Though he
remained ever a stranger to Russia and his fellows, as he did to
himself, he became the most observant of travelers. Though as the
foreigner he perceived only the superficial and picturesque elements of
the life of the land--its Orientalism, its barbaric coloring--and found
his happiest expression in a fantasy after the "Thousand Nights and a
Night," he noted his impressions skilfully and vividly, with an almost
virtuosic sense of his material. If he could not paint the spring in
music, he could at least embroider the score of "Sniegourochka"
delightfully with birdcalls and all manner of vernal fancies. If he
could not recreate the spirit of peasant art, he could at least, as in
"Le Coq d'or," imitate it so tastefully that, listening to the music, we
seem to have before us one of the pictures beloved by the Russian
folk--a picture with bright and joyous dabs of color, with clumsy but
gleeful depictions of battles and cavalcades and festivities and
banqueting tables loaded with fruits, meats and flagons. It is indeed
curious, and not a little pathetic, to observe how keen
Rimsky-Korsakoff's intelligence ever was. The satirization of the
demoniacal women of "Parsifal" and "Salome" in the figure and motifs of
the Princess of Samarcand is deliciously light and witty.
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