Diary of Marie Bashkirtseff
CZENUKFR

Saturday, 5 January 1884

My charming family informs me that Pietro Antonelli has just carried off triumphs: he has been acclaimed throughout Italy and the King has conferred on him the Commander's cross of Saints Maurice and Lazarus, etc. It appears that the young man, who departed for Africa five or six years ago, has become a serious explorer. I am thoroughly indifferent to this — at a level that beggars belief. But my noble and delicate family is moved by it as though hearing of a relative's triumph; these imbeciles understand nothing, and say: "You see — a young man spoken ill of — and yet, look! But he really had gone to Africa!"
Maman used to say that he had left out of despair in love, but even she did not quite believe in this departure for savage lands. And it turns out to be true.
For me, Rome and Antonelli translate as: the Russian Embassy, humiliation, and wounds to self-esteem. But my family will never understand that. My heart! Ah, the flat imbeciles — my heart has nothing to do with it; and for my heart to speak, all the miseries that surrounded me then and surround me still must fall silent. My heart will not compromise itself with all that.
Opening of the Manet Exhibition at the École des Beaux-Arts! I go with Maman, obliged to drag her after me.
Fortunately the arrival of the Canroberts rescues me a little — without them I was going like a condemned man, barely greeting the amiable architect.
Manet has not been dead a year. I knew very little of him. The overall effect of this Exhibition is striking. It is incoherent, childish, and grandiose. There are mad things — but there are superb passages. With a little more, he would have been one of the great geniuses of painting. It is almost always ugly, often misshapen — but always alive. There are splendid impressions here.
And in the weakest things one senses an I know not what that makes one look without disgust or weariness — two feelings one experiences before most mediocre pictures, one or the other. There is such assurance, such formidable confidence united with an equally formidable ignorance... It is like the childhood of a genius. And then borrowings too. Almost wholesale borrowings from Titian (the Woman Lying with a Negro), from Velázquez, from Courbet, from Goya. But all these painters steal from one another. And Molière too — a wigged translator of the Latin stage; there are entire pages word for word, I have read them, I know.
We return with the Canroberts and find company — it lasts until seven o'clock. Gavinis, Morgans, Linsingens, Villevieilles, Bonaparte, etc., etc., etc.
I have a fever and these people bore me to death. What a wretched life! Not one creature to love, misfortunes, misfortunes, and misfortunes!

Notes

Commander's cross of Saints Maurice and Lazarus: the Order of Saints Maurice and Lazarus, a dynastic order of the House of Savoy. A Commander's cross was a senior rank indicating significant distinction. ↩
Manet Exhibition: the posthumous retrospective of Édouard Manet (1832–1883) held at the École des Beaux-Arts, January–February 1884. It comprised 179 works and was a major critical event, helping establish Manet's reputation. ↩
Manet died on 30 April 1883. ↩
Woman Lying with a Negro: Marie's description of Olympia (1863) by Manet, showing the reclining nude with a Black attendant. The painting caused scandal at the 1865 Salon. ↩