Diary of Marie Bashkirtseff
CZENUKFR

Sunday, 7 January 1883

Now reading the newspapers is an interesting exercise — Le Voltaire makes one weep; Le Figaro dries the tears with a perhaps impartial account that nevertheless strips away illusions and enthusiasm — which is always a pity.
I adore Brisson's speech — yes, we are beheaded, as Hecht said; yes, Gambetta was the poetry and the mind of our generation.
I say "we." But not having the happiness of being French, I am for the brotherhood of peoples and the universal Republic.
The people of La Justice, to reassure the Republicans, maintain that men are nothing and the idea is everything. Then give us a constitutional monarchy, since men are nothing. No? Then how do you explain that men are nothing?
It seems to me that men are everything, and that the republican principle contains this idea in the most absolute fashion. Yes — the government of men elected for their merits from whatever they come. And what could be perhaps too... poetic in this system, moderated by republican institutions. "Men are nothing" — a stupid error, the flower of jealousy. Men like Gambetta will always get themselves chosen; but for them to be useful, one needs the Republic.
Why this absence of grief which is noted at Gambetta's funeral, as it was noted at Mirabeau's? Because it is the true and incomprehensible impression I myself felt...
La Justice speaks of the pagan character of the ceremony — the graces and poetry of this Athenian existence communicated to his funeral train... It is perhaps... Perhaps the greatness of the man, the honours paid to the majesty of genius, leave no room for desolate tenderness, for the heartbreak that a humbler death might inspire...
Skobelev, Gambetta, Chanzy, Adrien — the Franco-Russian alliance and the crushing of Prussia...
With Skobelev and Gambetta and Chanzy, France was reclaiming Alsace-Lorraine and our Baltic provinces were no longer threatened — whereas now.
Julian dines, and Tony comes in the evening. What would you have us talk of, if not of the Dead Man?
What a void. What astonishment.
One did not realise during his lifetime what this man was. Read Brisson's speech. Through the omnipotence of emotion, I become French and patriotic to the point of dying for it.
In these great, quasi-abstract emotions one is moved to the very sources of life itself, and one reaches heights of feeling that would make Gambetta proud... His name resembles him.
Look at a portrait and see: Gambetta — does it not fit? But names resemble their men — look at Floquet: his hair swept back, his pinched mouth; then Grévy — that one resembles him morally and physically. And Clemenceau? There is both roundness and modesty and smallness and dryness and precision. As for Rochefort — one sees him foaming, insulting, brandishing his forelock.
Julian and Dusautoy listen to my fine phrases. Dusautoy believes it is arrived — and regrets that I am a woman; and so does Julian, but with a small smile so as not to appear to swallow it as the musician does.
I am floored — to say I am on the ground would perhaps be too much. The thought that it is over — that this great artist, this sublime tribune, is silent forever — fills me with a sadness and revolt I cannot express. It is an outrage of death, as a journalist has written.

Notes

Le Voltaire: a literary and political Republican newspaper of the period, sentimental in tone; contrasted with Le Figaro's cooler, more skeptical manner. ↩
Mirabeau: Honoré Gabriel Riqueti, Comte de Mirabeau (1749–1791), the great orator and leader of the early French Revolution, whose state funeral in 1791 was also notable for the strange absence of outright grief amid the public spectacle. The parallel was frequently drawn in the Gambetta coverage. ↩
Skobelev: General Mikhail Skobelev (1843–1882), the Russian military hero of the Russo-Turkish War who was a passionate advocate of the Franco-Russian alliance and the recovery of Alsace-Lorraine. He had died in July 1882 — a second great loss that Marie links with Gambetta's death. ↩
Chanzy: General Alfred Chanzy (1823–1883), one of the most respected French commanders of the Franco-Prussian War and a strong supporter of a Russian alliance for revanche. He died in January 1883, just as Gambetta died — a remarkable convergence of losses. ↩
Floquet: Charles Floquet (1828–1896), Radical Republican politician, known for his theatrical oratorical style and swept-back hair. ↩
Grévy: Jules Grévy (1807–1891), President of the French Republic — a cautious, conservative man whose face and character matched his name in Marie's onomastic game. ↩
Rochefort: Henri Rochefort (1831–1913), the most famous polemical journalist of the Third Republic, known for his biting sarcasm and his wild hair (the "forelock"). ↩
arrived: In English in the original. Marie uses the English word arrived to mean something like "achieved," "arrived at greatness" — a code-switch for which French has no exact equivalent. ↩