Tropic of Cancer discussion

I'm having a hard time understanding Anais Nin's introduction to Tropic of Cancer, and I hope that someone would be nice enough to help me out with it. Also, I would like to see some discussion on the passage!

The sentence that's killing me is: "The poetic is discovered by stripping away the vestiture of art; by descending to what might be styled "a preartistic level," the durable skeleton of form which is hidden in the phenomena of distintegration reappears to be transfigured again in the ever-changing flesh of emotion"

I've dissected every word and still can not come out with the real meaning of this sentence. How is the "durable skeleton" reappearing in disintegration? And how does this explain this work?

side note; I am reading this book for the first time and haven't gotten past the preface so far.

Several things are latent in her choice of phrase. First though, recognize that its not even that unusual an insight. You can find such comments throughout critical theory all through the 1700-1800s; and when you do it is easy to see that it is all following in the train of Michelangelo Buonarroti and his famous anecdote of encountering a block of marble and 'stripping away the rock to reveal the David within' (which is how the great sculptor characterized his art).

Nin perhaps chooses an unfortunate phrasing in her remark, 'the phenomenon of disintegration'. Its clumsy. At best she may be alluding to the disintegration which describes all life; everything eroding and crumbling slowly--even too slowly for our eyes to notice. Integration may conversely be an elegant way to describe lovemaking or creativity, because either one re-builds. Building the faculty of perception is a trait which modern, automated, mannered, society has lost. 'Finding' existing--but hidden--forms, is the ability of all primitive peoples. This is what only poetry still has the ability to tap. And transitory encounters such as with Gaugin, Matisse, Cezanne, and Van Gogh.

Anyway the worst part of her utterance is this bit about 'transfigured again'. Gag. Unclear and obscurantist speech.

Thank you for this insight! Glad to see I'm not the only one who thought she was unclear, but your insight gave me some direction as well!

That's what I'm here for. You've got questions, I've got semi-colons.

Chuck wrote: "I'm having a hard time understanding Anais Nin's introduction to Tropic of Cancer, and I hope that someone would be nice enough to help me out with it. Also, I would like to see some discussion on ..."
Chuck, Nin's comment reveals more about Nin than it does about Miller. It especially reveals her fondness for being mysteriously inscrutable. The disintegration that Nin refers to is both Miller's dismissal of the traditional literary form of the novel and the social disintegration of western Europe in the 1930s that Miller was mirroring in Tropic of Cancer. Nin is often insightful in her writing, but could also be pretentiously obscure. I think she's better when writing about people than about literature.