Page:The Art of Nijinsky.djvu/28

Rh he will participate in a greatness that is greater even than his own—the supreme greatness of an impersonal work of art. Now, it is a chief glory of the Russian Ballet that it has not only afforded a perfect medium of expression to one of the most outstanding geniuses of the modern stage, but that it has also found in that genius an aptitude for subordination which is among the rarest and finest virtues an artist of the theatre can possess. It is for this reason that our treatment of the art of Nijinsky must needs go further than a consideration of its purely individual aspect. To do less would be unjust to various factors which contribute to the central effect. It would also be unjust to Nijinsky himself, whose method shows such a perfect sense of the action and interaction of elements as complex as they are mutually dependent.