Gourmont also began a literary alliance with Joris-Karl Huysmans, to whom he dedicated his prose work "Le Latin mystique" (Mystical Latin). In 1889 Gourmont became one of the founders of the "Mercure de France", which became a rallying point of the Symbolist movement. Between 1893 and 1894 he was the co-editor, along with Alfred Jarry, of L'Ymagier, a magazine dedicated to symbolist wood carvings. In 1891 he published a polemic called "Le Joujou Patriotisme" (Patriotism, a toy) in which he argued that France and Germany shared an aesthetic culture and urged a rapprochement between the two countries, contrary to the wishes of nationalists in the French government. This political essay led to his losing his job at the Bibliothèque Nationale, despite Octave Mirbeau's chronicles.