Diary of Marie Bashkirtseff
CZENUKFR

Thursday, 11 August 1881

Every day I go to Passy, but the moment I am settled I take a violent dislike to whatever I have begun. First Fortunata, whom I sent away after paying her for six sessions for nothing; then the painting I was mad about and burning with eagerness to do. Julian had said it needed modification, the composition needed improving — and that was enough to make me no longer know what to do. Despite everything I did begin it, but once begun I was seized with disgust and fear.
The truth is that I have only twenty days left — and what if it rains?
There are four life-sized heads to do in twenty days. And then... And yet each head can be knocked off in a day if things go well — yes, but what if they have to be done again? In short, it is a matter of maddening hesitations that give me hot and cold flushes ten times an hour. If I do it, it will not be everything that... For in the end, to rush, to do it any which way is worthless — and if I don't do it someone else will, and then! All these posters covering the walls of Paris, and the clusters of people stopping to look, the election fever — my painting is precisely an election poster, in front of which there is a grocer's boy with his basket, a workman laughing at a gentleman with a briefcase under his arm, a ridiculous-looking dandy, and a vast Bonapartist hat of which you can only see... the hat. In the background, a small woman.
Life-sized, half-length. In short, this and everything else is driving me mad — my hand trembles as I write. The moment I have an idea I have conceived a disgust for it.
There was only this painting, and I have lost so many days — and here I am still undecided.
What a devil of a temperament — when I am free to do as I wish, I no longer know what to do. It is my illness that makes me idiotic, and Breslau's honourable mention has cut my arms off. I feel lost on every side, and in the greatest terror at the thought of seeing anyone at all.
People speak to me — I cannot hear them, or hear wrong... Well, it seems I have deserved it... otherwise... Heaven is just. I wonder... The point is that Julian and the others say this painting is neither new nor original — agreed; besides, I know nothing about it myself. It is at least timely — and then if it is well executed, it will always be good. And then the fear of the models who will come and pose, and the weather?
In a word, I am on edge and wretched and know nothing. And I must still find out whether Alexis will be here during August — he poses for the dandy, and without him, no painting — and I have not yet found the elderly gentleman with the briefcase.
None of this would matter if I were resolved and in good spirits.
And I waste my time and strain my eyes reading to calm myself. There is no longer anyone to bring my hesitations to — Tony in Switzerland, Julian in Marseille. And I — the very devil. The moment I decide anything a voice tells me... In any case whatever I do I shall always do to my disadvantage. If I give up the painting someone else will do it and I shall have a mortal chagrin; if I do it I shall do it in haste, badly, it will rain, and I have only twenty days. Everything I manage to do will certainly be the opposite of what should have been done — so one would have to stop caring about anything. And so here you see me... ah! how dreadful to have come to this.
I have white hairs — one day I found nearly two of them at the front, it is since I began to go deaf... Is that not horrible enough!
Oh! Now... at least this cuts short my recriminations — I have nothing, agreed; but then again I am no longer good for anything. Society life, politics, the pleasures of the mind — all of it through a fog, and if I venture into it I also risk making myself ridiculous or appearing stupid or mediocre. All the abruptness, the affectations, the absences I must simulate — to hide from Saint Amand alone the fact that I am deaf! It is enough to discourage forty horses. How possible it is to confess one is deaf when one is young, elegant, and aspires to everything — how possible to ask for indulgence, pity, in these conditions. How natural it would be to... the rest — what's the use... everything, if I were to say it — but it is impossible! One's head splits; one no longer knows where one stands! Oh — no, there is no God such as I had imagined. There is a Supreme Being, there is nature, there is... but there is no God such as I have been in the habit of praying to every evening. That He grants me nothing — that passes; but to murder me in this fashion! To make me more wretched, more dependent on everyone, than the meanest beggar. And what have I done! I am not a saint; I do not spend my life in church, I do not fast — but you know my life; save for constant disrespect toward my family (who have earned it) I have nothing to reproach myself with.
What then will be done to women who abandon their parents to destitution or insult them horribly, or who abandon their children, deceive their husband and their friends, are malicious, treacherous, wicked, base, depraved? What will be done to them?
What will be done to... in short, to all those who have done harm to anyone? I, if I have done harm — I know nothing of it, I swear. And what good then is the fear and the continual thought of God! What good is it to pray every evening and to ask forgiveness for being compelled by circumstances to say harsh things to those around me? For if I am wrong toward Maman, you know perfectly well that it is to force her to act — it is through these scenes and these violent words that I have managed to push Georges somewhat away from the house. I ruined my health over it — but at least he is no longer sprawled drunk in the drawing-room. And so here I am horribly struck down — struck down with the most refined cruelty. Now —
In short — God — no, the God I thought I knew does not exist. It is not possible.
But then! Oh no — we need a God, to attribute to someone the good and the evil.

Notes

Election fever: the French legislative elections of August–September 1881 (the third elections of the Third Republic) were in full swing. Paris was covered in campaign posters, giving Marie her painting idea. ↩
Gommeux: 1880s French slang for a dandified, affected young man of fashion — roughly equivalent to "swell" or "dandy." ↩
Georges: Marie's brother Georges, whose alcoholism was a constant source of family distress. Marie's "scenes" and confrontations were her way of protecting the household from his behaviour. ↩