Vaslav Nijinsky short biography. Vaslav Nijinsky: Indecent egoist

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Biography

Born in Kyiv, the second son in a family of Polish ballet dancers - the first number of Tomas Nijinsky and soloist Eleonora Bereda. Eleanor was 33 and five years older than her husband. Vaclav was baptized into Catholicism in Warsaw. Two years later, their third child was born - daughter Bronislava. From 1882 to 1894, the parents toured as part of Joseph Setov's ballet troupe. The father introduced all the children to dancing from early childhood. Vaclav performed on stage for the first time when he was five years old, dancing the hopak as an entreprise at the Odessa Theater.

After Josef Setov's death in 1894, his troupe disbanded. Nijinsky the father tried to create his own troupe, but soon went bankrupt, and years of difficult wanderings and odd jobs began. Vaclav probably helped his father by performing small numbers at holidays. It is known that he performed in Nizhny Novgorod at Christmas. In 1897, during a tour in Finland, Nijinsky the father fell in love with another, the young soloist Rumyantseva. Parents divorced. Eleanor and her three children went to St. Petersburg, where a friend of her young years, Polish dancer Stanislav Gillert, was a teacher at the St. Petersburg Ballet School. Gillert promised to help her.

The Nijinskys' eldest son, Stanislav (Stasik), fell out of a window as a child and since then was “a little out of this world,” and the gifted and well-prepared Vaclav was accepted into the ballet class quite easily. Two years later, his sister, Bronya, also entered the same school. At school, some oddities began to appear in Vaclav's character; once he even went to a mental health clinic for examination - apparently, some kind of hereditary disease was affecting him. However, his talent as a dancer was undeniable and quickly attracted the attention of his teacher, N. Legat, a once outstanding, but already a little old-fashioned dancer.

Since March 1905, the innovative teacher of the school, Mikhail Fokin, staged the responsible examination ballet for graduates. This was his first ballet as a choreographer - he chose Acis and Galatea. Fokine invited Nijinsky to play the role of the faun, although he was not a graduate. On Sunday, April 10, 1905, a demonstration performance took place at the Mariinsky Theater, reviews appeared in the newspapers, and they all noted the extraordinary talent of the young Nijinsky:

Graduate Nijinsky amazed everyone: the young artist is barely 15 years old and has two more years to spend at school. It is all the more pleasant to see such exceptional data. The lightness and elevation, together with remarkably smooth and beautiful movements, are amazing [...] We can only wish that the 15-year-old artist does not remain a child prodigy, but continues to improve.

From 1906 to January 1911, Nijinsky performed at the Mariinsky Theater. He was fired from the Mariinsky Theater with a big scandal at the request of the imperial family, as he performed in the ballet “Giselle” in a costume that was considered indecent.

Almost immediately after graduating from college, Nijinsky was invited by S. P. Diaghilev to participate in the ballet season, where he gained enormous success. For his ability to jump high and elevate for a long time, he was called the bird-man, the second Vestris.

In Paris, the repertoire tested on the stage of the Mariinsky Theater was danced (“Pavilion of Armida”, 1907; “Chopinian or La Sylphide”, 1907; “Egyptian Nights” or “Cleopatra”, 1909; “Giselle”, 1910; “Swan Lake”, 1911), as well as the divertissement “Feast” to the music of Russian composers, 1909; and parts in new ballets by Fokine, “Carnival” to the music of R. Schumann, 1910; “Scheherazade” by N. A. Rimsky-Korsakov, 1910; “Orientals” by A. Glazunov, 1910; "The Vision of a Rose" by C. M. Weber, 1911, in which he amazed Parisian audiences with a fantastic jump through a window; “Petrushka” by I. F. Stravinsky, 1911; “Blue (Blue) God” R. Ana, 1912; “Daphnis and Chloe” by M. Ravel, 1912.

Choreographer

Encouraged by Diaghilev, Nijinsky tried his hand as a choreographer and, secretly from Fokine, rehearsed his first ballet - “The Afternoon of a Faun” to the music of C. Debussy (1912). He based his choreography on profile poses borrowed from ancient Greek vase painting. Like Diaghilev, Nijinsky was fascinated by the rhythmoplastics and eurhythmics of Dalcroze, in the aesthetics of which he staged his next and most significant ballet, “The Rite of Spring” in 1913. The Rite of Spring, written by Stravinsky with a free use of dissonance, albeit relying on tonality, and choreographically built on complex combinations of rhythms, was one of the first expressionist ballets. The ballet was not immediately accepted, and its premiere ended in scandal, as did “The Afternoon of a Faun,” which shocked the public with its final erotic scene. In the same year, he performed the plotless ballet “Games” by C. Debussy. These productions by Nijinsky were characterized by anti-romanticism and opposition to the usual grace of the classical style.

Personal life

In his youth, Nijinsky had an intimate relationship with Prince Pavel Dmitrievich Lvov, and later with Diaghilev. In 1913, after the troupe left for a South American tour, he met a Hungarian aristocrat and his admirer on a ship Romola Pulskaya. Having gone ashore, on September 10, 1913, they got married secretly from everyone, including family members. Diaghilev, having learned about what had happened from a telegram from his servant Vasily, who was assigned to look after Nijinsky, flew into a rage and immediately expelled the dancer from the troupe - in fact, this put an end to his short, dizzying career. Being Diaghilev's favorite, Nijinsky did not sign any contracts with him and did not receive a salary, like other artists - Diaghilev simply paid all his expenses from his own pocket. It was this fact that allowed the impresario to get rid of the artist who had become objectionable without any delay.

Entreprise

After leaving Diaghilev, Nijinsky found himself in difficult conditions. It was necessary to earn a living. A dance genius, he did not have the ability to produce. He rejected the offer to head the Grand Opera ballet in Paris, deciding to create his own enterprise. It was possible to assemble a troupe of seventeen people (it included Bronislava’s sister and her husband, who also left Diaghilev) and concluded a contract with the London Palace Theater. The repertoire consisted of productions by Nijinsky and, in part, by M. Fokine (“The Phantom of the Rose,” “Carnival,” “La Sylphides,” which Nijinsky remade again). However, the tour was not a success and ended in financial ruin, which led to a nervous breakdown and the onset of the artist’s mental illness. Failures followed him.

Last premiere

Reburial of ashes

In 1953, his body was transported to Paris and buried in the Montmartre cemetery next to the graves of the legendary dancer G. Vestris and playwright T. Gautier, one of the creators of romantic ballet. On his gray stone tombstone sits a sad bronze jester.

The significance of Nijinsky's personality

Critics [ Who?] called Nijinsky “the eighth wonder of the world,” highly appreciating his talent. His partners were Tamara Karsavina, Matilda Kshesinskaya, Anna Pavlova, Olga Spesivtseva. When he - the god of ballet - hovered in a jump above the stage, it seemed that a person was capable of becoming weightless.

He has refuted all the laws of balance and turned them upside down, he resembles a human figure painted on the ceiling, he easily feels in the air space...

Nijinsky had the rare ability of complete external and internal transformation

I'm scared, I see the greatest actor in the world

Nijinsky made a bold breakthrough into the future of ballet art, discovering the later established style of expressionism and fundamentally new possibilities of plastic arts. His creative life was short (only ten years), but intense. The famous ballet by Maurice Béjart “Nijinsky, God’s Clown” to the music of Pierre Henri and Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, 1971, is dedicated to the personality of Nijinsky.

Nijinsky was the idol of his time. His dance combined strength and lightness; he amazed the audience with his breathtaking jumps - many thought that the dancer was “hovering” in the air. He had a remarkable gift of transformation and extraordinary facial abilities. On stage he radiated powerful magnetism, although in everyday life he was timid and silent.

Awards

Memory

In 2010, Monaco was founded Nijinsky Prize, awarded to ballet dancers and choreographers.
As part of the celebration of the 100th anniversary of the “Russian Ballets” on June 11, 2011, a bronze sculpture of Vaslav and Bronislava Nijinsky in the image of the Faun and Nymph from the ballet “The Afternoon of a Faun” (sculptor Gennady Ershov) was installed in the foyer of the Warsaw Bolshoi Theater.

Image in art

In the theatre

October 8 - “Nijinsky, God’s Clown,” ballet by Maurice Béjart based on the diaries of Vaslav Nijinsky (“ 20th century ballet", Brussels, in the role of Nijinsky - Jorge Donne).
July 21 - “Vaclav”, a ballet by John Neumeier based on the script plan of the unrealized production by Vaslav Nijinsky using the music of J. S. Bach chosen by him ( Hamburg Ballet).
1993 - “Nizhinsky” based on the play by Alexei Burykin (Theatrical agency “BOGIS”, in the role of Nijinsky Oleg Menshikov).
1999 - “Nijinsky, God’s Crazy Clown”, play based on the play by Glen Blumstein (1986, theater on Malaya Bronnaya, in the role of Nijinsky Alexander Domogarov).
July 2 - “Nijinsky”, ballet by John Neumeier (Hamburg Ballet, starring Jiri Bubenicek).
March 22, 2008 - “Nijinsky, God’s Crazy Clown”, a play based on the play by Glen Blumstein (Puppet Theater named after S. V. Obraztsov (director and leading actor Andrei Dennikov).
April 19, 2008 - NN(choreographer Ryszard Kalinowski, Lublin Dance Theater)
June 28 - Armida's Pavilion, ballet by John Neumeier (Hamburg Ballet, in the role of Nijinsky, Otto Bubenichek and Alexander Ryabko).
- “Letter to a Man”, a performance by Robert Wilson based on the diaries of a dancer (in the role of Nijinsky

For twenty-nine years of his life, Vaslav Nijinsky belonged to this world. It included a road from Mokhovaya to Teatralnaya to the Imperial Theater School. The granite descent to the Neva, on the steps of which he cried when he was fired from the Mariinsky Theater. Paris, London and Nice, where he danced in Diaghilev's seasons. Diaghilev himself, who took away his love and freedom, but led him to worldwide fame. Three productions that marked the beginning of twentieth-century ballet.

Then there were thirty years of living in our own world of dreams and fantasies, about which we know almost nothing. Because every schizophrenic has his own.
His most hard-won role, perhaps, was Petrushka in Stravinsky’s ballet. The tragedy of a rag doll with a human soul was truly felt only in the 20th century. People gradually gained freedom, freeing themselves from the shackles of the illusory and real world in which their parents lived. But this liberation brought terrible loneliness, because the person was now responsible for his own life.
The theme of carnival, theater, booth, and fair turned out to be in demand in the artistic life of Russia at the beginning of the twentieth century. Dolls suffering like people. People turning into dolls. Both of them are wearing masks.
In 1905, Alexander Blok wrote the poem "Balaganchik".

“Here is a booth open for cheerful and nice children. A girl and a boy are watching

For ladies, kings and devils."

How nice it all began, what a good fairy tale this life could have turned out to be.

In 1890, the premiere of The Sleeping Beauty was triumphantly held on the stage of the Mariinsky Theater. It was a landmark production. For many contemporaries, the reign of Alexander III was associated with the golden age of the Russian Empire.
"The Sleeping Beauty" was, perhaps, the last farewell to the era of classicism in ballet. The solemn music of Tchaikovsky and the pompous scenery of Levot and his comrades, the exquisite production of Petipa, combining the best of the French, Italian and Russian schools of ballet.

But all this is in the Imperial Theater. Behind its walls, neither 32, nor even 64 fouettés, “twisted” by a ballet soloist, could help the matter. Behind the walls there was a completely different life, which the ballet theater had to see and accept.

This became possible in 1903, when Petipa resigned as chief choreographer of the Mariinsky Theater. He devoted more than half a century to the theater. But by the beginning of the twentieth century, ballet remained, perhaps, the only art form that had no relation to real life. It was a dried flower or a butterfly on a pin in the collection of an eccentric who, in the age of electricity and the automobile, wears a camisole and a powdered wig; with the passing of Petipa, ballet began to catch up with its time by ten-mile strides.

At first, Nikolai Gorsky and Nikolai Legat tried to do this. Then a young dancer and choreographer Mikhail Fokin appeared. It seems that he was the one who woke up the ballet Beauty. Everything was ready for the production of a new play called "Russian Seasons" in Paris. The gentlemen actors gathered for rehearsal. The year was 1907.

Characters and performers

Mikhail Mikhailovich Fokin, 27 years old, dancer at the Mariinsky Theater, teacher at the Theater School, choreographer.

In 1906-1907 Fokine created The Vine, Eunice, Chopiniana, Egyptian Nights, The Swan (better known as The Dying Man) and The Pavilion of Armida. Thus, the ballet theater entered the era of eclecticism, when heroes and plots of all times and peoples appeared on the stage. Like-minded people of Fokine were the artists Alexander Benois and Lev Bakst, the ballerinas Anna Pavlova and Tamara Karsavina, and the dancer Vaslav Nijinsky.

Sergei Pavlovich Diaghilev, 35 years old, gentleman, philanthropist, discoverer of talent, author of daring projects and in this sense - a fighter, a player.

In 1898, the first art magazine in Russia, “World of Art,” began publishing. In 1905 he organized a grandiose historical and artistic exhibition of portraits of the 18th-19th centuries. Then he organized the exhibition “Russian Art from Icon Painting to the Beginning of the 20th Century” at the Autumn Salon in Paris. Concerts of Russian music soon followed, introducing Europe to Glinka, Mussorgsky, Borodin, Rachmaninov, and Rimsky-Korsakov. In another year - opera season. Paris heard Fyodor Chaliapin. At the same time, the idea of stage synthesis in ballet arose - combining the forces of dancers, musicians, choreographers and artists. What arose was what was later called the “Diaghilev seasons.”

Tamara Platonovna Karsavina, 22 years old, is not yet a ballerina at the Imperial Theaters, although she already dances ballerina roles.

Talented, beautiful and smart. An ideal model for Fokine's historical productions. It was at this time that the passionately in love Fokin receives a refusal from her, and Karsavina remains a ghostly dream for him.

Vaslav Fomich Nijinsky, 17 years old. I just graduated from the Theater School and was accepted into the Mariinsky Theater troupe.

In life, he is a clumsy and ugly young man with a vacant look and often with a half-open mouth. On stage there is a graceful handsome man with radiant eyes, striking with the precision of his jumps and poses, “elevation and ballooning,” as they wrote in the reviews. A Pinocchio doll that becomes human at the first sounds of the overture.

"And this hellish music sounds, The sad bow howls. The terrible devil grabbed the little one, And the cranberry juice flows down."

Eternal slave

In his first season at the Mariinsky, Nijinsky danced in almost all ballets. Both classic and new ones staged by Fokin. He was a partner of Matilda Kshesinskaya, Anna Pavlova, Olga Preobrazhenskaya. He was a romantic youth in Chopinian, a slave of Cleopatra in Egyptian Nights, and a page of the sorceress Armida in Armida's Pavilion.
Somehow, quite naturally, the roles of slave and page followed him into real life. At first, a representative of the “other Petersburg” - Prince Pavel Dmitrievich Lvov - became his master and lover. In Nijinsky's life, reckless drivers, fur coats, night restaurants, and expensive gifts appeared. And the feeling of being used and then abandoned by Parsley that remained forever.

Then there was Diaghilev, who saved him from the clutches of cynical bohemia, surrounded him with care and attention, but at the same time fenced him off from life with glass walls. Because Diaghilev always knew better what Nijinsky wanted.
Then there was Romola’s wife, who also knew everything better and by 1918 quite successfully “saved” her husband from the heartless world, driving him into a nightmare of madness.
But not one of them could boast that they knew the person who was nearby - Vaslav Nijinsky. Because Nijinsky became himself only in dance, and there he was alone, even if he passionately hugged his partner at that moment.

This is probably why he could dance so incredibly because he did not waste himself in everyday life, but only smiled and bowed by rote, answering sumptuous compliments in monosyllables. In some ways, both Diaghilev and Romola were right in believing that Vaclav was unable to take care of himself. Until now, they only cared about him.

He was born in 1889 into a family of dancers who traveled around Russia with a troupe of traveling actors. Bronislava was a year younger, Stanislav was a little older. While still a child, my older brother suffered a head injury, as a result of which he developed a mental illness. The family also remembered the father’s terrible outbursts of rage. So it is quite possible that Vaclav’s schizophrenia was hereditary.
The father started another family, and the mother decided to send Vaclav and Bronislava to the St. Petersburg Ballet School for government support. They took him only because he jumped beautifully, otherwise the data was unimportant.

From the very beginning of their training, ballet dancers were involved in performances. They were little devils, and tin soldiers, and pastoral shepherdesses. Once in the dance of the "fauns" they had to run and jump. When everyone had already landed, it turned out that one was still flying. The choreographer (and it was Fokine) staged a solo part for the jumping baby (Nijinsky). This was their first meeting.
At the school, Nijinsky was teased as a “Japanese” for his slanted eyes, harassed for his unsociability, but they did not offend him too much. The teachers immediately made it clear who the main talent was. In high school, he read a lot, but for himself. Those around him remained in the dark about his mental abilities. The same thing happened with music classes. He played music alone in an empty classroom, showing impenetrable stupidity in class. His favorite novel was The Idiot. Then Vaclav himself will be treated in Saint-Moritz, like Prince Myshkin.

Giselle Mania

The first season of the Russian Ballet in 1909 in Paris opened shortly after the end of the season at the Mariinsky. The performances were an unprecedented success. Everyone was shocked by “Polovtsian Dances” with the main archer - Fokine, “Cleopatra” with the monstrously seductive Ida Rubinstein, “La Sylphides” (“Chopiniana”) with the airy Anna Pavlova and “Pavilion Armida”, which revealed Nijinsky to the world. Fokine’s ballet reform also consisted of that he revived men's dance. Before him, dances were staged exclusively for ballerinas, and partners were needed only to support them at the right moment, to help them show their talent, beauty, and grace. The dancers began to be called “crutches.”

Fokin was not going to put up with this. Firstly, he himself wanted to dance, and the role of a “crutch” did not suit him at all. Secondly, he felt what ballet had lost by practically removing the dancer from the stage. The ballet has become cloying and fruity, completely sexless. It was possible to show the characters only by contrasting the female dance with an equal male dance. In this sense, Nijinsky was ideal material for Fokine. From his body, superbly trained at the Theater School, any shape could be molded. He could dance whatever the choreographer had in mind. And at the same time, with his own talent, spiritualize his every movement.
The old ballet was largely based on pantomime. This is how it was possible to convey, for example, a message about Scheherazade’s betrayal in sign language. “Listen (extend your hand to the Shah), just imagine (tap your forehead) that your queen (point to her and draw a crown above her head) made love (hug yourself with both arms) with a black man (make a fierce grimace and hold your hand in front of face down, depicting blackness)".

In Fokine’s ballet, the ruler of Persia, with his hand on the hilt of his sword, slowly approached his defeated opponent and turned the Negro’s body face up with his foot. And before that, they grappled in a deadly dance, and Nijinsky - the “Golden Negro” - expressed in this dance all the torment of love and despair.
Yes, he was a slave again and involuntarily began to think about the extent of responsibility that a person bears when making another his toy. These thoughts resulted in a new interpretation of the role of Albert in the ballet Giselle.
Previously, handsome Albert seduced a young peasant girl, “torn” her heart, but was generously forgiven. Nijinsky's Albert was not looking for pleasure, but for beauty. He did not want Giselle to die and did not imagine how everything would turn out. Albert was just able to discern the Other in the girl - a different, but kindred soul. That is why he is in such despair, that is why he is ready to punish himself and follow the Wilis (the creation of his mind) into the swamp of madness.

The interpretation was fully consistent with the spirit of the era, captured in Blok’s poems or in the image of the “witch’s lake” from Chekhov’s “The Seagull.” But it did not correspond to the spirit of the routine of the Imperial Mariinsky Theater. Therefore, having arrived in St. Petersburg after the Paris season of 1910 and danced “Giselle,” Nijinsky was fired from the theater for performing in an inappropriate costume. The costume, made according to Benoit's sketch, was considered inappropriate: tights and tights without fluffy pants, an integral part of the Alberts on the Russian stage of recent decades. Now Nijinsky fell into serfdom from Diaghilev, Yuryev's day of return to the imperial stage was taken away from him.

“He will be saved from black wrath with a wave of a white hand. Look: the lights are approaching from the left... Do you see the torches? Do you see the smoke? This is probably the queen herself...”

Blue God

There were many rumors about why Nijinsky was fired. One of them connected the dismissal with the intrigues of Diaghilev himself, who thus acquired a permanent artist. One way or another, now Vaclav belonged only to him. (Diaghilev once said to Karsavina: “Why didn’t you marry Fokin? Then you both would have belonged to me”).
It was possible to start a permanent troupe with a single star - Nijinsky. Everything had to work for him: Karsavina (still not breaking up with the Mariinsky), invited “stars” (negotiations with Pavlova and Kshesinskaya), a couple of character dancers, the art of Bakst and Benois, music of famous composers.
The very first performance in 1911 again shocked the Parisian public. It was "The Phantom of the Rose" to the music of Carl von Weber's "Invitation to the Dance." It is based on a line from Théophile Gautier: “I am the ghost of the rose that you wore at the ball yesterday.”

Nijinsky had to dance not a person or even a flower, but the scent of a rose, which reminds the sleeping girl of yesterday's ball. Jean Cocteau, a regular at the Seasons, exclaimed that from now on he would associate the scent of roses with the last leap of Nijinsky, disappearing through the window. Probably, it was this ballet (not even a ballet, but an expanded pas de deux by Karsavina and Nijinsky) that allowed critics to correlate what they saw on stage with impressionism in painting.
The 1911 season could be called the most successful and fruitful. Fokine reached the peak of his activity as a choreographer. In addition to "The Specter of the Rose", the program included "Sadko" by Rimsky-Korsakov, "Narcissus" by Nikolai Tcherepnin, "Peri" by Paul Dukas and "Petrushka" by Igor Stravinsky. The ballets, as always, are “from different lives”: antiquity, the East, Russian exotica.
Somehow everything came together in “Petrushka”: both time and people. The twentieth century with its main theme of freedom and unfreedom. “Eternal femininity” (Ballerina Karsavina), stupid masculinity (Arap Orlova), thirst for power (Magician Cecchetti) and “little man” (Petrushka Nijinsky) made their choice. The fair dancer, in Stravinsky’s words, “suddenly broke loose,” allowed us to look into his soul. The soul of a doll that has become human, in which there is so much pain, anger and despair.

The audience watched with fascination the tragedy of the doll, but no one compared it with the tragedy of Nijinsky himself. After the performance, he ran away from the praise to the dressing room and removed layer after layer of makeup from his face, looking past the mirror. But the “Magician” Diaghilev came. He said that it was necessary to unwind, and took Nijinsky to dinner in the Bois de Boulogne. Parsley turned into a doll again.
Soon we began rehearsals for The Blue God, this time from Indian life. Almost all countries have already been covered by “plots”; soon they will have to repeat themselves.
A young lady named Romola Pulska was present at all the performances of the Seasons.

“Oh, no, why are you teasing me? This is a hellish retinue... The Queen walks in broad daylight, Entwined with garlands of roses...”

Taming a wild beast

In 1912, Diaghilev said that Vaclav should try himself as a choreographer. He suggested thinking about Debussy’s symphonic prelude “The Afternoon of a Faun.” Fokin will not be able to deliver this. He will again organize bacchanalian dances. Moreover, for greater persuasiveness, he will demand to bring a flock of sheep.
Nijinsky asked that Debussy be played for him. And then he turned his head in profile and turned his hand with his palm facing outward. The man disappeared, a beast appeared, which itself became music. I wonder if Diaghilev realized that he was giving Nijinsky to the slaughter? There had never been such ballets before; they were ahead of their time, especially in Paris, which had not yet had time to enjoy the exoticism of the Russian Seasons.

The dance lasted only 12 minutes and showed a completely different aesthetic of ballet theater. Where you can move in two-dimensional space. Where you can forget about eversion of your feet and step from heel to toe. Where you can move not in unison with the music, but in pauses. After all, the main thing is not this, but the afternoon heat, to which both the young faun and the nymphs, as if descended from the frieze of the temple, submit. And the veil lost by the nymph, and the vague desire directed by the faun to this fetish.
The ballet was booed, after which it was shown a second time. They booed even more. But there were also those who welcomed the appearance of the “newest” ballet. Among them is Auguste Rodin, who fiercely defended Nijinsky.
The next premiere of the 1912 season was Fokine's Daphnis and Chloe. The innocent shepherd rejected the claims of his unloved one and united with his chosen one in the apotheosis of the ancient dance. A herd of sheep walked across the stage.
This was the end of the Fokin era, which lasted so short. Ballet was catching up with its time by leaps and bounds.
Then “Games” appeared, staged by Nijinsky in the style of Gauguin, whom he loved very much. The ballet was about contemporary young people playing tennis, but as free as the islanders of Tahiti.
Then, in the 1913 season, it was Nijinsky’s turn to perform “The Rite of Spring” with music by Stravinsky and scenery by Nicholas Roerich. The pagan festival of the spring spell burst into the hall. Dances are divination, a prayer for the awakening of the forces of nature, a sacrifice of the Chosen One. The hall could not stand this energy. The power of archetypes turned out to be too heavy for spectators who were not ready to participate in the ritual. The ballet was interrupted several times, the raging spectators were forcibly removed and continued on. It was glory, only not during his lifetime, but posthumously.

And then Nijinsky became mortally tired and in this state went on tour with the troupe to South America. Romola Pulska was on the ship, but there was neither Diaghilev nor the sober-minded Karsavina. Romola attacked the object of her passion so energetically that an engagement was soon announced. They got married in Buenos Aires.

Then Romola began to free her husband from Diaghilev’s shackles, not realizing that Diaghilev, Ballet and Life were synonymous for him. In Rio de Janeiro, Nijinsky refused to perform in the next ballet, Diaghilev considered the contract to be broken. Now Nijinsky could only perform in music halls, which he did for some time. The path to St. Petersburg was prohibited for him as for a person evading military service.
Romola was not to blame. Or she was, but only as Albert in Giselle. She didn't think it would turn out like this. And when I realized what I had done, I focused all my energy on correcting the mistake. She gave birth to Vaclav two daughters, whom he loved very much... while he was getting to know them. She went to bow to Diaghilev, thinking that old impressions would stir up feelings in her husband’s soul, which was lost somewhere. She treated him with insulin shock.

Nijinsky died in 1950.

"The girl and the boy began to cry, and the cheerful booth closed.."

Then there were thirty years of living in our own world of dreams and fantasies, about which we know almost nothing. Because every schizophrenic has his own.

His most hard-won role, perhaps, was Petrushka in Stravinsky’s ballet. The tragedy of a rag doll with a human soul was truly felt only in the 20th century. People gradually gained freedom, freeing themselves from the shackles of the illusory and real world in which their parents lived. But this liberation brought terrible loneliness, because the person was now responsible for his own life.

The theme of carnival, theater, booth, and fair turned out to be in demand in the artistic life of Russia at the beginning of the twentieth century. Dolls suffering like people. People turning into dolls. Both of them are wearing masks.

In 1905, Alexander Blok wrote the poem "Balaganchik".

Here is a booth open for cheerful and nice children. A girl and a boy are looking at ladies, kings and devils.

How nice it all began, what a good fairy tale this life could have turned out to be.

Waking Sleeping Beauty

In 1890, the premiere of The Sleeping Beauty was triumphantly held on the stage of the Mariinsky Theater. It was a landmark production. For many contemporaries, the reign of Alexander III was associated with the golden age of the Russian Empire. Its territory has expanded significantly. Industry and trade developed. By 1893, the Franco-Russian alliance finally took shape.

By chance or not, all this found expression in the new ballet. The libretto was based on an old French fairy tale by Charles Perrault. Prince Désiré (Dream) wakes up with a kiss the lovely Aurora - Russia, who was plunged into a centuries-old sleep by ill-wishers and envious people in the person of the fairy Carabosse. The spell breaks, melted by the power of love. Fairy-tale heroes and messengers from exotic countries bring their gifts - dances. Apotheosis.

"The Sleeping Beauty" was, perhaps, the last farewell to the era of classicism in ballet. The solemn music of Tchaikovsky and the pompous scenery of Levot and his comrades, the exquisite production of Petipa, combining the best of the French, Italian and Russian schools of ballet. It was another dream of a strong and rich Russia, reborn in defiance of its enemies. This was a call to the heir to the throne (the Dream and the Dawn must have an heir) to continue his father’s work. It was a call to subjects to honor and glorify their kings.

In the world of ballet, the same thing happened as if in the world of architecture God gave a long life to Carl Rossi. Then in St. Petersburg by the beginning of the twentieth century there would not have been a single building in the eclectic or modern style, but continuous streets of Architect Rossi. Therefore, with the departure of Petipa, ballet began to catch up with its time by ten-mile strides.

At first, Nikolai Gorsky and Nikolai Legat tried to do this. Then a young dancer and choreographer Mikhail Fokin appeared. It seems that he became the real Prince Désiré (God be with them, with the French), who woke up the ballet Beauty. Everything was ready for the production of a new play called "Russian Seasons" in Paris. The gentlemen actors gathered for rehearsal. The year was 1907.

Characters and performers

Mikhail Mikhailovich Fokin, 27 years old, dancer at the Mariinsky Theater, teacher at the Theater School, choreographer. He did not approve of “mothballs” ballet and was constantly looking for an outlet for his ebullient energy on the side. He read a lot, was fond of painting, and played music. I spent hours wandering around the Hermitage, dreaming of bringing paintings, statues, and drawings on red-figure vases to life on the theater stage.

The dream came true when in 1906-1907. Fokine created The Vine, Eunice, Chopiniana, Egyptian Nights, The Swan (better known as The Dying Man) and The Pavilion of Armida. Thus, the ballet theater entered the era of eclecticism, when heroes and plots of all times and peoples appeared on the stage.

Artists Alexander Benois and Lev Bakst, ballerinas Anna Pavlova and Tamara Karsavina, and dancer Vaslav Nijinsky became like-minded people of Fokine.

Sergei Pavlovich Diaghilev, 35 years old, gentleman, philanthropist, discoverer of talent, author of daring projects and in this sense - a fighter, a player. In 1898, the first art magazine in Russia, “World of Art,” began publishing. In 1905 he organized a grandiose historical and artistic exhibition of portraits of the 18th-19th centuries. To do this, he travels the length and breadth of Russia, collecting portraits of his ancestors from remote estates. In essence, Diaghilev opened the Russian 18th century to his contemporaries.

Then he organizes the exhibition “Russian Art from Icon Painting to the Beginning of the 20th Century” at the Autumn Salon in Paris. Concerts of Russian music soon followed, introducing Europe to Glinka, Mussorgsky, Borodin, Rachmaninov, and Rimsky-Korsakov. In another year - opera season. Paris heard Fyodor Chaliapin.

At the same time, the idea of stage synthesis in ballet arose - combining the forces of dancers, musicians, choreographers and artists. What arose was what was later called the “Diaghilev seasons.”

Tamara Platonovna Karsavina, 22 years old, is not yet a ballerina at the Imperial Theaters, although she already dances ballerina roles. Talented, beautiful and smart. An ideal model for Fokine's historical productions. It was at this time that the passionately in love Fokin receives a refusal from her, and Karsavina remains a ghostly dream for him.

Vaslav Fomich Nijinsky, 17 years old. I just graduated from the Theater School and was accepted into the Mariinsky Theater troupe. In life, he is a clumsy and ugly young man with a vacant look and often with a half-open mouth. On stage there is a graceful handsome man with radiant eyes, striking with the precision of his jumps and poses, “elevation and ballooning,” as they wrote in the reviews. A Pinocchio doll that becomes human at the first sounds of the overture.

And this hellish music sounds, The sad bow howls. The terrible devil grabbed the little one, and the cranberry juice flowed down.

Eternal slave

Somehow, quite naturally, the roles of slave and page followed him into real life. At first, a representative of the “other Petersburg” - Prince Pavel Dmitrievich Lvov - became his master and lover. In Nijinsky's life, reckless drivers, fur coats, night restaurants, and expensive gifts appeared. And the feeling of being used and then abandoned by Parsley that remained forever.

Then there was Romola’s wife, who also knew everything better and by 1918 quite successfully “saved” her husband from the heartless world, driving him into a nightmare of madness.

But not one of them could boast that they knew the person who was nearby - Vaslav Nijinsky. Because Nijinsky became himself only in dance, and there he was alone, even if he passionately hugged his partner at that moment.

The father started another family, and the mother decided to send Vaclav and Bronislava to the St. Petersburg Ballet School for government support. They took him only because he jumped beautifully, otherwise the data was unimportant.

At the school, Nijinsky was teased as a “Japanese” for his slanted eyes, harassed for his unsociability, but they did not offend him too much. The teachers immediately made it clear who the main talent was. In high school, he read a lot, but for himself. Those around him remained in the dark about his mental abilities. The same thing happened with music classes. He played music alone in an empty classroom, showing impenetrable stupidity in class. His favorite novel was The Idiot. Then Vaclav himself will be treated in Saint-Moritz, like Prince Myshkin.

Giselle Mania

Fokine's ballet reform also consisted of the fact that he revived male dance. Before him, dances were staged exclusively for ballerinas, and partners were needed only to support them at the right moment, to help them show their talent, beauty, and grace. The dancers began to be called “crutches.”

In this sense, Nijinsky was ideal material for Fokine. From his body, superbly trained at the Theater School, any shape could be molded. He could dance whatever the choreographer had in mind. And at the same time, with his own talent, spiritualize his every movement.

In Fokine's ballets there was no development of images and characters yet. They were snapshots of fictional situations. But there is as much passion and expression conveyed in dance as you like. Actually, this is what everything was built on. More passion, more dance, more complex movements, more virtuosity.

The old ballet was largely based on pantomime. This is how it was possible to convey, for example, a message about Scheherazade’s betrayal in sign language. “Listen (extend your hand to the Shah), just imagine (tap your forehead) that your queen (point to her and draw a crown above her head) made love (hug yourself with both arms) with a black man (make a fierce grimace and hold your hand in front of face down, depicting blackness)".

Yes, he was a slave again and involuntarily began to think about the extent of responsibility that a person bears when making another his toy. These thoughts resulted in a new interpretation of the role of Albert in the ballet Giselle.

Previously, handsome Albert seduced a young peasant girl, “torn” her heart, but was generously forgiven. Nijinsky's Albert was not looking for pleasure, but for beauty. He did not want Giselle to die and did not imagine how everything would turn out. Albert was just able to discern the Other in the girl - a different, but kindred soul. That is why he is in such despair, that is why he is ready to punish himself and follow the Wilis (the creation of his mind) into the swamp of madness.

The interpretation was fully consistent with the spirit of the era, captured in Blok’s poems or in the image of the “witch’s lake” from Chekhov’s “The Seagull.” But it did not correspond to the spirit of the routine of the Imperial Mariinsky Theater. Therefore, having arrived in St. Petersburg after the Paris season of 1910 and danced “Giselle,” Nijinsky was fired from the theater for performing in an inappropriate costume. The costume, made according to Benoit's sketch, was considered inappropriate: tights and tights without fluffy panties, an integral part of the Alberts on the Russian stage in recent decades.

Now Nijinsky fell into serfdom from Diaghilev, Yuriev’s day of return to the imperial stage was taken away from him.

He will be saved from black wrath by the wave of a white hand. Look: the lights are approaching from the left... Do you see the torches? do you see the haze? It's probably the queen herself...

Blue God

It was possible to start a permanent troupe with a single star - Nijinsky. Everything had to work for him: Karsavina (still not breaking up with the Mariinsky), invited “stars” (negotiations with Pavlova and Kshesinskaya), a couple of character dancers, the art of Bakst and Benois, music of famous composers.

The very first performance in 1911 again shocked the Parisian public. It was "The Phantom of the Rose" to the music of Carl von Weber's "Invitation to the Dance." It is based on a line from Théophile Gautier: “I am the ghost of the rose that you wore at the ball yesterday.”

The 1911 season could be called the most successful and fruitful. Fokine reached the peak of his activity as a choreographer. In addition to "The Specter of the Rose", the program included "Sadko" by Rimsky-Korsakov, "Narcissus" by Nikolai Tcherepnin, "Peri" by Paul Dukas and "Petrushka" by Igor Stravinsky. The ballets, as always, are “from different lives”: antiquity, the East, Russian exotica.

Somehow everything came together in “Petrushka”: both time and people. The twentieth century with its main theme of freedom and unfreedom. “Eternal femininity” (Ballerina Karsavina), stupid masculinity (Arap Orlova), thirst for power (Magician Cecchetti) and “little man” (Petrushka Nijinsky) made their choice. The fair dancer, in Stravinsky’s words, “suddenly broke loose,” allowed us to look into his soul. The soul of a doll that has become human, in which there is so much pain, anger and despair.

Soon we began rehearsals for The Blue God, this time from Indian life. Almost all countries have already been covered by “plots”; soon they will have to repeat themselves.

A young lady named Romola Pulska was present at all the performances of the Seasons.

Oh no, why are you teasing me? This is a hellish retinue... The Queen walks in broad daylight, Entwined with garlands of roses...

Taming a wild beast

Nijinsky asked that Debussy be played for him. And then he turned his head in profile and turned his hand with his palm facing outward. The man disappeared, a beast appeared, which itself became music. I wonder if Diaghilev realized that he was giving Nijinsky to the slaughter? There had never been such ballets before; they were ahead of their time, especially in Paris, which had not yet had time to enjoy the exoticism of the Russian Seasons.

The ballet was booed, after which it was shown a second time. They booed even more. But there were also those who welcomed the appearance of the “newest” ballet. Among them is Auguste Rodin, who fiercely defended Nijinsky.

The next premiere of the 1912 season was Fokine's Daphnis and Chloe. The innocent shepherd rejected the claims of his unloved one and united with his chosen one in the apotheosis of the ancient dance. A herd of sheep walked across the stage.

This was the end of the Fokin era, which lasted so short. Ballet was catching up with its time by leaps and bounds.

Then “Games” appeared, staged by Nijinsky in the style of Gauguin, whom he loved very much. The ballet was about contemporary young people playing tennis, but as free as the islanders of Tahiti.

Then, in the 1913 season, it was Nijinsky’s turn to perform “The Rite of Spring” with music by Stravinsky and scenery by Nicholas Roerich. The pagan festival of the spring spell burst into the hall. Dances are divination, a prayer for the awakening of the forces of nature, a sacrifice of the Chosen One. The hall could not stand this energy. The power of archetypes turned out to be too heavy for spectators who were not ready to participate in the ritual. The ballet was interrupted several times, the raging spectators were forcibly removed and continued on. It was glory, only not during his lifetime, but posthumously.

Romola was not to blame. Or she was, but only as Albert in Giselle. She didn't think it would turn out like this. And when I realized what I had done, I focused all my energy on correcting the mistake. She gave birth to Vaclav two daughters, whom he loved very much... while he was getting to know them. She went to bow to Diaghilev, thinking that old impressions would stir up feelings in her husband’s soul, which was lost somewhere. She treated him with insulin shock.

Nijinsky died in 1950.

The girl and the boy cried, and the cheerful booth closed

Nijinsky's followers are divided into two kinds. The first (and the majority of them) dress the dancers in tights and, accompanied by heartbreaking music, force them to express the torments of love, longing, despair, etc. The second... Here you just need to see with your own eyes the productions of Martha Graham, Roland Petit or Maurice Bejart (especially those where he dances Jorge Donne) to understand the thin thread of continuity connecting them with Nijinsky, teetering on the brink of madness.

In 1907, eighteen-year-old Vaslav Nijinsky was accepted into the Mariinsky Theater troupe. Short, only 160 cm, with overly muscular legs and the face of a faun, he walked onto the stage, and very quickly it became clear that there was a new premiere in the theater. Nijinsky had a perfect sense of style and masterfully transformed himself. He was exquisitely graceful.

He was a man half a century ahead of his time; his life was an erotic spectacle - deeply narcissistic, intuitive, spontaneous; his work captured the rhythm of life of a generation gradually drawn into the ominous carnival of the First World War.

Andrew O'Hagan, Sr. "Nijinsky's Diary"

His partners were Kshesinskaya, Preobrazhenskaya, Karsavina. Nijinsky danced the main roles in M. Fokine’s ballets “Armida’s Pavilion” (White Slave), “Egyptian Nights” (Slave), “Chopiniana” (Youth).

Once, when Giselle was being staged, Vaclav voluntarily put on a costume created according to a sketch by A. Benois. It was a reconstruction of a German costume from the 14th century. Before that, wide trousers were worn in men's ballet. Seeing a male body indecently covered in tights, the empress laughed (later they would write: “... this caused confusion in the royal box.” Presumably, this was so: the husband was sitting next to the empress), and Wenceslas was expelled. A Tsar's ballet dancer should not cause laughter. The word “lust” was not spoken.

“Carnival”, “Scheherazade”, “Parsley”, “Narcissus”, “Daphnis and Chloe”, “Firebird”... and after “The Rite of Spring” Russia “became in great fashion”. In big. Costumes, trinkets “a la russe” and all that. English dancers Patrick Healy-Kay, Alice Marks and Hilda Munnings took Russian pseudonyms - Anton Dolin, Alicia Markova and Lydia Sokolova, under which they performed in Diaghilev's troupe. And even the wife of King George VI of Great Britain got married in a Russian dress. Bakst, Roerich and Benois worked on the sets and costumes for the productions.

“The Russian season, like a gust of fresh wind, swept over the French stage with its outdated conventions,” Karsavina would later write. – I sometimes ask myself whether Diaghilev was proud of himself in his happy hours - after all, he managed to unite a whole constellation of talents - Chaliapin himself, Benois (the master), Bakst (Ie bateau de la saison russe, the ship of the Russian season), whose name everyone had on his lips, his dandyish primness, punctuality and unfailing good nature contrasted sharply with the furious chaos of our rehearsals. Fokin screamed until he was hoarse, tore out his hair and performed miracles. Pavlova flashed among us with a fleeting vision and left, performing in a couple of performances; Muse of Parnassus - that’s what Jean Louis Vaudoyer called her. The most virtuoso of all modern ballerinas, Geltser, was also among us; she was admired by admirers of academic art. The spirit of the exotic found its highest embodiment in Ida Rubinstein and her unforgettable Cleopatra. The enumeration may seem boring; and yet I must add the name Nijinsky - whole volumes of books cannot say more than this one name.”

“I have never seen such beauty,” Proust wrote to his friend Reynoldo Hahn. When the Russian ballet brought “Giselle” to the next tour, it became a real sensation. This has never happened in Paris before: the splendor of the scenery beyond all measure, the brightest, exotic costumes, exciting music, the almost superhuman skill of the artists, and at the center of it all is Nijinsky, who jumped so high that it seemed he would never come back. He electrified the air with his searing, absolutely modern expression, completely erasing traditional stage manners and learning to squeeze everything out of nothing. Even Fokine (choreographer in Diaghilev’s troupe and a brilliant dancer himself) thought that Nijinsky was too much in his minimalism: “You just stand there and do nothing!” – he exclaimed once. “I play with my eyes alone,” replied Nijinsky” ( Andrew O'Hagan, Nijinsky's Diary).

At one time, another great dancer, Vaslav Nijinsky (whose follower Nureyev was often called), came to the Mariinsky Theater at the invitation of Matilda Kshesinskaya, who invited him to become her partner. Nuriev received a similar offer from Natalia Dudinskaya.

“Like Isadora Duncan ten years earlier and Martha Graham a quarter century later, Nijinsky was forced to throw away everything he knew and find his own way of expressing artistic truth. He moved along the same path that Picasso followed three years before him, creating his first cubist paintings” (Fokine).

Paris applauded. A few more performances - and the whole world went crazy for Nijinsky. Moreover, the world lusted after Nijinsky - and also began to behave defiantly. Indecent, there are no words. But the world was not interested in decency then. Nijinsky was interested in the world. And Nijinsky was a Faun. He was interested in himself and what he did on stage.

Do you understand? Passion has no gender. Beauty doesn't have it either. Beauty, as we know, is in the eyes of the beholder, but passion is in the soul of the one who desires. Everyone who looked at Nijinsky saw the embodiment of their own passion. Is it strange, therefore, that the public came out in droves? The artist danced his dream - the main thing that burned his soul. People looked and saw their own souls. We have a hell of a lot in common. When someone manages to show this generality, he is declared a genius. But a genius creates for himself. Actually, the last genius who was not an egoist was called Jesus Christ.

Nijinsky's partners spoke with bitter resentment about the brilliant egocentrist: they created, lost their heads and died, without feeling any return or interaction on his part. He danced his roles for himself.

Paradox? An artist shouldn’t do this, and even more than that: such egocentrism acts in the most harmful way. Yes, that’s certainly true.”

But before we get to the tragedy, let's dwell on the tangible. Here are photographs of Nijinsky from 1911-1916.

Nijinsky was looking for something simple in dance. Contrary to popular belief about the aesthetics of sophistication, the dancer strived for the opposite. Once, having admired the figures on ancient Greek vases, he used the vase painting as the basis for a new dance. Dance of your own school. Yes, schools, no matter what anyone says.

Here, for example, is what Nijinsky’s first choreographic production, “The Afternoon of a Faun,” looked like. Its plot is simple: a faun, serenely basking in the spring sun, tries to catch one of the nymphs frolicking by the stream, and, having failed to do this, returns with the veil of one of them.

“...we still clearly sense,” O’Hagan notes in his article, describing attempts to reconstruct Nijinsky’s ballets, “a taste of sexual obscenity.<...>The audience at the present morning performances at the Royal Opera House continues to divert children's attention from the scene when the faun crawls in pursuit of the shadow of his own desire, lasciviously entwined with an antique bedspread.

"Games"

Now famous throughout the world, Diaghilev had great faith in his prime minister, willingly inspired and supported his daring undertakings, but his own enterprise? No impossible. Nijinsky belongs to Diaghilev. It was Diaghilev who suggested the idea for his second production, the ballet “Games”. It was Diaghilev who came up with the idea that the dance could be based on a tennis match! At least that's what he insisted on. The match in Bedford Square was watched together, and indeed, a new ballet soon premiered in which two women drag a man trying to pick up a dropped tennis ball into a dance on the edge of decency.

Here's what O'Hagan writes about it:

“This was the first time in the history of ballet that dancers danced in modern costumes.<...>Three actors - frozen examples of English park sculpture in the Art Nouveau style - come to life before the eyes of the audience, but their movements, reminiscent of playing tennis ("candles" and volleys), are quite unusual. It is worth recalling that Nijinsky, while working on this ballet, kept an open album with Gauguin’s reproductions on the floor of his studio.”

We say "Gauguin", we mean...

Yes, it is impossible to deny Nijinsky’s defiant eroticism. More than one scandal was associated with his frank steps, and each time Diaghilev used all his influence to hush it up. But Diaghilev was an impresario. Moreover, he was an excellent impresario. He understood what he was betting on. But Fokin, who ultimately felt wounded in his creative ambitions, threw tantrums more than once or twice with threats to leave the troupe, and, in the end, insisted on his own. Like everyone else in such cases, he probably expected that he would be persuaded, but... Diaghilev let him go. Moreover, Nijinsky was not at the farewell banquet. Many years later, Nijinsky would write in his diary that Diaghilev asked him to do this, supposedly in order not to irritate the offended maestro. Until his last years, Fokin would not know that Nijinsky really wanted to go to this send-off, and Nijinsky - that Fokin waited until the last minute for him to leave the dressing room.

They became enemies.

Without fish

So, Nijinsky turned out to be the founder of a new school, this could not be denied. But even more so, it was impossible not to recognize the fact that yesterday’s like-minded people would have become competitors in this case, and the triumph of the Russian Ballets was one of a kind. The struggle would be fierce, the victory would be controversial, and it was impossible to allow a confrontation between two schools, which, moreover, were born in the same cradle. Open war was provoked by Nijinsky's marriage. He was left without a patron.

It cannot be said that the world has turned its back on him. No. Soon after leaving Diaghilev, many proposals followed. The most famous variety shows in the world wanted Nijinsky to direct their troupe. But Nijinsky did not want a variety show. He needed ballet. Your own, new ballet. He managed to assemble a small troupe (which included Nijinsky’s sister Bronislava and her husband and several other like-minded people who left Diaghilev’s troupe), implement several new ideas, and finally remake the old ones in his own way. But neither Bakst, nor Roerich, nor Benois agreed to work on Nijinsky’s performances: they knew how dangerous it was to quarrel with Diaghilev. So the young choreographer had almost nothing left.

Nijinsky got out as best he could. He was forced to invite an unknown artist. This man's last name was Picasso. The music (and music was very difficult: because of the war, both artists and the public boycotted German composers) was also written by a little-known composer. A certain Ravel.

But Diaghilev again used all his power, all his influence - this time to destroy Nijinsky. He launched lawsuits, challenged copyrights, and while they lasted, performance after performance was removed from the stage. Diaghilev cleverly chose the time for his next complaint - an hour before the performance. Thus, he deprived Nijinsky of the opportunity to maneuver, and he remained defenseless. Scandal followed scandal. The artists invited from Russia were forced to return home, and the salaries paid to them left the Nijinsky family without money.

The situation has become deplorable. The Nijinskys decided to return to St. Petersburg.

The same mother-in-law

However, before they had even reached Russia, the Nijinsky family with their newborn daughter found themselves in the position of prisoners of war. The First World War began, and I had to spend two long years in Budapest, in the house of my wife’s parents. Without a troupe, without a theater, without a stage, clenching his teeth: Nijinsky was Russian, they hated him. Well, as for European fame, it only fueled this hatred. Especially from the mother-in-law, Eleanor, who, although she was a famous artist, her fame did not extend beyond the borders of her homeland. She controlled the lives of the spouses. She interfered in the upbringing of little Kira. And the son-in-law was guilty of everything he did. And in everything that I didn’t do. It got to the point that Nijinsky was forbidden to take a bath and use hot water. Did it ever occur to Eleanor that she was making her daughter's life a nightmare? We don't know this. But we know that Romola was repeatedly offered to divorce Nijinsky, they even insisted - and she furiously refused.

In 1916, through the efforts of friends, the family was finally released. A tour in New York followed. Nijinsky was then staging the ballet Till Eulenspiegel. Only three weeks were allotted for preparation; the tense situation deprived Nijinsky of his peace of mind. During one of the rehearsals, he twisted his ankle and was forced to spend six weeks in bed. The contract with London Palace was terminated.

Diaghilev took advantage of this moment. The audience still wanted Nijinsky. He invited Nijinsky.

Now Pablo Picasso, Coco Chanel, Henri Matisse, Richard Strauss, Maurice Ravel, Sergei Prokofiev, Claude Debussy, Igor Stravinsky worked on the performances of the Russian Ballets. Nijinsky was accompanied by Rubinstein. If we provided a complete list here, it would take up half a page. But neither big names, nor success, nor the adoration of the public could hide Diaghilev’s hatred. Nijinsky's wife, Romola, notes in her memoirs an endless series of "coincidences" and "accidents", each of which could have cost her husband his life. There were many such cases. But the most unfortunate thing was the friendship of her Wenceslas with two gentlemen who had long called themselves his friends and, unfortunately, aroused reciprocal affection.

Mr. Kostrov and another, who is designated “N.” in her notes, were Tolstoyans. Whether this was another intrigue of Diaghilev, seeking to cause discord between the spouses, or whether the seeds simply fell on fertile soil, we do not know. But Nijinsky, whom his wife describes in her memoirs as a cheerful person, changes before our eyes.

This place is worth stopping by. The fact is that they like to write about Nijinsky, that he was a lazy, dull student, that even at the Imperial Ballet School he only succeeded in basic subjects, but in his diary we read the opposite. Vaclav did not have time exactly until the moment when he was almost expelled one day. The students were on their way to the theater, Vaclav, who was known as a hooligan, fired a slingshot and hit the priest in the eye. Sent home, he saw that the family was begging, witnessed a humiliating scene of borrowing money - and, upon returning, suddenly turned into the pride of the teachers. Only French and the law of God were not given to him.

What's interesting is this. In Romola’s memoirs, this slingshot will later turn into “toy bows and arrows” that “the boys took with them to the theater.” Read it again and try to imagine: a dozen and a half boys, accompanied by a teacher, going to the theater and armed in this way... But Romola was a smart woman. It never occurred to her to embellish her own actions in her memoirs. In addition, no editor would find fault with such a touch as the slingshot. So, the anecdotal “censorship” appeared in the text, obeying someone else’s will? Who is this? Probably still the same mother who wants only the best.

In his diary, Nijinsky recalls, in particular, how, as a boy, he became interested in reading Dostoevsky. Agree, an unusual choice for a lazy and dull child. And Nijinsky’s favorite work was “The Idiot”. Now, we believe that the change in his behavior will not seem paradoxical to you. Most likely, it was from the image of Prince Myshkin that the words and thoughts about love and God endlessly repeated in his diary grew: “God is love. I want to love everyone. I am God." Moreover, there, in his memoirs, we find the beginning of the story.

Here is young Nijinsky - the only hope of a mother abandoned by her husband, who has a mentally ill eldest son in her arms. The family desperately needs money. Nijinsky gives in to wealthy patrons. This is his only way out. And if he writes about Prince Lvov with love, then the connection with Diaghilev was a forced connection, because of money. Very soon, Vaclav, barely out of adolescence, already seeks to break off this relationship, but it is too late. Diaghilev considered him his toy, and if Nijinsky ever thought that he had cut the strings of his puppeteer, then every time it turned out that this was an illusion.

First notebook. "Feeling"

By the age of thirty, Nijinsky considered himself a sinner. He was merciless to himself. Memories of Parisian cocottes, Diaghilev, thoughts of his own desires disgust him. He tries to abstain. He gives up meat and wants his family to do the same. He writes with annoyance about Romola, who does not want to obey him.

“Crazy,” says the mother-in-law, and the father-in-law agrees with her. Everyone agrees with her. She belongs to that kind of mother-in-law, arguing with whom is a waste of time.

Meanwhile, imagine Vaclav. He strives to maintain ballet form. Sexual excesses have a bad effect on dancing. Finally, mommy’s ideas about healthy eating... easy to imagine, right? But Romola is a former ballerina. But she is in such tension that no matter how wholeheartedly she believes her husband, she no longer has the strength. And if the described manifestations of Tolstoyanism are deeply healthy, then everything else quickly turned into oddities.

However, they are not yet very noticeable. So far, the Nijinsky family has just finished a tour in North and South America and intends to leave Diaghilev’s troupe to settle in Switzerland.

Romola is worried about her husband's mental state. He became secretive. Keeps a secret diary. He is prone to aggression and often goes for walks alone. One day she finds out that her husband is wandering through the villages with a huge cross on his chest and preaching the search for truth.

Meanwhile, in his secret diary, Vaclav describes thoughts, hallucinations, and fears. He saw blood on the road, and cannot understand what really happened: murder or is it God testing the strength of his faith? He is worried that his daughters “said something.” He remembers his mother-in-law. Eleanor and her husband have long decided to take their daughter’s fate into their own hands and that is why they are accompanied. He understands, of course. He endures. He tries to love everyone.

How many souls has this damned love for all things destroyed! A love that cannot exist. Love is false, fictitious, artificial. But Nijinsky would not have been Nijinsky if he had not strived for such love. He wanted to love everyone, and to be loved too. He wants to write poetry, play the piano and dance. He wants to forget about the war - and he cannot.

Several times Nijinsky rebels. He is even looking for a rented room somewhere in the village. But very soon he realizes that this is a dead end, and returns. He writes his diary in short, chopped phrases. He wants to be clear. Wants to see the truth. He is merciless to himself and people. He writes everything.

Romola has just returned home. Yesterday afternoon Vaclav disappeared again, and the doctor had just told her that he had seen him in the city.

What's happened? - she asks the servants. - Why do you have such strange faces?

Madam! - the stoker answers her. - Sorry, maybe I'm wrong. We love you both. Do you remember when I told you that at home in the village, as a child, I carried out orders for Mr. Nietzsche? I carried his backpack when he went to the Alps to work. Madam, before he got sick, he looked and behaved exactly like Monsieur Nijinsky now. Please forgive me.

What do you want to say?

The last notebook. "Death"

In 1919, when Nijinsky’s last performance took place in a Swiss hotel, he was not yet thirty. He was still a brilliant dancer. His famous jump-flight was still beautiful. But strange drawings began to appear in his diary: human eyes. Red or black, with an indescribable expression of madness, they were drawn with such pressure that the pencil tore the paper. Besides the eyes, there were also spiders. They had Diaghilev's face. Nijinsky tries to write poetry, but they are crazy. If at the beginning of the text they, even if quite primitive, are still meaningful, then the further you go, the more often words replace syllables. They don't make sense, but they have rhythm. The words “Feeling”, “love”, “God” gradually crowd out any thought and are written down on their own, in random order. In the midst of this chaos, memories suddenly break through: clear and distinct. Then darkness again.

At that last performance, Nijinsky sat on a chair in front of the audience for half an hour and looked at it. Then he folded two rolls of fabric into a cross. “Now I will dance a war for you,” he said, “a war that you failed to prevent.”

Soon Vaclav met with Eric Bleuler, the man who first uttered the word “schizophrenia” out loud. In Nijinsky's diary, the entry about his intention to go to this meeting is the last. Very soon Vaclav was sent to Kreuzlingen, then to the Bellevue sanatorium. There he spent 30 years, completely withdrawing into himself.

"Nijinsky's Diary" was published in Paris in 1958.

The following were used in preparing the publication:

V. Nijinsky, “Feeling”.

R. Nijinska, "Vaclav Nijinsky".

T. Karsavina, “Theater Street”

Andrew O'Hagan, “Nijinsky's Diary.” (Article in London Review of Books, 2000. Translated by G. Markov.)

Illustrations from the archives of the New York Public Library.

Nijinsky Vaslav Fomich (1889-1950), an outstanding Russian dancer and choreographer.

Born on February 28 (March 12), 1889 in Kyiv in the family of famous dancers Thomas (Tomas) Lavrentievich Nijinsky and Eleonora Nikolaevna Bereda, who owned their own ballet troupe. The troupe toured in different cities: Paris, St. Petersburg, Kyiv, Minsk, Tiflis, Odessa.

All three Nijinsky children were gifted musically and plastically, had good external characteristics and were involved in dance from an early age. They received their first choreography lessons from their mother. My father also tried his hand as a choreographer. For six-year-old Vaclav, his older brother, and younger sister Bronislava, a famous future ballerina and choreographer, he composed a pas de trois - this was the first “performance” of the future genius. After the divorce, the mother settled in St. Petersburg with her three children.

In 1900-1908 he studied at the St. Petersburg Theater School, where he studied under the guidance of N.G. Legat, M.K. Obukhov and E. Cecchetti. Once on the stage of the Mariinsky Theater, he quickly became a soloist. He belonged to the galaxy of young dancers who shared the innovative ideas of M. M. Fokin. He danced in Fokine's ballets The White Slave (N.N. Cherepnin's Armida Pavilion, 1907), The Youth (Chopiniana, 1908), The Ebony Slave (Egyptian Nights by A.S. Arensky, 1907), Albert (Giselle Adana, 1910).

Almost immediately after graduating from college, Nijinsky was invited by S.P. Diaghilev to participate in the 1909 ballet season, where he gained enormous success. For his ability to jump high and elevate for a long time, he was called the bird-man, the second Vestris. Nijinsky became Diaghilev's discovery, the first dancer, and then the choreographer of the troupe (1909-1913, 1916).

In Paris, the dance repertoire tested on the stage of the Mariinsky Theater was performed (Armida Pavilion, 1907; Chopinian or La Sylphide, 1907; Egyptian Nights or Cleopatra 1909; Giselle, 1910; Swan Lake, 1911), as well as the divertissement Feast to the music of Russian composers, 1909; and roles in Fokine's new ballets Schumann's Carnival, 1910; Scheherazade by N.A. Rimsky-Korsakov, 1910; Orientals A. Glazunov, 1910; Vision of a Rose by K. M. Weber, 1911, in which he amazed the Parisian public with a fantastic jump through a window; Parsley by I.F. Stravinsky, 1911; Blue God R. Ghana, 1912; Daphnis and Chloe M. Ravel, 1912.

Encouraged by Diaghilev, Nijinsky tried his hand as a choreographer and, secretly from Fokine, rehearsed his first ballet - The Afternoon of a Faun to the music of C. Debussy (1912). He based his choreography on profile poses borrowed from ancient Greek vase painting. Like Diaghilev, Nijinsky was fascinated by the rhythmoplastics and eurythmics of Dalcroze, in whose aesthetics he staged his next and most significant ballet, The Rite of Spring, in 1913. The Rite of Spring, written by Stravinsky in an atonal system and choreographically built on complex combinations of rhythms, became one of the first expressionist ballets. The ballet was not immediately accepted, and its premiere ended in scandal, as did Afternoon of a Faun, which shocked the public with its final erotic scene. In the same year he performed the plotless ballet Plays by Debussy. These productions by Nijinsky were characterized by anti-romanticism and opposition to the usual grace of the classical style.

The Parisian public was captivated by the artist's undoubted dramatic talent and his exotic appearance. Nijinsky turned out to be a brave and original-minded choreographer, who opened new paths in plastic arts, returning male dance to its former priority and virtuosity. Nijinsky also owed his successes to Diaghilev, who believed and supported him in daring experiments. The break with Diaghilev due to Nijinsky's marriage to the unprofessional dancer Romola Pulskaya led to Nijinsky's departure from the troupe and, in fact, to the end of his short, dizzying career.

The repertoire consisted of productions by Nijinsky and, in part, by Fokine (The Phantom of the Rose, Carnival, La Sylphides, which Nijinsky remade again). However, the tour was not a success and ended in financial ruin, which led to a nervous breakdown and the onset of the artist’s mental illness. Failures followed him. The First World War of 1914 found the couple returning to St. Petersburg with their newborn daughter in Budapest, where they were interned until the beginning of 1916. Nijinsky was painfully worried about both his arrest and his forced creative inactivity. Meanwhile, Diaghilev renewed the contract with the artist for the Russian Ballet tour in North and South America. On April 12, 1916, he danced his signature roles in Petrushka and Vision of a Rose on the stage of the New York Metropolitan Opera.

In the same year, on October 23, the premiere of Nijinsky's last ballet, Till Eulenspiegel by R. Strauss, was shown at the Manhattan Opera in New York, in which he performed the main role. The performance, created in feverish haste, despite a number of interesting discoveries, failed. The unrest that he experienced greatly traumatized Nijinsky’s weak psyche. A fatal role in his fate was played by his passion for Tolstoyism, popular in the emigrant circles of the Russian artistic intelligentsia. Members of Diaghilev's troupe, the Tolstoyans Nemchinova, Kostrovsky and Zverev, instilled in Nijinsky the sinfulness of the acting profession, which aggravated his illness. In 1917, Nijinsky finally left the stage and settled in Switzerland with his family.

Here he felt better, he thought about a new system for recording dance, dreamed of his own school, and in 1918 he wrote the book Nijinsky's Diary (published in Paris in 1953). However, he was soon placed in a mental hospital, where he spent the rest of his life. He died on April 11, 1950 in London. In 1953, his body was transported to Paris and buried in the Sacre Coeur cemetery next to the graves of the legendary dancer G. Vestris and playwright T. Gautier, one of the creators of romantic ballet.

Nijinsky made a bold breakthrough into the future of ballet art, discovering the later established style of expressionism and fundamentally new possibilities of plastic arts. His creative life was short (only 10 years!), but intense. The famous ballet by M. Bejart, Nijinsky, God's Clown, to the music of P. Henri and P. Tchaikovsky, 1971, is dedicated to the personality of Nijinsky.

Nijinsky was an idol throughout Europe. His dance combined strength and lightness; he amazed the audience with his breathtaking jumps - many thought that the dancer was “hovering” in the air. He had a remarkable gift of transformation and extraordinary facial abilities. On stage he radiated powerful magnetism, although in everyday life he was timid and silent.