“Carneval” by Fokine, who discovered a certain aroma and dynamic rhythm
common to both, are a continuation, so to speak, of the style of
costumes employed in the first ballet, the “Spectre of the Rose”, on the
other hand, carries us almost without our noticing it over to the land
of France. The music is by Weber, the German composer who captivated
Gèrard de Nerval, but it receives its orchestral form at the hands of
Hector Berlioz, and the text is supplied by two lines from Théophile
Gauthier, who had already inspired “Cleopatra” and the “Pavillon
d’Armide” by Benois. This young girl in white flounced gown belongs more
to Achille Dévéria and Eugène Lamy
[Illustration: “WOMEN OF GOOD HUMOUR” BALLET. THE VALET NICCOLO.
(GOUACHE)]
than to Franz Krueger or Kriehuber; the ball from which she returns
might be the ball at Sceaux of Honorè de Balzac; this night which
filters through the glass door is a night in France; this dying rose
which is impersonated by the divine ephebe Nijinsky is a rose of France.
The young girls of times gone by, about whom the gentle Francis Jammes
dreamed, would not be displeased at this airy pavilion with white
wainscoting and white furniture in which, on the wall paper of blue
cobalt, white bouquets are scattered about. Into this virginal quietude
of soothing colors, detaching itself from the sombre verdure of the
background, the human flower projects itself--a flower of purplish pink,
feverish and consumed with amorous languor. The setting for a comic
opera, “The Secret of Suzanne”, develops the same theme more in detail.
This brief catalogue of Bakst’s romantic cycle would, however, be
incomplete were I not to mention the costumes of the “Boutique
fantasque” which is in fact chiefly a sketch, but more centered, more
pointed, more compressed than the “Fairy of the Dolls” which marks the
beginning of Bakst’s career. This was a memorable enterprise, for it was
marked by the collaboration of two great artists: the dolls by Bakst
perform evolutions against a background painted by André Derain.
We have already seen how Bakst discovered the tragic and magnificently
barbaric Greece of pre=Hellenic and ante=European times which he brought
to the stage, by designing stage settings the rude grandeur of which
formed a fit background for the growing despair of Antigone or for the
doom that overwhelmed Oedipus. Once again he brings out all the anguish
in the fear of the ancients, the primitive hysteria of people bewildered
by the cruel play of unfathomable forces--the hot wind which blows from
the Asiatic desert and which leashes the blood almost into insanity, the
triumph of Eros in the midst of fratricide and horror. He staged this
“Helen of Sparta” by Verhaeren for Mme. Rubinstein--this play in which a
great modern poet incarnates his intent, violent and prophetic soul in
the characters of a legend which had already absorbed the Grand Old Man
of Weimar. The return of Helen, however, which for Goethe had been the
symbol of restored and re=born classical antiquity, to the Flemish poet
seemed a passionate and terribly human dilemma hidden under an archaic
guise.
[Illustration: XLIX
GALISSON, PRINCE CHARMANT’S TUTOR LOUIS XIV BALLET (PAVLOVA TOURNEE).
GOUACHE]
[Illustration: L
THE BIRD OF FIRE (ANOTHER VERSION). GOUACHE]
[Illustration: LI
THE “BOUTIQUE FANTASQUE” BALLET. THE ENGLISHWOMAN]
[Illustration: LII
THE “BOUTIQUE FANTASQUE” BALLET. THE ENGLISHMAN]
[Illustration: STAGE DECORATION FOR “LÂCHETÉ”]
Now, Bakst designed a bare and harsh setting for the martyrdom of Helen,
who is condemned to be coveted unto death by all who come in contact
with her: the ground reduced to lime, stones that have a burnt smell,
heavy gates of the royal fortress, smoke of woodpiles--in short,
everything in this volcanic landscape is a latent menace.
This grim and desolate face of Hellas is seen for the last time in an
act of “Daphnis and Chloe” where one sees the pirates dancing a
war-dance among the steep declivities of the red rocks. But how sweet is
the idyll which they disturb! All that there is of Ionic sweetness
envelops this pastoral scene. I know nothing in the entire work of Bakst
that is equal to these tender, fresh, damp greens of the meadow and of
the forest where the two children walk about displaying the charming
torment of love that knows nothing of itself. It is a sketch for the
first act, but in it lies all of the Greece of Theocritus, of Moschus,
and also of André Chenier’s Aoristys. Thus the short novel by Longus
[Illustration: PROJECT OF A CRYSTAL CUP]
which had already inspired the painter Pierre Bonnard to draw the
lithographs which constitute the lyric flower of his work, live once
more through the brush of the great Russian.
The mythological world had, besides, already been displayed in another
work of Bakst’s,--“Narcissus”. The setting is unique: in the foreground
is a spring bordered by large somber rocks and shaded by branches of
trees which droop into a brook of emerald. Through an
[Illustration: GOGOL’S “NOSE”. AN ILLUSTRATION]
opening of the rocks one sees a meadow upon which a tropical heat lies
heavy. The natural bridge over which we presently see the nymph Echo
pass lamenting and garbed in a mourning robe of violet, forms the second
tier, raised above the scenery of the foreground in much the same manner
as one sees it raised in the stage settings of Torelli in the
seventeenth century, or as one also sees it in the “Parnassus” of
Andrea Mantegna at the Louvre. And it is the vivacious and manycolored
figures of the Greece on the terra=cottas that monopolize the scene,
clad in fresh and simple colors--blue and green that match with the
color of the sky and the forest, lemon=yellow and brick=red that form
patches on the short white tunics.
Bakst reserved, however, for the “Afternoon of a Faun”, the pastoral
poem for which Debussy received his inspiration from a poem by Stéphane
Mallarmé, his attempt at solving the paradox of setting forth upon the
stage the authentic rhythm of the figures that keep turning forever on
the sides of Greek vases. The background is an old forest; a convenient
hill, on which the Faun reclines, narrows the platform and leaves only a
small proscenium free. On this proscenium the dancers project themselves
in profile, dressed in long tunics with frilled folds like the fluting
of an Ionic column. Moving on a single elevation they convey the idea of
having but two dimensions like the arabesques that decorate a surface.
Bakst does not, however, allow himself to be imprisoned in this
three=fold domain. His imagination is forever travelling along thousands
of crossing paths. And quite willingly he stops at the great crossroads
of civilization, where hostile worlds confront each other and establish
themselves.
Of such a character is the exuberant “Martyrdom of St. Sebastian”, where
the Rome of Heliogabalus, closed about by Asia, conveys to us both the
naiveness of the mediæval mysteries and the imagination of the
Quatrocentrist painters. Again, there is “Pisanelle”, another French
work from the pen of Gabriele d’Annunzio. It is a poem of the
Mediterranean, in which the Latin West, feudal and mystic, clashes with
the rigid and solemn Byzantium, while the imperishable perfume of Hellas
rises from the land of Cyprus from which Aphrodite sprang forth.
It would take volumes to enumerate all the pictorial elements in these
productions, and even then one could not construct a component whole.
But the large architectural outlines, the clusters of small black and
gold columns which form the portal for the “Jeu de la Sainte
Courtisane”,
[Illustration: LIII
STAGE DECORATIONS FOR “THAMAR”]
[Illustration: LIV
SADKO]
[Illustration: LV
THE “BOUTIQUE FANTASQUE” BALLET “LA POUPÉE AUX DENTELLES”]
[Illustration: LVI
MODERN COSTUME (A “FANTAISIE”). (GOUACHE)]
the enormous twisted columns in the “Conseil des faux Dieux”, over whom
Sebastian triumphs--these impress themselves indelibly upon one’s
memory.
This architectural conception, the best possible setting for the actor
and for the “round relief” which the human body forms, especially
determined the grandiose and graceful setting for the ballet “The
Sleeping Beauty”,--this French masterpiece born of the soil of Russia
which is fertile in miracles. In this work, the production of which was
reserved for London, Bakst returns squarely to the surprises afforded by
extraordinary short=cuts, to the harmony of masses that are organized,
to the magic play of stage elevations raised in tiers, to the severe
splendors of linear perspective.
We see him, after a century of realistic still=life deception, taking up
again the work of the great decorators and architects, of the
geometricians
[Illustration: A WOMAN LYING. TOUCHED UP DRAWING]
of theatrical vision, whether their names be Gonzaga or Bibiena, whether
Sanquirico or Ciceri.
[Illustration: PORTRAIT OF THE POET JEAN COCTEAU]
This masterpiece, concerning which the author of these lines has written
a book, is a free “capriccio” of the Great Age when Tiepolo
[Illustration: PORTRAIT OF THE DANCER M.]
brushed elbows with Mansart. “Artémis troublée”, a ballet produced at
the Opera during the spring of the present year, is a graceful
mythological play springing from a similar set of ideas.
I am far from having exhausted the plentiful material of these
innumerable works, for during almost a quarter of a century Bakst has
[Illustration: PORTRAIT OF THE PAINTER GOLOVINE]
initiated numerous productive ideas. He discovers new veins but is ever
ready, after a few blows with the pick=axe, to abandon them to those who
follow him.
Is it not he who dares introduce the modern sportive costume to the
lyric stage as a decorative and expressive element? Remember the “Jeux”
which he undertook with Nijinsky! And was not this vogue for things
Venetian of the eighteenth century, for the Venice of Pietro
[Illustration: LVII
PORTRAIT OF IDA RUBINSTEIN]
[Illustration: LVIII
A CALL (POSTER FOR AN EXHIBITION AT VIENNA). (GOUACHE)]
[Illustration: LIX
A LIVING MODEL. RED CHALK AND CHALK]
[Illustration: LX
THE “BOUTIQUE FANTASQUE” BALLET. AN ITALIAN DOLL]
[Illustration: THE COMPOSER BALAKIREV. DRAWING. (THE TRETIAKOFF
MUSEUM, MOSCOW)]
Longhi and of Guardi, this vogue for beauty and for the fan called forth
by his exhilarating “Women of Good Humour” in which, with the greatest
unconcern, Bakst exchanges the toe=slippers of the pasha with the red
shoe=heels of Giacomo Casanova?
[Illustration: PORTRAIT OF THE MARCHESA CASATI TOUCHED UP DRAWING]
And lastly, was not his intervention decisive in bringing about a
transformation of feminine costumes?
These sketches of gowns constitute an epoch in the history of fashion,
and they afford an access to painters into this domain from which they
have been excluded ever since the days of Gavarni. For
[Illustration: SKETCH]
Bakst is more than an a solitary creator. He is an inspirer whose
influence radiates forth over a huge periphery. How numerous are the
aspects
[Illustration: SKETCH]
of modern life that bear Bakst’s indelible seal, which is a label of
greatness and which confers an air of nobility in which one is never
mistaken!
These are the things of which I am thinking as I turn over with you, my
readers, the pages of this book. And as we have finished, we must begin
again--this time, however, in silent meditation, which is even more
gratifying.
[Illustration: LXI
PORTRAIT OF THE POET ANDREI BELY. CRAYON AND PENCIL]
[Illustration: LXII
A PORTRAIT]
[Illustration: LXIII
PORTRAIT OF THE BOY Z. RED CHALK]
[Illustration: LXIV
THE “WOMEN OF GOOD HUMOUR” BALLET. DOROTHEA]
EPILOGUE
[Illustration: PROJECT FOR EMBROIDERY]
BAKST AND RUSSIA
We have followed Bakst through each of the fields with which he was
familiar, whatever their nature. Each road in this labyrinth of styles
brought us back to the native land of the artist. Throughout, the exotic
or “Eurasiatic”--to use a word coined by a group of Russian dreamers in
exile--dominated. For the common herd Bakst is over and above all the
creator of an oriental fairyland. Even his very name, monosyllabic,
quickly pronounced, and cutting like the blade of a Turkish simitar,
seems to call up a fleeting but intense vision of Asia.
[Illustration]
Bakst was bound forever to disconcert the lovers of convenient formulas.
You think you have caught up with his jerky and lightning-like course,
when, lo! he has already escaped, to the delight of one of the “four
winds of the spirit”. There remains in your hand the sixth skin of the
serpent which it divests itself of--only to clothe itself again in the
seventh.
Recently, in the spring of 1922, we witnessed a new <g>avatar</g> of the
artist. Ten years previously he had left his fatherland for a new
fatherland that was more hospitable--for France. Now, under a splendid
impulse of piety, of tender homesickness, of filial love he returned of
his own accord to his Mother--Russia, bruised, trampled
[Illustration: LXV
“A PEASANT WOMAN” (SKETCH BY POTEMKINE). GOUACHE]
[Illustration: LXVI
“A PEASANT WOMAN” (SKETCH BY POTEMKINE). GOUACHE]
[Illustration: LXVII
COSTUME FOR “LE CHANTRE ET LA DÉVOTE”]
[Illustration: LXVIII
COSTUME OF PEASANT WOMAN FOR POTEMKINE’S “VILLAGE”]
[Illustration: DRAWING OF COVER FOR THE BOOK “RUSSIAN EX-LIBRIS”]
upon, dragged into the mud and blood by infamous villains. When all the
world deserted her, he watched by her bedside.
Chance had it that, at the very moment when Alexander Benois’
masterpiece, “Petroushka” was produced at the Opera, a mimic drama by
Bakst was played on the scanty stage of the Femina theater entitled
“Lâcheté”. Between these two surprising plots lies nothing less than a
half=century of Russian history--the fall of a throne and of a world.
The “burlesque scenes” of Benois seemed like the final blossoming=out of
ancient Petrograd, like a nostalgic vision of the imperial city, called
forth by an ardent lover of an abandoned past. A mob of people,
truculent, jeering, deafeningly noisy, with an exuberant movement of
cheerfulness, monopolizes the stage; a forceful, manifold, strikingly
lively rhythm constitutes, properly speaking, the action. In the rigid
and stiff scenery of the fated city, popular fancy has erected its
paradise of outlandish hovels, its blue and red “balagani”, in the open
air. Personages from the prints at ten kopecks and from the pictures of
Epinal come to life again and bestir themselves; comely “nounous” strut
about and try to attract; with noisy clatter of boots bearded coachmen
hasten the step of their squatting dance. Russian rural life for one
last time spends itself in these Slavic saturnalia. Even the dolls which
are the protagonists of the grotesque drama try to shake off their
mechanical torpor. They would like to become flesh and blood; they have
a hungry desire to live; at times, indeed, they really do live.
The action of “Lâcheté”, likewise, is staged at St. Petersburg which,
however, has become Petrograd--but not in the clear sunshine of a
winter’s day; rather within the concrete walls of the “People’s House”
which the last of the Czars erected to the glory of the modern capital.
Here the wooden horses are moved by powerful dynamos under the searching
light of electric lamps. But what has become of the mob in
“Petroushka”,--the motley, varied crowd? The doll, the artificial,
mechanical, automatic puppet has dispossessed the human being; it gets
the better of the disabled actor. There remains enough soul, however, in
this changed world to supply the bodies of five human
[Illustration]
beings; and what a soul, good God! Nothing in these puppets reminds one
of the smiling indifference of “Petroushka”. We are on the eve of
terrible happenings, and we feel it with sadness; a dull <g>ennui</g> weighs
upon us heavily, like the low cloud before a storm.
Ah! we are now in the Petrograd of 1916! How can we express all the
trickiness in the apathetic inertia of these figures that are scarcely
articulate, that are uniformly costumed and that skip about or sink down
at the will of their wires that direct them? Before this pliability,
this evil passivity of shapeless puppets, this cynical swaying motion of
impotent figures, this “dance of death” of inertia, the mimicked action
vanishes, and living men disappear. The drama of the passion--death
which passes, hideous and sneering,--becomes pallid under the gaze
without eyes of hostile faces.
How the inevitable closes about us! Everything in this atmosphere of
anguish and of hallucination becomes a latent menace. The day is near at
hand--one feels it with one’s whole soul, nervous with fear--when this
mass, inert, blind, crushing, will hurl itself upon quivering Russia.
Happy the blond student in green blouse who finds death as he pursues a
dream of love; he will not see it. He will not know hunger or exile or
disgrace. Who of us Russians would not envy him?
Such were the two faces of Russia which were exhibited by two painters
who are more than painters,--Benois who has the power of retrospective
divination, Bakst who possesses an understanding of modern life and of
its tumultuous forces.
But behold! the curtain which has just fallen on the bristling, rough,
malicious scenery of “Lâcheté”, rises once more to unfold before our
eyes a third Russia--a Russia debonair and drunken, ignorant and full of
spirit.
The vaudeville act “Old Moscow” depicts a rich and opulent city of
merchants wearing their <g>kaftans</g>, of free carousals, of a jovial
savagery. Two frames, reaching to the knees of the actors, form the
stage setting. On them is a miniature reproduction of the orphaned
capital with its forty times forty cupolas, encircled by the crenelated
walls of the Kremlin. And amidst this delightfully exaggerated parody of
a stage full of moujik=bourgeois, we see funny human beings,
overbubbling with good health, moving about dressed in wide, stiff
skirts that are sky=blue or tri=colored; likewise country women weighing
a hundred kilos.
The thing that is of importance above everything else in this caricature
composed without any masked thought is that aroma of the land which,
even in its funniest moments, makes the tears come to the eyes of Moscow
<g>émigrés</g>.
Today Bakst is completely absorbed by this forgotten world which rises
about him on a background of a distant past. He is consumed with an
appetite for Russian memories, emotions and visions. Each day in his
studio a population of Russian figures keeps multiplying--models and
groups of which not only their costume but their very attitude has
something indefinably national about them, something profoundly popular,
in short, something authentic. And to what purpose? The artist as yet
does not know. Once the actors are placed upon the stage, he says to
himself, the play will start spontaneously. And in pursuing his enormous
and unceasing labors he lets things take their course without hastening
them.--
We have accompanied Bakst up to his last station. It is time, therefore,
for this sketch to end. The writer takes leave of his readers and
descends into the audience in order with his readers to await the rising
of the curtain for the next act of the most beautiful of plays: the life
of a grand and noble artist.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
CONTENTS
TEXT
The Story of Leon Bakst’s Life. Preface 13
The Yellow Drawing Room 15
The Ungrateful Age 18
The Two Sphinxes 32
A Wrong Start 40
The Club 48
Mir Iskousstva 56
The Three Knocks 77
The Theban Gate 89
Terror Antiquus 107
The Spiral Road 110
A Show in an Armchair 132
Epilogue. Bakst and Russia 217
PLATES
Portrait of Bakst by Modigliani I
“Chastising Cupid”, project of decorative panel II
D’Annunzio’s “Martyrdom of St. Sebastian”,
Mme. Rubinstein in the 5th act III
Judith of Bethulia (panel) IV
“Forsaken Chloe”, project of decorative panel. (Gouache) V
Portrait of Mr. T. (red chalk) VI
“Modern dress” (a “fantaisie”) VII
“Daphnis and Chloe parting in the evening”, sketch for
decorative panel. (Gouache) VIII
“Sheherazade” ballet. First Eunuch. (Gouache) IX
An inferior deity. “Narcissus” ballet. (Gouache) X
Stage decorations for ballet “Orientales”. (Gouache) XI
A Negro’s costume (Sheherazade) XII
Stage decorations for Oscar Wilde’s “Salome”. (Gouache) XIII
“Phædra” tragedy. Phædra’s nurse XIV
Stage decorations for Hindu ballet. (Gouache) XV
Mme. Ida Rubinstein as St. Sebastian XVI
The imperial palace (“The Martyrdom of St. Sebastian”) XVII
Mme. Rubinstein in “The Martyrdom of St. Sebastian” XVIII
The “Women of good humour” ballet. Rinaldo.
(Gouache) XIX
Stage decorations for “Phædra” (Gouache) XX
A costume. “Narcissus” ballet XXI
The Pilgrim (“Blue God” ballet). Gouache XXII
Stage decorations for act 4th of D’Annunzio’s
“St. Sebastian”. (Gouache) XXIII
The Czarevitch’s costume (“The Bird of Fire”) XXIV
Project of stage decorations for “Sleeping Beauty” XXV
Stage decorations for the vault scene (“St. Sebastian”) XXVI
“Terror antiquus”. First golden medal. 1911 Universal
Exhibition (Brussels) XXVII
“Terror antiquus” (detailed) XXVIII
Submarine monsters (“Sadko” opera). Gouache XXIX
Stage decorations for the ballet “Women of good
humour” (second version). Gouache XXX
A bacchanalian dance (Joseph) by R. Strauss XXXI
Mr. Nijinsky as “Blue God”. (Gouache) XXXII
The red Sultana XXXIII
The pink Sultana. (Gouache) XXXIV
The yellow Sultana. (Gouache) XXXV
Stage decorations for the “Blue God” XXXVI
Stage decorations for act 3rd of Verhaerens’s “Helen
of Sparta”. (Gouache) XXXVII
Stage decorations for the “Cleopatra” ballet XXXVIII
Costume for Tcherepnine’s “Adoration” XXXIX
Costume for Stravinsky’s “Bird of Fire” XL
The “Boutique fantasque” ballet. The child with dolls XLI
The “Butterflies” ballet. A valet in 1850 XLII
A huntress. Decorative panel XLIII
The “Boutique fantasque” ballet. A doll XLIV
A page (“Aladin” ballet) XLV
A page in Louis XIV’s style (“Aladin” ballet) XLVI
The Empress Elisabeth Petrovna hunting. (Gouache) XLVII
Delphi. (Gouache) XLVIII
Galisson, Prince Charmant’s tutor. Louis XIV
ballet (Pavlova tournée). Gouache XLXIX
The Bird of Fire (another version). Gouache L
The “Boutique fantasque” ballet. The Englishwoman LI
The “Boutique fantasque” ballet. The Englishman LII
Stage decorations for “Thamar” LIII
“Sadko” LIV
The “Boutique fantasque” ballet. “La poupée aux
dentelles” LV
Modern Costume (A “fantaisie”). Gouache LVI
Portrait of Ida Rubinstein LVII
A call (Poster for an exhibition at Vienna). Gouache LVIII
A living model. Red chalk and chalk LIX
The “Boutique fantasque” ballet. An Italian doll LX
Portrait of the poet A. Bely. Crayon and pencil LXI
A portrait LXII
Portrait of the boy Z. Red chalk LXIII
The “Women of good humour” ballet. Dorothea LXIV
A peasant woman (Sketch by Potemkine). Gouache LXV
A peasant woman (Sketch by Potemkine). Gouache LXVI
Costume for “Le chantre et la dévote” LXVII
Costume of peasant woman for Potemkine’s “Village” LXVIII
[Illustration]
Typographical errors corrected by the etext transcriber:
certain amateurishsess=> certain amateurishness {pg 50}
Offtimes he is mistaken=> Oftimes he is mistaken {pg 50}
due do the fact=> due to the fact {pg 50}
quite agressive=> quite aggressive {pg 50}
when its was exhibited=> when it was exhibited {pg 109}
uncompromising youth wo defie=> uncompromising youth who defie {pg 122}
painter Pierre Ronnard=> painter Pierre Bonnard {pg 180}
Baskt exchanges=> Bakst exchanges {pg 203}