I am guilty of too serious, too grave living, but never of
shallow living. I have lived in the depths. My first tragedy sent me to the
bottom of the sea; I live in a submarine, and hardly ever come to the surface.
I love costumes, the foam of aesthetics, noblesse oblige, and poetic writers.
At fifteen I wanted to be Joan of Arc, and later, Don Quixote. I never awakened
from my familiarity with mirages, and I will end probably in an opium den. None
of that is suitable for Harper’s Bazaar.
I am apparently gentle, unstable, and full of pretenses. I will
die a poet killed by the nonpoets, will renounce no dream, resign myself to no
ugliness, accept nothing of the world but the one I made myself. I wrote,
lived, loved like Don Quixote, and on the day of my death I will say: ‘Excuse
me, it was all a dream,’ and by that time I may have found one who will say:
‘Not at all, it was true, absolutely true.’
Anais Nin, excerpt from letter to Leo Lerman, 1946.
Stephanie Doty
Women’s Issues Matter
April 4, 2014
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