Benois and Diaghilev

[innopac]

In this review of the new biography of Diaghilev Luke Jennings writes the following:

"By then, Diaghilev was part of an upper-crust homosexual coterie whose mores Scheijen describes in diverting detail. The clique included the designers Alexandre Benois and Leon Bakst, and writer Walter Nouvel. They liked to cruise for sex in St Petersburg's Tauride Gardens, boasting of their conquests (mostly hard-up students and cadets), and swapping partners."

I am reading Alexandre Benois memoirs and perhaps I have missed something but "cruising for sex" and "swapping partners" doesn't seem to fit. Has anyone read a biography of Benois?

What I am wondering is does Scheijen say this about Benois in the new biography or has Jennings just generalized from the activities of some of Diaghilev's associates and included Benois name without substantiation?

[leonid17]

In this review of the new biography of Diaghilev Luke Jennings writes the following:

"By then, Diaghilev was part of an upper-crust homosexual coterie whose mores Scheijen describes in diverting detail. The clique included the designers Alexandre Benois and Leon Bakst, and writer Walter Nouvel. They liked to cruise for sex in St Petersburg's Tauride Gardens, boasting of their conquests (mostly hard-up students and cadets), and swapping partners."

I am reading Alexandre Benois memoirs and perhaps I have missed something but "cruising for sex" and "swapping partners" doesn't seem to fit. Has anyone read a biography of Benois?

What I am wondering is does Scheijen say this about Benois in the new biography or has Jennings just generalized from the activities of some of Diaghilev's associates and included Benois name without substantiation?

I am sorry to say this error is just one of the many irritations to be found in this book, whose problems are compounded by seemingly poor translation and inadequate editing.

[innopac]

Thank you, Leonid. I was thinking it was the journalist's error.

Do you recommend the book at all?

[leonid17]

Thank you, Leonid. I was thinking it was the journalist's error.

Do you recommend the book at all?

Not as a first reader on Diaghilev as it is densely written over 500 pages and written in a curious English.

However there is new information but there are so many irritations such as assumption without evidence and he mentions someone dying before a war and does not say which war, some errors in dates, doesn't indicate OS or New Style when giving dates and far too much about homosexuality which has never made anyone either an artist or an extraordinary manager of a ballet company. I am not convinced by his interpretations of Diaghilev's sexual relations or the physical aspect of such relations which are not described therefore, not confirmed. For me he needed to define what sort of homosexual relations he is talking about. He might have also considered that having someone lying in bed beside you as affectionate company is quite different to the many sexual acts that one can know of or read about.

I attended a talk by the author in London two weeks ago called "Diaghilev the Inner Man". Given the average age of the audience was probably above sixty and mostly female he refrained from the catalogue of Diaghilev's sexual activities and spoke interestingly, in fact much more so than in his book.

I have to confess I am still ploughing through this book annotating so many pages that I keep putting it down in frustration. There is however some significant new information to be found but I just wish the author knew a little bit more about the ballet.

If you are seriously and I mean seriously interested in Diaghilev's life I would buy it, I did, discounted on Amazon before its published date.

I read a review in The Times by someone called Bee Wilson which was not at all about the book but about Diaghilev and stunningly had Nijinsky dancing "The Firebird". No excuse. A total disgrace. Do art's editors still read books?

PS You can still get the book at a discounted price on Amazon - Diaghilev: A Life by Sjeng Scheijen

[innopac]

Thank you, Leonid, for writing.

I will see if I can persuade my public library to buy the book.

[Mashinka]

I’m afraid your description doesn’t tempt me, especially as I already own a considerable number of Diaghilev related books, though I’d be interested to know how you think the book fares in a direct comparison to those of Buckle and Haskell. I may well pick it up in the near future along with the new MacMillan biography when both have been remaindered though.

I read a review in The Times by someone called Bee Wilson which was not at all about the book but about Diaghilev and stunningly had Nijinsky dancing "The Firebird". No excuse. A total disgrace do art's editors still read books?

Here is a link to that review that opens with the daft Firebird comment.

http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol...icle6875196.ece

[leonid17]

I’m afraid your description doesn’t tempt me, especially as I already own a considerable number of Diaghilev related books, though I’d be interested to know how you think the book fares in a direct comparison to those of Buckle and Haskell.

Like yourself I got caught up with the Diaghileviana period in London during the 1960's when both the Royal Ballet and London Festival Ballet revived works from the Diaghilev Ballet Russe which engendered greater interest than normal with the Sotheby's Ballet Russe Sales which were an extraordinary opportunity to see and handle material from that companies productions. It was during these heady times when sale seemed to follow sale that Dickie Buckle stood up to announce that the signed front cloth by Picasso for Le Train Bleu had been bought for the Theatre Museum to be established in Covent Garden (now sadly defunct.)

The Theatre Museum was significant for balletomanes in London as it was the first museum in our city to exhibit significan ballet material. Of this tragedy Alexander Schouvaloff wrote, “Realizing that the V&A had no intention of allowing the Theatre Museum to grow or be successful I managed to find an American publisher and bookseller who would have sponsored a performing arts bookshop, a famous restaurateur who would have run a decent restaurant, and a venture capitalist who was prepared to put up a million pounds. Were the trustees pleased? Were they delighted when I found these Prince Charmings to solve all the problems with financial kisses? No. They put the museum to sleep.”

To many balletomanes it was a knife in the heart. There were protests and feeling so strongly about the effort Buckle and others had made to get the museum off the ground.

Dickie Buckle had always been an alert and knowledgeable critic unafraid of exhibiting his prejudices which many of his readers shared. When his book on Diaghilev was published its readability won over many readers and its minor errors were not confirmable in that era. Dickie Buckle met so many of those who helped make the Saison Russe and the Diaghilev Ballet Russe and it is these first hand accounts that helped him to bring the era to life. All of his books make happy reading for me.

Arnold Haskell's book on Diaghilev was jointly written with Walter Nouvel and it is Nouvel’s contribution that makes it a significant work as he was with Diaghilev from the beginning of the Ballet Russe, until the founder producer’s death.

Sjeng Scheijen book continues to irritate me as I struggle through it. It less academic than I expected given the authors academic background and the access I assume he had, (sorry I must have picked up this bad habit from reading his book) to material while Cultural Attaché to the Royal Netherlands Embassy in Moscow.

Of course his book is an achievement in part, but for anyone seriously interested in Diaghilev who has had access to Russian language studies and other materials materials on Diaghilev, I would say what my essays at school sometimes had written at the bottom, "Could do better."

[Quiggin]

It looks as though they've corrected the Firebird error. I remember the TLS captioning a photo of Balanchine and Allegra Kent as "Balanchine and his wife Maria Tallchief."

Bee Wilson is not a dance writer but does review for the London Review of Books and the New Yorker, and writes often about food. She does make the book sound perhaps like a better read than it is (maybe she should have written it!) but I'm always hooked when someone says something is like a story out of Chekhov:

Where did it come from, this mad drive? His childhood sounds like something from Chekhov. The Diaghilevs were artistic distillery owners from provincial Perm, where Serge attended elegant soirées organised by his stepmother Yelena (his own mother had died when he was a baby, the result, he falsely claimed, of his remarkably large head). Yelena — who knew Mussorgsky and Tchaikovsky — comes across as the great love of his life. Despite having two younger sons of her own, Serge was her favourite. She encouraged him to write poems, compose operas, play the piano, and generally think of himself as wonderful. All his life he wrote her long letters, calling her his “darling mama”.

This glorious comfort was brought to an abrupt end, however, in 1890, when Diaghilev was 18. His father was declared bankrupt and the family house was auctioned off. It was, writes Scheijen, as if “Diaghilev’s entire childhood had been wiped out in the blink of an eye”. Now he was on his own.

In 1895, still only 23, he wrote to his darling mama, laying out this vision of himself: “First of all, I am a great charlatan, although one of brilliance; second, I’m a great charmer; third, I’ve great nerve; fourth I’m a man with a great deal of logic and few principles; and fifth, I think I lack talent; but if you like, I think I’ve found my real calling — patronage of the arts. Everything has been given me but money — mais ça viendra.”

Added: no, the Firebird reference is still there on second viewing.

[richard53dog]

Bee Wilson is not a dance writer but does review for the London Review of Books and the New Yorker, and writes often about food.

I was surprised to see Bee Wilson's name in connection with this book as I know her too as a food writer. I recently read her "Swindled: the Dark History of Food Fraud", which was pretty discouraging.

But perhaps she is has a major interest in ballet.