André Schaeffner (born 1895). Strawinsky. Paris: Les Éditions Rieder, 1938. C9651

André Schaeffner (born 1895). Strawinsky. Paris: Les Éditions Rieder, 1938. C9651

The Last of the Warmenoughs... It is said that 1913 had the cold feel of revolution in St. P. The weather told the story as it had before in Russian literature (the setting for the events in Pushkin's poem "The Bronze Horseman" was the calamitous flood of 1824, the worst of many). Biely's novel Petersburg appeared that year and foretold the Great War; his oft repeated "oo-oo-oo" symbolizes, of course, the wind. In one of Alexander Blok's poems the October Revolution is depicted as a snowstorm. And 1913 was the 300th anniversary of the founding of the Romanov dynasty and it was observed that in proper Russian irony wind blew down the decorations on the eve of the anniversary celebration. It was just a sign of the times, then, when Stravinsky's 1913 production of "The Rite of Spring," danced by Nijinsky, blew into Paris and took it by storm and scandal.

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