Vaslav Nijinsky: Difference between revisions

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Nijinsky's ''Diary'' was written during the six weeks he spent in Switzerland before being committed to the asylum. Obscure and confused, it is obviously the work of a schitzophrenic, but in many ways reflects a loving nature, combining elements of autobiography with appeals for compassion toward the less fortunate, and for vegetarianism and animal rights. Nijinsky writes of the importance of feeling as opposed to reliance on reason and logic alone, and he denounces the practice of art criticism as being nothing more than a way for those who practice it to indulge their own egoes rather than focusing on what the artist was trying to say. The diary also contains a bitter exposé of Nijinsky's relationship with Diaghilev.

As a dancer Nijinsky was clearly extraordinary in his time, though at the end of her life his great partner Tamara Karsavina suggested that any young dancer out of the Royal Ballet School could nowperformnow perform the technical feats with which he astonished his contemporaries. His main talent was probably not so much technical (Itzikowsky could leap as high and as far) as in mime and characterisation; his major failing was that, being himself unable to form a satisfactory partnership with a woman, he was unsuccessful where such a relationship was important on-stage (in, say, [[Giselle]]. In epicine roles such as the god in "''Le Dieu Bleu"'', the rose in "''Spectre"'' or the favourite slave in ''Scheherezade"'' he was unsurpassed. That he was an astonishing and influential artist is not in question.

==Figure in Popular Culture==