{"Tatiana held to the convictions of ancient lore, believed in dreams"... In front of a mirror (detail), oil on wood (1827) by Georg Friedrich Kersting}
Before her Eugene stood, eyes blazing,
Like some forbidding phantom gazing,
And she, as if by fire seared,
Stayed rooted to the spot and feared.
Stand before an orange abstract painting, and smell the ripe flesh of a mandarin. Hear a word, see a colour. Two things linked. Together. Perception. A joined sensation. (Think Nabokov as a toddler finding the coloured letters on his toy wooden blocks to be “all wrong”. And Vasilly Kandinsky’s musical terms to describe his paintings, calling them "compositions" and "improvisations”. His invitation to "lend your ears to music, open your eyes to painting, and ... stop thinking! Just ask yourself whether the work has enabled you to 'walk about' into a hitherto unknown world. If the answer is yes, what more do you want?") Synaesthesia. My own taste of it. John Cranko’s Onegin, as seen two nights previous performed by The Australian Ballet, is like that for me.
I can hear the crunch of snow underfoot in the music of Tchaikovsky (in an arrangement by Kurt-Heinz Stolze) that forms complete for me this ballet of Pushkin’s novel in verse, and it is for this reason a favourite (one of many) of mine. The light that drapes the sky, scenes lit by “stars and lantern light”, and the “clink of spurs” resounding as Prince Gremin approaches and our anti-hero’s heart is “ungovernably caught” as Tatiana, no longer bewitched by his devil's charm, leaves him to his desolation. “Thunder struck”, “happiness so near”, dreams believed and "predictions discernible in moonlight beams", the “glitter, noise and smoke” of the high society masquerade: it’s all in there.
Now the mazurka has resounded.
Once, when you heard the thunder peal,
A giant ballroom shook and pounded,
The parquet cracking under heel.
The very window-frames vibrated;
Today, like ladies, understated,
We glide across the lacquered boards;
but in small towns and country wards
there the mazurka thrives, retaining
Its pristine charms; the leap and dash,
The play of heel, and the moustache;
these have not changed at all, remaining
Immune to wanton fashion’s sway,
The Russian sickness of today.
{"He laid inert; uncanny seeming"... Duel between Onegin and Lenski (detail), oil on canvas (1901) by Ilya Repin}
A duel, a “mincing tomcat sitting, purring, upon the stove”, hissing samovars on tables gleaming, and wings that give shelter. There are so many delights to come across in the lines, and to hear in the music that now tells this familiar tale of love unrequited and love lost. And in the ballet too, with the beautifully theatrical nature of the choreography with its wonderful contrast between what unfolds outside in plain view and that which is inward, within the body, longings, desires, remorse tangled aches. “None but the lonely heart” as told through movements that can and do belong to any time, then and now, and, presumably, to come. These easily decipherable expressions tell of a man of no fixed station and no rank condemned to an endless wandering. Oh! The way Onegin forms a ring around Tatiana’s body, encircling her, in their final scene together, this gesture and others tell to me the tale that “there is no greater sorrow than to recall times of happiness in misery” (Dante Alighieri).
Thank-you for bringing all this to the stage on Tuesday evening. You needn't doubt I loved every minute of it. Where both novel and ballet end leaves me to guess at what lies in wait, what fate for Tatiana and Onegin.
But even while his eyes were reading,
His thoughts were far away, as old
Desires, dreams, sorrows kept invading
And crowding deep inside his soul.
+ Onegin | Behind Ballet
+ The Australian Ballet perform Onegin in Melbourne at the State Theatre until the 4th of July
+ Louise heads off to see Onegin
+ John Cranko's Onegin was first performed by the Stuttgart Ballet in 1965 at the Württemburg State Theatre
+ Seen previously
(Save Kandinsky and Dante, all quotes above have been pulled from my dog-eared Penguin Classics edition of Alexander Pushkin's Eugene Onegin.)
