Deník Marie Bashkirtseff

Marie's Birth Date

Také známý jako: Marie birthday, birth date, date of birth, 1858, 1859, 1860

Concept culture/history Complete Aktualizováno: 2026-03-17

Overview

Marie Bashkirtseff's birth date is one of the most tangled biographical facts in her story, involving a three-layer falsification across Julian/Gregorian calendars, Marie's own vanity, and her mother's editorial interventions.

The Three Layers

1. Marie writes "11 novembre 1859" in her diary — but she was almost certainly born in 1858, making herself a year younger (a lifelong habit to amplify how precocious she was).

2. Her mother pushed the date to 1860 in the published edition of the diary, making Marie appear even more of a prodigy.

3. The original manuscript, rediscovered at the Bibliothèque nationale de France, confirmed 1858 as the true year.

Calendar Confusion

The Julian/Gregorian calendar difference adds further complexity:

  • Old Style (Julian): November 12, 1858
  • New Style (Gregorian): November 24, 1858
  • Russia used the Julian calendar until 1918

Marie writes "11 novembre" — not even matching either calendar's date precisely, suggesting she may have been imprecise about the day as well as the year.

Significance

When Marie writes this preface in May 1884, she is 25 years old (not 24 as her stated date would imply). Even on her deathbed — she died five months later — she perpetuates the age deception. Her immediately following remark, "I will certainly no longer have an age when you read me," is both a sophisticated literary observation and, tragically, literal truth.

Birthplace

Marie was born at the Gavrontsi estate near Poltava, in the Poltava Governorate of the Russian Empire (present-day Ukraine), to a wealthy noble family.

Key Source

Doris Langley Moore, Marie & the Duke of H. (1966), documents Marie's habitual age falsification in detail.

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