Bruno's weekly: Volume 2, 1915
An Interview with Adolf Bohm.
THE tumult and the shouting dies, the press-men and the veils depart—and what is left?—Some cosmetic errors, the sound of the stretching of the arch of multitudinous feet and Adolf Bohm.
He it is who has discovered himself next to Najinski, now that Najinski has gone. He is the pampered, over-familiar Le Negre, of the chosing of that top-heavy though attractive high-hipped Zobeide. He, who is Chef guerrier of Le Prince Igor, not forgotten in Les Sylphides and still on view in La Princess Enchantee and Soleil Du Nuit.
He comes through the melieu of the Ballet with the smiles of the man who suffers in three languages.
"Bakst --ah, there you have not only the savage, you have also the artist. I have often thought, how dreadful to be the picture—you know what I mean? No? I shall explain. Notice the eye of the connoisseur of arts, then imagine yourself their goal. See? It is so with the costume. Therefore, I say, how dreadful to be the picture but how still more lamentable to be the costume.
"Bakst is a successful organ; he has a keen appetite, a nose for cafes, a delightful sense of humor, an impressive style of flirting. His advances are of a marked and successful nature, considering his natural inborn plainness. Of his retreats one might say they are masterly. He sails a boat and drinks tea with graceful repugnance.
"He has however one fault—ah, an immense trifle—his head-gear the hoods, the turbans, the what-nots that he conceives for the heads of his disciples—Beautiful? Yes, as only ugly and vulgar things are,—but—"
He paused knocking his gold cigarette case upon his palm
"But my friend Leon forgets that in the classic arts the feet should have pre-eminence.
"Is Bakst new, is his art the art of the creator? Often I am asked that, very often I hear others asked that. There is an answer. The tragedy of man—there had been a past; the tragedy of nature—there will be a future.
"Without your yesterdays all would be great today. No, of course, Bakst is not new. Egypt may have been builded on the dust of an older Egypt, Rome may have fallen once again on Rome.
"In Russia there are other Russians—better perhaps, and also, perhaps not. Bakst happened to come when he was needed, when the world was ready for him.
"It is harder, I admit, to become known for what one has not done than for what one has. Bakst took the easiest way, he became known for what he did. Not for his restraint, but for his vigor. One can say of him what Wilde said of Hall Cain—he creates at the top of his voice.
"Therefore it is that one should not say Bakst dares, one should say Bakst dares again.
"Some of his designs are purely graphic. From the mind, for the paper. These are the kinds I have reference to, when I say how painful to be the costume. I have had to outrage Bakst, because Bakst has outraged me.
"He invents, say, something he considered decorative, but imagine trying to dance entangled with all the intricacies of Bakst's mind.
"Well, we have made our concessions each to the other" he added.
When I asked him if America could appreciate Russian art he answered:
"You are not asked to understand Russia. You are asked to feel. One does not understand death, one only reacts to it."
I said that the whole production had struck most of us as art under the skin. "A matter," I added, "of gastric acoustics, arteries and undressing or over-dressing," also concluding, "but only of the kind we lament because that savage sharpness, that peasant betterness and vitality given us so richly in the literature of the Russian and in the Russian history, is missing.
"In other words they seem to be economizing on perspiration." I finished.
"He has fallen into the estate of the man who forgets that destruction is more necessary than construction. The rich perversity of a decaying flower is only transcribable in the still richer, still more perverse flare of the decaying art. The happier midways of life and death. The conception that feeds on itself,—that is the most beautiful and the most destructive. Bakst has forgotten, it seems to me, and has instead tried to make something too new, and in consequence has made it too raw. Wounds are all very well but only in that they bleed. Bakst is a wound in which the arteries refuse their waters."
Bohm shook his head "Yes and no, as the peasant says. I admit that he is not always simple. That is what I tried to point out just a few minutes ago. It is his insincerity that sometimes gets in his way, nevertheless his art is a fine thing and the world is coming to know that, and then there will be others.
"Now let me say something that touches America. You want too many doctors. Only people who go around with the assurance given by medicins could expurgate so freely your books and shave down to so fine a point, your arts. When you have ceased to have stomach troubles you will not mind the hard and healthy spleen of the children of L'Apres-Midi d'un Faune."
Djuna Barnes.
Whoever will be free, must make himself free: freedom is no fairy's gift to fall into any man's lap.
Friedrich Nietzsche
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