One Degree of Separation – Tamara Nijinsky, An Interview
I just came across a rather interesting telephone interview
conducted for the Los Angeles Times on 3rd
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.
