Nearer the Moon
The preceding volume — Paris, before the war broke the world this one rebuilds.
Read our take
Mirages
by Anaïs Nin
The series resumes after seventeen years: the war decade uncut, from the flight out of Paris to the night the mirages ended.
- 2013
About Anaïs Nin
The story, briefly
Spoiler-freeThe unexpurgated project's fifth volume — and the first of its Sky Blue Press era — restores the entire war decade, 1939 to 1947: the New York rebuilding, the Gemor Press and erotica years, and the procession of loves the published third and fourth volumes edited down to friendships. Assembled by the Nin scholar Paul Herron from the journals and published in 2013, it bridges the gap the original 1990s run left open, and ends where the diary's American myth begins: the night drive west. (A diary — the closing pages wait behind the reveal.)
The story, in more detail
Seventeen years separate Nearer the Moon (1996) from this volume — a publishing story in itself. When Sky Blue Press and editor Paul Herron resumed the unexpurgated series in 2013, the missing war decade was the prize: the same years as the published Diary's third and fourth volumes, with the private record intact. What the editing had made into a chaste chronicle of presses and patrons emerges as the diary's most restless stretch — the title names the procession of loves pursued and found insubstantial, mirage after mirage, across the forties.
The volume's documentary value matches its drama: the erotica commission, the Village circle, and wartime New York all gain their missing dimensions, and the decade's end delivers the pivot the whole American diary turns on — the 1947 meeting with Rupert Pole, and the drive west that begins the double life the later volumes (and Trapeze especially) will map. The published Diary could name none of it; here the road opens with the real passenger aboard.
The full story
1939–1947, uncut: the arrival in a New York that had no use for the Paris reputation; the rebuilding — the press, the erotica, the young circle — with the attachments the published text removed restored to their real weight; the war passing through a city of refugees and rationing; and the decade's long procession of pursuits the title names, each promising the union the diary sought and dissolving on approach.
How it ends — spoilers ahead
The mirages end with a person: in early 1947 Nin meets Rupert Pole — young, beautiful, and headed for California — and the volume closes with the cross-country drive the published fourth volume rendered as solitary landscape writing. It was not solitary. The trapeze years begin at this curtain, and the next volume takes its name from them.
Why we recommend it
The missing decade
The longest span of any volume in the series, and the one the edited Diary most thoroughly rewrote.
The pivot, on the record
The Pole meeting and the drive west — the hinge of the whole late diary — finally in the primary text.
The Herron era begins
The Sky Blue Press volumes brought scholarly apparatus the nineties editions lacked.
What this book explores
Timeline
1939–1944
Wartime New York, uncut: the rebuilding, the press, the erotica, and the attachments the published text removed.
1947
The meeting with Rupert Pole and the drive west close the volume.
2013
Sky Blue Press publishes the volume, resuming the unexpurgated series under Paul Herron's editorship.
Book editions
Paperback
- Paperback
- Sky Blue Press / Swallow Press
- 2013
Reader reviews
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The Diary of Anaïs Nin, 1944–1947
The edited postwar account — including the drive west, minus its passenger.
Read our takeMirages: frequently asked questions
What years does Mirages cover?
1939 to 1947 — the entire war decade in New York, from the flight out of France to the first drive west to California.
When was it published?
2013, by Sky Blue Press with Swallow Press, edited by Paul Herron — the volume that resumed the unexpurgated series after a seventeen-year pause.
What does the title mean?
It is drawn from the diary's own image for the decade's procession of loves — pursuits that promised substance and dissolved on approach, mirage after mirage.
Who is Rupert Pole?
The young Californian Nin met in early 1947, with whom she drove west at the volume's end — the beginning of the bicoastal double life the later unexpurgated volumes document, and her companion for the rest of her life.
How does it relate to the published Diary?
It covers the same years as the published third and fourth volumes with the removed private life restored — most consequentially the attachments of the war years and the true character of the 1947 journey west.