Nijinsky's Feeling Mind

The Dancer Writes, The Writer Dances

AvNicole Svobodny

Häftad, Engelska, 2026

Del i serien Crosscurrents: Russia's Literature in Context

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Beskrivning

Nijinsky's Feeling Mind: The Dancer Writes, The Writer Dances is the first in-depth literary study of Vaslav Nijinsky's life-writing. Through close textual analysis combined with intellectual biography and literary theory, Nicole Svobodny puts the spotlight on Nijinsky as reader. She elucidates Nijinsky's riffs on Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, and Nietzsche, equating these intertextual connections to "marking" a dance, whereby the dancer uses a reduction strategy situated between thinking and doing. By exploring the intersections of bodily movement with verbal language, this book addresses broader questions of how we sense and make sense of our worlds. Drawing on archival research, along with studies in psychology and philosophy, Svobodny emphasizes the modernist contexts from which the dancer-writer emerged at the end of World War I. Nijinsky began his life-writing—a book he titled Feeling—the day after the Paris Peace Conference opened, and the same day he performed his "last dance." Nijinsky's Feeling Mind begins with the dancer on stage and concludes as he invites readers into his private room. Illuminating the structure, plot, medium, and mode of Feeling, this study calls on readers to grapple with a paradox: the more the dancer insists on his writing as a live performance, the more he points to the material object that entombs it.

Produktinformation

Utgivningsdatum:2026-04-30
Mått:150 x 228 x 22 mm
Vikt:540 g
Format:Häftad
Språk:Engelska
Serie:Crosscurrents: Russia's Literature in Context
Antal sidor:386
Förlag:Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
ISBN:9781793653550

Utforska kategorier

Balett inom Kultur

Mer om författaren

Nicole Svobodny is senior lecturer in global studies at Washington University in St. Louis and coeditor of Migration and Mobility in the Modern Age and Under the Sky of My Africa.

Recensioner i media

Svobodny offers the first in-depth English-language analysis of ballet dancer and choreographer Vaslav Nijinsky’s original Russian writings. Her work is based on considerable archival research in libraries and collections in the US and Europe. The book is organized as a contrasting dialogue between Nijinsky’s experiences of and attempts to understand interior and exterior, private and public, physical and mental, and somatic and performative realities. Making strategic use of secondary sources, the author focuses on Nijinsky’s words and posits the influence of Russian literary masters such as Dostoevsky, Gogol, and Tolstoy on his writings. Svobodny investigates catalyzing events that prompted Nijinsky’s writings and argues that he wished readers to experience both his writing process and the result. This interdisciplinary approach will be of interest to dance scholars, historians, and literary theorists. The text is supported by carefully selected English translations of selections from Nijinsky’s diaries, as well as relevant excerpts from the writings of others. Extensive notes and a lengthy bibliography extend the book’s substance and usefulness. Recommended. Advanced undergraduates through faculty; professionals.

Innehållsförteckning

AcknowledgmentsNote on Transliteration IntroductionPart I: From Stage to Page1. Trance Dance2. Walking and Talking3. Predator-PreyPart II: A Life in Books and Magazines4. Reading Nijinsky Reading5. Dancing the Tightrope Between World of Art and FeelingConclusionBibliographyIndexAbout the Author