characteristically and comprehensively displayed as in “Thamar.” In
certain other spectacles particular aspects of their art receive more
emphasis, are more acutely perceived. But in this barbaric legend from
the far Caucasus their powers are revealed at their ripest and fullest.
There is a “body,” a full-blooded vigour in this swift, fierce drama,
and its vivid enactment, which bespeaks maturity. The miming, the
dancing, the very _mise-en-scène_ draw fire from quickened pulses,
albeit so subordinated to controlling restraint, that of no ballet is it
less possible to resolve into component elements the spontaneous,
arresting whole. The _ensemble_ is perfect. And what “Thamar” lacks in
preciosity is compensated by abounding vitality.
It is possibly not mere fancy which suggests that in “Thamar” the
Russians give peculiarly spontaneous vent to their artistic impulses.
Western Europe has a proverb, which it would scarce be gallant to repeat
here, anent the affinity between a Russian and a Tartar; and it would
certainly seem as if to the presentment upon the stage of this old tale
from the folk-lore of wild Georgia had gone a native appreciation--a
relish--of all that it embodies, which must be wanting to the treatment
of themes more conventional or exotic. Only in the wonderful exuberance
of the crowded Moscow fair in “Pétrouchka” does one find again that
subtle access of spontaneity and vitality which can derive from a
national instinct alone.
For the story of “Thamar” it seems there is some warrant in history. At
least tradition reports that the castle, now in ruins, which stands in
the gorge of Dariol, had once a royal mistress, whose inhospitable
custom it was to lure unsuspecting strangers into her toils, and
presently cause them to be hurled to destruction from a secret door
giving upon a precipitous face of the rocky crag on which the castle is
perched. What measure of historical fact is foundation for the legend,
who shall say? Certain it is that the tale has lost nothing by the
telling, in the handing down from one generation to another; that the
lurid colours in which Queen Thamar’s character has been painted have
lost nothing--have gained, indeed--in intensity. Yet, if time has not
mellowed their barbaric crudity, at least it has arranged them
decoratively. Romance has been busy at her loom, from which at length
has issued a legend so cunningly woven as needs only the gorgeous
embroidery of the Russians’ art to reach an apotheosis.
The master hand of Léon Bakst has designed nothing more startling and
impressive than the great chamber of the castle in which Queen Thamar
holds perpetual court. By some wondrous trick of
[Illustration]
his art he has induced a sense of height that leads the eye upward far
beyond the proscenium’s limit, and creates a loftiness that seems to
dwarf the figures grouped about the floor. Even more remarkable is the
form and colouring of the decorations. Crude is the word that first
presents itself, but crudity ill suggests the ultimate harmony of this
astounding tableau. Violence is rather the note--violence of colour,
violence of form: meet setting for such deeds of violence as are soon to
be enacted. And as with the chamber, so with the dress of its
occupants--the splendid, violent trappings of æsthetic barbarism.
Nothing is subdued; it is the very occasion, as the spectator thrills to
feel, for passions to be loosed, unbridled and untamed.
Something of the same inspiration seems to have prompted Balakirev’s
music, which not only hurries the swift drama to its impending climax,
but seems charged with a sensuous violence of its own that enhances, to
a point of fascination almost dreadful, the orgy of passionate
intoxication on the stage.
Thamar is an exciting experience. In the first few bars of the short
prelude which precedes the rising of the curtain the note of mystery, of
eerie phantasy, is struck. The listener is transported from reality to
the region of legendary lore. To such strains would one choose to read
of witchcraft and of magic spells; at least, the music has that degree
of kinship with those voices of the elements which raise the hair with
unfelt breath, and send a shiver through the stoutest heart.
The curtains, lifting silently, disclose that striking tableau just
referred to--a _coup d’œil_ in a very special sense. Upon a divan at the
back, sinuous, a panther in repose, lies Thamar. At one side, flooding
the head of the couch with evening light, a huge casement gives outlook,
over the river’s turbulent flood, upon the wild snow-covered slopes that
surround the mountain fastness of the Queen. In groups about the
chamber are scattered Thamar’s women, some close in attendance upon
their mistress, others reclining on low cushions, a few watching
intently the distant prospect through the open window. Guarding the
door, tall henchmen.
A steadfast immobility has transfixed all. So, statuesque, stood the
guards and retinue of the Sleeping Beauty. This much the spectator is
permitted, at the lifting of the curtain, to apprehend. The stillness is
noted, lasting for just that brief but appreciable moment which invests
it with significance, and makes dominant that note of phantasy, of
unreality, which the opening strains of music sounded. The illusion
achieved, the spell of stillness is broken. A woman, one of those whose
watchful gaze has been directed through the window, stirs. It is the
merest gesture, but a gesture eager, alert: and on the instant, though
none other yet moves, the scene becomes instinct with life.
The woman looks again at the distant scene; then turns to another with a
whispered word. At the movement heads are turned, figures that seemed
indolent lose their sloth. Something is toward; the whispers are
pregnant with meaning. Thamar alone, recumbent on her couch, gives no
sign of life. One might suppose she slumbered, but for the cat-like
swiftness with which, at a word from one of her attendants, she turns
towards the window. Half raising herself, as a stalking leopard lifts
shoulders and neck to watch its distant prey, she takes a wisp of gauze
from her pillow and slowly waves it above her head. A stranger, errant
among the lonely mountain sides, has espied the castle, and approaches.
Even now he stands below the walls gazing at the fateful casement. Twice
and again the seductive signal is repeated. Its purpose then appears to
be achieved, for the scarf is dropped and Thamar, springing from the
couch, turns to her expectant court.
Orders are issued, but of these there scarce seems need, with such
accustomed readiness do the Queen’s minions set about their tasks.
Without ado the guards stationed at the doors prepare to sally forth,
wrapping themselves in voluminous black cloaks. A subtle touch, those
cloaks. They suggest the bleak, inhospitable wilderness without,
emphasising the warmth and luxury of the brilliant scene within--an
emphasis which is enhanced by the decorative value, considering the
scene pictorially, of the black irregular masses which the shrouded
high-capped figures present against the general riot of colour. When
presently the stranger is led in, likewise cloaked and muffled, that
contrast is again insisted upon. The stranger, it is instantly apparent,
is travel-weary: one divines the curiosity and wonder with which he
finds himself led into an atmosphere of ease and luxury which his tired
senses, despite the bandage over his eyes, must gratefully apprehend.
Meanwhile, the Queen has been preparing for the advent of her guest. As
the escort departs to bring him in, the women busy themselves with
Thamar’s person. Deftly and swiftly she is robed, and ere the door opens
to admit the doomed stranger, she is ready and awaiting her prey.
Wonderful mime that she is, I doubt whether Karsavina in any _rôle_
excels her impersonation of the feline Thamar. Her every movement, under
its sinuous grace, has that suggestion of stealth which fascinates while
it affrights. From the moment that the guileless stranger is brought
before her--for there is that in her attitude, as she awaits his coming,
which proclaims him not guest, but victim--till the fierce climax, she
never relaxes the tension under which his apprehension of her
close-pent, volcanic energy places the spectator. It is as though one
watched a panther sporting with some innocent creature that mistakes the
play for mere kittenish frolic: as beautiful, as horrid, and as certain
in its
[Illustration]
ending is Thamar’s way with her victim. The final pounce one awaits as
inevitable: the interval is filled with the exquisite agony of suspense.
Embodiment of action in arrest is Queen Thamar as, for a brief moment,
she regards the figure of the unsuspecting stranger. Then, loosing
suddenly her restraint, she springs upon him, and reaching up a slender
arm with eager fingers tears the bandage from his face. Fiercely she
scans him: he is fair to see. So, too, is Thamar, and if in that swift
interchange of searching looks the wild blood courses more hotly through
the siren’s veins, be sure that passion scarce a whit less fiery kindles
in the youth, so strangely and suddenly confronted by the glowing,
sinister beauty of the Queen.
At a sign from Thamar attendants come forward to relieve the stranger of
his travelling gear. Disengaging herself from his grasp, the Queen
retires to a table at the side, on which stands a wine cup and flagon.
From the background she watches avidly while her women are busy. The
stranger’s cloak and high-crowned hat are removed, and he stands
revealed--handsome, well-favoured, a very proper figure of a man. He
gazes about him rapt in admiration and delight, but ere he can espy
again the figure of the arch enchantress, a group of dancing girls
advances and encircles him. The graceful measures which they tread
distract his attention as he stands, pleased and diverted, in their
midst.
The bevy of girls gives way to a more potent allurement. Thamar herself,
darting forward, now begins a dance of fascination before the stranger’s
eager eyes. With her first lithe movements she asserts her mastery over
his enraptured senses. As the moth round the flame of the candle, he
hovers on the outskirts of her mazy dance, the reviving blood within him
gaining warmth as he feasts his quickening senses on her beauty and
grace.
[Illustration]
As Thamar continues to dance, so increasingly wavers the young man’s
hold upon himself. She saps his power of restraint to the very verge;
then on a sudden interrupts the dance, and runs to the table. Ere the
stranger can collect himself she is before him, offering with regal
courtesy a brimming wine cup. He hesitates to drink, but held by the
fascination of her eye he suffers her to lead him, unresisting, to the
couch. As they gain the steps of the divan a troupe of dancers enters.
Musicians, with quaint stringed instruments, are already seated along
the walls, and forthwith, a joyous revel is begun.
The lilt of the music, the throbbing rhythm of the dance, complete the
spell which Thamar’s beauty has begun. With eyes intent only upon the
face of his enchantress, the stranger puts the potion to his lips. As he
sets the wine cup down, Thamar eludes the embrace he proffers and glides
away. The youth pursues her through the whirling ranks of dancers, but
at a sign from Thamar the women take him by the hand and lead him from
the chamber. Reluctant to go, he yet submits to be escorted thus, since
the purpose is but to attire him more fitly for the night-long revel.
Left alone amidst her court, Thamar draws inspiration for her
approaching deeds of lust and violence from the savage frenzy of her
followers. Her henchmen crowd around her, goading her willing spirit
with the vigour of their dance. Rapidly the frenzy of that dance
increases; the armed men draw their daggers, hurling them points
downward to the floor in the midst of their whirling evolutions. Thamar,
aloof, looks on with heaving breasts. As she watches her excitement
grows, till at length with an imperious gesture she bids her attendants
bring the stranger in once more. The women fly at her behest, and
Thamar, with sudden resolution, masters her outward evidences of
passion, and gains the divan just as the stranger, in rich gala attire,
is ushered in.
The dance of armed men has ceased, and the entering youth is greeted by
a bevy of girls, each with a tabor in her hand, who dance before him,
and presently lead him to the royal couch. The youth advances gladly;
but Thamar, stealthily immobile, affects to ignore him. Spurred thus to
ingratiate himself, the stranger essays a dance before the object of his
passion. He is tall, he is shapely, he is active; his leaps and nimble
movements display to advantage his virile elegance and grace. Thamar,
watching him intently, is swept past all restraint and casts
dissimulation aside. Swiftly she darts upon him, and joins him in the
dance. The swaying measure which they foot in concert sets their pulses
throbbing to the point beyond endurance. As the music swells in volume,
the women are caught by the intoxication of the moment, and as the armed
men in their turn join the dance, the stranger finds himself supporting
the form of Thamar in their midst. The moment of ecstasy, of abandon, is
reached. A pregnant pause--then Thamar has flung herself upon the
stranger, fastened her lips upon his, and fleeing from the chamber,
drawn him in pursuit.
The disappearance of the two protagonists is the signal for resumption
of the revels. Violently and yet more violently throbs the music, wilder
and yet wilder rages the furious dance. The casement which earlier
admitted the sunset rays has long been closed, and one may believe the
night to be far spent ere the revels have reached this pitch of bacchic
frenzy. The orgy is at its height when the stranger, alone, re-enters
the chamber. His breath is laboured, his gait unsteady, as he staggers
under the heady influence of overmastering passion. At sight of him the
dancers pause, eyeing him askance, curious but aloof. The wretched
youth, at grips with his passion, pays no heed to them, but even as he
yields and turns again towards the door, the object of his thirsting
desire confronts him. The Queen takes him by the hand and fawns upon
him, savagely seductive. The youth is wax beneath her fierce caress, and
though the watching eyes of all the court are upon him, he can but gaze,
spell-bound, upon his Circe.
[Illustration]
Thamar, not less than her victim, is in the clutch of over-whelming
passion. The hour is at hand, and as the fateful moment approaches, she
thrills with fearful expectancy. Bemused, the luckless stranger sees not
the dagger which Thamar with stealthy motion of the hand withdraws from
her girdle; neither does he note the yawning abyss, revealed through a
panel in the wall a watchful guard has rolled noiselessly aside, towards
which his unheeding steps are being surely and relentlessly guided.
There comes at last the climax. Even as the infatuated youth leans
towards her, with a tigerish spring the Queen stabs him to the heart. He
is already on the brink of the open precipice; and as he reels backward
under the blow, a push from the minion at his elbow sends him hurling to
the rushing torrent far below. Thamar with outstretched neck watches, in
gloating ecstasy, the consummation of her fell design.
The panel in the wall slides back again. The guards resume their posts
of duty. The courtiers, grouped about the chamber, relapse into
immobility. The appointed doom is achieved. What was to be, is. Once
more the sense of fantastic unreality asserts itself in the spectator’s
mind. Mere ghouls, dread phantoms in human form, this dazzling throng of
courtiers--not creatures of warm flesh and blood as in the midst of
their simulated revelry he had almost deemed them. Thamar alone exhibits
emotion. It is not remorse, however, which sets her shivering as with an
ague, and turns her knees to water. Reaction must follow action, and the
hideous spectre that treads so close upon the heels of indulgence has
her in its grip. The hour has passed, the supreme moment has gone; and
Thamar, like every true artist, is plunged in depths that are measurable
only by the heights she has erstwhile scaled.
The court, regarding her attentive but impassive, is dismissed with a
gesture, and the great chamber is cleared of all save Thamar and her
women, by whom she is now unrobed. As the festal garments drop from her,
the Queen’s exhaustion, physical and mental, seems to verge upon
collapse. Slowly she gains the head of her couch, as the arras is drawn
from before the window. Night has fled and the purple rays of the dawn
pour into the room. The Queen steps into the midst of this luminous
flood, drinking deep of the morning glory. Her senses revive, she
imbibes new vigour, the black shadows are lifted from her. As presently
she lays herself upon the couch, her women sink to rest upon their
cushions.
Thus from supreme climax the action of the ballet subsides gradually to
statuesque immobility once more. Stillness broods over the quiet figures
of Thamar and her women. Realisation comes suddenly to the spectator
that the scene is now identical with that which the lifting curtain
first disclosed. And at that moment of quick apprehension--a woman
stirs! In a flash of inspiration the spectator’s eye, outrunning the
action on the stage, foresees the inevitable happening. Is not the whole
ghastly round yet fresh and vivid in his mind? The woman looks again,
whispers to another. A third bends to the Queen’s ear, and as the
curtain slowly descends the treacherous scarf is being once more lightly
tossed into the air.
[Illustration]
LE CARNAVAL.
PANTOMIME-BALLET BY MICHEL FOKINE.
MUSIC BY ROBERT SCHUMANN,
ORCHESTRATED BY RIMSKY-KORSAKOV, LIADOV, GLAZOUNOV AND TCHEREPNIN.
SCENERY AND COSTUMES DESIGNED BY LÉON BAKST.
“Le Carnaval,” which has been built upon Schumann’s well-known music, is
a ballet of the type which defies pedestrian description. If one may
term “incident” so trifling an affair as, let us say, a butterfly’s
flirtation with a flower, then “Le Carnaval” is full of incident. But it
has no story, no dramatic development of a plot, to give a theme for
narrative. The very characters bear relation to each other only as the
_personæ_ of a carnival.
The characters, indeed, are scarcely to be regarded as actual men and
women. Harlequin, Columbine, Pierrot and the rest who flit across the
scene, are no mere impersonations of those traditional figures of fancy
by gay revellers at a _bal masqué_, but themselves--living embodiments
of different phases of irresponsible humanity. The spectator is
conscious of an atmosphere of unreality, a sense almost of illusion. On
the wings of fancy he is transported far from the realm of adamantine
fact, and in a region of pure sentiment sees materialised the whole idea
of Carnival.
It is to the appearance of unreality, perhaps, that the ballet owes its
peculiar appeal and charm. Elsewhere some explanation has been attempted
of the fascination which the puppet exercises on the human mind, and
similar comments apply in the present case. For though the figures of
“Le Carnaval” are not, as in “Pétrouchka,” poor dolls aping humanity, in
essence they are puppets just as much--embodiments in miniature of
various human traits at which we can afford to laugh without offended
vanity. Watching “Le Carnaval,” indeed, we are verily in puppet-dom; so
completely is a severance from matter-of-fact reality achieved.
[Illustration]
This note of fantasy is maintained in chief by the exceeding deftness of
the performers, and the sensitive lightness of their touch. But not a
little is owed to the bold simplicity of Bakst’s _décor_. There is no
scenery; merely an immense green curtain for background, and for
furniture a couple of odd little striped sofas. The bareness of the
stage, the great height of the curtain behind, have the effect of
dwarfing the figures of the dancers; the elimination of all superfluous
detail produces a needed concentration of attention on their movements.
There being no dramatic action to unfold, sentiment rather than
passion--and that of the most artificial kind--being the matter for
portrayal, gesture and the dance are here submitted to the severest test
as means of expression. Artificiality demands, in representation, the
most deft and polished art--of course, of a strictly conventional and
academic kind. That formal perfection the Russians achieve in “Le
Carnaval”--a perfection so absolute that formality is forgotten,
eclipsed in its own apotheosis. So nicely do the performers exploit,
while never transgressing, the conventions by which the ballet is
conditioned, that for once artifice seems natural, and sentiment as real
as passion.
[Illustration]
The costumes devised by Bakst are of the Victorian period--crinolines
and peg-top trousers, of which the quaint prim style, so far removed
from modern tendencies, exactly suits the dainty little puppets that
flit magically across the stage. Pierrot, of course, appears as ever in
voluminous white clothes, but Columbine and Harlequin, though instantly
to be recognised, are dressed a little differently from the mode which
the harlequinade, as it used commonly to be presented in this country,
has stereotyped. But then, neither Columbine nor Harlequin in “Le
Carnaval” are the stilted, meaningless creatures to which the base usage
of the English so-called “pantomime” has degraded them. Their true
characters are restored: they intrigue the eye as airy figments of
irresponsible fancy--she the embodiment of freakish sentiment, he of
freakish humour. Columbine is no longer a well-favoured wench attired in
a scanty _tu-tu_, pirouetting with moderate skill upon her toes, but the
incarnation of feminine mutability and charm: bespangled Harlequin has
lost the silly wand with, which he was wont to slap about him
indiscriminately, and has become Arlecchino, the spirit of unbridled
mirth and mischief. The dance (in which general term one includes the
supplementary art of pantomime) alone perhaps can express these
conceptions of modern mythology, and the embodiment, the reality, which
Karsavina and Nijinsky give to them is possible only through their
perfection in that art. Than Nijinsky’s performance in “Le Carnaval,” no
more complete exposition can be imagined of all that the dancer’s art
comprises.
Three times have separate couples--fantastic, irresponsible
figures--flitted lightly across the stage in arch retreat and gay
pursuit, when the curtains at the back are parted and Pierrot’s white
face protrudes. Dismally he glances left and right. No one is near, and
with every motion of his dejected figure eloquent of suffering, he
advances from his hiding-place. A few paces taken, he pauses, the victim
not only of misery, but of indecision. Poor
[Illustration]
Pierrot, “temperament “ personified, in everything it is all or nothing
with him. Just now he finds himself deceived--and his abandonment to
grief reaches the utmost limits of despair. He has no longer zest for
anything in the world--and his vacillation is equally intense. Why
should he go forward--or backward--to left or right? Why stand up--why
sit down? Why do anything, _be_ anything? So he stands there, the
picture of indetermination, his baggy clothes hanging anyhow about him,
his very limbs so loosely jointed that they seem to be without definite
control.
[Illustration]