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.
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GALISSON, PRINCE CHARMANT’S TUTOR LOUIS XIV BALLET (PAVLOVA TOURNEE). GOUACHE
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