Diary of Marie Bashkirtseff
CZENUKFR

Saturday, 7 October 1882

Julian's note called for paper with my name on it, adding: a pupil of the studio — and someone underlined. But this journalist perhaps had someone interesting there, or some affair... As for Julian, we quarrelled again for an hour only to arrive at the same opinion — and we had even started there, except that our eloquence always makes us wander, and the subject is always my work, my art, my impatience, my calculations, etc., etc. He says I scatter myself — that at my artistic age one has one's nose buried in one's work and does not think about paintings; I wanted to make him say it. He tells me again that he rates me above Breslau; he reminds me with what painful efforts she won her medal (studio medal) and found her way in her painting, with what suffering, what tenacity. And that I must work and not consume myself in premature ambitions.
It is quite true — and it is very hard.
One must be mad to count on a miracle that is to make me paint a picture beyond my powers... Since even by my own calculations I have a year and a half before reaching Breslau-1881. Yes, it is quite true — but it is very hard. In short Julian explained to me by what succession of efforts, what patience, what continuity of work those who wish to arrive...
It seems to me that I was doing everything... Yet no — since Tony too says I am not doing as one must. They are right, but it is very hard. Yes, it is hard not to
[Pages 121 to 124 torn out]
[Bottom of page 124]... which I take with serenity... It is true I have that feeling — it seems to me it is only a question of time... Provided he is not too old... Too occupied with real things, too far removed from all the poetry that I alone shall have... That is what Julian says... That is what I think... In short, as long as he was not married I might have fears, misgivings... But it is done — there is nothing more to dread...
I am like someone saying: my leg has been cut off — I shall feel it no more... One can only wait for the moment, or else... Arrive at the conviction that it was not yet the thing, and that I have not yet met the One who is to be. When Julian speaks to me of him it seems... In the end all of this returns and I believe it is eternal... Yet how then to explain that I am so calm... In books, one suffers... I never see him, and I wait with a tranquillity...
It is this Julian who, by making me speak of it, gives all these reveries a semblance of reality. So Julian is my confidant — the only one in the world — although there is perhaps not in him all the elevation and depth with which I would wish to be understood... I doubt him because he has several times seemed to believe certain things possible... In short, that if Cassagnac had wished it he could have done anything with me. "He would have made you leave your room at midnight." Yes — but I should have despised him. Yes — because I had in him every confidence, and shall have it again, and it is perhaps because I am of a purer essence than others. If he had told me to go sleep beside him I should have seen nothing in it but sleeping truly — and that, leaning on his shoulder as on a sacred altar. Besides, I like to pass very close to what would be soiling or fatal, from which I believe myself preserved by my pride. I do not wish to be supposed like everyone else... And often, alas, I have seemed to acquiesce in conversations or suppositions by affecting not to understand and not to admit the possibility...
So I am quite willing that people should say I am mad and that my extravagances be understood as such — but not as ordinary, natural acts.
I see at every moment that it is not so in real life, and I cannot lose my illusions... Now this Orleanist Tony understands, I believe, that aspect which perhaps escapes Julian — I say Orleanist figuratively... For he is of a dullness — No! It is extraordinary how that fellow has squandered an existence that could have been splendid. Son of an illustrious father, he found himself quite naturally in a propitious, brilliant and admirable milieu. He himself had sufficient talent to occupy one of the foremost places in the world of arts. With that, handsome as one rarely is — Médaille d'honneur at thirty-two. Everything, in short... And what has he made of it?
What sums it all up is that at forty-four or five — looking no more than thirty-five at most — he wears white cotton socks and felt slippers! And that at home, amid all the poetry an artist's studio might have. No adventures with society women, no love affairs with beautiful creatures... He attaches himself like an ugly old man to little hussies who mock him, and has for the present a habitude! For little Reine — the most insignificant, most insipid of streetwalkers — a kind of tobacco jar with a dead piglet's face, with every bourgeois appearance and... complete amenities for the first pimp who comes along.
It is Irma who keeps me informed of these pleasant things. Well, Irma one can understand — she is funny, wily, vicious, gay; or at least take beautiful creatures, but that!...
Julian understands nothing of it, and I, while noting that he is a mouldy, old-school, forgotten fellow, [Crossed out: see] him a little... beyond — with more indulgent eyes. With a little poetry one could discover there a delicate nature, very naïve, young despite the years, suffering from the lack of assurance that relegates him to second place. Very much an artist — he adores verse and speaks of it a little like Prudhomme... Like everything else, for that matter... In short, a sentimental foundation I find rather pleasant. There must be, in his naïve and in some way respectful attachments to little horrors, a great need for tenderness... He must choose them calm and colourless, believing he will find more... virtue, more innocence than in beautiful, gay, fickle girls.
And in sum he must know well enough that Reine or an equivalent are equally fickle... It seems he has known it, has wept over it, and has gone back.
Irma says he is like an old man morally at least... I hope so... For his sake. If I were twelve — one of those twelve would go and concern herself with that fellow and make sentiment with him.
I am sure he would have impulses, tenderness, charmed words that would be charming — and at the same time Prudhommesque things that would destroy the charm... I think... I am always obliged to say I think or it seems to me — being neither an author who invents nor a woman who has lived; so I think that an unhappy man can easily be interesting: he suffers — to console is adorable! But once consoled, what drew you toward him no longer exists; having become happy, content, gay, it is very difficult for him not to be vulgar, or at least not to wound you by some manifestation of gaiety or contentment that removes the poetic cachet from your devotion, which ceases to be mission, charity, heaven, and becomes a simple association with a man like others who, having no more sighs or tears, becomes less than others by the very fact that... What is sad is that my fisherman is not good and I am tired of it... One wonders... In 1880 would Breslau have succeeded at so difficult a plein air?
But I am leaving for a month...