Page:The Art of Nijinsky.djvu/125

THE NEW PHASE morning wanted to know what it was all about; while even those who had got so far as to discover that much were almost unanimous in voting the whole concern amusing, perhaps, but really too trivial to be worthy of serious attention.

From one point of view the theme of Jeux certainly is trivial. Expressed in terms of pantomime it might easily have seemed little more than a thing of merely fascinating commonplace, like a scene out of some musical comedy played in dumb show. But here Nijinsky comes in, and raises it all to a higher power of meaning by the sincerity of his purpose and by his use of a convention which so combines a sense of character with an austere impersonality of action, that it can turn a particular piece of fact or fancy into an instance of universal truth. For Jeux is something more than a scene of charming 87