Dear List,
I recently watched the movie "Nijinsky" (1980),
directed by Herbert Ross, screenplay by Hugh Wheeler based
on Romula Nijinsky's biography.
Alan Bates was Diaghilev; George de la Pena played Nijinsky (his
interpretation of the Debussy's L'Apres Midi d'un Faune was
outstanding); Leslie Browne was Romola, Alan Badel interpreted Baron
de Gunsburg and Jeremy Irons, Fokine.
I remembered the interesting article by Monica Manolescu in The
Nabokovian,57,Fall 2006 ("Old, Mad, Gray Nijinski" in Lolita)
and various past postings about ivy-clad Nijinsky and the faunlet
Gordon, in Ada, where VN was particularly cruel to "catamites"*.
In Lolita Nijinski is "all thighs and fig
leaves", in Ada the faunlet Pedro performs a "Nurjinski leap" and Diaghilev appears as "Dangleleaf".
We also find in Ada: "Whose brush was it now? A titillant Titian?
A drunken Palma Vecchio? [...] Faun Exhausted by Nymph? Swooning
Satyr?[...]A moment later the Dutch took over:
Girl stepping into a pool [...]" which carries watery links to Pedro
[‘Permit me, Ivan, to get you also a nice cold Russian kok?’
said Pedro — really a very gentle and amiable youth at heart. ‘Get yourself
a cocoanut,’ replied nasty Van, testing the poor faun...Claudius, at least, did
not court Ophelia].
Concerning VN's references to
Arcadian faunlets & nymphets, catamites and his Lolita
"brood" was how Diaghilev's very real ones
caused, apparently, less scandal than VN's "nymphets"
in novel and movies. The critical articles about
"Nijinski" which I found were different in tone from those
concerning Kubrick's and Adrian Lynne's "Lolita". In both cases we find pedophilia but the destinies of young
boys and girls seem to arouse different reactions
from spectators.
(Btw: I wonder if VN had read Life of Nijinsky, 1933, by Romola
de Pulszky?)
................................................................................................
* One example: "A famous French floramor was never the same after the Earl of
Langburn discovered his kidnapped son, a green-eyed frail faunlet, being
examined by a veterinary whom the Earl shot dead by mistake."
In Pale
Fire, Gordon might indicate not only Narcissus at the pool, but
also Nijinsky's Faun: a slender but strong-looking lad of fourteen
...a leopard-spotted loincloth...lovely bestial face...the graceful boy wreathed
about the loins with ivy [..]. The young woodwose had now closed his eyes and
was stretched out supine on the pool’s marble margin [...] Lavender asked:
"Sure you aren’t a mucking snooper from that French rag?" "A what?" said Gradus,
pronouncing the last word as "vot." "A mucking snooping son of a bitch?" Gradus
hung up[...] a pair of sandals on its
marble rim — all that remained of
Narcissus.