Faun
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
"'For Sinistrari d'Ameno,' observed Durtal, "'the incubi and succubi are not precisely demons, but animal spirits, intermediate between the demon and the angel, a sort of satyr or faun, such as were revered in the time of paganism, a sort of imp, such as were exorcised in the Middle Ages. Sinistrari adds that they do not need to pollute a sleeping man, since they possess genitals and are endowed with prolificacy.'"--Là-Bas (1891) by Joris-Karl Huysmans |
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In Roman mythology, fauns are place-spirits (genii) of untamed woodland. Romans connected their fauns with the Greek satyrs, wild and orgiastic drunken followers of Bacchus (Greek Dionysus). However, fauns and satyrs were originally quite different creatures. Both have horns and both resemble goats below the waist, humans above; but originally satyrs had human feet, fauns goatlike hooves. The Romans also had a god named Faunus and goddess Bona Dea, who, like the fauns, were goat-people.
Fauns in art
The Barberini Faun (located in the Glyptothek in Munich, Germany) is a Hellenistic marble statue from about 200 BCE that was found in the Mausoleum of the Emperor Hadrian (the Castel Sant'Angelo) and installed at Palazzo Barberini by Cardinal Maffeo Barberini (later Pope Urban VIII). Gian Lorenzo Bernini restored and refinished the statue.
The House of the Faun in Pompei, dating from the 2nd century BCE, was so named because of the dancing faun statue which was the centerpiece of the large garden. The original now resides in the National Museum in Naples and a copy stands in its place.
The French symbolist Stéphane Mallarmé's famous masterpiece L'après-midi d'un faune (published in 1876) describes the sensual experiences of a faun who has just woken up from his afternoon sleep and discusses his encounters with several nymphs during the morning in a dreamlike monologue. The composer Claude Debussy based on it his symphonic poem Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune (1894).
Fauns in fiction
- The Marble Faun (1860) is a romance set in Italy by Nathaniel Hawthorne. It was said to have been inspired after viewing the Faun of Praxiteles in the Capitoline Museum.
- Mr. Tumnus, in C. S. Lewis' The Chronicles of Narnia (1949), is a faun. Lewis said that the famous Narnia story, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, all came to him from a single picture he had in his head of a faun carrying an umbrella and parcels through a snowy wood.
- In Lolita, the protagonist is attracted to pubescent girls whom he dubs "nymphets"; "faunlets" are the male equivalent.
- In the 1981 film My Dinner With Andre it is related how fauns befriend and take a mathematician to meet Pan.
- In Guillermo del Toro's 2006 film Pan's Labyrinth (El Laberinto del Fauno), a faun guides the film's protagonist, Ofelia, to a series of tasks, which lead her to a wondrous netherworld.
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