January, 1943 Summary and Analysis

23. As she slowly recuperates, Anais begins to fantasize about what she wants in her life and about the person she wants to be. Lying in bed, she imagines that she is missing out on life and becomes restless. At polite social gatherings, she yearns for great primitive fiestas, Mayan rituals, Tahiti. "I am like a winged creature who is too rarely allowed to use its wings," she writes. Nin compares herself to yeast, effectuating changes in its matrix without being recognized; she strikes a note of self-pity when she muses that perhaps only after her death will the importance of her life and work be recognized as having "dispersed the drug of clairvoyance." Psychoanalysis reveals to her the schism between her true self as projected in her work and the self she projects to others to please them. She reflects on...