It is fascinating to ponder the irony that a depiction of a woman which implies that she is more spirit than flesh should inspire raw lust. The paradox is an old one. The idea of female purity has had erotic implications for centuries. Young women presented as virgins often command higher prices in brothels than do experienced women. The desire is not only for innocence but for the spiritual renewal that is associated with a chaste body. In the end the two extremes, lust and chastity, belong to each other. Logically, one always implies the existence of the other. Neither can be defined separately. Nor ultimately can they be experienced apart from each other. In the process of preserving chastity, one must continually be wary of lust. Lust is the necessary preoccupation of chastity. It is even easier to understand that anyone possessed by spiritless desire would eventually fixate on chastity, too, as a symbol of the missing soul. Indeed, in a world in which body and spirit were separated and conceived as opposites, to achieve a fully erotic life would be like trying to balance on a narrow precipice. Thus did the ballet dancer, straining to stay aloft for a few miraculously graceful moments, her toes bent painfully back on point, have a titillating appeal, reflecting at once the possibility of ecstasy and the vulnerability of satisfaction.
The Faun
I was poor. I earned 65 rubles a month . . . not enough to feed both my mother and myself.—Vaslav Nijinsky, Notebook on Life
Bartering one’s body for financial or social benefits was not unusual among young actors and actresses, ballet dancers or singers. . . .
—Peter Ostwald, Vaslav Nijinsky
Though the dancer has rarely, if ever, been called a courtesan, there are episodes in his life that could easily be found in the biography of a cocotte. That he was taken as a lover by several older, wealthy and more powerful men, that his bills were paid by them, that it was through his protectors he was educated and introduced to a more sophisticated world, that eventually he was to be canonized in public opinion as a celebrated object of desire, all speak to the striking resemblance.
Nijinsky met his first protector, Prince Pavel Lvov, shortly after graduating from the Imperial Ballet School, while he was still a dancer at the Maryinsky Theatre in St. Petersburg. As in Paris, it was common in Russia for wealthy men to seek lovers among men and women dancers, both groups underpaid and struggling. With his innovative interpretation of classic roles, Nijinsky was already becoming a sensation. Lvov dressed the dancer in fashionable clothes and furnished him with an elegant apartment, took him to cafés and parties, making it possible for him to mingle with a society far more affluent than he had ever encountered before. It was here that Nijinsky found still other protectors, including a Polish count, whom years later he remembered chiefly because he had bought him a piano. And he met his most famous lover in these circles, too, the man who was to make him famous: Sergei Pavlovich Diaghilev.
When Diaghilev was organizing a ballet company to import to Paris, simultaneously, Nijinsky became both his lover and his protégé. Diaghilev supported him, making sure he dressed well, suggesting what he should read, bringing him to museums, pointing out the paintings he himself admired, as well as introducing him to a set of celebrated and accomplished friends—Jean Cocteau and Marcel Proust among them. And of course, Nijinsky became a principal dancer in his lover’s company. The partnership belongs to history now. With music by Igor Stravinsky, choreography by Michel Fokine, and Nijinsky as a principal performer, the company that was eventually to be called the Ballets Russes produced a revolution not only in dance but in all the other arts as well.
Along with facing the same circumstances which gave rise to galanterie, Nijinsky shared many of the virtues that courtesans had. In the role of a dancer and a choreographer, his timing was astonishing—his erotic beauty can still be seen in the photographs that survive him; the way he moved was at times so brazen that his performances inspired more than one scandal. Although he was known to be somewhat inarticulate, his choreography was brilliantly creative; he celebrated pleasure in his art; and while he was not necessarily famous for his charm, he was astonishingly graceful.
Indeed, whether or not he can be called a courtesan, Nijinsky’s particular grace calls to mind an aspect of this virtue in which many courtesans were known to excel. Just as gracefulness shapes and enlivens certain traditional movements, grace also informs and even allows innovations to be made. We might even say that since innovations change our perceptions of what grace is, this virtue continually gives birth to itself. Though for the simple reason that grace is not solitary, this can never be a virgin birth. As with pleasure, grace is always coupled with culture. Thus when a culture changes, so does its estimation of what is graceful.
And there is this to consider, too. The climate of a culture is never itself isolated; rather, it hinges on history. Dance mimics the movements of the body politic. We need only remember that during the French Revolution the rigid balletic positions once required at court gave way to looser, more flowing gestures. Yet the hinge of this doorway moves in two directions. Just as often, dance provides the first signals of social change. When Nijinsky stunned Parisian audiences with an astonishing leap during which he seemed to hover momentarily in midair before disappearing into the wings, did they understand the stunning feat they had just witnessed was symbolic of a future, simultaneously invisible and palpable, a mood whose powerful presence could be felt as if hovering in the atmosphere?
The change was augured in other ways. Through one of the attributes of the Three Graces, the revelation of the body, all over Paris an ancient form of grace was returning to the stage: Lanthélme’s slouch, Isadora Duncan’s liquidity, La Goulue’s cancan, Otero’s Spanish dance, the jut of a hip, the lifting of a leg. An erotic vocabulary of movement was reappearing. Yet, as Nijinsky began more and more to explore the dimensions of his own desire, he took the revelation even further.
In the ballet he choreographed to Debussy’s L’Après-midi d’ un faune, the dancer pushed the sensibilities of his audiences to the breaking point. The music he used was composed in response to a popular poem by Mallarmé, a poem that itself had broken convention by describing masturbation. But where Mallarmé achieved his effect by subtle allusion, Nijinsky was shockingly direct. Though his choreography was innovative, the first part of the ballet was more or less acceptable. Following the traditional story, Nijinsky, who appeared wearing a wig of golden curls and horns on his head and carrying a flute and a cluster of grapes, danced the part of the Faun aroused by a bevy of nymphs who flee from all his advances. The end of the ballet, though, was a different matter. Laying on top of the scarf he had stolen from one of the nymphs, Nijinsky thrust his pelvis into the fabric, moving his whole body as if he were having an orgasm.
The dancer’s art was provocative in other ways, too. Not only did he challenge the unwritten laws which forbade such a frank display of masculine sexuality, he leaped over the strict definitions that divide men from women. The fact that his body—with its thick thighs, the enormous strength, the darkly beautiful eyes—suggested androgyny made his movements seem even more a mixture of masculine and feminine conventions: here an enormous leap, there the head coquettishly tilted, here ferociously growling, there undulating across the stage like a serpent. The roles he played often accentuated this ambiguity. Cast as slave and lover of his master in more than one ballet, Pavillon d’Armide, Cléopâtre, and Sché hérazade, he was alternately dominant and submissive, ferocious and pliable.
That the way he danced reflected the circumstances of Nijinsky’s own life did not escape his audiences, who were fascinated by the love affair between the dancer and his master. Cocteau has made a drawing of the two men, walking down the street, Diaghilev’s arm around Nijinsky’s shoulders, the older man engulfing the younger. We can see why Nijinsky’s feelings for Diaghilev were ambivalent. He felt overpowered, and chafed at the control that the man who was not only his lover but also paid his bills and directed his career exercised over him. Eventually, Nijinsky freed himself, only to marry a w
ealthy woman who once again provided his support.
It does not seem far-fetched to see a mirror of his own dilemma in the central character of a ballet he created at the end of his career. In Papillons de la Nuit, Nijinsky told the story of a courtesan, once beautiful, now “an indomitable spirit in the traffic of love, selling girls to boys, youth to age, woman to woman, man to man.” Though it was never performed, the ballet would have been fascinating, once again reflecting what audiences might have preferred to avoid, though it is easy to imagine that the image would have been strangely beautiful.
And is this not the ultimate achievement of grace? To translate difficult circumstances, contradictory demands, ambivalent feelings, painful perceptions into a dance that even as it takes the breath away, moves us in a new direction. Witnessing what we do not entirely understand, we find ourselves suddenly taking an unpredictable leap—a risk of the most dangerous kind, a leap of the imagination.
Her Graceful Curtsies
A king without diversions is a miserable man.—Pascal
Even today the story is being repeated. Long before she met Louis, she would ride at the edge of the royal forest and watch him as he hunted. It is said she cut such a graceful figure, dressed in pink, her coach a complementary blue, the king could not have failed to take note of her. Particularly since she was as agile at driving a coach as she was at riding. We know this last because after she became Louis XV’s mistress, the marquise often accompanied him on his hunts, during which she was admired by many for her abilities at horsemanship.
She was not born a marquise. Along with a coat of arms and an estate, the title was given to her by the king a few months after they became lovers. That she was born a commoner would prove to be an obstruction to becoming the royal ma"tresse en titre, yet hardly an insurmountable one. Though her father, François Poisson, was a steward to the Paris brothers, the financiers on whom both the king and the economy of France relied, no one in the family before her had ever been received at Louis XV’s court; apart from the rarely gifted or most celebrated members of society, this privilege was reserved for the nobility.
Yet, despite the odds, Jeanne-Antoinette Poisson, as she was called then, had dreamed of this fate for years. She had wanted to be Louis’ mistress since she was too young to have understood exactly what a lover is. It was in the ninth year of her life that her mother asked a fortuneteller to reveal her daughter’s future. The ensuing prediction that Jeanne would one day become the lover of the king seemed to have impressed the whole family, who thereafter teasingly called the child “Reinette,” meaning, in rough translation, “Little Queen.”
It has been said by all who witnessed the moment when Pompadour was first presented to the king at Versailles that her curtsies were flawless. Though to a contemporary observer this may seem a minor accomplishment, verging on irrelevance, it was crucial in the eighteenth century, especially at Versailles, where the list of rules for proper deportment was as arcane as it was endless. Every move at court was crusted over with manners whose reason for being had long ago crumbled into invisibility. There was a prescribed way of sitting or rising. Protocol dictated who could and who could not sit on a chair, who could have a chair with a back, who might carry a cushion to chapel, and even at what angle the cushion should be placed (the cushions of princes of the blood could be straight, whereas those of dukes had to be angled). Ladies in court had a particular way of walking, with many short steps hidden under their skirts so that they appeared to glide; the way a woman was greeted, with a movement of the shoulder or a low curtsy, would reflect precisely how wellborn she was, how well married and even whether or not she had employed a good cook. Out of no discernible logic, certain words, cadeau, for instance, instead of présent, were considered vulgar; only people of a particular rank were allowed to carry parapluies, and no matter what misfortune had occurred, nothing but a cheerful expression would ever be tolerated in the public rooms.
Indeed, the separation between private life and public appearances at court was as distinct and impermeable as that between a stage and a dressing room. What resulted was a strange double life in which many quotidian events occurred two times, once ceremonially and a second time in reality. King Louis, for instance, almost always went to bed twice. The first occasion took place during the public ceremony called the coucher in his state bedroom, where he never really slept (the fireplace smoked and the location of the room was too public for him). After his boots were pulled off and someone from the royal bloodline, designated with the high honor, handed him his nightshirt, he made the semblance of retiring. But as soon as his courtiers left the room, he rose anew, took off the symbolic nightshirt, put his boots on again, and went out, often to search the small town of Versailles or the city of Paris for some nocturnal amusement, before he finally retired again, this time to the private room he preferred (if not to the bedroom of his mistress).
A similar redundancy took place in the morning. Rising early and working for hours in solitude—he even set his own fire to avoid waking the servants—he had to submit later in the day to a second rising that was ceremonial, called the levée, in the same cold and smoky room where he had pretended to sleep, during which he would hand the famous garment back to the lucky prince who had been privileged to give it to him the night before.
Pompadour’s presentation to Louis XV at the court of Versailles was equally symbolic. He already knew her well. The king had noticed her on his hunts, but too shy to speak with strangers, he never approached her (though occasionally he would send a gift of game to her house). The opportunity to meet arose at an elaborate costume ball given at the palace to celebrate the dauphin’s wedding. Since Louis’ last mistress had died, more than one woman at the ball tried to position herself to catch his eye, a difficult task, since it was a costume ball and he entered disguised as one of several yew trees. No one knows exactly when the yew tree turned back into a king. But suddenly everyone could see him laughing with Pompadour, who, dressed as the goddess Diana, was also unmasked. Later in the evening, after Pompadour went to a second celebration at the Hôtel de Ville in Paris, when the king had dispatched his duties, he followed her there and took her into a private room, where they dined and spent the night together.
By the time she was presented to the king at Versailles, she had been his lover for several months. Indeed, for several days she had been settled in her own apartments just above the king’s private rooms, to which they were connected by a small staircase and which he must have already climbed, given his reputed appetite, several times since her recent arrival.
Nevertheless, the ceremony had to be daunting for her. When just one low curtsy was a formidable feat for a woman dressed in elaborate courtly attire, protocol required that she execute three. And once the king dismissed her, which he did with a cold nod, she was expected to leave his presence by walking backward, a not wholly unreasonable requirement except for the long train of her dress, an item court fashion dictated that she must wear, and which she had to kick out of her way while receding. Miraculously, she pulled off these difficult maneuvers with a faultless grace that caused some admiration.
Though the achievement must be attributed to her natural virtues, she had received instruction. In preparation for her arrival at Versailles, Louis had dispatched two trusted men to teach her the protocol of the court, the hundreds of rules, manners, gestures, phrases, replies she would need to study and learn over three months. Was the king smiling to himself when he appointed the abbé Benois as a tutor to his mistress? Louis was known not only to enjoy a good laugh but to have a sense of humor along these lines, as when once he read a sermon on chastity aloud to Mademoiselle de Mailly, one of the royal mistresses who had preceded Pompadour. Benois consulted with another cleric before accepting this employment, but eventually he decided that since he had not introduced the lovers, he was not responsible for their union. He spent three months with his charge and after that remained a lifelong friend.
Though Pomp
adour’s audience with the king was successful, the trial was not over yet. Her social graces would be put to the test again immediately by her presentation to the queen. Leaving the council chamber, she had to proceed back to the antechamber called Oeil de Boeuf and cross it to reach the queen’s chamber, all the while followed by a crowd of spectators who had been anticipating these events with great relish. Among all the activities at court—gambling, the hunt, romantic liaisons, balls, ceremonious events—gossip ranked very high. Everyone, including the queen, knew that the young woman was Louis’ mistress. And knowing that she was a commoner too, many hoped for a memorable mistake.
Contemptuous of the bourgeois, the aristocracy felt threatened by the rise of a class that was gaining both wealth and power while the landed nobility, frittering away their riches at court, had allowed their estates to deteriorate. Those who were not born with titles were regarded as inferior. And to some it was an especially annoying affront to have a member of the bourgeoisie made into the official mistress, or ma"tresse en titre, an entitlement never before given to a commoner. Although those who became close to Pompadour were almost always won over by her considerable charms, some, the duc de Richelieu in particular, would remain steadfast enemies. The duke’s acerbity toward her may well have been partly motivated by his own insecurity over bloodlines. He had not received his title directly from his father, but instead diagonally through his uncle. The lineage and hence his blood was thought less than pure, and thus, as with many whose legitimacy is in some way questionable, he turned an avidly scornful scrutiny toward the legitimacy of others.
In her first meeting with the queen, Pompadour acquitted herself well, with only one small mistake; as she kissed the hem of the queen’s skirt, a bracelet fell off her arm. But the queen was kind to her. Instead of dismissing her with a curt compliment about the style of her dress, as the crowd had expected her to do, the queen asked after a mutual friend, one of the few aristocrats the Poisson family knew. Understanding the kindness of the royal gesture, the newly titled marquise responded with a warm and grateful ebullience, assuring the queen not only of her love and respect but of her desire to please her. Though Pompadour’s exuberance broke an unwritten law against abundant displays of emotion at court, the queen was gratified.
The Book of the Courtesans Page 18