If not by nature, then by habit, people tend to match one thing with another--man and woman, laughter and tears, sickness and health, fire and water, master and servant--thereby accentuating similarities and contrasts and opening a field of relations. In "The Mirror of Ideas," Michel Tournier examines these pairs and a host of others to demonstrate how pairing one object or idea with another generates the work of imagination, philosophy, and creative thinking of all kinds.
Tournier treats pairs both lowly and exalted--moving from fork and spoon, horse and bull, cat and dog, to fear and anguish, poetry and prose, body and soul, being and nothingness. Hardly an exhaustive inventory of traditional pairs, his selection nonetheless opens the door to patterns deeply embedded in culture and civilization, speech and writing, memory and habit. Possessed of both brilliant surfaces and surprising depths, Tournier's myriad reflections on the mirror of language reveal why his works have generated international attention and acclaim.

Michel Tournier, member of the Acadimie Goncourt and one of the most influential French writers of the post-Nouveau roman period, stresses the crucial interrelationship that exists between myth and literature. It is the writer's duty, he states, to keep myths alive by continually renewing and transforming them, re-releasing them in an ever changing social context. Written in French, this study considers the Tournier novel as the story of a voyage in a literal and figurative sense. Jonathan Krell uses the term "elementary" to characterize this voyage through the universe of Tournier's imagination, which is dominated by the four primordial element&--earth, water, air, and fire. Building on a foundation of Western culture's rudimentary myths, such as the ogre, twinship, and the Biblical stories of creation and the magi, Tournier performs a radical and disturbing transformation. Professor Krell shows how the transformation is made.