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.Thorvald carried on my father's scientific interests, Joaquin his musicianship, and I his talent for living.He talks about our illnesses as proudly as if they were heirlooms, jewels, possessions.He injects pride even into our humiliations.This pride is softened in me by my femininity.I choose to express it by humility.But the more humble the form, the prouder the core.I suffered from poverty, and only great pride can explain the depth of the wounds.If I were not proud I would not be so mortally offended.I am proud of my father.I understand in him the artist's egotistical quest for protection, like the woman's quest for male protection so as to attend to the bearing of children.Pregnant women are helpless.The artist while he is at work is helpless too.He too seeks a nest.I understand in him, as I do in Henry, the need for independence, for stimulants, for love affairs.The same gaiety in us.Gravity, earnestness, intensity, passion, joyousness.We are disconcerted by our faults, distressed, surprised by our weaknesses.The intentions are noble.The lies cover the flaws.When I spend hours on manual details, covering nail holes with putty, painting the laundry basket, washing stains off the walls, painting trays, etc., I am ashamed of this and invent more important occupations.I am translating for Allendy, or working on my prose poem.My father inflates the number of singers who come to work with him, the number of lessons he gives, of concerts he gives.He is ashamed of the hours he spends cutting newspaper clippings, filing the latest discoveries on hormones, remedies for damp walls, reports on spiritism.Henry never feels shame for anything he does.He accepts everything, shabby, small, petty, ugly, or empty.He is all-inclusive.Uncritical.I wonder whether I admired Henry's uncriticalness as a respite from the perfectionism I was cursed with.When I broke the crystal bowl and the water gushed out, was I shattering artificial, contained life and letting life break through and flow? Catastrophe and flow.No control.Nature, not crystal.Father, who loves crystal, had said tenderly, "And we had taken such pleasure in looking at it together.We love crystal because it is transparent, luminous, and yet solid.It has weight.Feel the weight of the Lalique vase."Later he said, "I wasn't worried about being old—I know I am not old.But I was anxious that you might come back to me too late, when I would be old.Anxious that you might not see me vivid and laughing and able to make you laugh."A great gusto for life.I felt a surge of admiration for my double.I regretted the years I had not known him, learned from him.Henry often says, "I'm tired of war.I must get rid of hatred.I need peace." He believes Lawrence would have done more if he had had peace with Frieda.It was Lawrence's cry too.It was my father's cry against my mother.Such a distance between my mother and me tonight.We are only bound to each other by similar maternal instincts.Henry understands me when I say: "I have known motherhood.I have experienced childbearing.I have known a motherhood beyond biological motherhood—the bearing of artists, and life, hope, and creation." It was Lawrence who had said: Give up bearing children and bear hope and love and devotion to those already born.Awoke this morning to read this letter from my father:Anaïs, cherie, ma plus grande amie! I owe you the most beautiful, the most profound, the most complete day of my life.I leave very moved and full of you.I rediscovered you whole, sensitive, vibrating.Yesterday as I lifted the veils accumulated by the years, I rediscovered your radiance.I see it, I feel it, I divine all of it, secret but strong, penetrating, human, all charm.Thank you, Anaïs.We sealed a pact between the best of friends.I send you all my thoughts and my fervor.I was shattered with happiness.Then he telephoned: "I must come to see you, even if it is only for an hour."And Father comes, resplendent, and we understand each other miraculously.He believes in polarity, man very masculine, woman very feminine.He hates violence, as I do.Great possibilities for both good and evil, but great control.The mold we give to our lives is so that there will be no cataclysms.The order we seek we are willing to surrender to the flow of life at any time, but it is there as a brake on a car, and our health is a brake.We put brakes on, against our temperament.He said, "Even a room, arranged in a certain manner, prevents certain things from taking place in it."As he talks I see the effort at equilibrium which is at the basis of our natures.But is it possible that I should become Father's bad double instead of the opposite? Which one is going to disturb the other's control? If my father is going to try to keep me from breaking loose, then I will hurt him too.He will not tolerate perversity, homosexuality.My father understands that when I seem to be most yielding, I am still selective.A friend told him I was in danger from psychoanalysis, which removes all the brakes.My father understands that my willingness to explore everything is a sign of strength.The weak ones have prejudices.Prejudices are a protection.We agree on this.My father and I elaborated on this, taking joy in discovering each other.He sat admiring the design of the bookcase and advised me to have my gate oiled.(I liked the long flute chant of its rusty hinges.) He has a passion for perfection which frightened me as a child.I felt I could never live up to it.He understands the strength in me.And I know that I can lean on him.I am less concerned than he is with a cleanliness that goes so far as to sterilize the silverware, and wash his hands every ten minutes.(It may be the doctor in him.) I am more human, more neurotic.But we are both enslaved by sensations.How we ever extricate ourselves is a miracle.Certain lapses of wisdom seem divinely wise to me.I plan less than he does.My father likes to guide, to play the teacher, the judge in quarrels: he loves to form lives.Father, too, is jealous of my journal."My only rival," he says.(All of them would slay the journal if they could.)My father laments my use of English, which he cannot read.Using English, he says, is doing violence to my own nature, to Spanish vehemence and French incisiveness.But I say to him I can give English these things, I can break molds for my own use, I can transcend a language.And I do love English: it is rich, fertile, subtle, airy, fluid, all-sufficient to expression.I write to Artaud, sending him a little help.And, above all, a letter which may give him relief from the feeling that the world is against him.I remember Allendy's words: "Do not play with Artaud.He is too miserable, too poor.""I am only interested in his genius.""But then be a friend, not a coquette.""In literary relationships I am very masculine," I said."But your silhouette is decidedly not masculine," said Allendy.Long walk with Joaquin around the lake, talking, talking, about Father.I am begging Joaquin not to judge his father without first knowing him.I say, "If you judge my father, you are also judging me, because we are alike."Joaquin protests violently, saying there are no resemblances in the essentials, only in details."Father lives in a non-human world." And Joaquin praises my mother for being "human."I say, "My mother's possessiveness and violence are real, human enough.But primitive.""Better than Father's artificiality."Joaquin's defense of my mother is always: "She loved her children.""As lions do.Biologically, yes.But she was just as selfish as my father, in the end.She fed us, protected us, worked for us, but would not allow us to be ourselves
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