«The facts of Meyrink's life are less problematic than his work⦠Munich, Prague and Hamburg shared the years of his youth. We know that he was a bank employee and that he abhorred that job. We also know that he attempted two revenge or two forms of escape: the confused study of the confused "occult sciences" and the composition of satirical writings ». With these words, in 1938, Borges fearlessly presented to Argentine readers Meyrink, the dream author par excellence, in which the fatal encounter between the occult and the feuilleton takes place. And it is in the Green Face that Meyrink reaches the apex of his art as a "chimeric novelist" and of his "admirably visual" style - and the apex of his histrionics, if with this word we mean an amazing ability to breathe narrative life into the most arduous esoteric images: in this case the legend of the green face, that is the evanescent face of the one who holds "the keys of the secrets of magic" and, immortal, remained on earth to gather the elect ". [back cover Italian edition Adelphi]
