Diary of Marie Bashkirtseff
CZENUKFR

Sunday, 3 February 1884

It is nearly two in the morning and I am writing in bed, having returned from the Italiens where they were performing Massenet's Hérodiade. I was with the maréchale and Claire.
How to articulate grievances... confused ones, against... nature, music, society?... It seemed to me that the maréchale was not very pleased to be seen with me — this theatre is like a drawing room, and people will not have failed to say... why this great friendship; these Russians give them boxes... and the maréchale will perhaps say, or has already said, that I have considerable talent and that I am her daughter's painter-friend... Yet she comes to us on Saturdays and wanted to take me to the ball with her daughter and has already associated herself with us in public. This evening she was unwell, and I might have attributed... However that may be, these humiliating thoughts tortured me, and I must have had the most distracted face...
Motionless at the front of the box, thinking imprecations against fate... The cowardice, the malice, the vileness of humanity. Correct that! Jesus died for it. Salvation [blacked out: lies in what is called a commonplace social standing] in the world — which I despise from the depths of my soul, for that matter. A name or money. Correct the world, vilify it, despise it, shame it... what is the use? Yes — WHAT IS THE USE??
One must be among those — belong to those who make the law. That is where salvation lies. Correct human infamy! But I am a child. To dominate it — yes. Or else one is condemned to nameless revolts and despairs.
Is it infamy in the first place? But no — these people are right; they do nothing wrong... And from the moment one is able to do as they do... If I were on top, I would speak of that famous human cowardice with a small indulgent smile — but I am not on top; I am nothing; I am a foreigner; and this infamous, savage, ferocious Paris — mendacious, cowardly, ignorant, and barbarous. Despite everything, and all the same.
Ah! they are right.
And that is all I bring back of musical impressions... No — I wanted to clear away this filth and not mix it with the pure, the sacred things of Art, of genius, of what [is] eternally great and eternally beautiful. [Three-quarters of a page torn out]
The first act astonishes with the novelty and breadth of the sounds. It resembles nothing I know... It is truly new.
[Three-quarters of the page torn out] [In the margin: But I don't even know Wagner.]
— full and resonant and harmonious. [Blacked out: the whole opera opens] with delight. It is music that fuses with the poem; it is the absence of set-piece arias and filler; it is enveloping, broad, magnificent, grandiose... He is a great artist, and henceforth a national glory. They claim that beautiful music is not understood the first time... come now — here one understands at once that it is admirable and melodic despite a very learned orchestration.
There is at the end of the first act an accompaniment of such beauty that I was transfixed.
And several times we looked at one another with eyes ready to weep with enthusiasm. In my case it is because I am more than twenty-three — but Claire, who is eighteen, and her mother, who is forty-five? If those wretched audience members were sincere, they would have wept; yes! there are beauties so... vast, so penetrating, so powerful...
For that matter, the enthusiasm is general... It is a triumph, and this Jules Massenet is a very fortunate man.
No doubt on hearing it again it will be even more beautiful — but I do not accept that one cannot understand truly beautiful music immediately.
The apparition of John the Baptist in the first act makes one shudder. The singer, seen without opera glasses, resembles Bastien-Lepage — only more handsome... (The Shepherds of Bethlehem and The Holy Women). The music that accompanies this entrance is of such striking simplicity that it is... it is very beautiful. Herod's air, and the duet of Jean and Salomé... One reaches explosions of voices where the exaltation reaches its peak. The desert, the Prophet, the Bible. Holy liberty preached from that moment forward... The Republic —
The maréchale was wearing a diamond eagle holding an olive branch in its beak. "The Empire is peace." But she finds the opera admirable.
It is — oh! yes — powerful, beautiful, elevated, colourful, [blacked out: rich, broad] resonant...
Of course my Italian music cannot contend with this dazzlement — for this dazzlement is so admirable it is almost touching... No, not that... And it is still with a two-penny orchestration that Italian romances grip the heart or make one dream of love. The old airs of the old operas... And Aida...
Ah! the devil — it is a little like Hérodiade itself, but this Massenet is a melodic French Wagner. Stop!
[Across the page: I have never heard anything by Wagner and judge by inspiration.] Here is the comparison. Wagner is Manet. He is the imperfect father of the new school — those who seek talent in truth and feeling; there have always been new schools, only for about a hundred years painting had gone astray, and now it is being put back on the right path.
So Wagner is Manet.
The Verdis and the Massenets take from him what was good and seek their own way. Massenet is French, and Verdi Italian.
Verdi is less learned, perhaps — but more passionate...
Why compare? Is Hérodiade beautiful, is it sublime? Yes.
Well then, that is all.
Simon Boccanegra, Verdi's latest opera (new manner), is tedious and stupid. He has stolen from the German all his defects...
As for Massenet — his name is Jules. Do I renounce Aida? Never!!! But if the amorous note is missing from Hérodiade, no matter — the note is missing! Despite the stupid invention of making St. John in love with Salomé. I would rather see them as fanatics. Prophet and she fanatical — yet love would then be inevitable... I would have loved John, and would have raged at not shining at the court of Vitellius, who makes quite idiotic appearances in the piece...
In short, the only delicious sensation I feel is at the moment when my unhappy head touches the cool white pillow...
Massenet is very pleasant, they say — he has a fourteen-year-old daughter, having married very young, and a very respectable wife. A great artist living like an ordinary fellow. I do not like that. He should be solitary to be truly great...
He would be unhappy then, perhaps — yes, that is possible, but interesting.
A little more of this, and if he were solitary... I would admire him more than Bastien...
Does he go beyond, is he Saint-Marceaux, is he Bastien? I do not know, but his music is very beautiful.
Verdi goes beyond — in Aida above all.
Yes, Massenet is a plein-airiste [sic] — he says he wants air in an opera; he wants it to hold together from beginning to end, and for the characters and the melodies to move within a musical atmosphere that envelops them and gives them life...

Notes

Hérodiade: opera by Jules Massenet (1842–1912), based on Flaubert's Hérodias (1877). Its Paris premiere at the Théâtre-Italien was a sensation. ↩
L'Empire c'est la paix: Napoleon III's famous 1852 declaration; the diamond eagle brooch signals the maréchale's Bonapartist loyalties. ↩
René de Saint-Marceaux (1845–1915): French sculptor Marie greatly admired, whom she placed at the pinnacle of contemporary art. ↩