Page:The Art of Nijinsky.djvu/127

THE NEW PHASE questions, artistic and otherwise, that it might well form the subject of a whole book. It demands to be treated as carefully from the standpoint of archæology as of art, and even the theologian might find a good deal to say about it from his own particular point of view.

At a first visit it appeared to be not much more than an exhibition of antic savagery, a marshalling of broad splashes of colour, a monotonous variation on the theme of centric and eccentric circularities. But over all, in spite of much that seemed absurd, one felt the presence of a guiding intelligence, ordering all things to an end that was not yet clear, but, even in obscurity, beautiful. On a second visit, however, when one could forget to be amused, the whole spectacle gathered to itself a coherence and significance which proved its purely visual charm to be, in 89