The Afternoon of a Faun...

Vaslav Nijinsky

These nymphs that I would perpetuate:

so clear

and light, their carnation, that it floats in the air

Heavy with leafy slumbers.

did I love a dream?

my doubt, night's ancient hoard, pursues its theme

In branching labyrinths, which being still

The veritable woods themselves, alas, reveal

My triumph as the ideal fault of roses.

consider...

if the women of your glosses

Are phantoms of your fabulous desires!

faun, the illusion flees from the cold, blue eyes

Of the chaster nymph like a fountain gushing tears:

But the other, all in sighs, you say, compares

To a hot wind through the fleece that blows at noon?

No! through the motionless and weary swoon

Of stifling heat that suffocates the morning,

Save from my flute, no waters murmuring

In harmony flow out into the groves;

And the only wind on the horizon no ripple moves,

exhaled from my twin pipes and swift to drain

The melody in arid drifts of rain,

Is the visible, serene and fictive air

Of inspiration rising as if in prayer.

relate, Sicilian shores, whose tranquil fens

My vanity disturbs as do the suns,

silent beneath the brilliant flowers of flame:

"that cutting hollow reeds my art would tame,

I saw far off, against the glaucous gold

Of foliage twined to where the springs run cold,

An animal whiteness languorously swaying;

To the slow prelude that the pipes were playing,

This flight of swans -- no! naiads -- rose in a shower

of spray..."

besides sweet nothings by their lips made known,

Kisses that only mark their perfidy,

My chest reveals an unsolved mystery...

The toothmarks of some strange, majestic creature:

enough! Arcana such as these disclose their nature

Only through vast twin reeds played to the skies,

That, turning to music all that clouds the eyes,

dream, in a long solo, that we amused

The beauty all around us by confused

Equations with our credulous melody;

And dream that the song can make love soar so high

That, purged of all ordinary fantasies

Of back or breast -- incessant shapes that rise

In blindness -- it distills sonorities

From every empty and monotonous line.

L'après-midi d'un faune ~ Stéphane Mallarmé

Από το ποίημα αυτό εμπνεύστηκε ο Claude Debussy ένα από τα σημαντικότερα ορχηστρικά του έργα,
το Πρελούδιο στο Απομεσήμερο ενός Φαύνου.

(πρωτότυπο στα γαλλικά)


(στο είχα υποσχεθεί εδώ και καιρό "φαύνε" της μπλογκόσφαιρας)


Debussy Prelude a l'apres-midi d'un faune