GLR May-June 2023

poignantly reveals how deeply wounded he felt all of his adult life at Balanchine’s patronizing view of him—and Kirstein was n’t a whiner and never indulged in self-pity. “Balanchine re turned,” Kirstein wrote, “he is as cold as ice. ... I can’t expect that his nature would change. ... With me, it is no use; I neither in terest or amuse him, and he has no basis upon which we can speak ... it makes me feel sad that I can talk with all the other people with whom I work, and George seems to have no inter est ... the only thing he really loves is music ... for this he has a passion, and it is wonderful and disinterested, but on the other things, he leaves me alone—with no trace of caring.” In all the long years that followed, the basic contours of the Kirstein-Balanchine relationship remained constant. An occa sional business lunch or dinner aside, the two men never be came friends, nor even socialized other than incidentally. Kirstein always retained his profound belief in Balanchine’s ge nius, and he devoted himself to creating the most ideal circum stances possible for its expression. His zeal did occasionally falter—the result of emotional exhaustion or the demands of his own multiple projects—but his central conviction of Balan chine’s unmatchable brilliance held steady. When Balanchine died in April 1983, Kirstein stepped in front of the curtain the following night and told a hushed audience, in a slightly trem bling voice that Balanchine “is with Mozart, Tchaikovsky, and Stravinsky. I do want to tell you how much he valued this au dience, this marvelous audience ... you kept us going fifty years, and will another fifty. One thing he didn’t want was that this be interrupted. We will proceed.”

deeply as well for Fidelma seemed “certain” to Jon Anderson, who felt that their relationship, at least during the early years of the marriage, definitely had a sexual component. As I wrote in my book, “the cynical conclusion would be that Lincoln mar ried in order to foster his career. Yet that seems too cynical, given how little he would bother to cover up his homosexual activities—and how much he genuinely cared for Fidelma.” What seems nearly as certain is that to Balanchine homo sexuality was simply incomprehensible—of no interest, and vaguely suspect. Distant and reserved by nature, Balanchine rarely discussed his or anybody else’s private life, yet of course he knew that male (not female) homosexuality was common place in the ballet world. We get an indirect clue to Balanchine’s attitude toward it in the figure of Vladimir Dimitriev, his most trusted adviser in the early years after his arrival in the U.S. Dimitriev proved a relentless advocate for Balanchine’s busi ness interests, and he was no less outspoken (in a negative way) about Kirstein’s homosexual affairs. Early on, Kirstein became deeply infatuated with one of the school’s first students, Harry “Bosco” Dunham, a “small blonde from Ohio” in his early twenties who’d already had an affair with Paul Bowles (who warned Kirstein that Bosco was “nuts— that sitting down in a chair was drama to him”). Until Bosco came along, Kirstein had been so preoccupied with the multiple issues connected with putting the ballet on its feet that for a con siderable period he’d been celibate. (As he wrote in his diary: “Streets full of sailors and marines. I keep my eyes neatly averted.”) But Kirstein found Bosco “wholly charming” and noted in his diary “the unmistakable solar plexus pains of strong attraction and longing which I have not felt since I can’t re member and which I thought up to now were forever dulled by jacking off and concentration.” Bosco responded in kind, but he proved wildly unpredictable and soon left the school and the city. (He would die in World War II.) But before that, while Bosco was still in attendance at the school, Dimitriev became aware that he and Kirstein were hav ing an affair. Kirstein somehow discovered that Dimitriev was regularly opening his mail—including his lovesick letters to Bosco. Shocked, he confronted Dimitriev, who—instead of ex pressing apologies and regret—“made fun” of Kirstein’s predilections. “I can’t understand Americans,” Dimitriev boldly told him. “Were all Americans queer?” Yes, Kirstein angrily replied: “We are the nation of the great intermediates” (he’d been reading Havelock Ellis). Henceforth, he wrote in his diary, “no intimacy would be possible” with Dimitriev, and he would confine their interaction to “an efficient working school and business basis.” Soon thereafter, Kirstein noticed a tone of “slight contempt” from Balanchine when the two of them talked. Unlike Dimitriev, who was something of a bull in a china shop, Balanchine’s style was indirect, coolly dismissive. Yet the contempt was unmis takable, and it left Kirstein, as he confided to his diary, feeling “loose and worried” and prone to nightmares (in one: “Balan chine a murderer; myself shipwrecked. Disaster and guilt all around”). What’s more, Balanchine’s deprecatory attitude to ward him carried over into their work together. He had expected a collaboration; what he got was an off-handed assignment to raise money and attend to the multiple small tasks of an admin istrative assistant. In one of the newly acquired letters, Kirstein

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