We've included excerpts from Anaïs Nin's book Henry and Jane below. We plan to post excerpts from other Anaïs Nin books over time. If you have any you find particularly thought-provoking to suggest, please send them to rod@herondance.org.
11
Men need things other than a sexual recipient. They have to be soothed, lulled, understood, helped, encouraged, and listened to. By doing all of this tenderly and warmly—well, he lit his pipe and let me alone. I watched him as if he were a bull.
12
I really believe that if I were not a writer, not a creator, not an experimenter, I might have been a very faithful wife. I think highly of faithfulness. But my temperament belongs to the writer, not the woman. Such a separation may seem childish, but it is possible. Subtract the overintensity, the sizzling of ideas, and you get a woman who loves perfection. And faithfulness is one of the perfections. It seems stupid and unintelligent to me now because I have bigger plans in mind. Perfection is static, and I am in full progress. The faithful wife is only one phase, one moment, one metamorphosis, one condition.
117
…in general, a woman considers man as an enemy, and she is glad when she can humiliate him or demolish him.
266
The absolute sincerity of men like Allendy and Hugo is beautiful but uninteresting to me. It does not fascinate me as much as Henry’s insincerities, dramatics, literary escapades, experiments, rascalities. When Henry and I are lying in each other’s arms, all games cease, and for the moment we find our basic wholeness. When we take up our work again, we instill our imagination into our lives. We believe in living not only as human beings but as creators, adventurers.
The side of me which Allendy discards, the disturbed, dangerous, erotic side, is precisely what Henry seizes and responds to, the one he fulfills and expands.
