Diary of Marie Bashkirtseff
CZENUKFR

Thursday, 16 August 1883

Great misfortune might perhaps be an exaggeration — but what has occurred may rightly be considered, even by reasonable people, as a crushing blow most precisely delivered…
And stupid, like all my misfortunes. I was going to send my picture to the Triennial on the 20th of August, the final deadline — but it is not the 20th; it is the 16th — today — that the deadline expires.
As you see…
My nose prickles, my back aches, my hands disobey me… One must feel like this after being beaten. Because…
When shall I at last take the resolution that everything counsels me — to leap from the top of the Arc de Triomphe?
After which I go and hide in the closet to weep out all my misery. The only — and scarcely heroic — place where I shall not be suspected…
If I were to lock myself in my room, they would guess why, after such a blow. It is the first time, I believe, that I have hidden away to weep properly — eyes closed, mouth contorted like a child or a wild creature.
And after that? After that I go and remain in the studio until my eyes look normal again.
For all of this is written as it happens. I once wept for Larderei in Maman's arms, and that confidence — that shared pain — was such a cruel humiliation for months afterwards, that I shall never again weep from grief before anyone. One may weep before anyone from anger, or at the death of Gambetta — but to display one's weakness, one's poverty, one's misery, one's humiliation… Never.
If it brings relief in the moment, one always repents it afterwards, as one repents a confidence.
Well, it will pass — yes, in May next, and even then!… The exhibition will run two months, and for two months the abominable humiliation will be renewed each day. This morning I decided to write Cartwright a very affectionate letter (with the hope that she may be useful in getting me well hung). Got you, dear friend.
While weeping — where you know — I found the gaze of my Magdalene: [blacked out: who happy] — who will not look at the sepulchre, but will look at nothing, as I just now did, eyes wide open after weeping.
Well then, well then, well then…
God is unjust. And if He does not exist, whom shall I hold to account!
He punishes me for having doubted.
He does everything to make me doubt, and when I doubt He strikes me; and when I persist in believing and in praying, He strikes me harder still, to teach me patience.
My voice is returning. I sang all evening — a range of three octaves, two notes more than when I had my full voice. Illness and the Triennial Exhibition have extended it by two notes, though it is not yet clear; yet it improves every day.
That would be a gift from heaven.
Third event. At table, reading Stendhal's life of Michelangelo, I had a serious desire to kill myself — out of despair at not possessing his genius.
What is the use of living without genius? What remains? So I would die soon — I could not live without being crushingly superior, and…