In the foreground of the picture, cut off by the frame at knee-length, a colossal archaic Cypris rises. The hair of the idol is draped about its head in fluted curls; the large eyes with their distended pupils have a magic fixedness; a ferocious grin plays about the corners of the lips. The goddess carries a blue dove in the palm of her hand. Powerfully modeled, she turns her back to the picture, to the fury of the elements, to the panic distress of men. Impassive, implacable she turns away from this world which is tumbling. Behind the statue the eye [Illustration: A BLIND ALLEY IN FIESOLE. DRAWING] beholds a landscape, an archipelago seen from a high elevation, and displayed like a map in relief; cliffs submerged by the rising waves; diminutive humanity seeking refuge under the porticos of the temples and attempting to escape the inevitable; an enormous stroke of lighting rending the air. It is the twilight of the gods, the last judgment of the Greek world, the end of Atlantis. With its mysterious mixture of congealed grandeur and mad anguish the panel, when it was exhibited (if I am not mistaken) with the Association of Russian Artists, created something of a sensation. People flocked to the lectures of Viatcheslav Ivanov, the poet=philosopher and author of a treaty on Dionysios and the religion of the gods, who explained this Greek Apocalypse. As for Bakst, this work of his constituted a striking but isolated episode in his life as an artist. Man of the theater that he was, his aim was that of utilizing and transforming <g>space</g> in accordance with his vision; here he transformed a surface, in the sense of material and philosophic depth. THE SPIRAL ROAD Into this period of researches and visions in Greece falls many an episode that is entirely different but no less significant. Since 1903 Bakst had been using the ballet of the “Dolls’ Fairy” on the imperial stage. It furnished the prototype of those romantic productions, of those entertainments for children which are colorless reflections of Hoffmann’s Coppelius or of Andersen’s tales and in which one sees toys awakened to an artificial and mechanical life by a magic wand--entertainments, furthermore, which have become vapid by their being produced on innumerable German stages. Also, he rendered homage thereby to that “old Petrograd” that was dear to the members of “Mir Iskousstva”.