Mallarme's Faun

[Neha Khan]

Hi there, I m reading mallarme's Afternoon of the Faun and trying to decipher the symbols used but his crytic style and highly subjective use of symbolic language makes interpretation all-too difficult .
I would like you ppl to come up with your interpretation or anything good that you have read on Mallarme's verbal ambiguities.

[Neha Khan]

cryptic*

[stlukesguild]

Mallarme is indeed dense and difficult at times. It also might be remembered that he works in an almost abstract manner where the poems cannot be simply reduced to a meaning (not unlike the later poems of his predecessor, Rimbaud). I'll try to post a bit later, but you might do better if you get this moved over to the poetry discussion boards.:nod:

[stlukesguild]

You might note that you can go back later and edit a post for spelling, grammar, etc...

[stlukesguild]

Mallarme was a great proponent of art pour l'art and his philosophy of literature was greatly inspired by Wagner (whom he idolized) and echoed Walter Pater's notion that "all art aspired to the state of music"... where form and content were inseparable. There is, for example, no "meaning" to a piece of music such as Mozart's Clarinet Quintet... and yet it is not "meaningless". The meaning lies in the experience... perhaps not unlike life itself.

In many ways Mallarme sought to take literature to an equal state with music... where there is no clear "meaning" divorced from the actual "musical" experience of the words and the poetic form. Mallarme seems to have been quite successful at creating something truly musical from his poetry for his poems... including Afternoon of the Faun were major sources of inspiration to composers such as Faure, Hahn, Debussy, and Ravel.

Afternoon of the Faun is something of a hymn to the undefinable... uncertain... unlocatable erotic experience. It strives to grasp at an experience that hovers on the edge of illusion. We can never be certain whether the events described occurred or "Did I love a dream?" Essentially the faun (commonly in Greco-Roman mythology an image of unbridled lust... often mocked by the wily nymphs... the objects of his desire) finds two nymphs asleep and he attempts to make love to them... but they slip away... and we are left wondering whether they were even real at all.

If you wish to discuss a certain part or parts of the poem please feel free to post again and I will attempt a bit of discussion.:wave:

[mortalterror]

I read a nice essay by T.S. Eliot the other day that likened John Dryden to Mallarmé. I'd like to quote from it.

"And what all these objections come to, we repeat, is repugnance for the material out of which Dryden's poetry is built... We prize him, as we do Mallarmé, for what he made of his material. Our estimate is only in part the appreciation of ingenuity: in the end the result is poetry. Much of Dryden's unique merit consists in his ability to make the small into the great, the prosaic into the poetic, the trivial into the magnificent." -John Dryden, by T.S. Eliot

I think that quote says a little something about all three poets.

[Neha Khan]

Thanks a lot Stlukesguild. I appreciate the favor. I m reading Mallarme so certainly i will get back to you.