Volume 53, Number 16 · October 19, 2006
Proust: The Race Against Death
By Graham Robb
Proust at the Majestic: The Last Days of the Author Whose Book Changed Paris
by Richard Davenport-Hines
Bloomsbury, 358 pp., $24.95
Shortly after midnight on May 18, 1922, in a private dining room at the Hôtel Majestic in Paris, a glittering group of writers, artists, musicians, and patrons of the arts gathered to celebrate the first public performance of Stravinsky's burlesque ballet Renard, choreographed by Bronislava Nijinska. The ballet had been performed that evening at the Paris Opéra, to a puzzled but polite audience, by the Ballets Russes of Serge Diaghilev, who also stage-managed the supper party. Nine years had passed since the riotous première of Stravinsky's Le Sacre du printemps. To judge by the reviews of Renard quoted by Richard Davenport-Hines, audiences were now more likely to be intrigued than offended by Modernist experiments. According to the New York Herald's critic, M. Stravinsky 'is going through a process of evolution which, however, is not likely to be followed easily by the public.'
Review, 3740 words
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