Mortality & Death Obsession

Thematic Tag: Mortality & Death Obsession

This broad thematic tag captures Marie's pervasive preoccupation with death, dying, and killing -- both literal and figurative. Marie uses death vocabulary constantly throughout the diary: as emotional hyperbole, philosophical meditation, social commentary, and increasingly as confrontation with her own mortality. With 831 tagged references across the diary's twelve years (1873-1884), mortality constitutes one of the diary's most distinctive rhetorical registers, evolving from the theatrical exclamations of a frustrated teenager into the devastating lucidity of a young woman watching herself die. Death is not merely a theme Marie returns to -- it is the lens through which she processes frustration, desire, isolation, ambition, and ultimately her own vanishing. The arc from "ces delais me tueront!" (These delays will kill me!, July 1873) to "La rage de se voir mourir!" (The rage of watching yourself die!, August 1884) traces the entire emotional and existential trajectory of the diary.

Death in the 1870s-80s: The Omnipresence of Mortality

Marie lived in an era saturated with death. In the 1870s-80s, tuberculosis killed approximately one in four adults in Europe, making it the single greatest cause of death across the continent (Tuberculosis in Europe and North America, 1800-1922; Our World in Data). Life expectancy at birth in France hovered around 40-45 years, though this figure was dragged down by catastrophic infant mortality: roughly one in six French babies died before age one, and in Paris the rate was even higher due to overcrowding, poor sanitation, and epidemic disease (INED; N-IUSSP). A Parisian boy who survived his first birthday in 1872 could expect to live only another 43 years. The "urban penalty" -- the gap between Parisian and rural mortality -- reached 10 years for males by century's end.

Cholera epidemics swept through European cities repeatedly; Marie's family feared it in Vienna in 1873, and her aunt warned her not to drink water because of the epidemic (carnet 007, August 1873). Diphtheria, typhoid, and smallpox were constant threats. Death was not abstract -- it happened in the home, in the street, in the theater. Marie's world is populated by people who die suddenly: Mme Savelieff dies at eleven one evening and the pannychide is held the next day (carnet 004, May 1873); Walitsky dies at two in the morning and the household cannot process it (carnet 077, January 1878); Nervo dies unable to swallow, having asked for the Bashkirtseff family's tea (carnet 099, April 1883). Death arrived without warning and without the modern apparatus of hospitals and institutional dying.

Death as Hyperbole: Marie's Figurative Death Language

Marie's most distinctive stylistic signature is her deployment of death vocabulary to express emotional intensity. From the earliest entries, she reaches for lethal metaphors where a less dramatic writer would use milder terms. This is not a literary affectation -- it is her native register, the way she naturally processes frustration, boredom, desire, and social humiliation. Representative examples, chronologically:
- "Ces delais me tueront!" -- These delays will kill me! (carnet 007, July 1873, age 14) -- on waiting to leave for Vienna
- "elle me tue par ses gronderies insupportables" -- she kills me with her unbearable scolding (carnet 007, August 1873) -- on her aunt
- "ce qui me domine, me rend folle, m'enrage et me tue, c'est la jalousie" -- what dominates me, drives me mad, enrages me and kills me is jealousy (carnet 011, October 1873) -- the escalating chain of verbs culminating in death
- "ces chaleurs me tuent" -- these summer heats kill me (carnet 007, August 1873)
- "On m'empoisonne tous mes plaisirs" -- they poison all my pleasures (carnet 024, October 1874)
- "Sans hommes, c'est la mort" -- without men, it's death (diary, figurative)
- "notre vie m'assassine" -- our life assassinates me
- "Cette vie me tuera" -- this life will kill me (carnet 051, raw carnet 6)
- "Et personne ne sait ce que je souffre, et on medit, et on calomnie sans comprendre qu'on me tue" -- and no one knows how I suffer, and they gossip, and they slander without understanding that they are killing me (carnet 051, raw carnet 6)
- "Rome m'affolle et c'est folie que d'y aller mal, cela me tuerait" -- Rome drives me mad and it would be madness to go there in poor condition, it would kill me (carnet 068, December 1876)
- "Elles me tueront" -- they [things/people] will kill me (carnet 105, August 1884) -- the same verb in the final carnet, but the hyperbole has become literal

Marie also uses death language in social commentary and wit:
- "Il a comme la jument de Roland toutes les qualites... excepte qu'il est mort... ou peu s'en faut" -- he has all the qualities of Roland's mare... except that he's dead... or nearly so (carnet 099, May 1883) -- comparing Bastien-Lepage to the proverbially perfect but dead horse
- "Theophile Gautier est mort" -- Theophile Gautier is dead (carnet 099, April 1883) -- used as explanation for why no critic can adequately praise Saint-Marceaux's Arlequin
- "Je vous attends ce soir pour assassiner cadavre" -- I await you this evening to assassinate a cadaver (carnet 077, December 1877) -- art studio jargon for working on an anatomical study
- "Et son concierge jouit probablement d'une belle sante. C'est insense" -- And his doorkeeper probably enjoys excellent health. It's insane (carnet 104, May 1884) -- bitter irony about Bastien-Lepage's cancer; reprised in her final entry as "que de concierges qui se portent bien!" (how many doorkeepers are in good health!, carnet 106, October 1884)

Deaths in Marie's World

The diary records numerous actual deaths, each revealing something about Marie's relationship to mortality:
- Mme Savelieff (May 1873, carnet 004): Marie's first extended encounter with death. She attends the pannychide (Orthodox funeral vigil) and tries to find consoling words, then finds her own consolation "acerbe et bete" (bitter and stupid). "Tout doit finir. Voila mon raisonnement, mais si quelqu'un des notres mourrait je ne le mettrais pas en pratique" -- Everything must end. That's my reasoning, but if someone of ours died I wouldn't put it into practice. She is fourteen.
- Walitsky (January 1878, carnet 077): The family doctor and devoted friend dies suddenly. Marie's reaction is complex: "Il m'est tout a fait impossible de realiser la mort de Walitsky, a laquelle je suis indifferente, je chante, je ris, parce que je n'y crois pas" -- It is entirely impossible for me to realize Walitsky's death, to which I am indifferent; I sing, I laugh, because I don't believe it. Then days later: "Il m'est impossible de croire a la mort de Walitsky. Ce serait un si grand un si profond chagrin" -- It is impossible for me to believe in Walitsky's death. It would be such a great, such a profound sorrow.
- Victor Emmanuel I of Italy (January 1878, carnet 077): Marie is in Italy for the king's funeral. She observes the elaborate mourning: "tout est en deuil, a Florence, les dames portent robes noires pendant 40 jours."
- Gambetta (January 1883, carnet 097): Marie's powerful eulogy: "Gambetta c'etait la vie, la lumiere du jour renaissant tous les matins, c'etait l'ame de la Republique." His funeral at Pere Lachaise draws an enormous procession. She contrasts him with Hugo, whose death would matter less because "son oeuvre est la."
- Nervo (April 1883, carnet 099): "Ce pauvre Nervo est mort!" A friend who in his last days remembered the good tea at the Bashkirtseff household and asked for some.
- Marie's father (June 1883, carnet 100): The most psychologically complex death passage in the diary. "Mon pere est mort." Marie examines her own emotional response with ruthless honesty: "J'attendais avec une sorte d'impatience un denouement, sans le desirer, mais cette idee d'un evenement, d'etre en grand deuil..., il y avait la une occupation, une nouveaute..." -- I awaited the outcome with a sort of impatience, without desiring it, but this idea of an event, of being in deep mourning... there was in it an occupation, a novelty. She paints the next day. She notes that the death would have affected her more had it happened nearby rather than at a distance. She reflects on which family death would grieve her most -- her aunt's -- and the remorse she would feel.

The Progression: From Metaphor to Reality

The diary's death language undergoes a gradual but devastating transformation across its twelve years: Early years (1873-1876): Death as dramatic hyperbole. Marie is fifteen when she writes "Si je mourrai, je brulerai mon journal. Je serais desolee de mourir..., je vivrais comme j'aime ou je mourrai. L'un des deux. Je n'ai que quinze ans. Mon Dieu!" (carnet 022, August 1874). Death here is a rhetorical flourish, a way of asserting the intensity of her desires. She also writes: "Si je meurs jeune, bientot, et si par malheur ce journal n'est pas brule, on dira: pauvre enfant, elle a aime Audiffret" (carnet 051, December 1875) -- already imagining posthumous readers, but the death is hypothetical, almost glamorous. Middle years (1877-1879): Death becomes existential. Marie begins to contemplate death philosophically: "Mais cela vaut-il la peine de vivre pour cela seulement?" (Is it worth living for that alone?, carnet 082, September 1878). She thinks practically about suicide -- prussic acid obtained through chemistry lessons. She bargains with God: "Enfin qu'on me laisse encore dix ans et pendant ces dix annees de la gloire et de l'amour et je mourrai contente a trente ans. Non a trente-cinq. S'il y avait avec qui traiter je ferai un marche" (carnet 097, December 1882). Later years (1880-1882): Death as social weapon and desperate threat. In carnet 088 (May 1880), Marie writes a furious letter to her mother threatening suicide: "je me suis juree d'attendre ma majorite et si rien n'est change de me tuer. (C'est une blague)" -- the parenthetical deflection undermining the threat even as she makes it. In conversation with a suitor she delivers the devastating exchange: "Pourquoi vivez-vous?" / "Parce qu'il est lache de se tuer" / "Pardon, c'est plutot une lachete de ne pas se tuer" (carnet 088, June 1880). The illness years (1882-1884): Death becomes real. By 1882, Marie knows her lungs are affected. "Enfin j'ai demande a Charcot, mourrai-je si je reste?" (carnet 094, November 1881). She tries cauterization: "je me suis brulee la poitrine, au-dessus du sein droit, a l'endroit ou le poumon est malade... au moins je ne mourrai pas poitrinaire" (carnet 100, July 1883). She plans her funeral: a chapel in Paris with statues by Saint-Marceaux and Bastien-Lepage, masses of Verdi and Pergolese sung by the most celebrated singers, in perpetuity (carnet 101, August 1883). The final year (1884): Death is present tense. "Comme je dois mourir vite je voudrais..." (As I must die quickly I would like..., carnet 104, May 1884) -- the sentence trails off, unable to complete itself. "C'est probablement parce que je mourrai bientot mais toute ma vie me revient" (It's probably because I'll die soon but my whole life comes back to me, carnet 103, February 1884). And the shattering: "La voila donc la fin de toutes mes miseres! Tant d'aspirations, tant de desirs, de projets, tant de... pour mourir a vingt-cinq ans, au seuil de tout" (So here is the end of all my miseries! So many aspirations, so many desires, projects, so much... to die at twenty-five, on the threshold of everything, carnet 105, August 1884).

Suicidal Ideation

Marie contemplates suicide at several distinct points in the diary, with varying degrees of seriousness:
- "Ils sont fous ou bien ils veulent que je me tue" -- They are mad or else they want me to kill myself (carnet 077, December 1877) -- after a family conflict, spoken in rage
- "Il y a des moments ou je mourrais avec bonheur. Tenez, je ferai semblant de me remettre a la chimie, je prendrai deux lecons par mois, cela me fournira l'occasion d'avoir des poisons. Une goutte d'acide prussique et tout ira bien" -- There are moments when I would die with happiness. Listen, I'll pretend to take up chemistry again, I'll take two lessons a month, that will give me the opportunity to have poisons. A drop of prussic acid and all will be well (carnet 082, September 1878) -- the most chilling passage: the specificity of the method (hydrogen cyanide, fast-acting) and the strategic planning go beyond ideation into practical preparation
- "je me suis juree d'attendre ma majorite et si rien n'est change de me tuer. (C'est une blague)" -- I swore to wait until my majority and if nothing has changed, to kill myself. (It's a joke) (carnet 088, May 1880) -- the parenthetical deflection is itself characteristic: Marie threatens, then undercuts, then the reader does not know which layer to believe
- "Il faut mourir. Il vaut mieux se casser la tete que de vivre ainsi" -- One must die. It is better to smash one's head than to live like this (carnet 088, May 1880) -- during the social isolation crisis
- "Du reste si je deviens... Je me tuerai... L'inconnu de la mort plutot que l'eternel silence..." -- Besides if I become... I will kill myself... The unknown of death rather than the eternal silence... (carnet 098, January 1883) -- the ellipsis conceals the word "deaf"; Marie cannot bring herself to write it, but the suicide threat is explicit: death over total deafness
- "Et puis ne devais-je pas mourir?" -- And besides, wasn't I supposed to die? (carnet 088, June 1880) -- said flirtatiously to a suitor, turning her own death into a coquettish deflection of a marriage proposal Marie's suicidal ideation is always entangled with her theatrical self-presentation. She is never simply despairing -- she is performing despair, analyzing it, writing about writing about it. This does not make the pain less real; it makes it more characteristically Marie.

Confronting Her Own Mortality

The Preface (May 1884)

Marie wrote her preface to the diary in May 1884, five months before her death, acutely aware it might be her last major writing. The opening line is a confrontation with death disguised as a confrontation with vanity: "Si je ne meurs pas jeune, j'espere rester comme une grande artiste, mais si je meurs jeune je veux laisser publier mon journal" -- If I don't die young, I hope to remain as a great artist, but if I die young I want to have my journal published (carnet 000). The conditional is devastating because by May 1884 Marie knew which branch she was on. And the line about her age: "je n'aurai certainement plus d'age lorsque vous me lirez" (I will certainly no longer have an age when you read me) -- carries the double meaning of timeless fame and literal death. She was perpetuating her birth-date falsification even unto death, a "document humain" capturing the psychology of vanity persisting to the end.

The Illness Years (1882-1884)

Marie's tuberculosis progressed through several stages visible in the diary. Early symptoms appear as early as 1876 when a doctor in Rome tells her she has something chronic in the throat but "des poumons tres forts c'est ce qui m'a sauvee" -- very strong lungs, that's what saved her (carnet 063, July 1876). By 1882, she knows the right lung is affected: "C'est le poumon droit qui... progresse" (carnet 099, April 1883). She consults Charcot about whether staying in Paris will kill her (carnet 094). She applies cauterization to her chest (carnet 100). She hides her illness: "Ma maladie avouee est un mal de gorge, car par dessus le marche j'ai aussi mal a la gorge" -- My acknowledged illness is a sore throat, since on top of everything I also have a sore throat (carnet 106, October 1884).

The Final Entries (October 1884)

The diary's last substantive entries are among the most powerful passages in all memoir literature. By October 9, 1884, Marie writes: "Vous voyez. Je ne fais rien. J'ai la fievre tout le temps" -- You see. I do nothing. I have fever all the time. She calls her doctors "deux jolis imbeciles" and turns to Dr. Potain. By October 12: "Ah! Mon Dieu, Mon Dieu et mon tableau. Mon tableau. Mon tableau. Mon tableau!" -- her anguish is for her unfinished painting, not for herself. "Helas! comment le cacher! Et comment aller chez Bastien!" -- How to hide it! And how to visit Bastien! Her two concerns: concealing her illness and seeing her dying friend.

The very last entry, October 20, 1884 -- eleven days before her death -- describes Bastien-Lepage's visit: "il ne peut presque plus marcher, son frere le soutient sous chaque bras, il le porte presque. Et une fois dans le fauteuil le pauvre enfant est extenué." Then the bitter epigram: "Misere de nous. Et que de concierges qui se portent bien!" And finally: "Depuis deux jours mon lit est au salon... Il m'est trop difficile de monter les escaliers." She does not write about her own death. She writes about furniture arrangements. Marie Bashkirtseff died on October 31, 1884. Her last words to her mother were reported as: "Life was so beautiful after all."

Two Artists Dying: Marie and Bastien-Lepage

The parallel decline of Marie and Jules Bastien-Lepage forms the diary's most poignant narrative thread. Bastien-Lepage, the painter Marie most admired, was dying of what doctors first diagnosed as rheumatism, then suspected as stomach cancer. (He died December 10, 1884, six weeks after Marie.) In her final months, the two invalids were drawn together by their shared fate. Marie's attitude toward Bastien's illness is characteristically unsentimental: "Il n'est pas dans ma nature de me chagriner pour la maladie ou la mort meme de personnes aimees. C'est leur indelicatesse ou leur durete qui seules m'importent. J'aime mieux voir Bastien tres malade mais affectueux que de le voir parfaitement bien portant et se fichant de moi" (carnet 105, July 1884) -- I'd rather see Bastien very ill but affectionate than perfectly healthy and not caring about me. This is Marie at her most bracingly honest. The final scenes are achingly tender. October 9: Marie drags herself to the Bois de Boulogne and sits opposite Bastien, their feet on the same hot-water bottle, the same blanket: "Nous devions etre droles." She presses her cheek to his hand; he squeezes hers. "Pourquoi l'aimons-nous?" she asks. The answer: he was "un empereur qu'on saluait de loin... qui s'est casse les deux jambes et qu'on peut aller secourir" -- an emperor one saluted from afar, who broke both legs and whom one can now go help. In the September entries, friends who had heard rumors of Bastien's imminent death are surprised to see him alive; Marie notes their "surprise melee de joie" with acid precision. The concierge motif binds the two artists' fates. In May 1884 (carnet 104), learning of Bastien's possible cancer: "Et son concierge jouit probablement d'une belle sante. C'est insense." In her final entry (October 1884): "Misere de nous. Et que de concierges qui se portent bien!" The repetition is the diary's last bitter joke: the universe's injustice in letting doorkeepers live while artists die.

Death in Art and Literature

Marie's death obsession was not idiosyncratic -- it was culturally mainstream. The 19th century cultivated an elaborate aesthetic of death that shaped both her sensibility and her self-image. The Romantic beautiful death. The Romantic movement aestheticized dying, particularly dying young of consumption. Lord Byron reportedly declared: "I should like to die of a consumption... because the ladies would all say, 'Look at that poor Byron, how interesting he looks in dying.'" Keats, who had nursed both his mother and his brother through tuberculosis, died of it himself at 25 -- exactly Marie's age at death. The Romantics believed tuberculosis produced spes phthisica -- a euphoria intermingled with depression that supposedly enhanced creativity (ASM.org, "Tuberculosis and the Fatal Beauty of Romanticism"). As the body was consumed, the mind was thought to engage in outbursts of inspiration. Marie's own late diary, with its feverish artistic ambition intensifying as her body failed, enacts this mythology -- though she would have scorned the comparison. The Naturalist clinical death. By Marie's era, Naturalism had replaced the beautiful death with the clinical one. Zola's characters die of alcoholism, disease, and industrial accident; the Goncourts documented Germinie Lacerteux's sordid decline. Marie, who invoked Zola, Goncourt, and Maupassant in her preface, positioned her diary as a "document humain" -- and her own dying became exactly that: documented without sentimentality, with the unflinching eye of a naturalist observing her own specimen. Death in painting. Marie would have known deathbed scenes throughout Western art: from the classical genre of the ars moriendi to contemporary Salon paintings depicting the noble death. Bastien-Lepage himself painted peasant life with an unflinching naturalism that transformed how death and hardship were represented. Marie's observation that "on n'ose deifier que les morts" (one only dares deify the dead, carnet 100, June 1883) shows her awareness of how death functioned in the art world's economy of reputation. Memento mori. The Latin injunction to "remember that you will die" persisted throughout 19th-century visual culture, from cemetery statuary to domestic objects. Marie's diary is itself a vast memento mori -- a record of living that becomes, through the accident of her early death, a record of dying.

Mourning Culture

Marie lived within the elaborate mourning conventions of the 19th century, and her diary documents them in detail: Mourning dress. After her father's death in June 1883, Marie describes her mourning outfit with the same attention to fashion she gives all her clothing: "En grand deuil naturellement, j'ai une jupe tout en crepe avec une echarpe de grenadine noire... Chapeau a long voile de crepe. J'ai tache de composer un ensemble tres jeune" (carnet 100, June 1883). She is in deep mourning but concerned about looking young and attractive -- a tension the period recognized and codified. Widows were expected to mourn in full black for two years; daughters for one year. Marie regrets that her artistic accomplishments at the Salon went unnoticed because the audience was distracted by the printed list of medal recipients rather than her striking appearance in crepe. Funeral rituals. The diary captures both Orthodox and Catholic funerary practices. The pannychide (Orthodox memorial service) for Mme Savelieff (carnet 004, 1873) is Marie's first funeral scene. Victor Emmanuel I's funeral in Italy (carnet 077, 1878) shows state mourning on a grand scale. Gambetta's funeral procession to Pere Lachaise Cemetery (carnet 097, January 1883) draws the largest crowd Marie has ever witnessed: "Au Pere Lachaise il y a eu une procession formidable du peuple." Condolence culture. After her father's death, Marie catalogues the social rituals of condolence with amused detachment: cards arrive "en quantite," friends come to weep, and she struggles to match their emotional register. "Si j'avais ete vraiment affligee je ne le raconterais pas" -- If I had been truly afflicted I wouldn't recount it (carnet 100, June 1883). The comedy of mourning etiquette -- having to look sad while feeling principally curious about who sent cards -- is one of Marie's sharpest social observations. Mourning as social currency. Marie understood that mourning could be instrumentalized. She notes the social advantages of deuil: it provides a reason not to go out, an excuse for weight loss, an explanation for reclusiveness. After her father's death, she reflects: "il y avait la une occupation, une nouveaute" -- there was in it an occupation, a novelty. She also observes how deuil intersects with art-world ambitions: her mourning dress at the Salon was supposed to create a striking visual impression.

Marie's Imagined Afterlife: The Will

In August 1883 (carnet 101), Marie composes her testament in the diary -- a passage that fuses her death obsession with her artistic ambition and her love of spectacle: "Vers trente-cinq ans je serai bien malade et a trente-six ou trente-sept ans en un hiver au lit tout sera dit. Et mon testament. Il se bornera a une statue et une peinture de Saint-Marceaux et de Jules. Dans une chapelle a Paris, entouree de fleurs, dans un endroit apparent, et a chaque anniversaire on y chantera des messes de Verdi et de Pergolese et d'autres musiques a chaque anniversaire et a perpetuite, par les plus celebres chanteurs." She predicted her death between thirty-five and thirty-seven; it came at twenty-five. She wanted a chapel in Paris with works by her two most admired artists, masses of great music sung in perpetuity. She got a grave at Passy Cemetery and posthumous fame she could never have predicted.

Usage Notes

The MORTALITY tag is deliberately broad, capturing both figurative and literal death content. When tagging diary paragraphs:
- Figurative death language (hyperbole, metaphor): Tag with MORTALITY. This IS the theme -- Marie's figurative death language is not incidental decoration but a core feature of her voice. "Cette vie me tuera" is as characteristic as any philosophical meditation.
- Literal deaths, funerals, mourning: Tag with both MORTALITY and DEATH. The DEATH tag is narrower, collecting only literal death events (funerals, burials, mourning periods).
- Suicidal ideation: Tag with MORTALITY. Distinguish between theatrical suicide threats (common in the early diary) and genuine contemplation (prussic acid passage, deafness passage).
- Illness leading to death: Tag with both MORTALITY and HEALTH. The illness entries in the final carnets are simultaneously about health (medical details, doctors, symptoms) and mortality (awareness of approaching death).
- Death in art/philosophical context: Tag with MORTALITY and PHILOSOPHY as appropriate. The distinction between MORTALITY (broad, including figurative) and DEATH (narrow, literal only) is essential. A paragraph where Marie says "cette chaleur me tue" is MORTALITY but not DEATH. A paragraph describing Walitsky's funeral is both.

Related Entries

- DEATH -- Literal death events only (funerals, burials, mourning)
- HEALTH -- Illness and medical themes
- DISEASES -- Specific named illnesses
- EMOTIONS -- Emotional self-analysis
- PHILOSOPHY -- Existential meditation
- JULES_BASTIEN_LEPAGE -- Fellow artist dying alongside Marie
- META_DIARY -- Marie's reflections on the diary as posthumous document