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It had been given to him by Adrian Singleton. As he turned over the pages his eye fell on the poem about the hand of Lacenaire, the cold yellow hand "du supplice encore mal lavee," with its downy red hairs and its "doigts de faune."
The binding was of citron-green leather, with a design of gilt trellis-work and dotted pomegranates. It had been given to him by Adrian Singleton. As he turned over the pages his eye fell on the poem about the hand of Lacenaire, the cold yellow hand "du supplice encore mal lavée," with its downy red hairs and its "doigts de faune."
In the most glimmering, floating of poems, "L'Après-midi d'un faune," there is caught magically by the climbing, chromatic flute, the drowsy pizzicati of the strings, and the languorous sighing of the horns, the atmosphere of the daydream, the sleepy warmth of the sunshot herbage, the divine apparition, the white wonder of arms and breasts and thighs.
The only things that can be mentioned here are a few drawings composed by Manet for Edgar A. Poe's The Raven and Mallarmé's L'Après-Midi d'un Faune, in addition to a few music covers without any great interest.
The bulk of his music no more discloses its full measure of beauty and eloquence to one who is in ignorance of its poetic basis than would Wagner's "Faust" overture, Tchaikovsky's "Romeo and Juliet," or Debussy's "L'Après-midi d'un Faune."
This style was at first employed with restraint in his earlier works, but Mallarme had boldly proclaimed it in a verse on Theophile Gautier and in l'Apres-midi du faune, an eclogue where the subtleties of sensual joys are described in mysterious and caressing verses suddenly pierced by this wild, rending faun cry: Alors m'eveillerai-je a la ferveur premiere, Droit et seul sous un flot antique de lumiere, Lys! et l'un de vous tous pour l'ingenuite.
She did indeed free the Russians from the conventions of the classic ballet and but for her it is doubtful if we should have seen Scheherazade and Cléopâtre. Daphnis et Chloe, Narcisse, and L'Aprèsmidi d'un Faune bear her direct stamp. This then, aside from her own appearances, has been her great work. Of her celebrated school of dancing I cannot speak with so much enthusiasm.
I had read 'L'Apres-midi d'un Faune' without extracting a glimmer of meaning. Yet Mallarme of course was a Master. How was I to know that Soames wasn't another? There was a sort of music in his prose, not indeed arresting, but perhaps, I thought, haunting, and laden perhaps with meanings as deep as Mallarme's own. I awaited his poems with an open mind.
A composition like "Nuages," the first of the three nocturnes for orchestra, while taking but five minutes in performance, outweighs any number of compositions that last an hour. "L'Après-midi d'un faune" is inspired and new, marvelously, at every measure.
For when so ever the kynge did ryde, he that kept the grayhounde dyd lette him lose, and he wolde streyght runne to the kynge and faune uppon hym, and leape with his fore fete uppon the kynge's shoulders.
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