La Ballerine de Saint Petersbourg by Henri Troyat

 La Ballerine de Saint Petersbourg

is a precious book by Henri Troyat: it is a vivid portrait of the iconic and glorious tradition of the Russian ballet, picturing also its same decadence.

I start to tell to the readers that all these characters really existed and made the history of the Russian and European ballet.

  

The book is narrated in first person using the voice of Ludmilla, a dancer.

Orphan of mother, Ludmilla remains alone with her father. A father too in love for vodka and discomfort but not too much for not understand that maybe it is better to find another place for this poor little girl: he can't be a good father for her because he is desperate for the departure of his wife. 

But...His father wants to give to Ludmilla a great future, putting her daughter in beautiful hands, assuring her a successful and rich future. 

Ludmilla loves dancing and her father accompanies her at the selections for being admitted in the prestigious Ecole Impèriale de Danse located in Saint Petersburg. An exclusive institute  where few people, talented and perfect for ballet, are admitted.. A school completeley financed by the same Tsar. There, dancers studies also Russian, french, history, geography and other topics.

Ludmilla is choosen and her second father and idol, with best qualities than not his real one becomes her teacher of ballet, Marius Petipa, born in Marseille but later emigrated in Russia.

Oh, that formative years are wonderful, tiring, suffering because dancing means an exploration of the limits of the body, and that limits where possible must be overcome: blood, sufferances are part of the process of learning and resistance. 

Ludmilla obtains her first contracts, and she is happy: she understands with the time that she won't never be the first dancer, but she doesn't mind. She understands that the secondary role can be portrayed with extreme grace and beauty: there are wonderful italians and Russians as first dancers and she admires them so badly. 

She becomes an affectionate of the house of Petipa, because there it is possible to breath an atmosphere permeated with creative vibes. Petipa has a beautiful family. 

Tchaikovski the composer of enchantment and dream, supervises with Petipa the coreographies of his works largely putting on stage. Loved by everyone it is a real tragedy for the entire Russian world of ballet and opera when the beloved composer falls sick with cholera and dies. No one knows exactly what happened: if he died of cholera or killed himself because he had catched cholera...

What appears more than sure? That the world has lost a real talent, gone too soon.

Ludmilla after a beautiful show meets the tsar Alexander III. The Tsar remembers very well her father when she tells him her last name. Ludmilla is the daughter of two creatives: her father, before to lose any interest for life was an actor, and also pretty good as tells to her, Alexander III. The son Nicolas II, that would have been the last Russian Tsar, is there with them: beautiful boy, at that time he has a relationship with a famous dancer but later they break-up because his father decides for another woman, Ferodovna, as we all know.

Important changes decided in terms of direction of the imperial  theather with the arrival of a colonel Vladimir Teliakovski, an incompetent, create horrible scenarios for the creativity of that place and for the same Marius Petipa...Teliakovski doesn't know anything of that world and build a sad atmosphere making unhappy choises and destroying the beauty everytime portrayed by dancers and coreographers. 

In Russia, in the while the most modern dancer and coreographer is Serge Diaghilev, also devastated for the departure of his beloved Tchaikovski: he would have left later for Paris where he started to propose an innovative ballet, meeting the perplexities of Marius Petipa for an innovation that would have modified too much the way of dancing. With Petipa in Saint Petersbourg there is also Cecchetti, an italian who created a method of work for dancers still used in modern ballet. 

Petipa, having lost his job at the Theater because of Teliakovski, and in a forced pension decides to return to France. 

Ludmilla thinks that maybe he wouldn't never made return to Russia, but Petipa does. After all it is in Russia that he has found a family, a country where he worked with success, where achieved successes, and where he would have been remembered forever.

The father of Ludmilla, after a pneumonia dies, like also, close to him, Petipa.

Abandoned by the men of her existence, 32 years, Ludmilla discovers in a dancer more young than her, Boris, maybe her future: there isn't anymore just dance, the only love she had known till now but someone: and it is, for Ludmilla a strange and joyous discovery this one.

She hasn't never had the habit of thinking at a different passion than dancing.

Because of the straining moments breathed in Russia where there was a war against Japan, resolved, with a chaotic internal situation that later would have brought at the destitution of the Tsar, the couple decide to move to Paris. 

Serge Diaghilev searches every year for some Russian dancers. 

Ludmilla is not enthusiastic of the innovations apported by Diaghilev. She remains a student of Marius Petipa: it's a completely different world and methodology of work the one by Diaghilev in comparison to the scenographies proposed by Petipa. 

Boris during the first world war decides to fight for his country dying in the battlefield. Ludmilla is destroyed. 

At the same time, subscriber of several russian magazines Ludmilla is always more worried for her country. 

Why? Because she reads of the end of the Tzar saluted as a shock from a lot of russian citizens, not resigned to see the end of that glorious and beauty past:  the advent of  Lenin with the name of Russia changed in URSS oh, so so horrible for Ludmilla.

What remains to her  is the dancing school she has opened in Paris, her first and final love: the mature Ludmilla admits that yes, there are not anymore the applauses in big and beautiful theathers, but the ones of mothers, fathers, friends and relatives of the students she follows at the end of the year, but it is satisfying, because as says our narrator, Ludmilla at the end of the book: "I think that for everyone, at every age, life reserves surprises if you believe in her and you work as if fatigue, old age and death would be only for others."

Touching, a real portray of a period. If you love ballet, history,  if you are curious to understand a world where grace, harmony are the product of great love, sacrifice and sufferance, it's absolutely for you. 

This book déclassé was part of the Biblioteque Municipale Merxheim. It will stay with me forever!

Anna Maria Polidori 

L'Ascesa by Stefan Hertmans

 Interesting book this one by Stefan Hertmans L'Ascesa

published by Marsilio. 

Well, it's a curious story, absolutely. 

Stefan bought a house in fact, finding it pretty attractive, located in Gand where he was born. He didn't know that that house had been once property of an SS. I wouldn't want to live in a place contaminated like that one, or in a house where it has been commited a homicide or a suicide but our man courageously maybe thought that after all this one would have been a great story for a potential book. 

And he was right. 

He found documents in the house, a house he kept for 20 years, interviewed the children of the man involved in this story, neighbors and whoever you can think at for trying to give new life to this man.

And the story of Willem Velhurst is interesting. He lost more or less completely the vision at an eye when little. He was a weird boy, not too much concludent and once adult fell in love for a married woman, Jew, escaping with her.

When she fell sick, and later died, knew another woman Mientje the daughter of a priest, and married her. 

Three children that will explain their life with this father pretty mysterious, at some point a devoted of Hitler. 

The family was pretty worried because of this dangerous passion of their beloved father and husband.

The wife of Willem was a woman of prayers. She prayed but she also kept active the house, in particular when Willem was captured, and taken prisoner: they needed money and artists in that house made the difference in terms of vivacity of the environment. It seemed that Willem after the trial had to spend the rest of his existence in jail but in a way or in another they converted this sentence and he returned to be free. Willem cheated the wife with another woman before to be captured and put in jail so he will continue to live his existence with the lover once set free.

The book closes with final considerations and the end of the various protagonists of this story. For sure a great research! I didn't know the story of all these States so the reading was interesting for this reason as well. 

Anna Maria Polidori 

I Pessimisti non Fanno Fortuna by Luca Zaia

 I Pessimisti non Fanno Fortuna by Luca Zaia, published by Marsilio is another wonderful book by this author. Luca Zaia is the governor of Veneto, so one of the richest regions of Italy: a man with an open vision of world and reality. A person of right, but you wouldn't say that. I admire him a

lot because he treated the pandemic with extreme efficiency and alarm, great severity and attention  not with the lightness of politicians of right. 

Only Veneto counted 15.000 victims for COVID: the second black swan, the first one was the pandemic, when still not over, a war in Europe. Although there is an aggressor, appear more than clear to Zaia that sanctions aren't the best answer for resolving this problem. Sanctions means in a region like Veneto a lot of  lost money because impossible a business at the moment with Russia. Is it an intelligent strategy? Policy should give an answer to this question. 

But of course there is not just this: a war in the heart of Europe is extremely worrying. Let's imagine a world populated by lack of electricity what would it means for all of us.

Zaia hopes that this conflict would be over soon: we musn't act just for Ukraine or Russia, but for us, Europe: the world must discover a new Perestrojka as the one wanted by Gorbacev. And also because as I repeat all the time, it's impossible to disconnect Europe from Russia. What Zaia would want is to inundate squares with manifestations of peace: a projectuality of peace, real and strong: Zaia asks for an investement on peace, the direction where we should look at.

Zaia adds, it's important to close, to close this war, without half treaties of peace, and the possibility of a new war soon.

Maybe it is because he grew up in a countryside, he knows what it means not having too much: Zaia lived in a beautiful world plenty of humanity and hospitality. He doesn't judge youngster selling on Vinted or Wallapop their items. They sold when little what unnecessary in person and remembers that days with great affection. The little price asked was to him and his friends a big little fortune for buying something that they wanted. 

Zaia has also lived immigration in his lands, and that's why he is open to migrants. He remembers in particular the Moroccon who sold clothes: he was always invited at lunch: then the black boy arrived from Senegal. He stayed with them at long because he wanted to learn new kind of systems of cultivation but he was also sad because he remaked most of the time that in Africa there wasn't sufficient water and so...What he was learning would have made the difference? A real impact?

Zaia has seen the globalization of the world including the one of food. Zaia is grown in a corner of the world where every fruit is important and if a single fruit not anymore all good, is not completely thrown away. The good part is eaten,  boiled, (let's imagine apples!)

or ends in a fruit salad. Depends. 

When little, no one bought other kind of fruits apart the one that they had and shared with neighbors. Neighbors brought to them fruits that they didn't have in a mutual help. 

A banana was considered too exotic and a waste of money: same for pineapples. When Zaia 

was minister of the agriculture insisted with McDonald's: it was important  the preparation of a hamburger made entirely with italian meat. The important american chain of fast-food decided for the introduction of McItaly.

Zaia convinced schools: they adopted as little breakfast a fruite juice: healthy and not caloric.

It's just up to us, remarks the politician.

Zaia opens largely to same sex relationships, women's rights, the right of ending the existence when too painful, so euthanasia, but...the main message is a message of optimism. Zaia notices  that there is less enthusiasm than not in the past and this one is a big danger.

The situation could become dangerous if no one will try to resolve problems. Social conflicts between classes could increase: measures against inequalities are important.  

"Difficult times create strong men: strong men create good, easy times: easy times create weak men, weak men create difficult times" an arab proverb but very incisive and that says all.

No polemics, and more wisdom.

Highly recommended book.

Anna Maria Polidori