1955-12-17 — Page 20

[POCKET CARTOON

By OSDERT LANCASTER

✩

STUDIO &

SILENCE

"The Governors would be so graceful, Padre, if this Chrismus you could omit all that sensational stuff about the Massacre of the Innocents."

THE CHINA MAIL, SATURDAY, DECEMBER 17, 1955.

The Jealous Impresario

Hired Six Detectives

IN SEARCH OF DIAGHILEV,

By Richard Bucklo. Sidg

wick and Jackson. 30%.

128 pages.

A

FEW years before

GEORGE MALCOLM THOMSON reviews the NEW BOOKS

drawn because something

into

stripped and flung naked the invourite's room.” Massino was dismissed and forbidden The theatre-and-Diaghilev re- tired to bed, where he remained for weeks.

The object of Buckle's quest,

Serge Diaghilev set thousand canvases,

about this the subject of his racy If out to conquer from every province of the man remains enigmatic. Many rambling book was, after all, an

did Europe he organised Empire, hung on the walls, of his old associates not immensely cultivated borbarian, in St Petersburg. in the

Beem to regret him, He had a boyar in a scalsicin collar and At the banquet which been a hypnotist, a magician a monocle. Product of a dying palace where Potemkin had celebrated this achievement, they were relieved that his spell period of history, he was a tear once entertained his mis-

Diaghilev, the young dilet was broken. tress Catherine the Great, n huge exhibition of historic tante, conceited and unpopu- lar, made a speech which Russian

portraits. Three

reached the level of prophetic utterance.

A British Crossword

2

13

18

14

5

12

Puzzle

20

21

19

22

23

126

ACROSS

3 Exhibits (8).

Frightened (6).

9 Hunted for (8).

11 Worlike (8).

12 Accurate (4)

13 Deduce (3).

18 Weeds (5).

19 Dregs (4).

22 Feika lness (8)

24 Solaced (81.

25 Morose (8).

20 Scatter (8)

25

DOWN

Injuries (5).

2 Comic (5),

3 Remote (7).

4 Nution (4).

5 Wine (4).

On land (0).

7 Unexpected (0)

10 Rogo (5)

14 Mortal (5).

15 Remainder (71.

16 Calm (8).

17 Ball game (0).

20 Active (5).

21 Edge (5).

22 Donkey (colloq.) (4).

23 Fewer (4).

YESTERDAY'S CROSSWORD-Across: 3 Particle, 7 Opert, 8 Purients,

10 Rioler, 13 Admiral, 15 Blay, 17 Turoons, 18 Matador. 20 Elan, 21 Rimole,

20 Needed, 27 Extrange. 28 zume, 29 Sanctity Down: Cubes. a Besuny, 12 Titan, 14 3 Paper, 4 Tots. Candle, Fanny, 0 Orator, 1 Ideat, Lauring, 10 Sense. 16 Angle. 10 Melors 19 Tartan. 22 Seedy. 23 Odour, 34 Edges Fl

in a ferocious tradition.

CHILDREN OF THE GAME. By Jean Cocteau. Harwill. 12s. 6d. 179 pages.

A SHOWMAN

Diaghilev, born in a Russian barracka, son of an offleer of the Imperial Guard, was В He told the assembled nobility showman,

with organising that the plotures summed up a geulus and fanatical will-power. TEAN COCTEAU, with quiz- brilliant but dead period:

He became 01 one-man Arts zical expression, mop of well- realise this not only when 1 Council, spending other people's waved sliver haly, and bony, look at the splendid portraite of money to produce works of art vivacious hands is, of 65, one theso ancestors but even more that pleased his own taste, of the French adolescent pools when I observe their moribund which was erratic but adven- who writes his own books. descendants. A period of history turous.

is dying. Wo ourselves shall

us

give birth to a new civilisation (which in turn will sweep

away."

A WANDERER

The now civilisation which

He was born

DIAGNILEY

with a monocit,

COCTEAU

From Cortean

1954

"A poet who writes about in a private world of drugs poetry is as ridiculous as a plant and fantasies. When Paul

treatise A

on horli- wishes

school to impress 0 chum, he invents a project for mass murder by means of poisoned gum, affixed to post- age stamps.

Maisons-rending at He was mean with walters, Latte swhere rich French sports- culture.” rude to hotel servants, disliked by his London tailor, aloof and men breed racehorses. Cocteau's capricious towards his troupe, father was a rich French law- yet capable of becoming the yer. He became known us a poet gayest of good comrades. He at 10; since then has revealed was a stupendous snob: 154 an innote genius for all the

**I do not believo that a country (France) which pro duces 140 cheeses can go down,”

When, at last, yielding to a

#

Dlaghilev had heralded came to agnostic who, when the weathe" tried old lines of publicity, e.g.. childish impulse to "dress up." Paul dies and Elizabeth shoots birth while he was a wanderer was bad during sea voyage, keeping a monkey and a Chinese Cocteau became a member

the

47

on the face of war-rent Europe, insisted that his valet should the impresario of a nomadic fall to his prayers. troupe of dancera which had once been the Imperial Russian In the depths of the 1914-18 Ballel. The birth-pangs he had wor

Diaghilev company. his noble foreseen cut him off from

to

Russin rengh source of Inspiration in the Old to get engagements in France or Russia, He arrived in the West Britain, toured the Spanish pro- ro- as a pioneer; he died in Venice vireial town-one-night stands. as a refugee.

They were in direst poverty. The baby daughter of Lydia Sokolova, Diaghilev's first Eng- lish dancer, must have an opera- tion or she would die.

But he and his ballet had not lived and wandered in vain. His true heir is to be found at Sadler's Wells.

in

In searching for relies of this strange man, Richard Buckle mot many elderly survivors of a glamorous artistic adventure. Ha came upon them in Paris, dusty over-crowded flats; on the Riviera; in London; unexplored territory Holland Park.”

TREASURES

LAST RESERVE

mongy

Sokolova had Dinglilley opened an old loot portmanteau and tipped out

in

north

that of

DE a heap of coins of Every European country. He handed over all the silver. It was bla last reserve. It was enough to pay the surgeon.

of

That was Diaghilev best. And his worst?

nt

his

Some of them, including Picasso, promised to lend their treasures and then did nol; others had kept nothing from the past; George Balanching had only a few pornographie draw- ings done for Diaghilev, which were hardly suitable for Buckle's ригрозе.

But while he sought relics he also gathered memorles-almost enough to make a composite portrait of Diaghilev. "Almost"

VIGNETTES OF LIFE

to servant, getting talten

on

of

The feverish relations between the two young people end when

herself. A climax with the crazy logic of nightmare ends a the the French Academy, the price tale that has the eerie fascina- police station et Toulon (1930) of seats at his Inauguration tion of something which cannot with three friends (respectively reached 15,000 francs the quite be understood.

artist singer.

and film actor) black market. Twelve thousand accused of let use of drugs; Parisians tried to get in.

ned £5. The drug was oplum, on which Cocteau later wrote a book. Six Syrians were arrested at the same time; this appears to have had no connection with French culture.

In 1923, after the death of his great friend Raymond Radiguet, Cocteau went for long walks with Maritain, the dis-

HIS SPEECH

THE ENORMOUS SHADOW. By Robert Harling. Chatto and Windus. 12s. 6. 288 pages.

TRAILING to

model a wholly

Cocteau turned up in a uni- form created for him by Lanvin the couturlor, a sword designed successful thriller (faults: by himself but made by Cortier. 1, non-violence; 2, weak In his speech he warned the suspension) un the Burgess- Academy not to overlook "those Maclean theme, Harling never- tinguished Catholic philosopher, bad characters through whom theless creates for his story a setting of modern Fleet Stroot But the walks did not lead him France

that is diverting and plausible. into the Church,

world."

He knows the strains of newspaper office, the hold- hidden rivalries, Úttle dignitles, simmering intrigues.

ADORED

He wrote novels and ilux- trated them; devised ballets--

for

has astonished

the

In his novel, Children of the Game, Cocteau invents two bad characters of his own.

con-

Children of the Game reached The Blue Train: Death and the Britain as a film (The Strange, of Young Man, but did not dance Ones) in 1952. With trembling He was so madly Jealous Massine, the dancer who was his in them; wrote plays; designed scissors the censors eliminated a

thai

and favourite pupil,

Rothschild's wines; bathroom sequence he hired labels three pairs of detectives

adored by to Was

of fashionable ferred the dubious accolade follow Massine and two girls. hostesses.

an "X" certificate, Even so, Massine was supposed to be in

crilics were repelled by its love with

of them. But

Infatuation "natzeating which?

death."

one

**When

hod he thought he discovered the guilly one he had her fetched at night, doped,

He was often outrageous, but always knew how far he could go too far, vot

with

B

He knows that journalists i fiction, as in life, should be dis- than bad manners, a partiality tinguished by something more

for spirits

waistcoat

and a

marked by cigarette-droppings, He can even draw an editor who might conceivably know a lead

story when he saw one.

All the greater pity, then, that

It tells the story of two rich The Enormous Bhadow, after "Poetry is indispensable, but juvenile delinquents, Elizabeth getting off to a good start, falis to what I cannot say."

and Paul, who dwell together to keep a grip on the truck.

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