The costumes devised by Bakst are of the Victorian period—crinolines and peg-top trousers, of which the quaint prim style, so far removed from modern tendencies, exactly suits the dainty little puppets that flit magically across the stage. Pierrot, of course, appears as ever in voluminous white clothes, but Columbine and Harlequin, though instantly to be recognised, are dressed a little differently from the mode which the harlequinade, as it used commonly to be presented in this country, has stereotyped. But then, neither Columbine nor Harlequin in “Le Carnaval” are the stilted, meaningless creatures to which the base usage of the English so-called “pantomime” has degraded them. Their true characters are restored: they intrigue the eye as airy figments of irresponsible fancy—she the embodiment of freakish sentiment, he of freakish humour. Columbine is no longer a well-favoured wench attired in a scanty tu-tu, pirouetting with moderate skill upon her toes, but the incarnation of feminine mutability and charm: bespangled Harlequin has lost the silly wand with, which he was wont to slap about him indiscriminately, and has become Arlecchino, the spirit of unbridled mirth and mischief. The dance (in which general term one includes the supplementary art of pantomime) alone perhaps can express these conceptions of modern mythology, and the embodiment, the reality, which Karsavina and Nijinsky give to them is possible only through their perfection in that art. Than Nijinsky’s performance in “Le Carnaval,” no more complete exposition can be imagined of all that the dancer’s art comprises.
Three times have separate couples—fantastic, irresponsible figures—flitted lightly across the stage in arch retreat and gay pursuit, when the curtains at the back are parted and Pierrot’s white face protrudes. Dismally he glances left and right. No one is near, and with every motion of his dejected figure eloquent of suffering, he advances from his hiding-place. A few paces taken, he pauses, the victim not only of misery, but of indecision. Poor
Pierrot, “temperament “ personified, in everything it is all or nothing with him. Just now he finds himself deceived—and his abandonment to grief reaches the utmost limits of despair. He has no longer zest for anything in the world—and his vacillation is equally intense. Why should he go forward—or backward—to left or right? Why stand up—why sit down? Why do anything, be anything? So he stands there, the picture of indetermination, his baggy clothes hanging anyhow about him, his very limbs so loosely jointed that they seem to be without definite control.
Sprightly and agile, extremity of contrast to nerveless, flabby Pierrot, there enters Harlequin. Mischief, all spry and self-contained, is ignorant of pity, and Folly becomes an instant butt for mockery and ridicule. Poor witless Pierrot, defenceless against the shafts of raillery, takes a few wild steps in blundering flight. But even that impulse fails him and he collapses in an inert heap upon the floor. And as he lies there, a huddled heap of misery, there passes before his dismal gaze all the mirth and gaiety in which he cannot pluck up heart, for all his longing, to join. He sees the sentimental pairs go by in elegant procession, each swain intent upon his mistress, and never a look, demure or bold, from bright eyes in his direction: he is witness of the pleasant melancholy of lovelorn youth, seeking and in ecstasy finding the object of its tender passion. He is present unobserved at a declaration of love, and it is this which spurs him at length to a spasmodic effort. For as the amorous pair, the declaration made and enchantingly accepted, trip gaily from the scene, Pierrot, with sudden zeal for emulation, dashes madly after them.
It is but a fitful flash of energy, however, and hardly has another sentimental passage ended betwixt a gallant and his fair, when Pierrot, disconsolate, returns. But even as he slouches mournfully in, he encounters Papillon, whose fluttering butterfly grace fills him with instant rapture. Gloom is banished on the instant: the fickle Pierrot is in a transport of delight. Clumsily he pursues her, hat in hand, seeking like a loutish boy to capture her. But her fluttering steps elude him; she leads him here and there in a dizzy maze and is gone, out of reach, at the very moment when the foolish oaf flings his hat down and thinks to have imprisoned her. With grotesque excess of cunning he lifts the hat’s brim, an eager paw ready to pounce upon the pretty captive. But nothing is there! The idiotic leer fades from his face, his whole figure sags as the momentary zest dies out, and plunged once more in the depths of despondency, he drifts aimlessly away.