Faun

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

You have new messages (last change).

For the young deer, see fawn. For other uses, see faun (disambiguation).

A faun, as painted by Hungarian painter Pál Szinyei Merse

The faun gives Ofelia the Book of Crossroads, in Pan's Labyrinth.

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

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 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 a goddess Fauna, who, like the fauns, were goat-people.

The Barberini Faun (Glyptothek, Munich, Germany) is a Hellenistic marble, c. 200 BC 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), the patron of Bernini, who heavily restored and refinished it, so that its present 'Hellenistic baroque' aspect may be enhanced.

[edit] Fauns in fiction

The Marble Faun (1860) is a novel by Nathaniel Hawthorne set in Rome. The faun of the title epitomizes the natural, carefree Count Donatello: "Our friend Donatello is the very Faun of Praxiteles. Is it not true, Hilda?" is the opening remark as four young art-minded friends gather in the sculpture-gallery in the Capitoline Museums at Rome. "In truth, allowing for the difference of costume, and if a lion's skin could have been substituted for his modern talma, and a rustic pipe for his stick, Donatello might have figured perfectly as the marble Faun, miraculously softened into flesh and blood," Hawthorne allows. Later, Donatello's murderous crime of passion will destroy him and transform the other characters. (The "Faun of Praxiteles", as Hawthorne describes it, is an imaginary sculpture loosely based on Praxiteles' Hermes.)

In C.S. Lewis' classic, The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, a faun named Mr. Tumnus is the first creature Lucy meets in Narnia. He tries to kidnap her but Lucy reminds him that they are friends and he brings her back to where they met to return her home.

In Piers Anthony's fantasy novel series, The Magic of Xanth, fauns are present as well as a main character in the book Faun & Games.

In the Spyro the Dragon series of video games, a faun named Elora makes appearances in two of the games, most prominently in the realm of Avalar, her home. Several other fauns, both male and female, appear in two of the worlds of Avalar's sub-realm, Autumn Plains. The female fauns, which act in a sort of valley girl manner, are in the world of Fracture Hills, while the male fauns are in Magma Cone.

In Guillermo del Toro's 2006 film Pan's Labyrinth (El Laberinto del Fauno) a faun (Doug Jones), whose many ancient names are now known only by the wind and trees, guides Ofelia (Ivana Baquero) through the three tasks she must perform in order to return to the kingdom in the netherworld where she was once a princess.

In Louis Malle's My Dinner with Andre, Andre Gregory relates the story of Scottish mathematician Robert Ogilvie Crombie's twentieth-century encounter with a faun (and later Pan himself), a meeting that inspired the scholar to found the Findhorn Ecovillage. Andre presents the tale as fact. His dining partner, Wallace Shawn, initially confuses the word "faun" with "fawn," protesting, "I thought a fawn was a baby deer."

[edit] In popular culture

In reality, a faun would not be able to stand upright for a long period of time, due to loss of balance because of the proportion of its legs. Many artists who depicted goat-like characters in their artwork knew this, and thus most fauns one sees in paintings are usually sitting, lying down, or leaning against an object. In Pan's Labyrinth, the Faun has noticeably large legs, reminiscent of tree trunks, that also solve this problem, as well as making him over eight feet tall, much taller than the commonly depicted faun.