters in Incest and the real-life people Nin used as their models. But I don't see those links. My inability to see those links frustrated me and kept me from enjoying the book, until I stopped trying to see them and just enjoyed the flow of the words and feelings they provoked.

Delta of Venus, on the other hand, is very easy to understand. It is erotica written for an unknown patron whose only complaint was, "Less poetry. More sex." I can see why Nin finally wrote to the mysterious patron and let him know she and her fellow writers hated him for divorcing the beauty and emotion of sex from the physical act itself. The writing is poetic in places and abruptly sexual in others, so abrupt, it feels like someone suddenly turned on the lights in a dark, cozy space to reveal the room is empty and uncarpeted, with only a bare lightbulb in the centre of the ceiling. In the 1976 foreward, Nin writes that was her first experience with writing erotica. I wonder if she didn't write more of it in later years. I bet her writing would have far surpassed anything Harlequin ever put out.

Comments

[silveringridd.livejournal.com]

in grad school i wrote a 25-page paper for a linguistics class on house of incest. analyzing the thing. good stuff. one of my favorite nin works. i believe i own and have read them all, or at least have read them all.

the diaries remain my favorite, but damn, no matter what it is, that woman can write.

[wlotus.livejournal.com]

I'll say! Last night I read "Elena", from Delta of Venus. That story was so complex, it didn't read like the wham-bam-thank-you-ma'am I expect when I open a book of erotica. I am going to read that story again, because I like how she developed the characters. And it was fun to see parts of her real life woven into the characters!

[rockbirthedme.livejournal.com]

Good erotica? As in, well-written and possibly having some content besides the straight sex erotica? I want my book budget back, then; the local library network has almost nothing by Nin.

I did find The Anais Nin Reader. It has a chapter from House of Incest. I gave up trying to understand it pretty quickly, but it was lush enough that I was happy to read it anyway. Most of the time, when more experimental poetry and prose starts to lose my understanding, I have no interest in it after that. House of Incest I enjoyed. It left my brain twisted into a pretzel, but it was a very happy pretzel.

[wlotus.livejournal.com]

Yes, "Delta of Venus" is good erotica. Several of the characters appear in multiple stories. It's far better than any erotica I have read, before. There is an actual story and some character development over the series of stories starring the same people.