Autograph Letter - "I hope that in attending the rehearsals of my new works, you will have the occasion to discover new perspectives on modern ballet."

Autograph letter composed in the hand of Romola Nijinsky on behalf of Waslaw Nijinsky and signed by Waslaw Nijinsky. 2 pp (recto/verso), dated 30 September, 1916 and addressed to Frederick Herman Martens (1874-1932). On stationary for The Biltmore in New York, translated from the French, in full: "Dear sir, I just now received your letter from the 23rd, and I appreciate your lovely offer to dedicate your book to me. I accept with pleasure, and I hope that in attending the rehearsals of my new works, you will have the occasion to discover new perspectives on modern ballet./ With best remembrances,/ W. Nijinsky".  Signed letters from Nijinsky, are of the utmost rarity. 

Signed by Waslaw Nijinsky himself, the present letter is in the hand of Romola de Pulszky, the Hungarian heiress and dancer in Diaghilev's corps de ballet, who won the affections of Waslaw Nijinsky on the company's 1913 sea voyage to South America, and by the time they landed in Buenos Aires, had convinced him to marry her. Upon receiving the news of the marriage, Diaghilev cabled Nijinsky to inform him that he was dismissed from the company. Severed from his personal and professional ties with the ballet, Nijinsky began his famous struggle with mental illness. Though he rejoined Diaghilev for the world tour from which the present letter was penned, he retired in 1917 when he was diagnosed a paranoid schizophrenic.

"For the first US tour, earlier in 1916, Diaghilev had succeeded in having Nijinsky released from his internment for mental health problems, and though he arrived on that tour later than the rest of the company, he was an enormous sensation on the tour. "When that first American season was over, Otto Kahn, the chairman of the Metropolitan Opera board, engaged the Ballets Russes for a second New York season, to be followed by a cross-country tour (1916-1917), and he unwisely decided that the company should be directed during this period by Nijinsky, not Diaghilev. What followed was probably the most chaotic and demoralized tour the Ballet Russes ever undertook. A four-month journey, stopping in fifty-two cities, with over a hundred dancers and musicians: it was a huge administrative assignment, and Nijinsky had no administrative skills....After this dreadful tour, on which the Metropolitan Opera lost a quarter of a million dollars, Nijinsky performed with the Ballets Russes for a few months more, in Spain and South America, in 1917." (Joan Acocella, "Secrets of Nijinsky." NY Rev. of Books, Vol. 46, 1999). (18438)

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Autograph Letter

Signed Document/Item

Dance

$4,500.00

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