STAGE DECORATION FOR “LÂCHETÉ”
Now, Bakst designed a bare and harsh setting for the martyrdom of Helen, who is condemned to be coveted unto death by all who come in contact with her: the ground reduced to lime, stones that have a burnt smell, heavy gates of the royal fortress, smoke of woodpiles—in short, everything in this volcanic landscape is a latent menace.
This grim and desolate face of Hellas is seen for the last time in an act of “Daphnis and Chloe” where one sees the pirates dancing a war-dance among the steep declivities of the red rocks. But how sweet is the idyll which they disturb! All that there is of Ionic sweetness envelops this pastoral scene. I know nothing in the entire work of Bakst that is equal to these tender, fresh, damp greens of the meadow and of the forest where the two children walk about displaying the charming torment of love that knows nothing of itself. It is a sketch for the first act, but in it lies all of the Greece of Theocritus, of Moschus, and also of André Chenier’s Aoristys. Thus the short novel by Longus
PROJECT OF A CRYSTAL CUP
which had already inspired the painter Pierre Bonnard to draw the lithographs which constitute the lyric flower of his work, live once more through the brush of the great Russian.
The mythological world had, besides, already been displayed in another work of Bakst’s,—“Narcissus”. The setting is unique: in the foreground is a spring bordered by large somber rocks and shaded by branches of trees which droop into a brook of emerald. Through an
GOGOL’S “NOSE”. AN ILLUSTRATION