Tolstoy deplored the ballet; he opined
All those re-jiggings of old fairy-tales
Danced by lithe girls and pseudo-virile males
To soothing music drugged the Slavic mind;
He favoured large and life-like fantasies
With central figures like himself intent
On finding what if anything life meant;
'How truthful,' readers murmured, 'it all is.'
The truth seemed in the questions, not the answers
In his digressions, which impressed them less;
His mystic wisdom they could do without.
Meanwhile Tchaikovsky and Petipa's dancers
Combined in wordless fashion to express —
To express what? Truth of some kind, no doubt. |
