Diary of Marie Bashkirtseff
CZENUKFR

Sunday, 13 August 1882

It is three in the morning; I cannot sleep.
This evening I showed Tony a rag-picker study, which he finds merely so-so, and a new sketch for the painting, which he finds very fine. On the whole the sketch is not new — it is like the very first one I had torn up and redone. It seems to me one must conceive things in a flash, especially things that strike and seize you so completely. Now, Tony is right: this painting is relatively easy to execute; there are only two figures, there is no bravura passage, since it takes place in an indeterminate hour, the silhouettes standing out dark. The whole thing — understand me well — the whole thing is a matter of capturing the right relationships between sky, figures, and ground. And then, above all, rendering the poetry of the hour, the profound, terrible desolation of what has just occurred. [Three struck-through lines, illegible.]
Now he finds that it is found — that the attitudes are deeply felt, poignant — the whole thing is to render it as I feel it.
— If you find the tones quite right, the relationships of this with that and that, it could be a very fine thing, altogether.
Yes — that is all. On one side a kind of terror, on the other a frenzy.
It depends on me!
And so I went to bed at midnight, no longer thinking of the day's discussions about Naturalism, painting, the street!
Thinking of nothing but this picture, which takes on enormous proportions in my brain — and once the imagination is set in motion, everything passes through it: I am working on it, it is done, I carry it in, it is exhibited. And the crowd standing before it, the emotion seizing me by the throat, the fear of I know not what madness, then an extravagant joy succeeding that anguish. And all of this passing through my body in shivers and perspiration, I got up at three o'clock, read, and now write with the sketch before me. But I am preparing myself a dreadful disappointment!! No — since I am sure of nothing, I shall try... Besides, it may be the two cups of tea I had this evening that have prevented me from sleeping. Oh, no.