Diary of Marie Bashkirtseff
CZENUKFR

Thursday, 22 February 1883

That agreeable architect shows up first thing in the morning. We had left it at this — he had asked when the perspective lesson would be, and I had only been able to reply by expressing the hope that his brother would come to see us soon. The Bastiens amuse me, and I drive the architect wild by bitterly criticizing the latest watercolours of the great Jules. I simply take it upon myself to mock this great artist — and with some spite.
He is not sufficiently agreeable — I know very well that there is Stéphanie, that is to say Ophélie, but no matter! It is unfortunate that one cannot speak of such things to the architect.
The other one is doing his Ophélie from Stéphanie, and he will not release her before next year since the painting is for next year. He will bring her no more, but keep her for the picture. It is the tenacity of a sly peasant...
Well, I admire him — even so and because...
The head of the smaller of the boys is entirely painted.
I play Chopin on the piano and Rossini on the harp, all alone in the studio.
There is beautiful moonlight — the great studio window reveals the sky, very bright, blue, magnificent. I think of my Holy Women and I am so enthused by the way the painting presents itself to me that I have a mad fear someone else will do it first... It disturbs the profound calm of the evening.
There are pleasures beyond everything else — I am very happy this evening. I have just been reading Hamlet in English and I am lulled by the music of Ambroise Thomas.
There are dramas eternally moving, immortal types... Ophélia... Pale and blonde. It grips the heart. Ophélia. One longs to experience an unhappy love... No.
Ophélia, the flowers, death.
Flowers and death. It is beautiful. There ought to be formulas for reveries like this evening's — that is to say, all the poetry that passes through the mind ought not to be lost but to fuse into a work... That is what this journal would be... No, it is too long. Ah, if God would allow me to do my painting — the real one, the great one. This year it will again be only... a kind of study. Inspired by Bastien? My God, yes and no — only his painting so closely resembles nature that if one faithfully copies nature one is condemned to resemble him.
The heads are living — it is not pretty painting like Carolus, but painting all the same. It is flesh, it is skin... human — it lives, it breathes.
There is neither artifice nor brushwork — it is nature itself, and it is sublime.