L’Après-midi d’un faune
One of 175 copies on laid paper (no. 22), the only printing besides the 20 copies on Japan paper.
Complete with the loose frontispiece printed on China paper and the bookplate engraved by the artist, heightened with a pink wash bearing the copy number, as well as with the tie securing the leaves.
“In this extraordinary poem, surprising new images arose at every turn of verse, as the poet described the yearnings and regrets of the goat-footed faun, contemplating on the edge of the marsh the tufts of reeds still holding, in an ephemeral mold, the hollow form of the naiads who had filled them. And des Esseintes also took captious delight in handling this tiny booklet, L’Après-midi d’un faune” (Huysmans, À rebours).
The collaboration between Manet and Mallarmé, following the mutual portraits they made of one another, reached its culmination in this edition of the Faune — initially rejected by Lemerre two years earlier and finally printed at the author’s expense by Derenne. Mallarmé had worked on the poem for nearly ten years. Originally conceived for the theater, the project was never realized in that form. The warm, summery atmosphere of this vision of a faun, unsatisfied in his desire, in love with nymphs glimpsed through the foliage, contrasts sharply with the wintry coldness surrounding the virgin Hérodiade.
Published in only 195 copies, the edition reflects a deep concern for refinement and for the book as an object. It is illustrated by Manet, who, in addition to the reproduced woodcuts, also designed the bookplate accompanying the copies, personally heightening its delicate pink veil: “…I will take care of doing them myself. It will take me a day.”
“This publication, offered to bibliophiles, demonstrates, through the rarest materials, all the craftsmanship that honors contemporary typography and publishing.” Printed on the presses of the Motteroz printing house, 31 rue du Dragon, the 195 copies — 175 on light Japan paper and Holland paper (with or without ties), and 20 on large Japan paper, numbered separately — comprise “Frontispiece and bookplate, apart from the woodcut ornaments and tailpiece within the text, in two colored pages by Manet, that is, 16 pages in large octavo on a Japan felt paper, with gilt title, and a cover of rose-China silk ties” (from the colophon).
A fine copy.
Antoine Coron, Mallarmé et ses éditeurs: les deux éditions du Corbeau (1875), les deux états de L’Après-midi d’un faune (1876–1886), Bulletin du bibliophile, 2018, no. 2, pp. 321–344.