Diary of Marie Bashkirtseff
CZENUKFR

I am very pretty this evening. And when there is someone I wish to please, I am ugly.

I am very pretty this evening. And when there is someone I wish to please, I am ugly.
The statue. The street urchins. The Holy Women. If I have these three things at the Salon, I shall give a thousand francs to the poor — incognito. Or any three things, if I make other pictures that are better.
I cough constantly, despite the heat, and this afternoon during the model's rest, having half-dozed off on the sofa, I saw myself laid out with a great church candle burning beside me.
Would that be the resolution of all these miseries?…
I see no other — unless it be… happier times.
Die? I am very much afraid of it. And I do not want to. It would be dreadful. I do not know how the happy manage, but as for me — I am very much to be pitied since I no longer expect anything from God. When this supreme refuge is lacking, there is nothing left but to die. Without God… there can be no poetry, no tenderness, no genius, no love, no ambition. Our passions throw us into uncertainties, aspirations, desires, violent [Crossed out: feelings] thoughts; [blacked out: when one waits] one needs a beyond, a God to whom to address one's enthusiasms and prayers, a God one has prayed to and who can do all things — one to whom one can say everything. I would very much like all remarkable men to confess and say whether, when they have been deeply in love, deeply ambitious, or deeply unhappy, they have not had recourse to God.
Common natures — even very intelligent and very learned ones — can do without it. But those who have the spark, even if they are as learned as all of science, even if they doubt by reason — those believe by passion, at least at moments!
I am not very learned, but all my reflections tend toward the belief that the God we are taught is an invention.
The God of religion or the religions — that one, let us not speak of him. But the God of men of genius, the God of philosophers, the God of people simply intelligent as we are — that God? First of all, if He is unjust, if He does not hear us, if He is wicked, I do not see what use He is. Is He so? Just or unjust — can I judge?
But if He did not exist, why this need to worship Him everywhere, among all peoples and in all ages? Can it be possible that Nothing corresponds to these aspirations — which are innate in all men — to this instinct that drives us to seek the Supreme Being, the great Master, God?
All our instincts — even the most abstract — correspond to something; they are caused by… and carry us toward… Can this one alone be inexplicable and useless??? He exists, then?!!! And how? If He is such that we cannot conceive of Him, it is as if He did not exist. And if He does not concern Himself with our miseries — what does He do?
I would like to know that He hears us. Then I would pray. Let Him grant me nothing — but let me have this supreme consolation; to ask is almost to hope.