Diary of Marie Bashkirtseff
CZENUKFR

Monday, 6 November 1882

We left yesterday and here we are in this execrable Poltava.
Papa — when I say Papa it is merely for brevity, not by any means affection — Papa, very short of money and very ill, martyrises us [words blacked out: with his delays]. We would have slipped away without him, but people would say abominable things because he is very ill.
Nobody would understand what torture it is for me to waste so much time, and the despair that can result from it. Ah — this is certainly the last time; I swear it. Well.
He knows how urgently I wish to leave — and, to prove that he does not obey me, he creates difficulties and scenes. He has left his luggage at Gavronzy, and his valet has no passport... He certainly does not understand how much these delays matter to me — yes, I choose to believe he does not understand. There is a proverb that says if you seat a pig at table it will put all four hooves in the dishes. Because I came and was kind for four weeks, he imagines this can always continue, and that I can go abroad only occasionally.
Ah — the fool, the brute, the imbecile.
Execrable hole of a town — horrible, dirty and stupid inhabitants, coarse, ignorant and corrupt. And all the Russians just like them! The Slavic race [word blacked out: is] false, is cowardly. People speak of Russian frankness. A fine joke that is — the Russians are sly as slaves, false and lying, with the outward show of "take my whole heart" and an expansiveness whose shallowness one quickly sees through.
Ah, my God — I am seized by wild fears that I will never see Paris again...
We lunched at Alexandre's and the days are spent thrashing Michka, to whom I gave a genuine slap this evening. There are Alexandre, his wife, Etienne; Paul and his better half, Nicolas, Michka, Dina, her mother... All of them more or less at odds with each other, but we all meet at our place.
Ah — I want to get away!
Painting, progress, success. Ah — wretch, what are you doing for all that! Ah — I will not have stolen it, I will not have veiled it, I will not have stolen it!
Charming wit, noble energy, iron will! Ah — I have all of that; the proof, if proof were needed, is the terrible revenge I have wreaked upon the universe by spending two hours in front of Paul, his wife, Maman and Dina declaring that Poltava is an indecent place, that its inhabitants are savage and dangerous, that at Gavronzy the soup is made from dogs' piss, that the hair of the people here is inhabited, and that the governor's cousin is merely a German woman who is his mistress.
In any case, no doubt these people cannot understand... Paris, elegance, celebrity? What for, what is the point? Actors are famous. Painters are known only by name — and in point of name, the only one cited and known is Raphael; and then they have chromolithographs of Russian daubers whose talent is as false, insipid and empty as the Russian character.
As for elegance — they believe only in the dressmakers of Kharkov, who stocks Les Modes de Paris, and our dresses are "overdone," "exaggerated," and "really, for coming from Paris, you are not well dressed."
How could you expect them to understand what I suffer sitting here with my arms folded, or occupied in thrashing Michka?

Notes

The triple formula "I will not have stolen it" (je ne l'aurai pas volé) is a French idiom meaning "I will have truly earned it / it won't come easy." Marie repeats it with passion, underscoring that whatever success she achieves will have been hard-won. The middle variant "I will not have veiled it" (voilé) may be a slip of the pen for volé (stolen). ↩
Kharkov (Kharkiv): the major city of northeastern Ukraine, considerably larger and more cosmopolitan than Poltava, which served as the regional fashion centre for the surrounding province. ↩