| Rating: | ★★★★★ |
| Category: | Books |
| Genre: | Literature & Fiction |
| Author: | Anais Nin |
An exquisite reading high point familiarizing one with
stories that will captivate you from beginning to end. The stories in Delta of
Venus Nin wrote for a dollar a page in the 1940s. Erotica to the core yet contains
a great deal of symbolism and darkness. Delta of Venus joyously explores the
art of human sexuality. Rape, exhibitionism, voyeurism and incest are a few of
the disarming and disturbing subject matters addressed in this book. My
favorite stories are The Basque and Bijou, The Hungarian Adventurer, The Veiled
Woman-- all remarkably unusual but alluring penned by the master of erotic
writing, Anais Nin.
Anaïs Nin (born Angela Anaïs
Juana Antolina Rosa Edelmira Nin y Culmell) (February 21, 1903,
Neuilly-sur-Seine -- January 14, 1977) was a French author who became famous
for her published journals, which span more than 60 years, beginning when she
was 11 years old and ending shortly before her death. The most famous book of
Anaïs Nin is Delta of Venus. It was first published in 1978. There are multiple
short stories in this work with certain important characters reappearing
throughout. She deals with many different sexual themes, while maintaining the
balance of her life's work: the study and description of woman.
The collection of short
stories that makes up this anthology was written during the 1940s for a private
client known simply as "Collector"'. This "Collector"
commissioned Nin, along with other now well-known writers (including Henry
Miller), to produce erotic fiction for his private consumption. Despite being
told to leave poetic language aside and concentrate on graphic, sexually
explicit scenarios, Nin was able to give these stories a literary flourish and
a layer of images and ideas beyond the pornographic. In the introduction, she
called herself "the madam of this snobbish literary house of
prostitution".
The stories range in length
from less than a page to one hundred times that, and are tied together not just
by their sexual premises, but also by Nin's distinct style and feminine
viewpoint.
In Delta of Venus Anais Nin
penned a lush, magical world where the characters of her imagination possess
the most universal of desires and exceptional of talents. Among these
provocative stories, a Hungarian adventurer seduces wealthy women then vanishes
with their money; a veiled woman selects strangers from a chic restaurant for
private trysts; and a Parisian hatmaker named Mathilde leaves her husband for
the opium dens of Peru. This is an extraordinarily rich and exotic collection
from the master of erotic writing.
Anais Nin's writing
style is at once impassioned, direct and unambiguous. While she leaves no doubt
in the reader's mind just what is going on, her countless love scenes are
imbued with so much warmth and dignity that one could scarcely find them
offensive. But most importantly, Anais understood that sex is nothing without
emotion, and it's the emotions of her myriad characters that cause the reader
to turn happily florid with every page. She understood that while sex is not to
be taken lightly, it's certainly not something to be restrained, either.
Lastly, of all the locales depicted in this collection of stories, she lends a
special affection to Paris. One could presume that of all of Anais' lovers, the
City of Light was the dearest to her heart, to wit: "At five I always felt
shivers of sensuality, shared with the sensual Paris. As soon as the light
faded, it seemed to me that every woman I saw was running to meet her lover,
that every man was running to meet his mistress." and "But we were
enjoying an orgasm, as couples do in doorways and under bridges at night all
over Paris."
