Imagining the past

Nijinsky died in 1950. Out of the past we invent stories. Mr. Ostwald made up this story about thirty years of unhappiness. It might not be true, but it is a nice story.

"Nijinsky looms as a magnificent example of a man who achieved greatness and suffered miserably. Self-sacrificing, creative, destructive, and victimized by misfortune, he inspired an entire generation of dancers, not to mention the musicians, painters, designers, sculptors, writers, poets, and psychiatrists whose lives he profoundly affected. Movement was his metier. It freed him from the confines of a small environment in St. Petersburg, and propelled him into the heady world of the Ballets Russes. He danced his way around globe, and he leapt into that mysterious universe called madness. He was a saint, a genius, a martyr, and a madman. One can see him still, arcing in space, jumping and flapping, cavorting and flailing, shooting into the sky, suspende, laughing, crying, grimacing, screaming. He remains a myth, an apparition, an emblem, a creature of fantasy, a biological creation, a fleeting image of God. Nijinsky, the God of the Dance. (pp.342-3)