“Regular maps have few surprises: their contour lines reveal where the Andes are, and are reasonably clear. More precious, though, are the unpublished maps we make ourselves, of our city, our place, our daily world, our life; those maps of our private world we use every day; here I was happy, in that place I left my coat behind after a party, that is where I met my love; I cried there once, I was heart sore; but felt better round the corner once I saw the hills of Fife across the Forth, things of that sort, our personal memories, that make the private tapestry of our lives.” ― Alexander McCall Smith, Love Over Scotland
As readers of Anaïs Nin know. Anaïs writes effortlessly about her private world maps in her Diaries.
A new site, Luoghi d’Autore writes about this gift in their new blog. We look forward to the upcoming articles on Nin’s experiences in Bali and later, Mexico and Japan.
We relate to the Fez connection. When in Fez staying at Riad 9, we carried Xeroxed copies of her Fez writing and shared with friends we were traveling with-all were enraptured by Nin’s writing and her ability to describe so accurately the labyrinthine nature of the streets we were walking. It was as if she was beside us as a timeless spirit of place guide.
The goal of our new site – Luoghi d’Autore – is to link the world of tourism to the literary passions of artists known and unknown. Luoghi d’Autore explores the complex relationship between a place, its landscape, its people, and artists who has chosen a specific destination as their ideal place to create a work of art. We believe that the sensitivity of artists provides them with the ability to describe the spirit of a place. We always look for a connection between a trip and a literary work, between locales and art. An example is the journey of Anaïs Nin to Bali; we made the same trip while reading her Diary 7, her article The Spirit of Bali, and the book A House in Bali of Colin McPhee (Anaïs Nin loved it); in Sanur we stayed in the same hotel that Nin had chosen. It was a very special experience.
We have already published two articles on her trip to Morocco (Anaïs Nin e la magia del Morocco)and her stay in Los Angeles (Anaïs Nin a Los Angeles: gli ultimi anni raccontati da Barbara Kraft). We will publish an article about her experiences in Bali and are working on her trips to Mexico and Japan. We try to discover and describe a place through an artist’s eyes and to explore the inner world of that artist through the places they visit. The aura of travel is beautifully described by Anaïs Nin’s writing on Fez in Diary 7. She writes “The external life matches or harmonizes with the inner one. Fez did. It matched the dreams, so I was able to unite them. That is why it is so important to create the outer life to match one’s inner longings, so that they reach a marriage.”
