Born on this date: Anaïs Nin
Below is correspondence between Frederick J. Hoffman (1909-1967) and Anaïs Nin (1903-1977) from February 1944. At the end of Hoffman’s letter he suggests a meeting while he was visiting New York on Nin’s birthday, February 21.
Frederick J. Hoffman was born in Port Washington, Wisconsin and was a Distinguished Professor of English at UW-Milwaukee from 1965 until his death in 1967. He wrote several books and essays. The correspondence below stems from his research into his 1945 book Freudianism and the Literary Mind.
Below is Anaïs Nin‘s kind and diplomatic response.
Anaïs Nin was born Angela Anaïs Juana Antolina Rosa Edelmira Nin y Culmell on February 21, 1903, in France. She was a prolific writer and in the letter above she mentions her books House of Incest (1936) and Winter of Artifice (1939).
Dear Dr. Hoffman: I'm afraid Mr. Miller unwittingly misled you as to the nature of my knowledge of psychoanalysis. I am quite incapable of answering your large and general questions for which erudition and a theoretical approach are necessary. Mine is the knowledge of experience, direct personal and subjective experience. Into this I can say I have gone very deeply. But from this to making general statements on aesthetics, writers etc. is impossible to me. I happen to believe in my kind of knowledge. I would still advise a writer to do as I did: to suffer it, investigate it with one's own life, to feel it, to go right to the deepest sources. But from this to answering your questions, is almost to go at the subject from the opposite direction. In your realm, in your point of view, I am entirely inadequate and my knowledge cannot be of any use. Theory and experience remain opposite poles. I would gladly have answered you..if I could. Besides the House of Incest I wrote the Winter of Artifice which is directly written from expereince. Good luck to your book and I hope to read it. Sincerely, Anaïs Nin
After Hoffman’s book was published, Anaïs Nin wrote the letter below.
Dear Mr. Hoffman: When your article Lawrences "Quarrel" with Freud appeard in Quarterly Review of Literature I was immensely interested and meant to write you a long letter. But at the time I was trying to both write and print and it was too big a strain - so I cut it out of the magazine and carefully kept your article- Today I reread it and I am going to try and obtain your book Monday. If you are in N.Y. will you let me know. I would like to talk with you. If not there I will write you at length. December 4 I am lecturing at Harvard, and I would like to quote a passage from your article in my lecture. I am using it here in self-defense for I have been violently distorted by all the reviewers and inadequately situated by Wilson for my last book Ladders to Fire. Your point of view and your way of stating it both aroused my admiration. Sincerely, Anaïs Nin
These letters can be found in the Frederick John Hoffman Papers (UWM Mss 141, box 1, folders 2 & 9)
Happy Birthday Anniversary, Anaïs Nin.
