It is easy to liken the art of this marvellous woman to something concrete, to the drawings of Toulouse-Lautrec or Steinlen, the posters of Chéret ... and there is indeed a suggestion of these men in the work of Yvette Guilbert. The same broad lines are there, the same ample style, the same complete effect, but there is more. In certain phases of her talent, the gamine, the apache, the gavroche, she reflects the spirit of the inspiration which kindled these painters into creation, but in other phases, of which Lisette, Les Cloches de Nantes, La Passion, or Le Cycle du Vin are the expression, you may more readily compare her style with that of Watteau, Eugene Carrière, Félicien Rops, or Boucher.... She takes us by the hand through the centuries, offering us the results of a vast amount of study, a vast amount of erudition, and a vast amount of work. In so many fine strokes she evokes an epoch. She has studied the distinction between a curtsey which precedes the recital of a fable of La Fontaine and a poem of Francis Jammes. She has closely scrutinized pictures in neglected corridors of the Louvre to learn the manner in which a cavalier lifts his hat in various periods. There are those who complain that she emphasizes the dramatic side of the old French songs, which possibly survive more clearly under more naïve treatment. Her justification in this instance is the complete success of her method. The songs serve her purpose, even supposing she does not serve theirs. But a more valid cause for grievance can be urged against her. Unfortunately and ill-advisedly she has occasionally carried something of the scientific into an otherwise delightful matinée, importing a lecturer, like Jean Beck of Bryn Mawr, to analyze and describe the music of the middle ages, or even becoming pedantic and professorial herself; sometimes Yvette preaches or, still worse, permits some one else, dancer, violinist, or singer to usurp her place on the platform. These interruptions are sorry moments indeed but such lapses are forgiven with an almost divine graciousness when Yvette interprets another song. Then the dull or scholarly interpolations are forgotten.
I cannot, indeed, know where to begin to praise her or where to stop. My feelings for her performances (which I have seen and heard whenever I have been able during the past twelve years in Chicago, New York, London, and Paris) are unequivocal. There are moments when I am certain that her rendering of La Passion is her supreme achievement and there are moments when I prefer to see her as the unrestrained purveyor of the art of the chansonniers of Montmartre—unrestrained, I say, and yet it is evident to me that she has refined her interpretations of these songs, revived twenty-five years after she first sang them, bestowed on them a spirit which originally she could not give them. From the beginning Ma Tête, La Soularde, La Glu, La Pierreuse, and the others were drawn as graphically as the pictures of Steinlen, but age has softened her interpretation of them. What formerly was striking has now become beautiful, what was always astonishing has become a masterpiece of artistic expression. Once, indeed, these pictures were sharply etched, but latterly they have been lithographed, drawn softly on stone.... I have said that I do not know in what song, in what mood, I prefer Yvette Guilbert. I can never be certain but if I were asked to choose a programme I think I should include in it C'est le Mai, La Légende de St. Nicolas, Le Roi a Fait Battre Tambour, Les Cloches de Nantes, Le Cycle du Vin, Le Lien Serré, La Glu, Lisette, La Femme, Que l'Amour Cause de Peine, and Oh, how many others!
All art must be beautiful, says Mme. Guilbert, and she has realized the meaning of what might have been merely a phrase; no matter how sordid or trivial her subject she has contrived to make of it something beautiful. She is not, therefore, a realist in any literal signification of the word (although I doubt if any actress on the stage can evoke more sense of character than she) because she always smiles and laughs and weeps with the women she represents; she sympathizes with them, she humanizes them, where another interpreter would coldly present them for an audience to take or to leave, exposing them to cruel inspection. Even in her interpretation of heartless women it is always to our sense of humour that she appeals, while in her rendering of Ma Tête and La Pierreuse she strikes directly at our hearts. Zola once told Mme. Guilbert that the apaches were the logical descendants of the old chevaliers of France. "They are the only men we have now who will fight over a woman!" he said. When you hear Mme. Guilbert call "Pi-ouit!" you will readily perceive that she understands what Zola meant.
Wonderful Yvette, who has embodied so many pleasant images in the theatre, who has expressed to the world so much of the soul of France, so much of the soul of art itself, but, above all, so much of the soul of humanity. It is not alone General Booth who has made friends of "drabs from the alley-ways and drug fiends pale—Minds still passion-ridden, soul-powers frail! Vermin-eaten saints with mouldy breath, unwashed legions with the ways of death": these are all friends of Yvette Guilbert too. And when Balzac wrote the concluding paragraph of "Massimila Doni" he may have foreseen the later application of the lines.... Surely "the peris, nymphs, fairies, sylphs of the olden time, the muses of Greece, the marble Virgins of the Certosa of Pavia, the Day and Night of Michael Angelo, the little angels that Bellini first drew at the foot of church paintings, and to whom Raphael gave such divine form at the foot of the Vierge au donataire, and of the Madonna freezing at Dresden; Orcagna's captivating maidens in the Church of Or San Michele at Florence, the heavenly choirs on the tombs of St. Sebald at Nuremberg, several Virgins in the Duomo at Milan, the hordes of a hundred Gothic cathedrals, the whole nation of figures who break their forms to come to you, O all-embracing artists—" surely, surely, all these hover over Yvette Guilbert.
Waslav Nijinsky
| "A thing of beauty is a boy forever." |
| Allen Norton. |
SERGE DE DIAGHILEW brought the dregs of the Russian Ballet to New York and, after a first greedy gulp, inspired by curiosity to get a taste of this highly advertised beverage, the public drank none too greedily. The scenery and the costumes, designed by Bakst, Roerich, Benois, and Larionow, and the music of Rimsky-Korsakow, Tcherepnine, Schumann, Borodine, Balakirew, and Strawinsky—especially Strawinsky—arrived. It was to be deplored, however, that Bakst had seen fit to replace the original décor of Scheherazade by a new setting in rawer colours, in which the flaming orange fairly burned into the ultramarine and green (readers of "A Rebours" will remember that des Esseintes designed a room something like this). A few of the dancers came, but of the best not a single one. Nor was Fokine, the dancer-producer, who devised the choregraphy for The Firebird, Cléopâtre, and Petrouchka, among the number, although his presence had been announced and expected. To those enthusiasts, and they included practically every one who had seen the Ballet in its greater glory, who had prepared their friends for an overwhelmingly brilliant spectacle, over-using the phrase, "a perfect union of the arts," the early performances in January, 1916, at the Century Theatre were a great disappointment. Often had we urged that the individual played but a small part in this new and gorgeous entertainment, but now we were forced to admit that the ultimate glamour was lacking in the ensemble, which was obviously no longer the glad, gay entity it once had been.
The picture was still there, the music (not always too well played) but the interpretation was mediocre. The agile Miassine could scarcely be called either a great dancer or a great mime. He had been chosen by Diaghilew for the rôle of Joseph in Richard Strauss's version of the Potiphar legend but, during the course of a London season carried through without the co-operation of Nijinsky, this was the only part allotted to him. In New York he interpreted, not without humour and with some technical skill, the incidental divertissement from Rimsky-Korsakow's opera, The Snow-Maiden, against a vivid background by Larionow. The uninspired choregraphy of this ballet was also ascribed to Miassine by the programme, although probably in no comminatory spirit. In the small rôle of Eusebius in Carneval and in the negligible part of the Prince in The Firebird he was entirely satisfactory, but it was impertinent of the direction to assume that he would prove an adequate substitute for Nijinsky in rôles to which that dancer had formerly applied his extremely finished art.
Adolf Bolm contributed his portraits of the Moor in Petrouchka, of Pierrot in Carneval, and of the Chief Warrior in the dances from Prince Igor. These three rôles completely express the possibilities of Bolm as a dancer or an actor, and sharply define his limitations. His other parts, Dakon in Daphnis et Chloë—Sadko, the Prince in Thamar, Amoun in Cléopâtre, the Slave in Scheherazade, and Pierrot in Papillons, are only variations on the three afore-mentioned themes. His friends often confuse his vitality and abundant energy with a sense of characterization and a skill as a dancer which he does not possess. For the most part he is content to express himself by stamping his heels and gnashing his teeth, and when, as in Cléopâtre, he attempts to convey a more subtle meaning to his general gesture, he is not very successful. Bolm is an interesting and useful member of the organization, but he could not make or unmake a season; nor could Gavrilow, who is really a fine dancer in his limited way, although he is unfortunately lacking in magnetism and any power of characterization.
But it was on the distaff side of the cast that the Ballet seemed pitifully undistinguished, even to those who did not remember the early Paris seasons when the roster included the names of Anna Pavlowa, Tamara Karsavina, Caterina Gheltzer, and Ida Rubinstein. The leading feminine dancer of the troupe when it gave its first exhibitions in New York was Xenia Maclezova, who had not, so far as my memory serves, danced in any London or Paris season of the Ballet (except for one gala performance at the Paris Opéra which preceded the American tour), unless in some very menial capacity. This dancer, like so many others, had the technique of her art at her toes' ends. Sarah Bernhardt once told a reporter that the acquirement of technique never did any harm to an artist, and if one were not an artist it was not a bad thing to have. I have forgotten how many times Mlle. Maclezova could pirouette without touching the toe in the air to the floor, but it was some prodigious number. She was past-mistress of the entrechat and other mysteries of the ballet academy. Here, however, her knowledge of her art seemed to end, in the subjugation of its very mechanism. She was very nearly lacking in those qualities of grace, poetry, and imagination with which great artists are freely endowed, and although she could not actually have been a woman of more than average weight, she often conveyed to the spectator an impression of heaviness. In such a work as The Firebird she really offended the eye. Far from interpreting the ballet, she gave you an idea of how it should not be done.
Her season with the Russians was terminated in very short order, and Lydia Lopoukova, who happened to be in America, and who, indeed, had already been engaged for certain rôles, was rushed into her vacant slippers. Now Mme. Lopoukova had charm as a dancer, whatever her deficiencies in technique. In certain parts, notably as Colombine in Carneval, she assumed a roguish demeanor which was very fetching. As La Ballerine in Petrouchka, too, she met all the requirements of the action. But in Le Spectre de la Rose, Les Sylphides, The Firebird, and La Princesse Enchantée, she floundered hopelessly out of her element.
Tchernicheva, one of the lesser but more steadfast luminaries of the Ballet, in the rôles for which she was cast, the principal Nymph in L'Après-midi d'un Faune, Echo in Narcisse, and the Princess in The Firebird, more than fulfilled her obligations to the ensemble, but her opportunities in these mimic plays were not of sufficient importance to enable her to carry the brunt of the performances on her lovely shoulders. Flore Revalles was drafted, I understand, from a French opera company. I have been told that she sings—Tosca is one of her rôles—as well as she dances. That may very well be. To impressionable spectators she seemed a real femme fatale. Her Cléopâtre suggested to me a Parisian cocotte much more than an Egyptian queen. It would be blasphemy to compare her with Ida Rubinstein in this rôle—Ida Rubinstein, who was true Aubrey Beardsley! In Thamar and Zobeide, both to a great extent dancing rôles, Mlle. Revalles, both as dancer and actress, was but a frail substitute for Karsavina.
The remainder of the company was adequate, but not large, and the ensemble was by no means as brilliant as those who had seen the Ballet in London or Paris might have expected. Nor in the absence of Fokine, that master of detail, were performances sufficiently rehearsed. There was, of course, explanation in plenty for this disintegration. Gradually, indeed, the Ballet as it had existed in Europe had suffered a change. Only a miracle and a fortune combined would have sufficed to hold the original company intact. It was not held intact, and the war made further inroads on its integrity. Then, for the trip to America many of the dancers probably were inclined to demand double pay. Undoubtedly, Serge de Diaghilew had many more troubles than those which were celebrated in the public prints, and it must be admitted that, even with his weaker company, he gave us finer exhibitions of stage art than had previously been even the exception here.
In the circumstances, however, certain pieces, which were originally produced when the company was in the flush of its first glory, should never have been presented here at all. It was not the part of reason, for example, to pitchfork on the Century stage an indifferent performance of Le Pavilion d'Armide, in which Nijinsky once disported himself as the favourite slave, and which, as a matter of fact, requires a company of virtuosi to make it a passable diversion. Cléopâtre, in its original form with Nijinsky, Fokine, Pavlowa, Ida Rubinstein, and others, hit all who saw it square between the eyes. The absurdly expurgated edition, with its inadequate cast, offered to New York, was but the palest shadow of the sensuous entertainment that had aroused all Paris, from the Batignolles to the Bastille. The music, the setting, the costumes—what else was left to celebrate? The altered choregraphy, the deplorable interpretation, drew tears of rage from at least one pair of eyes. It was quite incomprehensible also why The Firebird, which depends on the grace and poetical imagination of the filmiest and most fairy-like actress-dancer, should have found a place in the répertoire. It is the dancing equivalent of a coloratura soprano rôle in opera. Thankful, however, for the great joy of having re-heard Strawinsky's wonderful score, I am willing to overlook this tactical error.
All things considered, it is small wonder that a large slice of the paying population of New York tired of the Ballet in short order. One reason for this cessation of interest was the constant repetition of ballets. In London and Paris the seasons as a rule have been shorter, and on certain evenings of the week opera has taken the place of the dance. It has been rare indeed that a single work has been repeated more than three or four times during an engagement. I have not found it stupid to listen to and look at perhaps fifteen performances of varying degrees of merit of Petrouchka, Scheherazade, Carneval, and the dances from Prince Igor; I would rather see the Russian Ballet repeatedly, even as it existed in America, than four thousand five hundred and six Broadway plays or seventy-three operas at the Metropolitan once, but I dare say I may look upon myself as an exception.
At any rate, when the company entered upon a four weeks' engagement at the Metropolitan Opera House, included in the regular subscription season of opera, the subscribers groaned; many of them groaned aloud, and wrote letters to the management and to the newspapers. To be sure, during the tour which had followed the engagement at the Century the répertoire had been increased, but the company remained the same—until the coming of Waslav Nijinsky.
When America was first notified of the impending visit of the Russian Ballet it was also promised that Waslav Nijinsky and Tamara Karsavina would head the organization. It was no fault of the American direction or of Serge de Diaghilew that they did not do so. Various excuses were advanced for the failure of Karsavina to forsake her family in Russia and to undertake the journey to the United States but, whatever the cause, there seems to remain no doubt that she refused to come. As for Nijinsky, he, with his wife, had been a prisoner in an Austrian detention camp since the beginning of the war. Wheels were set grinding but wheels grind slowly in an epoch of international bloodshed, and it was not until March, 1916, that the Austrian ambassador at Washington was able to announce that Nijinsky had been set free.
I do not believe the coming to this country of any other celebrated person had been more widely advertised, although P. T. Barnum may have gone further in describing the charitable and vocal qualities of Jenny Lind. Nijinsky had been extravagantly praised, not only by the official press representatives but also by eminent critics and private persons, in adjectives which seemed to preclude any possibility of his living up to them. I myself had been among the pæan singers. I had thrust "half-man, half-god" into print. "A flame!" cried some one. Another, "A jet of water from a fountain!" Such men in the street as had taken the trouble to consider the subject at all very likely expected the arrival of some stupendous and immortal monstrosity, a gravity-defying being with sixteen feet (at least), who bounded like a rubber ball, never touching the solid stage except at the beginning and end of the evening's performance.
Nijinsky arrived in April. Almost immediately he gave vent to one of those expressions of temperament often associated with interpretative genius, the kind of thing I have described at some length in "Music and Bad Manners." He was not at all pleased with the Ballet as he found it. Interviewed, he expressed his displeasure in the newspapers. The managers of the organization wisely remained silent, and a controversy was avoided, but the public had received a suggestion of petulance which could not contribute to the popularity of the new dancer.
Nijinsky danced for the first time in New York on the afternoon of April 12, at the Metropolitan Opera House. The pieces in which he appeared on that day were Le Spectre de la Rose and Petrouchka. Some of us feared that eighteen months in a detention camp would have stamped their mark on the dancer. As a matter of fact his connection with the Russian Ballet had been severed in 1913, a year before the war began. I can say for myself that I was probably a good deal more nervous than Nijinsky on the occasion of his first appearance in America. It would have been a cruel disappointment to me to have discovered that his art had perished during the intervening three years since I had last seen him. My fears were soon dissipated. A few seconds after he as the Rose Ghost had bounded through the window, it was evident that he was in possession of all his powers; nay, more, that he had added to the refinement and polish of his style. I had called Nijinsky's dancing perfection in years gone by, because it so far surpassed that of his nearest rival; now he had surpassed himself. True artists, indeed, have a habit of accomplishing this feat. I may call to your attention the careers of Olive Fremstad, Yvette Guilbert, and Marie Tempest. Later I learned that this first impression might be relied on. Nijinsky, in sooth, has now no rivals upon the stage. One can only compare him with himself!
The Weber-Gautier dance-poem, from the very beginning until the end, when he leaps out of the window of the girl's chamber into the night, affords this great actor-dancer one of his most grateful opportunities. It is in this very part, perhaps, which requires almost unceasing exertion for nearly twelve minutes, that Nijinsky's powers of co-ordination, mental, imaginative, muscular, are best displayed. His dancing is accomplished in that flowing line, without a break between poses and gestures, which is the despair of all novices and almost all other virtuosi. After a particularly difficult leap or toss of the legs or arms, it is a marvel to observe how, without an instant's pause to regain his poise, he rhythmically glides into the succeeding gesture. His dancing has the unbroken quality of music, the balance of great painting, the meaning of fine literature, and the emotion inherent in all these arts. There is something of transmutation in his performances; he becomes an alembic, transforming movement into a finely wrought and beautiful work of art. The dancing of Nijinsky is first an imaginative triumph, and the spectator, perhaps, should not be interested in further dissection of it, but a more intimate observer must realize that behind this the effect produced depends on his supreme command of his muscles. It is not alone the final informing and magnetized imaginative quality that most other dancers lack; it is also just this muscular co-ordination. Observe Gavrilow in the piece under discussion, in which he gives a good imitation of Nijinsky's general style, and you will see that he is unable to maintain this rhythmic continuity.
Nijinsky's achievements become all the more remarkable when one remembers that he is working with an imperfect physical medium. Away from the scene he is an insignificant figure, short and ineffective in appearance. Aside from the pert expression of his eyes, he is like a dozen other young Russians. Put him unintroduced into a drawing-room with Jacques Copeau, Orchidée, Doris Keane, Bill Haywood, Edna Kenton, the Baroness de Meyer, Paulet Thevenaz, the Marchesa Casati, Marcel Duchamp, Cathleen Nesbitt, H. G. Wells, Anna Pavlowa, Rudyard Chennevière, Vladimir Rebikow, Henrie Waste, and Isadora Duncan, and he probably would pass entirely unnoticed. On the stage it may be observed that the muscles of his legs are overdeveloped and his ankles are too large; that is, if you are in the mood for picking flaws, which most of us are not in the presence of Nijinsky in action. Here, however, stricture halts confounded; his head is set on his shoulders in a manner to give satisfaction to a great sculptor, and his torso, with its slender waist line, is quite beautiful. On the stage, Nijinsky makes of himself what he will. He can look tall or short, magnificent or ugly, fascinating or repulsive. Like so many interpretative artists, he remoulds himself for his public appearances. It is under the electric light in front of the painted canvas that he becomes a personality, and that personality is governed only by the scenario of the ballet he is representing.
From the day of Nijinsky's arrival, the ensemble of the Ballet improved; somewhat of the spontaneity of the European performances was regained; a good deal of the glamour was recaptured; the loose lines were gathered taut, and the choregraphy of Fokine (Nijinsky is a director as well as a dancer) was restored to some of its former power. He has appeared in nine rôles in New York during the two short seasons in which he has been seen with the Russian Ballet here: the Slave in Scheherazade, Petrouchka, the Rose Ghost, the Faun, the Harlequin in Carneval, Narcisse, Till Eulenspiegel, and the principal male rôles of La Princesse Enchantée and Les Sylphides. To enjoy the art of Nijinsky completely, to fully appreciate his genius, it is necessary not only to see him in a variety of parts, but also to see him in the same rôle many times.
Study the detail of his performance in Scheherazade, for example. Its precision alone is noteworthy. Indeed, precision is a quality we see exposed so seldom in the theatre that when we find it we are almost inclined to hail it as genius. The rôle of the Slave in this ballet is perhaps Nijinsky's scenic masterpiece—exotic eroticism expressed in so high a key that its very existence seems incredible on our puritanic stage, and yet with such great art (the artist always expresses himself with beauty) that the intention is softened by the execution. Before the arrival of this dancer, Scheherazade had become a police court scandal. There had been talk of a "Jim Crow" performance in which the blacks were to be separated from the whites in the harem, and I am told that our provincial police magistrates even wanted to replace the "mattresses"—so were the divans of the sultanas described in court—by rocking chairs! But to the considerably more vivid Scheherazade of Nijinsky no exception was taken. This strange, curious, head-wagging, simian creature, scarce human, wriggled through the play, leaving a long streak of lust and terror in his wake. Never did Nijinsky as the Negro Slave touch the Sultana, but his subtle and sensuous fingers fluttered close to her flesh, clinging once or twice questioningly to a depending tassel. Pierced by the javelins of the Sultan's men, the Slave's death struggle might have been revolting and gruesome. Instead, Nijinsky carried the eye rapidly upward with his tapering feet as they balanced for the briefest part of a second straight high in the air, only to fall inert with so brilliantly quick a movement that the æsthetic effect grappled successfully with the feeling of disgust which might have been aroused. This was acting, this was characterization, so completely merged in rhythm that the result became a perfect whole, and not a combination of several intentions, as so often results from the work of an actor-dancer.
The heart-breaking Petrouchka, the roguish Harlequin, the Chopiniac of Les Sylphides,—all were offered to our view; and Narcisse, in which Nijinsky not only did some very beautiful dancing, but posed (as the Greek youth admired himself in the mirror of the pool) with such utter and arresting grace that even here he awakened a definite thrill. In La Princesse Enchantée he merely danced, but how he danced! Do you who saw him still remember those flickering fingers and toes? "He winketh with his eyes, he speaketh with his feet, he teacheth with his fingers," is written in the Book of Proverbs, and the writer might have had in mind Nijinsky in La Princesse Enchantée. All these parts were differentiated, all completely realized, in the threefold intricacy of this baffling art, which perhaps is not an art at all until it is so realized, when its plastic, rhythmic, and histrionic elements become an entity.
After a summer in Spain and Switzerland, without Nijinsky, the Russian Ballet returned to America for a second season, opening at the Manhattan Opera House October 16, 1916. It is always a delight to hear and see performances in this theatre, and it was found that the brilliance of the Ballet was much enhanced by its new frame. The season, however, opened with a disappointment. It had been announced that Nijinsky would dance on the first night his choregraphic version of Richard Strauss's tone-poem, Till Eulenspiegel. It is not the first time that a press agent has made a false prophecy. While rehearsing the new work, Nijinsky twisted his ankle, and during the first week of the engagement he did not appear at all. This was doubly unfortunate, because the company was weaker than it had been the previous season, lacking both Miassine and Tchernicheva. The only novelty (for America) produced during the first week was an arrangement of the divertissement from Rimsky-Korsakow's opera, Sadko, which had already been given a few times in Paris and London by the Ballet, never with conspicuous success. The second week of the season, Nijinsky returned to appear in three rôles, the Faun, Till Eulenspiegel, and the Slave in Scheherazade. Of his performance to Debussy's lovely music I have written elsewhere; nor did this new vision cause me to revise my opinions.
Till Eulenspiegel is the only new ballet the Russians have produced in America. (Soleil de Nuit was prepared in Europe, and performed once at the Paris Opéra before it was seen in New York. Besides, it was an arrangement of dances from an opera which is frequently given in Russia and which has been presented at the Opéra-Comique in Paris.) The chef d'orchestre, Pierre Monteux, refused to direct performances of this work, on the ground that the composer was not only a German, but a very much alive and active German patriot. On the occasions, therefore, that Till was performed in New York, the orchestra struggled along under the baton of Dr. Anselm Goetzl. In selecting this work and in his arrangement of the action Nijinsky was moved, no doubt, by consideration for the limitations of the company as it existed,—from which he was able to secure the effects he desired. The scenery and costumes by Robert E. Jones, of New York, were decidedly diverting—the best work this talented young man has done, I think. Over a deep, spreading background of ultramarine, the crazy turrets of mediæval castles leaned dizzily to and fro. The costumes were exaggerations of the exaggerated fashions of the Middle Ages. Mr. Jones added feet of stature to the already elongated peaked headdresses of the period. The trains of the velvet robes, which might have extended three yards, were allowed to trail the full depth of the Manhattan Opera House stage. The colours were oranges, reds, greens, and blues, those indeed of Bakst's Scheherazade, but so differently disposed that they made an entirely dissimilar impression. The effect reminded one spectator of a Spanish omelet.
In arranging the scenario, Nijinsky followed in almost every detail Wilhelm Klatte's description of the meaning of the music, which is printed in programme books whenever the tone-poem is performed, without Strauss's authority, but sometimes with his sanction. Nijinsky was quite justified in altering the end of the work, which hangs the rogue-hero, into another practical joke. His version of this episode fits the music and, in the original Till Eulenspiegel stories, Till is not hanged, but dies in bed. The keynote of Nijinsky's interpretation was gaiety. He was as utterly picaresque as the work itself; he reincarnated the spirit of Gil Blas; indeed, a new quality crept into stage expression through this characterization. Margaret Wycherly, one of the most active admirers of the dancer, told me after the first performance that she felt that he had for the first time leaped into the hearts of the great American public, whose appreciation of his subtler art as expressed in Narcisse, Petrouchka, and even Scheherazade, had been more moderate. There were those who protested that this was not the Till of the German legends, but any actor who attempts to give form to a folk or historical character, or even a character derived from fiction, is forced to run counter to many an observer's preconceived ideas.
"It is an error to believe that pantomime is merely a way of doing without words," writes Arthur Symons," that it is merely the equivalent of words. Pantomime is thinking overheard. It begins and ends before words have formed themselves, in a deeper consciousness than that of speech. And it addresses itself, by the artful limitations of its craft, to universal human experience, knowing that the moment it departs from those broad lines it will become unintelligible. It risks existence on its own perfection, as the rope-dancer does, to whom a false step means a down-fall. And it appeals democratically to people of all nations.... And pantomime has that mystery which is one of the requirements of true art. To watch it is like dreaming. How silently, in dreams, one gathers the unheard sounds of words from the lips that do but make pretence of saying them! And does not every one know that terrifying impossibility of speaking which fastens one to the ground for the eternity of a second, in what is the new, perhaps truer, computation of time in dreams? Something like that sense of suspense seems to hang over the silent actors in pantomime, giving them a nervous exaltation, which has its subtle, immediate effect upon us, in tragic and comic situation. The silence becomes an atmosphere, and with a very curious power of giving distinction to form and motion. I do not see why people should ever break silence on the stage except to speak poetry. Here, in pantomime, you have a gracious, expressive silence, beauty of gesture, a perfectly discreet appeal to the emotions, a transposition of the world into an elegant accepted convention."
Arthur Symons wrote these words before he had seen the Russian Ballet, before the Russian Ballet, as we know it, existed, indeed, before Nijinsky had begun to dance in public, and he felt that the addition of poetry and music to pantomime—the Wagner music-drama in other words—brought about a perfect combination of the arts. Nevertheless, there is an obvious application of his remarks to the present instance. There is, indeed, the quality of a dream about the characters Nijinsky presents to us. I remember once, at a performance of the Russian Ballet, I sat in a box next to a most intelligent man, a writer himself; I was meeting him for the first time, and he was seeing the Ballet for the first time. Before the curtain rose he had told me that dancing and pantomime were very pretty to look at, but that he found no stimulation in watching them, no mental and spiritual exaltation, such as might follow a performance of Hamlet. Having seen Nijinsky, I could not agree with him—and this indifferent observer became that evening himself a fervent disciple of the Ballet. For Nijinsky gave him, he found, just what his ideal performance of Shakespeare's play might have given him, a basis for dreams, for thinking, for poetry. The ennobling effect of all great and perfect art, after the primary emotion, seems to be to set our minds wandering in a thousand channels, to suggest new outlets. Pater's experience before the Monna Lisa is only unique in its intense and direct expression.
No writer, no musician, no painter, can feel deep emotion before a work of art without expressing it in some way, although the expression may be a thousand leagues removed from the inspiration. And how few of us can view the art of Nijinsky without emotion! To the painter he gives a new sense of proportion, to the musician a new sense of rhythm, while to the writer he must perforce immediately suggest new words; better still, new meanings for old words. Dance, pantomime, acting, harmony, all these divest themselves of their worn-out accoutrements and appear, as if clothed by magic, in garments of unheard-of novelty; hue, texture, cut, and workmanship are all a surprise to us. We look enraptured, we go away enthralled, and perhaps even unconsciously a new quality creeps into our own work. It is the same glamour cast over us by contemplation of the Campo Santo at Pisa, or the Roman Theatre at Orange, or the Cathedral at Chartres,—the inspiration for one of the most word-jewelled books in any language—or the New York sky line at twilight as one sails away into the harbour, or a great iron crane which lifts tons of alien matter in its gaping jaw. Great music can give us this feeling, the symphonies of Beethoven, Mozart's Don Giovanni, Schubert's C Major Symphony, or César Franck's D Minor, The Sacrifice to the Spring of Strawinsky, L'Après-midi d'un Faune of Debussy, Chabrier's Rhapsody, España; great interpretative musicians can give it to us, Ysaye at his best, Paderewski, Marcella Sembrich in song recital; but how few artists on the stage suggest even as much as the often paltry lines of the author, the often banal music of the composer! There is an au delà to all great interpretative art, something that remains after story, words, picture, and gesture have faded vaguely into that storeroom in our memories where are concealed these lovely ghosts of ephemeral beauty, and the artist who is able to give us this is blessed even beyond his knowledge, for to him has been vouchsafed the sacred kiss of the gods. This quality cannot be acquired, it cannot even be described, but it can be felt. With its beneficent aid the interpreter not only contributes to our pleasure, he broadens our horizon, adds to our knowledge and capacity for feeling.
As I read over these notes I realize that I have not been able to discover flaws in the art of this young man. It seems to me that in his chosen medium he approaches perfection. What he attempts to do, he always does perfectly. Can one say as much for any other interpreter? But it is a difficult matter to give the spirit of Nijinsky, to describe his art on paper, to capture the abundant grace, the measureless poetry, the infinite illusion of his captivating motion in ink. Who can hope to do it? Future generations must take our word for his greatness. We can do little more than call it that. I shall have served my purpose if I have succeeded in this humble article in bringing back to those who have seen him a flashing glimpse of the imaginative actuality.
Epilogue
as a substitute for a preface to the new edition.
I
IT was formerly the custom, in England at any rate, to publish one book in two or three volumes. Judge, therefore, of my dismay and delight on discovering, shortly after the first appearance of "Interpreters and Interpretations," in 1917, that I, abetted by my always delightfully agreeable publisher, had issued two books in one volume! Even the title itself fell apart. This practical detail has made it a comparatively simple matter to exhibit these twins separately in the future, and such is my intention. This volume, then, contains the first half of the longer book.
I have been asked occasionally why I devote so much attention in my writing to interpreters. The answer is, of course, that I devote very little attention to them, not enough, I sometimes think. This book, indeed, says nearly all that I have said up to date on the subject. But I am not at all in sympathy with those critics of music and the drama who lay stress on the relative unimportance of interpreters. Sometimes I am inclined to believe that interpreters, who mould their own personalities rather than clay or words, are greater than creators. I think we might have a more ideal theatre if interpreters could be their own creators, like the mediæval troubadours or the gipsies of Spain. For there are many disadvantages about creative art. One of them is its persistence. Beethoven and Dante wrote notes and letters down on paper and there they remain, apparently forever. It is very annoying. Legends hover round the names of these artists, and for centuries after their deaths all the stupid creators in the world try to do something similar to the work these men have done, and all the really inspired artists have to pass a period of probation during which they strive to forget the work these men have done. "You will find," remarks sagaciously one Henry C. Lunn, "that people will often praise a bad fugue because Bach has produced so many good ones." It would be much better for everybody if a law were passed consigning all creative work to the flames ten years after it saw the light. Then we would have novelty. If Beethoven recurred again, at least nobody would know it. Any knowledge about books or pictures or music of the past would have to be carried in the memory and in a few decades all memory of anything that was not essential would have disappeared. It must have been a thrilling experience to have lived in Alexandria at the time the library was burned. Just think, twenty years after that event, philosophers and professors probably could be found in Alexandria who did not go round with long faces telling you what had been done and what should be done. No references to the early Assyrians and the Greeks until the papyruses were replaced. The Renaissance and the Revival of Learning, on the other hand, doubtless pleasant enough at the time, smeared a terrible blot on the future of art.
Now interpretative art is different. It depends upon the contemporary individual, and some of its most thrilling effects may be entirely accidental. Any traditions which persist in interpretative art must be carried in the memory. In exceptional cases, of course, a singer, a dancer, or an actor is able to so stamp his or her personal achievement into the flowing rhythm of artistic space that a style does persist. We have a very good example before us in the case of Isadora Duncan, who has been followed by a long train of animated Grecian urns. The deleterious effect of this persistence of an interpretative tradition must be apparent to any one. For the imitator of an interpreter is a thousand times more futile than the imitator of a creator. Fortunately, on the whole, styles in acting, in singing, and in dancing frequently change. The Catalani-Jenny Lind-Patti tradition, which God knows has hung on long enough, is nearly exhausted. We live in the age of the Mary Garden tradition.
There is another and even better reason why I find it pleasant to write about interpreters. In looking over the books on music written in the past I find that the books about singers are infinitely more fascinating than the books about composers. I am enthralled by what H. F. Chorley has to say about Pauline Viardot and Henrietta Sontag; I am delighted with the Goncourt's books about Guimard, Clairon, and Sophie Arnould. Auguste Ehrhard's "Fanny Elssler" is an extraordinary document and one cannot afford to miss P. T. Barnum on Jenny Lind and Mapleson on Patti. But I find that the old scribes on Mozart and Mendelssohn, Beethoven and Schubert, quite bore me, and it is impossible to say anything new about these men. Books about Beethoven are still appearing but I advise nobody to read them. The authors have arrived at that fine point where they can only compare authorities and quibble about details. Was Beethoven in a cold sweat when he composed the Ninth Symphony or was he merely angry? The ink on the manuscript of such and such a work being blotted on a certain page, interest naturally arises as to whether the fifth note in the sixteenth bar is F sharp or G flat. Did Haydn or Prince H—— conduct the first performance of the Symphony in X major? Did Weber arrive in England on Thursday or Friday? And so on. It is all very tiresome.
Sometimes I believe that it is the whole duty of a critic to write about interpreters, about the interpretative arts. Less is understood about acting, singing, and dancing than about anything else in the field of æsthetic discussion, the more that is written about them, therefore, the better. Besides creative artists speak for themselves. Anybody can read a book; anybody can see a picture, or a reproduction of it. As for posterity it rejects all contemporary criticism of creative work; it has no use for it. It goes back to the work itself. So the critic of creative work entirely disappears in the course of a few years. After his short day nobody will read him any more.
Now an actor, a singer, or a dancer, can appear in comparatively few places for a comparatively short time. The number of people who can see or hear these interpreters is relatively small; consequently they like to read about them. As for posterity it is absolutely dependent upon books for its knowledge of the interpreters of a bygone day. That is the only way it can see the actors of the past. For that reason I am perfectly sure in my own mind that of such of my books as are devoted to criticism this is the one most likely to please posterity.
All criticism may not be creative writing, but certainly all good criticism is. For all good writing should be self-expression and the subject treated and the form into which it is cast are mere matters of convenience. There is no essential difference between poetry, fiction, drama, and essay. An essay may be as creative as a work of fiction, often it is more so. You will find criticism elsewhere than in the work of acknowledged critics. Dostoevsky's "The House of the Dead" is certainly a critical work, but the author chooses to criticize the conditions under which human beings are compelled to live rather than the works of Pushkin. Turgeniev once wrote to Flaubert, "There is no longer any artist of the present time who is not also a critic." He might have added that while all artists are assuredly critics, all critics are not artists. On the other hand Walter Pater's famous passage about the Monna Lisa is certainly creative; it might almost be held responsible for the vogue of the picture. Before the war, nearly any day you might find frail American ladies from the Middle West standing in front of Leonardo's canvas and repeating the lines like so much doggerel. All artists express themselves as they may but they are not artists unless they express themselves. Only thus may they establish a current between themselves and their readers; only thus may they arouse emotion. And if they succeed in arousing emotion we may disregard the form in which their work is cast and bathe in the essence of spirit and idea.
Whether you agree with this theory or not you must be compelled to admit that criticism of interpreters, if it is anything at all, is bound to be creative. For the art of the interpreter exists in time and space only for the moment in an arbitrary place. Therefore he who writes about an interpreter is using him to express certain ideas as a painter uses his model.
It is a well-established fact that singers and actors in general only approve of the critics who praise them, but it will readily be apparent that there is a good instinctive reason back of this peculiarity. Their work only lives as it exists in criticism and people who dwell in places where these actors are not to be seen or in times after they are dead must perforce depend upon the critic for their impressions of these interpreters. The case of creative work is entirely different. The creator of genius should never be disturbed by a bad criticism. If his work is good it will far outlast the criticism. Indeed a bad notice helps a fine book to find its public sooner than a good notice, because it attracts attention and stimulates discussion. I think it is likely, for instance, that the striking collection of bad notices of his previous books, which James Branch Cabell inserted in the end pages of "The Cream of the Jest," did as much to advertise that author as the subsequent publication of "Jurgen."
II
Somewhere in Agnes G. Murphy's vivid but somewhat hysterical account of the life and adventures of Madame Melba, the diva's Boswell declares that the singer never permitted herself the pleasure of meeting newspaper critics lest, it is to be assumed, they should be prejudiced in her favour through the acquaintanceship. I can assure Madame Melba that this decision, if strictly adhered to, has cost her many pleasant hours, for I number certain music critics among my most diverting friends. I can further assure these colleagues of mine that they have missed knowing a very amusing woman, for once, not being considered at the time anything so formidable as a critic, I was permitted to sit next to the Australian canary while she toyed with her grapefruit and tasted her oeuf bénédictine.
Madame Melba's point of view is not held exclusively by her. There are many singers who believe that a series of dinner invitations will buy a critic's pen; a few do not hesitate to offer emerald stick-pins and even substantial cheques. These methods are often entirely successful. On the other hand there are critics who will rush across the street, though the mud be ankle deep, to avoid an introduction to an artist. I have been frequently asked where I stood in the matter, as if it were necessary to take a stand and defend it.
I may say that if my profession kept me from knowing anybody I really wanted to know I should relinquish that profession without hesitation. It is absurd to feel that you cannot dine with a singer without praising her performances. Many days in each month I dine with authors whose works I abhor. I find their companionship delightful. Should I be deprived of their society because I happen to be a critic? I suppose I have a price—almost everybody has—but I should like to state right here and now that it is not a dinner, or a series of dinners, or even an emerald scarf-pin. I should be inclined, however, I admit frankly, to say at least gentle things about a lady who made me a present of a blooded silver cat.
But the crux of the matter lies deeper than this. No mere music critic can hope to write about singing, violin playing, or piano playing without knowing singers, violinists, and pianists. He can learn much from books, from the reviews of other critics, from hearing performances, but the great critics are those who study from the lips of the interpreters themselves. The valuable hints, suggestions, and inspiration that a critic with an open mind can gather from an interpreter are priceless, and not to be found elsewhere. Not that an interpreter will always tell the truth, not that he always knows what the truth is in his particular case. Nevertheless any virtuoso will always have something of interest to say. It stands to reason that any man or woman who has devoted his life to his profession will know more about its difficulties, limitations, and tricks, than a mere critic can hope to learn in any way except through social intercourse with the interpreter. A young critic may learn much through reading Chorley, Burney, Schumann, Ernest Newman, and James Huneker. He can further prepare himself for his trade by listening with open ears to concerts and operas (although, in passing, it may be stated categorically that no critic learns immediately the value of opening his ears, so steeped is he in the false tradition of his craft), by burying his nose in the scores of the masters, and by reading all that the composers themselves may have said about the performances of their works. But he can learn more in a five-minute conversation with a great orchestral conductor, a great singer, or a great instrumentalist than he can in all the other ways combined.
Arturo Toscanini, Mary Garden, Ysaye, Marcella Sembrich, Yvette Guilbert, Pablo Casals, Fritz Kreisler, Waslav Nijinsky, Marguerite d'Alvarez, or Leo Ornstein can give any reviewer, young or old, invaluable lessons. Such as these are their own severest critics and they teach the writer-critic to be severe—and just. One piece of advice, however, I would give to prospective critics. Become acquainted with artist-interpreters by all means, but other things being equal, it is perhaps better to meet good artists than bad ones!
III
Chaliapine, Nijinsky, Mazarin, and Fremstad[A] have not appeared on the New York stage since I painted their portraits; nor have I seen them elsewhere. Consequently any revision I might make in these pictures would be revision of what I felt then in terms of what I feel now. Nothing could be more ridiculous. So I let them stand as they are.
With Yvette Guilbert the case is somewhat different. She has been before the American public almost consistently since the original publication of this book. Her work at her own recitals is still the fine thing it was and probably will remain so for a great many years to come. Madame Guilbert, however, has seen fit to appear in a play at the Neighbourhood Playhouse in New York, a fourteenth century French miracle play called Guibour.
It is often said of an actress that she is too great to fail even when a part does not suit her. But this is an utterly fallacious theory. Only great actresses can fail. A really bad actress always fails and consequently cannot be considered at all. A mediocre or conventional actress is neither very good nor very bad in any rôle, but a great actress, when she fails, fails magnificently, because she plays with such precision and authority that she is worse than a lesser person possibly could be.
Certainly Yvette Guilbert failed magnificently in Guibour. I have been told that her infrequent performances in comedy in Paris have been equally unsuccessful. When Guilbert sings a song she is forced by the very nature of her method to make much of little; without setting, frequently without costume, without the aid of other actors, she is obliged in a period of three or four minutes to give her public an atmosphere, several characters, and a miniature drama. Now, taking into consideration the average low rate of intelligence and the almost entire lack of imagination of the ordinary theatre audience, she is compelled to chuck in as much detail as the thing will hold. The result is generally admirable. In a play, however, this method becomes monotonous, tiresome, picayune, fussy, overelaborate. One does not want the lift of an eyelash, a gesture with every line; one does not want emphasis on every word. The great actors employ broader methods. It was here that Madame Guilbert failed, by applying the extremely efficacious technique of her own perfect craft to another craft which calls for another technique.