No Speed Bumps

One Degree of Separation – Tamara Nijinsky, An Interview

I just came across a rather interesting telephone interview conducted for the Los Angeles Times on 3^rd November 1994.

It is an interview was with Tamara Nijinsky, the second daughter of famed Russian Ballets Russes dancer Vaslav Nijinsky.

Nijinsky in 'Le Dieu Bleu' (1912)

In the interview, Tamara speaks about her father’s life after being dismissed from the Ballets Russes by its impresario, and his lover, Serge de Diaghilev, for marrying her mother, Romola de Pulszky. She speaks about the dancer’s later mental condition and particularly Peter Ostwald's ‘Vaslav Nijinsky: A Leap into Madness’ (Carol Publishing Group, 1991).

Nijinsky - Nude Sketch

Born on June 19, 1914 one year after her father was diagnosed as schizophrenia, Tamara Nijinsky never saw her father dance.

Romola Nijinsky with Kyra (left, first daughter) and Tamara (right, second daughter)

She at first lived in Paris with her parents, but then, with the family’s financial difficulties, she was sent on her twelfth birthday to live with her maternal grandmother in Budapest. She attended drama school in the Hungarian capital and became a puppeteer, moving later to the US with her husband Szakas Miklos and daughter, Kinga.

This is a transcript of the interview.

Q: What do you remember from the years you lived with your father?

A: Basically, I remember that he was a very, very quiet person. I just remember him sitting in an armchair by the mantelpiece, although when we were together he seemed to be always smiling like a delighted little boy and he was happy to see me. There was an understanding smile, although we never talked with words.

Q: He literally never spoke to you?

A: No, no, he didn't talk when I was with him. In the later years, he might have said something to my mother, but I didn't understand because it was in Russian (Tamara, whose first language is Hungarian, spoke only a little Russian) or he was so quiet. During World War II (when she lived apart from her father) my fiance and I went to visit him, and he loved sweets. Unfortunately, I inherited that. And we took, I think, three or four pieces of pastry, and he opened up (the parcel) and he practically inhaled them, two or three, he ate them with so much delight.

Q: Do you have a sense of how much dancing meant to him?

A: You and I, we come and go, and we take a breath and we do this and that, and we live this way. But for him, to express himself through dance was like breathing. It was as essential to his life and survival as breathing is to ours. When he got off the stage, he was like a vegetable.

Q: What motivated him to take up visual art?

A: I think he felt he needed to express himself. You know, certain drawings were done at a time when he was not able to dance because of (his internment in Budapest as a Russian during World War I), so he had an extreme need to express himself somehow.

Q: What's your opinion of Peter Ostwald's 1991 book (Carol Publishing Group), "Vaslav Nijinsky: A Leap into Madness"? (Ostwald, a professor of psychiatry at UC San Francisco, was the first to study hospital records and medical archives to analyze Nijinsky's mental state.)

A: It's the best book ever written about my father, first because it is based on medical records, and because Ostwald went (to hospitals) in person and looked into the medical records. And, he wrote the book with so much empathy. I helped him a little bit too.

Q: What did you discover from the book?

A: I am certain if my father was alive today (and had access to contemporary medical care), he could function with some medication and create choreography. Maybe he wouldn't have danced, but he would have choreographed.

Q: How did you cope with the sadness at your father's illness and mental decline?

A: I am convinced that, especially in the beginning of the sickness, he knew . . . that something was happening to him and he was struggling desperately not to become ill, so that's a sadness. But . . . I learned in life that there are things that happen that are beyond me and it doesn't do any good to cry about them. I can't change them.

Q: Some believe that Romola Nijinsky didn't seek the best care possible for your father and believe that she sought to gain financially from his fame. Where do you stand on this?

A: She was a brilliant woman in her own right and you have to give her credit because she watched over Vaslav for 30 years after he became sick. She could have stuck him in a state asylum and said "forget it." People say she lived from the name of Nijinsky, but she supported him in the best circumstances possible. Maybe the means weren't always right, but the goal was. She was so dedicated sincerely to supporting him and after he died she survived 28 years and she traveled, she gave lectures, she made exhibitions (about him). To a certain extent, she kept his name alive.

Hope you found this as engaging as I did.