Chapter II: Part 2

threatened by the consuming energy and the unscrupulous ambition of his “employé”, Diaghileff. To be sure, Diaghileff, conscious of his actual superiority, carried himself as though he were the boss. Fearing he would be supplanted by this <g>maire du palais</g>, the director requested Diaghileff to resign voluntarily. Diaghileff would do nothing of the sort. Exasperated, Volkonsky promptly discharged him, by applying the famous “paragraph three” of the rules and regulations to his case, by the terms of which the “government secretary Diaghileff” was forever barred from all public appearance. Who knows but that to this act of administrative jealousy we owe the grandiose effort of the “Russian Season”? Excluded from official life, Diaghileff, the great <g>condottiere</g> of art, could unfold his full power!

Diaghileff left, his friends followed, a great gap closed in about the director, and several months later, not being able to have the last say in a quarrel with a star who was both famous and powerful, Volkonsky had himself to resign and leave.

Bakst, however, had not participated in this boycott of the prince; he plunged into his work for its own sake. But it was not at the Marie Theater that he made his real <g>debut</g>. Grand-Duke Vladimir Alexandrovitch had brought back with him from one of his frequent trips to Paris the text for a pantomime, the author of which was Fèvre, the comedian. This play, The Heart of the Marchioness”, found favor with the directors. It was decided to play it at the Hermitage Theater, an auditorium reserved exclusively for the Imperial family and the members of the Court. It was connected with the Winter Palace by a passage. The French actors of the Michel Theater, under the direction of the <g>maître de ballet</g>, Enrico Cecchetti, executed the pantomime before an audience of grand dukes and chamberlains.

Vladimir entrusted the scenery to Bakst. The latter conceived a semicircular pavilion as stage setting. For costumes he went straight to authentic sources and utilized the elements for devising a good ensemble. He brought a new idea to the theater: that of style. That is, at least, what eye-witnesses claim; nothing has been preserved of this work of his.

As the pantomime was tremendously successful, the Emperor had this show put on at a gala benefit performance in the Marie Theater--and this is how Bakst for the first time appeared on the most famous of all Russian stages. This winter of 1900, then, when for the first time he went upon the stage that, according to Goethe, “means the universe”, decided his future. Who could today imagine what the fate of modern scenerie would be without the contribution of Bakst? And who could conceive of a Bakst remaining a stranger to the theater? It took him ten years to find his place. The three knocks struck home. For the first time the curtain rises over a work of Bakst. Ten years later Paris will crown “Sheherazade”.

THE THEBAN GATE

Meanwhile Colonel Teliakovsky had succeeded Volkonsky. He owed his appointment as director to the fact that he had been in the Horseguards with Baron (later Count) Freedericksz, minister of the Court. A ludicrous figure he was--this horseman promoted

to be stage manager--, without either ideas or prestige and consequently unable to contribute anything of value. But he gave others a free hand--and that is a great deal during a period of fermentation and revival.

Thus, soon after his appointment, he authorized an experiment of far-reaching importance. Alexander Theater was preparing to bring out Euripides’ tragedy, “Hippolytus,” the attempt being made to produce it as nearly like the ancient original as possible. The young stage director, Osarovsky, hoped to make a grand <g>coup</g>. The play was translated by Merejkovsky in exceedingly beautiful verse and with an extremely intense modern feeling. Among the Russian intellectuals of that time, Nietzschean ideas were held in great fascination. Now, in this early masterpiece the philosopher had transfigured the whole conception of the spirit of the ancients. Under the marble-like and placid guise of the Greece of Apollo’s time he had revealed the Dionysiac ecstacy, the pathetic distress and the mystic impulse of the masses. What had been considered as the key to their souls, viz., this sovereign and plastic art, was but a sham emancipation.

For a quarter of a century the government had tried to curb turbulent youth by means of the classical ferule. Greek was loathed as much as was the royal blue of the gendarme uniform. But the translation by Merejkovsky and the enthusiastic eloquence of Professor Zielinski, scholar and poet, who commented upon it as “the birth of tragedy”, caused great surprise and soon extreme fondness for it. It was necessary, however, in order to bring about this rehabilitation of antiquity, to make use of the best possible medium, namely, its consecration by the stage.

The scenery and costumes for “Hippolytus” were ordered from Bakst. After an interval of four years there followed “Oedipus at Colonnæ” and Sophocles’ “Antigone”.

It was an arduous task indeed, for the problem was that of adapting the essential dualism of the Greek tragedy--its lyric choruses and its active players, its dithyrambs and its dialogue, Dionysius and Apollo--to the arrangement of the modern theater, with its odd-shaped stage, like a box opened toward the side of the spectators. Bakst made the attempt. Once having entered upon the road to Thebes he solved the enigma of the Sphinx without stumbling and forced open the gate. By raising the background of the stage he made the foreground available for the <g>proscenium</g>, with the altar of the god of the tragedy in the middle. On this <g>proscenium</g> the choruses executed evolutions, the choristers chanted the strophes and anti-strophes rhythmically, while the ensemble of supernumeraries scanned certain final verses. At the end the leader of the chorus would ascend the steps which connected the <g>proscenium</g> with the platform in order

STAGE DECORATIONS FOR ACT 4th OF D’ANNUNZIO’S “ST. SEBASTIAN” (GOUACHE)]

THE CZAREVITCH’S COSTUME (“THE BIRD OF FIRE”)]

PROJECT OF STAGE DECORATIONS FOR “SLEEPING BEAUTY”]

STAGE DECORATIONS FOR THE VAULT SCENE (“ST. SEBASTIAN”)]

to pronounce Fate’s supreme sentence upon the protagonist who had been prostrated by the gods.

Thus, for the first time, an attempt was made at a logical dissociation of the rhythmic and dramatic elements of the ancient theater. Years were

to elapse before the German Max Reinhardt invented the monumental staircase and the <g>proscenium</g> of Lysistrata; and still a longer period until that same intrepid pioneer let loose upon the arena of a circus the hysterical multitude of a chorus of wild persons. Bakst was the first, not only in Russia, but in the world, to try to work out a stage and a conventional plastic language that was in accord with our modern conception of ancient art.

The Greeks who faced each other in the tragic dilemmas of “Hippolytus” and especially of “Oedipus” were no longer those classical personages

with rounded gestures, draped in white, blue or red tunics that looked like a schoolboy’s drawing after a plaster=cast relief of Phideas. They displayed the angular shoulders of the warriors on one of Aegina’s bas=reliefs; the conical helmet with a visor protecting the brow and the nose, as well as the metal shin protectors, tended to simplify the lines of the actor. On the other hand the garments were brightcolored; the purple robe of Creon was resplendent with its ornamentation copied from Ionian pottery. The sixth century dispossessed the fifth, archaic art crowded out the classical canons, the intense colors of many hues

obtained preference over the marble whiteness of the statues. People breathed again; they felt themselves freed.

The great age of Pericles, which for three centuries had been exploited by every academy of Europe, which had been vulgarised, debased, enervated by the Alma=Tademas and the Siemiradskis, seemed gloomy, formal, deathly cold. Besides, an art that is perfect and definite, and that has reached its zenith affords no occasion for further research, for further development. It condemns its followers either to imitating it or else to diminishing it. Instinctively Bakst took issue with the academic rules. The fact that he possessed this divination of the right road to take is what placed him several years ahead of his contemporaries.

For he was quite alone in his passion for this Greek antiquity which at every new turn seemed different from every preconceived notion. His friends of the “Mir Iskousstva” were entirely taken up by their craze for rococo curios or for the majesty of imperial architecture; Diaghileff was looking for Russian portraits of the eighteenth century and was preparing the famous exposition of the Tauride Palace; Alexander Benois was living at Versailles, fascinated by the sight of regal splendor. The only one who followed his efforts with solicitude was Serov. So that, when Bakst felt the urgent need of testing his intuitions by direct observations, of knowing positively what he had merely guessed at, he succeeded in persuading the great portraitist to join him on his voyage of exploration into archaic Greece--a journey that was one of the outstanding events of his intellectual life.

Our great master has reserved to himself the task of some day telling in detail the thrilling events of this journey. With that devotion to friendship that is characteristic of him he has kept a minute account of the utterances and impressions of Serov’s manly and delicate mind. It will make a splendid volume some day.

Serov had guided Bakst’s first steps. This Greek expedition was Bakst’s return gift. With the help of these antique realities, which served him as striking arguments, he turned the tormented realist, the sensitive psychologist that Serov was, to a study of syntheticized painting expressing itself in broad and severe forms. And so Serov, pupil of Repine the “wanderer”, portraitist of important Moscow merchants and of great Russian intellectuals, brought back from this voyage a memorable “Abduction of Europa”. His days, however, were counted. And once again Bakst had to continue his solitary way unaided.

“TERROR ANTIQUUS”.

FIRST GOLDEN MEDAL. 1911 UNIVERSAL EXHIBITION (BRUSSELS)]

“TERROR ANTIQUUS” (DETAILED)]

TERROR ANTIQUUS

Bakst did not go to Greece in order to say his “prayer upon the Acropolis”, to venerate the Attic serenity, “the sublime grace and the sweet grandeur” discovered by Winkelmann and Goethe. He visited hot Argos, and Mycenæ with its tomb of the Atrides which several years before had inspired the poet d’Annunzio with the panting dialogue of his “Dead City”; Mycenæ whose gates called forth in him something like a homesickness for Egypt. He strolled about Crete, among the remnants of the palace of Minos, dreaming about Medea the Sorceress, about the Minotaur conquered by Theseus, about the monsters, the Titans, all those brutal or mystic figures--the Gorgons, the Eurynies--who by their incessant assaults shook the pedestal where the Divine Archer defied them. The fantastic and passionate conception of the stage decorations for the Greek tragedies and ballets which were to earn such applause in Paris had its origin in these meditations of his in the occult presence of Hellas’ clear sky.

But there was something else that made his heart beat fast as he strolled among the cliffs of Crete. That was the wind which blew up from the shore--a wind that was perfumed and that seemed to come from the vast Orient hidden in the fog. Who knows but that in such moments the call of the ancient Asiatic was indistinctly awakened in this Occidental Jew? Certain it is that underneath the chisel and the polishing tool of Greek culture he discovered the lavish, ardent and sensual oriental raw material. And the archaic sculptures, massive, with rigid frontlets, straightway transported him to Egypt. Then, too, his readings--Maspéro and the book by Fustel de Coulanges about the “Antique City” which had captivated him--confirmed his theories. He therefore did not hesitate to take from the Egyptians the ornaments in live colors with which he embellished the costumes for his “Oedipus”.

One cannot help but wonder, when one lets “Cleopatra”, “Helen of Sparta” and “St. Sebastian” pass in review, what would have happened if this extraordinary man had not been born on the banks of the Neva and in the fullness of the nineteenth century! Would he, under the pharaohs, have added new figures to the dancers on the tombs of Sakkarah? Or earlier still, would he, as a Phœnician sailor, in his leisure moments have designed the figures on the prows of the triremes of Hamilcar? He would well have fitted into the brilliant, arid, implacable atmosphere which forms the setting for Flaubert’s “Salambô”. But enough of these digressions.

What he had observed and meditated upon during these feverish weeks he intended to mass together in one single work, a decorative synthesis and at the same time a philosophical symbol: Terror antiquus, ancient terror!

In the foreground of the picture, cut off by the frame at knee-length, a colossal archaic Cypris rises. The hair of the idol is draped about its head in fluted curls; the large eyes with their distended pupils have a magic fixedness; a ferocious grin plays about the corners of the lips. The goddess carries a blue dove in the palm of her hand. Powerfully modeled, she turns her back to the picture, to the fury of the elements, to the panic distress of men. Impassive, implacable she turns away from this world which is tumbling. Behind the statue the eye

beholds a landscape, an archipelago seen from a high elevation, and displayed like a map in relief; cliffs submerged by the rising waves; diminutive humanity seeking refuge under the porticos of the temples and attempting to escape the inevitable; an enormous stroke of lighting rending the air. It is the twilight of the gods, the last judgment of the Greek world, the end of Atlantis.

With its mysterious mixture of congealed grandeur and mad anguish the panel, when it was exhibited (if I am not mistaken) with the Association of Russian Artists, created something of a sensation. People flocked to the lectures of Viatcheslav Ivanov, the poet=philosopher and author of a treaty on Dionysios and the religion of the gods, who explained this Greek Apocalypse.

As for Bakst, this work of his constituted a striking but isolated episode in his life as an artist. Man of the theater that he was, his aim was that of utilizing and transforming <g>space</g> in accordance with his vision; here he transformed a surface, in the sense of material and philosophic depth.

THE SPIRAL ROAD

Into this period of researches and visions in Greece falls many an episode that is entirely different but no less significant. Since 1903 Bakst had been using the ballet of the “Dolls’ Fairy” on the imperial stage. It furnished the prototype of those romantic productions, of those entertainments for children which are colorless reflections of Hoffmann’s Coppelius or of Andersen’s tales and in which one sees toys awakened to an artificial and mechanical life by a magic wand--entertainments, furthermore, which have become vapid by their being produced on innumerable German stages. Also, he rendered homage thereby to that “old Petrograd” that was dear to the members of “Mir Iskousstva”.

The prologue, which represents the busy coming and going in a doll shop in the capital city of 1830, is acted by a big crowd of people--shop=attendants, customers of every sort, small merchants and grand ladies, lackeys and grenadiers, mailmen and policemen produced on the stage as the naive action unfolds. All these masques and costumes are absolutely authentic, but they seem fragile and delicate like a dream. The fact is that the documents from which the <g>dossier</g> of the decorator was constructed were anything but commonplace. Bakst did not seek his information from the more direct sources supplied by the engravings of that time: he went to the show cases of porcelain ware.

Too little are the charming products of Russian porcelain makers--the Gardners and the Popovs--known. To be sure, they often merely misrepresent, in their style, the models from Saxony or Sèvres, but they do it with a naive flash of pure color that appeals to rustic artisans. But side by side with such imitations these obscure Russian artists modeled an entire little world of their own in tender clay--cossacks in uniform, drunken serfs, nude women, coiffed “en cabriolet” and burying their chilly hands in fur muffs. Whatever tastefully conventional there was in these figures, Bakst transposed into the language of the theater. Ever since that time this form of ballad (or “boutade”, as it was called

SUBMARINE MONSTERS (“SADKO” OPERA). (GOUACHE)]

STAGE DECORATIONS FOR THE BALLET “WOMEN OF GOOD HUMOUR” (SECOND VERSION). GOUACHE]

A BACCHANALIAN DANCE (JOSEPH) BY R. STRAUSS]

Mr. NIJINSKY AS “BLUE GOD”. (GOUACHE)]

in the time of Cardinal Mazarin), the dancing for which had been designed by Serge Legat, a splendidly endowed young man who committed suicide in a fit of passion and despair over a love affair, has maintained its place on the program. Examples of it are the “Carnival”, “Phantom of the Rose” and “Secret of Suzanne”, that delightful little=work in which one already sees Napoleon evolving from Bonaparte.

But Bakst had by no means given up his painter’s easel for his theatrical sketches. Numerous portraits of his bear out this fact, such as that of the philosopher and lay theologian Vassili Rosanov, of his friend Benois, of Levitan the remote emulator of Corot who discovered the intimate and poignant beauty of the humble Russian landscape, of Diaghileff and his old nurse. Painted with keen observation, with facility of touch and in vivid colors that spread over broad surfaces, these portraits coming from the school of Serov showed nothing of that painful affectation, of that anguish of definitive, absolute expression with which the Moscow master often endowed his canvases to the point of tiresomeness. In the case of Bakst there is nothing of the exact analyst who dissects and torments the soul of his model. With our artist everything seems to be improvisation, happy inspiration; it is a style for which the fine term “prime=sautier” (ready=wit), once coined by Montaigne, is exactly appropriate.

His growing familiarity, however, with Greek art, which is in a high degree plastic and linear, turned him in the direction of more concentrated and more simplified processes. The painting of vases in the merest outlines and on flat surfaces neatly silhouetted, imperceptibly drew him into the path followed by Ingres. He therefore gave up his paint brushes in favor of the lead pencil and the colored crayon. In his portraits thus designed it is the line which circumscribes the person, which sets it out in space, which expresses its character and suggests its size. Thus the Russian painter is already en route towards that strictly linear transposition of a body of three dimensions without the aid of the model, or of any standard of values, or of any material record; a style which some day Pablo Picasso employed as master and Modigliani as spiritual dreamer.

But even all this could not satisfy that fever for activity, that fecund restlessness which at all times determined the tremendous productivity of Bakst. It was necessary, people were agreed, to offer, in opposition to the Academy of Fine Arts, managed by pedantic dilettants who were embittered by the triumph of the new art, a form of instruction at once free and sane. The haughty air of the Academy’s official staff was not justified either because of any venerable tradition nor because of the most elementary <g>savoir faire</g>. The “wanderers”, having dislodged from the Academy the pedants whom Bakst knew, placed themselves in their seats. Their æsthetic carelessness was complete, their ignorance of Western art absolute and provoking. At the same time young artists who rebelled at this teaching were reduced to the necessity of acquiring the rudiments of painting by themselves.

Affairs were in such a condition that they absolutely needed to be remedied. Bakst therefore associated himself with Mstislas Doboujinsky,

a remarkable offspring of “Mir Iskousstva”, who excelled in the designing of the ornament and of the vignette, and who later worked with considerable success in the theater, in order to start a free school. I recall having been able, in connection with an exposition organized by the review “Apollo”, to estimate the results achieved during the first year of the school’s work. One series of studies symbolized a nude man on a background of red material. There was none of that “academic” way of placing things in a vacuum or in a neutral atmosphere, nor of sketches colored amid gray shadows. The bright red of the background played upon the subject in green lights; the rhythm of the colored surfaces superimposed itself upon the anatomic harmony of the body. All these attempts were strictly anonymous as far as the public was concerned; it was not the personal pride of the students that was to be flattered; it was merely a question of establishing the validity of the method. That did not hinder the fact, however, that some of those young unknown painters today enjoy a reputation that borders upon renown.

We have now reached the year 1908. Bakst seems to have condensed his effort. He has summoned back the ancient legendary tale and has restored it to the theater. This myth he has also projected upon a famous canvas. In his portraits his incisive line closely encompasses material and internal realities. In his romantic dreams he has been able to live again through what Stéphane Mallarmé has called “la grâce des choses fanées”. Later he makes a division of his artistic property among his enthusiastic students. How much there is in this to fill a beautiful life! One might think that the circle of such men as Bakst is completed in one harmonious curve. But it is nothing of the sort.

Bakst is one of those men whose road is laid out in spiral form. What seems like a stop, is in fact nothing but a turn of the road. And at each turn the circle widens. At Petrograd his task is completed. There is nothing left there except to follow. But there remains Paris and the universe.

In reality, I am at the end of my task, which is that of acquainting the reader with a Bakst who has not yet been written up, of speaking of his formative period and of the intimate and hidden sources of his inspiration. Once my hero had entered upon public life, I ought already to have left the domain of his private existence. It is with regret that I take leave of the good little fellow who goes into ecstasy over his grandfather’s canary birds; of the uncompromising youth who defies his ignorant masters; of the young man who risks his future--and what a

THE RED SULTANA]

THE PINK SULTANA. (GOUACHE)]

THE YELLOW SULTANA. (GOUACHE)]

STAGE DECORATIONS FOR THE “BLUE GOD”]

future!--for the sake of the exquisite form of a smile and the profile of a tapering hand; and finally of the artist whom I see in my country becoming identified with all big projects, either undertaking them or excelling in them.

But this study would perforce be incomplete if I did not decide to accompany our friend on his exodus toward the West and to put together the main facts of his recent activity which sends its rays over the entire world--an activity of which, for the most part, I am a witness.

Therefore, en route to Paris!

A SHOW IN AN ARMCHAIR

In 1906 or thereabouts, following immediately upon the first Russian revolution that failed so grievously, the group of young artists and poets marched side by side through the breach that had been opened in the citadel of public opinion. The “modernists” of “Mir Iskousstva”, who had been jeered by the common herd, came into their own. But a certain uneasiness troubles this rising power; it feels itself incomplete, limited in a fatal manner. It is not equipped to reestablish great painting; it can only count upon illustrators, decorators, and poets of the

past. And, as is the case with authority everywhere when it feels itself threatened, so too this group, not being able to assert itself, was anxious to spread out.

Accordingly, they looked for new fields to conquer. Once again we see Diaghileff leading the attack. He releases that great exodus of Russians to the West--the brilliant and victorious march on Paris. The offensive starts with a Russian exhibition at the “Salon d’Automne”, an exhibition which under the guise of being retrospective is in reality a fighting manœuvre. A collection of icons, of numerous portraits of the eighteenth century symbolizes the return to a tradition which the young men of the “Monde Artiste” proclaim to be their own. Similarly the arbitrary gaps indicate their complete break with the unnatural art of the “wanderers”, the latter having been nearly entirely eliminated.

Bakst took part in this enterprise not alone as a painter. He decorated the hall of the eighteenth century, which had been transformed into a grove, with a trellis surmounted by vases. This conception of an exposition hall forming an organic whole, making a coherent <g>ensemble</g>, and therefore having a distinctive atmosphere--is not this, again, a gift belonging to the Russians?

This first attack could do no more than break through the first lines of the enemy. Painting, it was evident, was not sufficient as an object for combat. So Diaghileff thought of music. His historical concerts of Russian music caused the greatest excitement; Parisian opinion was deeply stirred. Bakst’s role in this first and formidable success was quite accidental. He drew some portraits for the program, notably that of Balakirev, the composer of “Thamar”: bold lines and a synthetic contour set out the head of the aged oriental sorcerer as though it were sculptured.

It now became a question of following up this first victory. Diaghileff turns once again to the theater, counting for his success upon its numbers and upon the wide range that it afforded. All circumstances are favorable for his project. His old group of co=workers surrounds him, abler through strife and experience. A galaxy of stars of the dance--Pavlova, Karsavina--await but the signal to make them gleam forth on the western sky. At the same time a marvellous dancer is discovered--Nijinsky. And, as a will is needed to give life to all these latent forces, behold, Michael Fokine presents himself,--Fokine, a young master of

STAGE DECORATIONS FOR ACT 3rd OF VERHÆREN’S “HELEN OF SPARTA”. (GOUACHE)]

STAGE DECORATIONS FOR THE “CLEOPATRA” BALLET. (GOUACHE)]

COSTUME FOR TCHEREPNINE’S “ADORATION”]

COSTUME FOR STRAVINSKY’S “BIRD OF FIRE”]

the ballet, a rebel at the hundred=year=old tradition in vogue in the imperial theaters, who is ready to offer himself body and soul to the cause of the painters who take possession of the theater as masters. Into this renunciation of tradition he puts all the fervor of a neophyte and an infinite measure of talent. What was there that one could not dare to undertake with such a band of the élite?

What followed is well known: fifteen times the celebrated “Russian Seasons” have already borne in upon Paris like shining waves breaking into foam.

It is not for me here to trace in detail the fate of the “Seasons”,--the transformations which they underwent, their successes as well as their

failures, the latter oftentimes being more creditable than the successes. Whatever else may have been their mission, certain it is that they brought two men forth into fame and glory: Stravinsky the musician and Leon Bakst the painter.

“Cleopatra” had caused extraordinary surprise. “Sheherazade” in 1910 surpassed everything. In recalling the annals of the modern theater, it is scarcely possible to recollect any production that was given a similar reception.

I had intended to sum up the successive stages of the fifteen years of productive work accomplished. Yet here I find myself, as I face my sources and my documents, overwhelmed with the almost magic

abundance of the material, the description, yes, the mere ordered enumeration of which would fill many a volume. These sources consist in part of numerous productions which maintain their place in the theater from season to season without losing their popularity because of the ever present memories of others. But on the other hand we also have the “dossiers” of these productions,--the sketches and models of the decorations and costumes. These sketches are without a doubt the most authentic references. But besides having value as documents they possess an intrinsic value as works of art. These water-colors or emphasized sketches are more than mere guide-lines for the scissors of the costume maker or the brush of the stage decorator. These statuettes of odalisques, of girls of the street, of a marquis each have an existence of their own, each possesses an individual rhythm. The artist imparts movement to them--the whole dynamic rhythm of the future ballet pre-exists there potentially. Jotted down upon a white sheet of Waltmann they energize and give life to this surface. More than that: they suggest the character of the particular role.

Think of the sensual passion of the Oriental dancers in pink or green or of the fragrance of the rustic idyll that breathes from the exquisite pages drawn for Daphne! Think of the Gothic and mournful sensuality of Sebastian! Indeed, what an inspiring “show in an armchair” it is to turn over these pages, which are a microcosm of a world come into reality upon the stage!

To this show I would invite the reader; as for myself, I would but turn the pages.

* * * * *

“Sheherazade” was Bakst’s real debut at Paris. “Cleopatra” had been a revival. It represented an attempt to utilize the small ballet inspired by a story of Théophile Gauthier’s and supported by a mediocre score composed by Arensky. On top of this score were grafted fragments from Rimsky-Korsakov, Moussorgsky, Glinka, and Glazounoff in order to transform it into an historic whole. Bakst undertook the thankless task of re-creating the unity of this heterogeneous collection. He created a monumental and sinister background, saturating the Egyptian granite with color. He wrought into an harmonious whole the motley crowd of brown slaves with white loin-cloths, the Greek young men raising the panther skin of Dionysos, the captive Jewesses with somber hooded cloaks punctuated by the white in which their single and troubled figure is draped.

THE “BOUTIQUE FANTASQUE” BALLET THE CHILD WITH DOLLS]

THE “BUTTERFLIES” BALLET. A VALET IN 1850]

A HUNTRESS. DECORATIVE PANEL]

THE “BOUTIQUE FANTASQUE” BALLET. A DOLL]

The action which begins as an idyll and which is lulled by the soft music of the violin is suddenly upset by the strident notes of the flutes. Preceded by musicians who carry instruments of antique and unusual design and by solemn guards, a number of slaves carry a long closed box upon a litter. One side of the palanquin slides down and a mummy is revealed, tall and motionless, whom the slaves stand upright upon its feet encased in cothurns of sculpted wood. The slaves, running around her, free her of the bandages in which she is wrapped, and when the last fetters have thus dropped, the queen steps down from the cothurns, unnaturally tall, her hair colored with blue powder. She walks toward the regal couch and in doing so, a nude limb is revealed, longer and bolder than those of the fairies in the pictures of English pre-Raphaelite artists. This female being, this queen is Ida Rubinstein.

It is not the first time in the life of Bakst that we see this haughty and pallid profile of the implacable empress appear. Several years previously Bakst had adapted the stage setting of Sophocles’ “Antigone”

to this young débutante, who then appeared under an assumed name. I clearly remember this unique production. And I see again the proud maiden as she is wrapped in the numerous and complicated folds of her black mourning robe. In working out this conception Bakst had drawn his inspiration from a tombstone or else had deciphered the clever pattern from the sides of a Greek vase.

Later this young woman with her disconcerting and mysterious beauty, this mystical virgin, voluptuous yet frigidly cold, with a will

of iron underneath a fragile frame, and possessed of a haughty and cold intelligence, who dressed in eccentric clothes, became one of the Muses of our artist. Hers was the gift of driving his imagination to exasperation. Even after many years had elapsed she still held for him the allpowerful attraction of the strange, of the unreal, of the supernatural. His Muse--perhaps that is not the right term: rather, his Friendly Demon.

Having once touched upon the chapter of the Muses, another female image rises in my mind’s eye--that of Mme. Marie Kousnetzoff, the opera star. She is not the white and lunar Lilith; she is the Eve of the terrestrial paradise. This Russian brunette, with a Levantine face, a blooming flower in human flesh, with full, muscular form, seemed to have been created for the very purpose of wearing the turbans and the revealing veils designed by Bakst. Those who have seen her in the “Legend of Joseph”, garbed as a Venetian of the Renaissance, and wearing the thick-soled shoes suggested to Bakst by the celebrated costume designer Cesare Vecellio, brother of Titian, will forever retain this wonderful picture of the Biblical story of lust. Thus Mme. Kousnetzoff was the very incarnation of the oriental mirage that many a time haunted Bakst. Was she his Muse? No--his female Double!

But enough of these parenthetical remarks! Why was it that “Sheherazade” established itself and retained its place? Why was it that it could keep its prestige undiminished, even after it had called forth innumerable imitations in a territory extending all the way from the Opera to the meanest of suburban music halls?

The reason for it is the fact that this Persian ballet, which adapts the prologue of the “Thousand and One Nights” to a subtle and decorative score composed by Rimsky-Korsakoff, the eminent colorist, is the affirmation and, what is still more important, the realization of a great principle--the optic unity of a production. The sides of a large green tent enriched with gold and black encase and encircle the ladies’ apartment which is peopled with a crowd dressed in orange, pink and green clothes, who surround the single royal jewel, the Sultana Zobeide, a blue sapphire in a setting of rubies and emeralds. Thus the costumes either blend with the scenery in an infinity of fine shades and gradations of value that have been carefully studied out, or they contrast with the scenery in accordance with the visible logic of complementary colors.

Is the result, then, a ballet? It is a living scenery with interchangeable elements.

Was I going to speak of optic unity? Do I mean by it that unity stops at the surface? Certainly not! This ardent and cruel magnificence of color, this effluvium of sensuality which emanates from the setting produces an action in which the very excess of passionate ecstacy can only be satiated by the spilling of blood. This harmonious giddiness, this measured paroxysm seems to recall the title which Maurice Barrès gave to a famous book: “Concerning Blood, Sensuality, and Death.”

“Sheherazade” remains as the model work in Bakst’s oriental sphere of endeavor; neither he himself nor his competitors surpassed it. But

A PAGE. (“ALADIN” BALLET)]

A PAGE IN LOUIS XIV’s STYLE. (“ALADIN” BALLET)]

THE EMPRESS ELISABETH PETROVNA HUNTING. (GOUACHE)]

DELPHI. (GOUACHE)]

round about this luminous center other visions of hashish radiate forth: “Thamar”--a Cleopatra in Georgian style, a symphony in blue major; “The Blue God”, a Hindu fairy=tale; “Peri”, more recently, “Alladin”, and, only the other day, “The Adoration.” Astonishment takes hold of one as one tells the large pearls on this necklace that is worthy of the funeral=pile of Sardanapalus. Turn over the pages of the ballets that I have cited and look for the sketches; if you are in possession of the magic word of Ali=Baba, force open the sesame of the Museum of Decorative Arts in which are jealously guarded the most beautiful of these sketches; and you will find how justified was the saying of the late Joséfin Péladan, “Bakst, the Delacroix of the Costume.”

Consider the wisely arranged orgy of “Sheherazade”, (for Bakst has this supreme gift that great masters possess, of being concerned about the smallest button on a legging at the same time that they are getting a whole army to march) and in this whole eruption of vigorous colors you will not observe the slightest suggestion of white. There is, nevertheless, in the work of Bakst a whole corner, enveloped in sunshine, in which the white--shining and serene, virginal and fresh--dominates resolutely.

The sensual within him is duplicated by the romantic. We saw this come to the fore for the first time in the “Fairy of the Dolls”; Schumann’s “Carneval” revealed the “white Bakst” to the Parisians. They never grew tired of these adorable puppets, sentimental and crafty, who glide over the floor to the musical text of Schumann like the dolls on the cover of a music box. Harlequin and Pierrot, Chiarina or Colombine--they are not merely endless masks costumed in the styles of 1830, with furbelows and coiffures in ringlets; they are the incarnations of that playful and exquisite Viennese spirit; they are the descendants of Mozart and of Haydn. And the cut of their hazy cambrics, their whole bearing is in “Biedermayer” style--that quaint and charming style of bourgeois romanticism in the Germany of old. In order not to crush these fragile and delicate beings with the four walls of reality, as they flitted like butterflies about the stage. Bakst removed all stationary decoration: a background of drapery, a couch set off against this background--that was all. Nothing encumbers the view nor impedes the imagination of the spectator as he is enticed by the graceful or ironical episodes of the play to picture to himself a ball room or a boudoir or a park.

If the costumes of “Papillons”, which was connected with Schumann’s “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

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.

GALISSON, PRINCE CHARMANT’S TUTOR LOUIS XIV BALLET (PAVLOVA TOURNEE). GOUACHE]

THE BIRD OF FIRE (ANOTHER VERSION). GOUACHE]

THE “BOUTIQUE FANTASQUE” BALLET. THE ENGLISHWOMAN]

THE “BOUTIQUE FANTASQUE” BALLET. THE ENGLISHMAN]

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

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

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”,

STAGE DECORATIONS FOR “THAMAR”]

SADKO]

THE “BOUTIQUE FANTASQUE” BALLET “LA POUPÉE AUX DENTELLES”]

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

of theatrical vision, whether their names be Gonzaga or Bibiena, whether Sanquirico or Ciceri.

This masterpiece, concerning which the author of these lines has written a book, is a free “capriccio” of the Great Age when Tiepolo

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

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

PORTRAIT OF IDA RUBINSTEIN]

A CALL (POSTER FOR AN EXHIBITION AT VIENNA). (GOUACHE)]

A LIVING MODEL. RED CHALK AND CHALK]

THE “BOUTIQUE FANTASQUE” BALLET. AN ITALIAN DOLL]

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?

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

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

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.

PORTRAIT OF THE POET ANDREI BELY. CRAYON AND PENCIL]

A PORTRAIT]

PORTRAIT OF THE BOY Z. RED CHALK]

THE “WOMEN OF GOOD HUMOUR” BALLET. DOROTHEA]

EPILOGUE

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.

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

“A PEASANT WOMAN” (SKETCH BY POTEMKINE). GOUACHE]

“A PEASANT WOMAN” (SKETCH BY POTEMKINE). GOUACHE]

COSTUME FOR “LE CHANTRE ET LA DÉVOTE”]

COSTUME OF PEASANT WOMAN FOR POTEMKINE’S “VILLAGE”]

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

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?