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116BOOKS & ARTS. 6-13. r983~-- and Mrs. MillJ hntuart Mill andHarrietTaylor were marriedn 1851,twenty years after they had metand fallen in love and tw o years-the conventional period of mourning-after the death from ancer of Harrietsfirst hus ban d, John Tay lor. twentyyears they had been platonic lovers,devoted to each otherscompany butforced to hide their friendship fro m thepubhc as much as possible. P eople whohad hoped hat Mills marriage wouldma rk his re-entry nto social life weredissappointed. He lived in even greaterretirement after his marriage.Neitherhe nor Taylor had any troublegiving upthe tepid pleasures of society, for theyfoun d each other absolutely fascinating.Both had been made lonely by excep-tional intelligence, and they rejoiced ineach other like two giants, two midgetsor 6ny two people who had feared theiroddness would prevent them from everknowing close compan ionship. heywere a happy coup le, discussing every-thing, sharing everything. Most impor-tant, they shared Mills work-or whatposterity calls Mills work,despite hisinsistence that virtually everything pub-lished in his name was Harriets asmuch as his.Millbelieved that when two peoplethink and talk together abo ut everything,whatever writings may result from thosediscussions are joint produ cts. Its of lit-tle consequence which of them holds thepen. Not only during the years of ourmarried life, he wrote in his autobiog-raphy, but during many years of confi-dential friendship which preceded it, allmy published writings are as much mywifes work as mine.

published in 1843 and the basis ofMills fam e, owed little to Harr iet exceptfelicities of compos ition, but afte r that,everything we call Mills was a joint pro-duction: Politicalthe

at essay isParallel Lives: Five Vic-torian Marriages, YIII

essays on religion. Some of those workswere published only afterHarriet wasdead,ut they had been discussed,draf ted, planned a nd in som e cases dic-tatedby her longbefore heir actu atpublication.Taylors co-authorship of Millswork has proveda hard fact to swallow.Commentators have laboredmightily toprove that Millwas mistaken abo utHarriets oleand oprovide easonswhy he might have been mistaken abo utasubject-the authorship of his ownworks-on which he ought to have beenan expert. The sociologist Alice Rossihas examined a centurys worth of resist-ance to the idea that Harrie t could havecollaborated with so clear, logical andforceful a mind as MiIIs and concludesthat i t is sexist: Har riet provokes hos-tility from Mill scholars because, beingbrilliant and aggressive, shedoesnotconform to their standard of femininity.(Harriet hadbeen active in Unitar ian in-tellectual life in Londonandcontrib-uted articles and poems to the Unitarianuntilsh ediscov-ered hepreferred to work with andthrough Mill.) Moreover, . variouskinds of political bias have affected as-sessments of Harr iets ole in Millscareer. Unitarians in the nineteenth cen-tury-Harriets friends-were enthusi-astic about her influence on Mill,whereas the utilitarians, who saw her asremoving Mill from their orbit, tendedto beharsh on her; ater,Harold .Laskidownplayed he mportance ofHarr iets role in Mills thinking becausehe did not want Mills socialism to ap -pear the result of a mere wom ans in-fluence. Though it is couched in termsofdetachedscholarship,says Rossl,one senses in Mill scholars an unwit-ting desire to reject Harriet Taylor ascapable of contributing in any signifi-cant way to the vigor of Mills analysisof political and social issues unless it in-cluded some tinge of sentiment or politi-cal thought the scholar disapproved of,in which case this disliked elemen t wasseen as Harriets nfluence. More re-cently, every seriousscholar of Millslife and work has aken Mill at hisword. In so faras Mills influence,theoretic or applied,has been of ad-vantage to the progress of the W estern

world, or indeed of humanity at large,says Mills biographer Michael St. JohnPacke , the credit should rest upon hlswife at least as m uch as himself.Consider,or xample,he en,- -.mously influential ofPolitiialbegun in 1845 and ready forthe press by the end of 1847, when Har-riet was still married to JohnTaylor.Harriet read and comm ented on everyparagraph.She hough t hat he firstdraft lacked a chapter on the future ofthe working class, and Mill accordinglywrote one to her specifications. Shehelped him, too, with the proof s, witharranging for the binding and in nego-tiating a contract with thepublisher.When the time came for he second edi-tion, Harriet wanted more. She wantedMill to change his mind on a long-held,

well-thought-outand mportantopm-ion-his belief in capitalism as the mos tdesirable system of ownership.In the first edition, Mill had groundedhis opposition to socialism andcom-munismlittleistinction was thenmad e between the two) on the convictionthat men worked best when they workedin their ow n interests an d in the hopesof accumu lating, by their own efforts,rewards. He feared that whensubsist-ence was guaranteed,motivationowork would disappear. H e argued thatpeople who had never known freedomfrom anxiety about the means of subslst-ence are apt to overra te it as a sourceof pleasure.Undersocialism,labourwould be devoid of its chief sweetener,.the hou ght hat every effort tells per-ceptibly on the labourers own interestsor thoseof omeone with whom heidentifies himself. Rereading this par-agraph,Harriet objectedstrongly andtotally. Perhaps the revolutionaryevents of 1848 had helped to changemind, or perhaps the Chartistsmade her more optimistic about theability of the working class to direct itsow n econom ic and political life. W ha t-ever the reaso n, she believed it was ofthe first importance to guarantee peoplea living and o remove their anxietiesabout subsistence.Mill was astonishe d. The paragra phshe objected to had been inserted a t hersuggestion an d in her very words. More -over, he considered it the strongest partof heargum ent. If it were removed ,the most cogent objection to socialismwould disappear and he would have toturn round nd mbracet. Never-,


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August 6-13, 1983 The Nation. 117-.-- ._-theless, he neither pressed Harriet foran explanation of her change of mindnor attempted to re-argue his earlierposition. Placidly, he accepted the cor-rection: This is probably only the prog-ress we have always been making, andby thinking sufficiently I should prob-.~y come to think the same-as isa most always the case, I believe alwayswhen we think long enough. His com- plex portrait of some weaknesses ofsocialism was replaced by bland pietiesin its favor: There would be an end toall anxiety concerning the means of sub-sistence; and this would be much gainedfor human happiness. And so thereentered into the Political Economy autopianism much more typical of Mrs.Taylor than of Mill and an endorserhentof socialism that had enormous impactthrough the decades, making England alittle bit of what it is today because Har-riet Tayior changed her mind in 1849.

The man who had been trained tothink for himself from the age of 5 in-formed Harriet that he would changeany opinion if she asked him to even ifthere were no other reason than the cer-tainty I feel that 1 never should continueof an opinion different from yours on asubjec t which you have fully consid-ered. He thought himself fit only to in-terpret, to set down what others be-lieved, insisting again and again, in hisprivate diary as well as his letters andautobiography, that Harriet was thesource of any wisdom he had, and hemerely her mouthpiece. What wouldbe the use of my outliving you! hewrote to her. 1 could write nothingworth keeping alive except with yourprompting. In the production of someof his most important works, he tookthe position of a schoolboy fulfilling anassignment. I want my angel to tell mewhat should be the next essay written. Ihave done all I can for the subject shelast gave me.\And:-A~ finished the Nature on Sunday as Iexpected. I am quite puzzled what toattempt next-1 will just copy the list

of subjects we made out in the con-fused order in which we put themdown. Differences ,6f character (na-tion, race, age, sex; temperament).Love. Education of tastes. Religion deIavenir. Plato. Slander. Foundationof morals. Utility of religion. Social-ism. Liberty. Doctrine that causationis will.Practically all Mills later work maybe seen in that shorthand list ,of ideas.Where he began did not much matter,so long as he began, and Harriet was

Decadent Societies6y ROBERT Pi. ADAMSIt is refreshing to discover a book of learned mus-ings, elegantly written, that places the whole ques-tion of decadent societies in historical perspective.That such a book offers thoroughly delightful read-ing may seem anomalous, but perhaps the anomalyadds to the delight. n St. Lou15 Post-llispatchIlluminating, sometimes idiosyncratic, wide-rang-ing and stimulating. n Los Angeles Times Book ReviewThe point of the book is to make us think andargue, and its good to see this one-man party, thispatriotic polymath, examining these problems fromso deep a historical perspective.

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happy enough to tel l him w hat to do.She was the executive. Unhampered byth esubtletiesan dnuancesof houghttha t sometimes impeded Mill, unafraidof inconsistency, she cu t crudely, per-haps, but emphatically an d practicallytomportantatters.About theessays, dear, would not rehgion,heUtility of Religion, be one .of th e sub -jectsyo uhavemost to say on ?H ecould, he suggested,account or henearly universal existence of some kindof religion; could show how religionand poetry fill the same wants, the needfor consolation, he craving for higheroblects; could suggest how religionmust be superseded by a moral ity de w -ing i ts authori ty from the approval ofpeople we respect rather than from hopeof reward in an after life. It was fairlystandard positivist stuff,bu t Mill re-sponded ecstatically. Y our prog ram ofan essay on religion 1s beautiful , but i trequires you to fill ~t up-I can try, buta few paragra phs will bring me to theend of all I have got to say on the sub-ject . Nevertheless, he wrote the essaywhich was posthumouslypublishedasThe Utility of Religion.Almost everyone who alked to Millagreed that his mind was one of theamazing henomena fhege, soclear, so productive, so just , so inex-orable .Inact , he is report edohave had the largest bram size known toscience.) But i t had a defect Mill aloneperceived. It nitiated noth ing. He wasl lke an utom aton which funct ionedperfectly when set on co urse, but couldno t set its own course or turn itself on.Harriet, spontaneous, imperious, In-tellectually passionate,ithoutelf-doub t , put the loglc machine into mo-tion.She was his start erbut ton. Shewas Feeling, mysteriously energizing,mobilizing Thoug ht. Wh en she diedhe would say that the Spring of his lifewas broken,ndhemetaphor wasabsolutely right.Th e world does not take kindly to asuccessful collaboration between a mar-rled couple.When John Lennonn-sisted on making ecords with YokoOn o, he was accused of glorifying an in-ferior rtlst nd he was accused ofdestroying a great rtisticunit. AliceRossls feminist explanation of the hos-tility HarrietTaylorevokedmightac -count for some of the passion arousedby YokoOn o, oo. But cases exist inwhich ulen a re resented for intruding onwomens careers. Opera lovers will per-hap s recall the initial resistance to Jo anSutherlands demand that her husban d,

Richard Bonynge, conduct whenever shesang, nd-athe ther nd of theculturalpectrum-theesistance toBarbra Streisandslevation of herlover Jon Peters rom hairdresser toproducer. A collective jealousy seems tobe a t wo rk here. The public, whoselationshlp with any celebrity (wri$er ,philosopher or fllm star) is partlyerotic, resents any on e comlng betweeni t and he obJect of i ts at tent lon, andanyartistwho insists on giving mo recredit to a oved one han he publicthinks is approprlate risks the publicswrath.Such was the acticalblunder JohnStuart Mill committednwritlng hisautobiog raphy, three years into his mar-riage. At the tlmehe was suffering fromconsumption, and he thought i t was hislast chance to make the world see andappreciate one whose intellect is asmuch rofounderhan mines erheart is nobler.Mostautobiographiesare written as a defense of self; Millswas written as adefense of his wife.Usually read as aconversion story orpolitical testament,seems instead a mon um ent in the annalsof Victoriandomesticity. t dem and scomparlson with a narrative like Dawdwhich asks In its openi ngsentence whether David will tur n ou t t obe the hero of his own life and makesclear by the end thathe has not, thathi swife has filled that role.Attemptingo win recognition fo rHa rn et, Mill overstated he ase andevoked only disbelief and scor n. Alex-ander Bain, Mills friend, believed thatif Mill had scrupulously listed the waysin which his wife had collabo rated wlthhim, he would have been believed andHarriet respected. Unfortunately, saysBain, he o utraged all reasonable credi-bility in describing her matchless genius,without being able to supply any o rrob -orating testimony. Reading a proofin 1873, Bain beggedHelen Taylor,Harrietsdaughterand

Mills executor, to remove some of themore fulsom e references to her mother.The incredulous world, he said, wouldbe startled enough by wh at remained .He had n mind passages ike he fol-lowing, in which Mill describes HarrietTaylor as she was n 1832, and whichher daughter allowed to stand:I have often compared her , as sh e wasat thls tlme, to Shelley bu t In thoughtand Intellect,Shelley, so far hl spowers were developed In hl s shorthfe, bu t a chlld compared wth whatsheultlmatelybecame. Ahke ~n the


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toofseizing th e Idea orQ y n also found distressing Mills asser-t A that hls father,hetilitarianphilosopher James Mill, had no equalamo ng men in hls impact on progressivethought , ndonlyone qual mongwomen.Nordld he like thepassageab ou t Carlyle that ends with Mill call-ing Harrlet on e greatly the superior ofus both--who was more a poet than he,and morea thinker than I-whose mindand nature included and lnflnltelymore .It possible to create a context Inwhlch such passages seem less glarmg.M ~ ll overestimatedarrietsentalqualltles because they were so differentfrom his own. Also, he tended to cate-gorizepeople asThinkers or Feelers,and o suchaman he hlgheslpraisewould aturally be to say thatheeulogized onecombinedboth virtuesSmce Mdl thought of poetry as a modeof feeling rather than a feat of wrltlng,he did not percelve the ludlcrousness ofcomparing Harriet to Shelley.He me an tthat she elt as deeply s Shelley dld, notthat her poems were as good. (The mostoutrageous of all Mllls hyperbolesabout Harrlet fortunately did not m akeits way Into his autobiography nor pre-sent itself to he attention of th at dryScotsman,AlexanderBaln: In 1855,writlng from Italy, Mill sent New Yearsgreetmgs to the only erson lw n gwho 1s worthy to h e . D ia na T n ll ln g ,writing In in the 1950%called this a ransgresslondlfflcult toforgive even In the nam e of neu rosis.)I t is pointless to read Harriets scrapsof verse looking for a mute mgloriousShelley, or to compare her fragmentaryqsays wlth the prose ot Carlyle. Evensurvlvlng letters-most of themwere destroyed at her request-offer n oconvincing evldence of her genius. Theyare often confused, contradictory, ossy,intolerant of o ther peoples faults butunaware of her own. Mllls contempo-rarles cou ld see no resemblance betweenth egenlus descrlbed in theautobiog-raphy and the woman they knew. Somesald Mill was the only person I n the leastImpressed with her.omeai dhewasnt even bn gh t. om e said Millthought he was brilliantbecause heparroted back t o h m i s own thoughtsand words. All agreed there was a greatgap between the reallty of he wom an

and Mills V ~ S I O ~f her, and his autobi-ography, insofar as t described Harriet,has generally been taken to represent thestrength of his feelings rather han oportray accurately the object of them.Of cou rse he made her up , as we allma ke up he people we love. Mills delu-sion about Harriet love for herand, written all over his autobiography,i t makeshat ook , sympatheticallyread,one of th emost ouching lovestories of the nineteenthcentury. ThemoreordinaryHarrietTaylor was, infact, the mo re Impressive th e spectacleof a man projectin g upo n the world thelmeaments of an inner need.If Mills autoblography fails to makeus see the woman he saw, the chaptersdescribing his childhoodenable us tounderstand why hesa wher hat way.Theblueprint for loving was drawn,anddra wn powerfully, by his fathe r,wh o at one evei was teaching his son tothmk for himself but at another wastraining hi m in exactly the opposite be-havlor, drilling int o him with every les-son he feel of domin at ion, he sur-render of will to one stronger than him-.self. How well Mill understoo d the ex-perience of SubJectlonwouldbecomeclear In his symp athy th e plight ofwom en. His early experience led him toresent subjection but also to experienceit as hemost intenseconnectionbe -tween two people. lt seems therefore in-evltable that Mill would be drawn to awoman who made lavish use of rebukeand eproach, omeone tronger hanhimself, someone controlling, whom heendowedwithall hequalitieshe elthimself to lack: deep feeling, intui-tiveness, passion.Mill may have been like most peoplein creatmg imaginatively the person hethen fell in love with, but he differed inbeing able to present her to the world asboth philosophically and politically sig-nificant. Philosophically, Ha rrie t repre-sented he ure for the emptiness ofeighteenth-century ationalism.Politi-cally, she represented the fat e of intel-ligent women-underutilized, und er-respected, prevented fro m achieving whatshe mlght have if positions were deter-mined by talent and not by accidents ofbirth. If circumstances had been en-couraging,Harriet have been agreat artlst. She have been a greatora torHer knowledgeof human na-ture and her cleverness about practicallife would, in times when such arrere was open to women,have made hereminent among the rulers of the world.In his exorbitant praise of his wife,

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120 - 6-13, 1983Mlll seems at tm es to e apologizing f orthe collective disadvantage of the e-male sex, assumlng the collective gulltof the m ale. An d if the utrageousstatementsaboutHarriets genlus arenot quite a tactical maneuve r, designedto suggest womens pote ntial and theirsystematic discouragem ent, they may beinterpreted In a way that does not whol-ly represent heeffusions of love. Asone of the keenest students of power inmodern times, Mill could not have beenunaw are that in his dealings with Ha r-riet he was altering the usual allocationof power between he sexes. He must haverealized It was unusua l for a man of hisstature to claim that he had m erely writtendown what a woman had dlctated.Th e nineteenth centurys most Impor-tant theorist of feminlsm was concernednot to reproduce in his own ife thehistorical inlqultles of hls sex. H e wouldnot be heconventionalhusband,as-suming his own dom inanc e withln thefamily, the ruler of a microcosmic statewith Harr iet as his subject-the situa-tion that Dickens , in his role of apolo-gist for the p atriarc hal famlly, idealizedIn his novels. Between Taylor and Mill,power would be sha red , the reins heldjointly.They were embarkedupongreat experim ent, someth ing new In thehistory of relations between men andwomen-a true marriage of equals. Butso unusual was this sltuation that fo rHarr iet to be anywhere near equal shehad to be more than equal. Think oftheir marriage as a domestic case of af-firmatlve ction:o achieve equallty,more powerhad togo to Harriet, incompensation for the Inequality of theirconditions.Mill intended both he fact and hewritten portrait of their friendshlp, andlater of theirmarriage, s evolu-tionary act.How ever, In settlng upwom an as ruler, he was tracing an an-cient patternmore accesslble to or-dinaryminds-theman esotted bylove into yielding his rule to a woman,Hercules with a distaff, a figure of funfor centuries. Wh at Mill saw as a daringpolitical gesture seemed to others nomore han agrievous ase of uxo ri-ousness. Bains words mphasizehepolitical infraction at theheart of theoffensive pectacle: Such state ofsubjection to the will of another , as hecandidlyavows and glories in,cannotbe received as a right state of things . Itviolates our sense of d ue propor tlon, Inthe relationship of human beings. Onewonders if a similar ublectionof awomans will to amanswouldhave

vlolated Bains sense of due proportionto thesamedegree.And I f a womanwrotebout her husbands ex-travagantly as M ~ l lwrote about hiswife, would she be so violently accusedof hallucinationabout her husbandspersonalqualities?Nevertheless,Bainha sapoint. Such astate of subjec-tion . . . cannot be received as a rightstate of things.How splendid it would be if we couldfind n he Mills marriagewhat theyhoped we would ind, an exemplarymo del. But in practice, a female au to-cra t replaced heusualmale. In theirdaily life as in their collaboration,heobeyed her in all things. If he was will-ing to change his mind a t her request onsuch issues as the relative merits of so-cialism and capitalism, the secret ballotand capital punishme nt, he was certain-lywilling to dro p his old friends Mrs.Grotean dMrs.Austin when Harrie tasked him to.Hehad been close tothem n his youth. H e would see themagain after Harr iets death. But she dldnot like them, and that was enough tokeep Mill from them durlng her life-time. When his mothers property wasdlvlded am ong her children at the timeof her death, Mill thought to refuse hisshare since hehad been on suchbadterms with his mother since his mar-riage. But Harrlet rebuked him. To refuse 5 0 0 was a species of vanlty only a richman could afford. Of course he shouldtake hemoney.Ofcourse.A Syourfeelmg so directly contrary, mine iswrong and give it up entirely, he wrote.The pattern of rebuke and abdicatlonrepeated Itself in the most mm ute of theirhousehold affairs.Once , In Harrietsabsence, their nelghbor wrote Mill thatrats were infesting helr shared gardenwall. Mill replied with a bland acknowl-edgmen t of the recelpt of th e not e andreported hls action to Ha rne t. She wasfurious. Mill ought to have replled ag-gressively, throwing the rats back up onthe nelghbor, maklng them his respon-sibllity.An d so, in his next note, Milldld. H e never knew h o w Harrlet wouldreact. That was part o f her fascination.Expecting reproach, he was praised; ex-pectingpraise, he was rebuk ed.Agecan not wither her nor custom stale herinfinite variety," Shakespeare wrote ofCleop atra, who lso adhe ift ofcontrariness. JHarrlet died a mere seven years afterthey were married. But since she wassuch an extent a character In hls mag-ma tion, their marriage id ot aveto end with her passmg. Mill proved t o

be a mournlng fetlshlst, like Queen Vic-toria, w ho continued to set out Albertsshavlngwater after his death.Harriethad died in Avlgnon, onone of heryearly removals to the south of Francein search of health. M ~ l l ought a houseoverlooking the cemetery where s h c a sburied and spen t more and more tffriethere every year. He hlred an architectto design a tomb, or which Ca rrar amarble was especially imported.Thevast and perfect piece of tone hatmade ts way slowly by . ship o Mar-seilles andhen up the RhoneoAvignon proved big enou gh only for hecovering slab, and more marble had tobe ordered for he sides. When frnished,in March 1860, the tomb had cost about.1,500, an entire years salary for Mill.Every day when he was in Avignon,Mill spent an hour by the grave. Away,hedid heworkHarrietwould havewantedhim o do. She ontinued toguide his life. It was, in a sense, satisfac-tory. As wlth Petrarchnd aura ,Dante nd Beatrice, AugusteComteand Clotilde de Vaux, the woman whohad insplred great work as well as greatlove died nto heconditlon of pure,disembodied nsplration.Moreover, oMills great comfort, Harr iet had left adaughter, Helen Taylor, 27 at the timeof her mothersdeath. Shewould beMills companion for the rest of hls life.Surely no one ever before was so for-tunate, as, after such a loss as mlne, todraw nother prize in theotteryoflife-anotherompanion,tlmulator,adviser, ndnstructor of thearestquality.Whether shewas,s Millclaimed,th enherito r of much of[Harriets]wisdom, an d f all hernobleness of cha rac ter, we will not a t-tempt to discover.Certainly he too kHarnets place in the way most neces-sary o Mill, by p roviding someo ne hecould obey.Brought up an a thelst, trained tcf3is-trustah yauthorltyoutslde himseif,ama n wh o scorned in every w ay the no-tion of one person surrendering his willto anoth er, M ~ l l evertheless felt as oneof the profoundest needs of hls emo-tionalifehe need to do preciselythat-to surrender the wdl. In Imagin-mg that belng whatsom e would callhenpeckedconstltuted a utoplanmar-rlage of equals,hecreated a delusionwhich he and hls wlfe couldhappilyshar e. He inventeda ole for her thatshe hked both In theory (she liked theIdea of equality)and npractice shehked he feel of mas tery). Her subje ctwas willmg. Mills mlndpproved


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equality but his soul craved dom inatio n.H e atoned for the subjection of womenby the volunta ry, even enthusiastlc, sub-jection of one m an , and portrayed theresult a model m arriage of equals. U

N eteen elghty-three will godown in dance hlstory as theyear both George Balanchmeand Edwin Denby died, but tis also he 200th anniversary of Len-ingradsKirovTheaterof OperaandBallet. Called heMaryinskyTheaterunderhe zars, it is this instltutionthatnurtured Balanchine nd lmostevery other distinguished Russian balletdanceroneca nname.Lastmonth, asmall band of American dancers, dancewriters and balletomanes set out togethero n a pilgrimage to the Sovlet Union , in-tent on seeing the Klrov at home.Our t r ip to Leningrad coincided wlthwhat are called the Wh ite Nights, whehlight saturateshe city fro mbout5 to midnight;manyEuropeantourists visit at tha t time, and a yearlyfestival of the performing artskeeps thetheaters full. We saw more than a dozenperformances in the SovletUnion, n-cluding six by the Kirov Ballet. We sawevery dancer of note in the comp any,with theisappomtingxception ofAltnai Assylmouratova, the corps mem-ber whose dancing created a sensationduring the Kirovs Paris tour last year.(While we were inLenmgrad,Assyl-mou ratov a was preparing to dance thetitle role of Giselle.)Although heMinistry of Cu lture didnt fficlallyrecognize all the writers among us asworkingpress, we were abl e o meetwith company directors, choreographers,teachers, ballet histo rians nd balletenthdsiasts.A few of us were intro-duced to dancers, al though I t soon be-came clear that the go vernment ls espe-cially wary ab out American Journalistsmeeting young Sovlet performers of in-ternational reputation who might haveWestern leanings.Although the Klrov Ballet is 200 yearsold, the theater itself 1s only 123. Likemany of Leningradsmost importantbuildings, it suffered amage uringWorld War the brilliance of ts n-terior is due partly o careful mainte-nance and part ly to reconstruct ion. Thedove gray walls are lavlshly decoratedwith gold; he velvet hangings and up-

holstery startle the eye wlth a stingingazure blue-the same blue used to rep-resent the heavens in the mural of danc-ingmuses n the ceiling and inhemural f ancing ut t i on hepro-scenium arch . The giddy front curtain,by Golovman dVirsaladze,apaintedfantasia of blllowlngswags and mbroidered rapes, ddsan ironic touch. Then the curtain rises,and you gaze on a company com prisedof th emost exactingly schooled an dcoachedensemble of classical dancersin the world.Th e first hingyo unotice about aKlrov dancer 1s the ine of th ebody.From there, you zero in on the back. Itis as active as a llmb. It con trols her ac-t ions and 1s the site of her expressive ef-fects-imperiousness, melancholy, joy .In the United States, only Merce Cu n-ningham makes as much of the back astheKirovchool oes, altho ugh histechnlque and imagery are so differentthat you may prefer not even to ma keth ecomparison.The Russian classicalback 1s not an ageless tradition like thethe chain dance al luded tonSwan Lake and Serenade. It is theinvention of one person, Agrippina Va-ganova, a Kirov soloist who began toteach at the school during the1920s. Byth e 1930s, Vaganova was on the way toconsolidating her reforms of the classi-cal technique she inherited fro m Chris-t ianohansson nd NlcholasLegat;eventuallyshe would be recognized asgreat figure in the training of Sovietdancers, and the Kirov school would becalled the Vaganova Ch oreo grap hic In-st i tute in her hono r. Again and agam Iwa s surprised by howangibleerachievement still is. The dancing of theKirovs prima, Irma Kolp akova, the astballerlna to have been guided by Vaga-nova personally, 1s as much a part ofLeningrad a s the indolent caryatids o nits buildings, the statues of noble horsesin ts squares, he sunburst pattern o nthe ronwork of itswindows. Kolpa-kova does not have an ideal body forballet: her face 1s too large, her neck to oshor t, her orso oo blocky.But thestrength in her waist and pine-thesame contained and quiet strength ap -parent in photographs of Nijinskys tor-so-is such hat her knees and anklesappear obearno weight. Whe n heperforms a traveling step like embditten ournantacross hestage,sh eap-pears to be sliding along o n on e level,like ydroplane.She is a classicaldancer of such purity that her Gisellemisses aragic imension. Th em ad

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