University of Virginia Library

Faulkner's "L'Apres-Midi d'un Faune": The Evolution of a Poem
by
Robert W. Hamblin and Louis Daniel Brodsky

William Faulkner's first known published work is "L'Apres-Midi d'un Faune," a poem which initially appeared in The New Republic on August 6, 1919. Shortly thereafter, on October 29, a somewhat different text of this poem was printed in The Mississippian, the campus newspaper at the University of Mississippi. In January, 1920, Faulkner included yet another version of "L'Apres-Midi d'un Faune" in a hand-lettered booklet of poems which he presented to his friend, Phil Stone.[1] These three versions, together with the extant manuscript drafts of the poem, provide a revealing insight into Faulkner's method of composition at this early stage of his literary career. An examination of these various copies also unveils some hitherto uncited difficulties in the establishment of a definitive text of this frequently-discussed Faulkner work.

What apparently is the earliest known draft of the material which became "L'Apres-Midi d'un Faune" appears on a 7 by 11-inch fragment torn from the front cover of a copy of The Saturday Evening Post for August 31, 1918.[2] Consisting of fifteen lines written by Faulkner in pencil, this draft reads as follows:

Years after writing these lines Faulkner would speak of how his fictional creations tended to begin with a single "image" or "mental picture" which he would then expand into the finished work.[3] He might well have made the same observation about "L'Apres-Midi d'un Faune."

The lines quoted above represent a miniature version of the poem subsequently entitled "L'Apres-Midi d'un Faune." All of the basic components of the completed poem are present in this early draft, though they are indistinguishably blurred by Faulkner's ambiguous handling of pronouns and antecedents. The first line suggests the speaker's observer role which will define the faun-nymph relationship in the finished work. Line 2 introduces the personification of the trees, the element which (if one applies strictly grammatical pronoun reference) appears to be the controlling device throughout this particular draft and which, though reduced considerably, remains a significant feature in the published poem. On first perusal the third line seems to continue the personification, but closer inspection (and a study of later drafts) leads one to associate "their" in this line, as well as "they" in line 7, with certain personages ("dancers" in subsequent versions) being observed by the speaker. In line 8 the number shifts from "they" to "her," the one particular figure who becomes the focus of the narrator's interest. Thus, one notes, all of the essential elements—the sylvan setting, the narrator-observer, and the female figures—appear in these fifteen lines, though the treatment of each of these features would be clarified and greatly expanded in the forty-line poem.

Faulkner's handling of pronouns in this draft invites all manner of speculation. Some readers, of course, would see in these lines merely one more example of the cavalier attitude toward grammatical rules which Faulkner exhibited throughout his career. Others might defend Faulkner's ambiguity as an ambitious (though seemingly ill-advised) attempt to fuse the personification of the trees with the description of the female figures. As noted previously, "their" in line 3 may refer to trees or actual personages. Similarly, "they" in line 7 may be linked with these same personages or with the falling "autumn leaves." Depending upon whether the reader views lines 7-9 as a simile relating to "leaves," the pronoun "her" in these lines may refer to either a real or hypothetical person. If Faulkner conceived of the females in this draft as nymphs, it would not be altogether inappropriate to fuse their

description with that of the trees. Much more likely, however, the confusion of reference here (like the repetition of the words "autumn," "sudden," and "pause") is simply the result of multiple images flooding into the poet's consciousness in the white heat of creativity. Perhaps Faulkner (the existence of the lines on a magazine cover tends to suggest as much) was concerned only to get down on paper the essence of his poetic vision before he lost it, knowing he would return to this scribbled draft to complete the poem later on. Whatever the case, Faulkner recognized that his pronoun usage in this early draft was too confusing to be effective, and he remedied the problem when he revised the poem.

In reworking his early draft, Faulkner made some two dozen changes in wording and punctuation, inserted five and one-half additional lines, and coupled this revision with a second stanza, consisting of twelve lines, which links the narrator's observation of the nymphs to a developing awareness of the tragic limitations of the human condition. Faulkner then typed out his new draft on the verso of a leaf of letterhead stationery from the First National Bank of Oxford, this time assigning the poem the title (after Stéphane Mallarmé and Claude Debussy), "L'APRES-MIDI D'UN FAUNE."[4] The text of this typescript version appears as follows:

Apart from its expanded content and form, the most significant feature of this typed draft is the clarification of the dramatic situation. This version clearly indicates that the center of the poem is the speaker's observation of the nymph. To achieve this focus, Faulkner has virtually eliminated the element of personification from the first stanza (retaining the device only in line 15),[5] and he has separated the descriptions of the single nymph and the dancers by moving the latter to the newly-created second stanza. This shift explains the changing of "their" to "her" in line 3 and "they" to "she" in line 7.

Faulkner also made other changes in his previous lines. He inserted the adjective "slender" in line 1. He substituted "languorous" for "flashing" in line 3 but retained the canceled term as a description of "water" in line 4. He rewrote line 6, opening with a spondee, adding the mention of "love," and eliminating the redundancy of "autumn" from the previous line. Perhaps to avoid another repetition of phrase, Faulkner substituted "vagrant" for "sudden" in line 8. He inverted the order of line 10 and added the adjective "hot." In a revision which anticipates his use of accretional detail in his prose style, he added a second simile ("Or like the wild brown bee that flies / On honeyed wings") to heighten and extend the reference to the nymph's gaze upon the beholder. He substituted "limbs" for "face" and inserted "sharp" in line 13 and added "flashes" in line 14. He eliminated one alliteration by substituting "That sway and bend like arms" for "That grasp like gliding arms" in line 15 but created another by changing "Fans back" to "Blows back" in line 17. In all such changes Faulkner exhibits a conscious and meticulous effort to sharpen the imagery and improve the syntax of his opening lines.

This typescript draft of "L'Apres-Midi d'un Faune" demonstrates that Faulkner had clarified in his own mind the dramatic situation of the poem and had settled on a two-stanza organization; however, the poem was still far from finished. At the bottom of the typescript, in pencil, Faulkner again

set to work altering his text. In what appears to be an attempt to restate in more erotic language the last three lines of the first stanza, Faulkner wrote: Faulkner never utilized these lines in his poem; but he kept the image of the last line, associated it with "breeze" in line 16, and composed the following lines, which he also entered in pencil at the bottom of the typescript: These lines, of course, with some modification, became the concluding lines of the first stanza in the published poem.

Sometime later Faulkner copied the text of "L'Apres-Midi d'un Faune" in pencil on a 14 by 8½-inch sheet of Hammermill Bond paper, incorporating some of the lines he had penciled on his typescript and revising other parts of the poem. Most of the revisions involved word changes which sharpen the description and enhance the musical quality of the verse. For example, the rather prosaic opening was reworked to read:

One notes also in these same lines how Faulkner's substitution of "I follow" for "I peep" in line 1 alters the role of the faun from that of mere voyeur to that of wistful participant in the action. Faulkner would eventually make this attitude a dominant emphasis in the poem.

Other changes, while less substantial, nevertheless suggest the careful and deliberate attention Faulkner continued to give the text even at this late stage of composition. For example, he temporarily changed lines 9 and 10 to read: ". . . but still her eyes / Those hot and sudden sparks, they strike." He substituted "as" for "like" in line 11 and "lift and sway" for "sway and bend" in line 15. He discarded his previous version of line 17, including the reference to the nymph's laughter, tried "Lies smoothly on her limbs and breast," then settled on "Lies on her limbs and circled breast." He rewrote

line 18, altering it from "My limbs are cold and I will go" to "I have a sudden wish to go." The second stanza remained essentially unchanged from the typescript. In a choice which demonstrates a concern for accuracy and precision of detail, Faulkner rejected the thought of having the petals in line 30 drift "through the trees" and returned to his original phrase, "from the trees." He also substituted "as of" for "like" in line 33 and reworded line 34 to read, "Falls on the dancers, lorn and cold—".

The revision of line 18 in this version is especially illustrative of Faulkner's manner of composition—and doubtless of the creative process in general. Regardless of whether he was aware of the fact initially, this particular line was one Faulkner had written previously, probably with no intent to link it to the poem of which it eventually became a part. Possibly during his tenure as a cadet in Canada, or maybe even earlier, Faulkner had written the following quatrain:

Now, in polishing the text of "L'Apres-Midi d'un Faune," Faulkner recalled, perhaps unconsciously, the first line of this earlier fragment and inserted it into his poem. Years later, as a fictionist, Faulkner would frequently comment on the way a writer delves into his subconscious (variously called by Faulkner "a filing cabinet," "the lumber room," "a storehouse," and "the barrel"[8]) to draw up images and observations needful for his immediate purpose. It seems that Faulkner's first published work offers an example of this process. And apparently Faulkner's recollection and use of this first line triggered his recall of the other lines of the quatrain. When he again revised "L'Apres-Midi d'un Faune," Faulkner incorporated all four of the previous lines into the middle of his poem.

This subsequent version Faulkner likewise wrote out in pencil on a 14 by 8½-inch sheet of Hammermill Bond paper. In this copy he continued to experiment with wording and punctuation, in some cases returning to earlier forms he had for a time discarded—as in the wording of lines 9 ("but not her eyes—"), 37 ("like" rather than "as of"), and 38 ("and they dance on,") and the dropping of the ellipsis in line 21. The principal change, as indicated previously, involved the introduction of the four lines written sometime earlier. Having decided to use these lines, Faulkner had to determine where to

place them in the nearly-finished poem. He settled on the opening of stanza two, a decision which dictated rewriting line 18, "I have a sudden wish to go," as "Now hand in hand with her I go." In adapting the quatrain to his use in "L'Apres-Midi d'un Faune," Faulkner made a significant alteration. In the original version the unidentified speaker longed to escape "Far from [italics added] this silent midnight noon." Now, however, the speaker—a faun in pursuit of a fleeting, ideal beauty—longs to travel "To [italics added] some far silent midnight noon."[9] Faulkner retained the key phrasing of his original wording, but he shifted the meaning from a negative to a positive connotation. Once more the reader is struck by Faulkner's concern for precise, accurate statement.

There were still other changes from previous drafts. The pronoun "her" was stricken from line 1. In line 4 "flashing," which had previously been moved from line 3, was now deleted altogether in favor of "gleaming." Line 10 was improved considerably, both in terms of syntax and rhythm, to read: "A sharp quick spark, each sudden glance." In line 12 "On honeyed wings" was condensed to "Sweet winged." Several new descriptive details were added: "hot extravagance" in line 12, "short" (a most unusual adjective for "breast") in line 17, "virgin" in line 20, "senile" in line 30, and "white" in line 38. In line 34, perhaps to avoid a redundancy in the following line, the phrase "from the trees" was changed to "on the breeze." "Peeping" was altered to "staring" in line 30 and "through" (perhaps because the same word appeared in the previous line) to "on" in line 36.

At this point "L'Apres-Midi d'un Faune" was virtually complete. Faulkner had moved—with extreme care and no little bit of second-guessing—from a fifteen-line draft (perhaps hastily written) which confusedly meshed together the sylvan setting, the image of the single female figure, and the view of the other figures, presumably the dancers, to an expanded version which separated and clarified these three points of focus and related them to the speaker-observer's romantic longing. Faulkner had then reworked the poem extensively, in the process incorporating four lines from a previous writing. He would continue to polish the poem, making minor editorial changes in punctuation and wording; but for all practical purposes this second holograph copy, which is printed below, represents the first genuine emergence of the finished work.

Even though this autograph version of "L'Apres-Midi d'un Faune" is essentially the completed poem, Faulkner continued to make minor alterations in his text. In fact, the version first published in The New Republic contains twenty-four variations from the above copy. Thirteen of these are changes in punctuation, which may have been made by Faulkner but some of which just as likely were introduced by the editors of the magazine. In the published poem commas have been deleted in lines 2, 3, 7, 14, 15, 36, and 37; commas have been added in lines 6, 10, and 18; and end marks have been altered in lines 13 and 28. But eleven changes in wording have also been introduced. The placement of the adjectives "sharp" and "hot" in lines 10 and 12 has been reversed; "like" has been substituted for "as" in line 11 and "dances" for "flashes" in line 14. Lines 19 and 29 have been reworded to add color images: "The green night" and "blond limbed dancers." In line 25 "sudden" has been changed to "nameless"; in line 29 "Ah" (which had been previously moved from stanza one) has been altered to "And"; and in line 35 "through" has been changed to "from." In line 38 "on" has been dropped and "white" has been replaced by "unclad." Admittedly, most of these

changes in both punctuation and phrasing are minor in nature, but they demonstrate that Faulkner had continued to experiment with the poem even after it was ostensibly finished. And such experimentation would not end with the poem's appearance in The New Republic.

The copy of "L'Apres-Midi d'un Faune" which was printed in the October 29, 1919, issue of The Mississippian appears on first examination to be a corrupt text. Indeed, the note appended to the poem in the campus newspaper supports this view. The note reads: "William Faulkner of University of Mississippi. From the New Republic, Aug. 6, 1919." Moreover, the Mississippian's substitution of "moon" for "noon" in line 26 and the awkward repetition of "broke" in line 40 seem obvious printer's errors. Still, concerning the other fourteen variations from the New Republic text, one cannot be quite sure. A possible key to the question is found in line 25. The New Republic's wording of this line, "I have a nameless wish to go," is altered in The Mississippian to "I have a sudden wish to go." The change, barring the strangest of coincidences, is definitely not a printer's error, since, as noted previously, this last wording is exactly the form which Faulkner had used in holograph drafts of the poem. Apparently, Faulkner himself had a hand in producing the text which appears in The Mississippian.[10] And if Faulkner exchanged "nameless" and "sudden," he may very well have implemented some, or even most, of the other textual changes. Such a conclusion draws support from the fact that seven of the sixteen "corruptions" (seventeen, if one includes the capitalization of "D'un" in the title) in the newspaper version mirror Faulkner's practice in one or more existing manuscripts of the poem.[11] Perhaps Ben Wasson was not the first editor to annoy Faulkner by meddling with his manuscript. Faulkner may have used the reappearance of "L'Apres-Midi d'un Faune" as an opportunity to restore certain features which had been eliminated by the editors of The New Republic. Or perhaps—and in view of his subsequent handling of the poem, this case seems more likely—Faulkner was still experimenting with the text and simply had not yet arrived at a "final" version.[12]

Though it is not generally known, Faulkner returned to "L'Apres-Midi d'un Faune" at least once more after its printing in The Mississippian. Two months later, in January, 1920, Faulkner included this poem in a hand-produced thirty-six-page booklet of thirteen poems which he presented to Phil Stone. This volume was severely damaged in the fire which destroyed Stone's house in 1942; however, enough of the book has survived to enable one to identify most of the contents and in some cases to collate portions of

the poems with other known versions. The copy of "L'Apres-Midi d'un Faune" which appears on pages [21-23] of this booklet is particularly interesting, since it is unlike both the New Republic and Mississippian versions and since it may well represent Faulkner's final rendition of his text.

The Stone copy is something of a hybrid text in that it incorporates features from both of the published, as well as the manuscript, versions and even adds some new variations. As in the New Republic version Faulkner placed a comma after lines 18 and 29 and used the word "nameless" in line 25. The wording of lines 26 and 40 also agrees with the New Republic text, offering further evidence that these particular lines had been inadvertently changed in the newspaper printing. From the Mississippian version Faulkner kept the word "as" in line 11 and the word "with" in line 34, the period after line 28, and the commas in lines 36 and 37. In one instance—the use of the comma after "whirls" in line 14—Faulkner went beyond both published versions to restore a manuscript feature; and for the first time in any version he placed a comma after "pauses" in line 7 and capitalized "West" in line 19. Again, such changes are minor, but they serve to demonstrate how Faulkner kept reworking his text on each return to it. They also illustrate the problem the textual critic faces in his task of identifying Faulkner's preference of text for "L'Apres-Midi d'un Faune."

No one can examine the various texts of Faulkner's first published work without being highly impressed with the conscious and deliberate care with which Faulkner approached the creation of his poem. Once again one is reminded of how misleading was Faulkner's frequent characterization of himself as an impulsive and even indifferent craftsman. Despite this fictitious self-portrait, however, Faulkner has come to be recognized for what he actually was: a consummate, painstaking artist totally dedicated to the discipline of his craft. Nowhere is Faulkner's commitment to a high standard of workmanship better evidenced than in the evolution of "L'Apres-Midi d'un Faune."

Notes