Daily Inspiration Quote by Lincoln Kirstein

“Chronologically in luck” is a coolly backhanded compliment: it treats a person less as a romantic singularity than as a historical coincidence that landed perfectly. Kirstein, writing in the orbit of American modernism and institution-building (most famously, ballet as an American project), loved the idea that art isn’t just talent but timing. The phrase makes luck sound almost administrative, as if history hands out appointments and she happened to arrive when a vacancy opened.

Then comes the clincher: “She corresponded to necessity.” That verb, corresponded, is bureaucratic and faintly mechanical; it drains the line of gush and replaces it with design. The subtext is that her value was not merely in being exceptional, but in fitting the era’s unmet demand - aesthetic, cultural, even political. Kirstein’s world was one where patronage, touring, training, and reputation had to be engineered. In that ecosystem, a dancer can become a solution: the body that can carry a new style, the face that can sell a company, the discipline that can stabilize a risky enterprise.

The intent, then, is to elevate her while also folding her into a larger narrative: she wasn’t just “great,” she was required. It’s flattering, but it also hints at a ruthless calculus: artists are most celebrated when they can be read as answers to a problem their moment is desperate to solve. Timing becomes destiny; necessity becomes a kind of halo.