Le Corbeau sur le Buste (The Raven on the Bust of Pallas Athena)

Subject Matter:

This print is one of five transfer lithographs (plus an ex libris) made by Manet for a deluxe 1875 edition of Stéphane Mallarmé's translation of Edgar Allen Poe's The Raven (Le Corbeau). In this particular scene, the taunting raven makes its first appearance in the narrator's chambers, perching on a bust of Pallas Athena, the Greek goddess of wisdom.
The related verses read as follows:

Open here I flung the shutter, when, with many a flirt and flutter, 
In there stepped a stately Raven of the saintly days of yore; 
Not the least obeisance made he; not a minute stopped or stayed he; 
But, with mien of lord or lady, perched above my chamber door— 
Perched upon a bust of Pallas just above my chamber door— 
Perched, and sat, and nothing more. 

Then this ebony bird beguiling my sad fancy into smiling, 
By the grave and stern decorum of the countenance it wore, 
“Though thy crest be shorn and shaven, thou,” I said, “art sure no craven, 
Ghastly grim and ancient Raven wandering from the Nightly shore— 
Tell me what thy lordly name is on the Night’s Plutonian shore!” 
Quoth the Raven “Nevermore.” 

Physical Description:

In the lower right corner of the image, the head of a man with dark hair and a mustache is seen from the back. He sits in an armchair, gazing up at a raven perched on the helmeted head of a white classical bust. The bust is placed atop the frame of a simplified door. A mass of quickly-drawn black slashes surround the raven, stretch down diagonally from the door frame into the space of the seated man.
Signed recto, in plate, lower right, in image: "E. M."

Usage Rights:

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