Saturday, 27 January 1883
After a month of stubborn effort I can go on no longer. This study with Dina is worthless. Worthless because it is below what I am capable of. She did not show any ill-will in the sittings. Oh! No — but listlessness, and to struggle against that is maddening...
Apres un mois d'obstination je n'en peux plus.
It is quite enough to have to fight against my own incapacity and ignorance — in any case, when one has done everything one can and it is bad... That is nothing; but to produce something mediocre and know oneself capable of better, and for it not to be there, and because of someone else's fault... There lies the supreme fury!... Perrette's milk-potfn1 — there it is, broken; it all cracks open in a fit of tears.
J'ai bien assez d'avoir a battre contre mon incapacite et mon ignorance...
I shall hire a model and redo it in a week — I wager you on that... In any case, that is not yet the main question.
Je prendrai un modele et je le referai en une semaine, je vous en fais le pari...
Useless to struggle — that is the whole secret of an entire life...
inutile de lutter, voila le fin mot de toute une vie...
Whatever I do, whatever I want, whatever I hope... Nothingness! Whether Providence, if one wishes, or fate, or the blind and cruel God above, wraps this atrocious persecution in all the logic of human events... But...
Quoique je fasse, quoique je veuille, quoique j'espere... Neant !
I went to show the painting to Tony — it is not bad, but I can do better.
J'ai ete faire voir la peinture a Tony, ce n'est pas mal mais je puis faire mieux.
I knew that — only he speaks to me of my Salon, and that does me good. I was afraid to speak of it...
Je le savais seulement il me parle de mon Salon et cela me fait du bien.
There are many people — Russians who spoke ill of us now come, like the Kanchines...
Il y a beaucoup de monde, des Russes qui ont medit de nous viennent a present, comme les Kanchine...
And this evening I receive a note from that old eccentric Mme de Bailleul, who tells me mysteriously that she has something urgent to communicate, but that in the meantime, before she can see me, I should be very careful, watch myself well... about
Et ce soir je recois un mot de cette vieille drolesse de Bailleul...
It is evidently about Mackay, since she has already spoken to me of her in the same terms — that I should watch myself, that she is very wicked... What is it now? Ah! That! But I will not be able to go on living if this continues.
Evidemment il s'agit de la Mackay puisqu'elle m'en a deja parle dans les memes termes...
But it is insane! Am I dreaming? I am afraid of only one thing — that all these miseries and all these persecutions will drive me to some rash act... I have been patient for a long time, always hoping that it would change... But the blows redouble... Horrible misfortune, infamous slanders, petty wretchedness... Everything comes one after another, and I feel that it is the beginning of the end... of my patience... Then come wild ideas... What am I going to do, or become? One does not know... driven to the limit... At being told often enough that one has stolen, one can become a thief out of rage... I no longer know what is said of me — everything in the world... you recall the fear and horror that the sight of loose women caused me... I am accused of behaving badly, or who I am now... and for this Mme Mackay to have such anxieties, she must believe me capable of taking her painter from her as a lover or as a husband... My head is spinning...
Mais c'est insense ! Est-ce que je reve ?
Now, to return to less tragic miseries... Bastien-Lepage will come no more, never; that is understandable. He will not even be able to be useful to me for the Salon as he was to Breslau... But the thin dark slovenly though very talented Breslau could inspire no jealousy in [blacked-out words: his old] half-kept-woman... And I who had plans... to make ourselves a salon of celebrities of every kind, this Bastien-Lepage among them... What could be more natural — he has a mistress who is jealous and who is afraid of me... It is all quite simple, but the result... is whatever happens this: I am pursued by an inexorable jinx.
Maintenant pour en revenir a des miseres moins tragiques...
So — ideas... Perhaps it can be conjured away... prayers... I believe only in my own — paid masses are not efficacious... Yet, however, there are three women who pray morning and evening from the depths of their hearts for me: Maman, my aunt, and Dina would all three be ready to take all my sorrows upon themselves; Maman and my aunt would thank God from morning until night if he would be so good as to make them deaf and blind in my place... Dina too, perhaps... She is so good... Maman never misses a mass at church — when there are three services a week, she goes to all three; very occupied with work, I can only go to church rarely, once on a Sunday a month and even then, but Maman goes in my place and prays for me, and seeing her there almost always without me, they say that I never go to church at all, that I am so artistic — and from that to calling me a nihilist, pipe-smoking, drinking... It all hangs together...
Alors des idees... Peut-etre que ca se conjure... des prieres...
You see what good the prayers of my pious family do me...
Vous voyez que les prieres de ma pieuse famille me profitent...
And this in tutto.fn2
Et ceci in tutto.
And the conclusion?? To lie down and die?... More infamies would follow me into the other world... Then — to struggle? But yes... I bitterly regret having to play this role here below, but I did not choose it... To try to live all the same... Perhaps the hostile spirits will grow weary...
Et la conclusion ?? Se coucher et mourir ?...
Besides, if I become... I shall kill myself... The unknown of death rather than the eternal silence...
Du reste si je deviens... Je me tuerai... L'inconnu de la mort plutot que l'eternel silence...
All this is not possible! It is not me! I am dreaming! I am going to wake from this dreadful nightmare!
Tout ca n'est pas possible ! Ce n'est pas moi ! Je reve !
And in the meantime and despite all the grand speeches, life goes on — the days follow one another, the small things that idiots say one should despise and which make life, come one after another; and everything tortures me... And in spite of everything my youth rebels against all these miseries, it cries out against the injustice, it wants its share of pleasures and happiness. Is it possible, my God, that I am condemned!
Et en attendant et malgre les grandes phrases, la vie se deroule...
Why so many dreadful and unjust things! If it is God... Why not let us believe that he is terrible and without [blacked-out word: pity]? And whatever I say, [blacked-out words: my twenty years hoping] still [blacked-out word: falling in love with] every semblance of fortune's smile, running after happiness... And this web of duties and miseries would go on always until death!?!
Pourquoi tant de choses affreuses et injustes !
In any case, everything can change, everything can be redone — I shall perhaps be happy, loved, celebrated... But there is this terrible thing... This black, dreadful, irrevocable event, this eternal misfortune... It is, and it is forever.
Enfin, tout peut changer, tout peut se refaire...
Were I to become the most celebrated, the most envied, the most adored — it will always be there to tarnish all my joys, to poison all my triumphs...
Je deviendrais la plus celebre, la plus enviee, la plus adoree *que ce sera toujours l*a...
If I have talent... Then one of those questions that make Dante's Inferno look rosy and perfumed: And if I have nothing?...
Si j'en ai... Alors une de ces questions qui font paraitre l'enfer du Dante tout rose et parfume...
Bastien-Lepage is the greatest of the moderns; Cazin renders nature in his landscapes, and in no museum have I seen a landscape painter comparable to him — he transports you into the night, he makes you breathe the sea air in this very small painting of a blue night with a boat standing out in black. He makes you smell the scent of hay after a storm, he makes you dreamy before his star-studded sky, and the little house with the lit window... He is a magician, a creator, a marvellous artist. Bastien-Lepage is for living beings what Cazin is for [blacked-out words: the figure], the sky, the rain, the wind... These figures live in the most complete, the most absolute sense.
Bastien-Lepage est le plus grand des modernes...
It is no longer merely talent. He has painted his own portrait which is extraordinary in its truth — he has painted his moral self; one reads his genius on his face... Do you understand all that is sublime in this double reproduction?... It is a mirror reflecting the image reflected by another mirror. It is like the sculpture of Saint-Marceaux — it has a depth, an intensity... It lives, finally! It lives. Do you understand? And these beings who live are chosen and, as it were, explained, illuminated in their inner being by this great artist. Cazin, Bastien-Lepage, Saint-Marceaux.
Ce n'est plus du talent.
There is the sublime trinity, the three marvellous geniuses who shine over our artistic age.
Voila la sublime trinite, les trois merveilleux genies qui rayonnent sur notre epoque artistique.
And to think that I had [blacked-out words: the hope of having] one of them for a friend, and that I have lost him... [Blacked-out words: For Saint-Marceaux that...]
Et dire que j'ai eu [Mots noircis: l'espoir d'avoir] un d'eux pour ami et que je l'ai perdu...
Notes
Reference to La Fontaine's fable "La Laitière et le Pot au Lait" (The Dairywoman and the Milk-Pot), in which Perrette daydreams of future wealth while carrying her milk-pot, then stumbles and breaks it. ↩
In Italian in the original: "altogether / all of this." ↩