The Journal of Marie Bashkirtseff

No one loves everything as much as I. Art, music, painting, books, people, dresses, luxury, noise, calm, laughter, sadness, melancholy, jokes, love, cold, sun, all seasons and weathers, the plains of Russia, the mountains above Naples, snow in winter, the rain of autumn, spring’s follies, summer’s tranquil days, and nights brilliant with stars.

In early fin de siècle Paris, Marie Bashkirtseff became a cause célèbre in artistic and feminist circles, and one of the most talked-about women in Paris. She lived as if possessed by a presentiment of early death, imparting to the world—during her swift and vivid passage through time—a legacy of startling beauty, extraordinary art and, perhaps most everlastingly, her magnificent Journal.

In keeping with her censorious era, the Journal, edited by her mother and published posthumously in 1887, was rampantly expurgated and cleansed. Madame Bashkirtseff made absolutely certain that none of her daughter’s far-reaching and radical opinions appeared in the published pages. Likewise, she cleansed the journals of their often-embarrassing family rows, scandals and history. In spite of this vast and deep suppression of Marie’s story, the French press hailed the journals as the true portrait of a great and dynamic young woman.

Now, 128 years after her death, Fonthill Press brings forth the most complete, unsanitized version of Marie Bashkirtseff’s Journal ever published in the English language. In this fresh and timeless translation, Katherine Kernberger has returned to the original text—Marie’s notebooks held in Bibliothèque Nationale de France. Her meticulous, decades-long research into Marie’s life has resurrected the true, multifaceted literary self-portrait that Marie Bashkirtseff endeavored to reveal. Kernberger enables Marie to speak as she lived—scrupulously ambitious, seductively funny, warmly personal, and always thoroughly mesmerizing.

Excerpts

 “I have not omitted one of my actions or one of my thoughts from this journal. I am real and natural, like souls before God.”

“How short life is; how sad to live so little! How much women are to be pitied! At least men are free. They have absolute freedom in ordinary life—the liberty to go and come, to go out, to dine at a cabaret or at home, to walk to the park or to a café. Having liberty is half the battle in developing talent, and it’s three-quarters of ordinary happiness. But you will ask, 'Superior woman that you are, why not take this freedom for yourself?' It’s impossible, because a young pretty woman who emancipates herself this way blacklists herself; she becomes singular, talked-about, criticized, and censured. And as a consequence she is less free than when she observes those idiotic customs. So there’s nothing to do but regret my sex and come back to my dreams of Italy and Spain. Giant trees, pure sky, streams, oleanders, roses, sun, shade, peace, calm, harmony, poetry, inspiration.”

“L’art! If I didn’t have these four magical letters in the distance, I would be dead. But for art I need no one else; I depend on myself. And if I fail, I am nothing and can’t live any more. Art! I see it as a great light very far away over there, and I forget everything else. I walk with my eyes fixed on this light. I’m a little old to be starting, especially for a woman. But I will try.”

“I would like horribly to pose in the gentlemen’s studio—nude. People are ashamed to be nude because they are afraid they aren’t perfect. Otherwise we would go out without clothes. The sense of “modesty” disappears before perfection, beauty being all-powerful, and it even prevents embarrassment and consequently suppresses any feeling of shame.”

 “I’m frightened by the flight of time...”