Nijinsky makes us understand that a gesture is, as Blake said of a tear, an intellectual thing. His gestures, by which I do not mean the technical steps, are different in manner and in spirit from those of the traditional Italian school. With the conventional gestures of the academies, which mimic such attitudes as men are supposed naturally to adopt when they perform certain actions or experience certain emotions, he will have nothing to do. Nijinsky’s gestures mimic nothing. They are not the result of a double translation of idea into words, and words into dumb show. They are the mood itself. His limbs possess a faculty of speech. Wit is expressed in his Arlequin dance as lucidly as in an epigram. In _Le Spectre de la Rose_ he dances a sonnet of delighted devotion. He makes credible the suggestion, intended satirically, that La Rochefoucauld’s “Maximes” should be rendered choregraphically. His genius consists in a singular pliancy of the body to the spirit. His technique is characterised by extreme brilliance and agility. He is weirdly grotesque or daintily graceful at will. Where he is perhaps lacking is in gravity and statuesque pose. Nijinsky does not realise the Pheidian ideal as perfectly as Mordkin, and therefore he can never be his equal in creating that impression of the glorious virility of a Greek statue, in whose firm lines a mighty strength lies sleeping. Nor have I ever seen him adequately represent the fierceness of human passion. Even in his _Scheherazade_ dances there is not so much a deep exultation as a kind of schoolboy merriment. But these are the necessary limitations of a youthful body and [Illustration: TAMAR KARSAVINA IN _Shehérazade_ _Photograph: Bert, Paris_] a youthful spirit. Nor would we have it otherwise. We will leave the rest to time. The years will deepen and dignify his art. If he is too happy to enter into certain phases of the spirit we will gladly bear with his shortcomings. We are content to take him as he is--the genial, leaping, happy dionysiac fawn! It is interesting to record here some of his impressions and his remarks about himself. “I love dancing to the music of Chopin,” he says, “you see we are fellow-countrymen. I am not a Russian really; my parents were Poles, and I am a Catholic and not Orthodox. I always imagine that it is only a Pole who can really interpret Chopin; we understand the melancholy of his music.” With regard to the _milieu_ of his performance he has said: “One thing I am determined not to do, and that is to go on the music-hall stage. I have had several tempting offers; but after all what is money? I think more of art than of money, and I refuse to be sandwiched between performing dogs and acrobats.” Before he appeared at Covent Garden he said, “I am frightened of London. I like the town, it is so big and serious, but the thought of dancing at Covent Garden makes me feel nervous.”