The Shagreen Bone

When working on the ballet libretto Khanon noticed how "hastily and carelessly this novel was written." Throughout the text one feels how Balzac was in a hurry to finish on time. Under the pressure of his creditors, he worked himself to the point of exhaustion.[7]

Despite of eclectic and spreading, novel "Shagreen Skin" is a very constructive composition: the whole structure is described by one line of successive decreasing of life. <...> It pleases how carelessly the story is written, everywhere feels how Balzac hurried up..., under the pressure of his creditors the writer made his violent activity so intensive that caught a nervous exhaustion. The heavy weight of nervous exhausting, heavy activity, and also pressure of the creditors are still in his works and creates vain stress. In general, I decided that the ballet under Shagreen Skin should be a holiday of joyful decreasing of life.^[8]

— Yuri Khanon: "Primary position"

The scenography of the ballet is probably built according to the above-mentioned principle. As soon as the curtain rises, a huge, frozen line of fate (Stern's line from Balzac's novel) is brought before the public's eyes.[7]:9-11 It is all made of bones.^[9]

As composer and librettist in one, Khanon created a complete spectacle, a compressed version, a sort of extract of the formal ballet language. His aim was to stage not only a ballet but a "ballet about ballet." The Shagreen Bone was defined by the author as a rearguard ballet. This is a reference to the past, while keeping the odor of the present.^[10]: 3

A frequently asked question: How could such a dramatic transformation occur when the skin of a shagreen, “the hide of a wild donkey,” turned into “bones”? One can answer like this, for example: how many years have passed "since then"? Anything that does not decompose ossifies and then petrifies. In the novel Vanière, the gardener of monsieur Raphael de Valanten, examines with surprise a shagreen he found in a well and says: "dry as wood and not greasy at all." Thus, the work illustrates the idea of ossification of any culture, including classical ballet.^[11]

The Shagreen Bone is somehow the "reset" (rejection) of the culture of ballet. Subjected to the laws of ballet and summarizing the results of its development, the work demonstrates the absurdity of ballet and its stagnant forms. The composer seems to rise from the orchestra pit and throw bones in the face of the audience, that is to say, ballet clichés:

The author's innovative and eccentric attitude had a resonance in the avant-garde community. For example, the first issue of the new literary magazine ″Place of Seal″ (Mesto Pechati) began, as if by manifesto, with an essay entitled ″The Shagreen Bone″, which consisted of a fragment of the libretto of the first act of the ballet.^[9]

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