Last week, on the 29th, 100 years ago in Paris

We might have remarked as we

passed a bold centennial with

some concession to its mean-

ing, but we find that a con-

sensus still eludes us. I re-

fer to the first performance

of Le sacre du printemps, at

the new Théâtre des Champs-

Élysées, Nijinsky hollering

in the wings to give direc-

tion to the dancers, the or-

chestra inaudible above the

commotion in the hall.

No two witnesses agreed with

each other, on what they saw

or heard, or even with what

they'd said the night before.

They put one in mind of how

Wallace Stevens parsed The

Things of August, greatly 

now affronting the minds of 

denizens of Virginia, endur-

ing a cacaphony of cicadas:

something so generative that

breaks upon the stage as if 

by shock, itself, but ancient: 

These locusts by day, these crickets by night

Are the instruments on which to play

Of an old and disused ambit of the soul

Or of a new aspect, bright in discovery -

A disused ambit of the spirit's way,

.. that was a ghost, and is ..

A century later, almost to the day,

that instant in the history of the

dance is what has not expired, as

much as it is said, the world has

changed. The great commotion lives

and its instruments are with us, a

comprehension needing to be played.

      The greatest events and thoughts -

      but the greatest thoughts are the

      greatest events - are comprehended

      last: the generations that are con-

      temporaneous with them do not exper-

      ience such events - they live right

      past them. The light of the remotest

      stars comes last to men ..

Modris Eksteins

Rites of Spring

  The Great War and

  the Modern Age

Houghton Mifflin, 1989©

Wallace Stevens

Collected Poetry and Prose

  Things of August

Frank Kermode and 

  Joan Richardson, editors

The Library of America, 1997©

Friedrich Nietzsche

Basic Writings of Nietzsche

  Beyond Good and Evil:

  What is Noble

Walter Kaufmann, translator

op. cit.