Diary of Marie Bashkirtseff
CZENUKFR

Wednesday, 19 April 1876

See the disadvantage of my position. Antonelli without me has his club, society, his friends — everything, in a word, except me. Whereas I, without Antonelli, have nothing.
I am for him only a luxury occupation; he was for me everything — he made me forget our horrible position, and I did not think of it and occupied myself only with him, too happy to escape.
Whatever I become, I bequeath my journal to the public. All the books one reads are inventions — the situations in them are forced, the characters false. Whereas this is the photograph of an entire life. Ah! you will say, but this photograph is tedious while inventions are entertaining! If you say that you give a very poor notion of your intelligence. I offer you here what has never yet been seen. All memoirs, all journals, all these letters one publishes, are nothing but painted inventions designed to deceive the world.
[Annotation: As if the tone here were not forced, and as if everything were not of a wearisome exaggeration and romanticism! 1881]
I have no interest in deceiving — I have no political acts to conceal, no criminal relations to hide; no one cares whether I love or do not love, whether I weep or whether I laugh. My greatest concern is to express myself as exactly as possible. I have no illusions about my style or my spelling.
I write letters without errors, but in the midst of this ocean of words I doubtless let many slip. I also make errors in French. I am a foreigner — but ask me to express myself in my own language, and I would perhaps do it even worse.
But it is not to say all that that I opened the notebook. It is to say that it is not yet noon, that I am more than ever given over to my tormenting thoughts, that my chest is oppressed, and that I would gladly howl.
Besides, this is my natural state, whenever I have no Pietro to distract me from my constant unhappiness. That is why I cling to him so.
The sky is grey; the Chiaia is traversed only by cabs and dirty pedestrians; those stupid trees planted between the promenade and the sea prevent one from seeing it. In Nice on the Promenade des Anglais one has on one side the villas and on the other the sea, which breaks on the pebbles unobstructed. Here one has houses on one side and on the other a kind of garden that runs the length of the street and separates it from the sea — which is itself separated from the garden by a large enough stretch of barren ground covered in building rubble, offering a spectacle of truly desolating sadness. Arriving at the square that terminates the Chiaia — planted with pretty shrubs — one feels far better, and that spot is pretty. Further on one enters the quay: houses on the left, the sea on the right — but the sea stopped by a balustrated wall lined with stalls of oyster-sellers and shellfish-dealers; then come the iron gates of the port itself. But that is no longer the sea — it is a dirty place, entirely obstructed by a heap of uglinesses.
Grey weather always makes me a little sad — but here, but today, it oppresses me. This deathly silence in our hotel apartment; this irritating noise of cabs and bell-hung carts outside; this grey sky; this wind stirring the curtains!
Ah! I am very wretched, and I must blame neither the sky nor the sea but the earth. This disappointment concerning Pietro — whom I always thought so sincere and so passionate, despite my doubts... Sincerity and passion transformed into a lie and cowardly submission!
After all, my life is only beginning — why cry out so much over a disappointment, over a lie! I shall see so many more.
Tomorrow evening we leave. There is not enough money — we must go. Is that not vexing?
The time has seemed long to me — and yet tomorrow it will barely have been eight days!
I would very much like to know since when my lord Antonelli has been in Rome. I would like to know above all the truth! Was he removed by some ruse, or did he remove himself? In admitting the latter hypothesis, one would also have to admit that he never said a single true word to me.
If he was removed by a ruse, once back he ought to have stirred himself a little more than this. But there is a third supposition. He has renounced me of his own accord. There — that would be charming.
Or perhaps he loves me — but since I do not love him he wishes to force himself to forget me. That is the most flattering supposition for my pride — and perhaps the most probable.
Plowden will not fail to show him my photograph and have him read the Pax Tibi.
In any case, so much the better. Ah! But I forgot something magnificent — as Foster used to say — which is that it was I who did not want him; it was I who always said no, and he will not think that I love him. There is a compensation — almost a joy.
A few more days and I shall be in Nice. This moment, so desired before, is quite indifferent to me now. I would not wish to delay it — solely because of my character, which is so contrary to postponements of any kind.
I am glad to have been last summer for a few days to Florence, and this spring to Naples. I shall no longer have that aversion I have for every new city — if in future I have occasion to go to them.
That poor aunt, dying of boredom! She has never been so long alone, and her letters make me feel pity. And Grand-papa! And the dogs and the Sapogenikoffs and Collignon and the monkeys!
I believe Antonelli has been in Rome since Saturday. In that case he would only have been delayed by a week. Good — more mitigations and excuses. Besides, it is not to justify him — it is to calm myself.
Altamura displays and throws about too much money for me to trust him. One sees at once whether a man throws his money about from habit or to throw dust in one's eyes.
I am so bored that I do not know what to do with myself, and La Comtesse de Salisbury is too serious a book to stupefy and interest me.
Canaries and parrots! I am just back from the promenade — it was brilliant. We had just turned before the balcony where the gentlemen were standing, Muliterno among them, and watched Altamura playing the clown on his horse, when Torlonia passed with a friend of Petruccio's and raised his hat quite naturally — as if we were on the Corso or the Pincio. He had spotted Chocolat beside the coachman from a distance — but for me it was so unexpected, so unexpected... that I found it the most natural thing in the world. The gaiety rose from my heart to my head like the foam of a bottle of champagne. I went back in and stationed myself on the balcony half mad with joy — and then... what am I to Torlonia? Why this joy at the sight of a man who does not even look at me?... And little by little the foam subsided, and once more I saw the sad reality. I alone think of all these people — they do not concern themselves with me.
— I do not want to leave tomorrow! I exclaimed on coming in. And why stay? Certainly to see Torlonia is an immense pleasure — but this pleasure is accompanied by so many pains and so many humiliating thoughts that really it is enough to dash one's head against the wall!!
Let us mention in passing that we visited the Royal Palace near the Teatro San Carlo. Doenhoff, having encountered us when Maman had already gone back, asked whether we were at home this evening. We are going to the theatre.
Dinner is served; I dine alone while the others go to the table d'hôte.
God — what sadness! Truly Torlonia is adorable — there is someone I would be mad about if he loved me!!
That moment of happiness has hurt me — this Torlonia has humiliated me, I know not why.
There are many Roman faces here — one would think it the Corso.
I do not want to stay anywhere — I want to rush headlong to Russia and return from it only when I am clean. One hour more and this life seems to me impossible. I do not know whether it is my imagination, but it seems to me that everyone is pointing at us, mocking, despising!
You understand what a torture!
I shall not go to the theatre! Why go? To arouse curiosity — so that people ask who is that? — and so that they answer: I don't know.
Ah! If they answered that, it would be too fortunate — but no: they will want to provide information gathered in scraps and stitched together to form a most abominable fabric!
Besides, it seems to me that everyone knows us. One must leave — nothing holds me here; I am good for nothing — not for myself, not for anyone; no one loves me, no one cares for me!
I hear Doenhoff who has just entered the drawing room. The poor fool still hopes to obtain something from Maman. He might as well court a statue or a piece of furniture.

Notes

Marie's manifesto for the diary as document humain — anticipating what she will refine into her famous 1884 preface. This passage was suppressed in the 1887 published edition. ↩
Marie's savage self-annotation from 1881, written five years after this entry, mocking her own grandiose claims. The irony is characteristic of her lucid self-awareness. ↩
Pax tibi — "Peace be with you" (Latin): the motto of Venice, inscribed on the lion of St. Mark. Marie apparently had a Pax tibi inscribed — perhaps on the back of her photograph, or as the title of some message she left with Plowden. The reference is cryptic. ↩
"Comme disait Foster" — a quotation from someone named Foster; unidentified. Possibly an English acquaintance, given the typically English surname. ↩
The household at Nice evidently included actual pet monkeys — a not-uncommon aristocratic affectation in the 1870s. ↩
La Comtesse de Salisbury — a historical novel by Alexandre Dumas père (1839), set in the reign of Edward III of England, involving the founding of the Order of the Garter. One of Dumas's many medieval romances. ↩
"Canaris et perroquets!" — Marie's invented exclamation, perhaps a minced oath replacing something stronger; canaries and parrots suggesting noisy, colourful chatter. ↩
The Pincio — the hilltop terrace gardens above the Piazza del Popolo in Rome, one of the fashionable promenading spots for the Roman aristocracy. Torlonia's hat-tip here carries the easy naturalness of a social equal — which is precisely what thrills Marie. ↩
Teatro San Carlo — Naples' great opera house, one of the oldest and largest in the world (opened 1737), considered a rival to La Scala. Located adjacent to the Royal Palace (Palazzo Reale). ↩