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NIJINSKY

the truest sense, expressive of a fine idea.

With the simple directness of great art Le Sacre du Printemps points the imagination not away to an imaginary world of sentiment or ideal emotion, but back to the real but misty past of human life, to a time when man was still at hostile grips with nature, when the struggle between rich and poor had not begun, but when rich and poor alike were ranged together in a common strife with the cruelty of winds and waters. It was the life of the herd, and if we have ever glibly used or read the phrase "herd instinct" without realising what it meant, here it is, realised before our very eyes.

Primarily, we have said, this early life of man was a life of fear; but also it was a life of ecstasy and, now and then, of a strange communion with nature such as

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