The Diary of Anaïs Nin Essay -- Sexuality

Sex and desire. Few words evoke such complexity of meaning. For some, it is a sexual passage. Whereas one might describe it as the brute pleasure of two bodies fused into one being, another may find it as the fulfillment of animalistic desire, an unleashing of the beast. But, beyond an act charged with variant meaning, it can also serve as an identityheterosexual, homosexual, bisexual, or transsexual. Whether act or identity, societal dictates define the norm and the deviant. Because of this, the artist who departs from the acceptable and embraces the aberrant, arouses the mind of self and society. In doing so, sex and desire become a fomite, a means of communication betwixt artist and audience, and an object that demands our attention. Whether it is the subtle and sensual language of Anas Nin in The Diary of Anas Nin (1966), the coarse and unmistakable vocabulary of Henry Miller in Tropic of Cancer (1934), or the poetic and surrealistic prose of Djuna Barnes in Nightwood (19 34), sex and desire, as a vehicle in the literature of these authors, exposes the funny house and confusion within their world and suggests the government activity of a new order for self and/or society. Written between 1931 and 1934, The Diary of Anas Nin chronicles one artists psychological journey. delinquent by her father as a girl, Anas experiences an initial appall that leaves her like a shattered mirror (Nin 103). The shards of glass, each developing a lifetime of their own, come to be the several selves of Anas (103). Through the pages of The Diary, reflecting upon and dissecting these sundry(a) selves, she concludes, one does not shoot to remain in bondage to the start-off wax imprint made on childhood sensibilities. unmatched need not be branded by the fir... ...dea briefly has been to present a resurrection of the emotions, to depict the conduct of a human being in the stratosphere of ideas, that is, in the grip of delirium. (243). As an artist, his task has be en to overthrow existing values, to make of the chaos about him an order which is his own, to sow strife and ferment so that by the emotional release those who are dead may be restored to life (253). While there are those who might disagree with his methods, his language and natural imagery not only awaken the conscious, but they also leave alone a much-needed dose of humor in Modernist literature.Works CitedBarnes, Djuna. Nightwood. naked York New Directions Books, 2006. Print.Miller, Henry. Tropic of Cancer. New York Grove Press, 1961. Print.Nin, Anas. The Diary of Anas Nin Volume One 1931-1934. San Diego Swallow Press and Harcourt, 1966. Print.