![From the back cover of Dover’s pairing of Meyrink’s Golem and Paul Busson’s Man Who Was Born Again:
The Man Who Was Born Again by Paul Busson (1873–1924), Tyrolean and Viennese journalist and author, is well-known as perhaps the finest adventure fantasy in early twentieth-century German literature. The story of reincarnated memories in eighteenth-century Germany and France, it offers a fine integration of supernatural powers, ghosts, witchcraft, black magic, demons, and evocation of the dead; it is unique in its combination of wild imagination and realism.
E. F. Bleiler’s intro to this 1976 paperback is pretty thorough. He ends his section on Busson with a paragraph contradicting the back cover text:
Today Paul Busson seems to be forgotten in the Germanic world except as a journalist in the memory of a now very old generation. He was never known at all in English. The translations The Man Who Was Born Again and The Fire Spirits went almost unheeded, even though they appeared at a dearth-time of fantasy [late 20s]. Yet these two novels offer inimitable universes, where fantasy assumes such strong actuality that it achieves its own reality. Even after fifty years, in another language, these universes remain viable.
Image via Z-7
As an indication of obscurity, even I—Jujutsu master of book search—cannot locate a copy of The Fire Spirits.](http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_ltc42rqDg01qf0717o1_1280.jpg)
From the back cover of Dover’s pairing of Meyrink’s Golem and Paul Busson’s Man Who Was Born Again:
The Man Who Was Born Again by Paul Busson (1873–1924), Tyrolean and Viennese journalist and author, is well-known as perhaps the finest adventure fantasy in early twentieth-century German literature. The story of reincarnated memories in eighteenth-century Germany and France, it offers a fine integration of supernatural powers, ghosts, witchcraft, black magic, demons, and evocation of the dead; it is unique in its combination of wild imagination and realism.
E. F. Bleiler’s intro to this 1976 paperback is pretty thorough. He ends his section on Busson with a paragraph contradicting the back cover text:
Today Paul Busson seems to be forgotten in the Germanic world except as a journalist in the memory of a now very old generation. He was never known at all in English. The translations The Man Who Was Born Again and The Fire Spirits went almost unheeded, even though they appeared at a dearth-time of fantasy [late 20s]. Yet these two novels offer inimitable universes, where fantasy assumes such strong actuality that it achieves its own reality. Even after fifty years, in another language, these universes remain viable.
As an indication of obscurity, even I—Jujutsu master of book search—cannot locate a copy of The Fire Spirits.
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I would read this for the amazing cover art alone.
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