Diary of Marie Bashkirtseff
CZENUKFR

Monday, 11 August 1884

I went out at five in the morning to make a sketch, but by six o'clock there were already people about and I was forced to leave, furious. There were twenty of them around the cab, though it was closed.
In the afternoon I go through the streets again — nothing holds any more!
Maman went to see Bastien alone; apparently he told her he would devote a quarter of his existence to being agreeable to me if he recovers. To begin with, I am convinced Maman is inventing or embellishing — and besides, if he did say that, so much the worse.
There is Mme Mackay — and for me he will prove his gratitude by helping me obtain a medal.
That is bitter.
And now the very words I longed for make me feel a very sharp discomfort, a great jealousy... Almost grief.
He perhaps thinks we want a painting for nothing. Ugh! How horrible. He will give us one. But...
Mme Mackay or another.
Today he was reading an English novel — she is English or American, at any rate she speaks English, and he reads an English novel. That means he is thinking of her... And then everything his good mother and he and Emile can say in friendship — none of it matters, it is beside the point. I have spoken elsewhere of my greed in matters of feeling. I have even once compared Bastien to great capitals whose approach filled me with disquiet, [Crossed out: with anxiety], with sorrow. Well then — how can one, when one is jealous of mere friends — for I am — how can one... After all, here too they are friends, but with something more.
Now that he is grateful, it is very disagreeable.
I go to the Bois.
Tuesday, 12 August 1884.
In short, my friends — all this means I am ill. I drag myself about and I fight on, but this morning I truly believed I was on the point of capitulating — that is, of taking to my bed and doing nothing more. Then a little strength came back at once, and I went out yet again to search for things for the painting.
My weakness and my preoccupation detach me from the real world — I have never understood it with such lucidity, lucidity beyond what I ordinarily possess. Everything appears in detail and with a melancholy clarity.
I — foreign, ignorant and after all too young — I pick apart the badly turned phrases of the greatest writers and the stupid inventions of the most celebrated poets. As for newspapers, I cannot read three lines without revolting. Not only because it is cook's French, but because of the ideas... There is nothing true! Everything is agreed in advance or paid for!
No good faith, no sincerity!!! Nowhere. And when one sees honourable men who, in obedience to the party spirit, say lies or stupidities they cannot possibly think!! It is... enough to make one sick.
He had reached that point in his monologue
When a great noise suddenly rang out — 'Twas very skilful sailors all Coming along in their pirogue
The whale, seized with dread, Cast the prophet adrift, And went off — though full of distress — And swam quick to another shore. So ends the adventure quite. Then Jonas, who was very strong, Had it put in Holy Scripture And sent a note to The Sporting Gazette.
I composed this remarkable verse at dinner, before Saint-Amand, who is delighted.
We came home for dinner after leaving Bastien's — still in bed but with a tranquil face and clear eyes. He has grey eyes whose ravishing beauty naturally escapes the common run.
Do you understand me well? Eyes that have seen Jeanne d'Arc. We speak of it. He complains of not having been sufficiently understood... and I tell him that he has been understood by all those who are not brutes, and that Jeanne d'Arc is a work about which one thinks things it is impossible to say to his face. Ah! if only I could hear properly!!
He speaks to me differently from the way he speaks to Maman, Dina or my aunt — he speaks to me of [word cancelled] elevated things, and I... For it happens that I cannot hear!!
That is so atrocious that I can say nothing.
He speaks to me of my painting and I see it afresh — only, as he thinks as I do, he advises me to do what I already intended to do, and that is embarrassing: he may think I follow him blindly.
— Do not indoctrinate me too much — I might listen to you, and I do not want to.
I was in white with a small gathered batiste bonnet. But he does not see me.

Notes

Bastien-Lepage's Jeanne d'Arc (1879) is his most celebrated painting, showing the young peasant girl receiving her visions in her garden. Now in the National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C. ↩