The Birth of Tragedy out of the Spirit of Dance: Nietzschean Transitions in Nijinsky's Ballets

Georgia State University ScholarWorks @ Georgia State University Religious Studies Theses Department of Religious Studies Summer 8-17-2012 The Birth of Tragedy out of the Spirit of Dance: Nietzschean Transitions in Nijinsky's Ballets Sarah Levine Georgia State University Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.gsu.edu/rs_theses Recommended Citation Levine, Sarah, "The Birth of Tragedy out of the Spirit of Dance: Nietzschean Transitions in Nijinsky's Ballets." Thesis, Georgia State University, 2012. https://scholarworks.gsu.edu/rs_theses/37 This Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by the Department of Religious Studies at ScholarWorks @ Georgia State University. It has been accepted for inclusion in Religious Studies Theses by an authorized administrator of ScholarWorks @ Georgia State University. For more information, please contact [email protected]. THE BIRTH OF TRAGEDY OUT OF THE SPIRIT OF DANCE: NIETZSCHEAN TRANSITIONS IN NIJINSKYʼS BALLETS by SARAH LEVINE Under the Direction of Louis A. Ruprecht, Jr. ABSTRACT This project compares the career of the early 20th century ballet dancer, Vaslav Nijinsky, to Friedrich Nietzscheʼs theory of the tragic arts. In The Birth of Tragedy (1872) and elsewhere, Nietzsche argues that artists play the central role in communal mythmaking and religious re- newal; he prescribes the healing work of the “tragic artist” to save modernity from the decadence and nihilism he identifies in scientism, historicism, and Christianity. As a dancer, and especially as a choreographer for the Ballets Russes (1912-1913), Nijinsky staged a kinetic re- sponse to modern culture that not only displayed shared concerns with Nietzsche, but also, as I argue, allow him to be interpreted as Nietzscheʼs archetypical tragic artist. By juxtaposing the philologist-philosopher and dancer-choreographer as artists, I situate the emergence of Modern Art as a nascent movement still bound to Romanticism even while rebelling against it, and as an attempt to reinterpret art in a mythic (and thoroughly modern) context. INDEX WORDS: Vaslav Nijinsky, Friedrich Nietzsche, 20th century dance, Modern Art, Tragic artist, Art and religion, The Birth of Tragedy, Ballets Russes THE BIRTH OF TRAGEDY OUT OF THE SPIRIT OF DANCE: NIETZSCHEAN TRANSITIONS IN NIJINSKYʼS BALLETS by SARAH LEVINE A Thesis Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts in the College of Arts and Sciences Georgia State University 2012 Copyright by Sarah Yael Levine 2012 THE BIRTH OF TRAGEDY OUT OF THE SPIRIT OF DANCE: NIETZSCHEAN TRANSITIONS IN NIJINSKYʼS BALLETS by SARAH LEVINE Committee Chair: Louis A. Ruprecht, Jr. Committee: Molly Bassett Melanie Pavich Electronic Version Approved: Office of Graduate Studies College of Arts and Sciences Georgia State University December 2012 iv DEDICATION For my mother, Catherine Levine. v ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This thesis could have never been completed without the love, support, and sensitive criticism of my colleagues, advisors, and family. I first wish to thank my peers in the Department of Religious Studies, whose intellectual desires often fueled my own. I most appreciate the bond development by the core group who watched this project—and me—grow and blossom: Rachel Blume, Suzanne Tryon, Jay Vickers, Ashley Gnat-Vickers, Nicholas Newell, Kathryn Yates and especially, John Sullivan: our Wednesday afternoon sessions of constructive criticism, tears, and laughter were invaluable, as were the drinks we shared to wind down. The advice and guidance provided by my committee advisors, Melanie Pavich and Molly Bassett encouraged me to be confident in this project and forced me to articulate its merit. The hours they spent sharing conversation with me, considering my ideas, reading drafts and offer- ing suggestions are reflected in this work. I most wish to thank the director of this thesis, Lou Ruprecht, whose faith and trust in my intellectual pursuits has, for several years now, helped not only to sustain, but also grow my reverence for history, art, and most importantly, life. I am fortunate to look to him as a mentor and as a friend, and what is produced here represents many of our shared passions. Finally, I want to thank my family—my mother, Catherine, and brother, Joshua, for their unending and patient love they have given me through my many academic pursuits; they are my soul, and so they sing here. vi TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ..........................................................................................................v LIST OF FIGURES ..................................................................................................................viii 1. INTRODUCTION ....................................................................................................................1 2. NIETZSCHEʼS TRAGEDY ......................................................................................................7 2.1 The Birth of Tragedy out of the Spirit of Music and the artistic sacrament .7 2.2 Mythologizing Ancient Greece ......................................................................11 2.3 Apollo, Dionysus, and the achievement of the Greek affirmation of life....17 2.4 The Necessity of Suffering and the End of Suffering ..................................24 2.5 The Death of Tragedy ....................................................................................30 2.6 Reason, Christianity, Modernity, and Decadence........................................35 3. NIJINSKY, ARTIST OF THE FUTURE .................................................................................43 3.1 The Diary ........................................................................................................45 3.2 Nijinskyʼs cultural and artistic milieu: East meets West .............................55 3.3 Prophecies and Premonitions.......................................................................62 3.4 The early development of a tragic artist.......................................................67 3.5 Serge Diaghilev and the Ballets Russes.......................................................73 3.6 Staging Tragic Ballets....................................................................................82 3.6.1 “L'après-midi d'un faune” .............................................................................85 3.6.2 “Jeux” ..........................................................................................................95 vii 3.6.3 “Le Sacre du Printemps”..............................................................................99 4. CONCLUSION.................................................................................................................... 112 REFERENCES ....................................................................................................................... 117 APPENDICES ........................................................................................................................ 122 Appendix A: Jacques Rivière, excerpt from “Le Sacre du Printemps,” trans. Miriam Lassman ........................................................................................................122 Appendix B: Adolphe Boschot, “Le Sacre du Printemps, ballet en deux actes de MM. Roerich, Stravinsky, et Njinsky,” trans. Truman Bullard. ...............................131 viii LIST OF FIGURES Figure 3-1 Nijinsky with Lydia Nelidova as the bathing Nymph..........................................88 Figure 3-2 Nijinsky as the faun; Figure 3-3 Bronislava Nijinska and Nijinsky....................88 Figure 3-4 Male dancers in Le Sacre du Printemps. ..........................................................105 Figure 3-5 Village Maidens...................................................................................................105 1 1. INTRODUCTION What is it about himself that the tragic artist communicates? Doesnʼt he show his fear- lessness in the face of the fearful and questionable? —This in itself is a highly desirable state; anyone who knows it will pay it the highest honours. He communicates it, he has to communicate it, provided he is an artist, genius of communication. The courage and freedom of affect in the face of a powerful enemy, in the face of a sublime hardship, in the face of a horrible problem, — this victorious state is what the tragic artist selects, what he glorifies.1 The noble human being does not sin, the profound poet wants to tell us: though every law, every natural order, even the moral world may perish through his actions, his actions also produce a higher magical circle of effects which found a new world on the ru- ins of the old one that has been overthrown. That is what the poet wants to say to us in- sofar as he is at the same time a religious thinker.2 * * * For here is the very spirit of faun life, presented not at all as the Greeks presented it, but as a Greek might surely have rejoiced to see it represented had he been born again to- day.3 * * * In 1872, Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900), just 28 years old and already a professor of classical philology at the University of Basel, published his first book, The Birth of Tragedy. The book signaled his audacious debut into the late 19th centuryʼs intellectual conversations that were preoccupied by and centered on the relationships between myth, religion, and history. Such discussions had already produced a seismic shift in the traditional educational curriculum: as a field of study, comparative religion had been

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