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Stéphane Mallarmé (1842-1898) was a French poet who - with Paul Verlaine - was a founder and leader of the Symbolist movement. Most of his verse expresses an intellectual longing to transcend reality and find refuge in an ideal world, as in the dramatic poem L'Après-midi d'un faune (1876; The Afternoon of a Faun), which inspired Claude Debussy's famous prelude,
Manet probably met the poet at the salon of Nina de Callias. They were both entranced, and their friendship immediately became a close one.
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