to this young débutante, who then appeared under an assumed name. I clearly remember this unique production. And I see again the proud maiden as she is wrapped in the numerous and complicated folds of her black mourning robe. In working out this conception Bakst had drawn his inspiration from a tombstone or else had deciphered the clever pattern from the sides of a Greek vase.
Later this young woman with her disconcerting and mysterious beauty, this mystical virgin, voluptuous yet frigidly cold, with a will
RABBITS. A SKETCH
of iron underneath a fragile frame, and possessed of a haughty and cold intelligence, who dressed in eccentric clothes, became one of the Muses of our artist. Hers was the gift of driving his imagination to exasperation. Even after many years had elapsed she still held for him the allpowerful attraction of the strange, of the unreal, of the supernatural. His Muse—perhaps that is not the right term: rather, his Friendly Demon.
Having once touched upon the chapter of the Muses, another female image rises in my mind’s eye—that of Mme. Marie Kousnetzoff, the opera star. She is not the white and lunar Lilith; she is the Eve of the terrestrial paradise. This Russian brunette, with a Levantine face, a blooming flower in human flesh, with full, muscular form, seemed to have been created for the very purpose of wearing the turbans and the revealing veils designed by Bakst. Those who have seen her in the “Legend of Joseph”, garbed as a Venetian of the Renaissance, and wearing the thick-soled shoes suggested to Bakst by the celebrated costume designer Cesare Vecellio, brother of Titian, will forever retain this wonderful picture of the Biblical story of lust. Thus Mme. Kousnetzoff was the very incarnation of the oriental mirage that many a time haunted Bakst. Was she his Muse? No—his female Double!
But enough of these parenthetical remarks! Why was it that “Sheherazade” established itself and retained its place? Why was it that it could keep its prestige undiminished, even after it had called forth innumerable imitations in a territory extending all the way from the Opera to the meanest of suburban music halls?
The reason for it is the fact that this Persian ballet, which adapts the prologue of the “Thousand and One Nights” to a subtle and decorative score composed by Rimsky-Korsakoff, the eminent colorist, is the affirmation and, what is still more important, the realization of a great principle—the optic unity of a production. The sides of a large green tent enriched with gold and black encase and encircle the ladies’ apartment which is peopled with a crowd dressed in orange, pink and green clothes, who surround the single royal jewel, the Sultana Zobeide, a blue sapphire in a setting of rubies and emeralds. Thus the costumes either blend with the scenery in an infinity of fine shades and gradations of value that have been carefully studied out, or they contrast with the scenery in accordance with the visible logic of complementary colors.
Is the result, then, a ballet? It is a living scenery with interchangeable elements.
Was I going to speak of optic unity? Do I mean by it that unity stops at the surface? Certainly not! This ardent and cruel magnificence of color, this effluvium of sensuality which emanates from the setting produces an action in which the very excess of passionate ecstacy can only be satiated by the spilling of blood. This harmonious giddiness, this measured paroxysm seems to recall the title which Maurice Barrès gave to a famous book: “Concerning Blood, Sensuality, and Death.”