A re-arranged cento list-poem of “half-talk, phrases” underlined & lifted from Anaïs Nin's first published work of fiction, a dreamlike-nightmare novella about a woman's saison en enfer. †

⸻🧜‍♀️⸻

• water veiled
  • bells of the Atlantide
    • inside a sea-diamond
      • inexorable diamond sunlight
• I am the keeper of fragile things
  • half-talk & phrases
    • Melisande's hair falling over the balcony †
• Le pas d'acier... †
  • pomegranate spurting blood
    • acid revealing an invisible script
• Le pas d'acier... †
  • violent deviations
    • [the] terror and joy of murders accomplished in silence
• Le pas d'acier... †
  • the weight of brocades
    • the drug made fine incisions
• Le pas d'acier... †
  • reflections in cracked mirrors
    • broken glass will cut & the wheel crush
• Le pas d'acier... †
  • dangerous ecstasies
    • Laughter precedes hysteria.
• Le pas d'acier... †
  • The dream! The dream!
    • the deafening sound of bells
• Le pas d'acier... †
  • [the] forest must weep
    • nostalgic for the shivering of leaves
• the horror of obscenity
  • I am in terror of my ascensions
    • the silken passage of radiations
      • unrolled like a crimson bride
        • kissing, without hope of reality
• I want absolution
  • melted jewels [...] alchemized...
    • sunlight was an orchestra
      • out of ammonia crystals came the angels
        • dancing towards daylight.

A short film by the author's husband depicts the book's outset, an underwater Edenic dream narrated by Nin's Gallic accent over an experimental soundtrack ▸ ❀. The book also inspired Henry Miller's literary treatment, Scenario: A Film with Sound. ❀