A Caged Bird
Tins diary was written at St. Moritz in 1918-1919 when Nijinsky was no longer sane. Its clinical interest can only be *raised by experts, but it is not likely to escape the attention' of those who have seen and admired the dancer, or of those who have read his wife's biography of him, or of balletomanes in general, or of many who are curious about the workings, even when disordered, of the human head and heart.
Not long ago a Russian who had been translating a Russian book into English was found to have invariably translated the word " saint " as " silly." This diary is the work of a " silly " in that archaic sense, an innocent, a kind of holy fool, childlike, childish, and saintly by turns, not calm how- ever but inwardly tormented. Pathetic, sometimes revealing, and in its general effect moving, it is as uncomfortable to read as it would be to watch the hopeless struggles of a suddenly caged bird to regain: its freedom, power and joy, and just as a bird might repeat the same. futile and clumsy movements, so. the. writer repeata. and eontradiets..himself and flutters unhappily wherz • he can no longer -move with mastery. This is accordingly scarcely a book to be approached in a critical spirit, and nobody is likely to call its author blasphemous for identifying himself with the Deity. The best a reviewer can do is to give some idea of its contents by means of quotations.
" My madness," says Nijinsky, " is my love towards mankind," axid this love is reiterated throughout. " My political views are to be kind to everybody.. . . 1 love everybody
equally." He makes no claim to be a thinker : " I think little and therefore understand everything I feel," he says, and elsewhere calls himself " a philosopher who does not reason-- a philosopher who feels." He trusts blindly to emotions and instincts that arc, alas, much confused. As far as his private life is concerned, he is here and there very frank, and two points arc made very clearly - that he loves his wife and child, told that lie feels Diaghilev's influence over him to have been evil. He says he hits " worked like an ox and lived like a martyr," that his art came out of an all- embracing love for humanity, and that he does not like " works of art that have no moral aim." He presents himself as a vegetarian and pacifist, and intikes curious
references to IVilson, Cl6menecau and Lloyd George. Every now and again one meets with an arrest big phrase---" One should seek out the poor," or " An aeroplane should express goodwill." During a row with Diaghilev : " I felt as if cats were scratching my soul." Speaking of the slurs : " I have noticed there arc many human beings who
do not twinkle." Of authorship : " People who write a great deal are martyrs." Of the telephone : " The telephone is ringing, but I will not answer it because I do not like to speak on the telephone." Very often the bluntness and inconsequence of the writing suggests one of those phrase- books from which one is supposed to learn foreign languages :
" I want often to walk with you, but you do not want it.... am writing to you in my book, want you to read it, in Russian. .11 have learned to speak French. Do you not want to speak Russian ? . . You do not klIOW what you want. I know what 1 want. 1 want to build a house in the country. You do not want to live there. . . ."
Besides some striking photographs of Nijinsky and a facsimile of his handwriting, the book contains reproductions of some of the disturbed and disturbing drawings he was making at about the time the diary was being written. At the end an appeal is inserted for the Nijinsky Foundation, which provides for this great dancer in his seclusion and aims at raising sufficient funds " to be of permanent help to all (lancers, regardless of creed or nationality, who need medical assistance because of accidents or illness."
WILLI 1M PLOMER.
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