Mosaic: Memoirs by Lincoln Kirstein (review)

When Mr. Kirstein said to me at lunch near Lincoln Center (named for him's the local joke) that he and I were "in agreement about everything—and we are WRONG!," I assumed he meant wrong in the eyes of the most judgmental of third parties, Everyone Else; and I laughed. But it seems he meant this: "the salvation of consciousness, a continual awareness of the precise quality of shifting situations by the process of self-questioning [is] the sole stern pursuit." The title of his memoir is both an adjective ("pertaining to Moses' Law") and noun ("a tableau of scraps"), implying that even prophet-kings are bricoleurs and that collage projects authority. Laying bare the vanities, "barbaric provender," and wandering of his early years on Earth only makes Kirstein's profile stronger. He was brought on stage at the climax of the Balanchine Festival to be served his vodka on a tray by Baryshnikov—a gesture of real grandeur that the audience found moving, that Kirstein appeared to find too-much, and that in poring over his autobiography I find myself finding inadequate tribute to a diffidence so absolute.