For a quarter of a century the government had tried to curb turbulent youth by means of the classical ferule. Greek was loathed as much as was the royal blue of the gendarme uniform. But the translation by Merejkovsky and the enthusiastic eloquence of Professor Zielinski, scholar and poet, who commented upon it as “the birth of tragedy”, caused great surprise and soon extreme fondness for it. It was necessary, however, in order to bring about this rehabilitation of antiquity, to make use of the best possible medium, namely, its consecration by the stage.
The scenery and costumes for “Hippolytus” were ordered from Bakst. After an interval of four years there followed “Oedipus at Colonnæ” and Sophocles’ “Antigone”.
It was an arduous task indeed, for the problem was that of adapting the essential dualism of the Greek tragedy—its lyric choruses and its active players, its dithyrambs and its dialogue, Dionysius and Apollo—to the arrangement of the modern theater, with its odd-shaped stage, like a box opened toward the side of the spectators. Bakst made the attempt. Once having entered upon the road to Thebes he solved the enigma of the Sphinx without stumbling and forced open the gate. By raising the background of the stage he made the foreground available for the proscenium, with the altar of the god of the tragedy in the middle. On this proscenium the choruses executed evolutions, the choristers chanted the strophes and anti-strophes rhythmically, while the ensemble of supernumeraries scanned certain final verses. At the end the leader of the chorus would ascend the steps which connected the proscenium with the platform in order
XXIII
STAGE DECORATIONS FOR ACT 4th OF D’ANNUNZIO’S “ST. SEBASTIAN” (GOUACHE)