Anaïs Nin: Fulfilling a Desire for Intimacy through Writing

For Anaïs Nin writing was a channel between herself and the world, an expression across physical and emotional boundaries of experience. Amongst the many volumes of her poetic diaries one can find the words, “In being deprived of publication I am being deprived of existence.”¹

In Paris, in spite of writing avidly for a period of over 15 years from 1924, Nin struggled to gain much in the way of published works. On returning to New York with the onset of war in 1939, this predicament continued much to her frustration for “being published would have been a bridge.”²

In 1941, still resolved to take to the literary stage, Nin took it upon herself to build the bridge of paper and ink with the purchase of a second-hand printing press. In a small attic studio in Greenwich, Nin and her lover Gonzalo More started publishing her books.³

Her collection of short stories Under a Glass Bell (1944) in particular became the literary passage to life for which she yearned. Nin depicts its publication as a “second birth…becoming visible and tangible.”⁴

The tales in this collection are mostly drawn from Nin’s diary; she believed that both diary and fiction held dear the same desire of an “intimacy with people”.⁵ Nearly all of the central characters are artists. Just as Nin, they often seek transformation through their mediums and struggle amongst the pages of her book in their endeavour to build paths of connection to the world.