…The lunatic, inventor of the oddities
That can't but go as a gift…

From Alexey Burykin's poem
"To Caligula's Death in Theatre"

In winter of 1993, damp and dunk, theatre Moscow was lightened by a translucent phantom, a bright gleam, which flashed and faded away at once, a guest long waited and secretly desired, the performance "Nizhinsky". Actually it was not called so, but mysteriously - "N", as if the title itself implied some mystery.
"Have you seen "The Vision of Rose"?" asks his partner the hero of the performance Nizhinsky. "I have". "Have you seen "Nizhinsky"?" asked each other Moscow theatre-goers.
I have. This production was actually created by three men: two actors - Oleg Menshikov and Alexandr Feklistov - and a "third", also a recent actor, but also a poet, and by that time a beginning playwright - Aleksey Burykin. The names of the actors were known by everyone, the name of the playwright was almost strange. I remember that after "theatre society" visited the performance, the "verdict" was brought in and its essence was that actually there was no play at all, but just the actors with their talent filling this "empty space" - not only the stage, but dramaturgy as well. Even then I thought it was not true. Because besides poems recited by the characters of the paly, the poems, stamping rhythm and delightful musicality of which astonished me so that later I tried to find out who they were written by, until I understood that they were written by the author of the play himself, that these poems were not "The Silver Age", long bygone, not a copy, not an imitation, but quite an original, I couldn't imagine (I didn't dare!) that now somebody can write so.
And, besides these poems, I seemed to see in the paly itself, in its dramaturgic construction, in a strange combination of its two characters, one of them is named Nizhinsky and the other is Actor - the two characters always as if exchanging places, roles, "functions", as if constantly flowing into each other - in all its reticence there was not only a tribute to some "fashion" (what is fashion! - it is fleeting, for it's fashion), but something of different quality. Personal, private for the author, and may be on intention carefully hidden from too curious eyes. I thought that instead of a clue to "Nizhinsky mystery" (which is impossible "by definition") the author suggested his own vision of the mystery, the vision very complicated, born, probably, by his knowledge (of the facts, circumstances, testimonies of hero's contemporaries), but - to a much greater degree - by his intuition which, in this particular case, proved to be amazingly precise, corresponding - not so to what we don't know about Nizhinsky, as to what we don't and can't know, for it belonged only to him and couldn't be trusted to anyone else - neither to the eternal companion, "black man" and simultaneously "secret genius" Sergey Pavlovich Diaghilev, nor to his wife Romola, nor even to his "Diary" which he seemed to trust everything.
What is the secret of this Nizhinsky? In his eternal youth - and happening in front of our eyes fading? In his childishness - and ability to see what is hidden from the view of a mere mortal? In his dance - which we won't see on stage, for it is impossible to recreate it, but nevertheless we will have the full impression we saw it with our own eyes? In the combination of thoughtlessness, at times even rudeness, at times even vulgarity - with something different, as if belonging to a comer from different world, kind of an alien, with something he himself seemed not to know about, or at times suspected, but seemed not to trust it fully, as if he was always afraid that it would slip away, disappear as silently and mysteriously as it appeared - inside of him, in his essence, in his inner organization. For the mystery of a genius is hidden first of all from he who possesses it…
"You, Mozart, are God", says Pushkin's Salieri. "God's clown", called Nizhinsky himself in his "Diary". Mozart, God, Clown - the three images, as if different, as if incompatible with each other - in a mysterious way they took shape of a single whole in the Nizhinsky that was presented to the spectators (and now, for the first time - to the reader) in the "version" by Alexey Burykin. In this "version", where to the question "What rhyme do you have for the word "Zhizh"?" the hero without a minute's hesitation answers "Nizhinsky"*. In this "version", which is better described with its hero's words: "Oh, the plot!.. It's always the same… "What is the plot of your story?" - "None".
Exactly like this: "the plot - none", nothing seems to happen in the play. But if listen carefully to what is "behind words", even behind deeds, even behind secret thoughts… If simply listen carefully: "All this is just a play of imagination…" says Nizhinsky on stage. Well, it may be so, - but what magical play and what amazing imagination!

***

* - in Russian "zhizn" means "life" and this word is consonant to Nizhinsky, thus the author uses the pun which has sense only in Russian. That's why direct translating can't deliver this idea.