by Lucy Moore
It is hard to recreate a sense of the importance of art at the start of the twentieth century. In his 1977 autobiography, the critic and writer Arnold Haskell regretted the loss of the idea he had known in his youth that art was inspirational and important. People were schooled in it, they sought to understand it, they had faith in it as something numinous and transcendant, something that made man greater than a lump of clay or a hairless ape. He mourned that sense of urgency. No longer would a friend bang on his door to say, Come, come now; we’re going to see Nijinsky. Haven’t you seen Faune yet? – Don’t worry about what you’re wearing, the taxi’s waiting, we must get there in time – before racing him off to the theatre.
Haskell never saw Nijinsky dance, but those audiences who did were enraptured by him; there is an appreciable difference between what they said they saw in him and what they described seeing in other dancers. The essay accompanying a book of prints of Nijinsky published by the illustrator George Barbier in 1913 raved about him in the fragrant prose of the time, translated by the young Cyril Beaumont. ‘Ah! What poet could tell of the mysterious boon we accept from this foreign fairy with the oriental face, and weightless body? The spell of his subtle talent and his wondrous youth gives back to us, in desire without a pang, some magical illusion of our departed youth. It is as if this divine genius for defying the earth’s attraction and for treading the unseen paths of the air belonged to us too a little.’
The critic Carl Van Vechten, one of several people who ‘remembered’ being at the Théâtre des Champs-Elysées for the premiere of Sacre (but was actually there for one of the later performances), and who saw Nijinsky both in Paris in 1912 and 1913 and in New York in 1916, declared that as a performer he had no rivals. Nijinsky was simply ‘the greatest of stage artists … he communicates more of beauty and emotion to me as a spectator than other interpretative artists do’: ‘his dancing has the unbroken quality of music, the balance of great painting, the meaning of fine literature, the emotion inherent in all these arts’.
Another American critic, Stark Young, agreed. ‘I have never seen any other artist so varied in his compulsion, so absorbing in his variety, so glamorous in his stage presence as was Nijinsky.’ The theatre designer Edward Gordon Craig, who deplored most of Diaghilev’s excesses (Diaghilev teased him about wanting to get rid of actors altogether since he so loved abstraction), shouted with delight when Nijinsky as the Rose leapt into the wings, though he found his ‘tiny, almost unnoticeable movements even more marvellous than his dancing and later observed that all he did was Art’.
In roles that had as their common theme a sense of myth and otherworldliness, Nijinsky communicated to his audience a sense of the ‘saturated moment’ described by Virginia Woolf and T. S. Eliot – a mystical combination of thought, sensation and experience that created a unified poetic whole. ‘Looking at him, one is in an imaginary world, entire and very clear.’ When Robert Walser saw him dancing at Bellevue, soon after he was institutionalised, he thought his dancing was like a fairy tale, with all the layers of meaning that implies.
Nijinsky had a passionate connectedness to his work, identifying himself completely with his art. He was different in every role, submerging himself into the part he was playing without any sense of the post-war irony or detachment which has characterised later twentieth-century performance. ‘It was not only the face, the façade, that changed, but the mind and the personality behind it which altered. The change was not skin-deep, but soul-deep,’ wrote Cyril Beaumont. Reading these words again as I type them, the nature of Nijinsky’s illness comes insistently and poignantly to mind. He could ‘play upon movement in the same way that a great actor clothes words now with fire, now with the most melting tenderness’.
Perhaps the closest we can get to Nijinsky today is his various publicity photographs in which the intensity of his gaze and the immediacy of his presence is so powerful that you almost forget you are looking at a piece of paper. When Lincoln Kirstein’s Nijinsky Dancing, containing reproductions of several of these portraits, came out in 1975, Clement Crisp said that no live Petrushka had ever moved him as much as these photographs of Nijinsky in character.
The dance critic Edwin Denby noted that in these pictures Nijinsky’s poses were never exhibitionistic. He was so centred in the pelvis and, because of that, had such extraordinary balance, that when he lifted a leg it was as if a table was being lifted by one leg while keeping the top horizontal; he used the whole foot, not just the ball. ‘He looks as if the body remembered the whole dance, all the phases of it, as he holds the one pose; he seems to be thinking, I’ve just done that, and then after this I do that, and then that, and then comes that; so his body looks like a face lighting up at a single name that evokes a whole crowd of remembered names.’
‘I do not see anything in these pictures that would lead one to suppose that Nijinsky’s subsequent insanity cast any premonition-ary shadow on his phenomenally luminous dance intelligence,’ Denby wrote. ‘In their stillness Nijinsky’s pictures have more vitality than the dances they remind us of as we now see them on stage.’
What endures of Nijinsky’s work is of course impossible to pin down and there is an ongoing academic debate about what exactly he should be remembered for. As Joan Acocella wrote, concluding her Introduction to his diary with the thought that he was ‘probably’ a genius, ‘never was so much artistic fame based on so little artistic evidence: one eleven-minute ballet, Faun, plus some photographs’. It is true that no one can judge a work of art they have not seen. But that does not stop me wishing I had had the chance.
Paris, 29 May 1913. Onstage in the noisy, overheated theatre, the Chosen One waits to begin the solo that is at the heart of her tribe’s appeasement of their cruel gods. She has been selected from among her companions and prepared for the ritual by the elders of the tribe; the responsibility with which she has been entrusted weighs heavily upon her. The noise of the orchestra – and of the hissing, catcalling audience – crashes around her like thunder.
Her head hangs down, her heels and elbows jut out, her trembling knees turn awkwardly in. The uncomfortable pose is an expression of her internal state, at once proud, scared, brave, hopeful, angry and ecstatic. Her peers encircle her, focused on her, willing her on to her end. She must dance with her whole self, or the sacrifice will not work; they have chosen her to be their victim, their most precious victim, and she represents them all. When the music begins and she starts to dance, they marvel at her courage, power and beauty even as they watch for her to fall.
Later observers have found in Sacre an irresistible prelude to the Great War, the portent of an entire society’s self-destruction. The Maiden’s obedient, almost joyful submission to the rite, the way she is honoured by her people rather than mourned, the celebration of life and youth through sacrificial death – all these were impulses that animated the generation who fought and died between 1914 and 1918. As the cultural historian Modris Eksteins has written, the Chosen Maiden in Sacre would become, a few years later, the Unknown Soldier, memorialised in national tombs all over Europe – an ambivalent tribute to which I imagine Nijinsky would have been acutely sensitive.
Throughout his long afterlife, the fatal, frenzied solo of the Chosen Maiden has become a vivid metaphor for the tragic figure of Nijinsky going insane, dancing himself to lunacy but perhaps only feeling truly alive as he danced. If the music and choreography of Sacre ‘can be interpreted as a sign that the end of civilisation was at hand’, then Nijinsky becomes at once the emblem and prophet of modernity and its victim.
Very few lives have clearly definable points at which everything changes, but for Nijinsky one of those points was the first night of Le Sacre du printemps. It sped on a series of events – events which were en train anyway, but which were hastened or made inevitable by Sacre’s bold, perhaps foolhardy, refusal to cater to the traditional ballet audience and consequent commercial failure, and which would inexorably lead to the tragedy of Nijinsky, less than six years later, being commi
tted to Bellevue as a madman.
Because of his vertiginous fall, the heights he scaled and the depths to which he plunged, and because it is almost impossible to recapture anything of what he achieved, the memory of Nijinsky survives today like a fly caught in amber. He has become for me a glorious, glowing emblem of youth and talent, cut off in its prime but preserved forever as a reminder that art and beauty will always be the highest of human ideals.
Notes and References
(The sources have been abbreviated in this section and can be found in full in the Bibliography.)
1 YAPONCHIK, 1889–1905
6 ‘a woman … in the ballet’: Z. Fitzgerald, Save Me the Waltz (New York, 1968), p. 113.
7 ‘We were born’: Bronia Nijinska, Early Memoirs (Durham, NC, 1981), p. 1.
8 This is the date Bronia Nijinska gives (the night of 27–28 February, old time (Russian calendar before the Revolution); see Nijinska, Early Memoirs, p. 12); though Vaslav’s birth certificate has the date 10 January 1890, it is thought that Eleonora Nijinsky tried to buy him an extra year before he was required to perform his National Service by making him appear younger than he was.
9 ‘fairytale … so many directions’: Nijinska, Early Memoirs, p. 15.
9 ‘My parents considered’: V. Krasovskaya, Nijinsky (New York, 1979), p. 5, from an interview in Je sais tout magazine.
9 ‘wild, fierce … his body’: Romola Nijinsky, Nijinsky; and, The last years of Nijinsky (London, 1980), p. 280.
10 ‘With his … then again’: Nijinska, Early Memoirs, pp. 20–21.
10 ‘How high he’: ibid., p. 26.
10 ‘first appearance’: ibid., p. 28; T.P.’s Magazine, London, May 1911.
10 ‘Throughout our childhood’: Nijinska, Early Memoirs, p. 25.
13 ‘It was as if’: ibid., p. 57.
14 ‘a charming little’: Isadora Duncan, My Life (New York, 1995), p. 119.
14 ‘Before leaving … to go’: Nijinska, Early Memoirs, p. 77.
15 ‘praised me very’: ibid., p. 78.
17 ‘The little devil’: T. Karsavina, Theatre Street (London, 1948), p. 151.
17 ‘Are you a’: Nijinska, Early Memoirs, p. 85.
17 ‘made to feel’: A. Bourman, The Tragedy of Nijinsky (London, 1937), p. 6. Though he is wildly unreliable about later parts of Nijinsky’s life, to the point of inserting himself into scenes where he is known not to have been present, Bourman was one of six boys in Nijinsky’s year at the Imperial Theatre School and therefore his account of their school-life must be worth something.
18 ‘anger and jealousy’: ibid., p. 20. Bourman accuses Georgy Rozai in particular of this jealousy (and this crime), but Nijinska’s account of the accident has Bourman and another boy, Grigory Babich, equally culpable.
18 ‘I played a’: V. Nijinsky, Nijinsky’s Diary (New York, 1999), p. 116.
18 ‘unneccessary torment’: M. Fokine, Memoirs of a Ballet Master (London, 1961), p. 16.
19 ‘That to me’: J. Kavanagh, Rudolf Nureyev: The Life (London, 2008), p. 21.
20 ‘The theatre in’: Karsavina, Theatre Street, p. 190.
21 ‘felt a great’: Nijinsky, Nijinsky’s Diary, p. 115.
21 ‘You have … your brother’: Nijinska, Early Memoirs, p. 127. Later in his career Fokine saw Nijinsky as a rival, and as a consequence his memoirs offer Nijinsky only the barest minimum of praise through evidently gritted teeth; it is interesting therefore to read Bronia’s account of his early response to her brother, whom Fokine’s choreography made a star and who in turn took Fokine’s ballets to new heights.
22 ‘exalted, vibrant, free’: Karsavina, Theatre Street, p. 378, quoting Nadine (Nadia) Legat, Nikolay’s wife.
22 ‘to a plane’: ibid., p. 378, quoting Nikolay Legat.
22 ‘above all … and earth’: J. Homans, Apollo’s Angels: A History of Ballet (London, 2010), p. xxii.
22 ‘convent-like’: Karsavina, Theatre Street, p. 58.
29 ‘torture chamber’: Duncan, My Life, p. 121.
23 ‘tunic of cobweb’: ibid., p. 119.
23 ‘Like eager … and vividness’: Duchesse de Gramont, Years of Plenty (London, 1932), p. 339. She continues, ‘After that, she became Isadora Duncan.’
23 ‘reminded us … art form’: Fokine, Memoirs of a Ballet Master, p. 256.
23 ‘soul wept with’: Duncan, My Life, p. 119.
24 ‘by talent’. S. Scheijen, Diaghilev (London, 2009), p. 143.
26 This ethnographic: L. Garafola, Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes (New York, 1989), p. 6 et seq.
26 ‘complete unity of’: Homans, Apollo’s Angels: A History of Ballet, p. 293.
26 ‘to participate’: M. Rambert, Quicksilver: The Autobiography of Marie Rambert (London, 1991), p. 61.
27 ‘for the audience’s … the dance’: Fokine, Memoirs of a Ballet Master, p. 132.
27 ‘an articulate … slightest detail’: ibid., p. 132.
28 ‘As he extends’: Nijinska, Early Memoirs, p. 517.
28 ‘like a bashful’: Bourman, The Tragedy of Nijinsky, p. 77. Bourman doesn’t refer specifically to this performance, but more generally to Nijinsky’s early performances.
2 THE FAVOURITE SLAVE, 1906–1909
29 ‘not merely to be’: Nijinska, Early Memoirs, p. 157.
29 ‘Bronia, tell … doushka’: ibid., p. 159.
30 Ibid., pp. 190–2: I have disregarded the secondary account of Romola Nijinsky, who described this last meeting between Vaslav and Foma as a sentimental reunion.
31 ‘amongst the chosen’: Karsavina, Theatre Street, p. 123.
31 ‘a charming boy’: M. Kshesinskaya, Dancing in St. Petersburg (Alton, Hants, 2005), p. 110. 31 ‘what secrets Nijinsky’: Nijinska, Early Memoirs, p. 248.
31 ‘like some exotic’: A. Oliveroff, Flight of the Swan: A Memory of Anna Pavlova (New York, 1935), p. 23.
32 ‘unworthy of her genius’: S. Lifar, Serge Diaghilev: His Life, His Work, His Legend (London, 1940), p. 139.
32 ‘sought more success’: A. L. Haskell, Balletomania: The story of an Obsession (London, 1977), p. 56.
32 ‘If a dancer’: A. Pavlova, Pages of My Life (New York, 1947), p. 10.
32 ‘the quiet joys’: Oliveroff, Flight of the Swan: A Memory of Anna Pavlova, p. 61.
32 ‘shows onstage. You watch’: Kavanagh, Rudolf Nureyev: The Life, p. 645.
33 ‘I had my arms’: Nijinska, Early Memoirs, p. 196.
33 ‘I started to dance … about me’: Nijinsky, Nijinsky’s Diary, p. 118.
33 Nijinska says Vaslav was recovering in the spring of 1908, nursed by Prince Lvov’s (see below) valet. She speculates that Bourman’s taunts about his relationship with Lvov prompted Vaslav to go with him to the prostitute where he could prove that he was a man.
34 Prince Nikolay Yusupov: Homans, Apollo’s Angels: A History of Ballet, p. 53.
34 ‘Ballet is’: Fokine, Memoirs of a Ballet Master, p. 52.
34 1,000 roubles: Romola Nijinsky, Nijinsky; and, The last years of Nijinsky, p. 426. She says this sum was given at his introduction to Diaghilev, but since Lvov wouldn’t have wanted money and Diaghilev wouldn’t have paid it, I think it more likely that she got her facts slightly wrong (not uncommon) and it was paid by Lvov for his initial introduction to Nijinsky. See also Bourman, The Tragedy of Nijinsky, p. 122. R. Buckle names the pander as Boris Alexandrov.
34 ‘He loved me’: Nijinsky, Nijinsky’s Diary, p. 163.
35 ‘marvellously … stupefied’: Nijinska, Early Memoirs, p. 217.
36 ‘it was a bad sign’: M. Keynes (ed.), Lydia Lopokova (London, 1983), p. 46.
36 ‘perfection in the’: Nijinska, Early Memoirs, p. 248.
37 I have paraphrased Nijinska, Early Memoirs, p. 231.
37 ‘for the rest of my life’: ibid., p. 218.
38 ‘Before, he had only known school … innocence’: Romola Nijinsky, Nijinsky; and, The last years of Nijinsky, p. 60. To be taken with the usual pinch of salt required for Romola�
�s stories.
38 ‘that very rare feeling … hero’: A. S. Benois, Reminiscences of the Russian Ballet in London (London, 1941), p. 251 (phrases cited in different order from original source).
39 ‘dying of curiosity’: ibid., p. 256.
39 ‘a magnificent bear’: Serge Lifar in J. Drummond (ed.), Speaking of Diaghilev (London, 1997), p. 292.
39 ‘one tooth on the edge’: J. Cocteau, Journals (London, 1957), p. 55.
39 ‘looked one through’: A. Dolin, Autobiography (London, 1960), p. 28.
39 I know he smoked, but I am only guessing that he smoked Sobranie; it is such a peculiarly Russian smelling cigarette. The company was founded in 1879.
40 ‘his bluelit nights’: quoted in Lifar, Serge Diaghilev, p. 19.
40 ‘peculiar lazy grace’: Karsavina, Theatre Street, p. 352.
40 ‘looked up to him’: C. W. Beaumont, The Diaghilev Ballet in London (London, 1940), p. 8.
40 ‘It is the Seryozhas’: quoted in Scheijen, Diaghilev, p. 82.
40 ‘the only one’: quoted in Scheijen, ibid., p. 78.
41 ‘The dream and’: to Leo Tolstoy, quoted in J. Pritchard (ed.), Diaghilev and the Golden Age of the Ballets Russes, 1909–1929 (London, 2009), p. 40.
41 ‘Everything is here’: quoted in Scheijen, Diaghilev, p. 58.
41 ‘part of history’: Nijinsky, Nijinsky’s Diary, p. 109.
41 ‘We are a generation’: quoted in L. Garafola and N. V. N Baer (eds), The Ballets Russes and its World (New Haven, CT, 1999), p. 92.
41 ‘sly dandified primness’: Karsavina, Theatre Street, p. 201.
41 ‘one think of champagne’: J. Melville, Diaghilev and Friends (London, 2009), p. 11, quoting (I assume) Diaghilev.
42 ‘an individual gift’: quoted in Scheijen, Diaghilev, p. 101.
42 ‘there could be’: ibid., p. 6.
42 ‘for all his’: Mstislav Dobuzhinsky quoted in Scheijen, Diaghilev, p. 132.
42 ‘The end … the Resurrection!’: quoted in Scheijen, Diaghilev, p. 134.
43 ‘my greatest’: P. Stoneley, A Queer History of the Ballet (London, 2007), p. 58.
43 ‘elegant but unremarkable’: L. Massine, My Life in Ballet (London, 1928), p. 47.