''L'après-midi d'un faune'' (or "The Afternoon of a Faun") is a poem by the French author

Stéphane Mallarmé Stéphane Mallarmé ( , ; 18 March 1842 – 9 September 1898), pen name of Étienne Mallarmé, was a French poet and critic. He was a major French symbolist poet, and his work anticipated and inspired several revolutionary artistic schools of ...

. It describes the sensual experiences of a

faun The faun (, grc, φαῦνος, ''phaunos'', ) is a half-human and half-goat mythological creature appearing in Greek and Roman mythology. Originally fauns of Roman mythology were spirits (genii) of rustic places, lesser versions of their c ...

who has just woken up from his afternoon sleep and discusses his encounters with several

nymph A nymph ( grc, νύμφη, nýmphē, el, script=Latn, nímfi, label=Modern Greek; , ) in ancient Greek folklore is a minor female nature deity. Different from Greek goddesses, nymphs are generally regarded as personifications of nature, are ty ...

s during the morning in a dreamlike monologue. It is Mallarmé's best-known work and a hallmark in the history of

symbolism Symbolism or symbolist may refer to: Arts * Symbolism (arts), a 19th-century movement rejecting Realism ** Symbolist movement in Romania, symbolist literature and visual arts in Romania during the late 19th and early 20th centuries ** Russian sy ...

in French literature.

Paul Valéry Ambroise Paul Toussaint Jules Valéry (; 30 October 1871 – 20 July 1945) was a French poet, essayist, and philosopher. In addition to his poetry and fiction (drama and dialogues), his interests included aphorisms on art, history, letters, mus ...

considered it to be the greatest poem in French literature.Weinfield, Henry. ''Stephane Mallarme, Collected Poems''. Translated with commentary. 1994, University of California Press. Online version a
GoogleBooks
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History

Initial versions of the poem, originally titled ''Le Faune, intermède héroique'' were written between 1865 (the first mention of the poem is found in a letter Mallarmé wrote to

Henri Cazalis Henri Cazalis (; 9 March 1840, Cormeilles-en-Parisis, Val-d'Oise – 1 July 1909, Geneva) was a French physician who was a symbolist poet and man of letters and wrote under the pseudonyms of Jean Caselli and Jean Lahor. His works include: *''Cha ...

in June 1865) and 1867. Mallarmé submitted the first text to the Théâtre-Français in 1867, only to be rejected. Ten years later, under the title ''Improvisation d’un Faune'' the work was rejected again, this time by publisher

Alphonse Lemerre Alphonse Lemerre (Canisy, Normandy, France, 1838 – Paris, France, 1912) was a 19th-century French editor and publisher, known especially for having been the first to publish many of the Parnassian poets. Life Alphonse Lemerre was the eig ...

, who had previously published Mallarmé's work in ''Parnasse contemporain''. Mallarmé left Lemerre and found Alphonse Derenne, an editor, publisher, and bookseller of primarily medical books who sought to expand his business. The final text was published in 1876 (see 1876 in poetry) by Derenne under the present title ''L'après-midi d'un faune''. For the publication, Mallarmé's long-time friend,

Édouard Manet Édouard Manet (, ; ; 23 January 1832 – 30 April 1883) was a French modernist painter. He was one of the first 19th-century artists to paint modern life, as well as a pivotal figure in the transition from Realism to Impressionism. Born ...

, created four wood-engraved embellishments which were printed in black, and hand-tinted in pink by Manet himself in order to save money. Mallarmé's poem would provide the inspiration for many musical works, the most prominent of which being ''

Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune ''Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune'' ( L. 86), known in English as ''Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun'', is a symphonic poem for orchestra by Claude Debussy, approximately 10 minutes in duration. It was composed in 1894 and first performed ...

'' by

Claude Debussy (Achille) Claude Debussy (; 22 August 1862 – 25 March 1918) was a French composer. He is sometimes seen as the first Impressionist composer, although he vigorously rejected the term. He was among the most influential composers of the ...

. Other composers who drew subject matter and inspiration from Mallarmé’s poetry include

Maurice Ravel Joseph Maurice Ravel (7 March 1875 – 28 December 1937) was a French composer, pianist and conductor. He is often associated with Impressionism along with his elder contemporary Claude Debussy, although both composers rejected the term. In ...

in ''

Trois poèmes de Mallarmé ''Trois poèmes de Mallarmé'' is a sequence of three art songs by Maurice Ravel, based on poems by Stéphane Mallarmé for soprano, two flutes, two clarinets, piano, and string quartet. Composed in 1913, it was premiered on 14 January 1914, perf ...

'' (1913),

Darius Milhaud Darius Milhaud (; 4 September 1892 – 22 June 1974) was a French composer, conductor, and teacher. He was a member of Les Six—also known as ''The Group of Six''—and one of the most prolific composers of the 20th century. His compositions ...

with ''Chansons bas de Stéphane Mallarmé'' (1917), and

Pierre Boulez Pierre Louis Joseph Boulez (; 26 March 1925 – 5 January 2016) was a French composer, conductor and writer, and the founder of several musical institutions. He was one of the dominant figures of post-war Western classical music. Born in Mont ...

, with his hour-long solo soprano and orchestra piece ''Pli selon pli'' (1957–62). The poem also served basis for the

ballet Ballet () is a type of performance dance that originated during the Italian Renaissance in the fifteenth century and later developed into a concert dance form in France and Russia. It has since become a widespread and highly technical form of ...

s ''Afternoon of a Faun'' by

Vaslav Nijinsky Vaslav (or Vatslav) Nijinsky (; rus, Вацлав Фомич Нижинский, Vatslav Fomich Nizhinsky, p=ˈvatsləf fɐˈmʲitɕ nʲɪˈʐɨnskʲɪj; pl, Wacław Niżyński, ; 12 March 1889/18908 April 1950) was a ballet dancer and choreog ...

(1912),

Jerome Robbins Jerome Robbins (born Jerome Wilson Rabinowitz; October 11, 1918 – July 29, 1998) was an American dancer, choreographer, film director, theatre director and producer who worked in classical ballet, on stage, film, and television. Among his nu ...

(1953) and

Tim Rushton Timothy John Rushton MBE (born 18 March 1963 in England) is a British choreographer and from 2001 to 2018 artistic leader of the Copenhagen-based Danish Dance Theatre, Denmark's largest modern dance company. Tim Rushton was trained at The Royal Ba ...

(2006). Debussy's orchestral work and Nijinsky's ballet would be of great significance in the development of

modernism Modernism is both a philosophy, philosophical and arts movement that arose from broad transformations in Western world, Western society during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The movement reflected a desire for the creation of new fo ...

in the arts.

Editions

Translations

* (English) ''The Afternoon of the Faun'', translated by

Roger Fry Roger Eliot Fry (14 December 1866 – 9 September 1934) was an English painter and critic, and a member of the Bloomsbury Group. Establishing his reputation as a scholar of the Old Masters, he became an advocate of more recent developme ...

, in ''The Poems of Mallarmé'', Chatto and Windus, 1936 * (English) ''A Faun in the Afternoon'', translated by E. H. Blackmore and A. M. Blackmore, in ''Collected Poems and Other Verse'', 2006 * (English) ''Collected Poems: A Bilingual Edition'', Stéphane Mallarmé, translated by Henry Weinfield, University of California Press, (1st edition 1994 ; 2nd edition 2011 ) * (Finnish)'' Faunin iltapäivä: valitut runot'', Einari Aaltonen, 2006

Notes

Sources

*Hendrik Lücke. ''Mallarmé - Debussy. Eine vergleichende Studie zur Kunstanschauung am Beispiel von "L'Après-midi d'un Faune"''. (''Studien zur Musikwissenschaft'', Vol. 4). Dr. Kovac, Hamburg 2005, .

External links

The poem
in French on

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English translation
(2004–2009) by A. S. Kline *The poem ''L’après-midi d’un Faune'' in English translation
The afternoon of a faun'' in yeyebook.com
{{DEFAULTSORT:Apres-Midi D'Un Faune 1876 poems French poems Poetry by Stéphane Mallarmé