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.
Themes and analysis
Making the book herself
Making a book begins here before the work at a press. On February 4, 1940, Nin records adding later developments concerning her father to an earlier diary, while confronting her inability to publish it. On May 4 she is preparing an abridgment for Caresse Crosby. These entries show the record being revisited with a reader in view. The diary preserves the present but also admits revision, insertion and selection: the desire to communicate requires decisions about how a private accumulation of pages can become a shareable work.
A new connection
Kim Krizan's introduction presents Rupert Pole as the destination of the volume's search for connection, asking readers to anticipate relief after repeated disappointments. That advance promise changes how the following entries read: uncertain attachments become stages in a journey whose outcome has already been announced. Yet Krizan also points beyond this resolution to the divided life with Pole and Hugh Guiler. The new connection therefore gives this volume a shape without bringing the larger diary to rest; its apparent ending is also the opening of another unresolved arrangement.
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
Readers may also like
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.
If you like Anaïs Nin
Explore authors with a similar voice, perspective, and influence.
Henry Miller
The entangled careers of the Villa Seurat: she financed and prefaced his scandal, he detonated her prose — and each wrote the other into the century's record.
View author
Louis-Ferdinand Céline
The doctor of the Paris slums who wrote the century's blackest, funniest novel — and changed the sound of French prose.
View author
Martha Gellhorn
War correspondent who covered the Spanish Civil War, D-Day, and conflicts across five more decades; Hemingway's third wife, 1940–1945.
View author
References
References
The sources below include the primary text, editions, scholarship, archival materials, and other records that informed this page. They document Mirages, its publication, and its place in literary history.
1Mirages
NovelAnaïs Nin, 2013Used forThe primary text represented by this page, used for descriptions of the work’s contents and for any quoted passages shown here.
2Anaïs Nin — biography
WebsiteThe Anaïs Nin FoundationUsed forUsed to verify Mirages's bibliographic context and its place within Anaïs Nin's published work.
3Anaïs Nin Papers — diary, March–September 1938
ArchiveUCLA Library Special CollectionsUsed forUsed for independent archival, institutional, or historical context surrounding Anaïs Nin and Mirages.
4Anaïs Nin: A Biography
BiographyG. P. Putnam's Sons, 1995Used forUsed to cross-check chronology, publication history, and the circumstances in which Mirages appeared.
5Anaïs: The Erotic Life of Anaïs Nin
BiographyLittle, Brown, 1993Used forUsed for an additional scholarly or biographical perspective on Mirages and Anaïs Nin's wider career.
6Mirages — introduction and opening diary preview
WebsiteSky Blue Press / Everand, 2013Used forUses the public February 4 and May 4, 1940 entries and Kim Krizan's introduction. The latter's account of the ending is explicitly attributed; no complete 1947 episode, full-volume or notebook collation is claimed.
i
Why these sources are here
The primary text is the baseline reference for every book page. Additional references document publication history, interpretation, and historical context where that evidence is available.
Explore more resources