Diary of Marie Bashkirtseff
CZENUKFR

Friday, 28 July 1876

Berlin reminds me of Florence. Wait! — it reminds me of Florence because I am here with my aunt, as at Florence, and leading the same life.
First of all we visited the museum. I expected nothing of the kind in Prussia — from ignorance, or from prejudice. As always it was the statues that held me longest, and it seems to me that I have an extra sense beyond other people — a faculty specially designed for the comprehension of statues.
There is one in the great hall that I took for Atalanta, because of a pair of sandals which seemed there to indicate the principal meaning — but the inscription gives the name of Psyche. No matter: Psyche or Atalanta, it is a remarkable figure for beauty and naturalness.
After the Greek plaster casts we moved on; my eyes and mind were already tired, and I recognized the Egyptian section only by those pressed, fleeing lines which recall the rings produced in water by the fall of an object.
Nothing is more terrible than to be with someone who is bored by what delights you. My aunt hurried, yawned, grumbled — though it is true we had been walking for two hours. What is very interesting is the historical museum of statue miniatures, and then the old engravings and portrait miniatures. I adore them. I adore portraits, and in looking at them my fancy makes incredible journeys — transports itself to every era, invents characters, adventures, dramas... but enough.
Then the paintings.
We arrived at the moment marked as the perfection of painting — the ideal of art.
It began with hard lines, colours too bright and disconnected from one another, and has arrived at a softness bordering on confusion. There has not yet been — whatever people say and shout — there has not yet been a faithful copy of nature. One must close one's eyes to everything done between the primitive style and the modern, and consider only those two.
Harshness, blinding colours, boldly traced lines — that is the first. Softness, colours so blended that they lose much of their relief, few lines — that is the second.
Now one would need to take, so to speak, with the tip of the brush the too-vivid colours of the old pictures and transfer them onto the insipidities of the modern ones. Then one would have perfection. There is also the entirely new style that consists of painting by patches. This is a grave error, though with its aid one achieves some effect. In these new pictures the positive objects — furniture, houses, churches — are not comprehended. One disdains the precision of settings and produces a kind of depravity of line; one blurs too much (one can blur without using a stump), so that the figures contrast little and seem as dead as the objects surrounding them — for these objects lack sufficient precision and seem not to be fully settled and still.
Well, my girl — since you understand so well what is required for perfection... Rest assured: I shall work, and, what is better, I shall succeed!
I returned extremely tired, after having bought thirty-two English volumes, partly translated from the leading German writers.
"A library already here!" cried my aunt in alarm.
The more I read the more I want to read, and the more I learn the more things I find there are to know. I say this not to imitate a certain sage of Antiquity. I feel what I say.
Here I am as Faust. An antique German writing-table before me, books, notebooks, rolls of paper...
Where is the Devil? Where is Marguerite? Alas! the Devil is always with me — my mad vanity, that is the Devil. O unjustified ambition!
Futile impulses toward an unknown goal!
I detest the middle in everything. I require either a life... tumultuous! — or absolute calm.
I do not know why, but I do not love Antonelli at all — not only do I not love him, I no longer think of him, and the whole thing seems a dream. But Rome attracts me; I feel that only there can I study. Rome, noise and silence, dissipation and reverie, light and shadow... ah... wait... light and shadow — that is clear enough: where there is light there is shadow, and vice versa... no! [words crossed out] But I mock myself — that is certain! There is reason to. As much as I like! I want to go to Rome — the only place in the world that suits my dispositions. The only one I love for its own sake.
The Berlin museum is beautiful and rich — but does it owe this to Germany? No: to Greece, to Egypt, to Rome!
After contemplating all this Antiquity I got into the carriage with the most profound disgust for our arts, our architecture, our fashions. If one took the trouble to analyse oneself on leaving such places, one would find that one thinks as I do. Why should one wish to identify with others?
While not liking the dryness and materialism of the Germans, one must acknowledge many qualities in them — they are very polite, very obliging. And what pleases me above all is the respect they have for princes and their history; this comes from their being untouched by the infection called republic.
Nothing surpasses an ideal republic — but a republic is like the ermine: the smallest stain kills it. And show me a republic without stains!
No — this life is impossible here; it is a dreadful country. Fine houses, wide streets — but nothing for the mind or the imagination. The smallest town in Italy is worth more than Berlin.
My aunt asks me how much I have written.
"A hundred pages, I think," she says.
Indeed I have the appearance of writing — but no: I think, I dream, I read, then I write two words, and so on all day.
How singular — I understand the benefits of the Republic all the better since becoming a Bonapartist. No, truly, the republic is the only happy form of government, only in France it is impossible — and besides, the French Republic is built in mud and blood. Come, let us not think about the republic; the trouble is I have been thinking about it for nearly a week. For, after all, is France more unhappy since becoming a republic? No — on the contrary. Well, then?
And abuses? There are those everywhere. What is needed is a good free constitution and a man at the head who will govern little, and who will be like a fine shopfront sign — which does not increase the value of the shop but inspires confidence and is agreeable to the eye. Now a president cannot be that. But enough for this evening; another time, when I know more, I shall say more.
Rage seizes me when I think of the unworthy manner in which Antonelli has treated me.
My lips, my first kiss, my first I love you!
Yes — all those abstractions so precious to anyone of some sensibility and pride were very ill bestowed. They are priceless because one cannot have them a second time. And all that — lost; I say lost because the man understood nothing. That is what torments me. Did he not behave like a wretch, and is he not a wretch? A despicable character — and I did not understand... yes I did, but I always hoped to change him; I so much wished to be mistaken; I waited for him to become a man rather than a contemptible, insignificant animal. And it is for such a creature that I have soiled myself! Good heavens!

Notes

Painting by patches: Marie's critique of the Impressionist technique of applying colour in discrete patches or dabs of paint — the style she would later encounter and contend with as a student at the Académie Julian. ↩
En Faust: like Faust in Goethe's drama — the scholar in his study, surrounded by books and tormented by the limits of knowledge. ↩
Like the ermine: the ermine (stoat in winter coat) was proverbially said to die rather than soil its white fur — a symbol of absolute purity, used here with deliberate irony. ↩