them was the vision of the ballet now known to the world as Russian. To lost pensions and the certain displeasure of a firm-handed government they gave no heed. They were complete idealists, bent on a big purpose. Of the stories of that secession that we have had from various participants, not one shows the faintest reflection that any of the band thought of the possible sacrifice of his career. They were not estimating material prospects. They simply saw the vision of something that looked better to them than the art they had known; into the path indicated by that vision they turned without vacillation, and without emotion save enthusiasm.
With the fact that they were the advance guard of a movement that was about to assume a significance equal to that of the Barbizon School in painting and of Victor Hugo in literature, these Russians—boys and girls in age, most of them—were as supremely unconcerned as were Adam and Eve with the destiny of the race of which they were founders. To a group of incomplete artists the epic romance of the thing would have appealed, and there would have resulted columns and reams of print to tell about the inspiration, and all the rest of it. In the consciousness of these Russians—and make no mistake, most of them are alert, intellectually vigourous people—there was no concern about their own value as figures in a romance. They were filled with the excitement accompanying the possibility of radically improving their work.
Spontaneously the pieces of the new structure came together. To M. Fokine the group looked as head. In him they had a choreographer of the highest order, with the imagination of an epic poet. Nijinski and Bolm were prominent men of the group; heading the list of women were Miles. Pavlowa, Lopoukowa, and Karsavina. As a matter of exact history, Mr. Joseph Mandelkern points out to us that the enlistment of Mordkin, Volinine and other important recruits occurred somewhat later; being in the Moscow arm of the school, their first receipt of the romantic impulse was connected with Miss Duncan’s appearance in Moscow, which occurred after the St. Petersburg engagement. The secession at Moscow was largely a repetition of the occurrences at St. Petersburg.
The new cause gained, without delay, the alliance of the musical composers, Glazounov, Rimski-Korsakov. Tcherepnin, and others of stature little less.
Among the forces most important in contribution to the new-born art, moreover, was Léon Bakst, the decorator. M. Bakst, for a number of years, had enjoyed a high and steadily improving position in his craft; he had been variously honoured, he had executed responsible commissions to the satisfaction of every one—with the possible exception of himself. In a comparatively recent interview he is quoted as saying—in effect—that he believed that the function of a painter was to express emotion rather than to record fact. Taking as an instance an architectural sketch before him, he said that if a change of certain classic architectural proportions would add impressiveness, he would not hesitate to make the necessary changes. In other words, he regarded fact as material and not as an object to be recorded for its own sake. So it may be inferred that his success in rather conservative decoration, notwithstanding that it did not lack the note of individuality, was not satisfying to him.
