Consciousness, Literature and the Arts
Archive
Volume 10 Number 2, August 2009
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NIJINSKY: BALLET, SCHIZOPHRENIC CONSCIOUSNESS & PHILOSOPHY
by
LaTrobe University
‘One day Romola went into the kitchen and noticed that the three servants seated round the table broke off their conversation and looked at her oddly. ‘What has happened?’ she asked. The young man who stoked the boiler said, ‘Madame, forgive me; I may be wrong. We all love you both. You remember I told you that at home in my village at Sils Maria as a child I used to do errands for Mr Nietzsche? I carried his rucksack when he went to the Alps to work. Madame, he acted and looked, before he was taken away, just like Mr Nijinsky does now. Please forgive me.’’ (Buckle, 1971, 404).
This scene, as detailed by Richard Buckle in his biography Nijinsky, describes the situation in 1919, when Nijinsky’s wife Romola was confronted by their servants about the increasingly strange behaviour that the famous dancer was beginning to display – behaviour that was to culminate in a diagnosis of schizophrenia. It also gives a philosophical intersection within the life of Nijinsky. The boy that helped Nietzsche with his errands was the same man who attended to the domestic needs of Nijinsky as he was becoming psychotic. Nijinsky was a dancer first and foremost, but his life - and indeed his thought - do exhibit a number of interesting philosophical leitmotifs. In this paper we will explore points of philosophical interest within Nijinsky’s life. We will also, and more importantly, analyse the diary that Nijinsky kept as he was descending into what is here termed ‘the schizophrenic mode of consciousness’. We will proceed to examine the philosophical import of this document. It is an argument of this article that Nijinsky can be viewed in some respects as a philosophical thinker, if not one impaired by the condition that was to overwhelm him. Details of his biography lead us to the conclusion that he was very much interested in philosophy. He embraced modernist philosophies through his choreography, read important philosophical texts, discussed philosophy with friends and colleagues, and made detailed examinations of philosophers in his diaries as he was entering into schizophrenia. Nijinsky, it is argued here, had definite philosophical tendencies.
Let us begin by giving a general account of what a ‘schizophrenic mode of consciousness’ might entail. This will help establish the parameters of our investigation into Nijinsky’s life and work, and indeed to show why a philosophical analysis of such matters will be fruitful. It is argued here that schizophrenia is, by and large, a state of consciousness. There are many and varied manifestations of the illness – many symptoms and subtypes – that present the inquirer with a pronounced difficulty in understanding. A sufferer can experience symptoms as varied as delusion and hallucinations, to holding bizarre postures with their bodies for extended periods. The key for any investigation into schizophrenia is to account for the variety of these manifestations. One way to do this is to see schizophrenia as a mode of consciousness. People suffering from schizophrenia will intend in certain ways, will in certain ways, perceive in certain ways, cognate in certain ways and generally be conscious in certain ways. Whether they are experiencing a delusion, hearing a voice, or holding a bizarre posture, they will do so through particular states of consciousness. And this is why it is so intrinsically valuable to study such phenomena using philosophical techniques. Philosophy is well equipped to explain, describe and analyse states of consciousness. It is concerned with the mind and its functioning, and has centuries of conceptual machinery to study such states. Philosophy will be deployed in this article as an interpreter of pathology, and in particular of pathological states of consciousness. It is fortunate that Nijinsky, in his diaries, was concerned with philosophical pre-occupations, so we might bring philosophy’s conceptual machinery to bear on the schizophrenic mode of consciousness.
So what constitutes this schizophrenic mode of consciousness? The standard diagnostic manual that is used to categorise schizophrenic experiences is the DSM-IV. This manual gives us a good guide as to the common symptoms a schizophrenic mode of consciousness might exhibit. Such a mode will, in certain cases, display delusions – the most commonly recognised of the schizophrenic symptoms. For instance, the person may believe that chance events are pre-ordained to occur directly for their benefit – a phenomena known as delusions of self-reference. They may feel that they are receiving special messages from newspapers or other media. They may experience hallucinations, which may be somatic or visual or gustatory, amongst other forms. They may experience an inability to feel pleasure – an experience known as anhedonia. They may experience a lack of will power commonly referred to as avolition. They may have difficulty communicating - using neologism excessively or displaying pronounced illogicality. And there are many more. It is argued here that these phenomena are experienced through a mode of consciousness. Nijinsky was to display many traits such as those detailed in the DSM-IV. His state of consciousness resulted in forms of written communication that were quite characteristic of schizophrenia, showing illogicality, bizarre associations and neologism. When we come to analyse Nijinsky’s diaries will see these aspects in his writing. We will see how he may have been experiencing a phenomena known though blocking, where thoughts are blocked as they arise in his mind – a characteristic schizophrenic trait. He also experienced in other ways a typical schizophrenic mode of consciousness, the manifestations of which we will enquire into shortly.
So let us now turn to Nijinsky, his life and his diaries to fully explore how this mode of consciousness is exemplified in one of the most successful creative geniuses of his generation, and to see how philosophy helped inspire him.
Let us firstly start by giving an account of Nijinsky’s life and work as a dancer. He was the son of two successful dancers, and inherited his parents’ abilities. Romola Nijinsky writes of how Vaslav’s father Thomas quickly recognised his talent – “Thomas soon discovered that among his gifted children Vaslav had the greatest talent, and began to instruct him...Vaslav enjoyed these lessons immensely; and always begged his father to show him new steps whenever he had the time.” (R. Nijinsky, 1980, 32). Nijinsky built on these early lessons and was accepted into Russia’s Imperial Theatrical School, where he was recognised as a prodigy. Upon graduating from the Imperial School, he took up a position with the Imperial Ballet and partnered the premier ballerina of that company. He was employed one rank higher than was usual for new graduates. The expectation that surrounded Nijinsky was to be rewarded.
His time with this company was, however, to be relatively short. Partly as a result of a scandal concerning one of Nijinsky’s costumes (or lack of costume), he was relived of his duties, and free to be engaged in a private company. Cyril W. Beaumont describes the situation – “While taking the part of Loys in a revival of Giselle...which was honoured by the presence of the Dowager Empress, he donned trunk hose and doublet, which latter was somewhat short, but omitted the regulation trunks, which, in defiance of the management he refused to wear. As a result he was ordered to resign.” (Beaumont, 1974, 13).
It was directly after this incident that Nijinsky met Sergei Diaghilev, who had formed the Ballet Russes - a troupe that was touring Europe. This was to be Nijinsky’s big break. The Ballet Russes was gaining a considerable reputation as an innovative and exciting company that was prepared to both respect tradition, and break new ground. Nijinsky was perfect for the company. Joan Acocella describes the Ballet Russes during the early part of the twentieth century. She writes: “That company, the Ballet Russes, was to be the most glamorous and influential theatrical enterprise in Europe in the 1910s and 1920s, and during its crucial pre-World War I period, Nijinsky’s dancing was a great part of its fame.” (Nijinsky, 1999, ix).
Nijinsky, through the Ballet Russes, was to take Europe by storm. People marvelled at his poise, balance, and ability to engage in mimicry. But most of all people were astounded at his great leap. Nijinsky seemed to be able to suspend himself in the air. Lincoln Kirstein writes, “There was an illusion of arrest at the top of his rise, an explosion of rapture at the peak fulfilment of self-propelled motion in air and space. It was this high delight that roused the hearts of his audience.” (Kirstein, 1975, 89). The combination of this capacity of Nijinsky’s with the cutting edge choreography of the company’s principle choreographer Michel Fokine, and highly original scores specifically written for the troupe by composers such as Stravinsky and Debussy, made the Ballet Russes not just successful, but a ballet hegemony. Peter Ostwald describes the result of Nijinsky’s dancing in the troupe: “His name became a household word among balletomanes in London, Paris, Budapest, Vienna, and other major European cities where the Bullet Russes performed. Fashions changed as a result of their influence.” (Ostwald, 1991, 50).
The praise for Nijinsky catapulted him into fame. Marcel Proust, upon seeing Nijinsky dance, remarked “I never saw anything so beautiful”. (Ostwald, 1991, 42). He was becoming a celebrity - popularity and acclaim surrounded him. Audiences were flocking to see this great impresario perform his magic on the stage. Acocella remarks; “[t]o his audiences, Nijinsky was something utterly unforeseen, a miracle”. (Nijinsky, 1999, x). The resultant succes fou was extraordinary. The news of Nijinsky’s marriage while on a tour of South America was reported by the press around the world – in a similar vein to how a royal engagement might be reported.
It was not all smooth sailing, however. A ballet Nijinsky choreographed, The Rite of Spring, was the cause of a riot. The police were called, and two men almost fought a duel. People hurled abuse at each other, and the two camps – pro and anti-Nijinsky – came to physical blows over the daring new direction Nijinsky was taking his ballet audiences. He was fully embracing, and helping to establish, the new and emerging modernist philosophies that were becoming hegemonic. Another of Nijinsky’s choreographed works, The Afternoon of a Faun, was also to inflame the public. Kirstein writes of this piece that “Faune made its...relentless demands on an audience unprepared for so compact an onslaught on traditional “classicism”...But even beyond ancient perversity lay its impolite sexual candor, unveiled by ambiguity.” (Kirstein, 1975, 125). Based on a text of Mallarme’s, the ballet included a scene where Nijinsky feigned masturbation.
But his impact on dancing in the twentieth century should not be underestimated. In many ways, he heralded the modernist era in dance with his choreography. His peerless command of the complexities of human movement resulted in a capacity to take ballet in new and unexpected directions.
Nijinsky was concerned, at various times in his life, with philosophical pre-occupations, and as we have mentioned, may be thought of as in some respects a philosophical thinker, one broadly considered. His diaries, as we will come to see, mention philosophers and philosophical concerns quite regularly. In a similar way to the manner in which the writings of Dr Daniel Schreber were to become of such interest to psycho-analysts such as Freud and Lacan, Nijinsky provides a wealth of interesting material for philosophers. Ostwald observes that; “Lincoln Kristein, with his profound understanding of the history and practice of ballet, describes Nijinsky as ‘an artist and a naive philosopher...’.” (Ostwald, 1991, 62). We will see that he was far from a naive philosopher – but rather a philosophical thinker that had unfortunately succumbed to the schizophrenic mode of consciousness. There were many times in his life when he would turn to philosophy. As we will come to see, he read Nietzsche, and was aware of Schopenhauer’s work, and mentions both in his diaries. He also analysed the notions of reason and thinking in his diaries, indeed in a very philosophical way. Ostwald describes this interest, relating how Nijinsky and his wife cultivated an appreciation of philosophy. He says: “During the winter of 1914, Nijinsky...spent a considerable amount of time with his wife, and they probably became really well acquainted for the first time since their marriage the year before, going for long walks and developing an interest in literature and philosophy.” (Ostwald, 1991, 128). In particular it was the philosophical tenets of Tolstoy’s work that interested Nijinsky. He often thought - just as Wittgenstein was to consider – that he would leave his life of fame and become a peasant labourer in Russia. Two of Nijinsky’s companions were very encouraging of these thoughts. Ostwald describes their activity on one particular tour. He writes of Nijinsky that “he seemed to prefer the company of...two Russians....Kostrovsky and Zverev were now constantly visiting his train compartment....They spoke Russian all the time, delving into a ‘very abstract philosophy...’.” (Ostwald, 1991, 148). Even Diaghilev himself was known to discuss philosophy, amongst the other arts. Vera Krasovskaya writes of how Diaghilev, along with his servants, would extensively discuss such topics as philosophy. Krasovskaya makes reference to Diaghilev’s nanny – “In her simple dress and dark headscarf, she would sit by the hours as they argued about painting, music, philosophy, and literature [italics mine].” (Krasovskaya, 1979, 100). Not only was Nijinsky interested in philosophy, but it surrounded him through the people he knew. So we see that Nijinsky always had philosophical tendencies, both self-motivated and perhaps inspired by others who surrounded him. These tendencies were to follow him to the precipice of the schizophrenic consciousness, as we will come to see when we examine his diaries.
When Nijinsky hurriedly married on tour of South America, Diaghilev was beset with a pronounced jealousy. Diaghilev and Nijinsky had been living together in a romantic relationship. The news of Nijinsky’s wedding was enough to throw Diaghilev into a rage – the result of which was the firing of Nijinsky from the troupe. Nijinsky, not having thought through the consequences of his impetuous action, was now without work. He attempted to form his own dance company, but the stress of both being lead performer and co-ordinator of a ballet company was too great. Eventually Nijinsky and his wife retired to St. Moritz in Switzerland. Nijinsky was planning to start a school for choreographers upon his return to Russia, and proceeded to plan new ballets. Before any of his plans could take shape, however, Nijinsky started to shows definite signs of the illness that was to plague him for the rest of his life – schizophrenia. Acocella describes Nijinsky’s descent. She writes:
Then around January of 1919, Nijinsky began to fall apart. He began closeting himself in his studio all night long, producing drawing after drawing, at furious speed...When he and Romola took walks together, he would stop and fall silent for long periods, refusing to answer her questions. One day he went down to St. Moritz with a large gold cross over his necktie and stopped people on the street, telling them to go to church. (Nijinsky, 1999, xix – xx).
Nijinsky was coming to show some of the early signs of a schizophrenic mode of consciousness. Some posit the stress of Nijinsky’s dismissal from the Ballet Russes as the cause of his developing illness, although there were already signs of pathology on his recent tour of South America. Beaumont observes that on this tour, there was a point where Nijinsky “became seized with hostile suspicions that mysterious persons were hostile to him. This delusion developed into a form of persecution mania which attained to such proportions that he engaged a detective to guard him and to search the stage for possible hidden traps”. (Beaumont, 1974, 21). Antole Bourman gives a direct personal reflection on this time. Bourman was a friend of Nijinsky and travelling with him in South America. He was to later write, “The delusion showed itself repeatedly during our four weeks at Buenos Aires. It became habitual for Vaslav to hunt me out, and after glancing about fearfully, half whisper, ‘Tola, they will kill me here! Watch and you will see that this time, at least, I am speaking the truth. I know I am going to die. They will kill me!’” (Bourman, 1970, 267). Bourman was to make investigations amongst the troupe travelling with Nijinsky into any threat, even inquiring into the possibility of Nijinsky having received any form of threatening letters – but there were none. Nijinsky, before his dismissal from the troupe by Diaghilev, was teetering on the edge of a common symptom of a schizophrenic mode of consciousness. In paranoid forms of schizophrenia, sufferers attest with great conviction that persons of malicious intent are bent on causing personal injury to them. The DSM-IV states that in cases of schizophrenia where delusions occur, “[p]ersecutory delusions are most common; the person believes he or she is being tormented, followed, tricked, spied on, or ridiculed” (DSM-IV, 2000, p. 299). Nijinsky, during this time in South America, seems to neatly fit into this category of pathology.
After returning from South America, and being subsequently dismissed from the Ballet Russes, Nijinsky was to give one last performance before his final break with reality. At a chalet in the mountains near St. Moritz, Nijinsky assembled a small group of friends and interested admirers to a recital. What followed was, to our modern sensibilities, perhaps a piece of extreme modernist experimentalism. For the onlookers of the time, the disturbing scene was confirmation that something wasn’t right with Nijinsky. Krasovskaya writes, “But the attraction toward insanity was more powerful than his love of people or love of art. And, as he prepared himself for his last performance, Nijinsky ceased to resist.” (Krasovskaya, 1979, 340). As the performance began, Nijinsky sat on a chair in the middle of the performance space and looked at the audience for roughly half an hour. After some prompting, Nijinsky began dancing in a violent jerky manner. He then verbally blamed the audience members for ‘causing’ the First World War. Nijinsky had finally succumbed to the madness that was always at the periphery of his genius. Acocella gives a poetic summation of Nijinsky’s condition. She writes:
Nijinsky was almost thirty years old when he was diagnosed as schizophrenic. He lived for thirty years more, during which time his reputation grew. The myth that had collected around him as a dancer – that he was a flame, a vision, a messenger from beyond – seemed merely confirmed by the news of his illness. It was as if the beyond had reclaimed him....He became a symbol for that part of us that, in fantasy, takes off for the high hills, as opposed to that part that stays home. Nijinsky had always been famous for his jump. As witnesses describe it, he would rise and then pause in the air before coming down. Now, it seemed, he had declined to come down. (Nijinsky, 1999, xlii).
Accounts at the time back the general sentiment of Acocella’s remarks. Bourman, who as we have mentioned was a close friend of Nijinsky’s, wrote of the situation which Nijinsky’s condition had created. He says:
A little more than a year after I saw Nijinsky for the last time, harrowing news flew around the world. Brief, terse and cruel, the headlines stared from a London paper – ‘Nijinsky is Insane’ – and Diaghilev read them as he made his way unsteadily to the Empire Theatre. He came onto the stage with his eyes full of tears. His voice broke when he called us together and announced, ‘Boys and girls, Nijinsky is mad. He is insane. This is not publicity. It is, alas, the truth!’” (Bourman, 1970, 275).
Romola was of course concerned to try to find some effective treatment for Nijinsky’s condition. She sought the advice of a Dr Grieber. Grieber observed Nijinsky’s case, and finally recommended that he been seen by Professor Eugen Bleuler. Bleuler is an important name in the history of schizophrenia. It was Bleuler who coined the term schizophrenia, and did much pioneering work in categorising the condition. Bleuler agreed to see Nijinsky, and Nijinsky and his wife set off to Zurich to meet him. Bleuler firstly met with Romola without Nijinsky being present. He heard her report, and then reassured her that Nijinsky might not be suffering from the condition that others had feared. But upon meeting Nijinsky himself, Bleuler changed his opinion. He wrote of Nijinsky after their meeting that:
I was consulted on Thursday. The man came up with a few difficulties, showed fear of being declared mentally ill and answered my questions for the most part with a flood of words behind which there wasn’t much substance....He guarded himself against giving information about any delusions. Intelligence evidently very good in the past, now he is a confused schizophrenic with mild manic excitement. (Quoted from Ostwald, 1991, 196).
Dysfunctionality in language using capacities, particularly those described by Bleuler, are distinctive of the schizophrenic mode of consciousness. In the phenomenon of the word-salad, schizophrenics string together long trains of words that may bear only very tenuous associations with their context.
Bleuler recommended that Nijinsky be sent to Kuranstalt Bellevue near the Swiss-German Border. It was a sanatorium run by a Dr Ludwig Binswanger. Binswanger is a significant person in the history of philosophy. Binswanger, while a psychiatrist, was considered by many to be more of philosopher. He did some notable work using Heidegger’s ideas to understand mental illness. His collection of essays ‘Being-in-the-World’ employs philosophical concepts to explore how we understand human psychology and its dysfunctions. Ostwald writes of Binswanger that he “brought to Bellevue an unprecedented humanistic and philosophical attitude.” (Ostwald, 1991, 210). He had been trained by Jung, and was a lifelong friend of Freud’s. He ran Bellevue influenced by the philosophical ideas that he worked on in his studies into German philosophy. He had a particular sympathy for his famous patient, which is not surprising given Nijinsky’s own philosophical interests. Ostwald writes, in regard to Binswanger’s philosophical inclinations, that, “Binswanger, a philosopher at heart, always insisted that psychoanalysis is a hermeneutic enterprise, one of many ways to find meaning through an interpretation of symbols. Binswanger was strongly influenced by the phenomenologists Edmund Husserl and...Martin Heidegger.” (Ostwald, 1991, 211). Nijinsky was to spend long periods at Bellevue, during which he was granted relatively high levels of freedom and privileges, considering the sorts of treatments that schizophrenics were receiving at other institutions at the time. He was allowed to give a performance to the inmates, and was encouraged to take walks in the expansive grounds of the sanatorium. But despite the freedom, Nijinsky was unable to emerge from his condition. Krasovskaya writes, “Slowly but surely, Nijinsky lost contact with reality and immersed himself in his own fantastic world. The forms of reality grew turbid and were enveloped by darkness.” (Krasovskaya, 1979, 344). For the remaining years of his life, he would come and go from different institutions, only narrowly escaping the Nazi extermination of mentally ill patients during the Second World War. He was never to dance again, except during the last moments of his life, when, before he died, he reputedly made some movements that resembled the sorts of dancing he did when his fame was at its peak.
Let us now turn to Nijinsky’s diaries. As Nijinsky was succumbing to a schizophrenic mode of consciousness, he decided to keep a journal. It was a journal he had always intended to publish, and so was aware of its importance as literary document, although not perhaps for the reasons he thought at the time. And indeed it has turned out to be a very important literary document. As Acocella points out: “it is the only sustained, on-the-spot (not retrospective) written account, by a major artist, of the experience of entering psychosis. Other important artists have gone mad – Hoderlin, Schumann, Nietzsche, Van Gough, Artaud – but none of them left us a record like this.” (Nijinsky, 1999, vii). In the diary, Nijinsky gives full voice to the schizophrenic condition. It has all the characteristics of the schizophrenic mind – there are pre-occupations with death, florid language, nonsensical trains of thought and bizarre associations. It is not usual for a schizophrenic to have the motivation to engage in a sustained literary work. Schizophrenics suffer from a condition known as avolition, as we have mentioned, in which their motivation is eroded to the point of nullity. It is testament to the debilitating power of this aspect of schizophrenia that there are so few who have suffered from this mode of consciousness who have left their mark on the literary and philosophical landscape. Antonin Artaud is a writer who was able to overcome this aspect of schizophrenia to produce something of note. But others have usually achieved their success before the onset of the florid aspects of the condition, and have produced little after it has ravaged their lives. Nijinsky fits mainly into this category. He was in the initial stages of his condition when he decided to write his journal, and most of his achievements occurred before the condition was to present itself. The diaries were fortunately produced when Nijinsky could still marshal his volitional capacities into action. This is not to say that the diaries were outside the pure schizophrenic consciousness. As Acocella writes, “[a] final point that the diary makes clear is that Nijinsky was indeed suffering from what is called schizophrenia.” (Nijinsky, 1999, xxxv). She goes onto describe just how the diaries demonstrate the full gamut of the schizophrenic condition. She says:
Most striking [about the diaries] are the delusions. Almost all the varieties of delusion discussed in DSM-IV as indicative of schizophrenia are present in the diary: delusions of grandeur, of persecution, of control (one’s actions are being manipulated by an outside force), of reference (environmental events are directed specifically at oneself). Nijinsky also seemed to have somatic delusions: he believes that the blood is draining away from his head, that his hairs in his nose are moving around. He may be hallucinating too. Twice he feels that someone is in his studio, staring at him behind his back. (Nijinsky, 1999, xxxvi).
Let us now look at the diaries of Nijinsky in a little more depth.
The first point to note in a study such as this, is Nijinsky’s attitude toward scholars. He wasn’t enamoured by the scholarly process, and as a result probably would have been dismissive of an endeavour such as the one we are concerned with here. He says in the diaries: “Scholars will ponder over me, and they will rack their brains needlessly, because thinking will produce no results for them. They are stupid. They are beasts. They are meat. They are death.” (Nijinsky, 1999, 24). Strong words indeed, but we shan’t be deterred. Nijinsky’s document is so rich, and such a catalogue of what schizophrenic consciousness is, it would be remiss to leave his work unscrutinised because of his loathing of academics and their work.
More importantly for this study, the diaries also have a strong philosophical content. Nijinsky mentions Nietzsche and Schopenhauer. Nietzsche in particular is an important figure when we come to analyse the diaries, as we shall see. Not only did Nietzsche go mad near where Nijinsky succumbed to the condition, and close to the same time, but Nijinsky also keenly read Nietzsche’s work. In addition to these considerations, Nijinsky in his diaries calls himself a philosopher, and is concerned with thinking and rationality (ironically enough). He was also interested in Tolstoy, and in particular the more philosophical aspects of Tolstoy’s work. To this extent we must agree with Kirstein quoted by Ostwald above; Nijinsky is in some respects a philosophically influenced thinker. He is not an academic philosopher, nor even a Socratic type philosopher who poses philosophical questions to his peers. He is rather a thinker who had definite and strong philosophical inclinations that resulted in the reading of philosophical texts, the letting of philosophical ideas influence his work, and the writing about philosophy and its implications. By the time Nijinsky came to write about philosophy he had began to experience the schizophrenic mode of consciousness – so his thoughts on these matter are not as coherent as they would otherwise have been had he been well. Who knows what sort of philosophical insights Nijinsky may have written about had he been free of schizophrenia?
In the diaries Nijinsky writes: “I do not like Shakespeare’s Hamlet, because he thinks. I am an unthinking philosopher. I am a philosopher with feeling.” (Nijinsky, 1999, 52). This article concurs with Nijinsky here, as mentioned above – he was indeed a philosopher, one considered broadly. But what is an unthinking philosopher? Nijinsky is being very oblique here. Is an unthinking philosopher someone akin to a sportsman who, in acting, does not think? Is Nijinsky a thinker who does not think? An intriguing situation to be as a philosopher. Again we see an example of how schizophrenic consciousness can manifest itself.
We come now to another philosophical element of the diaries. Here, Nijinsky mentions both Nietzsche and Schopenhauer - philosophers that are recurrent in his ruminations. As has been mentioned, Nijinsky had read both these philosophers, and was concerned with tenets of their respective works. Schopenhauer is particularly interesting in relation to Nijinsky. Schopenhauerean pessimism seems particularly pertinent to the case of Nijinsky. Schopenhauer thought that all life was suffering, and we see such poignant suffering in the life and writing of Nijinsky. In his short work, ‘On the Suffering of the World’, Schopenhauer reflects that, considering the extent of suffering on the earth, it would have been better that Sun could have produced as much life on this planet as on the moon. (Schopenhauer, 1970, 47). It is a sentiment that Nijinsky, at the end of a long life of suffering at the hands of the schizophrenic condition, might have empathised with. Nijinsky initially explores Schopenhauer and Nietzsche through the concept of reason – an interesting concept to be explored by one who has lost his reason. For the philosopher, reason is important in structuring intelligible discourse. If anyone is to know what reason is, it is the philosopher. Nijinsky attempts to draw from this knowledge base. He claims he is the “philosophy of reason”. In this Nijinsky is attempting to distance himself from the unreason that now dominates his life. Nijinsky writes:
I am reason, and not intelligence. I am God, for I am reason. Tolstoy speaks a lot about reason. Schopenhauer also writes about reason. I too write about reason. I am the philosophy of reason. I am the true, not invented philosophy. Nietzsche went mad because he realized at the end of his life that everything he had written was nonsense. He became frightened of people and went mad. (Nijinsky, 1999, 225).
Nijinsky is pre-occupied in the diaries with madness and going mad, and here he hypothesises two reasons for Nietzsche’s madness. Firstly, for Nijinsky, Nietzsche goes mad because of a realisation that his work is meaningless – perhaps a doubt Nijinsky was himself suffering from. The second reason he gives for Nietzsche’s madness is worthy of note – that he goes mad because he is frightened of other people. Nijinsky touches on an interesting aspect of madness – the turning away from the companionship of others. Perhaps Nijinsky, having become aware of his own turning away from other people, posits this as a cause of Nietzsche’s madness, when in fact in might have been a factor in his own condition. Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari specifically mention Nijinsky in this context in their work Anti-Oedipus. They say that not only does the schizophrenic withdraw, but also other elements are at play. In their very poetic manner they write:
But at the other pole, the schizophrenic escape itself does not merely consist in withdrawing from the social, in living on the fringe: it causes the social to take flight though the multiplicity of holes that eat away at it and penetrate it....For what is the schizo, if not first of all the one who can no longer bear “all that”: money, the stock market, the death forces, Nijinsky said – values morals homeland religions and private certitudes? (Deleuze and Guattari, 1983, 341).
For Deleuze and Guattari someone suffering through a schizophrenic mode of consciousness is someone who must retreat in the “face of it all”. Nijinsky was one indeed who had encountered enough suffering, suffering in some cases that stemmed directly from his success, to withdraw his social impetus into the confines of schizophrenia. The schizophrenic mode of consciousness, as Deleuze and Guattari rightly point out, causes the social to very much take flight. Nijinsky would no doubt have recognised this, and hence his reflections on Nietzsche and his withdrawal form the sphere of social interaction.
As we saw at the beginning of this paper, Nietzsche’s insanity occurred quite near the location where Nijinsky was to go mad, as well as being temporally close – he had entered into madness not long after Nietzsche. Acocella writes: “Prior to his mental breakdown in 1889, Nietzsche spent the summers of 1883-88 in Sils Maria, a village near St Moritz. Thus he, like Nijinsky, went mad in the Engadine”. (Nijinsky, 1999, 17). Nijinsky obviously saw parallels with his life and that of Nietzsche’s – people were beginning to talk of the dancer as mad. Perhaps in Nietzsche, Nijinsky finds a kindred spirit; one he can explore madness through without having to admit his own illness. We will explore Nietzsche’s relation to Nijinsky in a little more detail shortly.
Nijinsky continues with his exploration of Schopenhauer. He professes to want to be a thinker, but assures us he is not Schopenhauer. Nijinsky writes: “I know that if I publish these books, everyone will say that I am a bad writer. I do not want to be a writer. I want to be a thinker. I think and write. I am not a scribbler, I am a thinker. I am not Schopenhauer. I am Nijinsky.” (Nijinsky, 1999, 152). Nijinsky is, here, being very philosophical, despite distancing himself from Schopenhauer. He claims to be a thinker. The schizophrenic consciousness can produce thoughts, as Nijinsky has, that may closely resemble the sorts of thinking found in some philosophical works. Martin Heidegger was very prone to the use of neologism, as was Immanuel Kant – a tendency we find in the schizophrenic consciousness, indeed in many parts of Nijinsky’s dairies. The schizophrenic consciousness may conjecture overarching theories that attempt to explain reality, as do many philosophers. Schizophrenic thinking and philosophical thinking are strongly related, and Nijinsky has in his diaries been true to this. In his article ‘On the Pathology of the Reflective Attitude’, Paul S. MacDonald discusses the manner in which certain philosophers show similar tendencies of thought to those found in certain forms of pathology. (MacDonald, 1997). He analyses philosophers such as Descartes, Berkeley, Husserl, Derrida and Wittgenstein, showing how their thought may in some respects be akin to the pathological.
Coming back to Nietzsche, not only was Nietzsche spatially and temporally close to Nijinsky, but Nijinsky had also read Nietzsche’s work. Buckle relates how in the winter of 1918, before Nijinsky developed his psychosis, he had read Ecce Homo. (Buckle, 1971, 400). Nijinsky gives a strange and compelling exploration of Nietzsche in his diaries. Firstly, he continually writes of Nietzsche in association with Darwin. Nijinsky says:
I will speak of Nietzsche and Darwin because they thought. Darwin, like Nietzsche, was descended from apes. They imitate those that they themselves have invented. They think they have discovered America. By discovering America I mean that a person says something that has already been said. (Nijinsky, 1999, 23-24).
One might assume from this that Nijinsky does not like Nietzsche. He is here dismissive of Nietzsche’s work, implying that it is merely derivative. For all Nietzsche’s flaws as a philosopher, probably to be called derivative is the least likely criticism one might level at him. Nijinsky goes on to say, against Nietzsche, that “God does not like Darwin’s and Nietzsche’s philosophies”(Nijinsky, 1999, 40). This is quite a criticism in terms of Nijinsky’s thinking - in particular because Nijinsky has a close affinity to his idea of God.
But at other points, Nijinsky warms to Nietzsche. He says: “It was not Nietzsche but Darwin who said that man is descended from the ape. I asked my wife in the morning because I felt sorry for Nietzsche. I like Nietzsche. He will not understand me because he thinks.” (Nijinsky, 1999, 17). I think the reason Nijinsky at times is affectionate towards Nietzsche is that, on some level, he empathises with his plight – a plight that is obviously akin to Nijinsky’s. However, Nijinsky himself is quick to distance himself from Nietzsche on this point – a very schizophrenic thing to do. He writes: “People think that I will go mad, because they think that I will lose my head. Nietzsche lost his head because he thought. I do not think and therefore will not lose my head.” (Nijinsky, 1999, 24). Again we have Nijinsky’s pre-occupation with not thinking. Schizophrenics can experience a phenomenon known as ‘thought blocking’, a situation in which thoughts are literally blocked in their mind and derailed. They can also experience the condition of ‘thought withdrawal’, where thoughts are experienced as being taken out of their mind in some way. Perhaps Nijinsky, in claiming to be the unthinking philosopher, was experiencing these sorts of phenomena.
It is not only philosophy that Nijinsky was interested in, but also literature. Literature and philosophy are closely related in the mind of Nijinsky. Nijinsky reflects on philosophical concerns through his literary readings. Acocella writes of Nijinsky’s interest in literature, saying: “But as the diary makes clear, Nijinsky had read widely in Russian literature – Puskin, Gogol, Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky, Merezhkovsky, and he thought about what he read, applied it to his own life and work.” (Nijinsky, 1999, xxxiii). In particular it was Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky that interested Nijinsky. As we mentioned, Nijinsky was interested in the more philosophical aspects of Tolstoy’s work. Nijinsky claims to know what reason is, because he has studied the topic through Tolstoy. Through this understanding, he distances himself from the madness that is enveloping him:
I know many people will say that a man without intellect is mad or a fool. A madman is not a reasonable being. A madman is a man who does not understand his own actions. I understand my own bad and good actions. I am a man with reason. In Tolstoy’s book “For Every Day,” a lot is said about reason. I have read this book a lot, and therefore I know what reason is. (Nijinsky, 1999, 55).
It is of interest that one stricken with such lack of reason should claim with such certainty that they know what reason is. In this excerpt, Nijinsky is attempting to convince himself, and those who will read the journal in the future, that he is not ill. This is a classic symptom of schizophrenic consciousness known as ‘anosognosia’. Schizophrenics will strongly deny they are insane, going so far as to stop taking medications, and attempting escape from the various forms of care they have been placed in. Nijinsky repeatedly attempted escape from the institutions he was confined to, and also attempted to frustrate the attempts at care from the various nurses and family members that attended to him. It is not often, however, that such a staunch denial of a loss of reason is given literary grounding, as we saw above. This is another instance of the originality and importance of Nijinsky’s diary.
Nijinsky was the greatest dancer of the twentieth century. His dramatic flight into schizophrenic consciousness, and the diary that resulted, are an excellent compendium of the condition. At the end of his life, after having astounded the world with his amazing leap, his unparalleled command of the human body and its movements, and his deep capacity for mimicry, Nijinsky was to remain a broken man. He could no longer converse intelligibly for any length of time with those around him. He lived in state cut off from the world - delusion dominated his existence. He was cared for by his wife, and could not attend to his own daily needs. He had existed in and out of mental health institutions for all of 30 years. He was what is now known as refractory schizophrenic – unable to be palliated. It was in this state that Nijinsky was interviewed near the end of his life. Milton Shulman, a newspaper reporter who interviewed Nijinsky in these later years, wrote:
His round face with the high, balding forehead and cheeks puckered in a fixed, querulous smile gives him the air of a benevolent, elderly, quizzical doll. His bright, brown eyes dance into and away from you, while his fingers rapidly open and close in a series of nervous, spasmodic movements. His voice seldom rises above a mutter and rarely says more that “Oui” or “Non”. But even age and the prosaic, uneasily-fitting sports jacket and grey flannels, have failed to hide the essential grace and litheness of the short slim body of...the greatest dancer the world has seen. (Quoted from Ostwald, 1991, 332).
Nijinsky, by the time he was 30, had descended into the schizophrenic mode of consciousness. It is a mode of consciousness that was to result in him losing all that which was most dear to him. In it, and indeed before it, Nijinsky was to concern himself with philosophy and its implications. There is, as we have touched upon, indeed a link between philosophy and madness. We have here examined Nijinsky, his life and writing, and have seen it to be a fertile bed of philosophical work. Nijinsky was indeed a philosophical thinker, although one who had – in the end – succumbed to schizophrenia. It is the hope of this article that more philosophical work can be done into understanding Nijinsky, and in particular his diaries. Philosophy is well equipped to understand such pathologies as the schizophrenic mode of consciousness, and further inquiry in this regard will no doubt bear much fruit.
REFERENCES
Beaumont, Cyril W., 1974, Vaslav Nijinsky, New York: Haskell House Publishers.
Bourman, Anatole, 1970, The Tragedy of Nijinsky, Connecticut, Greenwood Press.
Buckle, Richard, 1971, Nijinsky, London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson.
Deleuze, Gilles & Guattari, Felix, 1983, Anti-Oedipus, London: Continuum
DSM-IV (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fourth Edition), 2000, Ed. Michael B. First, Arlington, American Psychiatric Association.
Kirstein, Lincoln, 1975, Nijinsky Dancing, London: Thames and Hudson.
Krasovskaya, Vera, 1979, Nijinsky, Trans. John E. Bowlt, New York: Schirmer Books
MacDonald, Paul S., 1997, ‘On the Pathology of the Reflective Attitude’, Philosophical Writings 6, 3-20.
Nijinsky, Romola, 1980, Nijinsky and The Last Years of Nijinsky, London: Victor Gollancz Ltd.
Nijinsky, Vaslav, 1999, The Diaries of Vaslav Nijinsky, Ed. Joan Acocella, Trans. Kyril Fitzlyon, Chicago: University of Illinois Press.
Ostwald, Peter, 1991,Vaslav Nijinsky: A Leap into Madness, New York: Carol Publishing Group.
Schopenhauer, Arthur, 1970, Essays and Aphorisms, Trans. R. J. Hollingdale, London: Penguin.