Mythological Drama by LÉon Bakst.

Music by N. Tcherepnin.

Dances by Michel Fokine.

Scenery and Costumes Designed by LÉon Bakst.

WITHOUT reference to “HÉlÈne de Sparte” and “Daphnis et ChlÖe,” two ballets in their repertoire which the Russians seem chary of presenting in London, it would be unfair to say that the Greek view of life baffles them. But their performance of “Narcisse,” despite its many beauties, suggests no very confident or happy exploration into classic mythology. One fancies their temperament is too restless, too sensuous, to appreciate the cool, almost austere, repose of Greek ideas. “Nothing in excess” is hardly a motto to appeal to the creators of “Scheherazade,” “ClÉopÂtre” and “L’Oiseau de Feu.” As a result their treatment is too florid, and at times clumsy. It is not so much that they do not know when to stop, as that they fail to strike the right note in starting.

The scene is a sylvan glade containing a shrine of the goddess Pomona. There is a spring beside the shrine which feeds a glassy pool and gives that cool humidity to the air which LÉon Bakst has well suggested by the luxuriance of the green vegetation all around. The glade is shrouded in mysterious twilight when the curtain rises, and the queer forms of sylvan imps are dimly seen, frolicking to the woodland music of a flute. The orchestral accompaniment is charming, but it is unfortunate that the growing light should presently destroy illusion, and reveal what had seemed true elfin sprites as dancers clad in cloth overalls and wearing grotesque masks. One resents the needless clumsiness.

But there is a sound of approaching revelry and mirth. The woodland creatures hasten to their lairs, and a band of Boeotian peasants gaily troops on to the scene. Two and two, in merry pairs, young men and maidens enter. All are in holiday attire, come to do honour to the deities of woods and fields. They make procession round about the mossy dell, they dance, and offer supplications to the gods. These duties over, they disperse. Some fling themselves upon the ground to rest, others gather round the pool, and laughingly splash the water about. The joyous spirit of holiday animates them all.

There come others presently to the grove—a number of bacchantes who are celebrating the goddess of the shrine. For these the peasants form respectful audience while the due rites and ceremonies are observed. Libations are poured, dances are performed. First the leader of the bacchantes executes a solemn dance, which concludes with a prostration before the shrine. Her companions then join her, the bacchic frenzy begins to work, and a dance of wild energy ensues, which is not concluded until a climax of intoxication is reached and the dancers, from ecstasy or exhaustion, collapse.

While the bacchantes still lie prone a sound of distant singing is heard. The voices draw nearer, the listeners in the dell turn their heads expectantly. In another moment there enters running, gracefully eluding the efforts to stay him of two pursuing nymphs, a young shepherd. It is Narcissus—Narcissus the fair and cold: Narcissus of whose beauty all are enamoured, but whom no dart of the blind god has yet pierced.

Careless of his charms, and of the tender woes which he inflicts, Narcissus is in merry mood. He dances joyously while not only the two pursuing nymphs, but every maiden present, hangs in adoration on his every movement. Narcissus has no eyes for them, no thought of anything but delight in his own fair limbs and the joy of movement. He is a young man exulting in his grace and strength, with not a sentiment to dull the keen edge of sheer enjoyment of the act of living.

But even while Narcissus is thus dancing in self-centred abstraction, a female form, raven-haired and wrapped in a purple robe, is seen advancing slowly across the bridge which spans the background. It is Echo, mournful and lonely. Elusively she approaches, appearing now here, now there, before at length advancing into the midst of the youths and maidens. She prostrates herself imploringly before Narcissus. She too is enamoured of the lovely youth.

Narcissus pauses in his dance, and looks inquiringly at the pleading figure at his feet. For once his attention is distracted from himself. He stoops and raises the drooping Echo, gazing into her face. She returns look for look. The interest of Narcissus is aroused: he continues to forget himself, as Echo stimulates his curiosity. He takes pleasure in her, perhaps because in the ardent gaze which she fixes upon him he finds himself reflected.

But the watching nymphs are quickly roused to jealousy. Though Echo seeks to hold him, they tear Narcissus from his new-found pleasure. Derisively they declare that Echo’s love is but a mockery. Incapable of expressing any feeling of her own, she can but repeat the last words and gestures of those who choose to challenge her. Narcissus listens, astonished at so strange a tale. The nymphs, with jealous malice, urge him to test the truth of what they say. Nothing loth, Narcissus advances towards the sorrowful Echo. He dances a few gay steps, and pauses. Falteringly poor Echo repeats the last of them. Again Narcissus dances: again, on the instant that he pauses, the luckless nymph is constrained to imitate his final movements. Narcissus tries her with gestures—and unfailingly he sees, each time he pauses, his last motions repeated before his eyes.

It is true, then—this odd circumstance which the other nymphs related! Much amused, Narcissus breaks into a gleeful dance, and with all the heartless merriment of a wanton boy, indulges the whim of the moment. As he foots it round the hapless Echo he puts her, with unthinking cruelty, to every test

that his nimble wit can devise. In mute agony Echo responds to his pranks. Does he interrupt the dance to pause before her on tip-toes? She too, must raise herself into that attitude. Does he wave his arms around his head? She must copy the very gesture. So the cruel play goes on until at length Narcissus, wearying of the jest, merrily dances away in quest of some new sport. With him trip the eager nymphs. The peasant youths and maidens follow, and Echo is left to indulge her despair in solitude.

Unhappy Echo! Better to be dumb than condemned in this fashion to play the empty mime, a sport for idle moments. In gloomy abandonment to grief the hapless nymph unbraids her hair. The long black tresses fall about her shoulders, and thus, distraught in spirit, disordered in her looks, she flings herself in abasement before the shrine of the goddess. The mockery of her companions still rings in her ears, and in the first fury of a woman slighted she calls upon the deity to avenge her wounded pride. From the depths of her tortured soul she prays that Narcissus may learn something of the agony to which she is doomed, by giving his love where it can never be returned. The sacred grove darkens, the lightning flashes, and Echo, the bitterness with which her heart is overburdened thus discharged, goes mournfully forth.

The light returns, the cool recesses of the leafy glade invite retirement from the heat of afternoon. Narcissus, weary of his sportive play, returns alone to rest his tired limbs. He is thirsty, and the shining surface of the pool is grateful to his eye. He approaches, stretches his limbs in lassitude upon the sloping bank, and stoops to drink.

But his lips do not touch the water. He remains poised above the glassy surface, staring intently downwards. Out of the limpid depth he sees regarding him a fair and radiant face. Narcissus had never thought that such beauty existed on earth. He cannot remove his eyes, he is entranced. He raises his head—the beautiful image retreats. He stoops—and it comes nearer. He stoops lower—he would kiss the vision. But at the very moment when his lips meet those others, a ripple breaks across the still surface of the pool, the image is distorted, almost vanishes.

The prayer of Echo has been answered. The doom of Narcissus has been pronounced, and he loves where his love can never be returned. He scrambles to his knees, he stands erect. Out of the again placid mirror of the pool his own image smiles upward at him. He makes passionate protestations of love: his image answers him gesture for gesture. He seeks to fascinate by his grace and beauty: grace and beauty not less than his fascinate him in turn. Yet the vision, to his dismay, remains remote. It will not come to him, and though when he seeks to approach, it draws near in welcome, the moment of union brings catastrophe.

While the infatuated youth is thus occupied, Echo returns. Her mood of bitterness has passed, and at sight of the object of her passion all her love wells up anew. Pleading once more, she runs towards him with outstretched hands. But Narcissus pays her no heed. He has eyes only for the watery depths below him, and Echo’s distracted appeal falls unregarded on deaf ears.

Willingly would Echo now recall her prayer to the goddess. But wishes are in vain, and vain her efforts to distract Narcissus from his fate. Once she succeeds in drawing him, reluctant, from the margin of the pool, but the youth seems scarce aware of her existence. Too evidently preoccupied to listen to her pleadings, he is back at the water’s edge, rapturously gazing, as soon as her hold upon him is released. Inexorably it is borne in on Echo that fate is too strong for her. Sorrowfully she turns and goes.

Alone in the gathering gloom, Narcissus continues in rapt adoration of his own fair image. As presently appears, he is rooted, literally, to the spot. For as he stands there gazing he slowly sinks downward into the mossy soil, and in his place there rises a tall narcissus flower, whose pale petals glimmer luminously in the dusky twilight. From nooks and crannies the sylvan sprites creep silently forth, to pry with timid, curious eyes upon this strange apparition. Upon this ghostly scene, and the forlorn figure of Echo, passing sadly across the leafy bridge, the curtain gently descends.

One regrets to end this account of what is in many ways a charming ballet upon an adverse note. But a protest must be entered against the Brobdingnagian flower, so evidently a thing of paint and paste-board, which is thrust up from the trap-door cavity by which Narcissus makes his escape. The whole business is so monstrously crude and childish that one can scarcely credit its occurrence. In conception the conclusion of the ballet is admirable, but if trap-doors and cardboard flowers (popping up from the soil in full bloom and fresh with the property master’s paint) are the only means by which such an ending can be accomplished, it seems amazing that such ordinarily nice taste as the Russians display should tolerate these enormities. There is a sense of proportion lacking here, as at the opening of the ballet when a clumsy heaviness of hand, seeking to make the most of the elfin creatures of the wood, effectually reduces them to nothing. The poignant final passage between Echo and Narcissus, eloquently expressed by Karsavina and Nijinsky, is spoilt by this grotesque termination.

Happily these blunders are as rare as they are inexplicable. Only perhaps in “Le Dieu Bleu,” with its similar resort to the artifice of the trap-door, its matter-of-fact demons, and impossible flight of aerial steps, is there a parallel to these which mar the beauties of “Narcisse.” Too close an attention to the cult of the body is perhaps the cause of this material, ultra-realistic touch.

“Narcisse” would be best appreciated if one could ignore its blemishes and enjoy its many excellences individually. The dresses of bacchantes, nymphs and peasants embody some of Bakst’s most splendid designs, but these are seen to better advantage in the artist’s original drawings than on the figures of the wearers in the ballet. (This is the case, of course, with all Bakst’s decorations—not excepting scenery, which necessarily loses much in execution from the original scheme—but is especially applicable to those of “Narcisse.”) The music of Tcherepnin has a charm and distinction which would lose nothing by an isolated hearing, while the joyous dancing of Nijinsky is independent of the environment in which it takes place. Possessed of many charming features, “Narcisse” yet lacks a something to make it, as a whole, convincing. The deficiency, one must suppose, is a lack of real sympathy with their subject on the part of the performers.