Stéphane Mallarmé (1842-1898) was one of those artists in fin-de-siècle Paris who perceived strong relationships among music, literature and the other arts. A number of his poems, including L’Après-midi d’un faune, were not only inspired, he said, by music, but even aspired to its elevated, abstract state. The young composer Claude Debussy had similar feelings about the interaction of poetry and music, and he and Mallarmé became close friends, despite the twenty years difference in their ages. When Mallarmé completed his L’Après-midi d’un faune in 1876 after several years of writing and revising, he envisioned that it would be used as the basis for a theatrical production. Debussy was intrigued at this suggestion, and he set about planning to provide music to a choreographic version that would be devised in consultation with Mallarmé. The projected work was described as Prélude, Interludes et Paraphrase finale to L’Après-midi d’un faune. Debussy completed only the scenario’s first portion, perhaps realizing, as had others, that Mallarmé’s misty symbolism and equivocal language were not innately suited to the theater. The premiere, given at an orchestral concert of the Société Nationale in Paris on December 22, 1894, a few months after the score was finished, was meticulously prepared by the conductor Gustave Doret, with Debussy at his elbow giving instruction and inspiration, polishing details, retouching the scoring. So successful was the initial performance that the audience demanded the work’s immediate encore. L’Après-midi d’un faune was first staged by Diaghilev’s Ballet Russe at the Théâtre du Châtelet on May 29, 1912; Nijinsky created the controversial choreography and appeared in the title role.

Mallarmé’s poem is deliberately ambiguous in its sensuous, symbolist language; its purpose is as much to suggest a halcyon, dream-like mood as to tell a story. Robert Lawrence described its slight plot, as realized by Debussy, in his Victor Books of Ballets: “Exotically spotted, a satyr is taking his rest on the top of a hillock. As he fondles a bunch of grapes, he sees a group of nymphs passing on the plain below. He wants to join them, but when he approaches, they flee. Only one of them, attracted by the faun, returns timidly. But the nymph changes her mind and runs away. For a moment he gazes after her. Then, snatching a scarf she has dropped in her flight, the faun climbs his hillock and resumes his drowsy position, astride the scarf.” As the inherent eroticism of the plot suggests, the Debussy/Mallarmé faun is no Bambi-like creature, but rather a mythological half-man, half-beast with cloven hooves, horns, tail and furry coat, a being which walks upright and whose chief characteristic is its highly developed libido. Mallarmé’s poem is filled with the ambiguities symbolized by the faun: is this a man or a beast? is his love physical or fantasy? reality or dream? The delicate subtlety of the poem finds a perfect tonal equivalent in Debussy’s music.

©2023 Dr. Richard E. Rodda