When I was a teenager, I stumbled upon Anaïs Nin's diaristic works, prominently displayed in the family library. The volumes of the Diary were lined up side by side, their thick pale pink edges particularly inviting to the dreamy teenager that I was. I still remember the asterisks marking the journal number, the thickness, and the smell of the pages. The paperback editions with their faded covers. The intriguing portraits of Anaïs, her face down, porcelain complexion, and sad eyes. The reading of the Diary accompanied me for years, and listening to this interview with Fernand Séguin brings back the emotion it evoked with vividness.

The Diary is an absolutely unique work, an adventure into the depths of the human experience. Nin unfolds the hidden corners of her being, dusts off her unconscious, transfigures encounters, and creates from each day the novelistic materials to fill an entire existence. She sails from dream to vision, from creation to disillusionment, bathing her loved ones in a profound love that liberates more than it suffocates. She hops more than she walks. She enchants more than she reveals. The Diary lets you enter the house of mysteries and make your nest there. Anaïs Nin transformed an art considered minor and (perhaps because of it?) feminine into an alchemical experience of unveiling a constantly reinvented consciousness, simultaneously elusive and the pretext for all words.

This extensive interview with Fernand Séguin offers a glimpse into the magical power of the artist, but to truly taste it, one must open the Diary.

Naomie Décarie-Daigneault
Tënk's Artistic Director