Diary of Marie Bashkirtseff
CZENUKFR

Saturday, 5 August 1876 (24 July) — Sunday, 6 August 1876 (25 July)

We went to collect my trunks from customs. The corridors, rooms, and offices we passed through, the customs officers and men of every description we saw! They searched all the trunks; I tore open the packing, punching the dresses and hats, which I believe moderated their zeal by proving that I was not a milliner.
In vain I search for Russia — everything at this hotel is in the German manner. We lunched in the garden which occupies the main courtyard. Then I dressed and we went to find the Sapogenikoffs.
The coachman was still hesitating between two houses when I was snatched from the carriage by Giro and Marie, who had rushed into the street having seen me from the window. Leaving Paul and my uncle with Nina, I rushed into the girls' room, and for an hour it was confusion, chatter, shouts — just like the days of Girofla!
I carried them off with me; we crossed the Neva in two boats — in the first the Three Graces, in the second the gentlemen and Chocolat. If there is anything beautiful in Petersburg, it is this superb river, wide as a lake, with clear water so transparent that one sees the bottom. I am proud of speaking Russian — one language more — and these brutes of Russians do not appreciate my noble efforts.
Towards ten o'clock Nina came to join us; the gentlemen left; my Graces were escorted home, and Nina stayed to sleep at mine. It is four o'clock; we have been looking at my dresses — it is pleasant to sit up sometimes; it feels as if one were doing something forbidden. But little by little Nina began to speak to me of all those things of which one never speaks to young girls — wrongly so. One of her remarks struck me with its accuracy. It is that a woman, in giving herself to a man — even her own husband — undergoes a kind of humiliation, for she feels that on the man's side is force and impunity, and on her own abasement, since she submits. The man performs an act of sovereignty; the woman is only a passive instrument, whatever the love; the man, scarcely satisfied, sees in the woman a poor little thing to whom he has given everything; he loves her somewhat for the pleasure she has procured him — but that is the past, it is finished, and he rises as if nothing had happened, while the woman... it is different; and from a great distance I can judge, remembering myself after the horseback ride with Antonelli, while he was very tranquilly at his club. Besides, it is almost natural: the man gives, the woman receives — to her therefore the love, the memory, since she has diminished the man by a certain quantity of... of... of fluids, which must act upon her and by which she is augmented, even morally. But it is not just. It ought to be give and take.
Men marry, after all — they pose as wise, orderly, calm, and they revolt at the slightest wildness in a woman. Is that just? Is it reasonable? They are orderly because they are surfeited with the contrary — but women, entirely new, must they be, can they be? The man is worn smooth; he brings to a young girl the fine remains of his mind and body; he is tired; he takes a wife to rest; he demands a domestic woman who does not even go into society, who makes do with his cast-offs — is that reasonable? I do not preach the depravity of women, but I ask for justice and indulgence. But poor innocent — I meddle in affairs of which I know nothing. Competent persons, fair persons — am I right?
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Instead of visiting the churches, I slept, and Nina took me to lunch at her place. Her parrot talked, her daughters shouted, I sang — one could believe oneself in Nice. The two-seat coupé gave shelter to the Three Graces, who went in driving rain to see the Cathedral of St Isaac, famous for its malachite and lapis-lazuli columns. These columns are of extreme richness but bad taste, for the green of the malachite and the blue of the lapis-lazuli destroy each other. The mosaics and paintings are superb — true figures of saints, the Virgin, angels. The whole church is in marble; the four façades with their granite columns are beautiful, but they are not in harmony with the golden Byzantine dome. In general one receives a sort of painful impression from the whole exterior, for the dome is too prominent and crushes the four small domes surmounting the columned façades, which without it would be so beautiful. The profusion of gold and ornament in the interior produces the happiest effect — the variegated is harmonious and in the best taste, except for the two lapis-lazuli columns, which would be superb — but elsewhere.
A common people's wedding was being celebrated. The couple were ugly and we did not look for long. I love the Russian people — good, brave, loyal, naïve. These men and women stop before every church and chapel, before every icon-niche, and cross themselves and perform their devotions in the middle of the street as if they were at home.
After St Isaac's we went to the Kazan Cathedral. Another wedding — and a charming bride. This cathedral is built in imitation of St Peter's in Rome, but the colonnade looks superfluous; it seems not to connect with the building, and it is not extended far enough to form a semi-circle, and all this gives the monument a disadvantageous and unfinished air.
Further along the Nevsky, the statue of Catherine the Great. And before the Senate near the Winter Palace — which is, incidentally, an immense barracks — the equestrian statue of Peter the Great, one hand pointing to the Senate, the other to the Neva. The people interpret this double gesture singularly: the Tsar, it is said, points to the Senate with one hand and to the river with the other to say that it is better to drown in the Neva than to plead in the Senate.
The statue of Nicholas is remarkable in that it is not supported by the horse's two legs and tail — three points of support — but by the legs alone; this marvel prompted in me a gloomy reflection. The Communards will have less work to do — the support of the tail being absent.
I dined alone with my Graces — Étienne and Paul as spectators; they call themselves, very seriously, my court; they irritate me horribly. I should like to see no one but Giro and Marie.
Paul mends my lace and waits on me in the most chivalrous manner — but he irritates me. What would charm me in another only makes him bearable.
It rains and I have a cold. I write to Maman: "Petersburg is a filthy place! The paving is atrocious for a capital — one is mercilessly shaken; the Winter Palace is a barracks; the Grand Theatre an enormous privy; the cathedrals rich, but misshapen and misconceived."
Add to that the climate, and you have the complete picture of its charms.
I tried to work myself up by looking at the portrait of Pietro Antonelli, but he does not seem to me handsome enough for me to forget that he is a vile man — a creature one can only despise. I am no longer angry with him, for I despise him completely — not for a personal insult, but for his manner of living, his weakness... wait: let me define the feeling I have just named. The weakness that impels us toward good, toward tender feelings, toward the forgiveness of wrongs done by a beloved being — that may be so called. But the weakness that impels toward evil and villainy — that is called... cowardice.
I thought I should feel the absence of my family more; I am not content, yet it is owing rather to the presence of disagreeable and common people — my poor uncle, for all his good nature — than to the absence of those I love.

Notes

Girofla: apparently a familiar nickname for one of the Sapogenikoff sisters; the reference evokes a shared past of raucous girlhood play. ↩
Fluids: Nina invokes the contemporary pseudo-scientific theory of vital or sexual fluids — a common framework in 1870s popular physiology — to argue that sexual union is not neutral but constitutively transforms the woman. ↩
St Isaac's Cathedral (Isaakievsky sobor): completed in 1858, one of the largest domed cathedrals in the world; its lavish interior uses malachite and lapis-lazuli in its pilasters, a feature universally noted by visitors. ↩
The statue of Catherine the Great on the Nevsky Prospect was unveiled in 1873; the equestrian statue of Peter the Great — the Bronze Horseman — stands on Senate Square, gesturing toward the Neva. ↩
The equestrian statue of Nicholas I on St Isaac's Square, unveiled in 1859, was renowned as an engineering marvel — balanced on only the horse's two hind legs. ↩