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Nijinsky-1999.Pdf 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.
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