NON-FICTION: Dancer's Life

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MY LIFE—Isadora Duncan—Boni & Liveright ($5).

The Book. "Before I was born my mother was in great agony of spirit and in a tragic situation. She could take no food except iced oysters and iced champagne. ... I was born under the star of Aphrodite. . . .

"The evening of my debut arrived. I danced before a group of people so ... enthusiastic that I was quite overcome. They scarcely waited for the end of a dance to call out, "Bravo, bravo, comme elle est exquise. . . .'

"My mother would repeat the entire score of 'Orpheus' over and over until dawn appeared in the studio window. . . .

"That evening there was in the audience calling aloud with the rest, a young Hungarian of godlike features and stature, who was to transform the chaste nymph that I was into a wild and careless Bacchante. . . .

"Afterwards I danced at the Kaim Saal. The students went fairly crazy. Night after night they unharnessed the horses from my carriage and drew me through the street—, singing their student songs and leaping with lighted torches on either side of my victoria. Often, for hours, they would group themselves outside my hotel window and sing, until I threw them my flowers. . . .

"Adieu, Old World. I would hail a New World."

Isadora Duncan was one of those people upon whom life showers a fountain of adventurous fire. In her native U. S., when she sang the Marseillaise and did a classic dance, she was a triumph equally in Manhattan and in the dusty villages of the West. In Europe she attained a high degree of notoriety by refusing to become the mistress of famed Gabriel d'Annunzio; but despite her dislike, frequently made manifest, for the convention of marriage, she permitted herself to be wedded by noted Russian Poet Sergei Yessenin. Their marriage was as brief as a liaison.

The Author, Dancer Duncan, was born in 1880. Her life shows equally the influence of iced oysters, champagne, and her uneasy but auspicious star. Having composed this detailed and candid history, she planned to follow it with a volume about a trip to Russia—for which "I would hail a New World," was a sort of preface. This second volume she did not accomplish. When she had finished My Life, in the spring of 1927, she prepared to spend the remainder of the summer at her Riviera villa. This lady who had danced a thousand times with a veil waving in her hands like a bright tenuous flag, and who had wrapped life closely about her like a brilliant shawl, one summer day tied a red scarf around her throat and stepped into her automobile. As she drove along the roads that sloped down to the sea, a warm slow wind fumbled at her scarf and blew it back so that it stretched and flapped along the body of the car. Then the wind tangled its tassels in the spokes of a wheel. Abruptly and terribly the dancer who had carried a thousand light banners lay in the dust of a summer road, completely still, a red scarf pulled tight around her neck.