Product Description

With an Introduction by Joan Acocella

The astonishing diaries of the great dancer, at last available in their complete form.

In December 1917, Vaslav Nijinsky, the most famous male dancer in the Western world, moved into a Swiss villa with his wife and three-year-old daughter and began to go mad. This diary, which he kept in four notebooks over six weeks, is the only sustained, on-the-spot written account we have by a major artist of the experience of entering psychosis.

A prodigy from his youth in Russia, Nijinsky came to international fame as a principal dancer in Serge Diaghilev's Ballets Russes. After a falling-out between the two great men--who had lived openly as lovers for some time--Nijinsky struggled to build a career on his own. When psychosis struck, he began to imagine himself as married to God, indeed as God, signing his entries "God Nijinsky." Although he lived another thirty years, he never regained his sanity.

Already a classic in its earlier, bowdlerized edition, the diary now appears uncut for the first time in English, together with its previously unavailable fourth notebook. It is Nijinsky's confession and his prophecy. At the same time, it reads like a novel, portraying the terror in the Nijinsky household as the dancer plunged into madness. In her Introduction, the noted dance writer Joan Acocella explains the context of the diary and its significance in the history of modernism.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #232151 in Books
• Published on: 2006-10-16
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 384 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9780252073625
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
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Amazon.com Review
Vaslav Nijinsky spent the final six weeks before his permanent consignment to an insane asylum as something a madman in the attic. With his family--wife, young daughters and occasionally, mother-in-law--and household staff downstairs, the legendary dancer retreated to his room in a remote Swiss villa to tangle with his burgeoning psychosis. Fearful that his wife would (as she ultimately did) commit him, and highly suspicious of the physician-cum-amateur psychiatrist who daily came by to examine him, Nijinsky perceived the diary as the only safe haven for the rambling thoughts that were overtaking him. Throughout, the anxiety and anguish are palpable, as Nijinsky writes about his disillusionment with his mentor and lover, Ballets Russes director Serge Diaghilev; his alienation from and distrust of his closest family members; and his fear of insanity and its consequential confinement. His writing becomes more obscure as the weeks progress and he examines his relationship to God, writing "I am God" at one point, and later: "God said to me, 'Go home and tell your wife that you are mad.'" As his schizophrenia evolves, the pace and style of Nijinsky's prose changes radically--toward the end he writes in abstract verse--but he remains, with a dancer's sensibility, attuned to the cadences of his environment. The noises of the household, the ringing of the phone, footsteps down the hall, smatterings of conversations overheard are all registered as a sort of accompaniment to his dance with madness and function perhaps as a final tether to reality.

Nijinsky's wife stumbled upon the diary in a locked trunk some years after her husband disappeared into the abyss of madness and soon released it for publication to feed public interest in her famous mate--but not before she sanitized the manuscript to such a degree (removing references to his homosexuality, overblown ego, bizarre paranoia, and various obsessions with bodily functions and sex acts) that its essence was obscured. Now 80 years after it was written, 20 years after its renegade editor died, and six years after the copyright that Nijinsky's daughters held expired, the unexpurgated version of the diaries faithfully restores the fascinating record of a great artist's struggle for his life.

From Publishers Weekly
One of this century's finest male dancers, Nijinsky might have become known as the greatest ballet choreographer of the modern era had his career not ended so early. Nijinsky danced professionally for only 10 years (1907-1917), and his reputation as a choreographer was established by only three ballets, all choreographed for the Ballets Russes between 1912 and 1913. Scandal surrounded his career: under Sergei Diaghilev, his lover and the impresario behind the Ballets Russes, Nijinsky choreographed The Afternoon of a Faun, which contained movements suggestive of masturbation; the premiere of his Rite of Spring, choreographed to Stravinsky's dissonant score, caused audiences to riot and storm out of the theater. After severing ties with Diaghilev and the Ballets Russes at age 29, Nijinsky slid into insanity, and these diaries chronicle six weeks (January 19-March 4, 1919) of this period. The publication of this new translation (initially published in bowdlerized form in 1936), which for the first time includes a fourth journal of letters and poems, gives readers a chance to read an autobiography of a great artist during his psychological decline. This does not always make for easy reading: Nijinsky's thoughts are circuitous; he records his experience moment by moment and often breaks his train of thought to describe an incident in the next room. Although he is sometimes lucid, he often writes in contradictions and non sequiturs. Fitzlyon's excellent translation, which provides helpful and nonintrusive footnotes to explain Nijinsky's many linguistic idiosyncrasies, is complemented by Acocella's (Mark Morris) illuminating introduction. (Feb.) FYI: Acocella has just been named as the dance critic of the New Yorker.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
This is a thought-provoking look at the life of a man who has been called the "god of the dance." The famous Russian ballet dancer went insane in 1917, and this diary, written in six and a half weeks, records his ever more erratic thoughts, thoughts that at times become almost poetic: "I am an artist whose voice is dance," in conjunction with the more aberrant: "I am God, I am a man, I am man in God." Nijinsky documents his daily routine and carefully notes random thoughts, feelings, suspicions, and occasionally an accurate view of his true reality: "people will think I am insane because I speak of things I do not understand." Actor John Rubinstein's powerful presentation turns this audio into a one-man show, with an amazing job affecting a slight Russian/Polish accent. Nijinsky gave his last public performance when he was 29; he lived to be 61. Highly recommended for all public libraries.ATheresa Connors, Arkansas Tech Univ., Russellville
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Customer Reviews

Religious Mysticism
Vaslav Nijinsky was 30 when he wrote his "autobiography." Not long after, he became a catatonic schizophrenic, remaining so for the final 30 years of his life. At the time, he was considered the world's greatest ballet dancer.

As it is a totally unselfconscious reflection of madness, this is difficult and painful to read. Because the diary reflects the rapid flight of ideas, unsympathetic readers may be tempted to turn away. However, Nijinsky's thought contains underlying patterns.

Perhaps the most interesting, although most easily misunderstood, aspect of Nijinsky's thought is his religious views. He says, "I am God. I am God. I am God." Still other time he says, "I am God through feeling." Perhaps this is schizophrenic crankery.

But perhaps Nijinsky is saying that, when he danced, he felt so alive, or whatever you will, that he became God, as which happens with mystics. Thus, his expressions of Godliness are not meant as blasphemy but as the highest expression of artistic achievement, similar to a Van Gogh Starry night or his trees, which look like they are on fire.

If you can stand it, this is worth the effort.

Strange and fascinating
I was a great fan and was in awe of Vaslav ever since I first saw a photo of him playing the Harlequin in a book called The Great Male Dancers. Then I did not know of the tragedy of his existance, but I had a good inkling of its greatness. I finally got a hold of and read this book. It scared me with its sombre wonderfulness. There is no way to describe it except as the first scandelous dance autobiography. Dancers must read this. Biography fans must also. It is different. It is a window to madness. It is strange to us and therefore wonderful.

Beautiful and Prophetic
1. "God said to me, 'Go home and tell your wife that you are mad'."

Even if we are not ready to accept this assertion as a proof of Nijinsky's genius (i.e. him edging on God-Consciousness on his way to full enlightenment), we should at least be able to recognise that the author obviously did not view himself as insane, but, in his own eyes, consciously pretended to be such as the only means at hand to escape the harsh chilliness and cruelty of an insensitive world, handing over all responsibilities of the non-esoteric sides of life to those who feel they know such things better.

2. Neither the conclusion should be that the great Master of Choreography ended his life in a miserable demise, unworthy of a great genius and a potential role-model for generations to come.

On the last pages, as if to conclude the diary, Nijinsky speaks of a wonderful vision of his three years old daughter as she smiles at him: "I see what she is trying to tell me: it is not all about sadness and miserliness - there's also joy in life". Thus reminding of Tolstoy's famous formula "if you want to be joyful and happy, then just be that!".

The author's life has clearly been that of struggle and constant contemplations over the world's stubbornness in its reiterated refusal to accept the artist's message of love, despite its pure simplicity. And yet now on the verge of the sunset of life it all suddenly seems to have been nothing but a temporary, though little longer than usual, unpleasant dream, the remaining fogs of which are dispersed through a simple rearrangement of attention leading one to a life in a closer company with one's God. A life the fuller utilisation of the pleasures of which are not bound by the limits of life and death.

3. As for Nijinsky's main message, as it is contained in the diary itself, I think it is found in the place where the artist speaks of his discovery of the true nature of the phenomena of art criticism: the self-appointed critics of art are nothing but egotists who have never created anything themselves. They pinpoint and nit-pick on any flaws and draw conclusions where such cannot be drawn, causing the hearts of the sincere artists to bleed.

It implies that it is more than fair to observe that when it comes to art in general no judgements can be made whatsoever. An inspiration behind any artistic expression always comes from beyond oneself, out of a sincere desire to convey something to others. The only thing that is really alright to criticise is if the artist's motive is in question, that is if the original purpose is purely commercial and, thus, a con in its essence. Similarly judging is not the same as describing, just as to describe is not the same as to judge.

Interestingly, few other books and films have received as much subtle thrashing (along with appraisals) as Nijinsky's diary and Paul Cox' recent poetic documentary based on it. The point is that a truly worthless piece of literature, or other, never does. There simply seems to be something very provocative about innocence and tenderness to self-important people. And maybe the book CANNOT be appreciated fully by readers with a "lesser purity of heart" and large egos.

4. Other highlights of the wisdom in Nijinsky's diary (quoting freely from memory) are these: "I told my wife we had married for the wrong reasons and that we should re-marry, but this time in the spirit"; and: "People go to church and then drink wine because they have heard it said that it is the blood of Christ. How to explain to a fool that Christ's blood would make one sober rather than drunk?".