Diary of Marie Bashkirtseff
CZENUKFR

Saturday, 20 September 1873

Only at five o'clock am I free; I go into town with the Beast and Dina. At the French lesson I read the Sacred History, the Ten Commandments of God. He says one must make no images of what is in the heavens. The Catholics and the Orthodox are wrong; they are idolaters who worship statues and paintings. And I, for my part, am far from following this method. I believe in God, our Saviour, the Virgin. And I honour a few saints. Not all, for some are manufactured like plum-cakes. May God forgive me this reasoning if it is unjust, but in my simple mind things are so, and I cannot say otherwise. Shall I ever believe that God ordered a tabernacle built so that from the Ark of the Covenant His oracle might be heard?! No, no -- God is too sublime, too great for these pagan and insufferable absurdities. I worship God in everything. One can pray everywhere; He is everywhere present.
So I go into town, a turn on the promenade (hair down -- it is really quite pretty). In the evening we play Kings again, but the game is not interesting enough, nor are the stakes high enough. They play for the sake of playing, and I -- I do everything wholeheartedly: if I play, I am in the game. But this evening I laughed the whole time; the others shouted at me as at a donkey when it was my turn to play, and despite this I was giddy and distracted. I let chances pass, the go cards, etc. etc. But I was amusing myself uproariously, if one may put it so. Khalkionoff came, and, I no longer remember apropos of what, said that men are degenerate apes. He is a little fellow with the ideas of Uncle Nicolas.
-- Then, I said to him, you do not believe in God?
-- I can only believe in what I understand.
-- Oh! the horrid creature!
All these boys who are just sprouting their moustaches have these ideas; they are little greenhorns who think women cannot reason. Nor understand. They regard them as talking dolls who do not know what they are saying; they let them speak with a patronising air. I said all this to him, except for "horrid creature" and "greenhorn." He has doubtless read some book he did not understand and from which he recites passages. He proves that God could not have created, for at the poles they have found frozen bones and plants. Therefore these lived and existed at one time, and now there is nothing.
I say nothing against that, but was not our earth overturned by various revolutions before the creation of man? One does not take literally that God created the world in six days. The elements were forming over centuries and centuries and centuries. But God exists. Can one deny it upon seeing the sky, the trees, men themselves? Would one not say there is a hand that directs, punishes, and rewards, that is all-powerful, and that is the hand of God?!! Certainly it is absurd to imagine God in a burning bush, or in the Ark of the Covenant, or in a pillar of fire. Or to represent Him in statues or paintings. I understand that one might portray Jesus, who was on the earth, who entered into a human body.
I have a far more expansive conception of God! But paganism -- those men who deceived the peoples -- did they not acknowledge a supreme power? They did not know how to give it the name of God, but they called it Nature. Is it not the same thing? What is Nature? Another name for God.
[Written across: This is almost pantheism.]
All the actions, the thoughts of men, their vices, their virtues, their desires, loves and hatreds -- all this, where does it come from, and how does it lodge in a body that becomes dust when it is dead?!! Does one not see in everything the power and goodness of God?
In writing this, a vain thought crossed my mind: I thought it was pleasing to God. But at that very moment I recognised my wretchedness, and the most insignificant merit is effaced by this presumption. Even these humble words I utter at this moment are a sin, because involuntarily I want to earn something for this humility.
We walk the Beast back to her hotel. We are like a Jewish wedding party -- myself in the great white burnous, Dina in a petticoat and some black tunic or other, Walitsky with a hump formed by Pitou, Paul just as comically dressed, the Beast ordinary. The whole troupe without hats, laughing, talking, and walking down the middle of the street. The rare passersby stopped and stared at us with curiosity, but they are locals -- swine! We even saw two Englishmen. The return was no less solemn. I made my burnous billow like a white Mephistopheles; the wind turned it into a sail. Paul and Dina sang, and Walitsky talked his nonsense.
We do not end there. Paul tells us some school adventures, about the Sheficks and about an Englishman, Berry, prodigiously tall and strong, who smashed a mirror instead of breaking open a window to chase a supposed thief. And a fine evening they spent -- a night, rather -- drinking beer, each consuming an incredible quantity of enormous tankards and a kilogram of cheese, without saying a word to one another. They drank, ate, and exchanged friendly, stupid, and monotonous glances.
At last I go to bed -- the same affair every day, alas! One cannot invent anything new. I shall remember our nocturnal march for a long time.
[In the margin: Whether it is even or odd... it is even!]

Notes

In English in the original. ↩