Stéphane Mallarmé, ‘Monologue of a Faun’: A New Translation

Abstract

The poem which eventually became L’Après-midi d’un faune was first conceived as a short play or intermezzo. ‘Le Faune, intermède héroïque’, written in the summer of 1865, was to have comprised three scenes: the ‘Monologue d’un faune’ (translated here), followed by a scene of dialogue between the two nymphs, Iané and Ianthé, and a final monologue, ‘Le Réveil du faune’, spoken by the Faun after his siesta. In a letter of June 1865, Stéphane Mallarmé mentions that the work is still in progress and nearing 400 lines long. Only around 200 lines of this material survives. The dialogue scene, and the Faun’s reawakening, exist only as heavily corrected and incomplete rough drafts. The Monologue is preserved in a much later fair copy, dating from 1873 or 1874, with the dedication ‘(copié pour le tyrannique Burty, par) – Stéphane Mallarmé’. Philippe Burty (1830–1890) was a French art critic, a supporter of the Impressionists and an advocate of Japanese art. The text of this fair copy cannot be identical with that of the lost original of 1865. The surviving fragments show that the three scenes would have been linked metrically. The Monologue was to have ended with the incomplete line ‘Adieu, femmes’ – the line being completed, and the rhyme fulfilled, by the opening words of Iané in the dialogue scene which followed.