Even the artist in him was disappointed. He went to
the Ballet and saw Tchaikowsky's "Swan Lake"; but bearing Diagilev's
splendours in front of him, and knowing nothing about the technique of
ballet-dancing he was bored and cross and contemptuous. He went to
"Eugen Onyegin" and enjoyed it, because there was still a great deal of
the schoolgirl in him; but after that he was flung on to Glinka's
"Russlan and Ludmilla," and this seemed to him quite interminable and to
have nothing to do with the gentleman and lady mentioned in the title.
He tried a play at the Alexander Theatre; it was, he saw, by Andreeff,
whose art he had told many people in England he admired, but now he
mixed him up in his mind with Kuprin, and the play was all about a
circus--very confused and gloomy. As for literature, he purchased some
new poems by Balmont, some essays by Merejkowsky, and Andre Biely's _St.
Petersburg,_ but the first of these he found pretentious, the second
dull, and the third quite impossibly obscure. He did not confess to
himself that it might perhaps be his ignorance of the Russian language
that was at fault.
Pages:
61
62
63
64
65
66
67
68
69
70
71
72
73
74
75
76
77
78
79
80
81
82
83
84
85