The symbolist movement shaped itself refuting the accusation of mystification levied first by a hostile press, then by writers reacting against the values of the movement. Tracing how the massive use of this « old argument of mystification » functions is a good way of understanding how symbolism makes itself a target for criticism by radically reinventing the relationships between literature and the literary life that it promotes. The implications are not only strategic : from the point of view of the aesthetic ambitions of symbolism, mystification articulates the planes of life and of literature and constitutes an excellent tool for fulfilling the program fixed upon by Des Esseintes : the confusion of life and art. This confusion is embodied in a number of collective practices and media, foremost, the small journal, which integrates mystification not as the vector for a coded subversion nor for a “fun life” but for an aesthetic of the mediatisation of literary life.