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Digitized by the Internet Archive 
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COPYRIGHT 
 
 BY ALEXANDER KOGAN 
 PUBLISHING COMPANY, “RUSSIAN ART 
 
 BERLIN 
 
THE STORY 
 
 O F 
 
 LEON BAKST’S 
 
 LIFE 
 
 \ 
 
I 
 
 PORTRAIT OF BAKST BY MODIGLIANI 
 

TEXT 
 
 B Y 
 
 A N D R £ LEVINSON 
 
 BRENTANO'S, NEW YORK 
 
THE AMERICAN EDITION OF THIS WORK 
 CONSISTS OF 250 NUMBERED COPIES 
 
 PRINTED IN GERMANY 
 
 d> 
 
 DR. SELLE a Co. A.G.. 
 BERLIN 
 

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 “CHASTISING CUPID” 
 PROJECT OF DECORATIVE PANEL 
 
mriON of this work 
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PREFACE 
 

I N the book of fame, the name of Leon Bakst is writ large. Many 
 a time and oft,illustrious critics have heralded his praises. In speak? 
 ing today of the contribution made by Bakst, there is really 
 nothing that one can add or improve upon. The inventory of his 
 achievements has been completed; the unexampled influence 
 which he never ceased to exercise has been rightly evaluated. 
 Nevertheless, there remains a task which must not be neglected. 
 Paris, to be sure, enthusiastically watched the development of his art; 
 
 13 
 
but for us, Russians, has been reserved the most thrilling experience of 
 all—that of chronicling the unfolding of his genius. We have here the 
 spectacle of a towering, unusual, self-revealing personality, and of a style 
 that develops progressively and that blazes new ways after bitter struggles. 
 
 More than that, in order to obtain a composite picture of his work, 
 in order to arrive at a general estimate of the man, we must try 
 to reproduce the intimate atmosphere of his artistic development, 
 the material and intellectual surroundings which shaped his course. 
 
 As a compatriot and contemporary of the master, I have, on the 
 whole, breathed this same atmosphere. I have been an eye-witness 
 of those earlier creations of his that mark an epoch in the history of 
 Russian painting and of the Russian theater. This knowledge con¬ 
 stitutes my qualification for attempting this biography. The latter would 
 be incomplete unless his childhood and adolescence were also to be 
 recalled. In so far as this period of his life is concerned, I am reporting 
 Bakst’s own words; with moderation I have supplied a running comment. 
 
 Thus these pages present the first attempt at a story of Bakst’s life. 
 
 14 
 
THE YELLOW DRAWING ROOM 
 
 It was in a dull and mediocre home of the well-to-do middle 
 class that our artist who, as the originator of expensive pageants and 
 the dispenser of unheard-of splendor, was destined some day to modify 
 profoundly the whole conception of the western stage, spent his early 
 childhood. Leon Bakst’s family lived at Petrograd, on Sadovaia 
 street. Now, there is nothing more incongruous than the different 
 sections of the Russian capital—“the most phantastic in the world,” 
 to use a phrase of Dostoievski. 
 
 The Sadovaia is a rather narrow but very lively street, which cuts across 
 the market-place and is flanked by the arches of three huge galleries 
 where countless small tradesmen carry on their business. Here, in the 
 adjacent streets, in the gutters of the sidewalks which, depending upon 
 the time of the year, were muddy or dusty, Roskolnikov lived his life 
 
 15 
 
of superhuman anguish; a few steps from here, in a gloomy red house, 
 during all of a terrible night Rogojin and Prince Mishkin watched over 
 their murdered love; here, too, one day Nicholas I, the giant-like autos 
 crat with the countenance of an Apollo, standing at the entrance to the 
 temple which overhangs Sennaia Square, by a single imperious word 
 brought the revolting mob, which was exasperated by the plague and 
 the shedding of blood, to their knees. 
 
 Thus to a dreamer who is haunted by memories the very stones of 
 this district, which has been the silent witness of tragic fates, whether 
 imaginary or real, seemed to be harbingers of bad luck. 
 
 And yet, notwithstanding, there is nothing more noisily common? 
 place than the daily routine in broad daylight of this same Sadovaia: 
 large public houses, but devoid of rustic cheerfulness; mechanics’ 
 shops in which the songs had died. Dull boredom of an industri- 
 ous popular life, but how discolored, deadened, and enervated by 
 the peculiar atmosphere of this artificial town—this city of officials, 
 of soldiers and of ghosts 1 
 
 Nevertheless the little soul of the well-behaved child, blocked 
 up though it was by realities that afforded no way out, possessed 
 its wondrous sesame, its secret garden. Every Saturday Levoushka 
 would walk toward the Nevsky Prospect where, but a few steps from 
 General Army Headquarters with its imposing semi-circular facade 
 of red, from Winter Palace Square, and from the Admiralty—a 
 veritable fairy-land of lofty architecture—, his grandfather lived, a 
 noble and vaguely mysterious being who, without in the least being 
 conscious of it, awakened in the future artist a reverence for Beauty, 
 a holy fear of the Unknown. 
 
 The child thus came into unusual surroundings which constituted 
 
 the artificial paradise of his early life. WBatever it was—precocious 
 
 influence or atavism-this fascination dominated the life of Bakst 
 
 and at least decided his calling. At any rate the master himself, 
 
 who one da^ told me at length about his earliest recollections, 
 seems to think so. 
 
 His grandfather, a peculiar fellow, was a Parisian of the Second 
 Empire, a man of society who, it may well be, not long ago had been 
 
 16 
 
out walking with the Mornys and the Paivas. An amiable Epicurean 
 he was, a man of fine discernment in the manner of his time, who had 
 set up a retreat for himself at Petrograd that was well adapted to his 
 ineffaceable memories. 
 
 Everything in this home of dreams appealed to the sensibilities 
 of the child—the brocaded silks, the graceful and heavily gilded 
 trinkets. But his greatest delight was the large gilded parlor, with 
 panels of yellow tapestry, with furniture of rock and shelbwork in 
 the style of 1860, with its white marble, its yellow flower stand, 
 filled at all times with rare plants, and (this constituted his supreme 
 happiness) its four gilded cages in which canary birds were chirping. 
 In a corner, on a stand, a large model of the Temple of Salomon 
 displayed its imaginative architecture. A large painting had for its 
 subject the lament of the Jews before the demolished walls of Zion, 
 for the former Parisian “lion” did not renounce his race; he had not 
 forgotten Jeremiah over Theresa. 
 
 The irritable old man at times scared the impulsive and vivacious 
 urchin; kindhearted old grouch that he was, he often angrily charged 
 the wretched disorder up to the young lad. Levoushka was therefore not 
 sorry to see his grandfather leave for his customary Saturday promenade, 
 for this was indeed the right moment for him to make the large clock, 
 with its mechanical doll, ring, and to wind up the music boxes of 
 every description that were to be found in the yellow drawing room. 
 
 His own home furnished Leon no such emotions. Besides, the 
 indifference to matters of art was practically general in the Russian in? 
 tellectual classes of that time. The grandfather was therefore the idol 
 of the child, his sole arbiter of good taste. No sooner had he returned 
 home, than Levoushka would turn his room upside down and would 
 try to arrange his modest furniture according to the exquisite aesthetic 
 principles of the yellow drawing room; and he would try to hide from 
 view the things that were devoid of beauty. 
 
 Yet throughout all this there was never any idea of painting. Later, 
 his grandfather never got to know that Bakst was sketching. Meanwhile 
 Leon was about to become ten years old. His entry into school put an 
 end to his weekly pilgrimages to the Nevsky Prospect. Sesame had closed. 
 
 17 
 
THE UNGRATEFUL AGE 
 
 No sooner had Leon become encased in the uniform which distin* 
 guishes the city student from the provincial youngster in gray—viz., a 
 black blouse with silver buttons , than he came to know the mono* 
 tonous and depressing life of the Russian schoolboy: rising by lamp* 
 light during the long winter months; returning with his schoobbag on 
 his back; suffering the petty annoyances of an oppressive discipline 
 and the black boredom of official education. 
 
 It was then that he discovered the theater. Not that he had ever 
 been there. Like everybody else, his family had subscribed to a season 
 ticket at the Italian Opera which was then at the height of favor and 
 which eclipsed all efforts of an unappreciated national music to win its 
 way; but our hero, being too small, was not allowed to go to the family 
 box. With great difficulty, however, he had gained the privilege of 
 staying up on Mondays—the days on which his family had the box— 
 until their return. With delight he would then listen to his brother’s 
 account of the “Puritans” or the “Favorita” and their tragical and 
 pompous vicissitudes. 
 
 Tired of listening without acting, he constructed his own theater. 
 He cut out his heroes from the sheets of colored paper soldiers, his 
 princesses from the engravings in popular fairy tales illustrated at 
 Epinal, his court ladies from the fashion magazines. Then he would 
 place his actors on a paste board stage and “brush in” the scenery in 
 water color with paint plundered from his color*box. The subjects 
 were plentifully provided by the librettos of Verdi’s operas, augmented 
 by supplementary murders. As for the audience—it was never lacking, 
 Leon having always been the appointed and recognized entertainer of 
 his little sisters. 
 
 This play of make*believe did not, however, entirely satisfy his 
 precocious ardor. The strong desire for disguising and masking is, after 
 all, quite general among children, who possess a genius for dramatizing 
 the facts of life. Improvised plays were, therefore, put on. The most 
 frequently recurring motif was the visit of the doctor. There was much 
 
 18 
 
D'ANNUNZIO'S “MARTYRDOjVl OF ST. SEBASTIAN” (MME. RUBINSTEIN IN THE 5th ACT). 
 
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 TH E RATEFUL AGE 
 
 
 
 
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 * he discovered the theater. Not that he id ever 
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 his actors on a paste board stage and ush in’ the scenery in 
 
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 h ere plentifully provided by the librettos of neras, augmented 
 
 hv s: pplementary murders. As for the audienc t was never lacking, 
 
 i eon having always been the appointed an< ved entertainer of 
 
 his little sisters. 
 
 ITiis play of make*beiieve did not, however, entirely satisfy his 
 precocious ardor. The strong desire for disgu sing and masking is, after 
 ail. quite general among children, who posses • a genius for dramatizing 
 the facts of life. Improvised,plays were, therefore, put on. The most 
 frequently recurring motif was the visit of the There was much 
 
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SKETCH OF COVER FOR THE REVIEW “APOLLON" 
 
 illness at Leon’s homel Young Leon, besides being stage manager, 
 would now play the role of the- doctor with black robe, now that of 
 the druggist, now even, with self-denial, the rather contemptible part 
 of the patient. 
 
 One day, as he had concocted a drug by diluting green coloring 
 matter, he pursued realism to the point of swallowing the concoction. He 
 fell ill. Only with the greatest effort in the world was it possible to save 
 him by making him drink a quantity of milk. 
 
 Throughout all this, however, we do not yet see the painter come to 
 the fore. Indeed, our schoolboy was decidedly not a success at drawing, 
 
 23 
 
REMEMBRANCE (“ELYSIUM” CYCLE) 
 
 and with envy he watched how his chums sketched fine battle scenes upon 
 the margins of their note books. His life’s calling announced itself for 
 the first time when he was almost twelve years old. His school, known 
 as “the sixth gymnasium”, was making preparations to celebrate the 
 
 24 
 
ETERNAL WANDERERS (“ELYSIUM” CYCLE) 
 
 centenary of Joukovsky, the celebrated Russian poet. A good portrait 
 was wanted for the ceremony. Accordingly, a prize competition was 
 organized. Bakst decided to enter it. He reverently took home the little 
 engraving which was to serve as model, and four or five days later he 
 
 25 
 
brought back his drawing. The prize was awarded him, and his master* 
 piece put in a glass frame and hung in the gymnastic hall. From then 
 on Bakst was unanimously proclaimed a painter, and he was able to 
 pride himself on winning many a prize. 
 
 Leon’s father was not much pleased over this sort of success, especi* 
 ally since bad marks were raining thick in the other studies. He con* 
 ceived the notion that his son’s predilection for drawing was due to 
 sheer laziness. He therefore positively forbade him this pastime which, 
 he argued, interfered with serious studies. Leon therefore continued 
 drawing in secret, at night*time, by the light of a candle. 
 
 On the other hand his accomplishments brought him the friendship 
 of his drawing and penmanship teacher, who became much attached to 
 the youngster. Andrei Andreevitch was a diminutive little man with 
 bowlegs; but this tail*coated freak in blue was fired with a divine enthu* 
 siasm. Striding about the class room he would talk incessantly to the 
 pupils, now pondering the volutes of an acanthus leaf, now discussing 
 the lives of great painters, their struggles, their triumphs. So volubly 
 and so well did he speak that he stirred deeply the imaginative soul of 
 little Bakst and awakened all the latent passion in him. Subsequently, 
 the artist’s entire magnificent life was to be animated, as it were, by these 
 rhythmic fits of intellectual fever, from which he was to emerge renewed, 
 transformed, his mind’s eye turned toward unexplored horizons. 
 
 The profession of painting, therefore, suddenly appeared to Le* 
 voushka to be the highest of all destinies—one bearing the halo of 
 heroism. Filled with this romantic dream, he was anxious to quit 
 school at once. And he insisted with such impetuosity that his parents, 
 routed in the argument, decided by way of setting him right to seek 
 the advice of the sculptor Marc Antokolsky, a friend of the family and 
 a recognized authority on all matters pertaining to art. The late 
 Antokolsky was little known in Paris where he used to live, nor do 
 people care much about him in Russia today, although his works, which 
 are quite numerous, fill the museums of Moscow and especially of 
 Petrograd. So deceptive is artistic glory! 
 
 For indeed, he had his day of glory. In Russia he was the sculptor 
 of the century—of that nineteenth century which had lost the plastic 
 
 26 
 

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arts almost completely. The conception of a strict naturalism placed 
 at the service of humanitarian and social ideals, dominated by the idol 
 People, a conception that also characterized the notable and prophetic 
 “Association des expositions ambulantes”, was also his. 
 Moreover, Stassov, the voluble and prolix critic who composed for the 
 great Moussorgsky the monstrously confused text of “Khovanshchina”, 
 turned Antokolsky’s mind toward Russian history. 
 
 And thus, through his bronze and marble sculptures, Antokolsky 
 became the historical illustrator and portraitist of Russia. He wrought 
 Ivan the Terrible, Nestor the Annalist, Peter the Great, and even 
 Ermak the Cossack, conqueror of Siberia. With keen psychological 
 sense he also composed the likenesses of heroes and martyrs of 
 free thought: a dying Socrates, a Spinoza and a Christ insulted, the 
 latter work being conceived in the spirit of Strauss and Renan. All 
 these monumental figures which greatly stirred his contemporaries no 
 longer show any signs of life. 
 
 There remains the personality of Antokolsky, which was in every 
 respect a pure one. Not without reason did this poor and pertinacious 
 young Jew, who hardly knew how to write Russian, become the idol 
 and the oracle of two generations. We see but too clearly today that 
 he travelled the wrong road. But he had faith. His artistic convictions 
 were unalterable, unselfish, absolute,—those of a fanatic. More than 
 that—a thing seldom to be found—, this fanatic was kindness itself. 
 
 Antokolsky, then, on being consulted made much of the mis* 
 fortunes and bitter disappointments that one embarking upon an 
 artistic career must expect. But he was not unwilling to look Leon’s 
 drawings over. Pestered by the youngster, his father sent several 
 sketches to Paris. Lo and behold! when the reply, so anxiously await* 
 ed by the boy, arrived, it was favorable, decisive, almost intoxicat* 
 ing. The master had found the drawings quite well done and advised 
 the boy’s going to the Academy of Fine Arts, on condition, however, 
 that he pursue his general education. 
 
 Thus Leon, the intractable and mediocre schoolboy of the day before, 
 was to become a painter, a chosen and quasi*legendary being. He was 
 then sixteen years of age. 
 
 31 
 
THE TWO SPHINXES 
 
 Leon, then, presented himself for examination but failed. Before 
 being admitted to another test he had for a year to practice drawing 
 from models; and only after he had solved the mysteries of this form 
 of academic discipline, was he admitted. For another year he kept 
 abreast of both his artistic studies and his general secondary education; 
 soon, however, he neglected school and, after a few feeble attempts, 
 gave it up altogether. Let us state the fact without bitterness: Bakst 
 never received the Bachelor’s degree. 
 
 The first day that Bakst, attired in his new green uniform, wended 
 his way along the granite embankment toward the Academy and, hav* 
 ing passed under the eyes of the two Sphinxes from Thebes with a 
 hundred gates which guard the sanctuary, decided to enter, his aston* 
 ishment and his proud ecstasy knew no bounds. However, despite the 
 grand pretense of a temple, the Imperial Academy of 1890 was a rather 
 curious institution. 
 
 The academic instruction which flourished at the beginning of the 
 century, maintained its power and authority until the close of Nicholas 
 I s reign. But from 1863 on it was badly shaken by the famous secession 
 of the Thirteen , with Kramskoi at the head. These thirteen later 
 became the first “wanderers”; they were destined to herald the arrival 
 of a certain humanitarian realism closely related to the teachings of 
 Proudhon and of Courbet. They professed the haughtiest contempt 
 for disinterested pictorial beauty, for mere virtuosity, yes, even for 
 sound craftmanship based upon traditional experience. 
 
 Among the pompiers classicism had degenerated into hackneyed 
 copying, teaching became vulgar pedantry. Among the revolutionaries 
 classicism was the complete and absolute negation of art, admitted only 
 as a function of social apostleship. But the younger artists had public 
 opinion behind them, which hailed the catastrophe as a liberation. Yet 
 for thirty years the Academy, powerful solely because of its official 
 
 authority, continued to stick to the past and to live outside the pale of 
 a throbbing artistic life. 
 
 32 
 
Not until 1893 did the “wanderers”, led by Makovsky and Repine, 
 enter the citadel in order to establish a bold and frank dilettantism 
 while still respecting the remnants of the old Academy. At that time 
 Bakst had already broken with his first masters; we shall soon see why. 
 
 Let us first, however, briefly complete the history of the institution 
 on the Nicholas Embankment. Toward 1910 a reaction set in against 
 the anarchy of the “wanderers” and in favor of a classic revival, of a 
 rehabilitation of craftmanship. This movement was of short duration, 
 however, for the October Revolution abolished the Academy and estab- 
 lished free studios upon its ruins, the management of which was 
 placed in the hands of artists who supported the Communist regime. 
 On the day of its death the Russian Imperial Academy was more than 
 150 years old. 
 
 Thus, at the Fine Arts School, Bakst found a training that clung to 
 unchanged formulae, but that was decadent, inert, and lifeless. He spent 
 three months drawing from bas-reliefs and one year sketching models. 
 Then, after having passed the class in costumes and copied draped 
 mannequins, he was admitted to the studio class. His teacher, Tchistia- 
 koff, did not encourage him to continue; he considered Bakst a promis¬ 
 ing sculptor, and whenever his pupil tried to talk painting to him, he 
 would invariably turn the conversation to sculpture. Tchistiakoff’s 
 colleague, Venig, was more far-sighted and, while disapproving of a 
 certain vivacity and truculence of colors which netted young Bakst the 
 ironical title of “Rubens newly ground”, he was not unfriendly to him. 
 This meant a great deal, for it was impossible to think of any more in¬ 
 timate relations—any communion of ideas or of feelings—between the 
 pope-like officials and their pupils who were as yet unknown quantities. 
 
 Far more important were his relations with his fellow students, espe¬ 
 cially with the class that was about to leave. At school and at his patern¬ 
 al home he had been placed in a position of isolation because of his 
 artistic aspirations; here he found himself surrounded by young people 
 devoted to that same art that was viewed with such suspicion by the 
 Russian intellectuals of yesteryear. At the Academy Bakst met Neste- 
 roff who, following Vasnetzoff and contemporaneous with Vroubel, was 
 to attempt a revival of the ikon,—a revival which, besides proving 
 
 33 
 
abortive, was more in the nature of sentimental and artificial imitation. 
 This craze for old national art went hand in hand among certain stu- 
 dents with a strong animosity against the “meteques”; besides, anti* 
 Semitism was officially encouraged and stimulated, since it served to 
 side-track the hatred which was more and more undermining the auto¬ 
 cratic power. Bakst, sensitive and meticulous, was grieved at this. He 
 therefore clung all the more closely to Seroff, several years his senior, 
 who was finishing his education and who aspired to winning the Grand 
 Prize for Painting—the gold medal. This future portraitist was a son of 
 the celebrated musician whose masterpiece, “Judith”, is known to 
 Parisians only by partial selections. Already he had achieved, in the eyes 
 of his fellow students, the intellectual and moral prestige that was due to 
 the uprightness—albeit somewhat morose—of his character andthe tenac¬ 
 ity of his effort. Soon, indeed, he came to the forefront of his generation. 
 
 This man, already matured, reserved, and little given to effusive 
 outbursts, took a fancy to the red haired young lad. The pair would sit 
 together in the studio; they would spend the evenings chatting in the 
 modest students’ apartment where Seroff lived and drinking plenty of 
 tea. Those were the happy days! They lasted for eighteen months.. 
 Clouds were, however, gathering over the head of Bakst who had 
 already given repeated offense to his superiors by his whims of 
 independence. A free competition was announced in which “The 
 Madonna Weeping Over Christ” was to be the subject and the Grand 
 Medal of silver the prize. Bakst joined the competitors. 
 
 He sought inspiration from those artists of his time who had attempted 
 a revival of religious subjects by displaying a realistic setting—thus 
 breaking away from the iconographic traditions of the Renaissance—, 
 by giving care to ethnographic detail,by minutely studying the expression 
 observed. These artists included Repine and Polienoff in Russia, and 
 Munkaczy abroad. But, carried away by a youthful enthusiasm, he 
 wished to go beyond the fastidious and cautious realism of these paint¬ 
 ers and make a ten-strike. 
 
 He therefore chose a canvas of enormous dimensions—almost seven 
 feet in length—and plunged into his work. For the characters of the legend 
 he set down Jewish types that were obviously overdone, and imparted 
 
 34 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
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 “MODERN DRESS” (A “FANTAISIE”) 
 
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 ‘DAPHNIS AND CHLOE PARTING IN THE EVENING". SKETCH FOR DECORATIVE PANEL (GOUACHE), 
 
W&HMI8 VMD CHrOE BVKJLIKG IM XHE EAEMIMC.,' 2KEECH EOK DECOtTALIAE EYMET (GOflVCHE)’ 
 
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a movement to them that imitated the gesticulation of Lithuanian cloth? 
 ing merchants or of elders in the synagogue. As to the Virgin, she was 
 an old, dishevelled woman, with eyes red from weeping. Our candidate 
 was, to be sure, vaguely conscious of the fact that he was digging his 
 own grave; nevertheless he obstinately persisted in his daring attempt. 
 
 "SYRENS”. PROJECT OF PANNEAU. 
 
 What anguish he suffered while he awaited the decision of the 
 jury on the winding staircase that constituted the Bridge of Sighs for 
 the young daubers of Petrograd! 
 
 And justly so, for when his name was called and he appeared 
 before the tribunal, he saw his canvas crossed out by two furious 
 strokes of crayon, and he had to listen to an official rebuke by the 
 president. 
 
 The next day he quit the Academy under the impassive glances 
 of the two bearded sphinxes of pink marble, emerging from the 
 gloomy twilight. 
 
 39 
 
A HUT (SAVOY). DRAWING 
 
 A WRONG START 
 
 Leon was free now and left alone with his pride in his recent revolt; 
 but there was also a great void in his soul. A country holiday out at 
 Pavlovsk, the delightful suburban residence district where Constantine, 
 the grand duke^poet, lived, afforded him salutary diversion. In the 
 beautiful English park— the loveliest in all Russia—, where every 
 clump of trees, every hill, every lawn forms part of a grandly^devised 
 and complex general plan conceived by an architectural genius; in this 
 park, in which he walked about carrying the burden of his liberty— 
 a melancholy figure, he found what he lacked most: a friend. This 
 new*found friend was a cartoonist by the name of Shpak, a pupil of 
 Repine, and, though but a mediocre artist, yet one who gave himself to 
 painting with a passionate and unselfish spirit. He guided Bakst in 
 looking for motifs, spurred him on to direct observation of Nature, 
 and awakened in him the proper respect for his profession. But 
 this influence soon gave way to another. 
 
 40 
 
HUTS IN THE MOUNTAINS (SAVOY). DRAWING 
 
 Luck would have it that Bakst, during that same autumn, chanced 
 to meet Albert Nikolaievitch Benois, the celebrated watercolorist who 
 had no rival in Russia. He was a member of that “dynasty” of Benoises 
 who have played so prominent a part in the artistic development of 
 Russia. Albert Benois, a handsome, chivalrous and affable man, handled 
 the brush with remarkable ease. He possessed a technique that was 
 as natural for him as bel canto singing is to the Neapolitan beggar. 
 But while his productions, at the same time that they possessed certain 
 qualities of good taste and true knowledge of his art, nevertheless 
 were rather too tame, their success in the eyes of the public was com? 
 plete. This success of the “master”, who was feted and flattered by his 
 aristocratic and feminine entourage, and who was unanimously 
 elected to the presidency of the society of water^color painters, dazzled 
 young Bakst, blunted for a while in him the haughty pride of the 
 seeker after new truths, and stimulated other ambitions in him. The 
 fierce rebel who sneered at the Academy suddenly craved Success! 
 
 He achieved a success that was immediate, brilliant, and disastrous. 
 Soon he began to neglect landscape painting in favor of the society 
 
 41 
 
portrait. Having tasted the apple, he next painted Eve. And, as he 
 abandoned himself to these effeminate and futile pursuits with that 
 same insatiable fervor with which he went into everything, he under? 
 took, he simply allowed himself to drift. Besides, his good friend 
 Shpak was no longer there to awaken his sleeping artistic conscience— 
 he had died quite suddenly. Serov, too, was far away in Moscow and 
 unable to warn him. 
 
 When I questioned him about this period of his life of which there 
 are few traces left, Bakst spoke about them quite eloquently, yes, even 
 persistently. He took evident pleasure in this confession; he seemed 
 even to relish the mortification that it must have cost. Was it that in 
 this race toward the abyss he tasted something of that spirit of adventure, 
 of that happy faculty of spending without counting, of giving oneself 
 body and soul to God or the Devil, which, indeed, was a part of his 
 nature? Or was he dreaming of those pretty hands of women, slender 
 but strong, which stroked his curly hair? As far as we are concerned, 
 we must content ourselves with recounting briefly the outstanding 
 facts in the early history of our friend and hero. 
 
 The most important of these is a long stay abroad. At Paris he 
 made friends with Albert Edelfeldt, a Finnish painter and a remark? 
 able man, to whose lot it fell to break the ground for the birth of a 
 national art in his own country, in that he transmitted to it the enlight? 
 ened knowledge of France. It should be noted in passing that all 
 the Norse revivals which endowed the Scandinavian countries with 
 an intense and original artistic life had their origin on the banks of 
 the Seine. Edelfeldt was neither a creative genius nor an artist in the 
 vanguard. He stuck to the cautious methods of a Bastien?Lepage. 
 But he was a forceful and able painter. Some of his canvases are 
 to be found in Paris, among them, if I remember correctly, his 
 portrait of Pasteur. 
 
 The habit of working outdoors, the study of daylight and its effect 
 upon massive subjects which Bakst pursued with his new friend who 
 also in some respects became his teacher, contributed powerfully toward 
 his success in performing the enormous task that was soon thrust upon 
 his youthful energy. The Russian government asked the Prodigal Son 
 
 42 
 

' 
 
 • • ’ • ' - c- 'rv eme- 
 
 a ' m Most - -K 
 
 h .St v 
 
 :> .! ••cjuently, > ^ ■ evu - * 
 
 
 
 
 
 XI 
 
 (3HOA r JOD) .H0UHU3 T8MI3 .THJJA3 "aCIASAXaHaHS" 
 
 

 
 
 
 9 
 
 
 AN INFERIOR DEITY. 
 
 
 “NARCISSUS” BALLET. (GOUACHE) 
 
I 
 
of the Imperial Academy to paint a canvas that was to have for its 
 subject the arrival of Admiral Avellan in Paris. 
 
 Perhaps the reader remembers that this visit which, unless I am very 
 much mistaken, took place in 1893, was one of the first formal cere? 
 monies arranged in connection with the nascent Russo?French alliance. 
 This canvas, the result of painstaking and honest labor, which displays 
 a freshness of color and a virtuosity of touch that is by no means 
 vulgar, is preserved today in the Navy Museum at Petrograd. Was the 
 young rebel of yesterday to become the Roll or the Mentzel of the 
 imperial fastes? Today we know that nothing of the sort happened. 
 
 One afternoon as Bakst, back from Paris, was lording it over a tea 
 table surrounded by beautiful ladies, and was basking in the sunshine 
 of his reputation, with flattering chatter all about him, he noticed a 
 young man enter whose manners at first offended him. With a monocle 
 in his eye, with haughty pride writ across his dark?complected face, 
 round?shouldered, attired in the student’s green blouse with blue collar, 
 he carried on the conversation with an ease that bordered upon disdain 
 and insult. Yet in the very arrogance of the young upstart there was 
 something that fascinated. Bakst took him aside and, when he pressed 
 him for an expression of opinion as to what he thought of his painting, 
 the young man replied candidly that, while he had the profoundest 
 respect for the technical mastery of his questioner, the painting itself 
 absolutely displeased him, and for good cause. 
 
 This young man’s name was Alexander Benois. As for Bakst, little 
 did he imagine that he had arrived that afternoon at a turning point 
 in his artistic career. 
 
 47 
 
THE CLUB 
 
 For a number of years a group of students from May College a 
 private institution, had been in the habit of meeting at the home of their 
 comrade, Alexander Benois. Among them was Constantine Somoff, a 
 son of the venerable director of the Hermitage, and the future origin* 
 ator of “Echoes of Days Past”; Philosophov who later, when he was 
 associated with Dimitri Merejkovsky, was destined to become one of 
 the revivers of religious sentiment in Russia; and others besides who 
 afterward constituted the nucleus of the society named “The Artistic 
 World” and who still later supplied the staff of the Russian Ballet. 
 Unique, indeed, was the atmosphere of this house. 
 
 I have already had occasion to speak of the Benois family. They 
 were the descendants of one of those numerous immigrants who for 
 more than a century, from the accession of Peter the Great till the 
 Moscow Fire, were called upon to help in the transformation of Russia. 
 All of these newcomers went through a similar experience: the tremend* 
 ous opportunities for initiative, the vast geographical extent and the 
 artistic impulses of the young empire called forth the highest develop* 
 ment of their abilities. Many a mediocre artist—or at least one assumed 
 to be mediocre—who had become half suffocated amid the rabble of the 
 western world, became transfigured in these favorable surroundings. 
 The originality of the Russian character, the breadth of view of the 
 grands*seigneurs of Catherine II’s time, the primitive simplicity of 
 the life of the people—all this stirred their imagination. And so these 
 men, who transplanted into Russia the artistic methods of the West, 
 the conceptions of style and the traditions of art that had matured in 
 Europe, became Russians themselves in heart and spirit. More than 
 that: it is to these “Russianized” fellow*countrymen of ours that, in a 
 large measure, we owe the birth of a modern Russian art. 
 
 The Benoises were related to the Cavos family, a veritable progeny 
 of artists. Alexander s maternal grandfather had been a noted composer 
 of music, his uncle a theatrical architect of distinction. The Cavos 
 family were of Venetian origin and never lost contact with their former 
 
 48 
 
A STREET IN LA VILETTE (PARIS). STAGE DECORATION FOR “ALAIDIN" 
 
 fatherland; the Benoises had French blood in their veins. All this is of 
 importance to those who are interested in looking for the origin of 
 certain aspirations, of certain artistic inclinations and habits of mind, 
 in atavism or in the call of blood. All of which did not prevent the 
 Benois brothers, two of whom we already know and the third one of 
 whom was an architect and later was made rector of the Academy of 
 Fine Arts, from becoming the eminent Russian artists that in fact they are. 
 
 As for Alexander, from earliest childhood he possessed all the qua* 
 lities needed for becoming, if not an intellectual leader, at least an in* 
 tellectual centre. His general culture, broad indeed and so varied as to 
 have become eclectic; a certain pedagogic inclination,—a tendency to 
 instruct, to educate, to make ideas spring forth; added to this, a live* 
 liness of temperament, an acuteness of perception which made him a 
 
 49 
 
malcontent, a wide-awake dreamer—all these rare qualities determined 
 his life’s work. His attempts at painting, excepting only his theatrical 
 creations, never seemed able to free themselves of a certain amateurish- 
 sess. But this was a natural complement to the fact that he was primar¬ 
 ily a theoretician or rather a man of artistic tastes who re-enforces his 
 intuitions and his sensibilities with an exact sense of logic and with the 
 true talent of a writer. 
 
 For many years Alexander Benois has been the most famous critic 
 of Russia. He is passionate and imaginative. He proceeds either by 
 invective or by panegyric. He is a thunderbolt. He gets worked up over 
 some artist, some idea. Offtimes he is mistaken and his candidate for 
 fame fails. That is due do the fact that Benois, who had really construct¬ 
 ed his hero from his imagination, endowed him with his own ideas, 
 and magnified his own conceptions in him, would suddenly, some nice 
 day, leave the poor wretch to his own designs. 
 
 When Bakst was admitted to this group, or club, the school boys 
 had become students and the original circle had widened. Philosophov 
 had introduced into it a cousin of his, just in from the provinces,—a fat, 
 chubby lad, exceedingly free in his manners, dictatorial and quite agres- 
 sive, inexhaustible in paradoxes which at times were absurd, but which 
 he defended to the limit without in the least attempting to be polite 
 about it. Benois was the soul of this group; the newcomer was to become 
 its will, its moving power—he was to lead it to its supremest heights. 
 The name of this fellow from the provinces was Serge Diaghileff. 
 
 Now what was it that transpired during these interminable confabs? 
 The club had set itself up as a supreme court which was to judge the 
 quick and the dead. Before doing anything constructive—they didn’t 
 know themselves what—its members first wanted to wipe out everything 
 existing. They would agree upon the victime, appoint someone as pro¬ 
 secutor, and then conduct a trial. The defendant might be a Shishkin 
 or a Verestchagin—in any case he was one of those celebrities whose 
 wrongly acquired reputation was debasing the real character of Russian 
 genius in the eyes of the whole world! But this whole work of tearing 
 down could not satisfy this enthusiastic group of young people. They felt 
 the needof givingthemselves over to something, of consumingthemselves 
 
 50 
 
STAGE DECORATIONS FOR BALLET “ORIENTALES”. (GOUACHE) 
 
21 VCE DECOKV 1 IOM 2 EOK BVITEX „OKIEMJLVrE 2 ..' (OOfWCHE) 
 
 X 
 
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 XII 
 
 A NEGRO'S COSTUME (SIIEHERAZADE; 
 

for something. At first their idol was Tchaikovsky, the composer of the 
 “Sleeping Beauty”. Tchaikovsky had already become famous; there was 
 therefore no “Battle of Hernani” to fight. It was merely a question with 
 them of which work of this master should be given preference. They 
 decided upon the “Queen of Spades” and placed it upon the pinnacle. 
 What thrilled our friends about this work was the fact that it conjured 
 up the 18 th century in Russia. The action of the opera, the text for which 
 was taken from a story by Pouchkine, takes place amid a setting that is 
 an exact reproduction of “Old Petrograd”,—amidst a scenery that is 
 familiar and famous. The promenade in the summer garden, the little 
 bridge over the winter canal—this, when displayed on the stage, called to 
 mind anew the beauty of the venerable capital—a beauty ever present, 
 but unappreciated and neglected—and rehabilitated its declining fame. 
 
 If I have dwelt rather at length upon the feats and exploits of a group 
 of unknown youths, it is due to the fact that these young men, who after 
 theater would walk along the quais during the “white night” singing a 
 duet from the “Queen of Spades”, or would lean pensively over the cold 
 granite parapet to listen to the clock of the Cathedral of Peter and Paul 
 pealing forth its crystal melody over the gloomy walls of the prison 
 fortress,—it is due, I say, to the fact that these young men were destined 
 to reshape Russian artistic sense from top to bottom. Later, on the eve 
 of the new century, the “Mir Iskousstva” Society was founded; with the 
 generous aid of Princess Tenicheff, a magazine was published; artexposb 
 tions were arranged. A new epoch wasbeginning. Bakst helped to shape it 
 —and we already know that he gavehimself to every task whole heartedly. 
 
 At this point I do not propose to narrate the story of “Mir Iskousstva”. 
 It was a revolution and was outrageously attacked as such. But its ex* 
 ponents held that it saved Russian art. Today some people contend that 
 it was a menace to art. A quarter of a century lies between these two 
 conflicting opinions. It is not for me to judge which is right. But 
 Bakst’s participation in the work of this society forms a beautiful page 
 in the life of my friend and therefore, too, of this story of mine. And my 
 task would be incomplete were I to omit giving a brief description of 
 this great movement of ideas which for a long time determined the 
 future of Russian art. 
 
 55 
 
STAGE DECORATION FOR CHOPIN’S “NOCTURNES” 
 
 “MIR I S K O U S S T V A” 
 
 The small vanguard took position hastily; impetuously it fell upon 
 the enemy. Diaghileff, charging at the head of this handful of friends, 
 sounded the rallying cry. He was successful. Moscow, too, had its rais* 
 ing of the shield. Serov supported the movement. Levitan, the land* 
 scape painter, contributed his tremendous popularity to the young cause. 
 During this recruiting fever mistakes were not wanting; for instance, 
 Vasnetzoff, the insipidly sweet imitator of icons, was singled out for 
 praise. He had soon to be dropped. But instead Golovine, Polienov 
 and others joined them who drew upon the real popular sources. It is 
 
 56 
 
further true that they almost succeeded in “reforming” Vroubel, the 
 great romantic decorator who was haunted by the Demon. 
 
 Above everything this group was looking for allies from abroad. 
 These were to be found at the very gates of Petrograd. A “young Fin* 
 land” was rising about Edelfeldt as founder—the Axel Galiens, the 
 Jaernefeldts, the Enkels; in short, all those who were destined to 
 endow the “country of a thousand lakes” with a national art. The Finns 
 accordingly took part in the first exposition in which “Mir Iskousstva” 
 faced Russian public opinion. At the second there appeared French 
 guests who after three generations found their way back to Russia. 
 
 This proved a decisive feat. An end was thus put to the isolation 
 in which a waning Russian art found itself. For, at that time the whole 
 European artistic movement was ignored in Russia. The prize winners 
 of the Academy would go to Rome to perfect themselves and would 
 there copy the Stanze of Raphael, or else, perhaps, they would go to 
 study historical painting under Piloty, the De la Roche of Munich. The 
 moving spirits of the school—a Kramskoi, or a Repine—would return 
 from their western travels with nothing but contempt for the “futile” 
 (as they called them) masterpieces of beautiful painting or else an in? 
 fatuation for the virtuosity of the brush of a Fortuny or a Meissonnier. 
 
 Diaghileff and Benois flung the doors wide open. A motley crowd 
 enters pell-mell; even the “decadents” of the Viennese Secession, with 
 Renoir and Carriere. Mistakes are made; there is as yet no scale of 
 values; the obscure Belgian, Leon Frederick, is put upon a pedestal while 
 Cezanne is ignored until 1904. The reason for this is the fact that this 
 group at first has no positive program. But its negative influence is 
 inestimable. Repine, one of the most powerful exponents of this 
 ideologic naturalism which I have mentioned in passing, launched 
 a counter-attack in the name of the survivers of traditional academic 
 style. Diaghileff, by his virulent reply, threw the champion of routine 
 out of the saddle. It is a great period of ringing battles, of hard contests 
 with the adversary who mangled even Ingres’ very name. These strug¬ 
 gles were the more heroic since the public remained averse to them. 
 
 The editorial offices of their magazine were the hot-house in which 
 new ideas were hatched and the staff headquarters where the big 
 
 57 
 
offensives were planned. Now, the editorial staff itself was divided 
 into two sections. In the large salon we find Philosophov, handsome 
 and slender as a thoroughbred courser, who meets the contributors to 
 the literary section. There is Merejkovsky, who contributes his best 
 works to the review and who introduces us to the art and the doctrines 
 of Tolstoy and Dostoievsky; Leon Shestov, the apostle of “eradication” 
 with his emaciated face of a Jewish Socrates; Rosanov who pried into 
 the very depths of the sexual problem, a towering spirit who used to 
 bare his inmost thoughts with candor. Of all these men, who were 
 radiant in their young fame, Rosanov alone did not profess a supreme 
 philosophical contempt for the fine arts. The painters, accordingly, 
 would shrink back from the haughtiness and the affected attitude of 
 the literary folk and would seek refuge in the office of the secretary* 
 general, the headquarters of the artistic section. 
 
 There they would find Bakst, who was collecting the material that 
 oftentimes was queer enough, and who in fact worked out the whole 
 review. No task was too hard for him. He would group the various 
 component parts and make up the pages. It would happen that 
 Diaghileff, disconcerted over an engraving that came out badly and 
 that had the earmarks of a confused work, would come to Bakst who 
 would take up the work on the plate and give form to an amorphous 
 jumble of touches. Another one of his steady tasks was that of decorat* 
 ing the book, of designing the cover, of drawing the ornamented 
 letters, of supplying the tail*pieces. In this connection it should be 
 recalled that the art of book decorating was revived at the end of the 
 last century. The English, with Walter Crane at the head, started the 
 procession. It was an Englishman, furthermore,—Aubrey Beardsley— 
 who designed arabesques of extraordinary sharpness and delicacy upon 
 the geometrical quadrangles of the pages. This new method was also 
 being experimented upon in Petrograd. A number of artists of the 
 second generation of “Mir Iskousstva”,such as Narbout and Mitrochin, 
 are exclusively “vignettistes”. As for this first group, they had to do 
 everything and accordingly they did everything. Benois, Somov, that 
 other Russianized Frenchman Lanceray—all were experts at this art. 
 Bakst, too, went through it. There are magazine covers of his extant 
 
 58 
 
XIII 
 
 STAGE DECORATIONS FOR OSCAR WILDE’S “SALOMEA”. (GOUACHE) 
 
offensives were planr .1 
 
 J h ' ophov, hand 
 r utf the contributor' to 
 v v » i tributes his b* t 
 i t jnd the doctrine'* 
 
 'eradication” 
 ’ • pried into 
 's ov e: *d who used to 
 
 < d r. Of ! l t esc men. who were 
 i ov ilon* !■•.' p * less a supreme 
 e fine lartRjud accordingly, 
 
 
 tteted attitude of 
 4k of rhe secretary!* 
 
 co»r d uup 'W.a that 
 
 - ■ ' ’ ( ‘• M « •* a* i 
 
 the pjbte - •;'#! 5- a . n w 
 
 Jl ' •• OlK cn '.-S ;iv apy f*. .. .,*? 
 
 tng the book, i . u the .rt'.rocnted 
 
 hr,, a 
 
 an, furthermore. isley— 
 
 ■ ^ordinary sharp iv ao,! . . y upon 
 
 : ■> • V ^ . is ,;h o 
 
 are \ S \t s \ "\ »i t group, they had to do 
 
 ? ere experts at this art. 
 
 58 
 
 UIX 
 
 (3HOAUOO) ."A3MOJA8" 83CIJIW 3A080 >103 8M0ITAM033a 30AT8 
 
V 
 
A YOUNG BEOTIAN. (■•NARCISSUS” BALLET ). WATER COLOUR 
 
 on which statuettes in Directoire style flank a medaillon, or on which 
 there are artistic frames. At the same time he tried his hands at pure 
 illustrating; there is, for instance, a water^color of his which illustrated 
 “The Nose”, a grotesque story by Gogol. Today we look upon these 
 designs as the first attempts at the masterful costume^pages of later days. 
 “Bakst has hands of gold”, wrote Benois in his history of Russian 
 painting, a work of which we shall speak again later. He admired his 
 manual skill and the elasticity of his spirit and of his workmanship. 
 But he was unconscious of his powerful personality. 
 
 Later on, dissatisfied with pen sketching that was then reproduced 
 by the mechanical process of engraving, the group tried themselves at 
 original lithography. Here, again, Bakst was successful: a head of 
 
Levitan brings out in sharp juxtaposition the intense black and white 
 of the drawing. 
 
 Thus, then, we see Bakst working away at his table, which is covered 
 with waste paper, with photographs and proofs. Around him, people 
 talk idly, or loll about the couches, or draw caricatures, or debate. 
 Then, through a cloud of smoke produced by ten cigarettes, Diaghileff 
 comes rushing in, chasing a new rainbow. He tells of his latest discovery, 
 or he scoffs at some idol that he adored the day before. His enthusiasm 
 is as intermittent as it is uncompromising. He is the life of this party 
 of outspoken, unreserved painters; he cares little for men of letters. 
 Alexander Benois, on the other hand, forms the connecting link between 
 the two clans; he arranges and coordinates everything by virtue of his 
 broad and supple understanding. Soon new initiates — Grabar and 
 Jaremitch, the artist?writers, and Kouzmin, the poet?musician, and 
 others—join in the work of strengthening the somewhat difficult union 
 of these two sections. 
 
 Within this community of painters, however, there was little agree? 
 ment as to the road that should be followed. They agreed in their 
 hatreds, but differed as to aims. Diaghileff, always hypersensitive to 
 the sensations of the day and ready to take his ideas out of the clear 
 sky, would misjudge the value of ephemeral tendencies and therefore 
 
 CNOSSOS HARBOUR (CRETE). SKETCH FOR ALBUM 
 
 64 
 
STAGE DECORATION FOR PROLOGUE IN ORIENTAL STYLE 
 
 at times get himself into an impasse. Thus he allowed himself to be 
 carried away into enthusing over that atrocious “modern style”, the 
 architectural vestiges of which today disgrace every large city in the 
 world. Bakst together with his older friend Serov set himself against 
 painting in the style of Gustav Klimt and against architecture a la 
 Olbrich in the name of an honest, direct and robust art. 
 
 The weak spot about all this combativeness and intellectual ardor, 
 which proved fatal and unavoidable amid these divergent points of 
 view, was the lack of creative ability on the part of the group. This 
 group had deposed and duly trampled under foot the art of the 
 „wanderers” with its social tendencies and its worship of the moujik. 
 It had done this to the greater glory of an art that is unselfish and 
 creative. But almost immediately its members turned toward literature. 
 Among all those former members of the Club (I except only Serov and 
 
 65 
 
the Moscovites), there was not a single painter in the real sense of the 
 word. Benois, who never when working at a canvas could completely 
 overcome his amateurish clumsiness, Lanceray, later Doboujinsky 
 they all were first and foremost illustrators, rather than painters, who 
 were steeped in precious recollections, who gleaned from every style 
 and who discovered forgotten beauties. 
 
 With this select group, then, the motif prevailed more and more 
 over its execution; the brush became a means of interpreting a 
 history perceived with a sort of sentimental homesickness mixed with 
 irony. Is it surprising, then, that the retrospective attitude got the 
 upper hand more and more, and that the offshoots of this movement 
 were sacrificed to a propaganda for the past? 
 
 As a matter of fact, discovery followed upon discovery. Preceding 
 generations, going into Russian extremes, became infatuated with the 
 idea of progress. Accordingly they either ignored or misunderstood 
 their national past. Then, under Nicholas I the czar^gendarme, the old 
 architecture was disfigured by German builders. As for the unique 
 and grandiose beauty of the structures in the style of the Empire and 
 of Louis XVI, — buildings without parallel in the occidental world — 
 these were confounded by the public with that implacable hatred that 
 it bore toward the regime that had erected and that was maintaining 
 them. An educated Russian could not possibly find anything beautiful 
 about the Winter Palace, this fine masterpiece of Rastrelli; he would 
 decline to admire the Admiralty Building because the defeat of 
 Tsushima was prepared within its formidable walls. The writer of 
 this sketch was himself brought up in this atmosphere of hateful 
 contempt for the ‘official ugliness” and the “style of the barrack.” 
 
 Benois and his friends discovered this slandered beauty and became 
 enamoured of it. Later on we shall see how Bakst discharged his debt 
 of gratitude to old Petrograd, this wonderful city which rose miracuh 
 ously from the surface of the waves. 
 
 But the surprises were not yet over. In his history of modern 
 Russian painting, Benois with boldness and with charming eloquence 
 recalled the founders of this style of painting, the portraiTpainters of 
 the eighteenth century, especially Levitzky and Borovikovsky. He cast 
 
 66 
 
XV 
 
 STAGE DECORATIONS FOR HINDU BALLET (GOUACHE) 
 
k nfer in the real sense ( fe< 
 , . ... ,■ »♦ i canvas could com r eld y 
 
 cray, later Dobouii >ky— 
 : ;at ■ who 
 
 wU-a ry style 
 
 and more 
 preting a 
 mixed with 
 de got the 
 i movement 
 
 Preceding 
 ; with the 
 ,\-4 nderstood 
 c, the old 
 he unique 
 ipire and 
 world — 
 "red that 
 retaining 
 dutiful 
 would 
 defeat of 
 v. riter of 
 dateful 
 
 h ugliness’ and the 4 
 discovered this slamu 
 
 
 
 
 
 > d became 
 
 s shall see how K,. .ar, < ins debt 
 
 v id, this wonderful at niracuk 
 
 • waves. 
 
 ■' ntss and with ci •; v oquence 
 ? ■ oi painting, the p i V'nters of 
 tzkyar He cast 
 
 
 
 
 vx 
 
 (HHDA'JOO) T3JJAH JGKIH *03 <2HOITA>IOD3<3 3; 
 
 3DAT?. 
 

 

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 3«kv t 
 
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XVII 
 
 1’HE IMPERIAL PALACE (“THE MARTYRDOM OF ST. SEBASTIAN") 
 

STAGE DECORATION FOR D'ANNUNZIO'S TRAGEDY "LA PISANELLA" 
 
 overboard all existing estimates and showed up the emptiness of the 
 “wanderers” school. But his justified and impetuous enthusiasm prov- 
 ed—or nearly so—the undoing of “Mir Iskousstva”. 
 
 The magazine deteriorated before one’s eyes. Side by side with 
 it Benois brought out a collection, or analytical inventory, called 
 “The Art Treasures of Russia”. The creator became a collector. 
 Ceaselessly he and his friends collected. Bric-a-brac occupied a promi¬ 
 nent place. Icons of the school of Novgorod were dug up, likewise 
 family portraits done by serfs in the old households of the nobility, 
 mahogany furniture dating back to the Peace of Tilsit, and popular 
 likenesses. 
 
 For a time Diaghileff allowed himself to drift. As usual he treated 
 this craze for the past on a grand scale. He even resumed it in a defi¬ 
 nite effort of which I shall speak later. But for the present he and his 
 friends felt themselves reduced to the role of custodians of a museum 
 
 75 
 
or of benevolent guides, a thing that was repugnant to his ambition 
 and his temperament. He looked for a way out. The stage alone 
 seemed to offer it. 
 
 Naturalism had just won its greatest triumphs, thanks to the 
 Moscow Art Theater. But if comedy was taken possession of by the 
 naturalists, the opera and the ballet could react. Already Mamontov, 
 the famous maecenas who discovered Shaliapin, had ordered stage 
 decorations from the Moscow painters, Vroubel and Golovin. At 
 Petrograd everything was given a trial. I cannot, without exceeding the 
 limits set me, speak at greater length of what became of this movement; 
 some day, perhaps, I shall be able to strike its balance. As a matter of 
 fact, I have already had to enlarge considerably upon my subject in 
 order to set the subject of my sketch down in his proper surroundings, 
 in that unique atmosphere, created by historical and personal contings 
 encies, which is ignored for the most part by the Russian people, and 
 which entirely escapes the attention of the foreign reader. Besides, this 
 union of a handful of men who were determined to restore the artistic 
 greatness of their country was so brotherly, so fraternal that it would 
 be wrong to differentiate between their respective roles and artificially 
 to isolate their efforts. 
 
 76 
 
AN ALMfiE. “SHEHERAZADE" BALLET 
 
 THE THREE KNOCKS 
 
 Resolutely DiaghilefF turned his co-workers towards the theater. The 
 time was propitious. Vsevolojsky, the director of the Imperial theaters, 
 had just resigned his position which he had filled so brilliantly. Himself 
 a dilettante nobleman and a man of good taste he had personally 
 designed most of the costumes that, under his direction, were built for 
 the ballet and the operas. He had to a large extent reconstructed the 
 Russian and foreign repertoire, devoting himself to Tchaikovsky and 
 making a place for Wagner. A galaxy of stars surrounded him. Marius 
 Petitpas, the greatest living choreographer, exercised his successful 
 dictatorship over the ballet. A brilliant young woman, just out of school, 
 was about to eclipse the celebrated Italian virtuosos. Highly respected 
 
 77 
 
painters—the Shishkovs and the Botcharovs—who were experts at the 
 art of stage decoration, executed the ideas of their director. In short, 
 he did everything. Was it his fault that his activity fell within the 
 worst epoch of a century that was called the stupid century? Is he to 
 be blamed that the sources of his inspiration and the quality of the 
 documents consulted by him bore the marks of that terrible decadence 
 of the artistic instinct of which the year 1900 marks the climax and 
 presages its end? However that may be, he prepared a glorious end 
 for an obsolete art. The old opera passed away in beauty. 
 
 Yet with all the extraordinary perfection of execution, a certain 
 uneasiness was germinating. Vague manifestations of independence 
 were threatening the rigorous traditional discipline. In the midst of this 
 crisis the helm was given to a young man. Prince Serge Volkonsky, 
 who had distinguished himself in the Court theater by his splendid 
 bearing and his clever acting, belonged to one of the noblest Russian 
 families. His grandfather had taken part in the famous ”Decembrist 
 insurrection" of 1825; his grandmother had followed her husband to his 
 Siberian convict prison with a devotion that inspired Nekrasov to write 
 a celebrated poem. Volkonsky let the dead bury their dead and from the 
 very first made his appeal to the young men and women—to Diaghileff 
 and his friends. They plunged into their work: a revival of Delibes’ 
 "Sylvia” was decided upon. 
 
 The Mir Iskousstva painters agreed to make their first attack upon 
 the stage together. Accordingly, they divided up the work by acts, 
 Alexander Benois leading—Benois who even today, after his success* 
 ful collaboration with Stravinsky, retains a real feeling of reverence 
 for Delibes whom he places, without hesitation, in a class with 
 Wagner. Bakst and Serov also collaborated. 
 
 But the opera was never put on. There is a veritable hoode about 
 this ’’Sylvia", which kept haunting the Russian artists and yet was never 
 produced. The late Andrianov, an exceedingly good dancer, was about 
 to show an abridgement or sketch of this piece, but the attempt came 
 to naught; Fokine dreamed about it vainly for many years. 
 
 As to this first attempt at cooperative work, it failed for personal 
 reasons. From the beginning Volkonsky felt his prestige as manager 
 
 78 
 
'■ v experts at th 
 ; director. In short 
 it-’! within the 
 ' :rv? Is he to 
 litv of the 
 Jecadence 
 i:max and 
 nous end 
 
 ■V 
 
 .-non, a certain 
 ^endence 
 # - mid t of this 
 ge Volkonsky, 
 his splendid 
 oblest Russian 
 Decembrist 
 nd to his 
 o write 
 from the 
 'iaghileff 
 .. : 1 Delibes’ 
 
 \ upon 
 b r acts, 
 success* 
 cvcrence 
 a cm ss with 
 
 *>ode about 
 c a as never 
 
 er, was about 
 c >rrempt came 
 
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 as manager 
 
 XIX 
 
 l,3H. )AUOO) .OGJAVIIX .T3JJA3 "3UOMJH CTOOO 30 H3MOW" 3HT 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 


 XX 
 
 STAGE DECORATIONS FOR “PILEDRA". 
 
 (GOUACHE) 
 

A COSTI ME. 
 
 XXI 
 
 “NARCISSUS” BALLET 
 
XXII 
 
 THE PILGRIM ("BLUE GOD” BALLET). (GOUACHE) 
 

DRAWING OF A LIVING MODEL FOR A PICTURE 
 
 threatened by the consuming energy and the unscrupulous ambition 
 of his “employe”, Diaghileff. To be sure, Diaghileff, conscious of his 
 actual superiority, carried himself as though he were the boss. Fearing 
 he would be supplanted by this maire du palais, the director re?' 
 quested Diaghileff to resign voluntarily. Diaghileff would do nothing 
 of the sort. Exasperated, Volkonsky promptly discharged him, by 
 applying the famous “paragraph three” of the rules and regulations to 
 his case, by the terms of which the “government secretary Diaghileff” 
 was forever barred from all public appearance. Who knows but that 
 to this act of administrative jealousy we owe the grandiose effort 
 
 87 
 
of the “Russian Season”? Excluded from official life, Diaghileff, the 
 great condottiere of art, could unfold his full power! 
 
 Diaghileff left, his friends followed, a great gap closed in about the 
 director, and several months later, not being able to have the last say 
 in a quarrel with a star who was both famous and powerful, Volkonsky 
 had himself to resign and leave. 
 
 Bakst, however, had not participated in this boycott of the prince; 
 he plunged into his work for its own sake. But it was not at the Marie 
 Theater that he made his real debut. Grand * Duke Vladimir 
 Alexandrovitch had brought back with him from one of his frequent 
 trips to Paris the text for a pantomime, the author of which was 
 Fevre, the comedian. This play, “The Heart of the Marchioness”, 
 found favor with the directors. It was decided to play it at the 
 Hermitage Theater, an auditorium reserved exclusively for the Imperial 
 family and the members of the Court. It was connected with the 
 Winter Palace by a passage. The French actors of the Michel Theater, 
 under the direction of the maitre de ballet, Enrico Cecchetti, 
 executed the pantomime before an audience of grand dukes and 
 chamberlains. 
 
 Vladimir entrusted the scenery to Bakst. The latter conceived 
 a semicircular pavilion as stage setting. For costumes he went straight 
 to authentic sources and utilized the elements for devising a good 
 ensemble. He brought a new idea to the theater: that of style. That 
 is, at least, what eye-witnesses claim; nothing has been preserved of 
 this work of his. 
 
 As the pantomime was tremendously successful, the Emperor had this 
 show put on at a gala benefit performance in the Marie Theater—and this 
 is how Bakst for the first time appeared on the most famous of all Russian 
 stages. This winter of 1900, then, when for the first time he went upon 
 the stage that, according to Goethe, “means the universe”, decided his 
 future. Who could today imagine what the fate of modern scenerie would 
 be without the contribution of Bakst? And who could conceive of a Bakst 
 remaining a stranger to the theater? It took him ten years to find his 
 place. The three knocks struck home. For the first time the curtain rises 
 over a work of Bakst. Ten years later Paris will crown “Sheherazade”. 
 
 88 
 
THE THEBAN GATE 
 
 Meanwhile Colonel Teliakovsky had succeeded Volkonsky. He 
 owed his appointment as director to the fact that he had been in 
 the Horseguards with Baron (later Count) Freedericksz, minister 
 of the Court. A ludicrous figure he was—this horseman promoted 
 
 A ROAD IN THE FIELDS (SAVOY). DRAWING 
 
 to be stage manager—, without either ideas or prestige and con* 
 sequently unable to contribute anything of value. But he gave 
 others a free hand—and that is a great deal during a period of 
 fermentation and revival. 
 
 Thus, soon after his appointment, he authorized an experiment of 
 far*reaching importance. Alexander Theater was preparing to bring out 
 Euripides’ tragedy, “Hippolytus,” the attempt being made to produce 
 it as nearly like the ancient original as possible. The young stage 
 
 89 
 
director, Osarovsky, hoped to make a grand coup. The play was 
 translated by Merejkovsky in exceedingly beautiful verse and with an 
 extremely intense modern feeling. Among the Russian intellectuals of 
 that time, Nietzschean ideas were held in great fascination. Now, in this 
 early masterpiece the philosopher had transfigured the whole con* 
 ception of the spirit of the ancients. Under the marbledike and placid 
 guise of the Greece of Apollo’s time he had revealed the Dionysiac 
 ecstacy, the pathetic distress and the mystic impulse of the masses. What 
 had been considered as the key to their souls, viz., this sovereign and 
 plastic art, was but a sham emancipation. 
 
 For a quarter of a century the government had tried to curb turbu* 
 lent youth by means of the classical ferule. Greek was loathed as much 
 as was the royal blue of the gendarme uniform. But the translation 
 by Merejkovsky and the enthusiastic eloquence of Professor Zielinski, 
 scholar and poet, who commented upon it as “the birth of tragedy”, 
 caused great surprise and soon extreme fondness for it. It was necessary, 
 however, in order to bring about this rehabilitation of antiquity, to make 
 use of the best possible medium, namely, its consecration by the stage. 
 
 The scenery and costumes for „Hippolytus” were ordered from 
 Bakst. After an interval of four years there followed “Oedipus at 
 Colonnae” and Sophocles’ “Antigone”. 
 
 It was an arduous task indeed, for the problem was that of adapting 
 the essential dualism of the Greek tragedy—its lyric choruses and its 
 active players, its dithyrambs and its dialogue, Dionysius and Apollo— 
 to the arrangement of the modern theater, with its odd^shaped stage, 
 like a box opened toward the side of the spectators. Bakst made the 
 attempt. Once having entered upon the road to Thebes he solved 
 the enigma of the Sphinx without stumbling and forced open the 
 gate. By raising the background of the stage he made the foreground 
 available for the proscenium, with the altar of the god of the 
 tragedy in the middle. On this proscenium the choruses executed 
 evolutions, the choristers chanted the strophes and antbstrophes 
 rhythmically, while the ensemble of supernumeraries scanned certain 
 final verses. At the end the leader of the chorus would ascend the 
 steps which connected the proscenium with the platform in order 
 
 90 
 

 
 
 
 
 XXIII 
 
 STAGE DECORATIONS FOR ACT 4th OF D’ANNUNZIO’S “ST. SEBASTIAN” (GOUACHE) 
 
1 ou n The play was 
 
 ‘ ' vi i t-i'ul verse and with an 
 ■ ;/ ri Kussian ntellectuals of 
 
 
 n u n. Now, in this 
 
 * own4inured the whole con* 
 
 fim lie had re ealed the Dionysiac 
 
 i\n. choruses and its 
 .! k; :,y, i > and Apollo— 
 
 av modern shaped stage, 
 
 t!ie side of :ht , okst made the 
 
 d upoVi the road es he solved 
 
 without stumbung and tweed open the 
 o of the stage lie nade the foreground 
 , with the altar of the god of the 
 h roscenium the choruses executed 
 ! i -he strophes and anthstrophes 
 ■d supernumeraries scanned certain 
 r * - o the chorus would ascend the 
 
 onium with the platform in order 
 
 90 
 
 IIIXX 
 
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 XXVI 
 
 STAGE DECORATIONS FOR THE VAULT SCENE (“ST. SEBASTIAN") 
 

 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
to pronounce Fate’s supreme sentence upon the protagonist who 
 had been prostrated by the gods. 
 
 Thus, for the first time, an attempt was made at a logical dissociation 
 of the rhythmic and dramatic elements of the ancient theater. Years were 
 
 A BRANCH. SKETCH 
 
 to elapse before the German Max Reinhardt invented the monumental 
 staircase and the proscenium of Lysistrata; and still a longer period 
 until that same intrepid pioneer let loose upon the arena of a circus the 
 hysterical multitude of a chorus of wild persons. Bakst was the first, 
 not only in Russia, but in the world, to try to work out a stage and a 
 
 99 
 
conventional plastic language that was in accord with our modern 
 conception of ancient art. 
 
 The Greeks who faced each other in the tragic dilemmas of “Hippoly- 
 tus" and especially of “Oedipus’were no longer those classical personages 
 
 A ROAD IN UPPER SAVOY. DRAWING 
 
 with rounded gestures, draped in white, blue or red tunics that looked 
 like a schoolboy’s drawing after a plaster-cast relief of Phideas. They 
 displayed the angular shoulders of the warriors on one of Aegina’s 
 bas-reliefs; the conical helmet with a visor protecting the brow and the 
 nose, as well as the metal shin protectors, tended to simplify the lines 
 
 100 
 
of the actor. On the other hand the garments were brightcolored; the 
 purple robe of Creon was resplendent with its ornamentation copied 
 from Ionian pottery. The sixth century dispossessed the fifth, archaic 
 art crowded out the classical canons, the intense colors of many hues 
 
 PROJECT OF LANDSCAPE (UPPER SAVOY). DRAWING 
 
 obtained preference over the marble whiteness of the statues. People 
 breathed again; they felt themselves freed. 
 
 The great age of Pericles, which for three centuries had been 
 exploited by every academy of Europe, which had been vulgarised, 
 debased, enervated by the Alma-Tademas and the Siemiradskis, 
 
 101 
 
seemed gloomy, formal, deathly cold. Besides, an art that is perfect 
 and definite, and that has reached its zenith affords no occasion for 
 further research, for further development. It condemns its followers 
 either to imitating it or else to diminishing it. Instinctively Bakst 
 took issue with the academic rules. The fact that he possessed this 
 divination of the right road to take is what placed him several years 
 ahead of his contemporaries. 
 
 For he was quite alone in his passion for this Greek antiquity 
 which at every new turn seemed different from every preconceived 
 notion. His friends of the “Mir Iskousstva” were entirely taken 
 up by their craze for rococo curios or for the majesty of imperial 
 architecture; Diaghileff was looking for Russian portraits of the 
 eighteenth century and was preparing the famous exposition of the 
 Tauride Palace; Alexander Benois was living at Versailles, fascinated 
 by the sight of regal splendor. The only one who followed his efforts 
 with solicitude was Serov. So that, when Bakst felt the urgent 
 need of testing his intuitions by direct observations, of knowing 
 positively what he had merely guessed at, he succeeded in persuade 
 ing the great portraitist to join him on his voyage of exploration 
 into archaic Greece—a journey that was one of the outstanding events 
 of his intellectual life. 
 
 Our great master has reserved to himself the task of some da\ tell? 
 ing in detail the thrilling events of this journey. With that devotion 
 to friendship that is characteristic of him he has kept a minute account 
 of the utterances and impressions of Serov’s manly and delicate mind. 
 It will make a splendid volume some day. 
 
 Serov had guided Bakst’s first steps. This Greek expedition was 
 Bakst’s return gift. With the help of these antique realities, which served 
 him as striking arguments, he turned the tormented realist, the sensitive 
 psychologist that Serov was, to a study of syntheticized painting ex* 
 pressing itself in broad and severe forms. And so Serov, pupil of Repine 
 the “wanderer”, portraitist of important Moscow merchants and of great 
 Russian intellectuals, brought back from this voyage a memorable 
 “Abduction of Europa”. His days, however, were counted. And once 
 again Bakst had to continue his solitary way unaided. 
 
 102 
 
XXVII 
 
 “TERROR ANTIQUUS”. 
 
 FIRST GOLDEN MEDAL. 1911 UNIVERSAL EXHIBITION (BRUSSELS) 
 

 that is perfect 
 ; , no occasion for 
 ns its followers 
 nstinctively Bakst 
 he possessed this 
 d him rveral years 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 antiquity 
 conceived 
 ! v taken 
 \ imperial 
 
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 persuad* 
 exploration 
 U events 
 
 a; s some day tells 
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 ■> naniy and uds ate mind. 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 his Greek e\pt dition was 
 nque realities, which served 
 tormented realist the sensitive 
 vntheticized painting ex* 
 v o Serov, pupil of Repine 
 v mercha i t a nd of great 
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 etc counted And once 
 , i naided. 
 
 
 
 
 
 IIVXX 
 
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 (8332211X3) WOITiaiHXa JA2X3VIHU I IQf JACI3M M3CIJOO T2MI-I 
 
XXVIII 
 
 TERROR ANTIQUUS” (DETAILED) 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
A ROAD IN THE FIELDS. DRAWING 
 
 TERROR ANTIQUUS 
 
 Bakst did not go to Greece in order to say his “prayer upon the 
 Acropolis”, to venerate the Attic serenity, “the sublime grace and the 
 sweet grandeur” discovered by Winkelmann and Goethe. He visited 
 hot Argos, and Mycenae with its tomb of the Atrides which several 
 years before had inspired the poet d’Annunzio with the panting dialogue 
 of his “Dead City”; Mycenae whose gates called forth in him something 
 like a homesickness for Egypt. He strolled about Crete, among the 
 remnants of the palace of Minos, dreaming about Medea the Sorceress, 
 about the Minotaur conquered by Theseus, about the monsters, the 
 Titans, all those brutal or mystic figures—the Gorgons, the Eurynies— 
 who by their incessant assaults shook the pedestal where the Divine 
 Archer defied them. The fantastic and passionate conception of the 
 stage decorations for the Greek tragedies and ballets which were to earn 
 such applause in Paris had its origin in these meditations of his in the 
 occult presence of Hellas’ clear sky. 
 
 107 
 
But there was something else that made his heartbeat fast as he stroll? 
 ed among the cliffs of Crete. That was the wind which blew up from 
 the shore—a wind that was perfumed and that seemed to come from 
 the vast Orient hidden in the fog. Who knows but that in such mo? 
 ments the call of the ancient Asiatic was indistinctly awakened in this 
 Occidental Jew? Certain it is that underneath the chisel and the polish? 
 ing tool of Greek culture he discovered the lavish, ardent and sensual 
 oriental raw material. And the archaic sculptures, massive, with rigid 
 frontlets, straightway transported him to Egypt. Then, too, his read? 
 ings—Maspero and the book by Fustel de Coulanges about the “An? 
 tique City” which had captivated him — confirmed his theories. He 
 therefore did not hesitate to take from the Egyptians the ornaments in 
 live colors with which he embellished the costumes for his “Oedipus”. 
 
 One cannot help but wonder, when one lets “Cleopatra”, “Helen 
 of Sparta” and “St.Sebastian” pass in review, what would have happen? 
 ed if this extraordinary man had not been born on the banks of the 
 Neva and in the fullness of the nineteenth century! Would he, under 
 the pharaohs, have added new figures to the dancers on the tombs of 
 Sakkarah? Or earlier still, would he, as a Phoenician sailor, in his 
 leisure moments have designed the figures on the prows of the triremes 
 of Hamilcar? He would well have fitted into the brilliant, arid, impla? 
 cable atmosphere which forms the setting for Flaubert’s “Salambo”. 
 But enough of these digressions. 
 
 What he had observed and meditated upon during these feverish 
 weeks he intended to mass together in one single work, a decorative 
 synthesis and at the same time a philosophical symbol: Terror anti? 
 quus, ancient terror! 
 
 In the foreground of the picture, cut off by the frame at knee? 
 length, a colossal archaic Cypris rises. The hair of the idol is draped 
 about its head in fluted curls; the large eyes with their distended pupils 
 have a magic fixedness; a ferocious grin plays about the corners of the 
 lips. The goddess carries a blue dove in the palm of her hand. Power? 
 fully modeled, she turns her back to the picture, to the fury of the 
 elements, to the panic distress of men. Impassive, implacable she turns 
 away from this world which is tumbling. Behind the statue the eye 
 
 108 
 
1 
 
 A BLIND ALLEY IN FIESOLE. DRAWING 
 
 beholds a landscape, an archipelago seen from a high elevation, and 
 displayed like a map in relief; cliffs submerged by the rising waves; 
 diminutive humanity seeking refuge under the porticos of the temples 
 and attempting to escape the inevitable; an enormous stroke of lighting 
 rending the air. It is the twilight of the gods, the last judgment of 
 the Greek world, the end of Atlantis. 
 
 With its mysterious mixture of congealed grandeur and mad anguish 
 the panel, when its was exhibited (if I am not mistaken) with the 
 Association of Russian Artists, created something of a sensation. People 
 flocked to the lectures of Viatcheslav Ivanov, the poet?philosopher and 
 author of a treaty on Dionysios and the religion of the gods, who 
 explained this Greek Apocalypse. 
 
 As for Bakst, this work of his constituted a striking but isolated 
 episode in his life as an artist. Man of the theater that he was, his aim 
 was that of utilizing and transforming space in accordance with his 
 vision; here he transformed a surface, in the sense of material and 
 philosophic depth. 
 
 109 
 
\ 
 
 \ 
 
 THE SPIRAL ROAD 
 
 Into this period of researches and visions in Greece falls many an 
 episode that is entirely different but no less significant. Since 1903 
 Bakst had been using the ballet of the “Dolls’ Fairy” on the imperial 
 stage. It furnished the prototype of those romantic productions, of 
 those entertainments for children which are colorless reflections of 
 Hoffmann’s Coppelius or of Andersen’s tales and in which one sees 
 toys awakened to an artificial and mechanical life by a magic wand— 
 entertainments, furthermore, which have become vapid by their being 
 produced on innumerable German stages. Also, he rendered homage 
 thereby to that “old Petrograd” that was dear to the members of “Mir 
 Iskousstva”. 
 
 The prologue, which represents the busy coming and going in a 
 doll shop in the capital city of 1830, is acted by a big crowd of people— 
 shop*attendants, customers of every sort, small merchants and grand 
 ladies, lackeys and grenadiers, mailmen and policemen produced 
 on the stage as the naive action unfolds. All these masques and 
 costumes are absolutely authentic, but they seem fragile and delicate 
 like a dream. The fact is that the documents from which the 
 dossier of the decorator was constructed were anything but common* 
 place. Bakst did not seek his information from the more direct sources 
 supplied by the engravings of that time: he went to the show cases of 
 porcelain ware. 
 
 Too little are the charming products of Russian porcelain makers— 
 the Gardners and the Popovs—known. To be sure, they often merely 
 misrepresent, in their style, the models from Saxony or Sevres, but they 
 do it with a naive flash of pure color that appeals to rustic artisans. 
 But side by side with such imitations these obscure Russian artists 
 modeled an entire little world of their own in tender clay—cossacks in 
 uniform, drunken serfs, nude women, coiffed“en cabriolet” and burying 
 their chilly hands in fur muffs. Whatever tastefully conventional there 
 was in these figures, Bakst transposed into the language of the theater. 
 Ever since that time this form of ballad (or “boutade”, as it was called 
 
 110 
 
XXIX 
 
 SUBMARINE MONSTERS (“SADKO” OPERA) (GOUACHE) 
 

 
 R A L ROAD 
 
 c falls many an 
 ant. Since 1903 
 on the imperial 
 productions, of 
 ss reflections of 
 which one sees 
 a magic wand— 
 i by their being 
 odered homage 
 - hers of “Mir 
 
 
 
 and going in a 
 wd of people— 
 nts and grand 
 produced 
 ues and 
 icate 
 c the 
 ion? 
 •urces 
 )■ /. cases of 
 
 
 < ain makers— 
 often merely 
 . Sa.\ e vres, but they 
 
 appe rustic artisans, 
 
 c ob Russian artists 
 
 
 
 :< v rendt —cossacks in 
 
 
 
 cabi and burying 
 
 
 
 folly C' -tional there 
 
 
 
 '•■guagc i ’he theater 
 
 
 . 
 
 ' de”, as it was called 
 
 
 XIXX 
 
 (3HOAUOO) .(AM330 "OXCIA8“) 8M3T8KOM 3WIMAMHU8 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
XXX 
 
 STAGE DECORATIONS FOR THE BALLET “WOMEN OF GOOD HUMOUR 
 
 (SECOND VERSION). GOUACHE 
 
V 
 

 
 ♦ 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 
 XXXI 
 
 A BACCHANALIAN DANCE (JOSEPH) BY R. STRAUSS 
 
 
XXXII 
 
 Mr. NIJINSKY AS “BLUE GOD”. (GOUACHE) 
 
 
IN UPPER SAVOY. DRAWING 
 
 in the time of Cardinal Mazarin), the dancing for which had been 
 designed by Serge Legat, a splendidly endowed young man who 
 committed suicide in a fit of passion and despair over a love affair, 
 has maintained its place on the program. Examples of it are the 
 “Carnival”, “Phantom of the Rose” and “Secret of Suzanne”, that 
 delightful little^work in which one already sees Napoleon evolving 
 from Bonaparte. 
 
 But Bakst had by no means given up his painter’s easel for his 
 theatrical sketches. Numerous portraits of his bear out this fact, such 
 as that of the philosopher and lay theologian Vassili Rosanov, of his 
 friend Benois, of Levitan the remote emulator of Corot who discovered 
 the intimate and poignant beauty of the humble Russian landscape, of 
 Diaghileff and his old nurse. Painted with keen observation, with 
 facility of touch and in vivid colors that spread over broad surfaces, 
 these portraits coming from the school of Serov showed nothing of 
 
that painful affectation, of thatanguish of definitive, absolute expression 
 with which the Moscow master often endowed his canvases to the 
 point of tiresomeness. In the case of Bakst there is nothing of the exact 
 analyst who dissects and torments the soul of his model. With our 
 artist everything seems to be improvisation, happy inspiration; it is a 
 style for which the fine term “prime^sautier” (ready^wit), once coined by 
 Montaigne, is exactly appropriate. 
 
 His growing familiarity, however, with Greek art, which is in a high 
 degree plastic and linear, turned him in the direction of more concern 
 trated and more simplified processes. The painting of vases in the 
 merest outlines and on flat surfaces neatly silhouetted, imperceptibly 
 drew him into the path followed by Ingres. He therefore gave up his 
 paint brushes in favor of the lead pencil and the colored crayon. In his 
 portraits thus designed it is the line which circumscribes the person, 
 which sets it out in space, which expresses its character and suggests its 
 size. Thus the Russian painter is already en route towards that strictly 
 linear transposition of a body of three dimensions without the aid of the 
 model, or of any standard of values, or of any material record; a style 
 which some day Pablo Picasso employed as master and Modigliani as 
 spiritual dreamer. 
 
 But even all this could not satisfy that fever for activity, that fecund 
 restlessness which at all times determined the tremendous productivity 
 of Bakst. It was necessary, people were agreed, to offer, in opposition 
 to the Academy of Fine Arts, managed by pedantic dilettants who were 
 embittered by the triumph of the new art, a form of instruction at once 
 free and sane. The haughty air of the Academy’s official staff was not 
 justified either because of any venerable tradition nor because of the 
 most elementary savoir fa ire. The “wanderers”, having dislodged 
 from the Academy the pedants whom Bakst knew, placed themselves 
 in their seats. Their aesthetic carelessness was complete, their ignorance 
 of Western art absolute and provoking. At the same time young 
 artists who rebelled at this teaching were reduced to the necessity 
 of acquiring the rudiments of painting by themselves. 
 
 Affairs were in such a condition that they absolutely needed to be 
 remedied. Bakst therefore associated himself with Mstislas Doboujinsky, 
 
 120 
 
■ i'c Aiiv 
 
 A HUNTRESS IN 1930 
 
 a remarkable offspring of“Mir Iskousstva”, who excelled in the designing 
 of the ornament and of the vignette, and who later worked with cons 
 siderable success in the theater, in order to start a free school. I recall 
 having been able, in connection with an exposition organized by the 
 review “Apollo”, to estimate the results achieved during the first year of 
 the school’s work. One series of studies symbolized a nude man on a 
 
 121 
 
background of red material. There was none of that “academic” way 
 of placing things in a vacuum or in a neutral atmosphere, nor of 
 sketches colored amid gray shadows. The bright red of the background 
 played upon the subject in green lights; the rhythm of the colored sur? 
 faces superimposed itself upon the anatomic harmony of the body. All 
 these attempts were strictly anonymous as far as the public was con? 
 cerned; it was not the personal pride of the students that was to be 
 flattered; it was merely a question of establishing the validity of the 
 method. That did not hinder the fact, however, that some of those 
 young unknown painters today enjoy a reputation that borders upon 
 renown. 
 
 We have now reached the year 1908. Bakst seems to have 
 condensed his effort. He has summoned back the ancient legendary 
 tale and has restored it to the theater. This myth he has also pro? 
 jected upon a famous canvas. In his portraits his incisive line closely 
 encompasses material and internal realities. In his romantic dreams 
 he has been able to live again through what Stephane Mallarme 
 has called «la grace des choses fanees». Later he makes a division 
 of his artistic property among his enthusiastic students. How much 
 there is in this to fill a beautiful life! One might think that the circle 
 of such men as Bakst is completed in one harmonious curve. But 
 it is nothing of the sort. 
 
 Bakst is one of those men whose road is laid out in spiral form. 
 What seems like a stop, is in fact nothing but a turn of the road. And 
 at each turn the circle widens. At Petrograd his task is completed. There 
 is nothing left there except to follow. But there remains Paris and the 
 universe. 
 
 In reality, I am at the end of my task, which is that of acquainting 
 the reader with a Bakst who has not yet been written up, of speaking 
 of his formative period and of the intimate and hidden sources of his 
 inspiration. Once my hero had entered upon public life, I ought already 
 to have left the domain of his private existence. It is with regret that I 
 take leave of the good little fellow who goes into ecstasy over his grand? 
 father’s canary birds; of the uncompromising youth wo defies his igno? 
 rant masters; of the young man who risks his future—and what a 
 
 122 
 
THE RED SULTANA 
 
; : %d or ; ? jn.iii'n/!! : e of that “academic” way 
 
 atmosphere, nor of 
 t red of the background 
 
 Uvrr ; +ne colored sur? 
 
 ! rhe body. All 
 ■ he was con? 
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 iidity of the 
 Tie of those 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 borders upon 
 
 -tfCKT T&i 
 
 It- 0* ems to have 
 
 ^ Y’j# •> 
 
 ent legendary 
 has also pro* 
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 v\ i ^ ox dreams 
 
 Mallarme 
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XXXIV 
 
 THE PINK SULTANA. (GOUACHE) 
 

 ► 
 
XXXV 
 
 THE YELLOW SULTANA. (GOUACHE) 
 

 
 
 
 
 

 
 XXXVI 
 
 STAGE DECORATIONS FOR THE “BLUE GOD” 
 
1VXXX 
 
 "HOD 3038" 3HT 303 2HOITA3O03CI 3DAT8 
 
future!—for the sake of the exquisite form of a smile and the profile of 
 a tapering hand; and finally of the artist whom I see in my country 
 becoming identified with all big projects, either undertaking them or 
 excelling in them. 
 
 But this study would perforce be incomplete if I did not decide to 
 accompany our friend on his exodus toward the West and to put to* 
 gether the main facts of his recent activity which sends its rays over 
 the entire world—an activity of which, for the most part, I am a witness. 
 
 Therefore, en route to Paris! 
 
 131 
 

 A SHOW IN AN ARMCHAIR 
 
 In 1906 or thereabouts, following immediately upon the first Russian 
 revolution that failed so grievously, the group of young artists and 
 poets marched side by side through the breach that had been opened 
 in the citadel of public opinion. The “modernists” of “Mir Iskousstva”, 
 who had been jeered by the common herd, came into their own. But 
 a certain uneasiness troubles this rising power; it feels itself incomplete, 
 limited in a fatal manner. It is not equipped to reestablish great paint* 
 ing; it can only count upon illustrators, decorators, and poets of the 
 
(X TF ® A A 0 W 
 
 DRAWING OF COLOUR FOR THE REVIEW •'APOLLO" 
 
 past. And, as is the case with authority everywhere when it feels itself 
 threatened, so too this group, not being able to assert itself, was anxious 
 to spread out. 
 
 133 
 
Accordingly, they looked for new fields to conquer. Once again 
 we see Diaghileff leading the attack. He releases that great exodus 
 of Russians to the West—the brilliant and victorious march on 
 Paris. The offensive starts with a Russian exhibition at the “Salon 
 d’Automne”, an exhibition which under the guise of being retro? 
 spective is in reality a fighting manoeuvre. A collection of icons, of 
 numerous portraits of the eighteenth century symbolizes the return to 
 a tradition which the young men of the “Monde Artiste” proclaim to 
 be their own. Similarly the arbitrary gaps indicate their complete 
 break with the unnatural art of the “wanderers”, the latter having been 
 nearly entirely eliminated. 
 
 Bakst took part in this enterprise not alone as a painter. He de? 
 corated the hall of the eighteenth century, which had been transformed 
 into a grove, with a trellis surmounted by vases. This conception of 
 an exposition hall forming an organic whole, making a coherent 
 ensemble, and therefore having a distinctive atmosphere —is not 
 this, again, a gift belonging to the Russians? 
 
 This first attack could do no more than break through the first lines 
 of the enemy. Painting, it was evident, was not sufficient as an object 
 for combat. So Diaghileff thought of music. His historical concerts of 
 Russian music caused the greatest excitement; Parisian opinion was 
 deeply stirred. Bakst’s role in this first and formidable success was quite 
 accidental. He drew some portraits for the program, notably that of 
 Balakirev, the composer of “Thamar”: bold lines and a synthetic 
 contour set out the head of the aged oriental sorcerer as though it 
 were sculptured. 
 
 It now became a question of following up this first victory. Diaghileff 
 turns once again to the theater, counting for his success upon its numbers 
 and upon the wide range that it afforded. All circumstances are favorable 
 for his project. His old group of co?workers surrounds him, abler 
 through strife and experience. A galaxy of stars of the dance—Pavlova, 
 Karsavina —await but the signal to make them gleam forth on the 
 western sky. At the same time a marvellous dancer is discovered— 
 Nijinsky. And, as a will is needed to give life to all these latent forces, 
 behold, Michael Fokine presents himself, —Fokine, a young master of 
 
 134 
 
XXXVII 
 
 STAGE DECORATIONS FOR ACT 3rd OF VERH^EREN’S “HELEN OF SPARTA”. (GOUACHE) 
 
they looked for new fields to conquer. Once again 
 the k. He releases that great exodus 
 the brilliant and victorious march on 
 . n exhibition at the “Salon 
 • • n a if'.e gUi : being retro 
 i vre. A collection of icons, of 
 rurv symbol 1 es the return to 
 Monde Artiste” proclaim to 
 - aps indicate their complete 
 derers”, the latter having been 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 liter. He de* 
 n transformed 
 Yhi conception of 
 ^king a coherent 
 osphere — is not 
 
 ugh the first lines 
 icient as an object 
 wvHKerrsof 
 .t n opinion was 
 *. s was quite 
 • oLnam, notably that of 
 and a synthetic 
 i oriental sorcerer as though it 
 
 «a fig up this first victory. Diaghileff 
 * nng for his su c cess up< ; ts numbers 
 1 * i J A1! circumstances re favorable 
 > workers surrounds him, abler 
 . • ’' > v of stars of the dance —Pavlova, 
 hem gleam forth on the 
 ; dancer is discovered— 
 
 . ro all th latent forces, 
 5 .kmt a \ ng master of 
 
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XXXVIII 
 
 STAGE DECORATIONS FOR THE “CLEOPATRA” BALLET. (GOUACHE) 
 
2XVGE DEC OK V J„ IO ]A ?. EOK J.HE ..CFEOEY.LKV.. BVITEJ/ (GOUVCHE) 
 
 XXXAII1 
 
 

 
 
 XXXIX 
 
 COSTUME FOR TCHEREPNINE’S “ADORATION" 
 
XL 
 
 COSTUME FOR STRAVINSKY’S “BIRD OF FIRE 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
A WANDERING MUSICIAN'S COSTUME. (“WOMEN OF GOOD HUMOUR") 
 
 the ballet, a rebel at the hundred*year-old tradition in vogue in the 
 imperial theaters, who is ready to offer himself body and soul to the 
 cause of the painters who take possession of the theater as masters. Into 
 this renunciation of tradition he puts all the fervor of a neophyte and an 
 infinite measure of talent. What was there that one could not dare to 
 * undertake with such a band of the elite? 
 
 143 
 
What followed is well known: fifteen times the celebrated “Russian 
 Seasons” have already borne in upon Paris like shining waves breaking 
 into foam. 
 
 It is not for me here to trace in detail the fate of the “Seasons”,—the 
 transformations which they underwent, their successes as well as their 
 
 FACING THE MONT.BLANC. DRAWING 
 
 failures, the latter oftentimes being more creditable than the successes. 
 Whatever else may have been their mission, certain it is that they 
 brought two men forth into fame and glory: Stravinsky the musician 
 and Leon Bakst the painter. 
 
 “Cleopatra” had caused extraordinary surprise. “Sheherazade” in 1910 
 surpassed everything. In recalling the annals of the modern theater, it 
 
 144 
 
is scarcely possible to recollect any production that was given a similar 
 reception. 
 
 I had intended to sum up the successive stages of the fifteen years 
 of productive work accomplished. Yet here I find myself, as I face 
 my sources and my documents, overwhelmed with the almost magic 
 
 A VERANDAH. DRAWING 
 
 abundance of the material, the description, yes, the mere ordered enu* 
 meration of which would fill many a volume. These sources consist in 
 part of numerous productions which maintain their place in the theater 
 from season to season without losing their popularity because of the 
 ever present memories of others. But on the other hand we also have the 
 “dossiers” of these productions, — the sketches and models of the 
 
 145 
 
decorations and costumes. These sketches are without a doubt the most 
 authentic references. But besides having value as documents they possess 
 an intrinsic value as works of art. These water-colors or emphasized 
 sketches are more than mere guidelines for the scissors of the costume 
 maker or the brush of the stage decorator. These statuettes of odalisques, 
 of girls of the street, of a marquis each have an existence of their own, 
 each possesses an individual rhythm. The artist imparts movement to 
 them—the whole dynamic rhythm of the future ballet pre-exists there 
 potentially. Jotted down upon a white sheet of Waltmann they energize 
 and give life to this surface. More than that: they suggest the character 
 of the particular role. 
 
 Think of the sensual passion of the Oriental dancers in pink or green * 
 or of the fragrance of the rustic idyll that breathes from the exquisite 
 pages drawn for Daphnel Think of the Gothic and mournful sensuality 
 of Sebastian! Indeed, what an inspiring “show in an armchair” it is to 
 turn over these pages, which are a microcosm of a world come into 
 reality upon the stage! 
 
 To this show I would invite the reader; as for myself, I would but 
 turn the pages. 
 
 v n* 
 
 * 
 
 “Sheherazade” was Bakst's real debut at Paris. "Cleopatra" had been 
 a revival. It represented an attempt to utilize the small ballet inspired 
 by a story of Theophile Gauthier’s and supported by a mediocre score 
 composed by Arensky. On top of this score were grafted fragments 
 from Rimsky-Korsakov, Moussorgsky, Glinka, and Glazounoff in 
 order to transform it into an historic whole. Bakst undertook the 
 thankless task of re-creating the unity of this heterogeneous collection. 
 He created a monumental and sinister back-ground, saturating the 
 Egyptian granite with color. He wrought into an harmonious whole 
 the motley crowd of brown slaves with white loin-cloths, the Greek 
 young men raising the panther skin of Dionysos, the captive Jewesses 
 with somber hooded cloaks punctuated by the white in which their 
 single and troubled figure is draped. 
 
 146 
 
r; w 4 : etches are without a doubt the most 
 
 But besides I g value asdocuments they possess 
 
 ■ks of art. These water-colors or. emphasized 
 ; v-< Jin ‘ < .irs of the costume 
 
 *! v; -jettes of odalisques, 
 
 , 1 vence of their own, 
 
 smarts movement to 
 ballet pre-exists there 
 imann they energize 
 . biggest the character 
 
 the particular role. 
 
 s in pink or green 
 the exquisite 
 >ful sensuality 
 chair” it is to 
 ■ d come into 
 
 
 part* 
 
 . 
 
 . 
 
 of Sebastian! Indeed 
 
 reality upon the stage 
 To this < how ’ 
 turn the pages. 
 
 • • • 
 
 * revival, .t -e; 
 
 a story of tee ph 
 
 I would but 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 .patra" had been 
 ! ballet inspired 
 vi by a mediocre score 
 . re grafted fragments 
 ■ ■a, and Glazounoff in 
 Bakst undertook the 
 rogeneous collection. 
 Kind, saturating the 
 harmonious whole 
 * 1 cloths, the Greek 
 ‘ captive Jewesses 
 ; in which their 
 
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 THE “BUTTERFLIES" BALLET. A VALET IN 1850 
 
 
 
 
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 XL1V 
 
 THE “BOUTIQUE FANTASQUE” BALLET. A DOLL 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
S1LENUS. "NARCISSUS BALLET” 
 
 The action which begins as an idyll and which is lulled by the 
 soft music of the violin is suddenly upset by the strident notes of 
 the flutes. Preceded by musicians who carry instruments of antique 
 and unusual design and by solemn guards, a number of slaves carry 
 a long closed box upon a litter. One side of the palanquin slides down 
 and a mummy is revealed, tall and motionless, whom the slaves 
 stand upright upon its feet encased in cothurns of sculpted wood. The 
 slaves, running around her, free her of the bandages in which she is 
 wrapped, and when the last fetters have thus dropped, the queen steps 
 down from the cothurns, unnaturally tall, her hair colored with blue 
 powder. She walks toward the regal couch and in doing so, a nude 
 
 155 
 
limb is revealed, longer and bolder than those of the fairies in the 
 pictures of English pre^Raphaelite artists. This female being, this queen 
 is Ida Rubinstein. 
 
 It is not the first time in the life of Bakst that we see this haughty 
 and pallid profile of the implacable empress appear. Several years 
 previously Bakst had adapted the stage setting of Sophocles’ “Antigone“ 
 
 
 A BROOK IN THE MOUNTAINS. DRAWING 
 
 to this young debutante, 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 
 
 156 
 
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 exas? 
 peration. 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 
 
 157 
 
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’ apart* 
 ment 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 Barres gave to a famous book: “Concerning Blood, Sensuality, 
 and Death.” 
 
 “Sheherazade” remains as the model work in Bakst’s oriental sphere 
 of endeavor; neither he himself nor his competitors surpassed it. But 
 
 158 
 

 XLV 
 
 A PAGE. (“ALADIN” BALLET) 
 
eaor.I* i thick*soied shoes suggested ;: ikst bv the celebrated 
 ,c designer Cesare Vccelbc. <>J Titian, will forever 
 
 story of lust. Thus 
 • 1 of the oriental mirage 
 
 remarks! Why was it that 
 ,heh * It id retained its place? Why was it 
 
 o ; ui,minished, even aftc it had called 
 
 tending ill he way from 
 Is? 
 
 a t , v* hith adapts the 
 ubtle and decorative 
 went colorist, is the 
 ization of a great 
 :s of a large green 
 e the ladies’ apart* 
 ge, pink and green 
 Sultana Zobeide, a 
 Thus the costumes 
 shades and gradations 
 or they contrast with the 
 of complementary colors. 
 It is a living scenery with interchangeable 
 
 score . ■ . . b 
 
 affirm 
 principle 
 tent er 
 
 optic, unity? Do I mean bv it that unity 
 .i, i not! This ardent and cruel magnificence 
 •vc isuality which emanates from the setting 
 >. .ire very excess of passionate ecstacy 
 e spilling of blood. This harmonious 
 ' ! i.vwsm seems to recall the title which 
 m «■ nook: “Concerning Blood, Sensuality, 
 
 fbe mode! work in Bakst s oriental sphere 
 s r» pen? surpassed it. But 
 
 VJX 
 
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 XLVI1I 
 
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POPULAR BATHING AT LIDO 
 
 round about this luminous center other visions of hashish radiate forth: 
 “Thamar”—a Cleopatra in Georgian style, a symphony in blue major; 
 “The Blue God”, a Hindu fairy-tale; “Peri”, more recently, “Alladin”, 
 and, only the other day, “The Adoration.” Astonishment takes hold of 
 one as one tells the large pearls oh this necklace that is worthy of the 
 funeral-pile of Sardanapalus. Turn over the pages of the ballets that 
 I have cited and look for the sketches; if you are in possession of 
 the magic word of Ali-Baba, force open the sesame of the Museum 
 of Decorative Arts in which are jealously guarded the most beautiful 
 of these sketches; and you will find how justified was the saying of 
 the late Josefin Peladan, “Bakst, the Delacroix of the Costume.” 
 
 Consider the wisely arranged orgy of “Sheherazade”, (for Bakst has 
 this supreme gift that great masters possess, of being concerned about 
 
 167 
 
the smallest button on a legging at the same time that they are getting 
 a whole army to march) and in this whole eruption of vigorous colors 
 you will not observe the slightest suggestion of white. There is, never* 
 theless, in the work of Bakst a whole corner, enveloped in sunshine, 
 in which the white—shining and serene, virginal and fresh—dominates 
 resolutely. 
 
 The sensual within him is duplicated by the romantic. We saw this 
 come to the fore for the first time in the “Fairy of the Dolls”; Schumann’s 
 “Cameval” revealed the “white Bakst” to the Parisians. They never 
 grew tired of these adorable puppets, sentimental and crafty, who glide 
 over the floor to the musical text of Schumann like the dolls on the 
 cover of a music box. Harlequin and Pierrot, Chiarina or Colombine— 
 they are not merely endless masks costumed in the styles of 1830, with 
 furbelows and coiffures in ringlets; they are the incarnations of that 
 playful and exquisite Viennese spirit; they are the descendants of Mozart 
 and of Haydn. And the cut of their hazy cambrics, their whole bearing 
 is in “Biedermayer” style—that quaint and charming style of bourgeois 
 romanticism in the Germany of old. In order not to crush these fragile 
 and delicate beings with the four walls of reality, as they flitted like 
 butterflies about the stage. Bakst removed all stationary decoration: a 
 background of drapery, a couch set off against this background—that 
 was all. Nothing encumbers the view nor impedes the imagination of 
 the spectator as he is enticed by the graceful or ironical episodes of the 
 play to picture to himself a ball room or a boudoir or a park. 
 
 If the costumes of “Papillons”, which was connected with Schumann’s 
 “Carneval” by Fokine, who discovered a certain aroma and dynamic 
 rhythm common to both, are a continuation, so to speak, of the 
 style of costumes employed in the first ballet, the “Spectre of the 
 Rose”, on the other hand, carries us almost without our noticing it 
 over to the land of France. The music is by Weber, the German com* 
 poser who captivated Gerard de Nerval, but it receives its orchestral 
 form at the hands of Hector Berlioz, and the text is supplied by two 
 lines from Theophile Gauthier, who had already inspired “Cleopatra” 
 and the “Pavilion d’Armide” by Benois. This young girl in white 
 flounced gown belongs more to Achille Deveria and Eugene Lamy 
 
 168 
 
WOMEN OF GOOD HUMOUR” BALLET. THE VALET NICCOLO. (GOUACHE) 
 
 than to Franz Krueger or Kriehuber; the ball from which she returns 
 might be the ball at Sceaux of Honore de Balzac; this night which filters 
 
 169 
 
through the glass door is a night in France; this dying rose which is 
 impersonated by the divine ephebe Nijinsky is a rose of France. The 
 young girls of times gone by, about whom the gentle Francis Jamities 
 dreamed, would not be displeased at this airy pavilion with white 
 wainscoting and white furniture in which, on the wall paper of blue 
 cobalt, white bouquets are scattered about. Into this virginal quietude 
 of soothing colors, detaching itself from the sombre verdure of the 
 background, the human flower projects itself—a flower of purplish 
 pink, feverish and consumed with amorous languor. The setting for a 
 comic opera, “The Secret of Suzanne”, develops the same theme more 
 in detail. 
 
 This brief catalogue of Bakst’s romantic cycle would, however, be 
 incomplete were I not to mention the costumes of the “Boutique 
 fantasque” which is in fact chiefly a sketch, but more centered, more 
 pointed, more compressed than the “Fairy of the Dolls” which marks 
 the beginning of Bakst’s career. This was a memorable enterprise, for 
 it was marked by the collaboration of two great artists: the dolls 
 by Bakst perform evolutions against a background painted by 
 Andre Derain. 
 
 We have already seen how Bakst discovered the tragic and magnifh 
 cently 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. 
 
 170 
 
XLIX 
 
 GALISSON, PRINCE CHARMANT’S TUTOR LOUIS XIV BALLET 
 (PAVLOVA TOURNEE). GOUACHE 
 

 
 
 
 
 the m a. i mg n France; this dying rose which is 
 
 , v v x )uskv is a rose of France. The 
 
 roe gentle Francis Jamifles 
 pavilion with white 
 wall paper of blue 
 - 'in a! quietude 
 
 * r re verdure of the 
 ewer of purplish 
 r The setting for a 
 same theme more 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 . - d however, be 
 the “Boutique 
 centered, more 
 . s which marks 
 e enterprise, for 
 ists: the dolls 
 d painted by 
 
 igic and magnifb 
 >ean times which 
 > e rude grandeur 
 t of Antigone 
 igain he brings 
 imitive hysteria 
 able forces—the 
 • hich leashes the 
 > m the midst ot 
 wi a” by Verhaeren 
 . ■ Tern poet incarnates 
 rs of a legend which. 
 f ' oar. The return of 
 symbol of restored 
 ned a passionate 
 o •! »ic guise. 
 
 
 
 
 
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 THE BIRD OF FIRE (ANOTHER VERSION). GOUACHE 
 


 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
LI 
 
 THE “BOUTIQUE FANTASQUE” BALLET. THE ENGLISHWOMAN 
 

 

 
 LII 
 
 THE “BOUTIQUE FANTASQUE” BALLET. THE ENGLISHMAN 
 
 - 
 
STAGE DECORATION FOR •'LACHETE" 
 
 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 
 
 179 
 
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 Andre Chenier’s Aoristys. Thus the short novel by Longus 
 
 PROJECT OF A CRYSTAL CUP 
 
 which had already inspired the painter Pierre Ronnard 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 
 
 180 
 
GOGOL'S "NOSE ". AN ILLUSTRATION 
 
 opening of the rocks one sees a meadow upon which a tropical heat 
 lies heavy. The natural bridge over which we presently see the nymph 
 Echo pass lamenting and garbed in a mourning robe of violet, forms 
 the second tier, raised above the scenery of the foreground in much the 
 same manner as one sees it raised in the stage settings of Torelli in the 
 seventeenth century, or as one also sees it in the “Parnassus” of Andrea 
 
 181 
 
Mantegna at the Louvre. And it is the vivacious and manycolored 
 figures of the Greece on the terracottas that monopolize the scene, 
 clad in fresh and simple colors—blue and green that match with the 
 color of the sky and the forest, lemomyellow and brickced that form 
 patches on the short white tunics. 
 
 Bakst reserved, however, for the “Afternoon of a Faun”, the pastoral 
 poem for which Debussy received his inspiration from a poem by 
 Stephane Mallarme, his attempt at solving the paradox of setting forth 
 upon the stage the authentic rhythm of the figures that keep turning 
 forever on the sides of Greek vases. The background is an old forest; 
 a convenient hill, on which the Faun reclines, narrows the platform 
 and leaves only a small proscenium free. On this proscenium the 
 dancers project themselves in profile, dressed in long tunics with frilled 
 folds like the fluting of an Ionic column. Moving on a single elevation 
 they convey the idea of having but two dimensions like the arabesques 
 that decorate a surface. 
 
 Bakst does not, however, allow himself to be imprisoned in this 
 threefold domain. His imagination is forever travelling along thousands 
 of crossing paths. And quite willingly he stops at the great crossroads 
 of civilization, where hostile worlds confront each other and establish 
 themselves. 
 
 Of such a character is the exuberant “Martyrdom of St. Sebastian”, 
 where the Rome of Heliogabalus, closed about by Asia, conveys to 
 us both the naiveness of the mediaeval mysteries and the imagina? 
 tion of the Quatrocentrist painters. Again, there is “Pisanelle”, 
 another French work from the pen of Gabriele d’Annunzio. It is a 
 poem of the Mediterranean, in which the Latin West, feudal and mystic, 
 clashes with the rigid and solemn Byzantium, while the imperishable 
 perfume of Hellas rises from the land of Cyprus from which Aphrodite 
 sprang forth. 
 
 It would take volumes to enumerate all the pictorial elements 
 in these productions, and even then one could not construct a 
 component whole. 
 
 But the large architectural outlines, the clusters of small black and 
 gold columns which form the portal for the “Jeu delaSainte Courtisane”, 
 
 182 
 
LIII 
 
 STAGE DECORATIONS FOR THAMAR" 
 

 
 ' '“- l0US an< ^ manycolored 
 
 . • monopolize the scene, 
 
 and bricksred that form 
 
 rte; noon of a Faun”, the pastoral 
 aspiration from a poem by 
 r the paradox of setting forth 
 the figures that keep turning 
 kground is an old forest; 
 narrows the platform 
 this proscenium the 
 g tunics with frilled 
 >n a single elevation 
 ike the arabesques 
 
 dUi 
 
 mprisoned in this 
 g along thousands 
 the great crossroads 
 other and establish 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 V lorn of St. Sebastian”, 
 >ut bv Asia, conveys to 
 :s and the imagina* 
 i, s Agam, there is “Pisanelle”, 
 cn of Gabriele d’Annunzio. It is a 
 . . i> , h the Latin West, feudal and mystic, 
 , iri P»\zantium white the imperishable 
 , 1 < • : sCyprus from which Aphrodite 
 
 numerate all the pictorial elements 
 iu*n then one could not construct a 
 
 
 
 
 
 )• -i tv ■... outlines, the clusters of small black and 
 tlK' portal for the“Jeu delaSainteCourtisane , 
 
 iiu 
 
 "HA//.AHT H(H gHOITAaODHQ ill)AT?. 
 

LV 
 
 THE “BOUTIQUE FANTASQUE” BALLET “LA POUPfiE AUX DENTELLES 
 
 



 
 
 ivj 
 
 (3HOAUOO) .("3I8IATMAT' A) 3MUT8Q3 H33CJOM 
 

 
 
 
 
 BAKST 
 
 I Oil. 
 
A WOMAN LYING. TOUCHED UP DRAWING 
 
 the enormous twisted columns in the “Conseil des faux Dieux”, over 
 whom Sebastian triumphs—these impress themselves indelibly upon 
 one’s memory. 
 
 This architectural conception, the best possible setting for the actor 
 and for the “round relief” which the human body forms, especially 
 determined the grandiose and graceful setting for the ballet “The 
 Sleeping Beauty”,—this French masterpiece born of the soil of Russia 
 which is fertile in miracles. In this work, the production of which was 
 reserved for London, Bakst returns squarely to the surprises afforded 
 by extraordinary short-cuts, to the harmony of masses that are organized, 
 to the magic play of stage elevations raised in tiers, to the severe 
 splendors of linear perspective. 
 
 We see him, after a century of realistic still-life deception, taking up 
 again the work of the great decorators and architects, of the geometricians 
 
PORTRAIT OF THE POET JEAN COCTEAU 
 
 of theatrical vision, whether their names be Gonzaga or Bibiena, whether 
 Sanquirico or Ciceri. 
 
 This masterpiece, concerning which the author of these lines has 
 written a book, is a free “capriccio” of the Great Age when Tiepolo 
 
 192 
 
{ 
 
 PORTRAIT OF THE DANCER M. 
 
 brushed elbows with Mansart. “Artemis troublee”, a ballet produced 
 at the Opera during the spring of the present year, is a graceful 
 mythological play springing from a similar set of ideas. 
 
 I am far from having exhausted the plentiful material of these 
 innumerable works, for during almost a quarter of a century Bakst has 
 
 193 
 

 PORTRAIT OF THE PAINTER GOLOVINE 
 
 initiated numerous productive ideas. He discovers new veins but is 
 ever ready, after a few blows with the pick^axe, to abandon them to 
 those who follow him. 
 
 Is it not he who dares introduce the modern sportive costume to 
 the lyric stage as a decorative and expressive element? Remember 
 the “Jeux” which he undertook with Nijinsky! And was not this vogue 
 for things Venetian of the eighteenth century, for the Venice of Pietro 
 
 194 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 L VII 
 
 PORTRAIT OF IDA RUBINSTEIN 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
v jew veins but o 
 
 ever read atu t abandon them t« 
 
 those who follow hitr 
 
 rtive costume t< 
 
 c ^ rrsent? Rememh. 
 
 u hi: •* • i •• ' y v as not this vogut 
 
 . Venice of Pietro 
 
 
 IIVJ 
 
 KI3T2Vna r J51 AQI HO TlA>lT>lO‘l 
 
Lvm 
 
 A CALL (POSTER FOR AN EXHIBITION AT VIENNA). (GOUACHE) 
 

 V 
 

 
 
 
 
THE COMPOSER BALAKIREV. DRAWING. 
 (THE TRETIAKOFF MUSEUM. MOSCOW) 
 
 Longhi and of Guardi, this vogue for beauty and for the fan called forth 
 by his exhilarating “Women of Good Humour” in which, with the 
 greatest unconcern, Baskt exchanges the toe?slippers of the pasha with 
 the red shoedieels of Giacomo Casanova? 
 
 203 
 
PORTRAIT OF THE MARCHESA CASATI 
 TOUCHED UP DRAWING 
 
 And lastly, was not his intervention decisive in bringing about a 
 transformation of feminine costumes? 
 
 These sketches of gowns constitute an epoch in the history of 
 fashion, and they afford an access to painters into this domain from 
 which they have been excluded ever since the days of Gavarni. For 
 
 204 
 
SKETCH 
 
 Bakst is more than an a solitary creator. He is an inspirer whose influence 
 radiates forth over a huge periphery. How numerous are the aspects 
 
 205 
 
SKETCH 
 
 of modern life that bear Bakst’s indelible seal, which is a label of 
 greatness and which confers an air of nobility in which one is never 
 mistaken! 
 
 These are the things of which I am thinking as I turn over with you, 
 my readers, the pages of this book. And as we have finished, we must 
 begin again—this time, however, in silent meditation, which is even 
 more gratifying. 
 
 206 
 

 LX] 
 
 PORTRAIT OF THE POET ANDREI BELY. CRAYON AND PENCIL 
 
modem u(e that hear Bakst's . ’H which is a label of 
 
 ■ iid which confers an ar t\ in which one is never 
 
 L *^ rt things of which I am tin k ; : as I turn over with you, 
 f * few > the PW' » of this book. And as we have finished, we must 
 
 n r! ' time however, in silent meditation, which is even 
 
 ®Of‘ gratifying, 
 
 20t 
 
 IXJ 
 
 JI3M33 CIWA AOYAUD .YJ3H I3HQ/.A T303 3HT 30 TIAflTflOS 
 
LXII 
 
 A PORTRAIT 
 
fiAKf T 
 


 LXIIJ 
 
 PORTRAIT OF THE BOY Z. RED CHALK 
 
 
 
 
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AHHToaoa .TajJAa "huomuh aooo ho mhmow** hht 
 
7 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
EPILOGUE 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
PROJECT FOR EMBROIDERY 
 
 BAKST AND RUSSIA 
 
 We have followed Bakst through each of the fields with which he 
 was familiar, whatever their nature. Each road in this labyrinth of 
 styles brought us back to the native land of the artist. Throughout, 
 the exotic or “Eurasiatic”— to use a word coined by a group of 
 Russian dreamers in exile—dominated. For the common herd Bakst 
 is over and above all the creator of an oriental fairyland. Even his 
 very name, monosyllabic, quickly pronounced, and cutting like the 
 blade of a Turkish simitar, seems to call up a fleeting but intense 
 vision of Asia. 
 
 217 
 
i 
 
 Bakst was bound forever to disconcert the lovers of convenient 
 formulas. You think you have caught up with his jerky and lightning* 
 like course, when, lo! he has already escaped, to the delight of one of 
 the “four winds of the spirit”. There remains in your hand the sixth 
 skin of the serpent which it divests itself of—only to clothe itself 
 again in the seventh. 
 
 Recently, in the spring of 1922, we witnessed a new avatar of 
 the artist. Ten years previously he had left his fatherland for a new 
 fatherland that was more hospitable — for France. Now, under a 
 splendid impulse of piety, of tender homesickness, of filial love he 
 returned of his own accord to his Mother — Russia, bruised, trampled 
 
 \ 
 
 218 
 
mulas. You think vou have caught up with his jerky andilightning* 
 \ ° t c< ur ^ 1 he has already escaped, to the delight of one of 
 
 the four winds of the spirit \ There remains in your hand the sixth 
 skin or the serpent which it sts itself of—only to clothe itself 
 
 Recent* ,■ m rhe p*ing of 1922, we witnessed a new avatar of 
 ' ' ** P rex *v he had left his fatherland for a new 
 
 5 r e hospitable-for France. Now, under a 
 
 r- -Im of y, of tender homesickness, of filial love he 
 ‘ ' • dother-Russia, bruised, trample* 
 
 VXJ 
 
 HHOAUOO .(3KIXM3TOS Y8 HOT3X2) "WAMOW TVIA2A3T A“ 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 


 LX VII 
 
 COSTUME FOR “LE CHANTRE ET LA DEVOTE" 
 


 
 
 
 » 
 
 LXVIII 
 
 COSTUME OF PEASANT WOMAN FOR POTEMKINE’S “VILLAGE” 
 

DRAWING OF COVER FOR THE BOOK "RUSSIAN EX.LIBRIS" 
 
upon, dragged into the mud and blood by infamous villains. When 
 all the world deserted her, he watched by her bedside. 
 
 Chance had it that, at the very moment when Alexander Benois’ 
 masterpiece, “Petroushka” was produced at the Opera, a mimic 
 drama by Bakst was played on the scanty stage of the Femina theater 
 entitled “Lachete”. Between these two surprising plots lies nothing 
 less than a half-century of Russian history—the fall of a throne and 
 of a world. 
 
 The “burlesque scenes” of Benois seemed like the final blossoming- 
 out of ancient Petrograd, like a nostalgic vision of the imperial city, 
 called forth by an ardent lover of an abandoned past. A mob of people, 
 truculent, jeering, deafeningly noisy, with an exuberant movement of 
 cheerfulness, monopolizes the stage; a forceful, manifold, strikingly 
 lively rhythm constitutes, properly speaking, the action. In the rigid 
 and stiff scenery of the fated city, popular fancy has erected its paradise 
 of outlandish hovels, its blue and red “balagani”, in the open air. 
 Personages from the prints at ten kopecks and from the pictures of 
 Epinal come to life again and bestir themselves; comely “nounous” 
 strut about and try to attract; with noisy clatter of boots bearded 
 coachmen hasten the step of their squatting dance. Russian rural life 
 for one last time spends itself in these Slavic saturnalia. Even the 
 dolls which are the protagonists of the grotesque drama try to 
 shake off their mechanical torpor. They would like to become flesh 
 and blood; they have a hungry desire to live; at times, indeed, they 
 really do live. 
 
 The action of “Lachete”, likewise, is staged at St. Petersburg which, 
 however, has become Petrograd—but not in the clear sunshine of a 
 winter’s day; rather within the concrete walls of the “People’s House” 
 which the last of the Czars erected to the glory of the modern capital. 
 Here the wooden horses are moved by powerful dynamos under the 
 searching light of electric lamps. But what has become of the mob in 
 “Petroushka”,—the motley, varied crowd? The doll, the artificial, 
 mechanical, automatic puppet has dispossessed the human being; it 
 gets the better of the disabled actor. There remains enough soul, 
 however, in this changed world to supply the bodies of five human 
 
 228 
 
beings; and what a soul, good God! Nothing in these puppets reminds 
 one of the smiling indifference of “Petroushka”. We are on the eve 
 of terrible happenings, and we feel it with sadness; a dull ennui 
 weighs upon us heavily, like the low cloud before a storm. 
 
 229 
 
Ah! we are now in the Petrograd of 1916! How can we express all 
 the trickiness in the apathetic inertia of these figures that are scarcely 
 articulate, that are uniformly costumed and that skip about or sink 
 down at the will of their wires that direct them? Before this pliability, 
 this evil passivity of shapeless puppets, this cynical swaying motion of 
 impotent figures, this “dance of death” of inertia, the mimicked action 
 vanishes, and living men disappear. The drama of the passion—death 
 which passes, hideous and sneering,—becomes pallid under the gaze 
 without eyes of hostile faces. 
 
 How the inevitable closes about us! Everything in this atmosphere 
 of anguish and of hallucination becomes a latent menace. The day is 
 near at hand—one feels it with one’s whole soul, nervous with fear— 
 when this mass, inert, blind, crushing, will hurl itself upon quivering 
 Russia. 
 
 Happy the blond student in green blouse who finds death as he 
 pursues a dream of love; he will not see it. He will not know hunger 
 or exile or disgrace. Who of us Russians would not envy him? 
 
 Such were the two faces of Russia which were exhibited by two 
 painters who are more than painters,—Benois who has the power of 
 retrospective divination, Bakst who possesses an understanding of 
 modern life and of its tumultuous forces. 
 
 But behold! the curtain which has just fallen on the bristling, rough, 
 malicious scenery of “Lachete”, rises once more to unfold before our 
 eyes a third Russia—a Russia debonair and drunken, ignorant and 
 full of spirit. 
 
 The vaudeville act “Old Moscow" depicts a rich and opulent city 
 of merchants wearing their kaftans, of free carousals, of a jovial 
 savagery. Two frames, reaching to the knees of the actors, form the 
 stage setting. On them is a miniature reproduction of the orphaned 
 capital with its forty times forty cupolas, encircled by the crenelated 
 walls of the Kremlin. And amidst this delightfully exaggerated 
 parody of a stage full of moujik^bourgeois, we see funny human 
 beings, overbubbling with good health, moving about dressed in wide, 
 stiff skirts that are sky-blue or trbcolored; likewise country women 
 weighing a hundred kilos. 
 
 230 
 
The thing that is of importance above everything else in this 
 caricature composed without any masked thought is that aroma of the 
 land which, even in its funniest moments, makes the tears come to the 
 eyes of Moscow emigres. 
 
 Today Bakst is completely absorbed by this forgotten world which 
 rises about him on a background of a distant past. He is consumed 
 with an appetite for Russian memories, emotions and visions. Each 
 day in his studio a population of Russian figures keeps multiplying— 
 models and groups of which not only their costume but their very 
 attitude has something indefinably national about them, something 
 profoundly popular, in short, something authentic. And to what 
 purpose? The artist as yet does not know. Once the actors are placed 
 upon the stage, he says to himself, the play will start spontaneously. 
 And in pursuing his enormous and unceasing labors he lets things take 
 their course without hastening them.— 
 
 We have accompanied Bakst up to his last station. It is time, there? 
 fore, for this sketch to end. The writer takes leave of his readers and 
 descends into the audience in order with his readers to await the rising 
 of the curtain for the next act of the most beautiful of plays: the life of 
 a grand and noble artist. 
 
 231 
 
CONTENTS 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
TEXT 
 
 The Story of Leon Bakst’s Life. Preface .... 13 
 
 The Yellow Drawing Room. 15 
 
 The Ungrateful Age. 18 
 
 The Two Sphinxes. 32 
 
 A Wrong Start . 40 
 
 The Club. 48 
 
 Mir Iskousstva. 56 
 
 The Three Knocks. 77 
 
 The Theban Gate. 89 
 
 Terror Antiquus.107 
 
 The Spiral Road.110 
 
 A Show in an Armchair.132 
 
 Epilogue. Bakst and Russia .217 
 
 235 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
PLATES 
 
 Portrait of Bakst by Modigliani.' . . I 
 
 ‘‘Chastising Cupid”, project of decorative panel .... II 
 D’Annunzio’s ‘‘Martyrdom of St. Sebastian”, 
 
 M me Rubinstein in the 5 th act. Ill 
 
 Judith of Bethulia (panel). IV 
 
 “Forsaken Chloe”,projectof decorative panel. (Gouache) V 
 
 Portrait of M r - T. (red chalk). VI 
 
 “Modern dress” (a “fantaisie”).VII 
 
 “Daphnis and Chloe parting in the evening”, sketch for 
 
 decorative panel. (Gouache). VIII 
 
 “Sheherazade” ballet. First Eunuch. (Gouache). IX 
 
 An inferior deity. ’’Narcissus” ballet. (Gouache) .... X 
 Stage decorations for ballet “Orientales”. (Gouache) . . XI 
 
 A Negro’s costume (Sheherazade).XII 
 
 Stage decorations for Oscar Wilde’s “Salome”. (Gouache) XIII 
 
 „Phaedra” tragedy. Phaedra’s nurse. XIV 
 
 Stage decorations for Hindu ballet. (Gouache) .... XV 
 
 237 
 
M me - Ida Rubinstein as St. Sebastian. XVI 
 
 The imperial palace (“The Martyrdom of St. Sebastian”) XVII 
 M me - Rubinstein in “The Martyrdom of St. Sebastian” XVIII 
 The “Women of good humour” ballet. Rinaldo. 
 
 (Gouache). XIX 
 
 Stage decorations for "Phaedra” (Gouache). XX 
 
 A costume. “Narcissus” ballet. XXI 
 
 The Pilgrim (“Blue God” ballet). Gouache.XXII 
 
 Stage decorations for act 4 th of D’Annunzio’s 
 
 “St. Sebastian”. (Gouache).XXIII 
 
 The Czarevitch’s costume ('The Bird of Fire”) . . . XXIV 
 Project of stage decorations for ^Sleeping Beauty” . . XXV 
 Stage decorations for the vault scene (“St. Sebastian”) XXVI 
 'Terror antiquus”. First golden medal. 1911 Uni? 
 
 versal Exhibition (Brussels).XXVII 
 
 'Terror antiquus” (detailed).XXVIII 
 
 Submarine monsters (“Sadko” opera). Gouache . . XXIX 
 Stage decorations for the ballet “Women of good 
 
 humour” (second version). Gouache. XXX 
 
 A bacchanalian dance (Joseph) by R. Strauss . . . . XXXI 
 
M r Nijinsky as "Blue God". (Gouache). XXXII 
 
 The red Sultana. XXXIII 
 
 The pink Sultana. (Gouache). XXXIV 
 
 The yellow Sultana. (Gouache). XXXV 
 
 Stage decorations for the "Blue God”. XXXVI 
 
 Stage decorations for act 3 rd of Verhaerens’s "Helen 
 
 of Sparta". (Gouache).XXXVII 
 
 Stage decorations for the "Cleopatra” ballet . . XXXVIII 
 
 Costume for Tcherepnine’s "Adoration”. XXXIX 
 
 Costume for Stravinsky's „Bird of Fire”. XL 
 
 The "Boutique fantasque” ballet. The child with dolls XLI 
 
 The "Butterflies” ballet. A valet in 1850 . XLII 
 
 A huntress. Decorative panel. XLIII 
 
 The "Boutique fantasque" ballet. A doll. XLIV 
 
 A page ("Aladin” ballet). XLV 
 
 A page in Louis XIV’s style ("Aladin” ballet) . XLVI 
 The Empress Elisabeth Petrovna hunting. (Gouache) XLVII 
 
 Delphi. (Gouache). XLVIII 
 
 Galisson, Prince Charmant’s tutor. Louis XIV 
 
 ballet (Pavlova tournee). Gouache. IL 
 
The Bird of Fire (another version). Gouache. L 
 
 The “Boutique fantasque” ballet. The Englishwoman LI 
 
 The “Boutique fantasque” ballet. The Englishman. . LII 
 
 Stage decorations for “Thamar”. LlII 
 
 “Sadko". LIV 
 
 The “Boutique fantasque" ballet. “La poupee aux 
 
 dentelles". LV 
 
 Modern Costume (A “fantaisie”). Gouache. LV1 
 
 Portrait of Ida Rubinstein.LVII 
 
 A call (Poster for an exhibition at Vienna). Gouache LVIII 
 
 A living model. Red chalk and chalk. LIX 
 
 The “Boutique fantasque” ballet. An Italian doll . . LX 
 Portrait of the poet A. Bely. Crayon and pencil ... LX I 
 
 A portrait. LXII 
 
 Portrait of the boy Z. Red chalk.LXII I 
 
 The “Women of good humour" ballet. Dorothea . . LXIV 
 A peasant woman (Sketch by Potemkine). Gouache LXV 
 A peasant woman (Sketch by Potemkine). Gouache LXVI 
 
 Costume for “Le chantre et la devote". LXVII 
 
 Costume of peasant woman for Potemkine’s “Village" LXVIII 
 

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