Letters of Anais Nin and Henry Miller, 1932-1953, ed. Gunther Stuhlmann.
(New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1987.

Revered as a hero by his fans and disregarded as an egoistic scoundrel by his critics, Henry Miller lingers in American literature as a presence for which no common consensus seems to exist. As with certain other artists who provoke a wide range of opinion, Miller symbolized a force or personified a notion extending beyond his own identity or creation. He belonged to a tradition of literature that was idea- or content oriented rather than one that was self-consciously poetic or simply well crafted. In style and in vision, Miller was unabashedly rapturous, entranced, and ecstatic.

Writing in the first-person, he drew from personal experience to portray symbolic dramas that, when suc-cessful, addressed the larger issues of our times: mystical experience and the question of God; the confrontation of sacred and profane and of meaning and meaninglessness (the latter often portrayed in scenes of exaggerated sexuality, for which he was later labeled a pornographer); the liberating role of the artist; the dehumanizing politics of the modern age; the spiritual value of marginal characters and social misfits (many of them the “homeless” of his time); and meditations on the world-to-come. Miller was a philosopher in the original (and not in the modern) sense: a philosopher who lives his philosophy and whose philosophy emerges from the reality called life.

It’s perhaps this–the philosophical view–that stands at the center of a fierce difference of opinion on Miller. To many “men of letters,” Miller’s worldview is unpalatable. Like follow iconoclast Marcel Duchamp, he offended the traditionalists and the avant-garde (a nifty accomplishment) by refusing to accept a politically correct path, always preferring to go his own way.

Speaking of his own place in literature, Frank Harris (a client of the senior Miller’s tailor shop) once wrote:

There are two main traditions of English writing: the one of perfect liberty, that of Chaucer and Shakespeare, completely outspoken, with a certain liking for lascivious details and witty smut, a man’s speech; the other emasculated more and more by Puritanism and since the French Revolution, gelded to the tamest propriety; for that upheaval brought the illiterate middle class to power and insured the domination of girl readers. Under Victoria, English prose literally became half childish, as in stories of “Little Mary,” or at least provincial, as anyone may see who comes to consider the influence of Dickens, Thackeray and Reade in the world with the influence of Balzac, Flaubert and Zola.

All my life I have rebelled against this old maid’s canon of deportment, and my revolt has grown stronger with advancing years….

Although he epitomizes other things as well, Henry Miller clearly belongs to this tradition of “perfect liberty.”

In contrast to Miller’s “perfect liberty,” Anais Nin pursued a style that approached the darker issues only to skirt about them with an abstract, denatured Apollonian resolve. To integrate the “instincts” (as she liked to call them) into consciousness became a lifelong pursuit; one in which she was assisted by none other than Henry Miller.

In examining Miller’s correspondence with his patron, fellow writer, and lover, we are privy to previously unpublished disclosures of intimacy and compassion that occasionally border on the electric. When the commentaries are somewhat less electric, however, the letters often fail to elicit the interest of the general reader or even that of the Miller or Nin aficionado.

It’s possible that the fault lies with the editor Gunther Stuhlmann, who chose to exclude passages of general interest, such as (in his own words): “lengthy discussions of Dostoyevsky, Proust, Joyce, D.H. Lawrence; detailed critiques of one another’s work-in-progress; ruminations on films, books, and so on, often encased in letters of twenty or more typed pages.” Although one can understand the quandary concerning the obvious limitations of space, the decision to “eliminate material peripheral to the personal story” leaves the literary palate teased yet unsatiated.

By focusing on the personal concerns and events of their lives, the book fails to pay tribute to the larger issues that propelled Miller to greatness and that profoundly con-cerned each author. Perhaps, there was a concern that Miller’s superior grasp of such issues and his more imaginative ability to respond to them would have too severely overshadowed Nin’s generally less interesting contributions. Heralded by the emerging Women’s Movement and revered by a generation of introspective journal scribblers, her literary importance remains an inflated one, while Miller still awaits his proper canonization in modern literature.

One hopes that the juicier ruminations on literature, film, and art will one day see the “light of print” and will help to place each author in better perspective. Meanwhile, A Literate Passion occasionally sparks, but never quite ignites, the literary passions of the reader.

an excerpt at:



Hilda and Rango



Hilda was a beautiful Parisian model who fell deeply in love with an American writer, whose work was so violent and sensual that it attracted women to him immediately. They would write him letters or try for an introduction through his friends. Those who succeeded in meeting him were always amazed by his gentleness, his softness.

Hilda had the same experience. Seeing that he remained impassive, she began to court him. It was only when she had made the first advances, caressed him, that he began making love to her as she had expected to be made love to. But each time, she would have to begin all over. First she had to tempt him in some way — fix a loosened garter, or talk about some experience in the past, or lie on his couch, throw back her head and thrush her breasts forward, stretching herself like an enormous car. She would sit on his lap, offer her mouth, unbutton his pants, excite him.

They lived together for several years, deeply attached to each other. She became accustomed to his sexual rhythm. He lay back waiting and enjoying himself. She learned to be active, bold, but she suffered, because she was by nature extraordinarily feminine. Deep down she had the belief that woman could easily control her desire, but that man could not, that it was even harmful for him to try to. She felt that woman was meant to respond to man’s desire. She had always dreamed of having a man who would force her will, rule her sexually, lead.

She gratified this man because she loved him. She learned to seek our his penis and touch it until he was aroused, to seek his mouth and stir his tongue, to press her body against his, to incite him. Sometimes they would be lying down and talking. She would place her hand over his penis and find it hard. Yet he made no move towards her. Slowly then, she became used to expressing her own desire, her own moods. She lost all her reserve, her timidity.

One night at a party in Montparnasse, she met a Mexican painter, a huge dark man with heavy charcoal eyes, eyebrows and hair. He was drunk. She was to discover that he was almost always drunk.

But the sight of her gave him a profound shock. He pulled himself up from his faltering, tottering posture and faced her as if he were a big lion facing a tamer. Something about her made him stand still and try to become sober again, to rise from the fog and fumes in which he lived continuously. Something about her face made him stand ashamed of his unkempt clothes, the paint under his nails, the uncombed black hair. She, on the other hand, was struck by this image of a demon, the demon she had imagined to exist behind the work of the American writer.

He was huge, restless, destructive, loved no one, was attached to nothing, a tramp and an adventurer. He would paint at the studios of friends, borrowing oils and canvas, then leave his work there and go off. Most of the time he lived with the gypsies on the outskirts of Paris. With them he shared their life in the gypsy carts, traveling all through Prance. He respected their laws, never made love to the gypsy women, played the guitar with them at night clubs when they needed money, are their meals — very often made of stolen chicken.

When he met Hilda, he had his own gypsy cart just outside one of the gates of Paris, neat the ancient barricades, which were now crumbling. The cart had belonged to a Portuguese who had covered its walls with painted leather. The bed was hung at the back of the cart, suspended like a ship’s bunk. The windows were arched. The ceiling was so low it was difficult for one to stand up.

At the party that first evening, Rango did not invite Hilda to dance, although friends of his were providing the music for the night. The lights in the studio had been put out because enough light came from the street, and couples stood on the balcony with their arms around each other. The music was languid and dissolving.

Rango stood above Hilda and stared at her. Then he said, ‘Do you want to walk?’ Hilda said yes. Rango walked with his hands in his pockets, a cigarette dangling from the comer of is mouth. He was sober now, his head as cleat as the night. He was walking towards the outskirts of the city. They came to the rag-pickers’ shacks, little shacks built unevenly, crazily, with sloping roofs and no windows enough air came through the cracked boards and badly built doors. The paths were made of earth.

A little farther on stood a row of gypsy carts. It was four in the morning, and people were asleep. Hilda did not talk. She walked in the shadow of Rango with a great feeling of being taken our of herself, of having no will and no knowledge of what was happening to her, merely a pervading sense of flow.

Rango’s arms were bare. Hilda was aware of only one thing, that she wanted these bare arms to grip her. He bowed to enter his cart. He lit a candle. He was too tall for the low ceiling, but she was smaller and could stand straight.

The candles made huge shadows. His bed was open, merely a blanker thrown back. His clothes were strewn around. There were two guitars. He rook one up and began to play, sitting among his clothes. Hilda had the feeling that she was dreaming, that she must keep her eyes on his bare arms, on his throat showing through the open shirr, so that he would feel what she felt, the same magnetism.

At the same moment that she felt she was falling into darkness, into his golden-brown flesh, he fell towards her, covered her with kisses, very hot, quick kisses, into which his breath passed. He kissed her behind her ears, on her eyelids, her throat, her shoulders. She was blinded, deafened, made senseless. Every kiss, like a gulp of wine, added to the warmth of her body. Every kiss increased the beat of his lips. But he made no gesture to raise her dress or to undress her.

They lay there for a long time. The candle was finished. It sputtered and went out. In the darkness she felt his burning dryness, like desert sand, enveloping her.

Then in this darkness, the Hilda who had made this gesture so many times before was impelled to make it once more out of her dream and drunkenness of kisses. Her band fumbled for his belt with the cold silver buckle, felt below the belt at the buttons of his pants, felt his desire.

Suddenly he pushed her away, as if she had wounded him. He stood up, reeling a little, and lit another candle. She could not understand what had happened. She saw that he was angry. His eyes had grown fierce. His high cheeks, which seemed always to be smiling, no longer smiled. His mouth was compressed.

‘What have I done?’ she asked.

He looked like some wild, timid animal that one had done violence to. He looked humiliated, offended, proud, untouchable. She repeated, ‘What have I done?’ She knew that she had done something she ought not to have done. She wanted him to understand that she was innocent.

He smiled now, ironically, at her blindness. He said, ‘You made the gesture of a whore.’ A deep shame, a sense of great injury overwhelmed her. The woman in her that had suffered from being forced to act as she did with her other lover, the woman who had been made to betray her real nature so often that it had become a habit, this woman wept now, uncontrollably. The tears did not touch him. She got up, saying, ‘Even if it is the last time I come here, there is something I want you to know. A woman does not always do what she wants. I was taught by someone ... someone I have lived with for a number of years and who forced me. . . forced me to act...

Rango listened. She continued. ‘I suffered at first, I changed my whole nature... I… Then she stopped.

Rango sat down next to her. ‘I understand.’ He took up his guitar. He played for her. They drank. But he did not touch her. They walked slowly back to where she lived. She dropped exhausted on her bed and fell asleep weeping, not only for the loss of Rango but for the loss of that part of herself she had deformed, changed for love of a man.

The next day Rango was waiting for her at the door of her little hotel. He stood there reading and smoking. When she came out, he said simply, ‘Come and have coffee with me.’ They sat at the Martinique Café, a café frequented by mulattos, prize fighters, drug addicts. He had chosen a dark corner of the café, and now he bent over her and began to kiss her. He did not pause. He kept her mouth on his and did not move. She dissolved in this kiss.

They walked the streets like Parisian apaches, kissing continuously, making their way to his gypsy cart, half unconscious. Now in full daylight, the place was alive with gypsy women preparing to sell lace in the marker. Their men slept. Others were preparing to travel south. Rango said he had always wanted to go with them. But he had a job playing guitar at a night club where they paid him well.

‘And now,’ he said, ‘I have you.’

In the cart he offered her wine and they smoked. And he kissed her again. He raised himself to dose the little curtain. And then he undressed her, slowly, taking off the stockings delicately, his big brown hands handling them as if they were gauze, invisible. He stopped to look at her garters. He kissed her feet. He smiled at her. His face was strangely pure, illumined with a youthful joy, and he undressed her as if she were his first woman. He was awkward with her skirt but finally unhooked it, with a curiosity about the way it fastened. More adeptly he raised her sweater above her bead, and she was left with only her panties on. He fell on her, kissing her mouth over and over again. Then he took off his own clothes, and fell on her again. As they kissed, his hand gripped her panties and pulled them, and he whispered, ‘You are so delicate, so small. I cannot believe that you have a sex.’ He parted her legs only to kiss her. She felt his penis hard against her belly, but he took it and pushed it downwards.

Hilda was amazed to see him do this, push his penis down between his legs, cruelly, thrusting away his desire. It was as if he enjoyed denying himself, while at the same time arousing them both to a breaking point with kissing.

Hilda moaned with the pleasure and the pain of expectancy. He moved over her body, now kissing her mouth, now her sex, so that the shell-like flavor of the sex was brought to her mouth and they mingled together, in his mouth and breath.

But he continued to push away his penis, and when they had worn themselves our with unfulfilled excitement he lay over her and fell asleep like a child, his fists closed, his head on her breasts. Now and then he caressed her, mumbling, ‘It is not possible that you have a sex. You are too delicate and small ... You are unreal ...‘ He kept his hand between her legs. She rested against his body, which was twice the size of hers. She was vibrating so much that she could not sleep.

His body smelled like a precious-wood forest; his hair, like sandalwood, his skin, like cedar. It was as if he had always lived among trees and plants. Lying at his side, deprived of her fulfillment, Hilda felt that the female in her was being taught to submit to the male, to obey his wishes. She felt that he was still punishing her for the gesture she had made, for her impatience, for her first act of leadership. He would mouse and deprive her until he had broken this willfulness in her.

Had he understood that it was involuntary, not truly in her? Whether he had or not, he was blindly determined to break her. Over and over again they met, undressed, lay side by side, kissed and caressed themselves to a frenzy, and each time he pushed his penis downwards and hid it away.

Over and over again she lay passive, showing no desire, no impatience. She was in a state of excitement, which exacerbated all her sensibilities. It was as if she had taken new drugs that made the entire body more alive to caresses, to a touch, to the very aim. She felt her dress on her skin like a hand. It seemed to her that everything was touching her like a hand, teasing her breasts, her thighs continuously. She had discovered a new realm, a realm of suspense and watchfulness, of erotic wakefulness such as she had never known.

One day when she was walking with him, she lost the heel of one shoe. He had to carry her. That night he took her, in the candlelight. He was like a demon crouching over her, his hair wild, his charcoal-black eyes burning into hers, his strong penis pounding into her, into the woman whose submission he first demanded, submission to his desire, his hour.

"Anais Nin began writing a detailed, private diary as a child. As an adult, she continued the diary; she also began to draw upon it for her fiction. Diary, stories, and novels existed side by side. The relationship between them was legendary, but not really known. The few privileged readers of the diaries in manuscript had kept us aware of them and had proclaimed, in advance, their importance.-- Philip K. Jason

Anais Nin Reader edited by Philip K. Jason 1973, Swallow Press Chicago although this book is now out of print, the author has a new critically acclaimed book The Critical Response to Anais Nin available through the Greenwood Press.



I only regret that everybody wants to deprive me of the journal, which is the only steadfast friend I have, the only one which makes my life bearable, because my happiness with human beings is so precarious, my confiding moods rare, and the least sign of non-interest is enough to silence me. In the journal I am at ease.--- June, 1933