Anaïs Nin
:: Journal of a Wife
How strange our marriage, where union is based on likeness and accord. We begin with similar roots; we both feel deeply, think continuously; we have moods and dreams and visions - and there the similarity ceases, for the results of these, the effects outwardly, the actions and manner of living, are strikingly different. Thus we begin by understanding each other. We meet in a feeling or thought. In acting, we branch out, each in his own way, but we do not lose each other. We criticize and explain each other, we reason, we seek to influence each other - we understand even when we do not approve.
Fatalism has entered irrevocably into my soul. I look upon my happiness with awe and silent fear. Heaven, which at once metes out cruel punishment and undeserved charity, how shall it play with me?
I will someday write a story of how a woman can love two men; how she can receive one kiss while dreaming of the other's lips; how she can gaze into one face with love while remembering another face; how she can fall asleep in the arms of one and dream of the other. How one letter may evoke the most exalted devotion, and she may a moment later open the door to the other and receive him with tenderness.
Such a thing is possible.
The whole of a human being, however much he may write or talk, still remains hidden in the space and darkness.
Just now for the first time I realise the wisdom of religion, which teaches us not to attach ourselves to worldly goods, for they are perishable, to think only of life eternal and to love only God.
Didn't my first book suffer mainly from this unbalanced view of the world? I evaded squalidness, grimness, naturalness, cynicism, physical or mental ugliness. I falsified in order to beautify. If the beautiful stood alone, it would not be beautiful.
Why must I write? I love work. I detest idleness. I detest an empty, purposeless life. I have a passionate desire to create. But none of these things are within one's control, and my war against nothingness is childish. The truth is that I am unhappy when I merely live without giving. Yet I should face the fact that I have nothing in particular to give and realize that I am made to appreciate keenly, to listen intelligently, to feel things thoroughly, and that is all. I cannot admit this. I dream now of a play, now of an essay - dead things both.