Un Etre Etoilique

Damn! I spelled "susurrus" wrong!
Originally uploaded by curiousyellow.

In 1938, Henry Miller's extraordinary essay about Anaïs Nin's diary and other work, entitled Un Etre Etoilique was published in the collection Max and the White Phagocytes. Some of his comments follow. The image posted here was inspired by that essay, after I encountered some excitement about it in a LiveJournal community. The image started as a monoprint.

Here in part (a very small part) is what Henry Miller had to say about Anaïs Nin in 1938:

"As I write these lines, Anais Nin has begun the fiftieth volume of her diary, a record of a twenty-year struggle towards self-realization. Still a young woman, she has produced on the side, in the midst of an intensely active life, a monumental confession which when given to the world will take its place beside the revelations of St. Augustine, Petronius, Abelard, Rousseau, Proust, and others…

One has to first lose himself to discover the world of his own… which brings us back to the labyrinth and to the descent into the womb, into the night of primordial chaos in which "knowledge is refunded into ignorance." This laborious descent into the infernal regions is really the initiation for the final descent into the eternal darkness of death. He must return into the womb naked as the day he was born…

In this extraordinary unicellular language of the female we have a blinding, gem-like consciousness which disperses the ego like stardust…

The human being in her speaks straight out from under the skin… a serpentine, sibylline, sibilant susurrus that comes up out of the astral marshes: a sort of cold tinkling lunar laughter that comes from under the soles of the feet."

Chaos

Untitled I
Originally uploaded by curiousyellow.

The task which the artist implicity sets himself is to overthrow existing values, to make of the chaos about him an order which is his own. (Henry Miller, Tropic of Cancer, page 242)

I haven't started some serious blogging or comment-cruising on this "Delicious Rogue" blog yet, but I *will* get it rolling soon. I have also been mining Black Spring and Nights of Love & Laughter for ore to be posted here. In the meantime, I am posting this funky Flickr cameraphone shot I took yesterday because it gives me a chance to use the delicious quote you just read. Of course, Henry, who had a reputation as a neat, tidy guy (in his environment, if not his love life), would probably not have approved of this kind of chaos.—Joey

"Everybody is Joey, because it's easier that way."

This is a weblog about Henry Valentine Miller (1891-1980), Brooklyn-born American author, expatriate during the 1930's, Big Sur resident during the 1940's and creator of Tropic of Cancer and other literary masterpieces. His circle of close personal friends, including Anaïs Nin, Alfred Perlès, Gyula Halasz (Brassaï), Bezalel Schatz, Lawrence Durrell, and many more are part of a twentieth century golden age. This weblog is dedicated to Miller, his friends, fans and wannabees. I started the weblog as a place to invite comments about whatever is posted or quoted concerning Miller and his circle.