Diary of Marie Bashkirtseff

A Generous Approach to Marie Bashkirtseff

This project makes accessible the complete, unabridged diary of Marie Bashkirtseff (1858–1884) — a Ukrainian noblewoman, painter, and proto-feminist who kept one of the most remarkable intimate documents in history from age thirteen.

The diary's story

After Marie's premature death from tuberculosis, her mother published the diary heavily censored to protect herself and her family. For a hundred years, the diary was considered one of Those Diaries that shape people's lives — sharing a girl's inner world and values like the importance of education, women's rights, religion...

Only in 1995–2005 was the complete version published in 16 volumes by Cercle des Amis de Marie Bashkirtseff. They published it in a limited print run — today it's nearly impossible to find.

This project

The project was created as part of archetypal.cz, where we translate meaningful texts that a commercial approach couldn't deliver. First I discovered the shortened diary, then learned that a full version exists, and then that it's not easy to obtain.

Several years of spare-time work. It took many hours to obtain the complete diary in electronic form. Now I want to make it accessible to the world.

Current Status

The first full translation is done. The entire diary — all 107 notebooks, close to 3,800 entries spanning 1873–1884 — has been translated into Ukrainian, Czech, and English, with a modern French edition alongside. The Ukrainian translation has also been through its final editorial pass; the other languages have gone through the complete pipeline, from research to proofreading.

The work has now moved into a new phase. We go through the translations paragraph by paragraph against the French original, refining them so they read fluently and naturally — as literature, not as a translation. These redaction passes are already done for the first and last notebooks in Czech and for the preface and closing notebooks in Ukrainian, and every entry keeps a record in its metadata of which passes it has been through.

And this is where you can help. If you sign in (a Google account is enough) and come across a passage that reads awkwardly, select it and send us a short note — right from the paragraph you highlighted. Every entry also has an “Open on GitHub” link in its menu, leading straight to the source file with all its translation notes and history, in case you want to go deeper. Every remark then goes through the same editorial pipeline as everything else.

The source texts, the translations, and the whole translation system are public on GitHub. You are just as welcome on /r/bashkirtseff and in GitHub Issues.

Vision

My goal is to help Marie Bashkirtseff's spirit make a comeback. To publish the diary in all languages at once. You click which version (censored/complete/selection) and language you want, and you can read, share paragraphs, paragraph images...

Translations are created using AI, with emphasis on preserving Marie's layers of meaning, unique voice, and period context. If a translation in some language doesn't exist yet, the project includes tools that can generate it and then just fine-tune it by humans.

"I will be famous or I will die." Je serai célèbre ou je mourrai.
— Marie Bashkirtseff, 1884

Marie's words and spirit for everyone who wants to see them.

What Others Have Said

"A book without a parallel."
— William Gladstone, British Prime Minister

Her diary influenced generations of writers — Anaïs Nin, Katherine Mansfield, Mary MacLane. Simone de Beauvoir drew on it for The Second Sex.

Privacy

This site has no corporate tracking, no advertising cookies, and no data sold to third parties. We use our own simple analytics to understand which entries are read and how the site is used — nothing more. When you install the app, your reading data stays on your device.

Acknowledgments

Thanks to Cercle des Amis de Marie Bashkirtseff for their work on the complete diary edition — especially Ginette Apostolescu, who transcribed the diary, and Michel Fleury.

Contact

/r/bashkirtseff · kerray@archetypal.cz · GitHub

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