Nijinsky by Lucy Moore Read Free Book Online Page A

’.
    Two days later he told Roerich triumphantly that he thought he had ‘penetrated the secret of the rhythm of spring’. The mood and sounds of the Russian spring were vitally important to the piece, as essential to its émigré creators as Roerich’s shamanic studies or Stravinsky’s complex modernism. Serge Lifar described spring in Kiev, where he grew up, being marked by the ‘dull, rumbling explosions ’ of the dislodged floes of the thawing Dnieper crashing against one another in a torrent of melt-water. Later, an exiled Stravinsky would speak of ‘the violent Russian spring that seemed to begin in an hour and was like the whole earth cracking. That was the most wonderful event of every year of my childhood.’
    Diaghilev raved so enthusiastically to Pierre Monteux about Stravinsky’s ‘extraordinary new work’ that he was desperate to hear it when Stravinsky played it to them in Monte Carlo in the spring of 1912, but he was totally unprepared for the sadistic novelty of what he heard. As Stravinsky, drenched in sweat, pounded away on a quivering, shaking upright piano, the sound dwarfed everything. Monteux listened ‘in utter amazement’, worried his friend might burst. ‘I must admit I did not understand one note of
Le Sacre du printemps
. My one desire was to find aquiet corner in which to rest my aching head. * Then my director turned to me with a smile and said, “This is a masterpiece, Monteux, which will completely revolutionise music and make you famous, because you are going to conduct it.”’
    In June, Stravinsky and Debussy played Stravinsky’s four-hand arrangement of
Sacre
at the Paris home of Louis Laloy, editor of
La Grande Revue
. ‘When they finished , there was no question of embracing, nor even of compliments,’ wrote Laloy. ‘We were dumbfounded, overwhelmed by this hurricane which had come from the depths of the ages, and which had taken life at the roots.’ Five months later, Debussy was still in thrall to what he had heard, writing to Stravinsky that he was haunted as if ‘by a beautiful nightmare ’, trying ‘in vain to recall the terrifying impression that it made. That’s why I wait for the performance like a greedy child who’s been promised some jam.’
    When they first began discussing
Sacre
, Roerich and Stravinsky had assumed that they would use Fokine as choreographer. In 1910–11 he was still the Ballets Russes’s
directeur choreographique
and although Nijinsky had begun work on
Faune
, no one apart from Diaghilev, Bakst and Bronia knew about it. But by early 1912, as he was finishing
Sacre
, Stravinsky was having doubts, writing to his mother from Monte Carlo in March to complain that Fokine was not up to the job. Each of his successive works was immeasurably weaker than the one before, Stravinsky said, and for
Sacre
‘new forms must be created and the evil, the greedy and the gifted Fokine has not even dreamed of them … Genius is needed, not
habileté
.’ It could only be Nijinsky.
    Diaghilev agreed, though neither he nor Stravinsky was motivated solely by artistic concerns. At this time Diaghilev and Fokine were locked in conflict over
Faune
and
Daphnis et Chloé
and he had no intention of retaining Fokine for another ballet. Using Nijinsky as choreographer – he thought – would also reassert his authority over
Sacre
, about whichhe was still smarting because it had been conceived without him. He assumed Nijinsky, whom he still saw as his creature, would act as his cypher. For his part Stravinsky, who had resented being a junior partner in earlier collaborations with Diaghilev, thought he would have more creative control with the inexperienced Nijinsky staging
Sacre
.
    Both men sought to assert their influence over Vaslav with (according to which source you choose to believe) varying success. Grigoriev thought that while