Nijinsky (21 page)

This depersonalisation, this denial of individual virtuosity and beauty for its own sake, was an implicit repudiation of the dancers' ideals and their years of training and discipline. Many saw Nijinsky's challenging choreographic style as an insult to the traditions their work celebrated. Karsavina was one of these. Though she did not dance in
Sacre
, she said that in it (and
Faune
) Nijinsky
‘declared his feud
against Romanticism and bid adieu to the “beautiful”' – which was about as disapproving as the diplomatic Karsavina could force herself to be.

But while his critics complained that his work was a rejection of beauty, Nijinsky knew they were wrong. He was, he wrote,
‘the artist who loves all shapes
and all kinds of beauty. Beauty is not a relative thing. Beauty is god. God is beauty with feeling … Beauty cannot be discussed. Beauty cannot be criticised.' Instead he wanted to re-examine beauty: ‘
La grace
, le charme, le joli sont rangés tout autour du point central qu'est le beau. C'est pour le beau que je travaille
,' he explained to a journalist. Grace, charm, prettiness – Karsavina's ‘Romanticism' – could obscure what he considered the essence of the art to which he was devoted, and it was this to which he wanted to return, not unlike Cézanne painting and repainting the same view of Mont Sainte-Victoire in an effort to uncover its spirit, or Gertrude Stein re-examining the use and function of language by subverting what people expected to hear or read. As Stein would write of Picasso,
‘Another vision than
that of all the world is very rare … to see the things in a new way that is really difficult, everything prevents one: habits, schools, daily life, reason, necessities of daily life, indolence, everything prevents one.'

As the rehearsals went on, Nijinsky became increasingly defensive, all too aware how inadequately the dancers grasped his concept for
Sacre
. Even with Rambert's help he was
‘unable to reach them
[the
corps de ballet
] personally and obtain their cooperation, so they might believe in him and be supportive of his work and ideas, so essential during the process of creation'. If they could not perfectly copy a movement he demonstrated, he would accuse them of deliberately working against him and Diaghilev would have to come and make peace. When he saw how unpopular
Sacre
was proving in rehearsal, Diaghilev remarked sanguinely,
‘that it was an excellent sign
. It proved the composition to be strikingly original.'

What he was seeking to convey, as Vaslav told Lady Ottoline, was the sense of
‘pagan worship, the religious instinct
in primitive nature, fear [and] ecstasy, developing into frenzy and utter self-oblation'. His inspirations were Stravinsky's extraordinary score and the spiritual and anthropological discussions he had with Roerich, whom he respected
enormously. He was also indebted to the folk dances he had performed as a boy – the Ukrainian
hopak
, with side kicks, big jumps and powerful arm movements; the Caucasian
lezghinka
, in which men wearing soft leather boots dance almost on pointe, with fisted hands and turned-in legs; the
khorovod
, a circular dance used in ritual ceremonies, with flat palms and turned-in feet – and even to the costumes Roerich was designing. Roerich used folk motifs from the libretto like the firewheel and bundles of dry twigs used for setting fire to effigies, as well as rhythmical repetition, perhaps the main decorative element of Russian folk art. So important were his ideas that Nijinsky apparently waited to begin composing the ensemble sequences until he had seen Roerich's sketches so that he could incorporate their arcs and broken and concentric circles into his choreography.

Another element in the fractured, disconnected quality of Nijinsky's choreography for
Sacre
must have been his own increasingly fragile emotional state. Through the spring of 1913 the psychological pressures he was under, which had been building since he began composing
Faune
in 1910–11, were approaching a crisis point. It was
‘as if he felt
that a net was being woven around him and was about to envelop him'.

His schedule of performing, composing and rehearsing, never in the same place for longer than a few weeks, was ever more relentless. There had never before been a ballet-master as young as him. Although he was convinced of the importance of what he was doing, he was not always sure he was doing it right and he had no real support. Bronia was newly married; his mother could not begin to comprehend the complexities of his life with Diaghilev (he wrote in his diary that he avoided speaking to her and Bronia about Diaghilev because he knew how worried they were about him); and Diaghilev himself, it was becoming increasingly obvious – the man who was meant to be his patron and protector – had a private agenda that clashed with his own.

Lydia Sokolova, a young British dancer born Hilda Munnings (until Diaghilev transformed her into a Russian ballerina when she joined the Ballets Russes in early 1913), described Nijinsky as being like
‘a wild creature
who had been trapped by society and was always ill at ease'.
He barely spoke to anyone and, if addressed, looked ‘as if he might suddenly butt you in the stomach'; he was always nervous, fiddling with his hands and nails, ‘and seemed to exist on a different plane. Before dancing he was even more withdrawn, like a bewitched soul. I used to watch him practising his wonderful jumps in the first position, flickering his hands; I had never seen anyone like him before.'

What kept Vaslav going was the knowledge that he was creating something totally original. In late January 1913 he wrote to tell Stravinsky how pleased he was with
Sacre
's progress.
‘If the work continues like this
, Igor, the result will be something great. I know what
Le Sacre du printemps
will be when everything is as we both want it: new, and for an ordinary viewer, a jolting impression and emotional experience. For some it will open new horizons flooded with different rays of sun. People will see new and different colours and different lines. All different, new and beautiful … So, goodbye until we see each other. A bow to your wife. I kiss your hand. Vaslav.'

The first blow to Vaslav's hopes came a few weeks later, when Bronia told him that she could not dance the role of the Chosen Maiden. She had been feeling nauseous and faint for some weeks and the doctor had informed her she was expecting a baby. Nijinsky lost control, screaming violently at her,
‘You are the only one
who can perform this dance, only you, Bronia, and no one else! … You are deliberately trying to destroy my work, just like all the others.' When Bronia's husband Sasha Kochetovsky came into the room, Vaslav turned on him as if he were about to hit him, calling him an ‘uncouth
muzhik
[peasant]' despite all Eleonora's protests that it was perfectly normal for a married woman to have children. Later he told Rambert that ‘“
a blackguard
, a brigand … has prevented Bronia from dancing
Jeux
and
Sacre
”. “But who is he?” “Kochetovsky!”'

Marriage – the first time Bronia had deviated from the path of art to which she and Vaslav had jointly been devoted from childhood – had shaken the bond between brother and sister; this betrayal, as he saw it, hardened the rift, leaving him even more isolated. In her memoirs, Bronia also described arguing with him during this period about
the Dalcroze system, which she thought had nothing to teach classical dancers. After his furious response to her pregnancy she avoided him altogether, even though she longed to tell him how much she admired
Sacre
's choreography and realised
‘how exhausting and fatiguing
it was for him to be surrounded by uncooperative artists and try to create a ballet in such a hostile atmosphere … what an effort it cost him to obtain from the artists such exactness in the execution of a choreography they did not understand'.

Diaghilev, Nijinsky and the ballet travelled to Paris for their final rehearsals before the season began, but the news that Isadora Duncan's two children had been drowned in the Seine on 19 April cast a dark shadow over their arrival. Their driver had left the car in gear when he got out to crank the engine and, when it started, it shot off the road, plunging into the river. It was impossible to reach the two children and their governess who were trapped inside. Vaslav, who had known the children, was very distressed by this tragedy.

Just as in 1909, the theatre they were using was under construction, so they were having to rehearse alongside all the dusty commotion of builders. But the atmosphere was very different from the holiday feel of four years earlier. With
Jeux
still unfinished and so much riding on
Sacre
, the overwrought Nijinsky was furious at any distraction from his work and the entire company was picking up its mood from him and Diaghilev.

The Théâtre des Champs-Elysées was Gabriel Astruc's baby, a vast new building intended to be a temple to modern dance and music. The sculptor Antoine Bourdelle had even used Nijinsky, alongside Isadora Duncan, as his inspiration for the bas-reliefs that adorned the monumental exterior, showing Vaslav tearing
‘himself away with a wild leap
from the marble still holding him fast'. He called Nijinsky
‘more than human
… [with] something of the sacred animal' about him.

Astruc was so determined to have the Ballets Russes as his opening programme that he promised Diaghilev an astronomical fee for the season: 25,000 francs a night for twenty nights (when in earlier years he had received less than half that for a night's performance), as well
as extra money for supplementary expenses – electricians, coiffeurs, costumiers, stage hands and so on. Diaghilev couldn't have accepted less. His existing debts and the number of rehearsals Nijinsky and Monteux needed for
Sacre
were crippling him. Even though the front row of seats had already been installed – and the tickets for them sold – when Stravinsky,
‘in that sad delightful
Slav voice of his', insisted that they be ripped out to make space for the extra musicians he needed for
Sacre
(‘You know, old friend, it's done with the utmost ease nowadays by that powerful machine they have for cutting steel and reinforced concrete. And the upholsterers will patch up the damage very quickly'), Astruc had agreed.

It is to this period of their time together that Vaslav's most eviscerating memories in his diary about Diaghilev belong: his false smiles, the black hair-dye that stained his pillowcase, his two false front teeth which moved when he touched them nervously with his tongue, and which reminded Vaslav of a wicked old woman.
‘I realised that Diaghilev
was deceiving me. I trusted him in nothing and began to develop by myself, pretending that I was his pupil … I began to hate him quite openly, and once I pushed him on a street in Paris … because I wanted to show him that I was not afraid of him. Diaghilev hit me with his cane because I wanted to leave him.'

Misia Sert's letters to Stravinsky in the late spring of 1913 confirm the misery and unpleasantness between them. Diaghilev was
‘going through a dreadful period
' in which creditors were threatening to sue him and an insufferably rude Nijinsky was chafing against their relationship, recalling the deliberately provocative way the young Vaslav had behaved towards his father before he left Eleonora.

Bronia hoped a romance might blossom between Vaslav and Maria Piltz, whom they had known since schooldays and who was replacing her as the Chosen Maiden; she thought Piltz was
‘a little in love with him
'. Piltz told an interviewer in 1968 that Vaslav had asked her to come with him for a ride through Paris fifty-five years earlier, but as she got into the carriage someone pulled her from behind. It was Diaghilev:
‘Get out
. You're not going anywhere with him.' She remembered Vatsa
fondly. ‘He was so nice! But he was strange … He used to joke around with me. Once I asked him, “What do you love best in the world?” He laughed and replied, “Insects and parrots.”'

Vasily Zuikov was still shadowing Nijinsky on Diaghilev's instructions. When he and Rambert were working together, Zuikov would interrupt every few minutes to open or close the window, although Rambert recorded that
‘Nijinsky didn't take
the slightest interest in me as a woman. It never occurred to him, it never occurred to me. We were only discussing the work in hand.' Afterwards they would go to Pasquier's and drink hot chocolate and eat cakes. Rambert didn't realise then that she was falling in love with Vaslav, but Eleonora noticed. Ever watchful for women trying to ensnare her son, she warned Vaslav that Rambert admired him; he assured her there was
‘no danger
'. Something else would be needed to help him break free of Diaghilev's hold.

Whatever his feelings for her, Rambert was enthralled by Nijinsky, as a man as well as an artist. He possessed a great feeling for literature and she found him observant, with a gift for summing people up with a choice phrase, and was drily funny. One of the most fundamental things Nijinsky's life seems to me to have lacked was humour. Everyone around him took themselves so painfully seriously – unless the sources just conceal it (which is of course very possible) – perhaps easy laughter was yet another of the sacrifices they offered up on the altar of artistic immortality.

Many years later, Rambert remembered watching Vaslav's ecstatic performances when he taught the Chosen Maiden's solo to Piltz as
‘the greatest tragic dance
I have ever seen'.
‘His movements were epic
. They had an incredible power and force, and Piltz's repetition of them – which seemed to satisfy Nijinsky – seemed to me only a pale reflection of Nijinsky's intensity.' For Rambert, Piltz could be no more than a
‘picture-postcard
of a great painting'.