Seduction of the Minotaur

SEDUCTION OF THE MINOTAUR

by

Anaïs Nin

The Authoritative Edition

With comments by Anaïs Nin

Published by Sky Blue Press at Smashwords

Copyright © 2014 Sky Blue Press

Contents © 2011, 2014 The Anaïs Nin Trust

http://www.skybluepress.com

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Main Characters

Publishing History

Introduction

Seduction of the Minotaur

About the Author

More Titles from Sky Blue Press

MAIN CHARACTERS

Lillian Beye: Pianist who visits Golconda to play at the Black Pearl and to liberate herself from a dream of a boat caught in a waterless place; desires warmth and gentleness, friend of Dr. Hernandez; duped into paying for the release of an American who appears to be a prisoner. Lacks confidence in herself because her father wanted her to be a boy; returns home to her family in White Plains, bringing with her the atmosphere of Mexico. Composite character based on the passionate, aggressive side of Anaïs Nin as reflected in her friend Thurema Sokol (see Mirages).

Doctor Hernandez: Doctor and poet who lives apart from his wife; attends a party dressed as an Aztec warrior; murdered for trying to keep the illegal drug trade from expanding. Advises Lillian to address issues relating to her marriage and tries to protect her against promiscuity. Based on an actual Doctor Hernandez Nin befriended in Acapulco in 1947 (See Diary 5).

Harry Hatcher: American engineer married to a Mexican; long-time resident of Mexico who is dependent on American goods; reminds Lillian of her past. Based on man named Hatcher with whom Nin was acquainted in Acapulco in 1947 (See Diary 5).

Fred (Christmas): Chicago University student working as a translator in Mexico; eager to become a man, but fears ridicule. Based on a young man Nin referred to as Christmas in Acapulco in 1947 (See Diary 5).

Diana: American artist and long-time resident of Golconda; attends a party wearing a frame around her neck. Visits a Golconda dance and Doctor Hernandez’s cove; believes that Doctor Hernandez wished to be killed and that his wife did not love him. Based on Annette Nancarrow, whom Nin befriended in Acapulco in 1947.

Michael Lomax: Man who prefers men to women, has chosen not to love, and has withdrawn from the world.

Jay: Artist and newspaper proofreader with whom Lillian had a relationship in Paris; hedonist who makes Lillian into a woman but who is indifferent to his daughter. Based on Henry Miller (see Henry & June).

Djuna: Friend of Lillian; thinks that cells, freed from diseased ones, are capable of new life; believes that criminals relieve people of the desire to kill. Based on what Anaïs Nin called the mystic Anaïs (see Mirages).

Sabina: Subject of Jay’s painting; free, impulsive woman attracted to Lillian, whose inexperience and newness Sabina desires. Composite character based on June Miller and the aspect of Nin that sought to emulate her (see Henry & June).

Descriptions in part from Anaïs Nin Character Dictionary by Benjamin Franklin V

PUBLISHING HISTORY

Anaïs Nin self-published the first portion of Seduction of the Minotaur as Solar Barque in 1958 under the imprint of the Anaïs Nin Press, and this volume was the last of five novels (the first four are Ladders to Fire, Children of the Albatross, The Four-Chambered Heart, and A Spy in the House of Love) collected in the original Cities of the Interior, self-published in 1959. Nin felt the urge, however, to expand Solar Barque and added a second section; the complete book was renamed Seduction of the Minotaur and was published by Alan Swallow in 1961. When Swallow Press republished Cities of the Interior in 1974, Solar Barque was replaced by Seduction.

—Paul Herron, Editor

INTRODUCTION

In Seduction of the Minotaur I finally succeeded in absorbing the interpretations, the knowledge, the vision of the analyst with the novelist. The theme is psychoanalytical: the search for the origin of unhappiness in a new country and the problem of being faced with the repetition of patterns and recognizing their inescapable influence unless dissolved by awareness. Lillian makes both journeys, into the past as well as into the present, and becomes aware of their interrelation.

At the beginning of Seduction of the Minotaur, Lillian continues to travel away from the confrontation of her secret self, proceeds on a dynamic double journey. She begins with a troubled inner life and seeks peace from the outer joyousness of Mexico.

Symbolic images were drawn from many sources, Mexican legends as well as the story of how the Egyptians buried their pharaohs with two barks, one to sail after death to the moon and one to sail to the sun. This image was most appropriate for the story of Seduction of the Minotaur. If we did not make the journey on two levels, external and internal, we would not reach wholeness or happiness.

Lillian is only partly real.

She was essentially a woman rushing into acts which did not satisfy or assuage the needs of her inner self. The atmosphere of Mexico was in itself conducive to a slower rhythm, time for reflection, and the people seems to live in greater harmony with nature and with themselves.

Lillian was too strong, too powerful and could not find a balanced relationship. The groove she followed automatically was that of mother and child. She carries within her a wish for the hero, but in life she falls in love with his opposite. The man of power needs no mother. One can see in the novel that she makes impossible wishes: she responds and relates to the childlike in man, and then laments that this child cannot be a husband. She is all contraries. She demands yieldingness and decries dependency. She is drawn to passivity and demands activity. These ever contradictory impulses end in a draw. The fear dictates certain choices which do not correspond to the deepest wish of all. She forces her strength into relationships which cannot contain it. Because of the imbalance in her selections (experiment with the unsuitable element in chemistry), she cannot find a mate suited to her true nature. Yet she attains a fusion and balance at the end of Seduction of the Minotaur. Why? Because she could receive the eloquent messages directly from nature. Through the senses (which she feared to yield to sensually) she was able to become at one with nature (her nature) through the Doctor’s insights.

The dialogue between the Doctor and Lillian is not a psychoanalytic dialogue. He is a man of great humanity and wisdom. He observes her dislocation. He is killed. It was the first time I accepted a physical death. It was frequent, natural, and consistent with life in Mexico. It also forced Lillian out of her evasions.

–Anaïs Nin, from Novel of the Future, 1968

SOME VOYAGES HAVE THEIR INCEPTION in the blueprint of a dream, some in the urgency of contradicting a dream. Lillian's recurrent dream of a ship that could not reach the water, that sailed laboriously, pushed by her with great effort, through city streets, had determined her course toward the sea, as if she would give this ship, once and for all, its proper sea bed.

She had landed in the city of Golconda, where the sun painted everything with gold, the lining of her thoughts, the worn valises, the plain beetles, Golconda of the golden age, the golden aster, the golden eagle, the golden goose, the golden fleece, the golden robin, the goldenrod, the goldenseal, the golden warbler, the golden wattles, the golden wedding, and the gold fish, and the gold of pleasure, the goldstone, the gold thread, the fool's gold.

With her first swallow of air she inhaled a drug of forgetfulness well known to adventurers.

Tropic, from the Greek, signified change and turning. So she changed and turned and was metamorphosed by the light and caressing heat into a spool of silk. Every movement she made from that moment on, even the carrying of her valise, was softened and pleasurable. Her nerves, of which she had always been sharply aware, had become instead strands from a spool of silk, spiraling through the muscles.

How long do you intend to stay? asked the official. How much money do you carry with you? In what currency? Do you have a return ticket?

You had to account for every move, arrival or exit. In the world there was a conspiracy against improvisation. It was only permitted in jazz.

The guitars and the singing opened fire. Her skin blossomed and breathed. A heavy wave of perfume came down the jungle on the right, and a fine spray of waves came from the left. On the beach the natives swung in hammocks of reeds. The tender Mexican voices sang love songs which cradled and rocked the body as did the hammocks.

Where she came from only jewels were placed in satin-lined, cushioned boxes, but here it was thoughts and memories which the air, the scents, and the music conspired to hypnotize by softness.

But the airport official who asked cactus-pointed questions wore no shirt, nor did the porters, so that Lillian decided to be polite to the smoothest torso and show respect only to the strongest muscle.

The absence of uniforms restored the dignity and importance of the body. They all looked untamed and free in their bare feet, as if they had assumed the duties of receiving the travelers only temporarily and would soon return to their hammocks, to swimming and singing. Work was one of the absurdities of existence. Don't you think so, Senorita? said their laughing eyes while they appraised her from head to toe. They looked at her openly, intently, as children and animals do, with a physical vision, measuring only physical attributes, charm, aliveness, and not titles, possessions, or occupations. Their full, complete smile was not always answered by the foreigners, who blinked at such sudden warmth of smile as they did at the dazzling sun. Against the sun they wore dark glasses, but against these smiles and open naked glances they could only defend their privacy with a half-smile. Not Lillian. Her very full, rounded lips had always given such a smile. She could respond to this naked curiosity, naked interest, proximity. Thus animals and children stare, with their whole, concentrated attentiveness. The natives had not yet learned from the white man his inventions for traveling away from the present, his scientific capacity for analyzing warmth into a chemical substance, for abstracting human beings into symbols. The white man had invented glasses which made objects too near or too far, cameras, telescopes, spyglasses, objects which put glass between living and vision. It was the image he sought to possess, not the texture, the living warmth, the human closeness.

The natives saw only the present. This communion of eyes and smiles was elating. Where Lillian came from people seemed intent on not seeing each other. Only children looked at her with this unashamed curiosity. Poor white man, wandering and lost in his proud possession of a dimension in which bodies became invisible to the naked eye, as if staring were an immodest act. Already she felt incarnated, in full possession of her own body because the porter was in full possession of his, and this concentration upon the present allowed no interruption or short circuits of the physical contact. When she turned away from the porter it was to find a smiling taxi driver who seemed to be saying: I am not keen on going anywhere. It is just as good right here, right now...

He was scratching his luxuriant black hair, and he carried his wet bathing suit around his neck.

The guitars kept up their musical fire. The beggars squatted around the airport. Blind or crippled, they smiled. The festivities of nature bathed them in gold and anesthetized their suffering.

Clothes seemed ponderous and superfluous in the city of Golconda.

Golconda was Lillian's private name for this city which she wanted to rescue from the tourist-office posters and propaganda. Each one of us possesses in himself a separate and distinct city, a unique city, as we possess different aspects of the same person. She could not bear to love a city which thousands believed they knew intimately. Golconda was hers. True, it had been at first a pearl-fishing village. True, a Japanese ship had been wrecked here, slave ships had brought Africans, other ships delivered spices, and Spanish ships had brought the art of filigree, of lace making. A shipwrecked Spanish galley had scattered on the beach baptism dresses which the women of southern Mexico had adopted as headgear.

The legend was that when the Japanese pearl divers had been driven away they had destroyed the pearl caches, and Golconda became a simple fishing village. Then the artists had come on donkeys and discovered the beauty of the place. They had been followed by the real-estate men and hotelkeepers. But none could destroy Golconda. Golconda remained a city where the wind was like velvet, where the sun was made of radium, and the sea as warm as a mother's womb.

The porters were deserting before all the baggage was distributed. They had earned enough, just enough for the day for food, beer, a swim, and enough to take a girl dancing, and they did not want any more. So the little boys of ten and twelve, who had been waiting for this opening, were seeking to carry bags bigger than themselves.

The taxi driver, who was in no hurry to go anywhere in his dilapidated car, saw his car filling up, and decided it was time to put on his clean laundry-blue shirt.

The three men who were to share the taxi with Lillian were already installed.