Incest: From "A Journal of Love" -The Unexpurgated Diary of Anaïs Nin (1932-1934)

by Anaïs Nin

Last night, because of L. V., the schema of my lyrical book burst into crystallization. Death. Disintegration. Perversion. Spengler’s prophecies unraveled: lesbianism, June (minor themes in connection with June of lies, abortion, primitivism, psychism), incest—the de Vilmorins—Eduardo and homosexuality and paralysis, my death, holocausts. A thoroughly neurotic book including all the symptoms, phenomena, descriptions of moods, dreams, insanities, phobias, manias, hallucinations—tableau of disintegration, franker than Lawrence’s treatment of homosexuality, than Radclyffe Hall’s treatment of lesbianism, because of this conception of mine which is a reflection of Jung’s attitude against Freud’s—if we could understand the significance of the sexual symbol we would have the key to vast pregnancies and abortions, fecundations and impotences—-from the sexual root, the imaginary world—as, for instance, incest does not mean only possession of the mother or sister—womb of woman—but also of the church, the earth, nature. The sexual fact is the lead weight only: The drama is in space. The gesture is only a symbol with enormous significance (you can even find the taste of death in copulation). All the neuroses—amplify Eduardo’s fears, mine (making love in the middle of the night when half-asleep my greatest enjoyment), Henry’s, June’s! Accentuate each one’s follies (June’s fear in subway, Louise’s deafness, my blindness).