Book Review:

$8.

Delta of Venus: Erotica by Anais Nin

For those of us who lived during the sixties or for those even vaguely touched by the ideals of that decade, Anais Nin has become a cult heroine for her need to continue to grow and her faithful recording of that process. Most of her followers eagerly await new insights and inspiration found in each volume of her diaries. Delta of Venus, erotica by Anais Nin, is neither like the diaries nor should it be grouped with her fiction. It is another glimpse into the whole person and another interesting facet of this interesting personality.

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To date there are six volumes of the diaries published, which cover forty-five years of her life. As a young woman she returned to Paris, her birthplace. Her father deserted Anais at an early age so she was raised by her mother in New York. She wrote and worked as an artist's model. In time she became the center of an artistic coterie which included such literary lights as Henry Miller, Djuna Barnes, Antonin Artaud, Lawrence Durrell and Richard Wright, among others.

In her diaries Nin records the changes and strains of these relationships and her own growth during these times. When she is at her best (and she is aware of it, too), she is exploring with others on a one-to-one basis. She nurtures people by giving of her time, money, household, criticism and affection. This nurturing surprisingly does not sap her strength, but, incredibly, reinforces her belief in herself. Her sense of her own importance is not necessarily grounded in ardent feminism or belief in equality of the sexes, but in her unflagging faith in the potential of individuals.

Although she is most often read for the diaries, her fiction (e.g., Children of the Albatross, Under a Glass Bell, Ladder to Fire) has attained a following as well. It is surrealistic and at times difficult. Much of it is also biographical but headier than the diaries. Delta of Venus, finally published in 1969, is lifferent. At a time in Paris when Nin, Barnes, Miller, Durrell and their cronies were scratching to make ends meet, they all did "pick-up" work and supported one another. Henry Miller was writing pornography for a private collector who was paying him $1.00 a page. He was growing weary of his task and asked his friends to contribute. They did, and continued to supply the collector. We may never know who this man was, but we do know he wanted as much as he could get without any of the poetry, mystery or warmth attached to lovemaking in its ideal. What we have in Delta of Venus is Nin's contribution to this man's collection, and with this some of the loveliest hardcore pornography ever written.

In her diary of the time she writes

I was sure the old man knew nothing about the beatitudes, ecstasies, dazzling reverberations of sexual encounters. . . . Clinical sex, deprived of all the warmth of love -the orchestration of all the senses, touch, hearing, sight, palate; all the euphoric accompaniments, background music, moods, atmospheres, variations forced him to resort to literary aphrodisiacs.

These were not her only misgivings about the work. She comments retrospectively in 1976:

I believed that my style was derived from a reading of men's works. For this reason I long felt that I had compromised my feminine self. I put the erotica aside. Rereading it these many years later, I see that my own voice was not completely suppressed. In numerous passages I was intuitively using a woman's language, seeing sexual experience from a woman's point of view. I finally decided to release the erotica for publication because it shows the beginning efforts of a woman in a world that had been the domain of men.

To give detailed descriptions of the episodes would be inappropriate. Suffice it to say that the stories are extremely varied and arousing. Nin's women, as distinguished from women in most pornography written by men, are colorful and believable, if not characteristic of all women. Leila, the singer, for example, is both male and female. She is an imposing and attractive person who is free to choose her company from and exercise her eccentricities on her many admirers, both male and female. Anais's appeal to women comes not only from the depiction of such strong characters as Leila, but also from her delicate use. of voyeurism, of colorful, flamboyant and exotic behavior. Foreplay is no longer the underrated prelude to fucking. Nights of caressing and fondling in opium dens are ends in themselves. Aggression and passivity no longer belong respectively to males and females.

Perhaps Anais's early reservations about "clinicalness" had something to do with misplaced guilt. She states at one point that women, probably more than men, tend to integrate feeling with sexuality. That this is true does not mean that women don't enjoy outrageous fantasy. Embarking on the project, she says of herself.

So I began to write tongue-in-cheek, to become outlandish, inventive, and so exaggerated that I thought he (the collector) would realize I was caricaturing sexuality.

and of the others

the homosexuals wrote as if they were women. The timid ones wrote about orgies. The frigid ones about frenzied fulfillment. The most poetic ones indulged in pure bestiality and the purest ones in perversion.

Sexual fantasy is closely bound to all creative fantasy. The allure of the "zipless fuck", of the characters we are not, will always be there. Erotica is perhaps a caricature of sexuality, as the novel is a caricature of life. Insofar as fantasy satisfies a basic human need, erotica will always have a place. Anais need not have worried. Not only did she not betray women, but she also credence and expogave sure to women's eroticism narrowly explored by males.

a world until now only

-Penny Orr and Freddy Scott

-4

The

Hamecoming Queen is a Creat American tradition like war, CIA Involvement,big bombs, political prisoners Richard Nixon, Anita Bryant, Richard Helms Mr. Goodbar, Cool Whip Maracc.

Page 6/What She Wants/March, 1978

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