The Four-Chambered Heart, Anais Nin's third title in the Cities of the Interior series of novels, is one of Nin's most compelling books, with well-defined characters Djuna, Rango, and Zora , rhythmic waves of tension, and a powerful climax. Based on Nin's own relationship with the Peruvian radical Gonzalo More and his wife Helba, The Four-Chambered Heart examines how each of us experiences love in our own way, and how we are sometimes forced by social mores to compartmentalize one relationship in order to preserve the other.
Nin's use of symbolism has never been more effective: the river Seine represents the immutable force of life, the houseboat is the elusive dream, the shore is reality, and a doll found by a fisherman represents the part of Djuna that has committed suicide to allow the rest of her to grow. Djuna, through her torturous journey with Rango and Zora, arrives at a conclusion that is bitter yet critical to her survival as a woman seeking an understanding of how the exterior world affects the interior: " This new authoritative edition contains Nin's introduction, character descriptions, publishing history, and an author's chronology.
Abandoned by her father in , she and her family traveled to New York, where she began her now famous diary, comprised of some 35, pages over a period of six decades. When the first volume of 'The Diary of Anais Nin' was published in , it began Nin's meteoric surge to fame.
However, often overlooked are the works of fiction she created, beginning with 'The House of Incest' in , which was followed by a then-banned edition of a collection of novellas under the title 'The Winter of Artifice. Perhaps Nin's most acclaimed fiction is the series of short stories in 'Under a Glass Bell,' which she self-published in New York during the s when no commercial publisher would take the risk.
She then began a series of novels that were interconnected and finally collected into one volume entitled 'Cities of the Interior. Fairy Tales, Feminism, Dominatrixes! Fairy tales of all kinds can influence what we believe and experience around sex and relationships. But he also does more than that; because his beginnings as a clinician are intimately intertwined with the treatment of psychosis,.
