I Au Gesue m Je suis gesue m Je suis gesue Gods and Bodies Je suis gesue Je suis gesue HOLLANDER Je suis un sue Je suis un sue 00 The Diary of Vaslav Nijinsky: Je suisje suisje suis je suis Suisje suisje suisje suis S Unexpurgated Edition Je suis suisje suis suisje Je ne veux pas sent je suis translated by Kyril FitzLyon Je me suisje suisje suis edited by Joan Acocella The one addressed to mankind is similar, (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 312 pp., $30) only it is nineteen pages long. Nureyev: His Life OAN ACOCELLA'S long biographical and interpretive introduction is a by Diane Solway Jboon to the reader of this difficult book. She sketches the world of art con- (William Morrow, 625 pp., $27.50) temporary with Nijinskv's short career, along with the drastic historical events YRIL FiTZLYON's English motion, plus the drawings and the in progress that affected and helped to translation of Nijinsl^'s posed studio shots. His choreography, too, compromise both that world and Nijin- diary from the origin^ hand- eludes exact retrieval, except for L'Apres- sky's art, and the ways his madness may wTitten Russian texts is a midi d'unfaune, which was transmitted be seen as part of them all, inflected by landmark in the history of and survives. Jeux, Sacre du printemps, the mythology of the mad artist. She sets Kmodem art. The resultant book, which and Tyl Eulenspiegel can be only lamely Nijinsk>''s writings in the context of his includes Joan Acocella's rich introduction reconstructed, though again there are recent conversion to Tolstoyanism, which and the translator's own preface and some pictures and the many things that helps to account for the dominant spiri- annotations, in fact shows to what a great people said and wTote. tual theme of the diar>-, its constant degree Modern Art itself is History, mean- What we have is this book. NijinsW emphasis on what God wants, along with ing over. The objective detachment at viTote all of it during the six and a half its intermittent insistence on how bad it work, the currency of the interpretations weeks between his last public perfor- is to eat meat, to value money, to >ield and the aesthetic syntheses offered, and mance and his first hospitalization, which to lust. We also leam of Vaslav's unstable the emotional attitudes expressed by the was imminent as he finished writing on older brother Stassik, institutionalized in two people who produced this book place the last day, waiting to be taken to see a his teens, his fate a perpetual source of it firmly in an era beyond the reach of specialist in Zurich. That was in the spring dread. Acocella offers detailed analytical Modernisms original force, flavor, and of 1919, when he was twenty-nine. The information about Nijinsl^-'s mental con- aims, free from passionate entanglements book was intended as an urgent commu- dition, not only describing it in the light with the sense of form, or the devotion to nication to the world. Nijinsky writes that of present knowledge, but describing also art as a continuum that generates its own he means to publish it as soon as he gets to the efiforts made to deal with it personally path. As if he were a Renaissance painter Zurich, so that people will rightly under- and professionally at the time. or an Enhghtenment writer, Nijinsk>''s art stand him and profit from his knowledge There are also many details about the and life are now ready for detached in- of how the world ought to be. spection and analysis, with special em- practical and internal difficulties faced Now published in its entirety for the phasis on the society in which he lived and by an independent ballet company, espe- first time, this dense compendium of on his sexual and emotional histor>'. cially in times of war and revolution. pronouncements, complaints, memories, Acocella's account includes hair-raising Analysis is impossible for the art of un- reports (of dealings with God as well as stories of Nijinsky's failures as a leader recorded performers. Everything depends of quotidian events and physical details), and an administrator—at first of his own on words. There are no films of Nijinskj' thoughts, poems, letters, explanations, small, short-lived troupe (formed after dancing, and there are no living eye-wit- sermons, hopes (for love and understand- his marriage and his subsequent rupture nesses. Since his modern era is so recent, ing) and fears (of madness and global dis- with the Diaghilev enterprise), of which this fact seems a much greater calamity aster) has become the only solid legac>- of the two-month London engagement had than our lack of direct visual record for, Nijinsky, the great modern genius ofthe to be canceled after two weeks. Later, after say, Marie Taglioni, whose nineteenth- dance. The French translation of 1933, he had rejoined the Ballets Russes in 1916 century dancing is as unknown to us as also made from the original manuscript, for a season in New York, a second season Salomes. The tenuousness of a dancer's omitted almost all of the Fourth Note- was followed by a disastrous four-month, artistic immortality is appalling. Knowl- book, which consists of sixteen unsent fifty-two-city tour, during which Nijinsky edge of Nijinsky's performances must letters in French, Russian, and Polish, of was put in charge of the company and come from the many wTitten descriptions which ten are poems, the first fourteen tried to run it on Tolstoyan principles, out- and few photographs of him in actual addressed to living persons, the last two raging everybody and losing a fortune into to Mankind and to Jesus. This group of the bargain. ANNE HOLLANDER'S new book. Feeding letters was written all at once, during a Acocella is a dance critic, but she has the Eye, will be published in the fall by break from the composition of the book also co-written a textbook on abnormal Farrar, Straus and Giroux. itself. The last in its entirety goes like this: psychology. She emphasizes this diary's 42 : MAY 31, 1999 importance as the only record of an artist's her steady falsity, and fiiU of love for his her husband in 1934 to supplement and descent into insanity as it was occurring, wife, even though he does call Romola "an to complement this mad screed before she made by the artist himself. Crudely put, un-twinkling star." He also writes that "I published it. She was not highly intelli- this document shows how Nijinsky feh like my wife's nose because it has feeling." gent, or talented as dancer or writer, or in as the emotional dispositions that had He keenly feels her withdrawals of imme- much rapport with the actual phenome- created a dancer and a choreographer diate sympathy and the presence of her non of genius; and she was acutely ofher were being transmuted into psychosis. For constant anxiety. He often says that "my time. But they did love each other, and she her essay, Acocella has studied not only wife does not feel me," but he never seems did her best as that hapless personage. works on varieties of mental illness, bnt to feel that she does not love him. The Artist's Wife. specifically those on Nijinsky's malady, Romola had no sense of this text as an Vaslav Nijinsky was bom in 1889 (along notably Peter Ostwald's Nijinsky: A Leap important medical document, and she with Adolf Hitler, Charlie Chaphn, and into Madness, which appeared in 1991 knew it would be all that was left of Nijin- Ludwig Wittgenstein) to a couple of itin- and focuses on the evidence of his schizo- sk\' in the unaccountable fiiturc. How to erant Polish dancers who played sum- phrenia. mer theaters and cir- For this new edition cuses on both sides of of the diary, in order to the Russian-Polish bor- guard the integrity' of der, and who taught Nijinsky's writings dur- him to dance and to per- ing his breakdown, it form when he was lit- was clearly necessary to tle. When his father preserve every last bit eventually decamped, of incoherence and dis- his mother moved the continuity in Nijinsky's family to St. Petersburg text, every obsessive and set about getting repetition, every vagrant Vaslav into the Imperial association, and all the Theater School, which odd twitches of syntax or he entered at the age diction—each one well of nine. Though a poor annotated—together scholar, he was clearly with every personal a dancer of genius. account of defecation His mother must have and masturbation, to say known it all along. nothing of ingestion, His rise was swift. He and every uninhibited entered the ballet com- reference to public fig- pany at an advanced ures and family mem- rank, and he was famous bers. Also important, it in St. Petersburg by seems, was preserving S the age of eighteen. the traditional contempt S Through Diaghilev, he for the first editor 5 was world-famous only and publisher of this I two years later: "fe dieu diary, the dancer's wife 5 de la da/ise" Acocella Romola. Her edition of I suggests that this early 1936, in English trans- " glory could have heen lation, was heavily re- r quite destabilizing to written, rearranged, and ? someone prone to men- truncated so as to omit I tal imbalance, and that most of the sex and i, Nijinsky's later written the defecation and the ; repetitions that he is most uncomplimentary i God may have their references to herself, ^ source in this preco- along Viith the most bor- cious triumph. Maybe; ing and incomprehensi- Vaslav Nijinsky in "Tyl Eulenspiegel," 1916 but you would think that ble grotesqueries ofthe text. conjure the great dancer through the his superlative dancing would anyway feel Acocella is careful to acknowledge her scribbles of a madman with religious like divinity to him. "I am God within the respect for Romola's "editorial achieve- mania? It is very noticeable that there is body," he wrote. This had nothing to do ment," and calls her version "comforting" almost nothing concrete in these pages with public acclaim or with Tolstoy. because of the rewrites. Still, her inter- about dancing or performing, nothing Serge Diaghilev had crowned several pretations of Romola's editorial decisions about training, preparing, or choreo- prodigious cultural projects in the first sound needlessly condescending, as in graphing, nothing about other dancers decade of the twentieth centur>' with his "Romola probably found this primitive." and their work. Romola's eflbrts to make creation of the Ballets Russes. He had Unhappy Romola! I cannot believe that Nijinsky's diary reveal him as a great artist brought the Impressionists to St. Peters- she was ever the villain. Mainly she was and a great man as well as an undeniable burg. He had brought Feodor Chaliapin to the daughter of a dreadful mother, Emilia lunatic, and to preserve him from the very Paris. Then, in 1909, he gathered the best Markus, the Most Famous Hungarian scrutiny now brought to bear on the total- Russian dancers, choreographers, com- Actress of Her Day (help!). Nijinsky's ity of this horrific document, are somehow posers, and designers together into a new diary is full of loathing for this lady and moving. She wrote her own book about company and set them to work, spiriting

THE NEW REPUBLIC ; MAY 31, 1999 : 43 I H them away from traditional ser- ple smoke because they think X vice to the Czar and into the they look impressive that way. I m z fecund air of Paris, from which Harvest have noticed that people who m their combined talents might smoke have a proud bearing." dazzle the West with a fierce, Loved one, it has been my pri\ilege But the fey note unfailingly kinetic modernity. Nijinsky was to calculate your sightings, near and far, recurs, and the flatness of tone m the centerpiece ofthe ensemble, to trail iu the wide wake of your effulgence is mad and maddening. Writ- with his amazing elevation and watch you flare ing in 1919, as the Paris Peace and his unguarded, erotic stage 03 in anger and arousal everywhere. Conference was taking place, presence; and at the time he he remarked upon magazine was Diaghilev's lover as well. And on the windy afternoon of which I speak photographs of the convening Acoceila describes Nijinsky's burrs on my socks that stick and prick statesmen: "Lloyd George's sexual liaison with Diaghilev as unshakeablo as memories were clinging smile reminds one of Diaghi- the last of the youthful dan- for I was running interference with lev's smiles. I know Diaghilev's cer's several homosexual con- the Lilliputian pickers raiding the dwarf trees smiles. All Diaghilev's smiles nections, which were custom- while the ruddy sun, your other lover, was with you, are artificial. My little girl has ary; to improve his status or his hurtling toward the clarifying west. learned to smile like Diaghilev. I career. She finds the diar\' con- And you were there, too, laughing with the rest, have taught her because I want firming that Nijinsl^-'s private head tilted at that angle where you catch her to give Diaghilev a smile sexual excitements and fanta- that other, higher frequency you hear. when he visits me." "I have a sies were all about women, and sensitive smile because I feel that he would often seek out And strewn across the low fields by the sea, God. Wilson's smile is sensitive prostitutes rather than find a boulders that had bounced on landing because he feels God. However, homosexual milieu to frequent. burned as if to mock us two, Lloyd George's smile is silly be- She points out that the androg- alone or paired across the melted stubble, cause he does not feel God." ynous flavoro f his most famous some enormous, some mere rubble, Later: "I know that Frenchmen roles was created by Fokine, the steaming coals, alive as anything feel God, but they do not under- choreographer of Spectre de la —except the careening nugget who thinks he owns you, stand him yet, and therefore rose and Scheherazade, whereas whose influence was e\'idently flowing they make mistakes." Nijinsky's choreography for from face to face across the crowd He achieves rhetorical feats: himself in L'Apres-midi d'un arrayed in purple turtle fur and Lycra. faune was purely masculine. "The English do not like danc- ing because they have a lot of His marriage to Romola in Then I was with him, and he let me see money in their stomachs." And 1913, during the company's our small careers: the gash and gleam, this: "I have healthy guts be- South American tour without the eddy, the crash-and-burn, the writhing quiet, cause I do not eat much money." Diaghilev, was a stunning blow and it was very clear: Or: "My hair is moving, for I feel to the latter, who perhaps could lo\ing isn't oneness, but aloneness. it. I ate a lot and therefore feel not imagine the possibility', The other stands out sharp up there; death." Later he writes: "I know but the diar\' does make it seem each wears a sweater her own color, what an eye is. An eye is a the- perfectly natural to Nijinsk}'. no two the same. ater. The brain is the audience. I Romola was a dancer, though am the eye in the brain. I like not a ver^' good one, and her Which is why just then, while you were all out looking in the mirror and see- presence with the troupe on this looking for the right one to bring home, ing one eye in my forehead. I tour, Acocella says, was essen- some emblem of fulfillment to get us to winter, often draw one eye I like tially as a groupie in pursuit of I kept to my bag of apples by the haycart, an eye with hair on the head. Nijinsky'. She was veiy pretty though the day was far too frill to carry a message, I am God's eye, and not a war- and very eager, and the suscep- no field disturbance, no slightest reason to doubt you, like eye." tible Nijinsky certainly wanted and the need in me burned as it does in pure imitation, Nijinsky; the artist of the to marr\' her, even though she still I stood there alone in the pumpkins without you. body, is always denouncing the may initially have been set on intellect in favor of reason by Mother, or perhaps by the Jonathan Galassi (meaning intuition or sensibil- need to escape Mother. The ity) and feeling (meaning in- betrayed Diaghilev instantly stinctive sympathy). He writes: fired him when he heard of "I do not like Shakespeare's the marriage. Nijinsky thereafter had to happened to him is limpid and self-pos- Hamlet, because he thinks. I am an spend two years ofthe war interned at his sessed, and his observations are clear- unthinking philosopher." Later: "I am rea- mother-in-law's house in Budapest, mis- sighted about other people's honesty, fear, son, and not intelligence. I am God, for I erable in her forced company, out of work or vanity: "I have noticed that people are am Reason. I am the philosophy of reason. and not dancing. God within the body had not interested in new pictures, because I am the true, not invented, philos- no scope. The beliefs and the feelings they think that they do not understand ophy." He is not afraid of physical death, expressed in the diary must have begun to art. They buy old pictures in order to show but ofthe deadly element in life. He fre- crystallize then; what he tried to work on that they have 'love for art.' I realized that quently says that criticism is death, or that was a system of dance notation. people like art but are afi-aid to say to thinking is death, or that machines are The diary is wonderful as well as hor- themselves "I understand art.' People are death, or that all the various conven- rific. It is not a real diary, but a mixture of very timid because critics frighten them tional hypocrisies that he calls "tricks" and confession, memoir, and tract. Nijinsky's ... critics think that the public is stupid." "habits" are death. Later: "I am not afraid straight narration about the things that Later on he says: "I think that many peo- of anything. I am afraid of the death of

44 : MAY 31, 1999 reason. I want the death of intellect ... Nureyev's version sound very much like it all as a childhood pastime. His own pas- intellect is stupidity, and reason is God." what Nijinsky's fellow-student Tamara sion to be nothing but a dancer apparently He strikes a prophetic note: "I would Karsavina describes in her memoirs. came to life when he was first exposed to like factories to be destroyed, because they Whatever the Russian regime or epoch, the ballet at the age of seven. And Ufa, spread dirt on the earth I want people however, these gifted Russian ballet far from being a cultural desert, then har- to realize that they must give up all rub- dancers (and some notable others) re- bored a number of "undesirable" artistic bish, because there is not much time left to quired swift transfer to the West to fiilfill and inteiiectual exiles from ex-St. Peters- live. I feel the suffocation ofthe earth I their talent, after their pricelessly exacting burg and Moscow. There had been an feel that the earth is suffocating, and apprenticeship at home. Solway points out opera house there since 1938 and a ballet therefore I ask everyone to abandon facto- that Nureyev's own autobiography begins company since 1941. Some ofthe dancers ries and obey me. I know what is needed with his defection, not with his childhood had been trained in Leningrad, or had for the salvation of the earth." He has an and training. even danced in the fabled company, now urgent desire to help improve not just One basic difference between Nijinsky called the Kirov. the world, but each person, including his and Nureyev, who was immediately With Father not yet home to dis- wife and her mother: "My wife came and likened to him when he appeared in the approve,- Mother took the children to a kissed me and I felt glad, but God did not West, was that Nureyev's origins were ballet performance there in 1945: gold, want me to show my joy, because he wants Tatar, not Russian or Polish. He was Mns- red velvet, lights, music, glittering crea- to change her." On Emilia: "My wife's lim and nomadic, descended from Gen- tures. Little Rudik was never the same mother is a hypocrite ... she is a wicked ghis Khan's Mongol hordes, not Christian, again, even while continuing his stellar woman She will be furious when she not Slavic, and not at all rooted in the tblk-dance appearances. The Ufa balle- reads these lines, but I will be delighted Russian earth. He hked to fancy himself as rina Anna Udelstova saw him perform because 1 will have taught her a good les- romantically Asiatic—soft and cruel, bru- during his prize-winning tenth year and son." Later: "I am God in man. All people tal and tender—but he was also essentially immediately recommended classical bal- will be gods if they do what I tell them. I godless, the opposite of Nijinsky, who felt let training, starting with herself, but aim- am a man with faults, because I want peo- inhabited by God. Nureyev's father had ing for eventual study in Leningrad. And ple to correct their faults. I do not like been an observant Muslim, even had early so, in the teeth of parental disapproval, he people who have faults they have not priestly ambitions, and his mother wrote began studjing ballet with local teachers corrected. I am a man who has tried to only in Arabic throughout her life. But in the ballet studio attached to the com- improve himselfAndneartheend: "I will both parents later joined the Party, spoke pany, which he joined on the stage as a write a lot because I want to explain to Russian, lost the religion, and embraced paid extra after he turned fifteen. people what life is and what death is." the Revolution. Nureyev got out of Ufa and into the Nijinsky's main text is divided into two His father became a career army officer Kirov School by getting the attention of parts, the first called "On Life" and the and was fighting the Japanese in 1938, the its scouts who scoured the Republics for .second "On Death." but otherwise there year of Rudolf's birth. He was absent from talent, which meant entering and winning are ver>' few paragraph breaks or divisions home during the boy's early childhood, ballet competitions where scouts would of theme. The restless short sentences, while home shifted around nntil the fam- be present, even as far away as Moscow; and the repetitiveness and the inconse- ily settled in Ufa, capital ofthe Republic of and getting his mentors and teachers to quence in the material, make reading it Bashkir, far from Moscow and even far- recommend him in Leningrad itself; and very difficult for more than a few minutes ther from St. Petersburg, now renamed at a time. The temptation is to skim for Leningrad. There was no conception of a gems and juicy parts; and sympathy for dancing career for Rudik, who was the Romola does keep creeping in. In the end only boy born after three older sisters. His VACANCES we must be grateful for the present daunt- parents hoped he would distinguish him- PROVENCALES less effort to bring Nijinsky's entire out- self in the Party, as a reward for their loy- VACATIONS pouring into the present vexed world, just alty to it. Michael Feagan as he wished. We can never see him, but perhaps we can at length profit from lis- NE FACT sharply separated Nure- 1425 Bayview Avenue Tel: (416) 322-5565 tening to him. yev not just from Nijinsk)' but Suite 204 Fax:(416)322-0706 from all the notable dancers Toronto. Ont., Canada 1-800-263-7152 O M4G 3A9 E-mail: [email protected] HAT WOULD HAVE HAPPENED tO schooled in St. Petersburg whose careers Nijinsky if Diaghilev had not fiowered in the West. Nureyev did not start W created the Ballets Russes and there until he was seventeen, almost pro- taken it to Paris in 1909? That's easy. He hibitively late. All his life he couldn't lose Unabridged Audtobooks would have stayed in St. Petersburg and the sense that he would never catch up. danced (unless madness overtook him) Something had to compensate for effort- in the same ballets that Rudolf Nureyev less technique, which could be achieved appeared in fifty years later at the start of only through years of intensive training his career, performing in the same com- from childhood. What he had was tem- pany, trained in the same school in the perament, fanaticism, and erotic appeal, same techniques, having lived the same besides being a bom dancer and a bom Her 1,500 Tides student life in the same city. The differ- star. Available for Purchase or Rental by Mail ence between Imperial Russia at the turn Nureyev began learning folk-dancing in for a free catalo^e. write or call: of the centurj' and the Soviet Union in kindergarten and instantly excelled at it, Dept. NE • P.O. Box 969 • Ashland, Oregon 97520 1960 was astoundingly small, with respect just as he did at music. He was good to the character of that experience. Balan- enough to perform in concerts and com- 1-800-729-2665 http://www.blackstoneaudio.com chine had it, too, in the 1920s. petitions and to win a prize at the age of BLACK^^TONE AUDIOBOOK5 In her biography, Diane Solway makes ten, although his parents were thinking of Unabridged Recordings ot Gieal Boolis

THE NEW REPUBLIC : MAY 31, 1999 : 45 I z getting himself known for energy- and represented the refined perfection that yev, who applied some severe Leningrad m persistence, confidence and resolve, and Nureyev felt he could never attain. The rigor to her practice with him and im- snpremely magnetic stage presence. reticent Bruhn was himself essentially un- parted some of his own ferocious drive to Beauty, talent, and skill were not the qual- aftainable, though the two had a long and this much-revered English lady. Together ities that were attributed to Nureyev by devoted, if stormy, relationship. Nureyev they reinvented the traditional pas de his early supporters. He was also known felt that he could forever learn from him, 70 deux: in their updated version, instead m for ignoring rules, skipping correct proce- and was forever pursuing and seeking of a dignified man enhancing a brilliant •o dures, and having no sense of belonging to while Bnihn retreated. In other respects, woman, a star couple struck sparks from c any sort of collective. During the two and apart from a few early intimacies with one another. (Not everyone was seduced. 00 a half years in which he danced with the women, Nureyev came to enjoy a vigorous The critic John Martin moaned, "She has r— Kirov Company, he was always changing and promiscuous gay sex life in the West, gone ... to the grand ball with a gigolo.") o the steps of his solo, altering the costume though no evidence exists about his ado- that he was given, or arguing his way out lescence. Homosexuality was illegal in the T NUREYEV'S DEBUT IN PARIS, SOOn of decisions that had gone against him. Soviet Union; things happened that left after his defection in 1961, Nijin- He always got away with it. He thrust his no trace. Nureye\- contracted AIDS and Asky's sister Bronislava was in the tunnel-visionary way to the top of the died of it in 1993, after surviving fourteen audience. Nijinsky had died in 1950, after ballet world with will, nerve, and unan- years and only stopping his ceaseless per- thirty years of incarceration; but Bronia, swerable star quality, more or less like forming when he could barely speak or herself a dancer and a choreographer, had Genghis Khan. stand. When he couldn't dance anymore doubtless never ceased to miss his unique he became a conductor, trusting his life- dancing since 1919. Marveling at Nureyev OLWAY's THICK LIFE OF Nureyev is long love and knowledge of music to keep performing the Bluebird pas de deux from very tiring. The cumulative efFect is him on the stage, under the lights, receiv- The Sleeping Beauty in Paris—just as Stotal exhaustion, since this dancer ing applause. Nijinsky had done at his Paris debut in was a burning rocket, and the book re- 1909—she exclaimed, "He is the reincar- cords every detail of his combustion, his HE REST OF NUREYEV'S STORY is nation of my brother." Here was the same trajectory, and his final extinction. The about the breathless doings of a wild, bird-like, unearthly beauty; the physical character of the material helps, Tsuperstar, one of the first super- same wondrous elevation; the same dis- too. Once Nureyev's career restarted in stars to appear in the '60s, right along play of an unbroken St. Petersburg artistic the West—after his dramatic defection at with the Beatles. Solway iiirther helps to tradition. twenty-three from the Kirov Company wear out the reader with her six hundred At his London debut later that year, in during its Paris tour in the summer of pages of relentless journalese, full of an original Ashton ballet to a Scriabin 1961—his stor>- is essentially the life of a wrenched and hasty transitions from score, as Nureyev rushed downstage bare- working dancer, which consists of class, practical and professional details (with chested in a swirling red cloak, Diana practice, rehearsal, and performance, over numbers and sums of money) to celebrit>' Cooper (another survivor of Paris, 1909) and over and over again. This was mag- events (with complete lists and descrip- whispered to Cecil Beaton: "He is better nified by a factor of ten in the case of tions) to exorbitant expenditures to char- than Nijinsky!" There was the same thrill- Nureyev, a driven man who came to lead acter sketches to potted contemporary ing intensity, the savage purit\', the look of this taxing life all over the world, eventu- history to small dramatic scenes between dancing for himself. And the great Karsa- ally fl\ing from continent to continent, Rudolf and others. Added to this is our vina, now living in London, who had been from ballet company to ballet company, sympathetic weariness at the sense of how Nijinsky's partner in the early Diaghilev increasingly unahle to breathe without a much labor went into this biography: Sol- seasons as well as his fellow-student, theater to star in every night. way has interviewed hundreds of people announced to ballet students in 1962 that It is no wonder that Balanchine backed whose lives intersected viith Nureyev's, "the legend of Nijinsl^ lives again in away fi-om inviting Nureyev to join his however fleetinglyo r indirectly, in several Nureyev." own balanced and interactive company. countries, and she has unearthed hitherto One can only assume that these lovers He had no use for a one-man show, he untapped original sources. TVacking this of the real thing had long been vainly needed team players; and also he found fiaming projectile has been manifestly waiting for its second coming. They saw Nureyev's Leningrad style to be fifty years hard work. Her resulting account has what they longed to see. Some of it was out of date. Balanchine nevertheless had more historical and sociological interest there; but the world had changed. The respect for Nureyev's ability to be con- than artistic interest; and in a way so did training was similar, but the state of mind sumed by a role, to he transformed into a Nnreyev himself. With a follow-spot on and soul was a different thing. NijinslQ' young nobleman drunk with love, or a his vibrant figure, the book is a swift tour had arrived in Paris under Diaghilev's prince crushed with grief, or a chieftain of global culture from 196I to 1993, with wing as part of an avant-garde break- mad with power; and eventually he did a special view of the Soviet Union from through in the modem classical dance, hire him for a character part in a ballet of 1938 to its dissolution. an advance that claimed attention and Le Bourgeois gentilhomme that was never For the balletomane, Nureyev's chief expected appreciation only from artisti- produced. When Peter Martins was still a contribution to the art was his galva- cally sophisticated audiences. He was en- fifteen-year-old apprentice at the Royal nizing effect on Margot FontejTi, which couraged to choreograph in avant-garde Danish Ballet, he called Nureyev a "dirty resulted in their truly magnificent and modes, even at the risk of outraging that dancer," meaning, he said, "not clean, sort long-lasting partnership. Not only that, public rather than engaging it. Nijinsky's of messy." With all his incandescence, the entire Royal Ballet felt Nureyev's artistic personality could never have pros- Rudik could never get past the look of electrifjing infiuence, which he exerted pered under superstar circumstances, overdoing it. He was always the provincial later on other ballet companies in Paris, as it was able to do by the reach of out to show them. Vienna, and elsewhere, always with excel- Diaghilev's forward-looking artistic aims. Nureyev's passion for dancing became lent results. Fonteyn at forty-three was Nureyev, coming of age viithin a limiting mingled with his passion for Erik Bruhn, considering retirement when she first and static Soviet vision of a classic high the elegant Danish danseur noble who danced with twent>--four-year-old Nure- art, came to the West and turned the bal-

46 : MAY 31,1999 let into a prodigious sensation for every- ward Villella had gone the other way, time. There are fictional autobiographies body, full of sex and glamour, not only on appearing wholesome, athletic, and cheer- of "wicked" women, Moll Flanders and many stages but also on tele\ision. fiil on Balanchine's stage, where Peter Roxana, lives of a pirate and a soldier of Nureyev operated from the beginning Martins was being the gentleman; but the fortune. Captain Singleton and Colonel at a less adventurous level than Nijin- strongest postmodern trend was toward Jack, and fake historical memoirs, A Jour- sky, always remaining within the classi- gender confusion and baroque rule-break- nal ofthe Plague Year and Memoirs of a cal mode, sensationalizing it rather than ing, at both of which Rudik was a win- Cavalier. They mimieked authenticity so reforming its basic themes and qualities. ner. Balletomanes finally came to prefer successf\illy that the last two were treated He made his name by changing the male Bary.shnikov's controlled simplicity and as genuine historical documents for half a ballet-dancer from a strong and gentle- openness—and this, perhaps, was more century af^er Defoe's death. manly pcrfonner with aristocratic appeal like what Nijinsky was aiming at, back Yet these "classics" were mostly invis- into an exciting renegade with a feral in the ancient modern times at the start ible to Defoe's contemporaries. The genre moodiness and a pliant sensuality. Ed- ofthe centurv. • of "the novel" did not exist; it was only with the publication of Samuel Richard- son's Pamela in 1740, nine years afler Defoe's death, that this new literary species began to be recognized. Wben they first appeared, Defoe's talcs of rogues and chancers were nothing to do with The Narrator polite literature. This accounts for their anonymity: they may have sold well, but MULLAN they scarcely deserved, with their ignoble excitements, to have a named author. Daniel Defoe: The Life and Defoe-the-novelist only became an estab- lished character in the nineteenth cen- Strange, Surprising Adventures tury. His novels were popular, as we know from the number of editions that they by Richard West went through, but no critic of his own time (Carroll and Graf, 427 pp., $26) stoops to notice them, and no waiter talks of imitating them. The original eigh- E KNOW Daniel Defoe quently republished and translated books teenth-century editions of the novels are in ways that his con- in history). It won its special status partly often very rare, precisely because of their temporaries did not. because it seemed to invent both a modem vulgar popularity. They were produced to For us, he is a novelist. hero and a modern genre. Its protagonist be consumed, not to find their way to the Yet his novels are only was "the individual," in all his particularity safe preserve of a gentleman's library. Wa small part of what he wrote. In libraries and ordinariness: the character whom we it is possible to find anthologies that draw have come to expect from our novels. Its N HIS OWN LIFETIME, Defoe was from his huge output of polemical and title page may have advertised The Si range famous, or notorious, for other rea- journalistic writing, from his sallies into Surprizing Adventures of Robinson Cru- I sons. He appears in The Dunciad, political controversy or economic prog- soe (a promise joldly echoed in the title of Alexander Pope's brilliantly spiteful gal- nostication, from his works of religious Richard West's new life of Defoe), but it lery of contemporary scribblers, as "rest- instniction, from his verse (of which he demanded to be judged by a standard that less Daniel," in doubtful honor of his was especially proud). Most of this now would be claimed by all later eighteenth- prolificacy. Even though Pope's poem was engages only the academic researcher. It is century novelists: the standard of "proba- composed in the years during which the cluster of fictional autobiographies— bility." Crusoe tells his extraordinary story Defoe's novels were being published, he "novels," as we now call them—written in the level tones of one who trusts to facts, describes him as a writer of "Verses, as near the end of a long Grub Street career dates, inventories; what he calls "particu- well as of Politicks"; Defoe's fiction, which that have survived and become classics. lars." It is only in these particulars, authen- one would have thought ripe for Pope's On tbe rare occasions when Defoe put his tically recorded, that the workings of Prov- educated disdain, is not mentioned. name to anything that he had written, he idence might be discovered. Defoe was well enough known in his invariably announced himself as "the Robi?]son Crusoe is all about starting own day, but it was for what he did before Author of The True-Born Englishman," a from scratch, its narrator telling us how he he turned to those novels. Most infa- satirical poem for which he was renowned learned for himself, on his island, to man- mously, he had been a satirist, and had in the early eighteenth century. Now it is ufacture clay pots and Christian theology. been put in the pillor\' for his mockery of above all as the author of Robinson Crusoe Crusoe the castaway has to be narratively High Church Tories in The Shortest Way that he is famous. as well as materially self-reliant. He looks with Dissenters (1702). He had been a For us he is not just a novelist, he is back on his life and he has to make sense political propagandist, working fbr dif- the originator of novels. Robinson Crusoe, of it: the story of a resourcefiil adventurer, ferent parties and ministers, shifting which was published in 1719 when its which is also the story of an individual allegiance with the changing political author was almost sixty, has become a delivered by God. And the rest of Defoe's winds. He had been a successful versifier, kind of m\1:h (and one of the most fre- novels, produced in a characteristic ffuriy rapidly tui'ning topical controversies into of invention in the four years affer Robin- rough, sardonic rhyme. He was the most JoHN MuLLAN teaches English literature son Crusoe, all follow this pattern. resourceful, energetic, adaptable hack in at Universit}' College, London, and has All of them are first-person accounts British literary" history. edited and introduced Daniel Defoe's of lives of adventure, opportunism, resili- It is this other life of authorship that Roj:ana (Oxford University Press, ence, and, finally, penitence. None had biographies of Defoe must explore. It was Worlds Classics). Defoe's name attached to them in his life- a life in which two inffuences predomi-

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