[p. 81] Glistening snowflakes whirled and danced in front of the windows of a St Petersburgh house, when on the third of February 1888 Footnote the large dark eyes of Anna Pavlova for the first time gleamed in the light of this world. A burning soul, as bright as the cristal snowflakes, has choosen the tiny frame of this new human being as its abode. The spirit of beaty has already sown its most noble seeds in this heart, that she may sprout in the divine light of tenderness and goodness, grown up, and once blossomed into a rare flower, bring joy and light to humankind.
When Annushka was two years old, she lost her father. "We were poor, very poor," wrote Anna Pavlova Footnote, "but my mother always managed to have a present for me on holidays: with Easter toys [p. 82] in a huge Easter egg, with Christmas a small fir tree hung with gilded apples and nuts and full of bright little candles. And I remember very well how glad and excited I was when I, eight years old, was taken to a Christmas performance at the Maryinsky Theatre. I had never been to an opera house, and burning with curiosity I asked my mother what we were going to see there. Then she told me the story of Sleeping Beauty. I loved it and my mother had to tell it to me many times since.
"The sleigh that took us to the Maryinsky moved silently over the fresh snow which was glistening in the light of the lanterns. I was overjoyed sitting next to my mother, her arm around me. 'Now you are going to see beautiful fairies,' she said, while we quickly drove to the theater, this unknown realm. At the first notes of the orchestra I became very grave. I shuddered. For the first time in my life I was moved by an overdose of beauty. When the curtains rose to reveal the glorious hall of palace, I uttered a cry of joy. I remember hiding my face in my hands when the old witch entered the stage on a car pulled by rats.
"In the second act boys and girls danced [p. 83] a beautiful waltz. 'Wouldn't you like to dance like that,' my other asked me with a smile. 'No,' I answered, 'I want to dance as that beautiful lady the Sleeping Beauty, and I want to be a Sleeping Beauty too, and dance in this theatre just as she is doing.' My mother called me her little fool, without suspecting that I had found my true vocation. When we got back home, I asked my mother whether I could take dancing lessons. She said, 'Of course, my little Nura,' (a pet name), probably thinking of the ballroom with her daughter as a debutante. But I did not think of any ballroom, I was thinking of ballet only. That night I dreamed I was a ballerina and that I danced like a butterfly to the music of Tchaikowsky. I like to remember that evening when my future was decided.
"The next morning I spoke about nothing but my future. My mother probably started to realize that her daughter was a serious and determined little person. 'In order to be a dancer you have to leave your mother and go to an academy. [p. 84] But my little Nura surely does not want to leave me?' 'No, I do not want to leave you. But if that is what it takes to become a great ballerina, it has to be done.' And I embraced her and begged her with a lot of kisses to send me to a ballet academy. When she rejected my pleas, I began to cry.
"After some time, my mother, surprized at my persistence, agreed to take me to the director of the ballet academy. We were, as I already said, very poor. But probably my mother made this large sacrifice to ensure my future, when she would not be there anymore and I would have to fight the struggle for life on my own. Footnote 'A child of eight we cannot admit,' the director said. 'You can come back when the little one is ten years old.' I was utterly dejected by this decision. And during the next two years I had only a single thought: to become a ballerina as quickly as possible. During that time I has often sad and withdrawn, and sometimes very unmanageable.
"As was the old Petersburgh habit, we went into the country during the summer, not too far out of town. It always gave me great joy to see our furniture, beds, tables, chairs, pots and pans, and the great samowar, loaded onto a cart which [p. 85] carried it all to the dacha, a wooden summer home as small as a dolls' house. We usually sat on the veranda. There we had our meals, there my mother made me read the fables of Kriloff Footnote aloud, there she taught me to sew. Without a hat on and dressed in an old cotton dress I roamed through the forests near the house. I loved the gloom under the high fir trees, their column-like trunks encircled by butterflies. In the shade of those trees I choose a quiet spot to sit daydreaming. I built grandiose castles in the air. Sometimes I would make a wreath of wild flowers and imagined myself as Sleeping Beauty.
"On my tenth birthday I reminded my mother of her promise to take me back to the director of the ballet academy. She became quite grave, but took me there all the same. She knew me well enough to realize that I could never be persuaded to change my mind. I was mad with joy when the director took me on as a pupil. Still, I cried my eyes out when the day came to leave my mother. She cried much too. At that time I could not understand her tears as well as I do now. She knew what step I was going to take. I exchanged a quiet, pious household, where hovered the spirit of the silver Mother of God, for an exacting, [p. 86] intoxicating life in a quite different world: the kingdom of art and the stage. She knew that my step was irrevocable, and also that in the world of the stage there was no pure happiness to be found, and that its temptations were difficult to resist. Footnote
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