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Tuesday, 22 May 1883
# Mardi 22 mai 1883
The Maréchale and Claire come to collect me to go and see Detaille's Panorama — the evening of the Battle of Gravelotte.
La maréchale et Claire viennent me prendre pour aller voir le Panorama de Détaillé, le soir de la bataille de Gravelotte.
The Panorama is not yet finished but already astonishing — the reality of it is overwhelming. Military panoramas are something altogether different from paintings in a frame.
Coming home, my heart drops at every sound: the bell, Coco's bark. The jury votes today. I work until half past seven; each sound brings a contraction — nothing. If Julian had fixed the mention in advance, if it were truly settled, someone could have telegraphed good news by now. If I already had it I would know. My heartbeat is steady and anxious. The waiting is odious.
Miserable life. Everything and nothing. Death — why not? Nobody escapes it. One ceases to exist, that is the horror. But genius lives always; or one writes nonsense with a hand of fire. Because the mention is delayed. Ophelia. I despise myself; I bring the letter to my heart and it stops. Doucet's corsage.
I take some opium syrup to calm myself; I seem agitated. I dreamed of the Saintes femmes and fell back to sketching, thinking, working in the state one is in tonight. Impossible to concentrate on anything else. I read Dumas. I smoke. The street whistle is always audible into the night, and people returning from the countryside, tired and dreamy and happy and drunk and exhausted, and the whistle again.
Nine forty-five. Julian has gone as far as he could go; if it does not come now, with the results known by five o'clock, and still no telegram — then the legs catch fire, the body burns, the cheeks — bad dreams. Nine twenty-five: Julian would have known by six and would have come, then nothing. I had believed: refused — inadmissible — yet here: very admissible. I watched the carriages. Too late now. I could do a portrait of Cartwright instead — those blue eyes, indecent, shameful to watch; small black pupils, tiny black lashes, black hair, a bacchante, concentrated to an essence. Dina doesn't have eyes like that; not beautiful, but strange.
No honour medal. Sculpture: Dallon has one. They could have given it to Bastien — no, they can give him something more. L'Amour au village doesn't merit what they gave it; his sublime Jeanne d'Arc in a landscape displeased three years ago. I have wanted to reread that since. I wanted to see it hung better. I shall show it again tomorrow.
Coming home, my heart drops at every sound: the bell, Coco's bark. The jury votes today. I work until half past seven; each sound brings a contraction — nothing. If Julian had fixed the mention in advance, if it were truly settled, someone could have telegraphed good news by now. If I already had it I would know. My heartbeat is steady and anxious. The waiting is odious.
Miserable life. Everything and nothing. Death — why not? Nobody escapes it. One ceases to exist, that is the horror. But genius lives always; or one writes nonsense with a hand of fire. Because the mention is delayed. Ophelia. I despise myself; I bring the letter to my heart and it stops. Doucet's corsage.
I take some opium syrup to calm myself; I seem agitated. I dreamed of the Saintes femmes and fell back to sketching, thinking, working in the state one is in tonight. Impossible to concentrate on anything else. I read Dumas. I smoke. The street whistle is always audible into the night, and people returning from the countryside, tired and dreamy and happy and drunk and exhausted, and the whistle again.
Nine forty-five. Julian has gone as far as he could go; if it does not come now, with the results known by five o'clock, and still no telegram — then the legs catch fire, the body burns, the cheeks — bad dreams. Nine twenty-five: Julian would have known by six and would have come, then nothing. I had believed: refused — inadmissible — yet here: very admissible. I watched the carriages. Too late now. I could do a portrait of Cartwright instead — those blue eyes, indecent, shameful to watch; small black pupils, tiny black lashes, black hair, a bacchante, concentrated to an essence. Dina doesn't have eyes like that; not beautiful, but strange.
No honour medal. Sculpture: Dallon has one. They could have given it to Bastien — no, they can give him something more. L'Amour au village doesn't merit what they gave it; his sublime Jeanne d'Arc in a landscape displeased three years ago. I have wanted to reread that since. I wanted to see it hung better. I shall show it again tomorrow.