"L'après-midi d'un faune" ("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 o ...

. It describes the sensual experiences of a

faun The faun (, ; , ) is a half-human and half-goat mythological creature appearing in Greek and Roman mythology. Originally fauns of Roman mythology were ghosts ( genii) of rustic places, lesser versions of their chief, the god Faunus. Before t ...

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

nymph A nymph (; ; sometimes spelled nymphe) is a minor female nature deity in ancient Greek folklore. Distinct from other Greek goddesses, nymphs are generally regarded as personifications of nature; they are typically tied to a specific place, land ...

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

Symbolism Symbolism or symbolist may refer to: *Symbol, any object or sign that represents an idea Arts *Artistic symbol, an element of a literary, visual, or other work of art that represents an idea ** Color symbolism, the use of colors within various c ...

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, m ...

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
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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 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, 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 Modernism, 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 (art movement), R ...

, 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 Impressionism in music, Impressionist composer, although he vigorously rejected the term. He was among the most influe ...

. 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 in music, Impressionism along with his elder contemporary Claude Debussy, although both composer ...

in '' Trois poèmes de Mallarmé'' (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 composition ...

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

Pierre Boulez Pierre Louis Joseph Boulez (; 26 March 19255 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 contemporary classical music. Born in Montb ...

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

modernism Modernism was an early 20th-century movement in literature, visual arts, and music that emphasized experimentation, abstraction, and Subjectivity and objectivity (philosophy), subjective experience. Philosophy, politics, architecture, and soc ...

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 art critic, 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 ...

, 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

wikisource Wikisource is an online wiki-based digital library of free-content source text, textual sources operated by the Wikimedia Foundation. Wikisource is the name of the project as a whole; it is also the name for each instance of that project, one f ...

English translation
(2004–2009) by A. S. Kline {{DEFAULTSORT:Apres-Midi D'Un Faune 1876 poems Poetry by Stéphane Mallarmé Fauns in popular culture Mythology in written fiction