Diary of Marie Bashkirtseff
CZENUKFR

Tuesday, 14 August 1883

Well then, and today? I tell you — it is erased.
That is to say — here it is. I have identified what that feeling of the other evening was. I have felt it before, in London, in Italy, at the Louvre. [Crossed out: Above all in those days, that very keen feeling] — some years ago. I could not arrive in a very great city without being seized by anxiety and sadness and a thousand feelings that can be summed up thus: "so many things, so many beings, so much money, so many works of art! So many pensions! And to think that none of it will ever be mine!"
If one were capable of feeling something similar before a jewel, a bundle of banknotes, or a watch, one would be a thief and perhaps a murderer.
To monopolize, to possess, to reign, to dominate, to live the life of an entire people — these are the instincts of the wretched creature who writes to you.
How then could you expect that, finding myself before an object like Bastien-Lepage, I should not be seized with longing and, consequently, with sadness and discouragement?
And there was truly no need to inflict upon me this dreadful physical inferiority [Crossed out: to enrage me] in order for me to feel fits of rage. Someone one would wish to see not merely as one's equal but as one's… subordinate, someone one would wish to dominate, subjugate, charm — and that someone… handles one with care, if he is delicate, and pities one!
But it is monstrous.
And this evening? This evening it is the same.
When one dreads something in advance, the expected troubles do not arrive. So true it is that there is always disappointment.
It is not that I renounce… Ah! God — only it is impossible, and so one resigns oneself… with rage, and without resigning. Therefore…
Oh! In vain I… No — it is not there. In vain I hope it perhaps does not show, but that… No — as an impression: none, none, none. I repeat it to myself the better to exasperate myself. But why, why, why?!
He looks at me as if I were a milestone, and the architect finds a thousand charms in me. You must agree that it is… beyond words! It is beyond words, beyond imagining.
And then one falls to one's knees before God, begging Him to make it so. If the Good Lord does not exist… But if He does exist, He will not listen to me all the same… because I have doubted Him. Ah! if He would grant me this, if He would grant me this, I would never doubt again! It is not a bargaining promise — I ask for nothing better than to believe; but He makes me an unbeliever by crushing me. All these troubles and this irreparable misfortune.
He must… My God, let it be so…
What is my painting? What is the use of painting? I no longer feel my future favourite works…
Jules says that painting is the divine summation of literature, the quintessence… Three hundred pages in one canvas, twenty-four hours in a single minute…
Ah! If he takes it that way… he is too formidable and will never love me. Besides, if it were going to happen, it would have already — the thunderbolt. So then? I am fond of him, and it did not come all at once… That is to say, if I am truthful, I do not love him — that is why it did not come at once.
Would I want him to love me as much as I love him?
For lack of anything better, no doubt.
So since it did not come at once, it will never come?! That would be desperate. Let us see…
Well then — at least he finds me intelligent, amiable perhaps, etc. but that is all. He has not the same reasons as I have… First of all, I adore his talent, and it is his talent that makes me look at him and discover all his other qualities — and all his qualities together constitute his genius.
In any case, if he did not invite me to come and see his studies, it is… I discover sound artistic reasons: I believe he is working on a large seascape from his various studies, and I believe he thinks of himself as having gone away to work in peace.
For him as for me, Art comes before everything — so I understand that certain ideas, certain habits of mind… and absolute peace are necessary; that if one were invited to dinner it would disturb the disposition of his spirit; there would be a break in the continuity of the current, of the cerebral fluid that guides his eye and hand — and then farewell to the result sought, caressed, approached, worked for… A single word, a stranger's face, a passing annoyance, and the attention is diverted… You may think this theory far-fetched, but he is so thoroughly the man of this theory that it is plausible. Besides, I am already that way myself, though my studies are not yet works that demand what his works demand.
[Crossed out: I am writing to Émile to find out exactly where the Joan of Arc is — I want to buy it as a surprise.]
In sum, all of that is a matter of indifference to me.
But all of that is life, you little fool.

Notes

In English in the original. ↩