Abstract

Nijinsky

The article discusses the book "Nijinsky," by Romola Nijinsky. The book is impressive from a number of angles. It is a biography of extreme personal intensity, devoted, anguished, and, in the best sense, controversial. It embodies information not to be had in any other form concerning one of the first and most unappreciated of all arts—dancing. Its subject matter, even if it were not treated with honor, as here it is, would command the respect of any sentient reader. For Vaslav Nijinsky was a genius—in his capacity for perception, his qualities of imagination and fantasy, his intensity for life. Incidentally, he was an artist, and the greatest compliment one can pay to his wife and biographer is to say that she shows his great art as incidental.