Anaïs Nin on Why Understanding the Individual is the Key to Understanding Mass Movements

“Every individual is representative of the whole, a symptom, and should be intimately understood.”

French-Cuban writer Anaïs Nin (1903-1977) was one of the most prolific and dedicated diarists in modern literary history, her journals a treasure trove of insight on life, literature, society, and human nature. From the The Diary of Anaïs Nin, Vol. 3: 1939-1944 (public library) — which gave us Nin’s illustrated insights on life, this poignant mediation on Paris vs. New York, and Henry Miller’s wisdom on giving vs. receiving — comes this thoughtful reflection on why understanding the masses, in sociology and in politics, must be preceded by understanding the triumphs and tragedies of the individual:

The general obsession with observing only historical or sociological movements, and not a particular human being (which is considered such righteousness here [in America]) is as mistaken as a doctor who does not take an interest in a particular case. Every particular case is an experience that can be valuable to the understanding of the illness.

There is an opacity in individual relationships, and an insistence that the writer make the relation of the particular to the whole which makes for a kind of farsightedness. I believe in just the opposite. Every individual is representative of the whole, a symptom, and should be intimately understood, and this would give a far greater understanding of mass movements and sociology.

Also, this indifference to the individual, total lack of interest in intimate knowledge of the isolated, unique human being, atrophies human reactions and humanism. Too much social consciousness and not a bit of insight into human beings.

As soon as you speak in psychological terms (applying understanding of one to the many is not the task of the novelist but of the historian) people act as if you had a lack of interest in the wider currents of the history of man. In other words, they feel able to study masses and consider this more virtuous, assign of a vaster concept than relating to one person. This makes them …. inadequate in relationships, in friendships, in psychological understanding.

A couple of pages later, Nin ties this to political leadership in a way that, in an election year, rings more urgent than ever:

My lack of faith in the men who lead us is that they do not recognize the irrational in men, they have no insight, and whoever does not recognize the personal, individual drama of man cannot lead them.

The Diary of Anaïs Nin, Vol. 3: 1939-1944 is sublime in its entirety.

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An Institution Committed to the Dulling of the Feelings: Susan Sontag on Marriage

“Marriage is based on the principle of inertia.”

“My God, it is intolerable to think of spending ones whole life, like a neuter bee, working, working, & nothing after all,” wrote Charles Darwin as he weighed the pros and cons of marriage before committing himself to the love of his life, with whom he had ten children.

Earlier this month, artist Wendy MacNaughton illustrated Susan Sontag’s meditations on love, culled from the author’s journals between 1964 and 1980 — a stirring blend of cynical disillusionment and romantic idealism. To get there, Sontag had passed through a turbulent youth of crashing against the walls of her sexual identity and eventually marrying Philip Rieff at the tender age of seventeen after a ten-day courtship. In the first installment of her published diaries, Reborn: Journals and Notebooks, 1947-1963 (public library), edited by Susan and Philip’s son David Rieff, a 23-year-old Sontag shares this grim antidote to Darwin’s optimistic take on spousal union as she grapples with the dissolution of her own marriage to Philip — a kind of painful separateness bespeaking the opposite of the limbic revision that happens between two souls connected in a healthy, loving relationship.

On August 12, 1956, she writes:

In marriage, every desire becomes a decision

She revisits the subject on September 4:

Whoever invented marriage was an ingenious tormentor. It is an institution committed to the dulling of the feelings. The whole point of marriage is repetition. The best it aims for is the creation of strong, mutual dependencies.  

Quarrels eventually become pointless, unless one is always prepared to act on them — that is, to end the marriage. So, after the first year, one stops ‘making up’ after quarrels — one just relapses into angry silence, which passes into ordinary silence, and then one resumes again.

Then, in an entry dated November 18, 1956, Sontag puts down the outline for an intended essay on marriage:

A Project — Notes on Marriage

Marriage is based on the principle of inertia.  

Unloving proximity.  

Marriage is all private — no public — behavior.  

The glass wall that separates one couple from another.  

Friendship in marriage. The smooth skin of the other.  

[Protestant theologian Paul] Tillich: the marriage vow is idolatric (places one moment above all others, gives that moment [the] right to determine all the future ones). Monogamy, too. He spoke disparagingly of the “extreme monogamy” of the Jews.  

Rilke thought the only way to keep love in marriage was by perpetual acts of separation-return.

The leakage of talk in marriage.
(My marriage, anyway.)

Sontag and Philip separated shortly thereafter and permanently divorced in 1958. She never completed the “Notes on Marriage” essay, though many of the ideas teased out in Reborn were eventually fully explored in Against Interpretation: And Other Essays.

Also from Sontag’s diaries, her thoughts on censorship and aphorisms, and her synthesized advice on writing.

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A List of “Rare Things” From 11th-Century Japanese Court Lady Sei Shonagon, World’s First Blogger

“Two women, let alone a man and a woman, who vow themselves to each other forever, and actually manage to remain on good terms to the end.”

Between the 990s and the early 11th century, Japanese court lady Sei Shonagon set out to record her observations of and musings on life, Japanese culture, the intricacies of the human condition. Her writings were eventually collected and published in The Pillow Book (public library) in 1002. An archive of pictures and illustrations, records of interesting events in court, and daily personal thoughts, many in list-form, this was arguably the world’s first “blog” by conceptual format and Sh?nagon the world’s first blogger*.

Among her lists was this lovely meditation on “rare things”:

71. Rare Things–

A son-in-law who’s praised by his wife’s father. Likewise, a wife who’s loved by her mother-in-law.

A pair of silver tweezers that can actually pull out hairs properly.

A retainer who doesn’t speak ill of his master.

A person who is without a single quirk. Someone who’s superior in both appearance and character, and who’s remained utterly blameless throughout his long dealings with the world.

You never find an instance of two people living together who continue to be overawed by each other’s excellence and always treat each other with scrupulous care and respect, so such a relationship is obviously a great rarity.

Copying out a tale or a volume of poems without smearing any ink on the book you’re copying from. If you’re copying it from some beautiful bound book, you try to take immense care, but somehow you always manage to get ink on it.

Two women, let alone a man and a woman, who vow themselves to each other forever, and actually manage to remain on good terms to the end.

For a related treat, see these 5 vintage versions of modern social media.

* Thanks to reader Paul Simon for the tip

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