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Advance praise for
Mirages: The Unexpurgated Diary of Anaïs Nin, 1939 – 1947
“Henry Miller called her a ‘masterpiece.’ Leaning on his elbows across the dinner table one evening, he laughed as he told me, Anaïs was the greatest ‘fabulist’ he had ever known and one ‘possessed of the nine lives of the cat.’ Nin herself referred to her lies as ‘mensonges vitals’ by which she meant the lies that give life. Her brother Joaquin Nin likened Anaïs to a ‘steel hummingbird’ and Edmund Wilson said she was a ‘practical little Franco-Spanish housewife’ who was, at the same time, ‘a lovely little nymph who was not quite a human being.’
“As for myself, she was a myth in her own time, the Scheherazade of the diary genre, and epitomizes Harold Bloom’s observation in Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human, to wit, ‘Romance, literary and human, depends on partial or imperfect knowledge.’ I leave it to readers of Mirages: The Unexpurgated Diary of Anaïs Nin, 1939–1947 to draw their own conclusions.”
—Barbara Kraft, author of Anaïs Nin: The Last Days and The Restless Spirit: Journal of a Gemini, with a preface by Anaïs Nin
“Mirages comprises . . . anything but. Instead, here, editor Paul Herron, like a spy in the great house of love, offers up the utterly unexpurgated Nin, and we have Salome, The Diarist, at last without her many veils. Till now, but for tantalizing glimpses, Anaïs the woman—carnal, conflicted, endlessly seeking completion through flesh and heart—has appeared only in heavily redacted snippets. In Mirages, she stands before us, stripped bare, unmasked, triumphant, among her cast of sacred and noires bêtes (Gore Vidal, Henry Miller, et al.) now revealed, by name, as who and what they were to her. Mirages exposes, reveals and humanizes Nin as much more than the sum of heavily edited parts.”
—Elizabeth Boleman-Herring, author of The Visitors’ Book (or Silva Rerum): An Erotic Fable
“Mirages provides a treasure of newly disclosed Nin sentiments. Nin transcends self-reflection and offers a glimpse into what women feel but are rarely able to articulate, whether about daily experiences, or love gained and lost. With intense passion, her powerfully seductive prose shares insights, observations, and confessions about the human psyche. Highly recommended.”
—Diana Raab, author of Dear Anaïs: My Life in Poems for You
MIRAGES
SWALLOW PRESS BOOKS BY ANAÏS NIN
FICTION
Children of the Albatross
Cities of the Interior
Collages
The Four-Chambered Heart
House of Incest
Ladders to Fire
Seduction of the Minotaur
A Spy in the House of Love
Under a Glass Bell
Waste of Timelessness and Other Early Stories
Winter of Artifice
NONFICTION
D. H. Lawrence: An Unprofessional Study
The Novel of the Future
A Woman Speaks: The Lectures, Seminars, and Interviews of Anaïs Nin, edited by Evelyn J. Hinz
SWALLOW PRESS BOOKS ABOUT ANAÏS NIN
Arrows of Longing: The Correspondence between Anaïs Nin and Felix Pollak, 1952–1976, edited by Gregory H. Mason
Recollections of Anaïs Nin by Her Contemporaries, edited by Benjamin Franklin V
MIRAGES
The Unexpurgated Diary of Anaïs Nin
1939–1947
Edited by Paul Herron With an introduction by Kim Krizan
SWALLOW PRESS / OHIO UNIVERSITY PRESS Athens, Ohio PUBLISHED IN ASSOCIATION WITH SKY BLUE PRESS
Swallow Press
An imprint of Ohio University Press, Athens, Ohio 45701
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. This book contains material protected under International and Federal copyright Laws and Treaties. Any unauthorized reprint or use of this material is prohibited. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, scanning, PDF download, recording, blogging, internet posting, content syndication, e-mail or by any information sharing, storage and retrieval system without express written permission from the publishers, except by a reviewer or scholar who may quote brief passages in a review or article.
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Print edition and institutional digital edition published by Swallow Press/Ohio University Press, Athens, Ohio (www.ohioswallow.com). To obtain permission to quote, reprint, or otherwise reproduce or distribute material from Swallow Press / Ohio University Press publications, please contact our rights and permissions department at (740) 593-1154 or (740) 593-4536 (fax).
This book may not be circulated in any other binding or cover.
1st Edition. Unexpurgated.
All content unless otherwise stated, copyright © 2013 The Anaïs Nin Trust (anaisnintrust.com) This edition published by arrangement with Sky Blue Press. Introduction copyright © 2013 Kim Krizan Preface copyright © 2013 Paul Herron
Excerpts from The Diary of Anaïs Nin, Volume Three, 1939–1944 (copyright © 1969 by Anaïs Nin and renewed by Rupert Pole and Gunther Stuhlmann) and The Diary of Anaïs Nin, Volume Four, 1944–1947 (copyright © 1971 by Anaïs Nin and renewed by Rupert Pole and Gunther Stuhlmann) reprinted by permission of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.
Typesetting and design: Sara A. Herron, Sky Blue Press Cover photo: courtesy of The Anaïs Nin Trust; Deigh-Nevin Cover design: Ohio University Press/Swallow Press
All photographs copyright © The Anaïs Nin Trust, with the following exceptions:
Edward Graeffe: James Abresch, photographer
Valentina Orlikova: Soviet Russia Today (April 1943) Anaïs Nin in Provincetown: José Alemany, photographer Anaïs Nin in action coat: Soichi Sunami, photographer
Printed in the United States of America
Swallow Press/Ohio University Press books are printed on acid-free paper
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Nin, Anaïs, 1903–1977. Mirages : the Unexpurgated Diary of Anaïs Nin 1939–1947 / [Anaïs Nin] ; preface by Paul Herron ; introduction by Kim Krizan ; edited by Paul Herron. pages cm Includes index. ISBN 978-0-8040-1146-4