University of Virginia Library

Both this presentation booklet and the autograph manuscript on the fragment of a Saturday Evening Post cover, discussed below, are part of the William Faulkner Collection of Louis Daniel Brodsky.

From July 10 to December 5, 1918, Faulkner was a pilot cadet with the Canadian Royal Air Force squadron stationed in Toronto. There is some evidence to suggest that the penciled draft may have been written during this period. Joseph Blotner (Faulkner: A Biography [1974], pp. 220, 245) has pointed out that Faulkner was writing at least some poetry while in Canada, possibly including a four-line fragment which was subsequently incorporated into the later versions of "L'Apres-Midi d'un Faune." The Saturday Evening Post, of course, would have been readily available to Faulkner in Canada: the printed notice on the cover of the August 31, 1918, issue lists the price as "5 c. The copy 10 c. in Canada." Moreover, the "autumn" setting of the poem fits the period Faulkner was in Canada, rather than the winter months when he was back in Oxford. Finally, the penciled draft was for a long time in the possession of Faulkner's mother, Mrs. Maud Falkner, and was stored with a group of materials which included Faulkner's RAF uniform and the trunk he used during his tenure of service.

See, for example, Frederick L. Gwynn and Joseph L. Blotner, eds., Faulkner in the University: Class Conferences at the University of Virginia 1957-1958 (1959), pp. 1, 26, 31-32, 74; and James B. Meriwether and Michael Millgate, eds., Lion in the Garden: Interviews with William Faulkner 1926-1962 (1968), pp. 245, 248.

This typescript, the two holograph versions of the nearly-finished poem, and the document which contains the quatrain beginning "I have a sudden wish to go" are all part of the William Faulkner Collections in Alderman Library, University of Virginia. All uses of these materials in this article are drawn, with permission, from electrostatic copies of the originals kindly furnished by Edmund Berkeley, Jr., Curator of Manuscripts, Alderman Library. The typescript has been previously transcribed (with the mistaken substitution of "And" for "Ah" at the beginning of the second stanza) in Joan St. C. Crane and Anne E. H. Freudenberg, comps., Man Collecting: Manuscripts and Printed Works of William Faulkner in the University of Virginia Library (1975), p. 19. The same volume also contains collations (pp. 17-18) of the two holograph copies and a description (pp. 127-128) of the leaf containing the quatrain.

In removing the personification from line 2, Faulkner created something of a logical absurdity. In the early draft "their flying hair" seems clearly a reference to the leaves and branches of the trees. In the revision the actual positioning of the faun in relation to the trees and the nymph (lines 1-3) appears contradictory.

The placement of these words on the page makes it difficult to distinguish whether they are a part of the lines which follow or a separate fragment of a line which Faulkner started and then abandoned.

Appearing on the same page as this quatrain are three experimental versions of six lines of verse beginning "This girl, she is dead, is dead." On the verso of the leaf is a draft of a poem about a flyer. Faulkner's handwriting in the quatrain is extremely difficult to read. Blotner (Faulkner, p. 245) transcribes the lines as follows: "I have a sudden wish to go / Far from this silent midnight now / Where lovely streams whisper and flow / And sigh as sands touched by the moon." Misses Crane and Freudenberg (Man Collecting, p. 128) render the same lines: "I have a sudden wish to go / Far from this [two words illegible] room / Where lonely streams whisper and flow / And sigh on sands blanched by the morn."

See Faulkner in the University, pp. 116, 117, 258; and Blotner, Faulkner, p. 1457.

This change may have been an afterthought. In his holograph copy Faulkner first started to reproduce his original line, writing "Far from this silen". Then he broke off before completing the last word, deleted the line, and wrote the new line below the cancellation.

Carvel Collins has made the same point and has demonstrated a similar problem with the text of another early Faulkner poem, "Cathay." See William Faulkner: Early Prose and Poetry (1962), pp. 6-7.

The seven variations which parallel Faulkner's practice in the manuscripts are the following: the omission of the comma in line 6; the addition of commas in lines 7, 36, and 37; the placement of a period after line 28; and the use of the words "as" in line 11 and "sudden" in line 25.

In this regard one notes a parallel to Faulkner's tendency as a prose writer to return to previous incidents and characterizations, frequently revising these in the retelling.