Diary of Marie Bashkirtseff
CZENUKFR

Sunday, 7 August 1881

Saint Agathe got us a box for the dress rehearsal of Oedipus Rex at the Comédie-Française.
The staging is perfect, the costumes admirable in their faithfulness and harmony, and Mounet-Sully, utterly wrong as a man of the world, is splendid in his robes. Hecht was in the next box. Afterwards I went to the studio, where I find Amanda Sidval — a Swedish woman, old and a spinster, who really ought not to be called Amanda... In any case, she was waiting for Julian who did not come, so I take her away, leaving on the table these verses inspired by Oedipus:
O illustrious Director of the painting studio, In your absence, alas! Two stars here have shone. Where were you, o wicked soul? To what happy, unreal shore had you fled? Signed: Amanda Sidval...
Saint Agathe — I shall truly end by believing that is his real name — dines here and recounts all his monotonous nonsense.

Notes

Oedipus Rex: a new production of Sophocles's tragedy at the Comédie-Française, one of the major theatrical events of the 1881 season. ↩
Mounet-Sully (1841–1916): Jean-Sully Mounet, one of the foremost tragic actors of the age at the Comédie-Française, celebrated for his performances of classical and Shakespearean roles. Marie finds his manner in ordinary life disappointing but his stage presence in classical robes magnificent. ↩
Amanda: from the Latin amanda, meaning "she who is to be loved" or "lovable." Marie's jibe is that this old spinster ill-befits a name so charged with romance. ↩
Marie is writing the note in the voice of Amanda Sidval, signing it with Amanda's name — a mock-classical verse in the high style of Greek tragedy, deliberately undermined by the colloquial Ou's qu'etais-tu (a vulgar contraction of Où est-ce que tu étais), creating comic bathos. ↩