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from the FRENCH of Stéphane Mallarmé

THE AFTERNOON OF A FAUN

Eclogue

                      The Faun

These wood nymphs, they must be prolonged. So rare
Their pretty pinkness that it swerves in the air
Drowsy with bushy sleep.

                                     Did I love dreams?
My doubt declines, a mass of old night themes,
In subtle branches which, having survived
As the true forest, proves my conquest thrived
On the idealistic falsity of roses.
Let us think . . . .

                         Or say your fantasy imposes
Its wish upon those females that you gloss.
Illusion, wood-god, like these springs you cross,
Runs from the cold blue eyes of the most chaste.
But, you say, there’s another, whose sighs raced
Differently, a warm breeze in your fleece?
Never! for through the hot narcotic peace
Which stifles, if it flutters, the cool dawn,
No water pours, if not from my flute drawn,
Tunefully through the thickets; the only wind,
Quick to breathe out its sound before it’s thinned
From my two Pan-pipes in a dry downpour
Is, on the skyline’s seamless, moveless floor,
The visible, serene, artificial cause
Of inspiration, which the sky recalls.

I vandalise the shores of Sicily.
The sun I rival in my vanity.
Wordless, you shores, beneath night’s flowers, UNFOLD
THIS MESSAGE: ‘Here I cut the reeds controlled
By talent. On glaucous golds of a far haze
Of green-stuff, giving vines to fountain sprays,
A carnal whiteness ripples and is gone.
And at the prelude, where the pipes were born
This flight of swans, no—naiads—runs away
or dies . . . .’

                                    Inert, all burns in the fawn day,
Not showing how, together and astute,
Such hymen fled, wished by who tuned his flute.
Then I’ll awaken to the primal blood,
Alone, erect, beneath night’s ancient flood,
Lilies! And one of you two honesties.

A pretty nothing from their lips. A kiss
That gives soft reassurance of false heart.
My breast, proved virgin, has been torn apart
By an august, strange tooth—and shows the bruise.
Such sign, arcane, must for its kinship choose
The great twin reed that to blue skies we play.
Turning the cheek’s throb back upon its way,
It dreams, in one long solo, we entertained
The wood’s surrounding beauty with a strained
Likeness we gave it to our credulous song;
It dreams—though true love’s choired high and long—
Of making fade from daily fantasy
Of hips and back, which my eyes half-shut see,
Their resonating, empty, boring line.

Try then, malicious weed, device of fine
Flights, by the lakes to bloom, awaiting me.
Proud of my music, I shall always be
Speaking of goddesses, my idolatrous paint
Baring them at the thigh where dark makes faint.
So when I have sucked brightness from the grape
To shrug griefs off from which I feigned escape,
Laughing, up to the sun I raise the sprig,
Blowing the tiny skins, mad to be big
With drink, till sprigs are veins I peer between.

Nymphs, we’ll pump RECOLLECTION up. ‘I lean
My eyes through reeds, grazing the eternal throat
Which drowns its white heat in the swell, its note
Of rage flung for the forest sky to hear.
A splendid pool of hair can disappear
In flash and shudderings, oh diamonds!
I dash there. At my feet conjoined (by bonds
Of tiredness with life’s dire duality)
Two sleepers rashly hugging arms I see.
I lift them up, still in their tangled state
To this massif the shallow shadows hate—
Scorched by the sun, by not one rose perfumed.
Along with day our sporting is consumed.’
A virgin’s rage I love, the fierce delight
Of a nude, sacred burden taking flight
To shun my burning lips that, as the light
Quivers, swallows her flesh’s secret fright:
From feet of helpless nymph to heart of shy
Losing her innocence, made humid by
Wild tears, or the less pardonable faint.
‘My crime is, merry, that it put restraint
On these false tears, it cleaved the bushy hair
Of kisses which the gods made such a snare:
Having to hide my laugh, I’d scarcely gone
Beneath the happy suppleness of one
(Holding with finger—so her feathery white
Be coloured by her sister’s lust alight—
The little one, naïve, though no blush stayed)
When from my arms, which little deaths unmade,
This all-ungrateful prey shook herself free,
Scorning the sob intoxicating me.’

So, go! Others will drag me, with a tress
Knotted around my horns, to happiness:
My passion, know that bees already thirst
where the ripe, purple pomegranates burst.
Our blood, in love with what will seize on it,
Flows with desire, a swarm without remit.
When gold and cinders tinge the forest heights
In the dead leaves a festival excites:
Etna, upon you Aphrodite steals,
Upon your lava sets her guileless heels,
And a sad slumber roars where flames sink low!
I have the queen!

                                     Sure punishment . . .
                                                                       But no,
Soul void of words and this encumbered clay
Succumb late to the mute pride of midday:
Goodbye. I must sleep now. Stretch out, ignore
Blasphemy as if parched sand made me more
Lovingly drink the effective star of wine.

Couple, I go where you as shades combine.

Stéphane Mallarmé (translated by Alan Marshfield)

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