❦
Monday, 27 February 1882
After a thousand torments I slashed my canvas. The urchins would not pose; attributing these failures to my own incapacity I kept starting again — and in the end... It is just as well; those dreadful monsters were fidgeting, laughing, shouting, fighting... In the end I am simply making a study, so as to be tortured no more by pictures — everything I undertook became, after twenty-four hours, hackneyed or sentimental or banal or clumsy or pretentious, after having greatly pleased me at first... Besides, it is better to do simple studies; I am in such a critical passage (what sort of French is that!)Apres mille tiraillements j'ai creve ma toile...
So humiliated by my inferiority, so shaken by Breslau, that I am left helpless. And how much time wasted — Biarritz, the illness, and already a month here!! If I had not chased after pictures like a fool, or rather if I had not been half stunned by those few lines of Wolff's... There is only one way to set myself back on my feet: to bring back things that will be found very good — but there it is...
Si humiliee de mon inferiorite, si troublee par Breslau que j'ai les bras coupes. Et que de temps perdu, Biarritz, la maladie, et un mois deja ici !! Si je n'avais couru comme une sotte apres les tableaux ou plutot si je n'avais pas ete moitie assommee par les quelques lignes de Wolff... Il n'y a qu'un moyen de me remettre sur pieds, c'est rapporter des choses qu'on trouvera tres bien, mais voila ...