(Con)Sequences

Works Cited

Bernstein, David. “The Story of Vaslav Nijinsky as a Source for T. S. Eliot’s ‘The Death of Saint Narcissus’.” The Hebrew University Studies in Literature and the Arts Band 4, 1976. 71-104.

---. “Dance in the Four Quartets.” The Hebrew University Studies in Literature and the Arts Band 9, 1981. 236-259.

Bochner, Jay, and Edwards, Justin D. (eds.). American Modernism Across the Arts. (Studies on Themes and Motifs in Literature Band 46). 1999. Frankfurt/M.: Peter Lang, 2001.

Beach, Christoper. The Cambridge Introduction to Twentieth Century American Poetry. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003.

Buckle, Richard. Nijinsky. (Übersetzt von Jürgen Abel). 1971. Herford: Busse Seewald, 1987.

Butler, Judith. Gender Trouble. New York: Routledge, 1990.

Cole, Merrill. The Other Orpheus: A Poetics of Modern Homosexuality. New York: Routledge. 2003.

Comley, Nancy R. “From Narcissus to Tiresias: T. S. Eliot's Use of Metamorphosis.” The Modern Language Review 74.2 (Apr 1979): 281-286.

Copeland, Roger, and Marshall Cohen (eds.). What is Dance? Readings in Theory and Criticism. Oxford: University Press, 1983.

Coulter, Maureen Elizabeth. The Eroticised Body and the Transcendent Word: Representations of the Dancer in the Works of Theophile Gautier, Arthur Symons and W.B. Yeats. Doctoral Thesis, University of Canterbury, 2004. Published online at:  ir.canterbury.ac.nz/bitstream/10092/4584/1/coulter_thesis.pdf(2 July 2011)

Crane, Hart. The Complete Poems and Selected Letters and Prose of Hart Crane. Ed. with an introduction and notes by Brom Weber. London: Oxford University Press, 1968.

Duncan, Isadora. “The Dance of the Future.” (1903). What is Dance? Eds. Roger Copeland and Marshall Cohen. Oxford: University Press, 1983. 262-265.

---. “The Art of the Dance.” (1928) The Dance Anthology. Ed. Cobbett Steinberg. New York: New American Library. 1980. 35-43.

Desmond, Jane (ed). Dancing Desires. Choreographing Sexualities on and off Stage. (Studies in Dance History). Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2001.

Eksteins, Modris. Rites of Spring: the Great War and the Birth of the Modern Age. Toronto. Lester & Orpen Dennys, 1989.

Eliot, Thomas Stearns. “The Ballet.” The Criterion Vol. III, No. 11, April 1929. 441- 443.

---. “Tradition and the Individual Talent.” 1917. The Sacred Wood: Essays on Poetry and Criticism. London: Methune, 1920. 42-53.

---. “London Letter.” The Dial Vol. LXXI, No. 2, August 1921. 213-217.

---. “The Elizabethan Dramatists.” 1924. Selected Essays. 1917-1932. New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 1950. 91-99.

---. Four Quartets. 1943. New York: A Harvest Book, Harcourt, Inc., 1971.

---. Selected Poems. 1954. London: Faber and Faber, 1961.

Ellis, Havelock. “The Art of Dancing” (from The Dance of Life). 1923. What is Dance? Eds. Roger Copeland and Marshall Cohen. Oxford: University Press, 1983. 478-497.

Ellis, Sylvia C. The Plays of W. B. Yeats: Yeats and the Dancer. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 1999.

Epstein, Joshua Benjamin. Sublime Noise: Musical Culture and the Modernist Writer. Diss. Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tennessee, 2008. Published online at: etd.library.vanderbilt.edu/available/etd-10282008.../EpsteinDissertation.pdf (30 July 2011)

Fisher, Jennifer, and Anthony Shay. When Men Dance. Choreographing Masculinities Across Borders. New York: Oxford University Press, 2009.

Foulkes, Julia L. Modern Bodies. Dance and American Modernism from Martha Graham to Alvin Ailey. The University of North Carolina Press, 2002.

Franko, Mark. Dancing Modernism/Performing Politics. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1995.

Guimond, James. The Art of Williams Carlos Williams. A Discovery and Possession of America. Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1968.

Hanna, Judith Lynne. Dance, Sex, and Gender: Signs of Identity, Dominance, Defiance, and Desire. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988.

Hargrove, Nancy D. “T.S. Eliot and the Dance.” Journal of Modern Literature XXI, 1 (Fall 1997 ). 61-88.

Heppenstall, Rayner. “The Sexual Idiom” (From Apology for Dancing). 1936. What is Dance? Eds. Roger Copeland and Marshall Cohen. Oxford: University Press, 1983. 267-288.

Horst, Louis, and Carroll Russell. Modern Dance Forms in Relation to the Other Modern Arts. Princeton, NJ: Princeton Book Company (Dance Horizons), 1961.

Jones, Susan. “Virginia Woolf and the Dance.” Dance Chronicle: Studies in Dance and the Related Arts 28.2 (2005): 169-200.

---. “‘At the Still Point’: T. S. Eliot, Dance, and Modernism.” Dance Research Journal 41.2 (2009): 31-51.

---. “Dance.”A Companion to Modernist Literature and Culture. Eds. David Bradshaw and Kevin J.H. Dettmar. Oxford: Blackwell, 2006. 265-271.

Kermode, Frank. “Poet and Dancer before Diaghilev.” Puzzles and Epiphanies. London: Routledge, 1963. 1-28.

Kolb, Alexandra. Performing Femininity: Dance and Literature in German Modernism. (Cultural History and Literary Imagination Vol. 12.). Bern: Peter Lang, 2009

Koritz, Amy. Gendering Bodies/Performing Art: Dance and Literature in Early Twentieth-Century British Culture. The University of Michigan Press, 1995.

Lee, Deng-Huei. The Evolution of Yeats’s Dance Imagery: The Body, Gender, and Nationalism. Diss. Phil. 2003. University of North Texas. Published online at http://www.library.unt.edu/theses/open/20032/lee_deng-huei/dissertation.pdf (18 Apr 2011).

Levinson, André. “The Idea of the Dance: From Aristotle to Mallarmé.” 1927. What is Dance? Eds. Roger Copeland and Marshall Cohen. Oxford: University Press, 1983. 47-54

---. “The Art and Meaning of Isadora Duncan.” 1917. What is Dance? Eds. Roger Copeland and Marshall Cohen. Oxford: University Press, 1983. 438-444.

Lieven, Prince Peter. “Vaslav Nijinsky.” The Dance Anthology. Ed. Cobbett Steinberg. New York: New American Library. 1980. 84-90.

Mallarmé, Stéphane. “Ballets.” 1886-97. What is Dance? Eds. Roger Copeland and Marshall Cohen. Oxford: University Press, 1983. 111-114.

Mahaffey, Vicki. “The Death of Saint Narcissus" and ‘Ode’: Two Suppressed Poems by T. S. Eliot.” American Literature 50.4 (Jan 1979): 604-612.

Mester, Terri A. Movement and Modernism: Yeats, Eliot, Lawrence, Williams, and Early Twentieth Century Dance. Fayetteville: The University of Arkansas Press, 1997.

Nényei, Judith. Thought Outdanced : The Motif of Dancing in Yeats and Joyce. Dissertation Debrecen University. Published by Akadémiai Kiadó, Budapest (Philosophiae Doctores Series), 2002.

Nijinsky, Romola. Nijinsky. Der Gott des Tanzes. (Übersetzt von Hans Bütow). 1934. Tübingen: Insel Verlag, 1974.

Rivière, Jacques. “Le Sacre du Printemps.” 1913. What is Dance? Eds. Roger Copeland and Marshall Cohen. Oxford: University Press, 1983. 115-122.

Rodgers, Audrey T. The Universal Drum. Dance Imagery in the Poetry of Eliot, Crane, Roethke, and Williams. The Pennsylvania State University Press, 1979.

Segel, Harold B. Body Ascendant: Modernism and the Physical Imperative. Baltimore and London: John Hopkins University Press, 1998.

Selden, Elizabeth. The Dancer s Quest: Essays on the Aesthetic of the Contemporary Dance. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1935.

Sorell, Walter (ed.). The Dance has Many Faces. 3rd revised edition Chicago: A Cappella Books, 1992.

---. “The Diaghilev Era.” The Dance Anthology. Ed. Cobbett Steinberg. New York: New American Library. 1980. 382-396.

Steinberg, Cobbett (ed.). 1980. The Dance Anthology. New York: New American Library.

Stern, Carola. Isadora Duncan und Sergej Jessenin. Der Dichter und die Tänzerin. 1996. Reinbeck bei Hamburg: Rowohlt Taschenbuch, 2002.

Symons, Arthur. “The World as Ballet.” 1898. The Dance Anthology. Ed. Cobbett Steinberg. New York: New American Library. 1980. 346-350.

Trachtenberg, Alan (ed.). Hart Crane. A Collection of Critical Essays. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1982.

Valéry, Paul. “Philosophy of the Dance.” 1936. What is Dance? Eds. Roger Copeland and Marshall Cohen. Oxford: University Press, 1983. 55-65.

William, Carlos Williams. The Collected Earlier Poems Of Williams Carlos Williams. 2nd ed. London: MacGibbon & Kee, 1951.

---. The Collected Later Poems of Williams Carlos Williams. 2nd ed. New York: Laughin, 1963.

---. Kora in Hell: Improvisations. Boston: The Four Seas Company, 1920.

Wilson, Cheryl A. Literature and Dance in Nineteenth-Century Britain: Jane Austen to the New Woman. Nineteenth-Century Literature and Culture Series. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009.

Yeats, W. B. The Collected Poems of W. B. Yeats. Intro. by Cedric Watts. London: Wordsworth Poetry Library, 2008.

Notes

• 1) Although the relationship between poetry and dance can be seen as a very old one, studies often tend to focus on 19th century European literature, especially French symbolism (e.g. Valéry, Mallarmé, Gautier). The 1970s and 1980s brought a temporary increase of interest in critical interdisciplinary readings which have recently broadened in scope and gained new momentum. An example is Cheryl A. Wilson’s Literature and Dance in Nineteenth-Century Britain: Jane Austen to the New Woman (2009). This study fills a scholarly gap, while also contributing to the fields of literary study, dance history, and gender studies. Yet, it is mainly concerned with investigating the interaction between the novel and social dance (e.g. waltz, quadrille), not with theatrical dance. A number of recent PhD theses also document the growing body of scholarship on literature and dance or music, see, for instance, Coulter (2004), Epstein (2008).
• 2) An important early essay is Frank Kermode’s “Poet and Dancer before Diaghilev” (1963). Excellent and detailed studies of the relationship between dance and modernist poetry, which deepened my own interest in the subject, are Terri A. Mester’s Movement and Modernism: Yeats, Eliot, Lawrence, Williams, and Early Twentieth Century Dance (1997); and Audrey T. Rodgers’ The Universal Drum. Dance Imagery in the Poetry of Eliot, Crane, Roethke, and Williams (1979). For adding a particular focus on gender to the discussion see Alexandra Kolb’s Performing Femininity: Dance and Literature in German Modernism (2009), although she is more concerned with the German scene, and Amy Koritz’s Gendering Bodies/Performing Art: Dance and Literature in Early Twentieth-Century British Culture (1995). For a broader context see, for instance, Louis Horst’s and Carroll Russell’s Modern Dance Forms in Relation to the Other Modern Arts (1961).
• 3) The Russian impresario Serge Diaghilev founded the Ballets Russes in 1909, and it was to become one of the most influential dance companies of the 20th century. Originally resident at the Théâtre du Châtelet in Paris, it had a spectacular opening season in 1910, making its London debut in 1911. The only tour of America took place from 1916-1917. In the two decades of its existence until Diaghilev’s death in 1929, the company performed works by choreographers like Michel Fokine, Leonide Massine, Vaslav Nijinsky, Bronislava Nijinska, and also by a young George Balanchine, who was latter to become the founder of what is nowadays the New York City Ballet. What marks the ground-breaking importance of the Ballet Russes is its collaboration of contemporary avant-garde artists; it brought an exceptional artistic synthesis arguably never repeated before and after. Apart from the dancers and choreographers named above, this included composers like Claude Debussy, Eric Satie, Igor Stravinsky, and artists and painters like Alexandre Benois, Jean Cocteau, Pablo Picasso, and León Bakst. In a way, the Ballet Russes realized the idea of Wagner’s ‘Gesamtkunstwerk’ and saw the creation of a new, vital ballet theatre which reflected crucial changes in society and in the other art forms. The literature on the Ballet Russes is extensive; for a brief introduction see Walter Sorrel’s “The Diaghilev Era” (1980) or Richard Buckle’s study of Nijinsky (1987) which gives detailed background of the companies’ works and performances. Cf. also Havelock Ellis (1923) for a historical outline of the European strands of dance tradition and the revolutionizing power of Diaghilev and Fokine.
• 4) In particular the second half of the 20th century shows a rising dominance and self-expression of homosexual artists, prominent examples are Rudolph Nureyev or Matthew Bourne’s choreographies for AMP which literally reverse male and female roles by having, for instance, a corps de ballet of male swans in Swan Lake, or a group of male mechanics in overalls instead of a female gypsy choir in CarMen. Especially George Balanchine’s neo-classical ballet perpetuated the formation of an androgynous ideal and the celebration of an abstract dance art, while the negotiation of traditional gender roles is taken up explicitly in Pina Bausch’s dance-theatre from the 1970s onwards.
• 5) Duncan did this quite literally by dancing barefoot and discarding gravity-defying techniques such as dancing en pointe. Cf. especially Duncan’s lecture “The Dance of the Future” (1903), and her study “The Art of the Dance” (1928); see also André Levinson’s “The Art and Meaning of Isadora Duncan” (1917). For a more personal view of Duncan’s life see, for instance, Carola Stern’s Isadora Duncan und Sergej Jessenin. Der Dichter und die Tänzerin (2002).
• 6) For a more detailed discussion of the (rightfully) contested idea about the existence of any kind of core femininity (or masculinity) which can be lived out through dance (as many, especially German modern dancers believed) and a potential criticism of the modern dance movement as one towards essentialist notions of body and “authentic” feminism, see, for instance, Kolb (47ff).
• 7) An example is Duncan’s performance of her solo “La Marseillaise” in Boston which caused a particular scandal; the exposure of one of her breasts on stage resulted in the cancellation of the show.
• 8) This imagery can also be found in Paul Valéry’s “L'âme et la danse” (1923) and Yeat’s poems, e.g. in “Byzantium”.
• 9) Susan Jones gives an insightful in-depth analysis in her essay “‘At the Still Point’: T. S. Eliot, Dance, and Modernism” (2009), which cannot be repeated her for reasons of space. Cf. also David Bernstein’s essay “Dance in the Four Quartets” (1981) and Rodgers (1979).
• 10) The Waste Land was to achieve a similarly iconic status for literary history as Sacre did for modern choreography. It is worth to note that few modern ballets have seen so many re-stagings and new versions (for instance by Maurice Béjart, Heinz Spoerli, Pina Bausch, or John Neumeier) as Le Sacre du Printemps
• 11) In 1950, 14 early poems of Eliot were published for the first time, one of which was “The Death of St. Narcissus”. The facsimile version of The Waste Land manuscript included the full draft of this poem. Apart from Jones (2009) and Bernstein (1981), another essay which discusses the relation between dance and Eliot’s poetry in great detail is Nancy D. Hargrove’s “T.S. Eliot and the Dance” (1997).
• 12) Cf. Bernstein, David. “The Story of Vaslav Nijinsky as a Source for T. S. Eliot’s ‘The Death of Saint Narcissus’” (1976); see also the essays by Vicki Mahaffey “‘The Death of Saint Narcissus’ and ‘Ode’: Two Suppressed Poems by T. S. Eliot” (1979) and Nancy R. Comley “From Narcissus to Tiresias: T. S. Eliot's Use of Metamorphosis” (1979).
• 13) In January 1919, Nijinsky’s last public dance performance took place in a hotel in St. Moritz; already delusional, he danced the image of the crucified Christ in the bizarre solo “Marriage avec Dieu”. The incident, after which he is said to have retreated permanently into schizophrenia, finally dying in a London mental institution in 1950, is described in Romola Nijinsky’s book Nijinsky. Der Gott des Tanzes (1934). The book also partially reproduces Nijinsky’s original diaries from the time.
• 14) Bernstein argues polemically: “Reduced to its basic essentials, the poem is quite clearly about a dancer who because he could not live men’s ways was struck mad and ended up green, dry and stained under the shadow of a gray rock. Who could this dancer have been if not Vaslav Nijinsky?” (102). He emphasizes that Eliot was well acquainted with and intrigued by Nijinsky’s story which was “known to every schoolboy at the time” (ibid). As striking biographical evidence he sees Eliot’s own stay for psychiatric treatment in St. Moritz, two years after Nijinsky’s lapse into insanity, and the poet’s homosexual affair with Jean Verdenal. According to Bernstein, these events deepened Eliot interest and insight into Nijinsky’s relationship with Diaghilev, while the tragic death of his own lover also inspired the Waste Land. However, a draw-back of Bernstein’s argument remains the lack of historical proof and, most crucially, the exact dating of the poem. Whereas Eliot could not remember when he wrote it, Ezra Pound’s letters about the Waste Land manuscript only suggest that it was written sometime between 1919 and 1922. See also Ted Hughes’ book Dancer to God: Tributes to T.S. Eliot (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1993).
• 15) Terri A. Mester argues that in many of his works Williams uses an aesthetic, imaginative “measure” based on “ancient‚ divisions’ of dance” (154) for imposing order onto the sensual world. In a letter from 1955, Williams himself explains: “Poetry began with measure, it began with the dance, whose divisions we have all but forgotten but are still known as measures. Measures they were and we still speak of their minuter elements as feet” (cited in Mester 147)
• 16) Various studies have been dedicated to the complex dance imagery in Yeats’ oeuvre. Especially Yeats’ plays were shaped by the collaboration with professional dancers such as with the Japanese dancer Michio Ito in At the Hawk’s Well (1916), or Ninette de Valois, the latter founder of England’s Royal Ballet Company, in King of the Great Clock Tower (1934). From the 1990s onwards, an increasing interest in dance history from a feminist perspective lead to interdisciplinary efforts which also brought the relation of Yeats, dance, gender, modernism into new focus (cf. Mester 1997). See, for instance Ellis (1999), Lee (2003), and Nényei (2002).
• 17) Many critics have commented on Yeats’ personal struggle with old age, i.e. the loss of his youth and ‘man-power’, which finds repeatedly reflection in his later works. The poet, who embarked on an affair with the young actress Margot Ruddock when he was 69, also underwent the contested Steinbach operation for sexual re-juvenescence in the 1930s.