Le Miroir des Limbes and Its Challenges

Abstract

In L'Homme precaire, Malraux explains that the Bibliotheque de la Pleiade is our imaginary museum of literature. It can be inferred that in deciding to publish Le Miroir des limbes in a Pleiade edition, he intended to emphasize its particular importance, since he had consistently refused to publish in that collection a second volume of novels which could have included La Voie royale, Le Temps du mepris, and Les Noyers d'Altenburg.1 I would like to examine Le Miroir des limbes, not in its details, since the work is too complex and too broad to be dealt with in a short article, but in its totality, and to formulate several hypotheses concerning its position in Malraux's works and its generic originality.