Joaquín Nin


Joaquín Nin y Castellanos was a Cuban pianist and composer. Nin was the father of Anaïs Nin.

Biography

He was son of the Catalan writer Joaquin Nin Tudó and the Cuban from Camagüey Àngela Castellanos Perdomo. Nin studied piano with Moritz Moszkowski and composition at the Schola Cantorum. He toured as a pianist and was known as a composer and arranger of popular Spanish folk music. Nin was a member of the Spanish Academy and the French Legion of Honor.
He was the father of Thorvald Nin, composer Joaquín Nin-Culmell, and writer Anaïs Nin with singer Rosa Culmell.
Joaquín Nin appears as one of the characters in the novel The Island of Eternal Love, by Cuban writer Daína Chaviano.

Memory

In her memoirs and fiction, his daughter Anaïs Nin often attempts to consider aspects of her own nature by recalling how her father treated her as a child. Her "unexpurgated" diary volume describes an incestuous relationship with him in adulthood. She described him as an egotistical Don Juan and would often imitate him by affecting a "Doña Juana" persona.