St Petersburg полностью

The tabloids described Kchessinska’s outfits, her diamond necklaces and pearls, the luxurious banquets in her honor at expensive restaurants, and her townhouse in the modern style. The director of the imperial theaters, Vladimir Telyakovsky, who hated her whims and intrigues, wrote in his diary that she was a “morally impudent, cynical, and brazen dancer, living simultaneously with two grand dukes and not only not hiding it but on the contrary, weaving this art as well into her stinking, cynical wreath of human offal and vice.”94

But many people were in awe of Kchessinka’s brilliance as a dancer. “Le tout Petersburg” came to her performances. A reporter for Peterburgskaya gazeta breathlessly described the audience at the Maryinsky Theater when Kchessinska was dancing on stage: “Innumerable ball gowns in every color and shade, diamonds sparkling on shoulders, endless frock coats and tails, small talk in English and French, the heady scent of fashionable perfume, in a word, the familiar scene of a social rout.”95

The influential ballet critic Akim Volynsky should not have been interested in Kchessinska’s social successes, but he too did not distinguish between her stage performance and her image.

Her demonic artistry sometimes gives off an icy chill. But at other times Kchessinska’s rich technique seems like a miracle of a real, high art. At moments like that the audience bursts into wild applause and crazy cries of delight. And the black-eyed she-devil of ballet endlessly repeats, to the bravos of the entire hall, her incredible pas, her blindingly glorious diagonal dance across the stage.96

Praising Kchessinska’s genius, “capricious and mighty, with a shade of sinful personal pride,” the critic saw in her a symbolic and tragic figure. But for Telyakovsky, the director of the imperial theaters, Kchessinska’s appearances on the stage were the triumph of “vulgarity, triteness, and banality.”

The director was disgusted by the open, challenging, and indecorous sexuality of the ballerina, “her too short costume, fat, turned-out legs and open arms, expressing total self-satisfaction, an invitation to an embrace.” The irony of the situation lay in the fact that the audience, loving the unheard-of energy of the spectacle, readily attributed the sexual explosion on stage to their presence. The cynical Telyakovsky knew better, when he wrote in his diary after another “trite and coarse” performance, “Kchessinska was in good form. The royal box was filled with young grand dukes, and Kchessinska made a real effort.”97

Thus the connection between the huge stage of the Imperial Maryinsky Theater and the little halls of the Petersburg cabarets was made. Everywhere the intimate was becoming the purview of everyone, brought out for display and gossip. Private life no longer existed. The sexual relations (real or imagined) of the royal family or of two famous poets was the subject of public discussion and ballyhooed in the same way.

Kchessinska on the stage was almost within reach. One could undress her mentally and evaluate her physical charms (or flaws) with the same aplomb with which Akhmatova’s tragic loves were gossiped about on the basis of her latest poems. Few were shocked that the niece of Alexander Benois, the twenty-eight-year-old artist Zinaida Serebryakova, entered the Mir iskusstva exhibits with nude self-portraits—under innocent titles like “Bather” or “In the Baths”—of incredible beauty, in which there was “a certain sensuality,”98 as even her loving uncle admitted.

For Serebryakova and her friends this was a manifesto of moral and aesthetic emancipation. For the public it was yet another opportunity to feel drawn by a celebrity’s sex appeal and to indulge their voyeuristic fantasies. In this charged atmosphere Kchessinska, Serebryakova, Akhmatova, and Sudeikina were all equal before the Petersburg public, which was ever hungry for sexy scandal and gossip.

A contemporary described Sats’s The Goat-legged as “half-goats, half-humans lasciviously frolicking on stage.”99 But Sudeikina did not limit her appearances to the Theater of Miniatures on Liteiny Prospect, where Sats’s ballet was appearing. In her memoirs, Akhmatova recalled that Sudeikina performed a Russian dance for Grand Duke Kirill at his father’s palace. Akhmatova repeated the grand duke’s reaction: “La danse russe rêvée par Debussy.”

Grand Duke Kirill was often seen at performances of Kchessinska, who was the mistress of his younger brother, Andrei. An interesting connection appears—grand dukes, Kchessinska, Sudeikina, Akhmatova. To my knowledge, no one has noted that connection before, and yet it could partly explain the persistent and rather widespread rumor that Akhmatova had had an affair with Nicholas II or, at any rate, with someone from the royal family.