Firebird
Susan Sellers, Firebird: A Bloomsbury Love Story (Brighton: EER Fiction, 2022)
Review by Noa Leach, Suffolk
In Firebird, Susan Sellers imagines the life of celebrated Russian ballerina Lydia Lopokova and her position within – and without – the Bloomsbury Group in the early twentieth century. It is a tale of love and individuality against social exclusivity as Lopokova’s vivacity and marriage to economist Maynard Keynes shake the foundations of Bloomsbury relationships. Weaving literary, political, and cultural history, Sellers follows Lopokova’s love story with Keynes, her assimilation into British culture and artistic spheres, and her career as it moves from Tsarist St Petersburg to 1920s London.
Firebird is organised into three parts. It opens with Lopokova’s performance in the role of the eponymous Firebird in Stravinsky’s ballet which captivates Keynes and the rest of the first part follows their blossoming relationship. The second part looks back to Lopokova’s childhood in Russia and her emerging international career, from dancing for the Tsar to becoming a celebrity in Paris and the US. In the third part, Bloomsbury members including Virginia Woolf and Vanessa Bell struggle with Lopokova’s stark entry into their lives – with some redemption as Woolf realises there is more to Lopokova than what is on the surface.
Inspired by a V&A exhibition on the Ballet Russes 1909-1929, Sellers uses her meticulous research to situate the novel strongly in its cultural moment, making references to everything from Edwin Hubble to the 1924 Olympic Games in Paris. Sellers gives dimension to the largely unknown figure of Lopokova by piecing together surrounding lives and context – interlacing literature, Russian history, economics, the First World War, and more.
Every element of the novel, which Sellers describes as ‘biofiction’, is based on evidence and existing suggestions about the true lives of her characters, largely extracted from the letters and diaries of Keynes, Lopokova, Woolf, and others. Sellers integrates her research on the lives of these figures into creative prose, which recreates extensive conversations between her real-life characters and provokes questions about the line between truth and imagination. Her imaginative interpretations find astute intersections between the creative works of Bloomsbury artists and their (auto)biographical information. An especially sharp instance of this is when Sellers’ Woolf praises Lopokova for her musings on simultaneity within balletic form (she believes can make ‘the past and future resonate in the same present moment’) which Woolf has been ‘grappling with myself’ as she writes Mrs Dalloway and To the Lighthouse. The novel features particularly elegant translations of dance into vibrant prose; it is a delight to follow the fluid language that builds these kinetic scenes.
The stage is a darkened forest, the moon a silvery sickle in the jet-black canopy overhead. The trees themselves seem painted in shadow, their forms obscured, their outlines a blur. A hunting horn is heard and the colours shift, first to midnight blue, the deepest Byzantium purple. […] red apples glisten on the still-dusky branches. A harp, its liquid notes sliding in glissando, suggests these apples are as evil as any Eve encountered in Paradise, while the sinister intrusion of a cor anglais confirms our fear that this forest is bewitched. (Firebird, p. 3)
Sellers’ biofiction turns history into story, encouraging her readers to imagine the lives behind both renowned and less eminent names of twentieth-century artists. Firebird is a must-read for those interested in the literary history of this period, shedding new light on Bloomsbury lives through deep research and richly imaginative prose.
Noa Leach completed her MPhil in English Literature at Clare Hall, University of Cambridge
