Diary of Marie Bashkirtseff
CZENUKFR

Sunday, 23 March 1884

Monday, 24 March 1884

For some days now there has been I know not what fog around me... which isolates me from the universe and makes me see realities deep within myself. So... No — everything is too sad for me to complain... It is a heavy stupefaction... I have just reread a book I had little admired some years ago, and which is admirable: Madame Bovary.
The literary form... the style... yes... after all it is only execution.
But that is not the point — amid these vapours that surround me I see more clearly... realities... realities so harsh, so bitter, that I shall weep in writing them. But I shall not even be able to write them. And besides, what is the use?
What is the use of anything? To struggle and weep for ten years — six of which spent working ten hours a day — to arrive at what? A beginning of talent and a mortal illness. I went to my doctor today and chatted so pleasantly that he said: "I see you are always cheerful."
If I persist in hoping that "Glory" will repay me for everything, I shall have to live — and in order to live I shall have to take care of myself... These are frightful visions of reality.
One never believes... Until... I remember being very small and travelling for the first time by railway, and for the first time in contact with strangers; I had settled in, occupying two seats with all manner of objects, when other passengers entered. "These seats are taken," I said, with aplomb.
"Very well," replied the gentleman, "I shall call the guard."
I took it for a threat, as in the family — one of those idle warnings, as at home — and nothing can describe the strange chill that seized me when the guard arrived and cleared the seat, which the passenger at once occupied. That was the first reality.
For a long time I have been threatening myself with illness without believing it, involuntarily imitating the admirable and unconscious system of my phenomenally stupid family... Well...
I would not have had time to tell you all these miseries — but I am waiting for my model, and doing nothing one must groan...
And the March wind with a grey, heavy sky...
Yesterday I began a fairly large painting in the old orchard at Sèvres.
A young woman seated beneath an apple tree in blossom, a path going off into the distance, and everywhere branches of fruit trees in blossom, very fresh grass, violets and small yellow flowers. The woman is seated and dreaming, eyes closed, her head resting in her left hand, elbow on knee.
It must be very simple, and one must feel the emanations of spring that make the woman dream.
There must be sunlight between the branches. It is two metres wide and a little more in height.
Claire is accepted; she comes to see me and appears to find it perfectly natural that I should have only a number 3 and not be placed on the cimaise.
I thought at first she was joking — but seeing she was not... I can scarcely say what abominable impression...
It is not by asking them that one knows people's true feelings — it is by chance, in conversation, speaking of other things; then one can grasp the true measure and the real meaning.
So it is perfectly natural that I am not on the cimaise? Not even well placed?? That girl was joking — or else I am mad, and everyone is mad and a liar...
So this is a deep, hopeless discouragement — no one's fault... since I have no talent...
Yes — that has truly shown me that if I did not hope in my art I would die at once. And if that hope were to fail as it did this evening... Yes, nothing would remain but death, without fine words.
Whom to believe, what to do. For one word from a little fool.

Tuesday, 25 March 1884

Notes

Gustave Flaubert's Madame Bovary (1857): the novel of provincial boredom, romantic disillusionment, and wasted aspiration that scandalised France on publication and became a cornerstone of French realism. ↩