Diary of Marie Bashkirtseff
CZENUKFR

Saturday, 13 August 1881

Well then, I work at it — barely two hours — and then: give it up! The question is: suppose I abandon it, and then I say to myself: who knows? Perhaps it would have been very good. So I decide to go on, and immediately I tell myself: it is pretentious and says nothing.
Indeed I dislike my models. And then I picture the canvas exhibited on the boulevard just after the elections... And then it is such an unfeminine subject — which is precisely what attracts me most.
If I had the certainty that there was no chance of it being good — that I am not capable of doing it well enough for the subject to achieve grandeur — but then who knows, if I apply myself, perhaps? There is the "perhaps" that is driving me mad.
Julian's opinion — but Julian was wrong about Zillhardt this year: he had predicted good things, and the result was a disaster.
I am going to leave it to chance — but if chance does not say what I say... and what do I say?
It is my illness, I swear. I absolutely need Alexis for the painting, and I don't know when he is coming back, and I have only eighteen days left. You're mad.
No — I have time.
Yes — chance! Well then: I open this notebook at random, I place my finger at random, and if the number of letters in the line on which my finger falls is even, I give up the painting.
Very well — it is even. But...
You are not unaware that I have a diseased right lung; well, you will no doubt take pleasure in learning that the left is likewise affected. None of these idiot doctors has yet told me so — besides, I felt it for the first time in the relic catacombs at Kiev, but I thought it was a momentary pain caused by the damp. Since then it returns every day, and this evening so strongly that I find it painful to breathe, and there is a real pain between the collarbone and the breast — the very place where the doctors tap their little taps. And the painting.

Notes

Marie uses a random divination game to settle her artistic indecision — opening the notebook at random and counting letters. The fact that the answer comes out "even" (meaning she should give up) and she immediately qualifies it with "But..." is characteristic self-awareness. ↩