NIJINSKY, THE GOD, MEETS PAUL COX, THE ALTAR BOY

by Brandon Judell


Vaslav Nijinsky is considered by many to be the greatest male dancer of the twentieth century. Starting in 1909, he set the world afire as the star of Diaghilev's Ballet Russe, making classics of such Fokine dances as Petrouchka, Les Sylphides, The Spectre of the Rose, plus The Afternoon of the Faun which he himself choreographed. In the photographs that survive, you can tell why.

But stardom combined with an artistic temperament can spell disaster as we all know, and Nijinsky, who was Diaghilev's lover, decomposed quite swiftly. He got married, was ousted out of the Ballet Russe, and went mad. Luckily for us, while institutionalized, he kept an illustrated diary proving what John Dryden once noted, "Great wits are sure to madness near allied." Nijinsky's scribblings supply numerous insights into love, art, and a world forever at war. His conjectures are never less than acutely perceptive, never less than poetry.

Poetry did save the early versions of this diary, first published in 1936, from being shorn of all gay references by his wife, Romola. Her fascinating, yet self-censored, biography of her spouse also excised his gay past. Only in later editions of the diaries, published after Romola's death, did the real impassioned Nijinsky surface with all his same-sex revelations intact, many not all that celebratory.

This complete version of the diaries has now been made into a part documentary/part celluloid ode, The Diaries of Vaslav Nijinsky, by Australian-based director Paul Cox. Clearly, exploring madmen who see the truth more clearly than the sane is not a new topic for Cox. There was Vincent: The Life and Death of Vincent Van Gogh (1987) and Man of Flowers (1983). In the latter, an elderly lover of art kills a hunky enemy and turns him into an actual statue. And, if I remember correctly, 1975's The Island touched upon an obsessive state of affairs, too. (Other Paul Cox efforts include Innocence; Molokai: The Story of Father Damien; The Hidden Dimension; and Lonely Hearts.)

Catching up with Mr. Cox in a Central Park West hotel, I was immediately told "Nijinsky was a gay icon for many, many decades."

I respond how the painter Erté once told me that in his youth, he had seen Nijinsky dance in Moscow. A scandal erupted because Nijinsky was not wearing a dance belt that night, and his protruding genital pouch upset the Czarina greatly.

Laughing, Cox corrects: "Well, he was wearing underwear, but he just had a pair of pants on that showed his balls, and you were not allowed to do that at the time."

For what reason did this significant event not make it into his film?

"It gets too complicated," Cox shakes his head. "You can't cover the whole range of things. I wanted to somehow, but it's very pretentious of course, to give form and shape to this wandering marvelous spirit." And this Cox accomplishes.


He also captures Nijinsky's immense guilt about his homosexuality. One thinks that if Nijinsky hadn't gotten married or if he were living today when homosexuality is a bit more accepted, he wouldn't have gone insane.

"No, I don't think so," Cox argues. "His soul is sick, not his mind. By that I think it's the old eternal embrace of men. It's much larger. Sometimes you see somebody smiling, and you see all the people in similar situations smile right through the centuries. It was a large embrace. Van Gogh calls it that The Great Grave of Man. That Great Grave. The insensitivity of man. The insensitivity of man drove him insane."

But Nijinsky had great remorse about having a homosexual inclination. Many of the quotes Cox include in his film, that were cut out of the original published diaries, deal with this guilt.

"Definitely," Cox agrees. "But at the same time, Nijinsky was also a beast. He was a faun. He went to Diaghilev's hotel and he says in his diary, "I immediately allowed him to make love to me." What was that about? It was extraordinary. 'It was all the same to me. My mother and I had to eat.' This is extraordinary."

Not all people are fascinated by those of unsound mind. What drew Cox to Van Gogh and Nijinsky? "I've always been a little insane," the helmer admits then retracts. "No, I think I'm one of the sanest people I know. I am just interested in people who are right on the edge, who walk around with exposed nerves and bleeding hearts, who are so close to the truth of living, dying and being. And I find it remarkable that here you have two so-called madmen who had actually all by themselves single-handedly changed the future of their medium and became the forefathers of modern art and modern dance which is extraordinary. These people are supposedly mad. I have this theory that I live in a very insane world."

I then recall how I read Nijinsky's diaries way back in my college days. I read it right after Sylvia Plath's The Bell Jar, and I truly believe I came close to having a nervous breakdown because I started questioning what's rational and whether I was indeed sane. While Cox was editing this film, as he was trying to recreate the world as seen through the eyes of one who's hold on reality was nonexistent, did he ever start to lose his grip? Did he ever start wondering what is sanity? What isn't?

"Well, I've always asked that question," Cox responds. "But indeed, suddenly I was facing such a dark cloud that was very hard to escape. Especially when you're emotionally and physically exhausted, you do wonder a little within, and that certainly happened to me. But there is some sort of strange strength that lifts you. I had to finish this journey especially because I did it in the old-fashioned way. There was no digitized image or anything. Even the editing was done on the flatbed."

Nijinsky in this film says, "I am God." In a sense, a director is God, except maybe if you work in the Hollywood system. Does Cox feel like a god who's creating his own little world?

"No," he chuckles, "I felt in this case like not even the priest. I felt the altar boy. Now and then I could bring in the wine or the blood of Christ. Then maybe now and then I would become the priest at the editing table for that's where the film was really composed. But I was a servant, and I never regarded myself as any more."