NO PUEDO MAS

I do not want you back

NEW YORK, SEPTEMBER 23, 1942

Letter from Henry in Hollywood:

I think we’re both confused in speaking of WORK. There’s nothing wrong, I’m sure in the idea that what we are all seeking is to do the work we like and are fitted for. You shouldn’t be angry when I call you a worker. You’ve always been—it began long before you knew me. What embitters you in regard to me is that you fear your work has borne no fruit, or that it’s in danger of being nullified. I admit I owe everything to you… I’ve said it time and again. What mystifies me is this: that if you, or anybody, make such sacrifices for another, is it because that the other has something more important to offer than the mere performance of his duty? The question, in my own mind as well as yours, seems to have shifted from the accomplishment (due to protection) to the means employed (dependence on others). Perhaps the whole trouble is that I am thinking as an absolutist. That’s either my virtue or grand defect. All you’re asking for is that I take a relative view of the problem and circumstances. Perhaps I have a great fear, unacknowledged, that if I compromise I will go under completely. I am possibly the only writer in our time who has had the chance to write only as he pleased. Perhaps this was bad. I wonder. Because actually on all sides life imposes compromises. I make compromises in daily life—too many, according to you. And I don’t, or won’t, with the writing. Logic dictates that to hold that position, I should make greater compromises in life. Perhaps I have never made any real ones. I may have written you foolishly about renunciation versus sacrifice. One might say of me that I have done only what I wanted to do, that I derived pleasure from my so-called renunciations. How can I answer that? Everything depends on the motive behind the question. If I am to be judged, then I am guilty. If it is not a question of judging but of understanding my behavior, then possibly it is not so easy to answer that question.

I know from previous discussions with you, when we are involved emotionally, that the very thing you blame me for when angry, you condone or even approve of when you are calm. One thing is clear—I am not angry with you. I am listening to you like a child. I feel I have done wrong. But you know that is not something I did just yesterday, or the day before. I am not acting differently now than before. I am true to character. At these moments you make me feel that there is something fundamentally wrong with my whole character. I don’t say you’re wrong. If there is something fundamentally wrong with me I want it to come out. I’m perplexed. I’m tormented. I’m looking for the light. I am not even riled when you use words like hobo and clochard. I know I am not these things, I am essentially a worker—contradictory as all this sounds. Can’t you see that my desire to create instead of work is a sound, natural instinct, based on a worthy impulse? Of course you do—or you wouldn’t have done everything for me as you did. Maybe it all boils down to this: if the present circumstances will not permit me to create then I should at least work, just as everybody else does. But I wouldn’t be writing you these irritating letters if it wasn’t that I gravely doubt this, and honestly, not as a dreamer or idler. It’s the old Chinese proverb problem, of whether inaction (sometimes) is not better than action. I admit it is difficult to defend this when you commence hurling accusations of inhuman at me. But damn it, you know I am not inhuman. And if you don’t, who will? […]

For a long time now I have honestly never tried or even wished to cause another pain. But to eliminate pain (to others) is almost an impossibility. Especially if it comes about because I am being myself. That is right and just…that’s one’s destiny. I don’t quarrel about that. All my troubles, at the moment, are caused by the mere fact that I am trying more and more to be myself. If this self is a monster, then the sooner it is recognized the better. You have doubts at times, you question the wisdom of all you have done to help me. But if you were just helping me to be more and more myself, how could that be unwise? Or are you implying that I am not myself now? And if I don’t know how can you? If I am perplexed now how can you be so clear? I know that you’re trying to help me see clearly. But what I also think is that you’re worrying about something else…perhaps that I am concealing something from you. You’re hammering at me for one thing and meaning another, isn’t that it?

Well, listen, don’t think that way—you’re wrong. You had the same uneasiness when I was in Greece. But I tell you that whenever I am away from you, you only grow in stature. It would be impossible for me to fall in love with someone else. You have no rivals. All other women seem petty, insignificant. I couldn’t be faithless if I tried. You’ve made me immune. What you can’t understand is that I can say this and mean it, and yet act apparently indifferently. Talk about wonderful climates, the joys of creation, the pleasure of being alone, etc. There are no contradictions here—only those made by your own fear of losing me. I don’t have those fears about you. Not that I don’t think it possible for you to fall in love with someone else. Everything is possible. But I don’t go after you and chide you for wrong reasons.

As a matter of fact, I haven’t anything, and never did have anything, to reproach you with. You have been, and still are, perfection. I admire you more and more and respect you more and more. Where I get baffled is that, the moment I talk about realizing our relationship more fully and deeply still, you say I ruined that possibility, and that my actions are a betrayal of any such desire. True! But only because you have no faith in my desire. Because in some uncanny, feminine way, you succeed in making me say: “I prefer liberty” when, with a little more honest effort, you could just as well succeed in making me say: “I prefer a life with you above everything.” This is not recrimination. I know as I write the above that you are just as powerless to act differently as I am.

We have this situation we are in because of what we are essentially. By choosing to live above the ordinary levels we create extraordinary problems for ourselves. You mention Russia and Shangri-La, as though you look to the one and I to the other. I’ve been all over the Russian experiment in my mind. For me it would not be a solution. Neither would Shangri-La. Both are initial, preparatory steps or modes of existence towards living the life of this world with and for other human beings. The ultimate goal is to make this earth a paradise. But that’s how I’m trying to live all the time—as it were. I don’t have to conquer any capitalist in myself, nor do I, as in Shangri-La, have to strive towards moderation. I am the ideal citizen for both these states of being. I am ready—but the conditions are absent. It’s as though I had to live backwards, from some better condition of the world (which is natural to me and which I was born into) to some stupid and deplorable one. I have already lived the life people are dreaming of not only imaginatively but actually. So have you. The difference is that you adapt yourself better to the backward state. That’s what you call being human. You may be right.

Another difference is that with this criterion of human you emphasize the need for struggle. But to me struggle is relatively unimportant. How can I struggle when I have already achieved? […] This struggle is on a level which I have outgrown. Both the materialistic philosophy of the Russians and the Oriental philosophy aim to lift man above this struggle. I believe in a collective life unqualifiedly. I’ve often told you I don’t mind in the least what would be asked of me—I would willingly dig trenches, ditches. I could even be a slave—it wouldn’t disturb me. Notice, too, that wherever there are monks, people are devoted to spiritual ends, they always practice a high form of collectivism. I am not against doing dirty work—I merely see and feel the futility of doing work for no good purpose. […] It seems absurd for me to fight with you concerning my essential character.

Whatever truth is in me will assert itself, no matter what I do or say. I accept you as you are. I wouldn’t want to change you one bit. The more I go along the less I want to change anybody.

And now I want to answer you about Hugo and yourself. You say we would all like to do this and that…the easiest thing. First of all, it isn’t the easiest thing—what we are talking about. Doing what one wants to do is the very hardest thing in the world. The easiest thing is to compromise, to do what others want you to do. Hugo did not fail to become an artist because he had to protect you. He much preferred to do what he did—it was easier for him, considering his nature and temperament. I don’t think you can accuse me of quibbling here. And as for you, you know very well, you’ve often admitted it—self-sacrifice has been your curse. We all have different roles. There’s some deep, inexplicable reason why we live out both the virtues and defects of our character, not just the one or the other. The virtues are perhaps the flowering of previous inner struggles, in other existences…who knows? […]

And yet, despite all I say, it devolves upon me to do something. If, thanks to you (and maybe thanks just a little to my own efforts), I have been lifted out of our time… even at the very worst, if I am just dreaming (and how wonderful to dream! Why is it such a sin?)…nothing will put me back except chains. I can do forced labor, like the convict. I tell you, I can forget everything that ever happened, forget all that I ever did, all I dreamed of, and live the life of a dolt…I can do it.

But what will it prove, what good will it do? Will that prove me to be human, like everybody else? I don’t say that is what you wish. I know very well you don’t…I know you are trying to tell me that is what the world wants. You are trying to get between me and the world, act as a buffer, intermediary, accoucheur. But why spare me? What happens if you die? And sometimes I ask myself: who is protecting whom? Can one protect another? Isn’t there a mutual need, a mutual dependence? Why is there always someone to protect the artist, the non-doer, the non-utilitarian? Is it because some few people realize the preciousness of art? Are they protecting the artist or are they helping to perpetuate something which they vitally need? […]

You express a fear of having to live with others, by their grace, etc. I respect that. For me it’s less difficult. I am always curious to see how far people will go, how big a test one can put them to. Certainly there are humiliations involved, but aren’t those humiliations due rather to our own limitations? Isn’t it merely our pride which suffers? It’s only when we demand that we are hurt.

I, who have been helped so much by others, ought to know something about the duties of the receiver. It’s so much easier to be on the giving side. Much of the scrupulousness which people evince is due to a real lack of magnanimity. Giving seems to confer upon them a sense of superiority. To receive is much harder—one has actually to be more delicate, if I may say so. One has to help people to be more generous, more magnanimous. You do them a service—if you are honest about it. And then, finally, no one likes to do either one or the other alone. We all try to give and take, to the best of our powers. It’s only because giving is so much associated with material things that receiving looks so bad. Ultimately it’s only an accident that one is on one side of the fence and the other on the other. If it were not so there would be no giving…one would eliminate the beggars. But that would be a terrible calamity for the world.

The beggar is just as important in the scheme of things as the giver. If somewhere there should be a true and just form of collective life in which begging is eliminated, it will only be the crude aspect of it. Actually there will always be the beggar—if only the beggar of mercy. God help us if there should be no longer the need to appeal to some other human being, to make him give of his richness. Of what good is abundance then? Must we not become strong in order to help, rich in order to give, and so on? How will these fundamental aspects of life ever change? The trouble now is that people are poor in spirit, low, mean, envious, jealous. The change they envisage is not towards the expression of greater magnanimity, but of protection against humiliation, protection of their petty egos, their petty pride, their petty prejudices.

You use the word “confused.” I’m not nearly as confused as you might suppose. You know, I’m always on guard against your clarity. You spool it off with invincible logic always. It seems very clear—on the surface. But I am not so sure of your innate clarity. With you there is a racial clarity. You’re diamond pointed. You must see well in order to act. With me it’s rather the opposite—I must act in order to see. I’m always making discoveries…perhaps in circles. Sometimes I do succeed in leaping out of the clockwork. Miracles I’m not finished with myself, with my self-experimenting. Sometimes I have to lie still, like the possum, and just watch and wait. You are always ready for action, always armed, always on the alert.

I admire that in you—but I haven’t those qualities. The faster you run the more I want to slow up. I look for ambushes. You leap precipices like a chamoix. My god, Anaïs, the one great torment I have always and forever is—how can I repay all the kindnesses done me? When I speak of magnanimity of being able to receive as graciously as giving, can’t you see that I take that to heart first of all myself? No matter how much I do I shall never become generous enough. I pay not in the coin of the realm but out of my own substance. Sometimes you perceive in that something akin to the whoring spirit. Yes, at its worst it might be that. But at its best, it’s an endeavor to pay with a better, cleaner coin, to pay with blood. In the end I will pay with my life, that’s what it amounts to. So part of my struggle is to conquer this vicious round, to get free of debt and payment… not to give or take, but to give and take equally at the same time…so that it becomes different, something like radiation. That means transubstantiation. Alchemy of the spirit. How does one achieve that? By fulfilling all his earthly duties? By living up to the letter of the law? No, somehow it must happen like a revolution, a swift inward turn, a different tempo, different rhythm, different orientation. I don’t know yet.

Letter to Henry (sent before previous letter from Henry was received):

Henry: Yesterday I wrote you an emotional letter, probably as contradictory as yours. I reread your letter, the last one, and now I see it more clearly. My attitude is a necessary balance to yours and I need not defend it. What has happened is that when I asked you to help me, I pushed you into a conflict. Now listen: we are making it too important. In the first place I always said lately: help me until I get the press going. Also I said: help me partially. Now look: the press is making a success. I feel confident now. I have work until December. What complicates the issue for me, and confuses it, is your sudden insistence on one place rather than another. I can cope with the problem of taking care of you, but I can’t cope with the problem of how to do so in Hollywood. Now look, Henry. The place has become important to you because you feel the conflict less when you’re away from me. For one thing, you don’t see me anxious or tired, and that’s a relief to you. For another the climate and lessening of expenses gives you the feeling again that there it is easy and here a strain. I’m ready to do whatever you want. I’m not asking you to take a job. I want you to cease suffering from this conflict, to cease fearing New York merely because it becomes more acute here. On vacation I get lulled too. I could forget even your needs. But not for long. And you want to maintain that vacation insouciance. All right. You know I never want to push you into anything that causes you misery. Stay away as long as you need to. Determine to do what you can, like showing my manuscripts or what you want to. And don’t create a monster out of New York, not permanently at least because I can’t live in Hollywood. You also torment me needlessly because you enjoy Hollywood and then you get afraid that so many separations will in the end separate us, and then you start to talk about our partial life and blaming that, when it isn’t true at all, and what threatens to destroy us is your own quest for a paradise which can only be obtained at the cost of my not being in it. Voilà.

What I should write to Henry is that I no longer love him except as a child, and that I will continue to take care of him as a mother and thus free him to live where and how he pleases. Can I do this? That is the truth. Can I say it?

OCTOBER 7, 1942

The day I asked myself, “Has the time come for me to tell Henry the truth?” I received in the evening a voluminous letter in which he says he cannot fall in love with anyone else, that I am perfection and have immunized him! So again I kept my secret. It would be cruel to abandon him when he needs me, when I am the only one who takes care of him, the only one. Henry has written ten books which everybody reads, and can’t have security even for his barest needs. Ben Abramson of the Argus Book Shop printed The World of Sex, sells it for $7, and Henry gets nothing.

Fraenkel sells the Hamlet Letters and gets $100 checks from the Gotham Book Shop, and Henry gets nothing (he wrote half the book, and it is selling because of his name). His books are reprinted sub rosa, and he gets nothing. Poor Henry.

Meanwhile je me débât with the money problems, a hopeless tangle. We are heavily taxed, and after Chisholm’s poems we have no other orders. Caresse is poor and crazy, has plans but no money. This all makes me work for very little money, the poems of Kay Boyle’s daughter, worthless echoes of adolescent readings. Finally I am forced to ask myself: are my stars bad? I have always believed myself responsible for everything. La fatalité intérieur, but slowly I see now outer incidents I have not caused: the war, my bad luck with the critics. Paul Rosenfeld, with the best will in the world, writes a review that betrays the secret I threw a veil over and proclaims loudly that the father in the Winter of Artifice is Joaquín Nin. Also he creates for everybody a confusion between the diary and the novel. William Carlos Williams, with the best will in the world, the best intentions, presents me as a female ogre, and makes me an enemy of man, by my honesty, and misunderstands me magnificently, regally! These two are the only reviews. Harvey Breit tried to write for me, but the editor of the New Republic, who normally accepts his work, is deposed, and the new editor does not like him. Fatality? The others ignore me. Complete silence from the Times, Tribune, Time, etc.

My underground success is continuous, from person to person, secretly, and quietly. But no éclat. And for that I am ready to éclater—I am rebelling against the petty restrictions, anxieties, the destructive, small, constant, harassing needs. It seems to me all the wonder of my life is being devoured. I must jump out of this. I thought the press would do it. A mirage. We were going to make $200 a month, but instead zero! Now what? The stairway. Always I think of the five flights I have to climb to get home. Somehow, in those stairs I climb after leaving Gonzalo or Henry, feeling the fatigue of the whole day and night, always what I meditate on, as I climb, is that Gonzalo needs a new pair of glasses and where will I get the money? As I climb, it seems to me that I am heavily burdened, and I see no way out of it. I cannot make money. I’m a worker, I’m clever, I’m dexterous, I’m talented, yet I cannot make money.

I wept. I am a failure.

In that alone!

OCTOBER 9, 1942

Shook off the wretchedness. Tried to get Sam Goldberg, the lawyer, to give me something to print. He read the diary. He was overwhelmed, he was moved, but does not help. I believe the whole world is jealous of my care and love of others—Henry or Gonzalo—and that is why they refuse to help me. Everybody thinks I am, symbolically, rich enough. Luise didn’t want to give me anything. She felt poor, poor in love. I’m rich in love, so the world denies me material riches. I suspect it is malicious jealousy. Goldberg is devoted to me as a writer, yet when I turn to him for help, nothing. I turned to Dorothy (not begging, merely asking to be given something to print) and she failed me…all of them failed to help me. I am never helped, but I suppose it is my self-made destiny, carved out by my character.

Today my courage came back. Jacobson is helping the courage by fighting the anemia. The poor mystic Anaïs is watching the blood count rising, and as it rises, so do the courage and the power. The mystic is troubled. At three million red globules I felt the burdens crushing me, and Henry’s attitude cruel. At three million five hundred thousand I felt myself soaring again, confident, ready to take the whole burden on myself again. At four million I feel expansive and all-powerful, although nothing has changed. Hugo meanwhile acts the role of Saturn at the bank: he makes people think of making testaments, advises pension trusts, reminds them of old age, sickness, counsels savings, investments, caution, foresight, and naturally brings some of that undertaker gloom to the house! With the same gravity he discusses the budget, the taxes, his pension.

Though I fully realize our inadequacy and spontaneous nonchalance (Henry’s, Gonzalo’s and mine) make Hugo’s existence necessary and indispensable, I suffer from the cramping, sad realism, and I want to save him too from his burdens, lighten his life and free him.

I’m convinced that if one loves three highly selected men as deeply as I have, one has experienced everything. Every other experience is a reflection or repetition on a minor scale. Dudley was the son of Henry, as Robert was. I have known smaller and lesser Hugos. Many Spaniards would have been to me smaller, less fervent Gonzalos. I have known all the scales of erotic love, of spiritual love, mental and physical contacts, all the contacts. I never read a scene of love that I did not already know, had already lived. I never need to read with envy and hunger. I am conscious now of how we learn to live from certain books, and how I am doing the same for others. My diary will inflame, rouse, expand others equally.

This is Gonzalo’s image of the mystical life. He tells me: “It is like a powerful searchlight turned towards the sky. It becomes weaker and weaker as it points towards the infinite. Whereas look how strong it is when it is turned towards the earth.” As he says this, his own eyes are ardent, turned towards the earth always, with an earth fire and intensity!

I tried in vain to explain to him the cosmic consciousness which solves all dualities and divisions. People’s ideas usually divide and separate. Gonzalo cannot grasp this that is above all ideas.

OCTOBER 13, 1942

The World of Aesthetics

The Imbs. Linked to the world of fashion and fashionable events, in Paris mainly. Irina Aleksander’s dresses from the grand couturiers are works of art. Their decadent decor, in white and black and plum color, with Chirico designs on the walls to give perspective, iron garden furniture which gives ephemeralness (meuble de saison, de jardin, transient, and vaporous and rust-inviting). She lacks beauty but is stamped by a distinction never seen in America.

The Cristofanettis. Francesco’s decadent painting, artificial and fragile. Lucia’s designs for Rodier clothes, her coral jewelry sold at Bonwit Teller, her elegance and originality.

But my books always open the secret doors to the underlying drama, and immediately I can no longer enjoy the decor, the elegance, the games with clothes and jewels. I am taken behind the scene, into the drama. And then the people are like me, amazed when the drama suddenly dissolves all the beauty and reveals instinctive, primitive ferocities. “Oh, the ugliness,” cries Lucia, “the ugliness.” So Francesco, the mute, dark, jealous Italian aristocrat, foams and hurls the ugliest phrases. Naked they are now. Bestial in hatred, animal pride and savagery. Out of the decadence, sensibilities, elegances, appear the ugliest demons: revenge, hatred, self-love, envy, the wish to murder, destruction, all the crimes of the soul. Jealousy! Again the ugliest of all the demons. Jealousy which makes a murderous animal of the most delicate and sublimated human beings. Now we see Lucia, the exotic Syrian woman, no longer made of satin and velvet and colored stones and feathers, and he no longer somber and trembling and shy, who becomes the women at the market uttering obscenities! The depths of the soul. The first time I saw this spectacle was with June. Do I not possess such a well of horror and monsters? Do I disguise it? In my greatest anger there are phrases June used I could never use or invent. No, I have often wished to kill, in anger and jealousy, but I do not possess virulence, such vitriolic wells of poison. It is this exposure of the Apache insults and sudden descents into ugliness which shocks the idealist Lucia. Au naturel is not very beautiful to people concerned with illusions and delusions and art. I have never seen Henry au naturel except when he chose to write a veritable leprosy. I have seen Gonzalo au naturel, but he thinks it is natural, and forgets it all the next day as if it were a storm. In a storm, he implies, every word is possible, but it is not valid. They attach a permanency to good behavior, and an ephemeral quality to the attacks of bestiality. When I yield to milder forms of these attacks I am humiliated and ashamed. It is possible I am more transmuted in my karma, further from the animal.

OCTOBER 23, 1942

Jacobson discovered a new mixture—the most potent vitamin—which rid me of anemia in three weeks and transformed me physically. This sent me soaring at last with a physical power equal to my desire and imagination. The effect of this on my whole life was prodigious: no more fatigue, no more sense of ruling my body by will and courage, like some old horse driven by a youthful jockey, no more strain. An inrush of power, and physical exaltation. A sense of equilibrium. The obsessions from which I suffer, the incubus, the morbid inner states in regard to Helba and induced by Gonzalo’s defense of her, disappeared. I lost my timidity. In the first place I have become beautiful. I glow. In consequence I enjoy dressing and attending big gatherings and shining. At the Guggenheim Gallery vernissage I aroused attention and created a sillon of whisperings behind my back: “There goes Anaïs Nin, that’s Anaïs Nin.” A full expansion. I talk. I am petillante. Je fais même des plaisanteries. Nothing has changed around me, but I have changed. I am not affected. I feel confident. A desire to shine, to expand—euphoria. I embrace Jacobson with gratitude. Life is a dance again. For the first time I accept a soirée at the Imbs’ in place of one with Gonzalo. I never did this before, but I am hungrier for pleasure, and the deeper joys of love are always mixed with pain. Pleasure—it comes all at once. Gonzalo is forced to take me before the soirée, and he makes love to me as if to make certain of his ownership and then lets me go. I dressed up in black lace, taffeta, frou-froutant, and lace mantilla, and sparkled for Marcel Duchamp, Denis of the New Republic, James Sterne of Time. Valeska Imb said sincerely: “You look so beautiful.”

Hugo arrived later from his engraving class and was fully shocked, said I took his breath away, was completely seduced, and was eager to take me home and make love to me.

Again I am surrounded by love, by warmth, by magical happenings. I am full of ideas, plans, desires. Gold alone eludes me persistently. On a copy of my book for Marc Slonim, because he talked so much about the jeux of detective stories, I wrote: “À la Récherche des Jeux Perdus.” Let that be the title of my next journal.

This is the heaviest and thickest diary volume I have ever written in. Henry gave it to me. And such a light title (À la Récherche des Jeux Perdus) I have given it, in the darkest and heaviest days of all history for a good Marxist, such as I am in my actions, seeking a world removed from pain and horror. However, much shall be forgiven me, because of my being a Marxist in my acts whereas most people, outside of Russia, are the reverse. It is only with their tongues they support the Russian religion, and their acts are acts of bourgeois drug-solutions, bohemian anarchism, or creative egotism and individuation. I am at peace as far as my behavior goes. Now for the direction taken by my flighty mystical soul—that I can’t account for.

I have started my new phase with a report made for Dr. Jacobson which is an acknowledgment to the materialistic concepts: his injections have given me renewal, a transformation. I was getting ready to see a psychiatrist, being defeated by my obsessions. I did not need to do so. After three weeks of treatment all my activities are so exalted, so positive and expansive that the obsessions are displaced. They have faded so completely.

Externally, nothing has changed, but the body withstands the wear and strain of daily battle, and I am sure of victory. The worse the state of the world grows, the more intensely I try for inner perfection and power. It is not a challenge. The bestial world and evil can, and do, deal physical death. But that is all.

I fight for a small world of humanity and tenderness just as Jacobson fights the illnesses that are brought to him. He cannot do more.

Last night: while Hugo was bending over his engraving in the quiet of the New School, Gonzalo was bending over me and kissing me with the gratitude he feels after his pleasure. Henry I cannot see or imagine. He is in a place I do not know. This brings us up to date. In the public library around the corner people are reading my Winter of Artifice.

NOVEMBER 2, 1942

When Hugo told me again how he loves me I asked: “Why do you love me?”

“Well, for twenty years you have kept me interested.”

After twenty years he loves me like a lover: ardent, eager, enthralled. When he saw me healthy last week (I reached a pinnacle of perfect health, never reached before and which intoxicated me—alas! I cannot sustain it) he begged me to retain this. He said he could not bear it, the expression I have sometimes. “You look…you look…” He searched for a strong enough word… “You look crucified.”

NOVEMBER 3, 1942

Letter from Henry:

Just got your letter about resuming the role of analyst. Well. That sounds better. Yes, I do think you could do that well. […]

You know, when it comes down to bedrock, I don’t think it’s so much a question of “caring for the sick,” as you put it, as it is one of our getting results. You can see the results of creation, dealing with your neurotics, and that’s pleasurable. It also puts you out of the competitive world, which is so abhorrent. You may remember, I said it to you more than once—that if you feel you must minister to the weak and ailing, then you should do it with all your heart and soul. You can’t play at analysis any more than you can at art. Remember this, that you will profit more from it, in the end, than your patients. Because there is something defective in the analyst which drives him to this work—it is like the relation between master and slave—so I firmly believe. Don’t fool yourself by thinking that you are doing good, that you are alleviating misery, and so on. No, you will be treating yourself, that’s what I think. In this way, and maybe in only this way, you can complete your own analysis—and then see beyond it. This is not to deter you—on the contrary. I think it will be excellent. And don’t tie it up, your work, with the idea that it is a solution of my economic ills. Do it for its own sake, purely. Enjoy it!

I want you to put an end to your anguish about my physical comfort. I want you to get like a rock and not worry whether I sink or swim. There’s undoubtedly something wrong with me, or I would have solved this primitive question long ago. Better let me face it. You’re absolutely right that it is not your place to be humbling yourself before these idiots. Maybe I’d get on to another tack too if I had to take a good dose of that medicine. (Though it seems to me I have. Somehow I get inured to it. I think I am less easily deceived than you, by people. I don’t expect too much of them. But that, it seems, only leads to expecting everything of you, and that’s wrong.) But I don’t want you to think that I would ever get the idea that you failed me. No matter what you did, you couldn’t fail me. I hold myself responsible for whatever happens to me. You, having greater wisdom, probably have more fear of what may happen than I in my blindness.

The last three days have been marvelous. Such perfect weather! Almost as good as Greece. I’ve been in bliss—and feel two hundred percent better. Solitude does that to me. I feel enriched. One doesn’t need people, theatres, bars, etc. Just to step outdoors, see the light on the hills, the stars at night—that’s enough. People in the East think this is a bizarre place, because it’s Hollywood. I have almost nothing to do with Hollywood. I might be a thousand miles away, for all it matters. It drives me nuts, sometimes, to think that one can’t live where one wants, especially when the place is not on the moon, not at the Antarctic. Places are important, just as important as food or other things.

I’m going to return, but I tell you, as long as the war is on, I am going to make an effort to convert you to my way of thinking. In some ways, you know, you’re a fatalist. Generally you accuse me of being too soft and yielding. Generally you’re right, but about this thing, living in the right place, the right climate, nothing on earth can convince me that I’m wrong. I look to New York with loathing. Two days, such as these last two, wipe out years of living in New York. You must realize that I’m not crazy when I say this. And I say it, living an incomplete life. I haven’t had a taste of sex since I’m out here. And oddly enough, it doesn’t bother me. It’s wonderful to live alone like this, but it would be more wonderful not to live alone. But it’s like choosing between the concentration camp and going to war. I’d choose the concentration camp.

Anyway, what I’m trying to tell you is this, that the West is utterly different from the East. I wanted you to see this country—you have seen hardly anything of America, you know. I am at the point where, failing to know the people I’d like to associate with, I can get along with anybody. It’s enough for me now to exchange a few words with the grocer, or with Honest John, the Greek who runs a hash joint up the canyon. People stop and talk—they always do, you know. But I don’t care whether they do or not. I get to the point of complete enjoyment of life, and then bango! The old question— how do you make a living? I’m not a bit sorry that I didn’t land a job in the studios, callous though that sounds. I’ve had a rich, wonderful time of it, these four months. And please don’t hold that against me. What gripes me is that I had it at your expense. Margaret and Gilbert Neiman were wonderful to me. And, if I did drain them a bit, I repaid them in other ways. It’s something to know that people do recognize more than one way of being repaid.

You know, I meet more people who know Frieda Lawrence than you can shake a stick at. They all tell me what a wonderful life she leads up there in San Cristobal, New Mexico. Somehow Frieda has solved her problems—in a very humble way. She must be a grand person, quite different than we think from reading Lawrence. I begin to suspect that she was the bigger of the two, when it comes to life.

And that’s what I’m getting at all the time…to arrange things so that one can live simply and easily, very humbly perhaps.

You seem to get frightened, whenever I mention this. I don’t know what it is, whether you need the cultural elements more than I or what. All I can tell you is that I have grown to appreciate the life of the country these last few years. I don’t need the cities anymore. You can always have music and books, even in the most remote places. And sometimes it’s good not to have even these, but rather to be thrown completely on your own.

Well, I’m going to stop. Maybe you’ll be able to give me a job as secretary or something. Better not ask me to do analysis—I might drive the patients away. Somehow sick people infuriate me. And God knows what I’d want to adapt them to.

NOVEMBER 17, 1942

Henry: Your letter this morning made me very angry. You repeat the same thing, just as if we didn’t write countless letters about it. You’re completely blind about one thing, and always will be. I’m responsible for that blindness. You start all over again to exult in the life you lead—and then you dare to say to me: “When I speak of this life, this humble life, you get frightened—you seem to need the cultural background, etc.” as if it were a choice for me, a simple choice. What is this humble life of yours? You admit it’s possible because of the Neimans and me. Then it isn’t a humble life—it has a basis on dependence. Then you go on converting me to it. What a clever woman Frieda is! Yes of course. What do you expect me to do? I am tired of repeating that I do not choose to print, choose to analyze, choose to stay in N.Y. I do not choose to struggle.

You put me in the place by your attitude. I again bowed my head and accepted this attitude—which means always for me to be and continue to be what I am. The trouble is you’re unbalanced and can’t see that. You think I can take your attitude. At whose expense? If I can only get my liberation by staying at somebody’s house and letting someone struggle for me I don’t want it. For a long time I have been fully aware of our separation. My saying it first only happens because I always see first. The last straw was your thoroughly irresponsible remark about sex. “It’s fine to have it but I can do without it.” It isn’t in anger that I say this, but now I don’t want you to return. You told the (John) Cages you were never returning to N.Y. I should long ago have given you the ultimate liberation. The time has come. I do not want you to return. I don’t want to bring you back to any place you loathe. You do not and never have made your life around me, by the climate of my presence. You are now complete, by yourself. I say this without pain or anger. You have prepared me for this. I only regret that you have failed to complete yourself in one simple truth: two people can’t take your attitude—or they sink into ignominy. One can, and the other must struggle. Your passivity has created my struggle. When I met you I stayed in Louveciennes doing nothing—and I like the easy life just as much as you do. I began to struggle because your debacle at the time proved what happened to you whenever someone didn’t protect you.

You have always refused to see the necessity of this. You have blamed me as if it were a temperamental defect.

Your passivity increased in proportion to my creative and protective activity. Ironically, you never recognized that my struggle was at the basis of your magnificent renunciations and independences. You mocked the people who struggled. You said: “Look, look how I do it.” And it was all utterly crazy and inhuman. I can’t bring myself to let you down and show you. You think your way of life is wisdom—but it isn’t. It’s the way of life permitted to those who are protected by someone else’s struggle. That’s all. There is no triumph and no conquest in it. It’s a crystallization of the ego—that’s all. I repeat it, Henry: I do not want you back. There is no need of it. I shall continue to help you. I have always wanted you fulfilled. I have my own plans and it won’t be Hollywood. This is not a surprise or a shock. You mustn’t be concerned. This separation has been going on since you went to Greece. I have been fully aware of it. Your letters have effectively detached me from you. They are more revealing than you know. Believe me when I say I feel completely detached and you are free—to live as you please. Only I do not want any more letters on this subject. I shall be grateful not to hear any more about the foolishness of my struggles, my love of the city, my refusal to lead an enchanted life at the cost of begging. That I shall be thankful for.

I didn’t want a separation to come out of a quarrel—but that is how it happens. One suddenly discovers after ten years that one is fundamentally misunderstood, which means not loved, and there you are. I’m very definite about this however—and it is not anger which makes me do it but complete disillusion—and that can’t be altered. Sooner or later you were going to be alone, for your efforts were never towards union but towards aloneness. The time has come.

Second letter to Henry:

I’m no longer angry—just very sad at being misunderstood—but I kept my first letter for a day, and read it again. I still feel the same way, but I understand what makes you write me such irritating and unjust things. I understand and feel for you too. You mustn’t be hurt by my use of the word “child.” You are a man, and more than all other men, as creator, as lover, as everything in fact, but in relation to money you’re helpless. This helplessness is so intolerable to you that you can’t acknowledge it, and so you also find intolerable the awareness of what I have to do for you—so between guilt and pain you simply refuse to realize the rightness and necessity of what I do. You would feel much happier if I became a child like you, joined you and repeated your life with June, for I repeat to you, I’m as helpless as you in regard to money, and it is Hugo (another unbearable idea) who has guarded us both. What you want me to do is destructive—to join you and become blind with you. As you can’t solve this, you ran away. You ran away to Greece. At that time your trip was a break from me and your unsolvable problem. We broke physically and emotionally. You found you could live without me—physically and emotionally. I did too. It became clearer and clearer that the only bond left was a mother and child one: you demanding, capricious, unwilling to make sacrifices, and running away again. Your last demand was the biggest. You really want to stay where you are, you still need my protection, and there you are. You’re too honest to pretend anything in order to keep this protection. You have always been honest—your letters are very honest about the fact that you feel fine, alone. You are furthest away from your own guilt. In fact the best deliverance would be utter destruction of the bond, because you would be back at the place before you met me, starving but free of guilt. Alas—it’s tragic that we won’t escape that, though I struggled to free you. Now if we are both honest, I will say that I will overlook all your foolish, nonsensical statements about your independence and humble life and need of nothing, and I will not let you starve—if only you stop writing me destructive, cruel, thoughtless letters. You, who are so honest, can’t face a simple truth like this. It is unnecessary for you to return. We are not bound as man and woman anymore. If we had been, you wouldn’t have put so many small things in the way of your return, a city, a climate, your personal gratifications, your well-being. It is unworthy of us to be so deceptive. Now your problem is clearing, isn’t it? You have all you want—the impossible always—at any cost. There it is. May you enjoy your peace, your solitude, your choice of life. Do not destroy my peace and the strength I need by constantly being critical of my attitude. I shall respect the kind of bond which makes it impossible for me to leave you without protection, no matter how often you have denied and denigrated the way I achieved it.

NOVEMBER 19, 1942

Henry has definitely chosen his life—escape and delusion. He has surrendered only to himself—to his self-gratification. What he wants of me is destructive, and I will not do it.

NOVEMBER 20, 1942

Before getting my break letter, Henry writes me:

Just got your letter with the postal check—yes, I did get the other, didn’t I say so? You will not get the ms. for a few days yet, I fear—it went by ordinary mail…

Each time I open a letter from you I expect another somersault now. You are really veering around like a weather-vane, do you know it? I have no doubt it’s all due to the terrible financial anguish you’re going through. I’m determined to take a job when I get back: we’ll see if that will steady you. I feel excellent—morally, mentally, physically, spiritually.

I have to smile the way you polish off Greece in your enthusiasm for Morocco. How do you know it’s so much better? Better than here, by a thousand times, that’s certain. What are you doing, working on Hugo now to put him in the consular service?

This morning I was rereading the last volume of my Rosy Crucifixion, and do you know, I was delighted with it. Wondered if it was really me who did it. That’s the truth—and this leads me to say that I am sure I can both work for a living and do my writing too. So many men and women have done it. And done it well.

Well, Lafe has arrived. I’m going to meet him now at the Satyr Book Shop. Give my regards to Frances and Tom Brown.

…So I write, calling him Mr. Weather-Vane, telling him I had given him what I thought he wanted me to give him: his liberty—and now he was veering again. What will be the effect of my letter? It is the first time I said to Henry what ought never to have been said, the fateful breaking words. He forced me to.

NOVEMBER 24, 1942

There appears what I call the drama of woman’s development. Woman—in her new development—has chosen the weak child-man who will not interfere with her evolution, on whom she can use her strength. His weakness in the end destroys her. She no longer wants to be the mother of children, which demands immolation and abdication. She is the sublimated mother of the child-man, the artist, the poet, the primitive. Today the primitive, the poet and the child are the weakest in the new world realism, and woman chose to protect him, recognizing his needs, protecting creation again, and thus giving birth again to the artist.

I count innumerable marriages of this kind: Abe Rattner and his wife, Frances and Tom Brown, Thurema and Jimmy, myself and Henry, Gonzalo and I. But the real child becomes a man and ceases to take the mother’s strength and becomes her protector. The artist/child never becomes a man, never ceases to live off her strength, and the woman grows older, tired, exhausted, and finally emptied and weak. If she weakens and needs protection she finds herself alone, even abandoned. The biological drama is distorted, tragedy sets in. The mother’s love, diverted of its natural channel, does not find the rhythm of nature which made the child stronger as the mother grew weaker.

This is a phase in the development of woman’s strength, in the diverting of the strength away from biological motherhood into sublimated motherhood, into higher forms of creation.

Working with Caresse proved to be an ordeal (she has given me Misfortunes of the Immortals by Max Ernst and Paul Éluard to print): she is changeable, fussy, capricious, exigent, wavering, uncreative, egotistical—above all changeable, unsure, which adds to our work, anxieties and expenses. She’s made mere laborers of us.

Her catastrophe issued from the lack of depth in her life, her waywardness and lack of fundamental values. Today she is poor and alone and sick. Yet she strains to recapture her “prestige” as a publisher out of vanity. Actually her “designing” and “typography” consisted of stealing my idea of printing on cellophane—immediately she appropriated it—and copying the format and mise en page of the original French Sans Pareil Edition. So Gonzalo’s initiative is killed and we have no interest in the book.

Letter from Henry:

You know, about our mutual veering around. The best thing to do, as pure strategy, when you want someone to do as you wish, is to give in to them—give them the whole hog. (Not in anger, or rebellion, or despair.) Really give in—and you’ll always get what you want. I had made up my mind to return quite a while ago…

That I wrote and harped about the beautiful country here, the solitude, etc., was no contradiction. The two are not incompatible. Didn’t you yourself teach me to overcome one of my great faults—namely, that of destroying a thing or place or person when you wish to leave it? (I did that with France a bit when writing about Greece—and have repented ever since.) I don’t hate what I have to give up or what I can’t have. It’s hard for me to get angry anymore. (Except about trifling things.) Nor can I be greatly deceived in people anymore. You must not expect very much of people—only the few, and of them one should demand, or expect everything.

I’m sure I’ll land something quickly when I get back. There must be thousands of jobs open now. I don’t care a hoot what it is. Factory work, if needs be. Have you noticed, incidentally, what a jolly time of it people are now having, working for defense? If only the poor buggers could learn to work this way in peace time—instead of cutting one another’s throats.

You always get a retarded anger, which mystifies people. That’s from holding it in, of course. You have to get angry on the spot—or not at all. Else you poison yourself.

If I should have to send a telegram about departures, etc., I’ll send it to Frances to give you over the phone. Don’t worry about money—I’ll get there. I’m awake now.

Letter from Henry (after receiving the break letter):

Well, that was a real blast from the Arctic you hurled at me! You certainly don’t leave me a leg to stand on. But how can you say that I have never recognized that I owe everything to you? Why, everybody knows that. I’ve never tried to conceal it or disguise it. Look, aren’t you confusing things? Wouldn’t it be possible for someone to be wholly dependent on another person—and be miserable at the same time? You must admit that I have achieved some little thing for myself, don’t you, won’t you? It’s true that I might have not experienced the depths and joys of solitude if you hadn’t made it possible. But because I tell you of these things (and I’m only saying what others have said before me, those who have tried it), you must not infer that I deny your part in it. You remember Lawrence’s words about “the morning star,” about being alone but having the woman there with him—which John Middleton Murry found so ridiculous and contradictory? Well, I was expressing the same thing, really.

Damn it all, you do confound what I mean whenever I talk about “aloneness.” You consider it the opposite of “union.” As a matter of fact, it’s the only way of achieving union, because you can only unite with others when you have achieved your own unity. And dependence! I tell you, we’re dependent on one another, every one of us. No one can stand alone, no one is self-sufficient. And I mean more than mere physical or financial dependence. But the strength we get from one another is for the purpose of nourishing that portion of our being which demands “aloneness.” It sounds contradictory, but it isn’t.

You’ve interpreted my words as some kind of slur on you, which is something I could never possibly bring myself to do. You always get your pride up at the wrong moment. I’ve been admitting to you all my faults, all my weaknesses. And then, crack, bang! You suddenly come to the conclusion that I am denying you, that everything is wiped out. Certain words and phrases make you see red. I’m truly sorry when that happens, but I never know what will produce this effect. I am not thoughtless and cruel. Whether I am a “crystallized ego,” as you put it, I don’t know. If I am, then I have accomplished nothing, then I am deluding myself utterly.

No, as I said in my last letters, I’m serious about returning to N.Y. and earning a living. I admitted that I wanted to change the situation. It seems to me now that if I don’t earn my own living I have no right to open my mouth. I must do as everybody else does and then see if I can boast of being wise, serene, gay, etc. You’re absolutely right. I had come to that conclusion myself. I have been living a lie, and writing it, I guess. I have given a false impression.

Yes, I’ve run away from so many things—and finally I’ve had to face them all. And this makes me wonder sometimes—was that all I accomplished by my writing—what every jackass knows? Really if that were it, it would be absurd. I’d be the first one to laugh at myself. You lay such emphasis on the word “choice,” I always notice. You give me credit for making choices. I wish I knew, sometimes, what was choice and cowardice. Things are terribly interrelated, more than we dare to believe, I think. My present situation for example. I didn’t choose—but there’s no doubt I unconsciously brought it about. There’s no doubt that I wasn’t ready for that job, no matter how much I protested I was. That’s being honest, as you say. God, but I’m not flattered anymore about being honest. I’ve seen the weakness of that too. But I suppose this trait is ingrained, like your pride. It’s something we have to wrestle with, and not fall back on as if it were a Maginot Line. In short, it doesn’t comfort me merely to say yes to your accusations. I want to do something about it. If I can’t prove myself in your eyes, then it’s all hopeless. I don’t ever again want to write a letter defending myself.

I don’t think we misunderstand each other at all. I’m sure I don’t misunderstand you. If there’s any misunderstanding it’s myself that I misunderstand. It does strike me as ironical, though, that at this moment when I imagine myself to be really at my best, that I should produce such a harrowing effect upon you. You make me think of myself as someone performing a successful experiment in a vacuum. And that makes me open my eyes.

It will sound outlandish to say so, but it reminds me of the time when I was a child and my mother dragged me by the ear back to kindergarten to ask the teacher to give me back the presents I had given away to the other children. I had always hated my mother for that. But I guess she realized that I was too sure of the better gifts she would give me, and too pleased with myself over my dubious generosity. Though at that moment, I had no thought of generosity: I was being Sovietique, taking from those who had and giving to those who needed. That was all. If we had been very poor, if I had needed those homely things, I am sure I would have acted differently. But my mother wanted me to be grateful, and I just couldn’t be grateful for gifts I didn’t want.

But believe me, today I am grateful for everything. I have eaten humble pie since then. Only today it is not so easy for me to distinguish between the giver and the recipient. I would like to see the giving and taking happening indiscriminately. But that’s looking at things from the standpoint of perfection, which is wrong, I suppose. There’s only one thing I know clearly—we all have different things to give and we also are in need of different things, one from another. And I have no defense to make out for myself. I took what I needed and I gave what I pleased. Now it’s time I turned about—give what is needed and take what it pleases to be given me. And even for that turnabout I can’t take any credit. It’s as though I had been a bandit all my life and then, when given hard labor, I take it cheerfully. So much has to do with the fact that I find the work of the world ugly and stupid. Perhaps this bugaboo will disappear too, now that I am face to face with it. And yet I feel that on my dying bed I will rise up on one elbow and have a last say at the world—“Don’t work so hard you poor fools! Give over…do as little as possible!” You see, it isn’t the easy-going, happy-go-lucky people who cause sorrow and misery in this world. It’s the go-getters, the reformers, the conquerors, the fanatics, the hard-working ones. They think that Paradise is created by sweat and labor, by making everyone think alike. That, that sure knowledge that at the bottom of all this toil and effort is simply a miserable, sadistic gloating—that’s what kills me. Well, as the monk said in Shangri-La—I’ll be moderately industrious. And maybe moderately happy, and moderately independent. Moderation—that’s the hardest thing for me to learn.

I understand a little better now, as I write you, what riled you so much. That phrase you quote—that could sound like the greatest insult. But would I think like that deliberately? You say my letters are an unconscious revelation. But you always say that when you want to perceive bad things. And you, or anyone, always perceives the bad the moment the ego is in jeopardy. Some crazy kind of fear comes up and then suddenly all is clear, ah yes, terribly clear. But it’s not clear! And that’s why the overemphasis on the unconscious, by the analysts, is wrong. If we were to be judged by the unconscious we’d all be guilty of the most heinous crimes. I want to remind you of the story about the Buddha returning home and how he was greeted by his wife whom he had deserted. You spoke of “running away” from problems. In a very true sense, that’s what the great Buddha did. He ran away because when his eyes were opened he could not stand the suffering of the world. (A very great difference here, I must admit, between our running away and his. He could not stand seeing others suffer. We can’t stand our own suffering.) Anyway, he went away and his great problem was—how to rid the world of suffering. Apparently, no one has imitated his behavior, at least. (Not that that destroys the rightness of his viewpoint.) When he returned it was with honor. No one accused him of running away from his wife and child, or from the responsibilities of the court. Nor did his wife complain that he had denigrated the female in her.

I am not comparing myself to Buddha. I have found no solution to world problems. I don’t think anything, any element of life, can be eradicated. Don’t you think, when I watched Margaret and Gilbert together I had many a pang? And yet I knew I also had something which they didn’t have.

I don’t believe in these parting quarrels. You know my vice, or weakness, or whatever you want to call it. You stood it for ten years, and you abetted it. I am not the least bit hurt or angry by what you write. I sympathize with you—deeply. It’s just as bad as if I had been an alcoholic. And if you really meant it that you didn’t want me to come back, or if you ran away, no matter what you did, I would not be angry or hurt. I would only blame myself. But I want to point out something to you. You know what my fears and obsessions are. You know so well, that it makes you overly heroic and self-sacrificing. You want to spare the other person pain. But do you know this—if every day you had come to me and said (instead of pretending that you could manage things): “Henry, things are bad, things are serious—you must do something. I know you don’t like to take a job, but you must now, it’s imperative. Today I will only leave you half what I promised you, or a third…that’s all we have.” That would have had a lightning-like effect upon me. I’d have been out on the double-quick. We are all weak in that, when we know the other one is strong, we lean on him or her. It’s human, even if deplorable. And, as I said before, that’s what strength is meant for—to be used by others. The strong feed on the weak just as much as the weak do on the strong. They’re bound, inexorably. Now I know you had too much tact and grace and delicacy to act that way with me. And I was too weak, too passive, too yielding. For a dreamer you have to use thunder and lightning. (Only now and then heat lightning—like now. You certainly turned on the heat, as they say.)

But just as you write me soberly and thoughtfully and considerately in your appendix, so I can write you. I am not going to do as you say. I am coming back and I am going to work. And I am not going to make you miserable because I take a job, you can depend on that. I won’t even make my employer miserable. I’ll be thankful that I got a bit of sense. All this I had intended to do anyway. You were wrong to interpret my letter psychoanalytically. You’ve been nursing that unconscious of mine too sedulously. We must give attention to the conscious processes too. That’s the part of us that is in the world and doing battle with it. You know the Spanish saying, “No man is a hero to his valet.” Well the valet is the conscious mind. It’s the mind that knows, because it has to dress the lazy self every day.

I couldn’t help but read the parts you had scratched out. I like that line about when your day of pleasure comes it will be at the price of mine. Fine! Now you’re talking. I’m going to give you a bit of luxury and idleness. I want to see you take a perpetual vacation. I don’t think there’s any danger of working! It’s a new experience. And all experiences are good. I’m sure I’ll become a foreman or superintendent in no time. Maybe a vice-president. You forget that I was once slated to become the vice-president of the Western Union! I couldn’t have been such a slouch then. And now I’ve got something more than muscle. Yes, I’ll want a little sexual intercourse too. I didn’t become a guru—quite.

Letter to Henry:

Henry—I didn’t make myself clear. I’m not trying to make you say you owe everything to me, or even to feel grateful, or harping on the giving. You know that all this is inaccurate, that deep down between you and me everything was right, an exchange of art, a mutual giving. What makes me see red, as you say, is something I want you to understand once and for all: it is when you are in your euphoric states, talk to me as if what I did do was unnecessary, that all I do can be abandoned, that I can just step out blithely, magically out of the problem, as you do. Don’t you see, what angers me is not that I want you to feel the dependence, but only because I serve as a foundation and give you the feeling of liberation, then you turn and say to me: “Why don’t you live as I do, do as I do—just ignore it all, enjoy yourself, etc.” Then it hurts me because being the realist in this case, the dreamer who has accepted to work, I feel that you are not convinced of the need of what I do. Surely you know I get no pleasure from making you admit I take care of you—none—but I get hurt when you say: “It’s too bad you like the big city and not this life I lead here. Why do you struggle so? Why don’t you print for yourself, etc.” It’s like a criticism—as if I could not enjoy dreaming. You ask, is all your writing only going to lead you to find that you have to work like other men, for a living? No—of course, it’s absurd. There is no other way. Wonderful men have yielded to that. All the French writers had professions. It didn’t kill them. You say then that to make you see this I should have cut you off—to make you see it. But that is not my way. I tried to make it clear to you, but each time I talk about it you make it sound terrible—like a creditor—and that is humiliating—that is not what I mean. It is a blind spot you have. It’s Don Quixote saying that it is not a windmill, it’s a castle. I’m not opening your eyes to what I do—but to the simple fact that it has to be done, that if you don’t do it, I have to do it, that I am deeply, very deeply tired, physically so, and that I want you to share with me, because I can no longer do it all. In America it is too heavy for me, too much for my body. To make you see this, do you think I have to do it cruelly—cut you off, so that you will face it absolutely, really, concretely? Can it not be done otherwise? I have not abetted your desire to do nothing else but writing the last years. Since we came to America I told you: I cannot do it. Hugo still has a European salary which doesn’t go far enough. N.Y. is nightmarishly expensive. I can’t pay $40 rent and your meals in restaurants. You knew I couldn’t. You know I wrote for Ruder, I tried the press, etc. The most I can now make is $100 a month, but the press rent and running expenses take some of that. And the physical wear is tremendous. Wasn’t all this clear to you when you left? Isn’t that why you left? But as soon as you got to Hollywood you forgot it? And when the press is put on a paying basis, I get sad and lose interest, I am a dreamer. I hate working for other people. You do misunderstand my letters. You think I want you to thank me. God, no, Henry. It’s only that when you start dreaming you start asking me why I don’t do the same! Then the struggle appears in this light as grotesque. No one can work when the other denies the need of it. Can’t I make this clear? No—I know it isn’t—it can’t ever be, to you. That is why you are not convinced. It is utterly hopeless. I repeat the legend, you’ve been disconnected from all life on earth and no power can reconnect you.

What I don’t like is that this forces me to give terrible emphasis to something I don’t naturally want in the foreground. Your lack of earth-recognition of the need to earn a living forces me to represent something I’m not. In the end I’m getting deformed in your eyes and in my own. And that depresses me. The dreamer in me is being killed because I’m condemned to be the food supplier—and meanwhile Henry is saying: “It’s absurd to have food suppliers. We don’t need them!” In short—you are not ready to return. You are not ready to give up whatever drug that protects you from accepting the ugly side of life—your delusions. There is nothing to do but for one to accept the incompleteness of the other and set about to substitute for it. It is too bad that there cannot be a sharing of responsibilities so that neither one should get deformed. I’m being deformed because the problem is much too heavy for my body’s capacity. You’re being deformed because this omission or blindness in you is sooner or later going to catch up with you—in spite of me.

Do you know why you mentioned Frieda Lawrence? I know. It’s because it is such a person you need now. You have mistaken the nature of my strength. Hers is a physical, earthy strength. Mine was psychic, spiritual. It was courage with not much of a physical basis—just the desire to protect the feeling. You speak of strength—but you see I’m not an oak—and that’s what you need. Trying to be an oak with a body not made for it has broken me. I do not say this ironically or with jealousy—I do think you should visit Frieda—see her life—you must find the life you really want, and the woman who can give it to you. For the first time I realize I am not the woman for you—you need an oak!

TUESDAY NIGHT

Letter from Henry:

Anaïs, your last letter was full of sadness and despondency, with genuine despair. There is only one thing I can do, it seems, and that is to relieve you once and for all of this heavy burden. I am looking for a job, in earnest. I will know something definite in a very few days. At the worst—or maybe it’s the best—I will take a job in a defense plant. Meanwhile I’ve become quite good friends with a man who has just begun to publish—he’s the vice-president of a printing plant. He likes my books—and preferred the “Colossus” to all, which I rather liked. Had dinner with him and his wife the other night. The question is, what can he publish? I am giving him the Letters to Emil, which I have been rereading with that in mind, and which are publishable, I think.

Meanwhile, let me say in passing, I won’t need any money, probably for quite a while. And if I land a job, I won’t need any ever—you’ll be free. […]

FRIDAY

Letter from Henry:

Anaïs, what am I to say to your last letter? You’ve apparently lost all faith in my ability to solve this question of independence. There’s only one thing left for me to do—to prove it. So I’ll look for a job here.

I’m truly sorry to hear that you are in such a state of mind. I don’t question anything you do, or wish to do. One must act according to one’s nature. We can’t always understand why a person acts as he does, but we can be tolerant. You must do as you see fit—it’s obviously imperative. […]

Letter to Henry:

Henry: We’re still writing at cross purposes. This morning you say sadly that I do not believe in your capacity to take a job—and that you will be indulgent towards the step I take—towards my attitude. Henry—for god’s sake—when a man has written twenty pages to prove he cannot make concessions, that he cannot compromise, when a man shows the deep resistance you did to your life in N.Y.—how can this man turn around and do the opposite? And for what? For me? How can you expect me to turn around and ask you to do what you have spent twelve years proving to me you can’t do? I get my integrity from doing repulsive things for a human resource, for you. You can’t do these things for another human being. Also I haven’t asked you to do anything for me, but for yourself. I have only given you what you wanted again as always. What you desperately tried to get from me. Again I am letting you be yourself—choose your life, etc. You did everything to prove to me your deep resistance to life here. I can only envisage your return as tragic for me. I have to slowly make you conscious that the rhythm between us is broken because you asked too much—you set about to be true to yourself, to your wishes and dreams. This has been so superhuman a task that I am now drained—weak—and only ask for respite, peace. I feel broken. I cry in the streets and I can’t climb stairs. I feel absolutely weak. Je n’en peu plus. Today I said in the middle of the street to the passersby: “No puedo mas”—I wanted to shout it in Spanish—I don’t know why: “¡No puedo mas! I can do no more!” If you come back I know what awaits me: feeling your misery, your rebellion. I can’t bear it. Because I’m a dreamer, I dreamed your dream of freeing you, but I didn’t know that the human being breaks—and there you are. The human being broke. You dreamed impossible things and left me the work of fulfilling them. You escaped every constraint, ever discipline, every slavery to love, to human life, every sacrifice. You’re at peace with yourself. Well, that’s an achievement. Either I have given you the strength to stand without me—or else I gave you only delusions. I believe I merely freed you to dream crazier and crazier things. But don’t be indulgent! For nothing I am doing comes out of me—women have no life of their own. I have only reacted to your destiny. You destroyed the life in N.Y. You made it worse than it was—you made no effort to make it better. I knew at the time what you were doing, the meaning of it. Each whim, each rebellion was significant for me and a source of pain—but I couldn’t stop you. I know you don’t understand what has happened to me. I am being destroyed. But I know all my letters mean nothing to you. We now speak a different language. By sheer suffering I have become merely a human being. All I want is tenderness and humanity. You have become something else. If it pleases you to think it’s Buddha—let it be Buddha. Whatever it is, it is something that has killed the dreamer in me. My real self was in the fantasy stories, in the House of Incest and the fairy tales. I can’t write those anymore. My devotion to human beings has killed me. The mother has finally been murdered by the dreamers. For me the nonsense and the dreaming and the madness are all alike, they are a way of killing me because I have served them with my life. What I want you can’t give me now. Now I want only a corner to sleep in, and recuperate my lost strength, and a human being beside me. I want to hide away. I think you’re unbalanced because all these things I talk about don’t mean anything to you. You don’t know how to answer me. Just give me time. I have my own desert to traverse. It is my turn to go away and find what I must do.

DECEMBER 4, 1942

Letter to Henry:

Henry: There is no blame and no accusation in this that I write you because we have done it together. But you must make the effort with me to understand it and not let it crush us. There is one truth you have persistently evaded and that is the material reality, the need of food and bed. I have equally failed to have a sense of reality about my body and the limitations of human sacrifice. You have counted on my heroic attitude, my romantic belief in your creation. Today it has cost me my life, almost, and where will you be when I am dead? As far as that goes, the way I am is worse than death. I am like an invalid. I tried the impossible. I am as weak as when in Paris I collapsed and was given a blood transfusion. Because you have never done for anyone what I have done for you—you cannot understand what it is, never to sleep one’s fill, to be economizing even on what I eat, to beg, to steal, to work. Do you know the old galleys, where on the deck people took their pleasure while others below rowed until they died? That is what our life has been. And with this a complete awareness in you, a persistent conviction that it would be absurd for you to work. We live out a legend because I believed in your creation, I believed the world should take care of you, and so I set out in a crazy way to serve this until I cracked. There is something wrong there, don’t you think? Several times you have been on the brink of realizing the wrongness of it—but it meant a sacrifice on your part, so you ran away. You have practically said: “At the cost of your life I must follow my beliefs”—other times you have said: “If I realized each move I make creates sacrifices for you I would go crazy.” Well it is true. And I have paid with my life. My eyes are worn out, my hands are deformed, my body is completely exhausted. I ran the press lately with lumbago. I bent over the typesetting with a painful, stiff back. I can hardly get up in the morning. I come home at six o’clock and go to bed. And you are so far from the reality of this you can’t even feel it. You could never feel all the meals I missed, the constant self-denial, the continuous labor, the tension, the anxiety. It is wrong of you to mention Buddha—to make it a religious sacrifice? Haven’t I done enough? Buddha didn’t burden his wife with the full dependence you did. He didn’t talk about meditation and then cause such torment to a human being as you have. Your trip around America was a nightmare to me. You got tired of writing for Ruder in two months. I did it for six months. No Henry—this is deeply wrong—I don’t accuse you because a part of me consented to this and I suppose I believe one has to give one’s self to death. Well—I have. My real death won’t help you—it would be a useless romantic sacrifice. Death as a total loss of strength—that I have reached. I can go no further. I want to give you time to solve this—because it was our doing, my mystical exaltation made me a martyr. I gave myself up. The loss of blood—anemia—was deeply symbolical. […] We have both been equally crazy, and that is why I have no bitterness and no revolt. But I have to make you understand this. I’m trying to do it this way, without violence and without cruelty. If you think that to stop sending you money is the only way to make you aware—then I’ll do that too. I still think whatever I do can’t be destructive. Your anarchism has been a kind of narcissism. You have dressed up your weakness in wonderful delusions—legends—telling me all kinds of tales to make me believe this was necessary, when only a little communism, a little sharing of the burden, a little humanity might have saved us from catastrophe.

P.S. Your letter today—you are irritated—I’m sorry if in my desperate state I said unjust or cruel things. If I didn’t have faith in you I wouldn’t be writing you. Neither one of us are to blame. We were both in good faith—we are only to be pitied. […]

Letter from Henry:

Friday Evening, Hollywood.

Anaïs: Last night I wrote you at some length and now today comes another letter with a check. […]

Between us there is no antagonism, no war of wills. You are creating a mirage. All that you have asked of me I have readily assented to. Maybe this is what happened— that I fled from the heaven you tried to create for me in order to make one of my own. But heaven is the same everywhere—and it’s not a place but a condition, as you know. What does it matter how we come by it, how we arrive? Circumstances now find us three thousand miles apart, but perhaps infinitely nearer than we ever were. You’ve drawn a line around New York. I’m drawing no lines. Eventually I will encircle you in New York. I feel achieved, at rest, and at one with myself. Let me help you! I realize that you are still regarding me as a bit of a fool, but sometimes the fool is nearer to God than the wise ones. How can I make you realize that you have lost nothing? Strength? That will return. You have no more sacrifices to make. That’s over with. Incidentally, I am returning this check, because I have enough to last several weeks yet, and I have two or three offers of jobs already. That’s demonstration number one. And you don’t know how happy it makes me feel. […]

You say I have killed the dreamer in you. No, only you could do that. Imagination is the one thing we possess which is free. Nobody can kill it. It is not “murderable.” For the moment, take that on authority. The truth of it will become apparent to you as you come to the end of your suffering. It was you who taught me, in Louveciennes—I remember well that moment—not to blame the world, but to hold oneself responsible for all that happens to one. That was a blessed moment for me, and after that, immediately came the clear vision of my past, of the pattern of my life. I think I made great progress since that day. I know it—don’t just think it. But I know too that as time unfolds, and vision increases, this same pattern of the past is susceptible of greater and greater interpretation. Nothing is static or fixed, not even the past.

There is a great deal now in your letters about the past. Let us stop thinking of that. Face the future. Don’t murder the future with the past. Let the understanding of the past act as a liberating force. I refuse to let you shackle me with my own past. I can’t deny it, that’s true enough, but I won’t be bound by it. And why should you? […]

I will surely look up the book you mention, and report on it. I hope you won’t say anymore that what you write doesn’t mean anything to me. It has meant everything, you see. Now you can break your wand, as Prospero did. Don’t return any mss. now. Just hold them and let them rest quietly for a while.

Now as I turn over the last page of your letter, I see—“It was all beyond us.” Well, you see you were wrong. Nothing is beyond us, if we have the real desire.

Well, enough. I expect to hear another tune in your next letter. And if you still do not believe, still are not convinced, I’ll keep answering you on the head. But I hope we’re through fighting windmills.

DECEMBER 10, 1942

I don’t know what day I felt: No puedo mas. But it came with such violence that I broke down. First came an extreme weakness—so extreme I could not climb the stairs to my home. I had to take them like mountain climbing at the same tempo as my mother who is over seventy. Then came weeping. The uncontrollable weeping. It seemed to me I was broken for good—physically and spiritually. The correspondence with Henry growing more and more confused. Fears, doubts, anguish, confusion. The work at the press monstrously heavy. Strain. Strain. A feeling of unbearable tension— such a painful tension, like lying on a rack. Jacobson unable to give me strength. I can never describe the tension. I had driven myself too far! The daily efforts broke me.

I telephoned Martha Jaeger. Such a beautiful, compassionate face! I yielded to her like a child—weeping, confessing. Immediately she released the tension by her words… “You encompassed too much. You had no sense of reality about the body—the limitations of the body!”

As I talked to her, abandoned myself to her care, I felt less hurt and less confused.

It was as if I had been given absolution and the permission to rest, relax and give up my too-great burden. She was amazed at all I had taken on—“Too much, too much,” she said.

The father is absent from this drama. This is the drama of the mother—of woman—I have been drawing closer to all women lately. Woman is only now becoming aware of her individuality, but also aware, as Jaeger said, of how her cosmic relation is different than man’s. It is a difficult, deep thing for woman to commune with. She can only do it by a universal motherhood or whore-priestess way.

“The high priestess,” said Jaeger when I spoke of my yielding to my father.

It is strange how I turned to the Woman and the Mother for understanding. I have had all my relationships with men—of all kinds. Now my drama is that of woman in relation to herself—her conflict between selflessness and individuality, and how to manifest the cosmic consciousness she feels.

There are depths I have not yet entered—which I struggled to express when I argued against Henry and Durrell and wrote “The Woman’s Creation” essay. I reread it tonight and only begin to understand it now—because of what Jaeger said about the cosmic life of woman running underneath.

It is strange that I have described these feelings and made the somewhat similar statements Jaeger makes but emotionally and unconsciously, and I’m only fully aware of them now with her. The diary must be unconscious and emotional, so I can get lost in it and can only regain my vision through the objective eye of another.

Psychoanalysis is our only way of gaining wisdom because we do not have religion.

Confusion in me between love and devotion. All my acts I thought were acts of love: yielding up of the self, the personal. But feeling hurt that they should all be willing to immolate me, and feeling unloved according to my way of loving (sacrifice), I was unloved by Henry and Gonzalo. I felt that the self must be shattered in love, love as abnegation, effacement of the self. Henry did not love me this way. Only Hugo. My revolt goes back to all the concessions I made for love (the scene of destruction of my books by Gonzalo because of jealousy).

Coming out of the ether, I said, “You did a wonderful job, doctor.”

Why must I fall mortally ill to prove to the world the sacrifice is accomplished? I think I have been completely crucified.

DECEMBER 22, 1942

Hugo feels my “return” and expresses it in the form of a game. He says: “I have been scared of losing you for twenty years. Now I’ve got you in the trap—at last.” And he plays at laughing villainously (as he does in my dreams of a cruel Hugo) and says: “Now I’m the boss. I won’t be so good anymore…”

And pretends to grow into an absolute boss.

We talked about the end of my taking care of my children, that they are grown up and will go away. All this for me is terribly poignant because it is foreseeing events for which I’m not emotionally ready. I’m not detached from Gonzalo, yet my love for him has moments when it resembles a leave-taking. I know the end now. And although I do see that Hugo is the only husband for me—the only one truly married by similarities of character and understanding, the only absolute—I am sad to return. I cannot even say it lacked romantic or passionate value, my marriage. I cannot even say this, because since Hugo gave me the initial shock of first pursuing me and then relinquishing me, he has spent twenty years like a knight of the Middle Ages giving me all the proofs and tests of his love that a man can give, and courting and re-courting and re-wooing me constantly, and waiting like a wife waits for her husband’s return!

Jaeger brought out the importance of the abandonment trauma in my marriage— Hugo’s departure for Europe before we were engaged. I told Hugo about it, how I had looked for a ring with his last bunch of flowers and did not find it. He had roses delivered to me while he was in the bathroom, with a ring, and this card:

August 15, 1922

Darling, I love you. I cannot live without you. Will you be my wife and marry me when I return from this trip? Hugo

DECEMBER 26, 1942

Letter to Henry:

Henry: Every word you said about the Dreamer corresponds to my feelings. I was puzzled by the same things and I see clearly a great difference between Pellegrina and me. She represents only a part of my nature. This is the very part I tried to live out—but she had wealth. And her voice. Actually possessed the “horn of plenty.” I had the desire to be fully Venusian, and I had the gifts to give, but I didn’t have the wealth. And so to live this out and bring magic and creation all around me, I wasn’t content to sing (or write) but I had to give real food, real nourishment. And as I didn’t have it in plenty, I took it out of my mouth, I did it by denials. I denied myself even proper eating, thus giving of my very blood, and thus destroying my physical body. That is why you ask me: why should giving have exhausted me? But, Henry, I didn’t give what you give, just what you possess—your spiritual gifts, your writing. I gave what I didn’t have, whatever the other needed, and to accomplish this I sold myself to prostitute writing, I slaved, I cut on my sleep, rest, comfort. I denied myself all pleasure, all relaxation, all trips, vacations, everything. I even gave up all peace because by straining I gave myself constant anguish. I felt responsible—the mother. If I had been merely content with singing—but no, I was the cosmic mother, and like a mother I did all the ugly, menial chores until I died from the ugliness of it all. There is a great difference in the two stories. I had a great deal to give, but that was not enough. I had to give my blood, my strength—and that became a crucifixion. That kind of giving nobody does—giving up even one’s self, soul and body. And can’t you see that this is exhausting, that this has nothing to do with the mystical giving, that I did it in reality—I wasn’t satisfied with the symbol of communion. Even Christ was satisfied with a symbolical meal. I gave my body. And that is why I broke and wanted to die. It is this I feel I can’t make clear to you because you never experienced it. You gave what was pleasurable, easy and natural, not the impossible. You were really objective all the time. You didn’t waste yourself away with compassion, wear yourself out with sharing everybody’s lives. So you kept your strength. Your question today shows you don’t know why I should have fallen and become weak. You don’t know that you were in the womb nourishing yourself out of my very flesh—not just a mystical strength. The mystical strength is infinite, but not the body. It is my body I crucified. For it wasn’t made for the burden I put on it. And that is where I was the dreamer. Is that an answer to your question?

I am having a pregnancy test made today.

DECEMBER 27, 1942

It is like a detective story, this tracking down of the incidents and misinterpretations which create an image, or distortion rather, or reality. My doubt of love makes me interpret certain phrases and incidents in a certain way.

A re-evaluation, re-interpretation of everything. Objectivity. Could I make a work of art of this—transmute, transform, conquer pain?

Coincidence, or the magical effect of analysis? The day I return from Jaeger, Hugo puts on my lap the first few hundred dollars he has earned outside of the bank, that he has vainly tried to earn for years and couldn’t. Is it because deep down he resented how I spent all my money on others and felt it was useless to earn more as I would give it all away? When he felt I was trying to stop giving, he earned it, to give himself the pleasure I have denied him—of giving to me. His greatest pleasure, linked to his erotic passion for me, is to take me out and get me underwear, panties, stockings. Dressing me gives him a sexual pleasure, and I denied him this for years.

The magic consists in my peace being contagious, my relinquishing of struggle and anguish, releasing Hugo and Gonzalo. My lying back, with greater confidence, my ceasing to clutch and fear, affects all those around me.

Neurosis is the real possession by the devil, the real evil force.

DECEMBER 28, 1942

Winter of Artifice—notes

Pure essence of the personality, stripped of racial characteristics—time, place, the better to penetrate the innermost being—the deepest self. Description of states: insomnia, obsessions, coldness. Because I was free and beyond nationalism—uprooted—mystical. Rayons X de la vie intérieur. Describe people as composed of climate elements, race elements, food they eat, animals they resemble, books they read. Elle était faite de… Then as layers: living either in feeling, present or past, ideas. Or absent, preconscious, conscious, seeing themselves, or blind or beyond this—into the union of sensation and perception or partly paralyzed, semi-invalids, semi-asleep, atrophied, avaricious, fearful, shrunk. Day people, or nocturnal—constant, variable, deflected, focused.

      American Infantilism

cradle shoes

little bows in the hair

gather little girl dresses

orphan hats

school girl socks

eating of candy, sugar, ice cream

University or school clothes worn by Virginia

   Impotence

emotional immaturity

sexual immaturity

radios instead of musicians

   School

books on how to win friends

school of how to make love

questions asked of great figures

Gonzalo

I have felt mired in the blindness of their lives. Helba’s paranoia, the idea of her great value, the blame of others for all mishaps, the victim complex—Gonzalo believes this.

Dismantling of a love

A feeling décanté

DECEMBER 31, 1942

The “pregnancy” was psychological. I had all the symptoms: nausea, painful breasts, ovarian pains, etc. Jaeger said I was trying to give birth to something—“What, we don’t know yet.” After the last attack of poison she helped me again. It is clear that I suffer merely from the knowledge that my love for Gonzalo did not become an absolute, not because of Helba, but because he destroys the mystical me (because he cannot possess it), and I cannot marry him altogether either. There is a part of him I reject, that materialist, terre à terre, factual, literal, limited Gonzalo who destroys all that he cannot understand. It is this that causes my sorrow.

I have Hugo. I see Hugo as I did not before, and I see the obstacle which turned me away from him erotically. Emotionally, I am suffering, but without despair, rancor, rebellion. I understand. I have to accept this. How sad it is. Gonzalo is blind. Blind. I cannot get any nearer to him. I made all the efforts. I grasped communism for his sake. He never came towards my mysticism. He hates it.

A difficult turning point. I have had too much suffering and so little pleasure.

JANUARY 6, 1943

Jaeger carried me out of the despair, out of the pain. We touched upon a deep well of guilt, great expiation for my only joy—the erotic. My only pleasure was the act of love, but my concept of love was wrong: to give up, to shatter the self in love, to consume the self. And my concept of giving was wrong: to give what hurts to give— myself—I thought was the highest love.

All wrong. And then the suffering from ingratitude, as she said.

The guilt appeared then, in my fear that she should make me renounce my sexual life, the last sacrifice of the last and only pleasure. For days I feared her. I thought she was taking the side of the others, not seeing the good I have done (as Helba won’t see it). Then we unveiled the guilt, exposed it. So much expiation. Gonzalo too, expiating to Helba for the pleasure he took with me.

The guilt was there and is responsible for the suffering. And today we clarified the relationship with Gonzalo. True, I am not ready to give him up to his next phase of maturity, of going to Peru to get his rightful inheritance. True, I fear losing him when he won’t need me as a mother anymore.

But it is true he wouldn’t go…he waited and postponed and risked letting his mother die without seeing him. He resists facing his home, family, bourgeois background, fears being held there by the threat of the inheritance. He prefers to take from me. And as he said a few days ago, or whenever I doubt him because he sacrifices me to Helba: “The proof that I love you is that I can’t go to Peru, as I should.”

So it stands, and as Jaeger says, it is static for the moment. She understands so well. She has played the same role, only more terribly. She had no personal life, no husband or child. She could take nothing for herself. She was the giver.

JANUARY 9, 1943

Gradually, led by the lucidity and compassion of Martha Jaeger, the atmosphere cleared. I gained confidence in everything, in Gonzalo’s love, in Hugo’s, in myself. The tension vanished. And both Hugo and Gonzalo responded psychically. Hugo was relieved and released of his sacrifices, his strain, and we planned our “tour of the world” when he retires, our life and our pleasures. Then Gonzalo felt free, was happier and even more devoted. He became (because of the change in me) more protective, and expressed his love of domination which I lose sight of.

Resentments and bitterness were lifted. Because I understood everything, I could no longer be bitter. How difficult it is to recapture the talks with Jaeger, so mysterious the process. We don’t know when we start, why we are talking about all the women I have loved, and their resemblance to my mother—they have the impetuous, aggressive character of my mother. We don’t know why I think that because it was betrayal and abandonment, the suffering my mother endured at my father’s hands was worse than any I suffered. We don’t know why I expected this for myself. We didn’t know how, as a child, I passed into my mother and endured her suffering and her being abandoned… The women—primitive, emotional, uncontrollable, irrational—my mother. This is all that I suppressed, controlled, sublimated. So again I seek “nature” in my lovers, and yet I suffer too, from this naturalness… On and on. And the guilt because of the pleasure I took. I thought Jaeger would condemn me and ask me to relinquish it, which in itself is an expression of guilt. Actually, Jaeger not only does not condemn me, she regrets not having done the same with all the love that has filled her…

Also the masochism, the obedience to the religious phrases.

At what point does the self-injury begin? I fell into a trap because of my compassion. I injured myself, but, says Jaeger, there is a way of giving without injury to the self, a way of being compassionate.

Masochism. What of masochism? The tortures I suffered from Henry’s early promiscuity, his stories of going from me to a whore, but that was not deliberate cruelty, and soon he changed. Yes. I suffered, but mostly through my concept of love as sacrifice. My lovers did not betray me. They were childlike, selfish, narcissistic, unconscious, irresponsible, but not sadistic. I suffered mostly from jealousy (without cause) and excessive self-denial. Too great. All that I needed, I gave away, even the essentials.

However, my weakness as a mother, my indulgence, was counterbalanced by my mystical wisdom, so that they did not become weaker, but stronger, both Henry and Gonzalo. That was positive and creative.

Inner peace now. How strange it is.

I have started again to dream of a new life, of expansion. I dream of going to Peru—all of us—helping Gonzalo to get economically free, enjoying the voyage, the abandonment of America… I dream of voyages, new lives, new relationships…

JANUARY 11, 1943

Dreams of reconciliations:

My father. He is playing a very small piano in a museum in Havana. We are intimate and gentle. He says to me: “You were nicely dressed yesterday but you didn’t look beautiful. Today you do.” He caresses my hand. He is small, quick, humble.

We traversed the museum before coming to his private apartment. The noticeable fact was that there was nothing to see. It was extraordinarily bare. His own rooms were bare and not beautiful. I felt that he had been given a humble place and that he humbly accepted it.

My brother Thorvald. Also a feeling of intimacy and ease. I said to him: “You know, I used to think you and I were entirely different, but I can see we are growing more alike, and I understand you better.” The woman he was married to I liked.

JANUARY 13, 1943

The body still shows the strain, the wear and tear, but it does not rule me. I am in a good mood. I have thrown away my much-mended, much-faded dark red kimono and bought at a second hand shop a sumptuous black velvet sortie de théâtre with a satin white lining, worn only a few times by a rich woman, and which I wear as a robe de chambre. I have bought oil paints to repaint the now-faded windows. I have bought a muff cushion and made myself a muff out of the little leftover pieces from my astrakhan princess coat, now cut down to a small cape and hood, very Marie Bashkirtseff. I have bought a cookbook and am cooking with care and delectation for Hugo’s pleasure (he has waited for twenty years for this new quality to appear in me—I have been indifferent and careless). I have washed my seashells to their pristine whiteness. I have started to dream profusely day and night. The blood is circulating again. I write in my head.

What I feel about Henry now is this: he had ten years of comfort, laziness, self-indulgence, effortlessness, and aside from writing, he gave himself the easiest, softest life, without ever collaborating to make my burden lighter, or at least sharing it in part, or seeking to give me the same share of ease and softness. He never denied himself, drove himself, sacrificed, pinched, or renounced a single whim, pleasure, and therefore I have done well by him, gave him what very few artists have ever been given, ten years of peace and ease, and now he is well known, he is launched, he can easily obtain this from the world. And I do not feel it is wrong for me to put an end to my continuous sacrifices for him. I gave to the limit, of my body and soul. It has to end now. Lately he has not even thought it necessary to compensate these efforts with his presence, has taken without returning even in love or companionship and has made me merely the provider.

Henry gave my birthdate to Pierce Harwell in Hollywood, who never saw me: “First, about Anaïs. Lord God! I haven’t come down from the stratosphere yet! Her chart is an experience. While every chart is something of a spiritual event in the astrologer’s life, Anaïs’s chart is one of those symphonic things that fill the brain and the soul with the music of the spheres. Already I have spent hours in it, like a bird winging through heaven.”

JANUARY 1943

I lie in bed and write letters. There is a pause in the press work. I have whole afternoons at home. I am lazy. I enjoy it. I cannot make an effort. When I feel this exaltation filling me again, the surging energy, I lie back. I am not letting it carry me away. That part of me continues to dream great tasks, of going to Russia and working for it, giving my life.

Another part of me dreams of indolence, travels, lovers. Another part of me rewrites the diary to fullness and perfection. As I cannot invent people, I don’t write.

The house is in order. Beautiful. Papers in order. That is how one organizes for the big dreams which will carry me off. The diaries in the safe, cigarettes in the cigarette boxes, one of leather, one of painted wood. The telephone at my hand, and next to it the little Spanish feast table with its two little red lanterns. On top of it, a glass box with jewels. Marks of Hugo’s goodness: the doll house he gave me for Christmas because I gave mine away when I six years old, earrings he engraved for me.

The present. The sensual Gonzalo unleashed last night, thrusting into my mouth…

New stockings bought with pennies saved by Millicent from shopping. She opens the little box on my bed after breakfast, and says: “And now go and spend it on yourself.”

Laziness. Laziness.

From my thumb to the index there is a rim of red I cannot wash completely away— the mark of my holding Gonzalo’s sex after having marked it with my painted mouth.

Laziness.

FRIDAY, JANUARY 15, 1943

Letter from Henry:

Anaïs, the only reason I keep answering you about these recriminations and accusations is not in self-defense, but to awaken you, because admit it or not, you also have your blind spot. You say I don’t seem to understand that it’s your body which is exhausted. Implying thereby that there was never anything wrong psychically. And then you send me the Harding book, which I wrote you about last night. And the Harding book contains the answer to your problem. You sent it for me to profit by— but won’t you admit that you were equally involved? I am grateful to you, to everyone, when my eyes are opened. But when I try to point out to you wherein you may be weak you think I lack sympathy and you come back to the same theme obsessively—that you are only physically exhausted, because I drained you dry. It is perhaps because you are so physically exhausted now that you refuse to recognize the mutual aspect of the catastrophe. […]

Do you know what this whole thing reminds me of? Of a Cesarean operation. You gave birth to a lusty infant: he’s doing well, he has a good appetite, he’s gay, even resourceful, young as he is, and the doctors tell you so, but, because it was such a terrible operation, because of the great pain you endured, you just won’t believe it. You just can’t see how it will get on in the cruel outside world, though the good Otto Rank wrote a book (The Trauma of Birth) to prove that’s how heroes are made. Here I am, without the ordinary anguish of birth, and you say, “Yes, but look at me!” The important thing was the birth, no? You’re alive, you’re breathing, you’re resting from your labors. Have faith in your creation. When I come of age, you’ll marry me. The insignificant one who “protected, incited, inspired, formed, disciplined, nurtured, tormented, perfected and finally created the writer” may perhaps also be able to do as much for the human being who became the writer in order to become something greater still. You cannot and must not give up in mid-stream. The great sorrows, pains and tribulations are reserved for the great. They are fruitful. Let me add this finally. I decided on the beginning from the bottom. I have no illusions of any kind, nor delusions either. I do the utmost I can every day. I’m leading a beautiful, chaste, sober, disciplined life, which keeps me serene. I know that miracles will continue to happen, because I know there is a law of compensation. I atone for any sins or crimes by doing my best towards others. I give myself completely in every direction. I want nothing, and I want for nothing. I consider myself blessed. If this sounds crazy, then have Dr. Jacobson put me in a strait-jacket.

Letter to Henry:

Why can’t we stop wounding each other and destroying what was created? You give the weakest and the worst interpretation of my devotion: the neurotic one. That is what hurts me. I never gave the worst interpretation of your dependence: I always gave it the highest one, the justification of your creation. I lived for that highest interpretation. You seek only the flaw in mine. That is what fills me with bitterness. Because I wrote it down, you say, proved the wrongness.

You speak of the horoscope but you don’t accept its interpretation of my serving. You don’t see the tragic drive I had, to consume myself in love. That is not neurosis. Many mystics consumed themselves. That you should treat me as a mere neurotic expressing self-pity is such a poor interpretation of my acts. I asked you not to write me anymore in that tone—I asked for a truce. I will not argue for myself anymore. If you can’t write tenderly, humanly, simply don’t write me. I don’t see why we can’t make this change without reproaches to each other. I don’t see why we can’t be human and simple about it, why I can’t just say to you: “Henry I’m tired. You take care of yourself now.” And you answer me quietly and simply: “Fine. I will. I feel strong now. You rest awhile.” At times you write me like that and I just rest and sleep and feel myself getting strong. But at other times—and believe me in back of all the bitter statements there is always in you and in me a need of self-justification—you write, as you believe, to help me but it sounds like reproaches too. You think I blame you for my collapse but I don’t. […]

You had ten years of what the artist needed to create—and now I’m tired, that’s all, just humanly, simply, naturally tired. Is that a crime? When you were tired you slept. You weren’t forced to explain or justify your tiredness. After each book you experienced a letdown. You felt drained. Well, I created for ten years without a rest. I’m just plain tired. Do we have to drag in Harding, neuroses, Rank, Lao-tze, etc.? I’m tired like a negro gets tired—like a child. […]

There is nothing unnatural in my being tired. Nothing neurotic. Nothing of a failure. When you slept I guarded you, let you sleep. Can’t we be natural, can’t I be allowed to be tired, human, simple? That alone would cure me—hasten the return to strength. Your letters have been irritants instead of berceuses!

Letter to Henry:

Henry: The way you could have helped me best is by finally regarding me as a human being, with a body. My love for you was far more complete because I regarded you both mystically and as a human being, I treated you as a great creator, writer, mystic, but I took care for your body, and when I met you in Paris it was your body which had broken finally—and I took care then of all your needs, regarding them all as a whole. But you tend to do to me what everybody else but Hugo has done: to expect the infinite, to disregard my weakness, my illnesses, my fatigues, to have no compassion. This is the reason I obsessively harp on your accepting the reality of the body, for if this had not failed me I would still be taking care of you. Don’t you see? It is so simple. But you have grown so accustomed to see me only in mystical relation to you. You have lost sight of the other. My insistence on this was because in my mystical desires and devotions there was no end. Will you believe me more when I tell you that this is not my personal interpretation but the very words of a person who can see what neither you nor I can see because we get emotionally involved—the woman with whom I have been talking?

When you had your crisis in France, your change of life, low ebb, you made a transformation from a lessened physical energy to a new expression of it in a more spiritual realm. I didn’t call you a neurotic then. I saw you pass from great animal exuberance to a less physical energy and into a more mystical one. Well, I have to do the same which means I can’t express my devotion by taking care of people with my body’s efforts. I have to do it differently—in another realm, that’s all.

Don’t you see, Henry? Of course I’ll get well, and make the transfer—but it will not be the same pattern. I will have to become a writer, a musician, anything, but no longer the physical mother. That’s hard because I am a complete person—the physical and spiritual in me are related. I have not only wanted to give manna, but everything people needed, shelter, warmth, food. I’m total. I’m no Ramakrishna. I function on two levels, like a combined Stalin-Ramakrishna affair. Can you imagine wanting to be so complete?

JANUARY 19, 1943

Music

There is something to be investigated: my relation to music. I think I am a musician manqué. It is music I am trying to reach in writing. I am too emotional for writing, too emotional. I ought to be behaving like June to satisfy this violence and excess of feeling. But something controls, checks me. Reason and consciousness. Is it fear of the unconscious? When I saw Gonzalo beside himself, crazy, unstable, I felt my own instability and fear of insanity. But music—could this feeling go into music better than writing? How? As a child my reaction to music was emotional, tragic, passive. I hate solfège, the technical piano studies, etc. The dream of music, not its reality.

It is the only thing which satisfies me today. I am further than ever from the scientific, intellectual worlds. It is only to save myself from melancholy, depression and insanity that I seek consciousness again. People cannot receive writing directly through the senses as they receive music. Yet it is this way that I write, to communicate directly with the emotions. There is a mystery here.

Why did I reject the study of solfège and weep during the lessons? Music has haunted me several times in my life. Why did I give up dancing, which was a joy?

The exaltation which takes hold of me even when I am in a physically low condition is too much for writing. It breaks the mold of words. That is why I have done so much bad writing, diffuse and oceanic.

The kaleidoscope of moods is contained in music, not writing. The second part of Winter of Artifice symphonic.

It is always the same story one is telling, but from different ends of the microscope, of the hourglass, of the opera glasses. Through layers and layers of glass one looks, and at times it is an image in the mirror made small by the great distance. It is childhood, a small figure, with its scenery, its climate, its atmosphere. Long distance. Miniature. At another time it is not an image of one figure, but of three large wars that are taking place. For the small diminutive figure of the child, the war between parents and division and separation are as great as the world wars of 1914 and 1940. As great, as devastating. The being is torn asunder, three times. Now it is the giant figures of myth parents, striving and dividing. Now it is the image of nations striving and dividing. The sorrow is transferred, enlarged, but it is the same sorrow: it is the discovery of hatred, of violence, of hostility. It is the dark face of the world which no childhood was ever prepared to receive. Childhood is not prepared for strife. It enters with an expectation of paradise and of play, and to force the tragedy of hatred and destruction upon a child is to force too great a burden on its innocence. The being is sundered, as the tree cracks under lightening, as the earth cracks under the earthquake, as the soul cracks under violence and hatred. Paradise was from the first a place to be swallowed up by the darkness. So it is. The unbaptized children who die are for the devil, but some are baptized by fire—they do not die of it, but are scarred.

There are so many instruments for the eye to gaze through, and to observe. It is possible to see infinitesimal detail, never everything at once, buy only at the moment of the most intense sorrow or pain or death. I have too often looked backwards. Too often, as men return to memories of a battle because the scar hurts them.

Nothing is effaced.

Through the microscope I see the dispersed and sundered being. Every little piece has a separate life. Then occasionally like mercury, they melt together, but they remain unstable and elusive, corroding. The mercury being the matter of our thoughts— the mercurial mind—the indicator of temperature. Blood cannot warm it. The cells of feeling have their own motions, retreats, shrinking. Something always eludes the scientist, the poet, the star-gazer, the informers, discoverers, tabulators. It haunts our sleep. It is what lies in the deformed mirror of the dream.

Fragments.

JANUARY 22, 1943

I feel like Rimbaud, with a desire to turn my back upon all my writing because it is all entangled with pain and to enter a new world. I feel like writing two or three macabre stories I carry in my head.

I feel like rewriting the entire diary in two columns:

the actual diary as it is

and its completion à la Proust—filling, rounding, objectifying, encircling, encompassing all.

JANUARY 23, 1943

I know that the diary should be written in two columns—two versions. I know that the dreams should be completed. It is not enough to penetrate into the subterranean chambers. It is not enough to illumine separate cells with a partial light. Some total process must take place, some miraculous synthesis, by the suppleness of dialectics. The application of this principle has made the power of Russia. I want to find it in writing. I want to find the true dialectical writing. My problem is that in action people repudiate the invisible world which has formed their acts, as people repudiate the influence of the dream. Je fourmille, je grouille d’idées, des perceptions fuyantes. I am approaching something new.

JANUARY 24, 1943

How many evenings spent lying down, reading, listening to music, with Hugo. Do I lie content, savourant Giraudoux, or ruminating the story I want to write, or improvising in the diary? Evenings at Louveciennes, with the country asleep around the room like a giant foster mother, evenings when people feel at peace and drugged, but Anaïs? Anaïs cannot rest. Warmth, perfume, rugs, soft lights, books. They do not appease me. I am aware of the time passing, of aging, of all that the world contains which I am missing.

Yet when I go out I am disappointed. Every day I am prepared for feasts of love. If only I could enjoy sensual love as men do. If only I were easier to please. If only I were Ninon de L’Enclos…

Frénésie

Frénésie

JANUARY 27, 1943

I have had a fear of public recognition.

All this was subtly suggested by Jaeger. She led me as she does so invisibly to the very core of it. I was talking about Helba having had “public recognition—not that I want that,” I said.

And Jaeger said, “Why not?”

Then I had to confess I did want it and had suffered from the lack of it. I told her the lamentable story of my publications:

The D. H. Lawrence book was published by Titus a few months before his business went bankrupt, and the book was only partially distributed, half lost, not sent to reviewers, and no royalties.

Michael Fraenkel advanced money for House of Incest, but lost interest in it when it was out and did not distribute it as he had promised. No reviews, no response. I finally sold about 50 copies to Gotham Book Mart at 50¢ apiece, which she resold at $5, but I was grateful that she took them or they would still be in France.

Durrell supplied money for The Winter of Artifice. Obelisk issued it a week before the war—no distribution, no reviews.

I print Winter of Artifice myself, and when James Johnson Sweeney receives a deluxe copy from Hugo, he never writes a note of thanks, acknowledgment, or even courtesy. The New York Times refused to review it.

I am a slave to love again. I see strongly creative women crushing their men. I have feared this, as I have feared all aggression, all attacks, all destruction.

Henry is trying to make me feel badly, unconsciously. He is merely turning to “begging” letters again, to his dependence on the world. He begged Dorothy Norman, after I broke with her, and groups and organizations. He accepts hospitality, etc. Then he sends me a portrait of Joe Gould, the Bowery Village bum writer.

Then I get a fervent letter from Pierce Harwell, admiring and seduced by my horoscope! And he says this about Winter of Artifice, which pleased me deeply:

“Your words are little clay pellets with hieroglyphs on all sides, and on the top and the bottom. Their meanings are not philologistic, but telepathic and cumulative.

“I am going to say something which is peculiar and irrational for me to say to you. You are materially the ‘woman of the world,’ you have lived hard and violently and roundly. And, quite oppositely, I am eternally pre-adolescent. In a material sense I have been ten years old all my life. So it does seem peculiar and very irrational for me to write to you in this way.

“P.S. I am enclosing a little note for Eduardo. Will you be so kind as to send it to him for me. Henry sent me Eduardo’s little book to read, The Round, and I am anxious to discuss it with him.”

FEBRUARY 2, 1943

Gonzalo’s partial impotency, growing more so, leaves me without sensual satisfaction. For weeks he cannot fulfill the sexual act, he merely satisfies himself by my caresses, like an old man. The last time he had a small heart attack. His health is bad. So now, finally, I have nothing, no lover even, just merely the burden, no pleasure, no passion, no understanding. It is a terrible weaning—I have never wanted to see that Gonzalo’s sexual inadequacy was starving me, together with his spiritual incompatibility. I can’t bear the death of this love. I can’t bear my being so aware of the crumbling. To separate first from Henry, that was painless, but from Gonzalo it hurts.

Gonzalo, Gonzalo—will you awaken before it’s too late? Henry lost me, and now you will too—I am withdrawing. I would give my life to recapture my illusion of Gonzalo.

THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 4, 1943

The talk with Frances today in which we were piecing together a vast puzzle. She described the two kinds of orgasms so clearly: in one she lay back utterly passive, it came out of the darkness, dissolved and invaded her…in another a driving force in her, an anxiety, a tension made her seek it, grasping it as if in fear of it eluding her, and the movements were confused and crazy, cross currents of forces, short circuits, which brought an orgasm which did not bring calm, satiation, but left depression, a lack of satisfaction. The first one brought peace, the second, as if she had not been possessed, not fecundated by the male, dissatisfaction and frustration. (D. H. Lawrence has described somewhere the “Clutching” of the female will in sex which in turn could be explained by the impotence of the infantile man…)

I have had moods corresponding to both states: I dread the second mood.

Is it the strong self in us which is not answered with equality, overwhelmed, conquered?

Is it that in the sexual act of the infantile men (including Chopin, de Musset, etc.), behind the apparent sexual maturity or potency, there is a psychic lack of drive and energy force which the woman feels and is destroyed by?

Is it this, or is it that in us lie two figures: one of the female woman, all passivity and receptivity, and another, a taut, anxious shadow which, to relieve her insecurity, fears, nervousness and panic, always plunges forward as the desperado does and is defeated because this aggressiveness of the psyche cannot meet its mate and unite with it? A part of the being does not take place in the marriage, and consequently there is this depression which corresponds to the depression felt by men after a relationship with a whore.

Now I myself have had two fears: of not attaining the orgasm, and of Gonzalo not being strong enough, enduring enough.

The other night I had a reprieve. He took me and I responded. I felt less depressed. But the anxiety has set in, and it is damaging the relationship. Whether the sexual is finally affected by the psychic discordance and multiple psychic assassinations, and whether the cadavers of all the joys Gonzalo killed in me, all the mystical voyages he paralyzed, all the dreams he crippled, have finally affected our sexual life, I don’t know. All I know is that I do not have the woman’s elation of meeting the strength that will take and possess her.

To really match him I would have to degenerate into a driveling, foaming half-idiot, incapable of opening a door or peeling an orange!

With Hugo I have the same exultancy at mastering, defeating, conquering, meeting the obstacle, at facing truths, at evolving, maturing, advancing, developing, growing. There is no problem of strength. He has his own. It is tested and tried in his work. If only, if only I could fall in love with his body, amorously—I love only his face and hands!

I couldn’t save my relationship with Henry, but perhaps there is time yet to save mine with Gonzalo, or is it too late? Have I quieted his aggressiveness, pampered his laziness, increased his inertia in our sexual life?

The lover inside

like the child

This struck me because I recognized a feeling which I have had in regard to the lover. The yearning and craving and sense of emptiness come from the evolution in the love which places the helpless child-lover inside the womb, not only as a sexual act, but as a child, filling the womb. Now, as the passion decreases according to natural laws, and as he enters less frequently, and as, if the mother is creative, he has been growing stronger, there does come a time when she feels him outside of herself, and it is the confusion of the sexual with the material craving which gives woman this terrible misery which she describes as the need of touch, presence and possession. This has been the source of conflict between man and woman. Woman accusing man of not loving all the time, of not being inside of her all the time, of moving away and out. And she is left empty. Woman’s tie is the physical. She has a greater need of caresses. And that is why the “weaning” that must come is so painful. When I gave birth to Henry, he lived outside of me. Now I feel Gonzalo outside (for it is a reality that he has grown bigger, stronger, more mature).

The suffering is of the womb: a yearning for a thing impossible in love, for a mingling of flesh and blood that happens only between mother and child before the child’s birth. Woman’s longing has that physical hunger for an impossible tie, the only time she feels secure, tranquil and sure of her possession (as I felt at the early passionate period of the relationship). I believe this is the secret of her “possessiveness.” She is a realist and a materialist. Her body is made for this kind of absolute intermingling. Hereafter she will be incomplete without it—no relationship can give the marriage what the woman’s body attains with her child. It is fatal to seek it in love, in sex. In other words, while man’s tendency is to be born, to emerge, woman’s is to take back, to keep, to contain. It is this instinct which drives her in love, not desire, not lust, not possessiveness, but that the body is made for this kind of union with the child. And the surrender she must learn, the weaning, the solitude that follows each birth—that, for woman, is her tragedy and her great differentiation from man.

Letter to Henry:

Today I got your gift—am very touched. I didn’t want you to send so much—you may need it. I did two things I most wanted: I got my radio out of the repair shop, which brings me music, and I bought paper to print my stories (my pen broke down). When I finish the book for Caresse I’ll print my stories and we’ll see. When you told me all that Dudley said, I felt sad and ironic. Yes, I was wonderful—wonderful enough to use as the most worthless woman should never be used, wonderful enough to take from, to harass for one’s whiskey, to strip and worry, to corrode the wonder and turn it to the use one puts servants and slaves to, wonderful enough not to save, but to burden, to want to feed on, to use for the very menial tasks his philosophy freed him from accomplishing. His rich nature demanded freedom, freedom from work (but not mine!). He has something else to give beyond his subjection to work—(but not I!). He helped to cause the collapse, would have gladly helped to finish me off, but I am “wonderful.” I had to run amuck before they stopped, and rebel, and scream.

Well, it’s all over. No one can do that to me anymore. I am a deeply injured being. You mustn’t be surprised if I cannot agree with your philosophy: it almost caused my death. It demolished our life. I naturally have to find my own. For a while I couldn’t read anything you sent me, even the Blake—it seemed to me I had to find a new world or die. Finally I did find a new world. I became luminous again, free, joyous. Saturday I’m giving a big party, a celebration of this resurrection. So you mustn’t feel badly. But what I do feel is for Dudley’s wife, and all the women who will love the sons you will form with your philosophy. I had promised myself to write nothing more about all this because I noticed that my deepest letters, where I most struggled to tell you something, were those you couldn’t answer. And then suddenly you ask me: are you still against Hollywood? Then it’s my turn not to know what you mean!

Letter to Henry:

Henry: What a Chinese correspondence! I never know what you’re referring to— or answering—and you say now I mystify you, and all I know is that there is a big eclipse over our communication, for the more I write you the less you understand me. Better to abandon the effort. Surely you can see now the communication is broken. You are trying to understand the big change in me, but since you have removed yourself from all the vital central relations you can’t possibly participate. I haven’t written because I don’t know what to say. We’ve become unrelated—we read the same books but see different meanings. I’m grateful for the Blake book but at the moment I can’t read it. It’s unrelated to the big change that absorbs my energy; it doesn’t touch the integrity I seek. I prefer not to struggle anymore. The fact that I am the one who helped you get to your stratosphere doesn’t console me now when I wish that instead of giving you a stratosphere I had built some kind of… Well…enough. I can’t look back. I have to go on. Correspondence is too shabby a substitute. We’re trying to make it do, but it’s like a weed bridge over an enormous river. It’s slight, inadequate. It’s better to write as you do: Spring is coming—fine about all the letters, news, offers.

Goldberg doesn’t even want to write about the erotica—he’s so scared. He saw the man who printed Tropic of Cancer out of prison and that frightens him. I have the mss. What shall I do with them? The Cooneys are litigating against a ferocious woman to keep their farm on the eve of ejection—at least insecure and suspected of pacifism, etc. So it is not a good idea mixing with them. Why were you so struck with Joe Gould? What is your interest there? He is a monster, a failure, has created nothing but a grotesque figure of mock liberty, mock creation. It’s a caricature. Frances knows him. Was it just comical to you? Something I thought so far from you, unrelated to you…a gory dadaism, a clown of anarchism.

As far as my illness goes, it’s over. I have my normal energy again. I’m finishing Caresse’s book, but I’m not the same. It’s this entirely new Anaïs who doesn’t know what to write you. Death and rebirth, but completely changed. Out of the shell shock it is all the ugly and ill I can’t bear, the regressions, the negative, the Joe Goulds, the sordid, the weak, the crazy.

I was tempted to tear this up—I tore up two letters. I’ll send it just so you won’t be without news.

Will I be the musician of literature, will I improvise, will the words emit a sound, will they resound and resound? Will I be the dancer of literature, use the lightest words? Will they dance alone, a ballet even in the most tragic moments? Will I be the actress of literature, wear all the masks, play all the roles myself? Will I be the lawyer pleading for my own exoneration, the jailer making my own prison of scruples?

everything…

the eye of the photographer

the stage setting

the knowledge of lighting

will I use the searchlight of the analyst

the product of my sickness, like the paintings of madmen?

Let me write a book, for I am in prison. Life is too enslaving, too crushing, too stifling. Let me write a book, grow wings, become invisible. Let me forget my sorrows, the lies that were told me, the delusions.

People will say I have changed. I changed. I moved away, only because I could no longer bear the pain.

I must keep to analogies, similarities of processes between body and soul, the analogy between the orgasm and the ecstasies of the soul.

There is a recurrence in the life of my animus, my mystical creative self, in the form of a young man who bears me into the mystic regions: Jean, Robert, and now Pierce Harwell, the astrologer. It is always thus, when I have had a fall from grace, when I am enslaved by earthy loves, by pain…

Henry has passed from the animal to the mystic, skipping the intermediate human emotional state. His mystic state is more that of self-indulgence: it is used to camouflage all painful or disagreeable perceptions. It is used to disguise his inertia and laziness and emotional inadequacy.

FEBRUARY 14, 1943

Last night elated by meeting Pierre de Lanux. As soon as he began to talk it was like a banquet for me—I found again the accents of Giraudoux, of Saint Jean Perse, of Louise de Vilmorin, of Nellie de Vogue, of Cocteau’s description of the Comtess de Noailles.

And I, the starved Armenian of the poetical lost words, listened to him with all my attention and forgot my other visitors.

Lanux immediately spoke of the many levels of meaning reached by the French writer not possible to the English—the people, not the language. I am, for the English, committing a sin each time I give a phrase that contains all the meanings: spiritual, concrete, personal and mythological.

“Someday you will wake up and write in French.”

But I know my destiny. It is a painful one. I am bringing those nuances into English, as a gift. I am inserting into English writing the subtlety and multi-lateral aspects it lacks. The language obeys me. But it will be difficult to be heard, seen, touched and loved by the English palate and soul. Listen to me, you English readers! I am sacrificing myself for you. I left my own people—those who understand my language. I left them to bring you the subtle melodies, the infinite nuances. In doing so, I seek difficulties, I shall be often rejected. You deal in terrible simplicities, in deserts, in primitive in-differentiation. You lack overtones. You lack the oblique, the indirect, the range, the virtuosity and maturity. Listen to me! I am your most intricate and variable musician. I can extend your ears, add hundreds of colors to your eyes, increase your palate’s responsiveness, develop your senses. Follow me! I am bringing you a gift. As eyes, you are colorblind. My blood itself, my race brings you color. You lack tonalities. If you would accustom your ears to my scales, to my great variations, wavelengths, how light you would grow, what worlds you would discover! I could make you sensitive all over, thin your skin, sensitize your senses—if you let me! Are you going to punish me for my audacity? The awakener! Proust has not penetrated you. You cannot read Giraudoux. But I speak your language—the language of the potential you.

FEBRUARY 17, 1943

Gonzalo and I were talking about the books we are reading. I was telling him of the sorcery of Giraudoux. He said he was reading Don Quixote and studying the history of the Party. I said: “What an amazing contrast, exactly like your own nature. In your past life you’ve been a Don Quixote, seeing beauty where there wasn’t.”

“What do you mean?” said Gonzalo. I didn’t say any more, but he knew I meant Helba. After a while he said: “So I see beauty in the cross-eyed monster—well, several other people have seen what I see.” I pretended not to understand, because I realized I had gone too far and could not explain my meaning without running into the same conflict: I attack Helba, he punishes me, then I am hurt because he defends her. How can I expect Gonzalo to see the monster in Helba? We both stopped. The next moment he was tender, as if nothing had happened.

The new Gonzalo lives with me, but the untransformed Gonzalo still shares his weakness with the worthy companion of his incurable anarchism and laziness. What I am is what he aspires to, not is—the potential Gonzalo. Helba is what he was. Will he have the deathbed awakening of Don Quixote to his madness? He is trying to awaken. Poor Gonzalo. It is enough.

The rest is the monster in you, Anaïs, your sickness, because you have no confidence, because you fear to be abandoned, you fear Helba’s power. That’s for you to face and suffer and conquer. In an effort to rise to the surface, to see the surface world, to meet the men of power, the conquerors…le monde qui brille…I got myself beautifully dressed, combed, perfumed, and went to a cocktail party at Colette d’Arvilles’…

So I am back again (at the Vilmorins’, at innumerable wealthy people’s homes), back again into luxury. Everything is warm and brilliant. Tout cela brille, like the glasses, the carafes, the ice container, the satin and the damasks, the furniture… Il ne faut pas regarder en dessous… Pandora’s box. Attention, Anaïs! Can you distill only the pleasure from this? Les Jeux d’Artifice.

FEBRUARY 18, 1943

I go out into the world, face new people. I am filling myself with new images, new impressions, new sensations, to renew my poor old love of Gonzalo, to lighten my burdens, and an ocean moves within me with elation and excitement. It is like climbing into the realness of light again. I see too much, I feel too full, too rich, there is the congestion de lumière, and out of it I cannot form a book. Any thread I pick, any theme, leads me into an ocean, a cosmos, a labyrinth. I see all the connections and the interrelations, so I am caught in a symphony and cannot play my solo quietly. An onrush. A tremendous circulation, animation…

My night dreams elude me, but it seems to me that I dream continuously. And I cannot seize a structure for one book; I can only add to the fresco, to the infinite tapestry to the illimitable.

Je me sens pleine.

That is my most cherished mood—desire, plenitude.

FEBRUARY 22, 1943

Several days of flowing, dancing, inner celebration and inspiration, then last night a dream which has painfully affected me all day: I was working at the press with Gonzalo. I left him to speak to Jaeger. I sat very near her so Gonzalo would not overhear us. But instead of analyzing me, Jaeger went out on the fire escape to show me her gymnastic feats. She did amazing somersaults, with suppleness. But once she slipped down the opening of the fire escape. I was in great anguish. She caught herself by the hand very nonchalantly and continued. Again she slipped, and this time fell down the six flights. I screamed, got completely hysterical, felt a terrible sorrow as if my mother had fallen. Her small son was there—a French boy. He fell asleep innocently on my knees, not knowing his misfortune. I knew his loss and thought: I shall have to adopt him. The house was full of people. I felt the pain of Jaeger’s fall in my body. It was unbearable. I didn’t dare ask if she were dead. But she wasn’t. She was laid on her bed and I felt her pain in my own body, particularly around the breast, the stomach, the body itself, not the arms and legs. She spoke to me quietly as if she would not die. Later Gonzalo and I were looking for each other with desperation. We found each other and clung wildly.

MARCH 3, 1943

Party at Canada Lee’s. First I wanted to go alone; an adventure, a new world. Audace. Then I felt very close to Hugo and willing to share the experience with him, so we went together. It was beautiful. Half white, half black. The blacks are the best of all, warm, cordial, noble, easy, integrated. They were intellectuals, communists, artists, doctors, sculptors, architects. A new world of human simplicity and deep development. Very moving…but disturbing.

A beautiful night.

MARCH 1943

Then Saturday, March 6, in spite of depression, I gave a marvelous party to give Jaeger the pleasure of seeing me in full bloom of health. A party to health, to pleasure, and it was joyous. And as one party gives birth to another, Saturday I will meet Richard Wright and Carson McCullers, Wednesday I see the James Sternes, while today we all sat around Milton Gendel’s table and crayon-painted it as I did my benches. Laughing and talking.

Les jeux rétrouvés! Les jeux. I forgot Gonzalo for two days!

MARCH 12, 1943

The neurotic is the caged mouse, caught in his pain, is fixed upon it and cannot move away. Free of neurosis, even if the problems are still the same, the soul is free. There is the power to move away, to rest from it, to seek new experiences which change the air, change from stagnation to circulation. The problems are there, but I have changed. I can move, dance, forget, rest, renew myself and return with fresh strength.

It is not in the love, but in the friendships that I find gayety…a gayety I needed deeply. So I go out, out, out. And I have lost my shyness. I sparkle. I am so open to the world, so open, so much in contact with it, it is like a huge cosmic love affair!

Then this morning another letter from Henry, and again this feeling that I disagree with every word he says, that he misunderstands me, that the contact is broken.