The Mirror of Legends

Bernard Lazare

translated by Brian Stableford

Here available in English for the first time, in a splendid translation by Brian Stableford, The Mirror of Legends, one of the important collections of French Symbolist Bernard Lazare (1865–1903), offers a melange of stories based on Greek, mythological and Biblical sources. In prose coiling as effusively as the smoke from a swinging censer, the esoteric lore of centuries is paraded before the reader in this series of incantatory poem-like tales that form an eclectic myth-cycle of their own. A mixture of erudition, heretical speculation and heightened lyricism, The Mirror of Legends offers a unique artistic statement of metaphysics, aesthetics and ethics.

About the Author
Bernard Lazare (1865–1903) was a French Jewish literary critic and journalist. Though mostly remembered today for his prominent role in the Dreyfus Affair and his book Antisemitism: Its History and Causes, he was also an important member of the Symbolist movement, and one of its purest and most extravagant exponents. He wrote drama and some poetry, but the core of his production consisted of an extensive sequence of short stories, or elaborated poems in prose, most of which he published in Symbolist periodicals between 1887 and 1893, and which he subsequently organized into three augmented collections. Although somewhat neglected today, for reasons that have nothing to do with their literary and philosophical merit, Lazare’s short stories are key documents of the Symbolist movement, and a remarkable illustration of the methods and preoccupations of the writers whose activity constituted its heyday.

Paperback, 196 pages. Release date: August 21, 2016
ISBN-13: 978-1-943813-38-4
Price: US$16.50

Hardcover, 198 pages. Limited edition of 60 copies
Release date: August 21, 2016
Price: US$29.00