Part 5

The sensual within him is duplicated by the romantic. We saw this come to the fore for the first time in the “Fairy of the Dolls”; Schumann’s “Carneval” revealed the “white Bakst” to the Parisians. They never grew tired of these adorable puppets, sentimental and crafty, who glide over the floor to the musical text of Schumann like the dolls on the cover of a music box. Harlequin and Pierrot, Chiarina or Colombine--they are not merely endless masks costumed in the styles of 1830, with furbelows and coiffures in ringlets; they are the incarnations of that playful and exquisite Viennese spirit; they are the descendants of Mozart and of Haydn. And the cut of their hazy cambrics, their whole bearing is in “Biedermayer” style--that quaint and charming style of bourgeois romanticism in the Germany of old. In order not to crush these fragile and delicate beings with the four walls of reality, as they flitted like butterflies about the stage. Bakst removed all stationary decoration: a background of drapery, a couch set off against this background--that was all. Nothing encumbers the view nor impedes the imagination of the spectator as he is enticed by the graceful or ironical episodes of the play to picture to himself a ball room or a boudoir or a park.

If the costumes of “Papillons”, which was connected with Schumann’s “Carneval” by Fokine, who discovered a certain aroma and dynamic rhythm common to both, are a continuation, so to speak, of the style of costumes employed in the first ballet, the “Spectre of the Rose”, on the other hand, carries us almost without our noticing it over to the land of France. The music is by Weber, the German composer who captivated Gèrard de Nerval, but it receives its orchestral form at the hands of Hector Berlioz, and the text is supplied by two lines from Théophile Gauthier, who had already inspired “Cleopatra” and the “Pavillon d’Armide” by Benois. This young girl in white flounced gown belongs more to Achille Dévéria and Eugène Lamy

than to Franz Krueger or Kriehuber; the ball from which she returns might be the ball at Sceaux of Honorè de Balzac; this night which filters through the glass door is a night in France; this dying rose which is impersonated by the divine ephebe Nijinsky is a rose of France. The young girls of times gone by, about whom the gentle Francis Jammes dreamed, would not be displeased at this airy pavilion with white wainscoting and white furniture in which, on the wall paper of blue cobalt, white bouquets are scattered about. Into this virginal quietude of soothing colors, detaching itself from the sombre verdure of the background, the human flower projects itself--a flower of purplish pink, feverish and consumed with amorous languor. The setting for a comic opera, “The Secret of Suzanne”, develops the same theme more in detail.

This brief catalogue of Bakst’s romantic cycle would, however, be incomplete were I not to mention the costumes of the “Boutique fantasque” which is in fact chiefly a sketch, but more centered, more pointed, more compressed than the “Fairy of the Dolls” which marks the beginning of Bakst’s career. This was a memorable enterprise, for it was marked by the collaboration of two great artists: the dolls by Bakst perform evolutions against a background painted by André Derain.

We have already seen how Bakst discovered the tragic and magnificently barbaric Greece of pre=Hellenic and ante=European times which he brought to the stage, by designing stage settings the rude grandeur of which formed a fit background for the growing despair of Antigone or for the doom that overwhelmed Oedipus. Once again he brings out all the anguish in the fear of the ancients, the primitive hysteria of people bewildered by the cruel play of unfathomable forces--the hot wind which blows from the Asiatic desert and which leashes the blood almost into insanity, the triumph of Eros in the midst of fratricide and horror. He staged this “Helen of Sparta” by Verhaeren for Mme. Rubinstein--this play in which a great modern poet incarnates his intent, violent and prophetic soul in the characters of a legend which had already absorbed the Grand Old Man of Weimar. The return of Helen, however, which for Goethe had been the symbol of restored and re=born classical antiquity, to the Flemish poet seemed a passionate and terribly human dilemma hidden under an archaic guise.

Now, Bakst designed a bare and harsh setting for the martyrdom of Helen, who is condemned to be coveted unto death by all who come in contact with her: the ground reduced to lime, stones that have a burnt smell, heavy gates of the royal fortress, smoke of woodpiles--in short, everything in this volcanic landscape is a latent menace.

This grim and desolate face of Hellas is seen for the last time in an act of “Daphnis and Chloe” where one sees the pirates dancing a war-dance among the steep declivities of the red rocks. But how sweet is the idyll which they disturb! All that there is of Ionic sweetness envelops this pastoral scene. I know nothing in the entire work of Bakst that is equal to these tender, fresh, damp greens of the meadow and of the forest where the two children walk about displaying the charming torment of love that knows nothing of itself. It is a sketch for the first act, but in it lies all of the Greece of Theocritus, of Moschus, and also of André Chenier’s Aoristys. Thus the short novel by Longus

which had already inspired the painter Pierre Bonnard to draw the lithographs which constitute the lyric flower of his work, live once more through the brush of the great Russian.

The mythological world had, besides, already been displayed in another work of Bakst’s,--“Narcissus”. The setting is unique: in the foreground is a spring bordered by large somber rocks and shaded by branches of trees which droop into a brook of emerald. Through an

opening of the rocks one sees a meadow upon which a tropical heat lies heavy. The natural bridge over which we presently see the nymph Echo pass lamenting and garbed in a mourning robe of violet, forms the second tier, raised above the scenery of the foreground in much the same manner as one sees it raised in the stage settings of Torelli in the seventeenth century, or as one also sees it in the “Parnassus” of Andrea Mantegna at the Louvre. And it is the vivacious and manycolored figures of the Greece on the terra=cottas that monopolize the scene, clad in fresh and simple colors--blue and green that match with the color of the sky and the forest, lemon=yellow and brick=red that form patches on the short white tunics.

Bakst reserved, however, for the “Afternoon of a Faun”, the pastoral poem for which Debussy received his inspiration from a poem by Stéphane Mallarmé, his attempt at solving the paradox of setting forth upon the stage the authentic rhythm of the figures that keep turning forever on the sides of Greek vases. The background is an old forest; a convenient hill, on which the Faun reclines, narrows the platform and leaves only a small proscenium free. On this proscenium the dancers project themselves in profile, dressed in long tunics with frilled folds like the fluting of an Ionic column. Moving on a single elevation they convey the idea of having but two dimensions like the arabesques that decorate a surface.

Bakst does not, however, allow himself to be imprisoned in this three=fold domain. His imagination is forever travelling along thousands of crossing paths. And quite willingly he stops at the great crossroads of civilization, where hostile worlds confront each other and establish themselves.

Of such a character is the exuberant “Martyrdom of St. Sebastian”, where the Rome of Heliogabalus, closed about by Asia, conveys to us both the naiveness of the mediæval mysteries and the imagination of the Quatrocentrist painters. Again, there is “Pisanelle”, another French work from the pen of Gabriele d’Annunzio. It is a poem of the Mediterranean, in which the Latin West, feudal and mystic, clashes with the rigid and solemn Byzantium, while the imperishable perfume of Hellas rises from the land of Cyprus from which Aphrodite sprang forth.

It would take volumes to enumerate all the pictorial elements in these productions, and even then one could not construct a component whole.

But the large architectural outlines, the clusters of small black and gold columns which form the portal for the “Jeu de la Sainte Courtisane”,

the enormous twisted columns in the “Conseil des faux Dieux”, over whom Sebastian triumphs--these impress themselves indelibly upon one’s memory.

This architectural conception, the best possible setting for the actor and for the “round relief” which the human body forms, especially determined the grandiose and graceful setting for the ballet “The Sleeping Beauty”,--this French masterpiece born of the soil of Russia which is fertile in miracles. In this work, the production of which was reserved for London, Bakst returns squarely to the surprises afforded by extraordinary short=cuts, to the harmony of masses that are organized, to the magic play of stage elevations raised in tiers, to the severe splendors of linear perspective.

We see him, after a century of realistic still=life deception, taking up again the work of the great decorators and architects, of the geometricians

of theatrical vision, whether their names be Gonzaga or Bibiena, whether Sanquirico or Ciceri.

This masterpiece, concerning which the author of these lines has written a book, is a free “capriccio” of the Great Age when Tiepolo

brushed elbows with Mansart. “Artémis troublée”, a ballet produced at the Opera during the spring of the present year, is a graceful mythological play springing from a similar set of ideas.

I am far from having exhausted the plentiful material of these innumerable works, for during almost a quarter of a century Bakst has

initiated numerous productive ideas. He discovers new veins but is ever ready, after a few blows with the pick=axe, to abandon them to those who follow him.

Is it not he who dares introduce the modern sportive costume to the lyric stage as a decorative and expressive element? Remember the “Jeux” which he undertook with Nijinsky! And was not this vogue for things Venetian of the eighteenth century, for the Venice of Pietro

Longhi and of Guardi, this vogue for beauty and for the fan called forth by his exhilarating “Women of Good Humour” in which, with the greatest unconcern, Bakst exchanges the toe=slippers of the pasha with the red shoe=heels of Giacomo Casanova?

And lastly, was not his intervention decisive in bringing about a transformation of feminine costumes?

These sketches of gowns constitute an epoch in the history of fashion, and they afford an access to painters into this domain from which they have been excluded ever since the days of Gavarni. For

Bakst is more than an a solitary creator. He is an inspirer whose influence radiates forth over a huge periphery. How numerous are the aspects

of modern life that bear Bakst’s indelible seal, which is a label of greatness and which confers an air of nobility in which one is never mistaken!

These are the things of which I am thinking as I turn over with you, my readers, the pages of this book. And as we have finished, we must begin again--this time, however, in silent meditation, which is even more gratifying.

EPILOGUE

BAKST AND RUSSIA

We have followed Bakst through each of the fields with which he was familiar, whatever their nature. Each road in this labyrinth of styles brought us back to the native land of the artist. Throughout, the exotic or “Eurasiatic”--to use a word coined by a group of Russian dreamers in exile--dominated. For the common herd Bakst is over and above all the creator of an oriental fairyland. Even his very name, monosyllabic, quickly pronounced, and cutting like the blade of a Turkish simitar, seems to call up a fleeting but intense vision of Asia.

Bakst was bound forever to disconcert the lovers of convenient formulas. You think you have caught up with his jerky and lightning-like course, when, lo! he has already escaped, to the delight of one of the “four winds of the spirit”. There remains in your hand the sixth skin of the serpent which it divests itself of--only to clothe itself again in the seventh.

Recently, in the spring of 1922, we witnessed a new avatar of the artist. Ten years previously he had left his fatherland for a new fatherland that was more hospitable--for France. Now, under a splendid impulse of piety, of tender homesickness, of filial love he returned of his own accord to his Mother--Russia, bruised, trampled

upon, dragged into the mud and blood by infamous villains. When all the world deserted her, he watched by her bedside.

Chance had it that, at the very moment when Alexander Benois’ masterpiece, “Petroushka” was produced at the Opera, a mimic drama by Bakst was played on the scanty stage of the Femina theater entitled “Lâcheté”. Between these two surprising plots lies nothing less than a half=century of Russian history--the fall of a throne and of a world.

The “burlesque scenes” of Benois seemed like the final blossoming=out of ancient Petrograd, like a nostalgic vision of the imperial city, called forth by an ardent lover of an abandoned past. A mob of people, truculent, jeering, deafeningly noisy, with an exuberant movement of cheerfulness, monopolizes the stage; a forceful, manifold, strikingly lively rhythm constitutes, properly speaking, the action. In the rigid and stiff scenery of the fated city, popular fancy has erected its paradise of outlandish hovels, its blue and red “balagani”, in the open air. Personages from the prints at ten kopecks and from the pictures of Epinal come to life again and bestir themselves; comely “nounous” strut about and try to attract; with noisy clatter of boots bearded coachmen hasten the step of their squatting dance. Russian rural life for one last time spends itself in these Slavic saturnalia. Even the dolls which are the protagonists of the grotesque drama try to shake off their mechanical torpor. They would like to become flesh and blood; they have a hungry desire to live; at times, indeed, they really do live.

The action of “Lâcheté”, likewise, is staged at St. Petersburg which, however, has become Petrograd--but not in the clear sunshine of a winter’s day; rather within the concrete walls of the “People’s House” which the last of the Czars erected to the glory of the modern capital. Here the wooden horses are moved by powerful dynamos under the searching light of electric lamps. But what has become of the mob in “Petroushka”,--the motley, varied crowd? The doll, the artificial, mechanical, automatic puppet has dispossessed the human being; it gets the better of the disabled actor. There remains enough soul, however, in this changed world to supply the bodies of five human

beings; and what a soul, good God! Nothing in these puppets reminds one of the smiling indifference of “Petroushka”. We are on the eve of terrible happenings, and we feel it with sadness; a dull ennui weighs upon us heavily, like the low cloud before a storm.

Ah! we are now in the Petrograd of 1916! How can we express all the trickiness in the apathetic inertia of these figures that are scarcely articulate, that are uniformly costumed and that skip about or sink down at the will of their wires that direct them? Before this pliability, this evil passivity of shapeless puppets, this cynical swaying motion of impotent figures, this “dance of death” of inertia, the mimicked action vanishes, and living men disappear. The drama of the passion--death which passes, hideous and sneering,--becomes pallid under the gaze without eyes of hostile faces.

How the inevitable closes about us! Everything in this atmosphere of anguish and of hallucination becomes a latent menace. The day is near at hand--one feels it with one’s whole soul, nervous with fear--when this mass, inert, blind, crushing, will hurl itself upon quivering Russia.

Happy the blond student in green blouse who finds death as he pursues a dream of love; he will not see it. He will not know hunger or exile or disgrace. Who of us Russians would not envy him?

Such were the two faces of Russia which were exhibited by two painters who are more than painters,--Benois who has the power of retrospective divination, Bakst who possesses an understanding of modern life and of its tumultuous forces.

But behold! the curtain which has just fallen on the bristling, rough, malicious scenery of “Lâcheté”, rises once more to unfold before our eyes a third Russia--a Russia debonair and drunken, ignorant and full of spirit.

The vaudeville act “Old Moscow” depicts a rich and opulent city of merchants wearing their kaftans , of free carousals, of a jovial savagery. Two frames, reaching to the knees of the actors, form the stage setting. On them is a miniature reproduction of the orphaned capital with its forty times forty cupolas, encircled by the crenelated walls of the Kremlin. And amidst this delightfully exaggerated parody of a stage full of moujik=bourgeois, we see funny human beings, overbubbling with good health, moving about dressed in wide, stiff skirts that are sky=blue or tri=colored; likewise country women weighing a hundred kilos.

The thing that is of importance above everything else in this caricature composed without any masked thought is that aroma of the land which, even in its funniest moments, makes the tears come to the eyes of Moscow émigrés .

Today Bakst is completely absorbed by this forgotten world which rises about him on a background of a distant past. He is consumed with an appetite for Russian memories, emotions and visions. Each day in his studio a population of Russian figures keeps multiplying--models and groups of which not only their costume but their very attitude has something indefinably national about them, something profoundly popular, in short, something authentic. And to what purpose? The artist as yet does not know. Once the actors are placed upon the stage, he says to himself, the play will start spontaneously. And in pursuing his enormous and unceasing labors he lets things take their course without hastening them.--

We have accompanied Bakst up to his last station. It is time, therefore, for this sketch to end. The writer takes leave of his readers and descends into the audience in order with his readers to await the rising of the curtain for the next act of the most beautiful of plays: the life of a grand and noble artist.

CONTENTS

TEXT

The Story of Leon Bakst’s Life. Preface 13

The Yellow Drawing Room 15

The Ungrateful Age 18

The Two Sphinxes 32

A Wrong Start 40

The Club 48

Mir Iskousstva 56

The Three Knocks 77

The Theban Gate 89

Terror Antiquus 107

The Spiral Road 110

A Show in an Armchair 132

Epilogue. Bakst and Russia 217

PLATES

Portrait of Bakst by Modigliani I

“Chastising Cupid”, project of decorative panel II

D’Annunzio’s “Martyrdom of St. Sebastian”, Mme. Rubinstein in the 5th act III

Judith of Bethulia (panel) IV

“Forsaken Chloe”, project of decorative panel. (Gouache) V

Portrait of Mr. T. (red chalk) VI

“Modern dress” (a “fantaisie”) VII

“Daphnis and Chloe parting in the evening”, sketch for decorative panel. (Gouache) VIII

“Sheherazade” ballet. First Eunuch. (Gouache) IX

An inferior deity. “Narcissus” ballet. (Gouache) X

Stage decorations for ballet “Orientales”. (Gouache) XI

A Negro’s costume (Sheherazade) XII

Stage decorations for Oscar Wilde’s “Salome”. (Gouache) XIII

“Phædra” tragedy. Phædra’s nurse XIV

Stage decorations for Hindu ballet. (Gouache) XV

Mme. Ida Rubinstein as St. Sebastian XVI

The imperial palace (“The Martyrdom of St. Sebastian”) XVII

Mme. Rubinstein in “The Martyrdom of St. Sebastian” XVIII

The “Women of good humour” ballet. Rinaldo. (Gouache) XIX

Stage decorations for “Phædra” (Gouache) XX

A costume. “Narcissus” ballet XXI

The Pilgrim (“Blue God” ballet). Gouache XXII

Stage decorations for act 4th of D’Annunzio’s “St. Sebastian”. (Gouache) XXIII

The Czarevitch’s costume (“The Bird of Fire”) XXIV

Project of stage decorations for “Sleeping Beauty” XXV

Stage decorations for the vault scene (“St. Sebastian”) XXVI

“Terror antiquus”. First golden medal. 1911 Universal Exhibition (Brussels) XXVII

“Terror antiquus” (detailed) XXVIII

Submarine monsters (“Sadko” opera). Gouache XXIX

Stage decorations for the ballet “Women of good humour” (second version). Gouache XXX