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Four Chambered Heart: V3 In Nin'S Continuous Novel
by
Anaïs Nin
The Four-Chambered Heart, Anaïs Nin's 1950 novel, recounts the real-life affair she conducted with café guitarist Gonzalo Moré in 1936. Nin and Moré rented a house-boat on the Seine, and under the pervading influence of the boat's watchman and Moré's wife Helba, developed a relationship. Moré named the boat Nanankepichu, meaning 'not really a home.'
In the novel, which Nin...more
In the novel, which Nin...more
Paperback, 182 pages
Published
January 1st 1959
by Swallow Press
(first published 1950)
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Another part to Nin's larger Cities of the Interior collection. We meet Djuna again in Paris, this time with her lover, Rango. He has a boat on the Seine which is where most of their trysts take place. However, in typical Nin fashion, Rango is already married to the questionably mad Zora, and the proverbial crap hits the proverbial fan when Zora discovers this affair.
I like the way Nin creates a fiction surrounding her life, the way the words flow just so off the page. She was by far no literary...more
I like the way Nin creates a fiction surrounding her life, the way the words flow just so off the page. She was by far no literary...more
An interesting read into the insights of human nature and emotion, continuing the story of Djuna we take up with her as she becomes involved with Rango a seemingly simple straightforward guy whose personality is affected by how he sees the world, and later his wife Zora 'professional' victim and attention seeker whose manipulative personality is repulsive. I love the way Nin writes about the foibles of human nature. Reading this is a litle like peeling back the layers of a bulb with each layer a...more
I thought it was rather badly written, especially at the beginning, she did simple things that really annoy me such as repeating words or rephrasing herself dozens of time to say the same thing in a way that was supposed to be poetic but became meaningless. However I still enjoyed this (short) book,there are some moments that have real emotional wisdom and there are some utterly fantastic quotes!
Fantastic prose by Anais Nin. A short novella which explores the fragmented self and the destructiveness of manipulative, dependent relationships. Many layers of meaning within the pages of this book, well worth a read.
"Sensual" is the best word to describe this book. Nin has a habit of using evocative language, almost over the top, but I like it.
Jan 04, 2010
Karen Powell
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Four Chambered Heart: V3 In Nin'S Continuous Novel by Anais Nin (1959)
Feb 27, 2013
Sabrina Laxmanalal
added it
this is as close to "chick read" as i would get. Ain't the same anymore.
Bit too poetical/sensual for my taste, but enjoyed it more than I expected to.
I enjoyed this, she has some really interesting ideas. I definately prefer her short stories, as i could have done with a bit more plot in this novel, which felt a bit slow at times, and i don't get that in the shorter pieces. Still good though.
I liked this book because it analyzes the relationship between lovers from its highest point to it's downfall. Obviously, in doing this it also analyzes the individuals and we see exactly how the main characers became such pathetic failures. The story and the writing is mediocre. It was the dissection of people and relationships I found worth while.
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earlier:
apparently this is only part of a continuous novel? guess i shouldve read the back. another of my $50 spend at The Strand.
july 09 - ...doesn't matter. (not erotica.) great look at a kind but adventurous french woman's emotional inner life in a tangled relationship with a "feckless" faux-Gypsy - Rango in their barge on the Seine. subtle.
recommend!
apparently this is only part of a continuous novel? guess i shouldve read the back. another of my $50 spend at The Strand.
july 09 - ...doesn't matter. (not erotica.) great look at a kind but adventurous french woman's emotional inner life in a tangled relationship with a "feckless" faux-Gypsy - Rango in their barge on the Seine. subtle.
recommend!
For some reason, I'm forever more partial to "Ladders to Fire," but I love Nin and this work was no exception.
This book is beautiful. It is wine and chocolate, figs and amaro indulgent, complex, perfect. So far...
May 20, 2013
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French-born novelist, passionate eroticist and short story writer, who gained international fame with her journals. Spanning the years from 1931 to 1974, they give an account of one woman's voyage of self-discovery. "It's all right for a woman to be, above all, human. I am a woman first of all." (from The Diary of Anaïs Nin, vol. I, 1966)
Anaïs Nin was largely ignored until the 1960s. Today she is...more
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Anaïs Nin was largely ignored until the 1960s. Today she is...more
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“The drug of love was no escape, for in its coils lie latent dreams of greatness which awaken when men and women fecundate each other deeply. Something is always born of man and woman lying together and exchanging the essences of their lives. Some seed is always carried and opened in the soil of passion. The fumes of desire are the womb of man's birth and often in the drunkeness of caresses history is made, and science, and philosophy. For a woman, as she sews, cooks, embraces, covers, warms, also dreams that the man taking her will be more than a man, will be the mythological figure of her dreams, the hero, the discoverer, the builder....Unless she is the anonymous whore, no man enters woman with impunity, for where the seed of man and woman mingle, within the drops of blood exchanged, the changes that take place are the same as those of great flowing rivers of inheritance, which carry traits of character from father to son to grandson, traits of character as well as physical traits. Memories of experience are transmitted by the same cells which repeated the design of a nose, a hand, the tone of a voice, the color of an eye. These great flowing rivers of inheritance transmitted traits and carried dreams from port to port until fulfillment, and gave birth to selves never born before....No man and woman know what will be born in the darkness of their intermingling; so much besides children, so many invisible births, exchanges of soul and character, blossoming of unknown selves, liberation of hidden treasures, buried fantasies...”
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“Djuna had wanted a life of desire and freedom, not luxury but beauty, not security but fulfillment, not perfection but a perfect moment like this one...”
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1 person liked it
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