Marie Bashkirtseff lived her short life between Russia and France in the last half of the nineteenth century. She died in 1884, at the age of 25, of tuberculosis. She was born to a Russian noble family who, by Marie's time, was involved in scandalous litigation and suffered money trouble as a result. Well, "money trouble" for a noble European family, that is. They still lived in beautiful villas, traveled around Europe, and could afford a host of tutors for Marie, a well-educated young woman. Marie began keeping a journal at the age of 13 and did so until her death.
Her journal has been published in a variety of ways. Initially, the only portions available had been selected by Marie's mother, whose selection (and omission) certainly presented a somewhat edited version of her daughter's life and personality. The original journal was discovered in the Bibliothèque Nationale de France sometime later and the extent to which Marie's family had edited her journal became clear. Now, happily, her complete and unedited journal is available in a number of languages. I recently finished Volume I, which ends in May 1876 with the 17-year-old Marie living in Nice.
At the risk of stating the perfectly obvious, there is something unsettlingly intimate about reading the journal of a real human being, who kept the journal daily as a record of their lived experience, who changed from day to day, the record of which change the journal itself comprises. Every day, in every interaction, people take pains to present themselves the way they wish to be perceived. Of course a journal is perhaps only a heightened attempt at this self-presentation. However, over years of journaling (and, I think, especially over the tumultuous years of one's adolescence), a very nuanced picture emerges of our author, a picture not completely within the control of Marie herself. For my part, I find Marie superficial, greedy, materialistic, selfish, arrogant and vain. However, I also find her ambitious, driven, talented, intelligent, self-reflective and astute. The Marie that seems to breathe from the pages of her journal feels so alive, she cannot be reduced to only one set of personality traits. She is a real person and not merely a character.
The reality of her narrative takes on special poignancy at certain moments when Marie seems to see into her own future, a future we already know. In more than one spot, she observes her own declining health or foretells an early death. Additionally, Marie would reread her older entries and provide more current commentary. At 17 she wrote of her voice instructor's praise, saying she would be singing professionally by 20. Margin notes from an older Marie tell us that, at 20, she could hardly speak and, at 22, she was deaf.
The fact of Marie's journaling, and the way she would revisit previous entries, speaks a little to her self-absorption, but also quite a bit to her bravery in self-reflection. By setting down her story as she lived it, and then by revisiting this story periodically, Marie forced herself into face-to-face contact with earlier incarnations of herself. For every road we travel, we must neglect at least one other. Marie's willingness to revisit herself at certain crossroads, or at moments that would become failures, indicates an intrepid personality who does not let regret of unrealized paths mask their instructiveness to forward living.
All in all, I have been completed charmed by Marie. I started to view her as a friend, someone whose actions and thoughts, by intervals, amuse me or annoy me (or both). I sometimes identify with her and sometimes am alienated by her. I root for her success and, sometimes, for her comeuppance. Marie Bashkirtseff was, in any case, a woman to be reckoned with and I cannot wait to start Volume II.
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