Page:The Art of Nijinsky.djvu/101

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THE BALLETS

expressed in it so clearly, so forcibly, so inevitably, that no other method than this, one feels, would do. For here is the very spirit of faun life, presented not at all as the Greeks presented it, but as a Greek might surely have rejoiced to see it represented had he been born again to-day.[1]

Now, Mr. Maurice Hewlett, who knows more than most of us about the psychology of fauns and fairies, has explored the difference between the human kind and the fairy in words which are beautifully relevant to the subject-matter of this Prélude. "A comparison of the fairy kind," he writes, "with human beings is never successful, because into our images of human beings we always impart self-

  1. I must interpolate here a word of admiration for the beautiful scenery of M. Bakst, which so cunningly supplies the needed link between Nijinsky's Greek attitudes and Debussy's very modern music.

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