four-thirty-three

I.

Edward Burne-Jones, "Pan and Psyche" (1874)

Carlos Schwabe, "The Faun" (1923)

James McAvoy as Mr Tumnus in "The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe," 2005

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II.

Friedrich Nietzsche on the role/appeal of the satyr chorus in Greek tragedy:

[T]he satyr was the primordial image of man, the expression of his highest and strongest emotions, as an inspired reveller, enraptured by the approach of the god, as a sympathetic companion, in whom the suffering of the god was repeated, as a messenger bringing wisdom from the deepest heart of nature, as a perceptible image of the sexual omnipotence of nature, which the Greek was accustomed to observing with reverent astonishment. The satyr was something sublime and divine: that’s how he must have seemed, especially to the painfully broken gaze of the Dionysian man, who would have been insulted by our well-groomed fictitious shepherd. His eye lingered with sublime satisfaction on the exposed, vigorous, and magnificent script of nature; here the illusion of culture was wiped away by the primordial image of man; here the real man revealed himself, the bearded satyr, who cried out with joy to his god. In comparison with him, the man of culture was reduced to a misleading caricature. Schiller was also right about the start of tragic art: the chorus is a living wall against the pounding reality, because it—the satyr chorus—presents existence more genuinely, more truly, and more completely than does the civilized person, who generally considers himself the only reality. The sphere of poetry does not lie beyond this world as a fantastic impossibility of a poet’s brain; it wants to be exactly the opposite, the unadorned expression of the truth, and it must therefore simply cast off the false costume of that alleged truth of the man of culture. The contrast between this real truth of nature and the cultural lie which behaves as if it is the only reality is similar to the contrast between the eternal core of things, the thing-in-itself, and the total world of appearances. And just as tragedy, with its metaphysical consolation, draws attention to the eternal life of that existential core in the continuing destruction of appearances, so the symbolism of the satyr chorus already expresses metaphorically that primordial relationship between the thing-in-itself and appearance. That idyllic shepherd of modern man is only a counterfeit, the totality of cultural illusions which he counts as nature. The Dionysian Greek wants truth and nature in their highest power—he sees himself magically changed into the satyr.

Friedrich Nietzsche, The Birth of Tragedy (1872), trans. Ian Johnston

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III.

A poem by Stéphane Mallarme provided the inspiration for Claude Debussy’s Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune.  Widely acknowledged as a piviotal bridge between Romanticism and modernism, the orchestral work premiered in 1894. It was choreographed by Vaslav Nijinski for the Ballets Russe in 1912; exactly one year after Prelude’s premiere as a ballet, the same choreographer and company would stage the first presentation of Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring.  It wins the all time prize for “Best Ballet Featuring A Masturbating Satyr.”

Leon Bakst's costume design for Nijinsky's "Faune," 1912

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