It’s the first day of springtime today, but we at Revue_Blanche are about to sing the autumn song, because we are Oscar Wilde club, first of all. Autumn is the time of Oscar Wilde’s birthday and the day of his death, and also, autumn is the time of a birth and death of one more aesthete, whose name the reader will learn from my new essay--

*Preface*
In his life, Anton Chekhov was often accused of the “unnatural sin”, which his contemporaries regarded as deadly, namely, most of his works as though were “lacking both principles and ideas”. As his readers, we can judge, whether it is so or not. As I think, if it is so, then that’s the beauty of his art. At the same time, this accusation sounds odd for us, who from our school days knew of the fact that Chekhov was a lifelong bearer of most sublime ideals. But for the Russian press of his time, which was largely “progressive” that is “red”, he was a decadent. That’s all right, I would say, let him be. And so, even this blatant decadent, in 1892, when he read the book My Diary by Marie Bashkirtseff, never found any kind words for his response, but he expressed his negative attitude to the book in his Letters, forgetting mercy and humanism of his first profession and calling the author, who died young, “egocentric”.
Today, Revue_Blanche presents
one more forgotten figure of the European decadence
one more Oscar Wilde’s contemporary, whose life showed her professing Oscar Wilde’s individualism and devotion to art--
meet--
Marie Bashkirtseff
(November 11, 1858 - October 31, 1884), an Ukrainian-born Russian painter and sculptor.

From Wikipedia:
Born to a wealthy noble family, Marie Bashkirtseff (Maria Bashkirtseva) grew up abroad, traveling with her mother across most of Europe. From the age of 13, she began keeping a journal.
Titled, I Am the Most Interesting Book of All, her popular diary is still in print today.
In 1881, using the nom de plume "Pauline Orrel," she wrote several articles for Hubertine Auclert's feminist newspaper, La Citoyenne.
Her letters, consisting of her correspondence with the writer Guy de Maupassant, were published in 1891.
Unfortunately, a large number of Bashkirtseff's paintings were destroyed by the Nazis during World War II.
She died of tuberculosis at the age of 25.

Her most famous motto: “Nothing before me. Nothing after me. Nothing but me.”
There was some confusion concerning the date of her birth, and there is what she wrote about her real age in her Diary: “It's horrifying just to write it, but I console myself by thinking that I certainly will not have any age when you read me.”
Visiting her grave in Cimetière de Passy, Paris, Guy de Maupassant said: “She was the only Rose in my life, whose way I would strew with roses, if only I knew the way was to be so short and bright.”

Bibliography :
Bashkirtseff, Marie "Mon journal", volumes I-XVI; texte intégral transcrit par Ginette Apostolescu. - Montesson (5 rue Jean-Claude-Bézanier, 78360 ) : Cercle des amis de Marie Bashkirtseff, 2005 (Paris : Impr. diff. graphique). - 1 vol. (326 p.) ; 21 cm. Index. - DLE-20051207-57368. - 848.803 oeuvre (21) . - ISBN 2-9518398-5-5 (br.) : 22 EUR. - EAN 9782951839854.
"I Am the Most Interesting Book of All: The Diary of Marie Bashkirtseff" (English translation by Phyllis Howard Kernberger, Katherine Kernberger) ISBN-10: 0811802248, ISBN-13: 978-0811802246, Publisher: Chronicle Books (June 1, 1997)

MBau
Her landscape which I love. Autumn in Paris. One day like this, in Paris, Oscar Wilde met his last birthday. The trees in the alley look like they looked when Wilde walked there, visiting Paris in the 1880s and 1890s.

MBMast
One of her paintings.

MBash1878
Artist in 1878.

*Autumn in Springtime--Springtime in Autumn*
“The autumn came so suddenly
like death of Maria Bashkirtseva…”
(from the Russian Silver Age poetry)

The girl, the young artist, who died young , leaving many paintings and many volumes of her diary. The Diary (in Russian, published in 1892) reflects mentality and aesthetic ideas of the late 19th century which formed later in the aestheticism of decadence. As her contemporaries said, her Diary was like beautiful brocade turned on the inner side.
She had everything in her life: wealth, luxury, adoration of her mother and grandfather. The estate of her family was famous with luxury and hospitality, and its area was greatest after the estate of Count Kotchoubay. But she hardly could remember her homeland Ukraine, since being aged 10 she was taken abroad because of her tender health by recommendation of her grandfather--aristocrat-anglophile, bibliophile and fine art connoisseur--who loved her so much. She also could not remember her father, since her parents got divorced, with her mother having won the case, which was a rarest thing in Russia in those times.
Marie spent her childhood, inhaling aroma of orchards in the South of France, and listening to noise of the sea at Cote d’Azur. Many sites of the old Europe, famous with their name, became native to her: Mentone, Rome, Nice, Paris, London. There were the numerous concerts, plays, museums and paintings which she saw, appreciated and described in her famous, sensational (later, much later) Diary. She lived seeing beauty every day, which gave her second wind.
The loneliness, the golden cage, the isolation, caused by the early diseases (the chronic laryngitis, which stole her beautiful voice and unique ear, and later the tuberculosis, which led her to the grave), however we call it, but it was obviously the power which helped to emerge all what was on the bottom of her heart. The thought of going out without trace worried her mind--“…the soul feels, loves, hates, desires. The soul alone makes us live. At the same time, a small wound of the perishable body, some inner disorder, some excess of wine or food, in some extraordinary way, is able to make the soul live the body.” [from her Diary, translation is mine.--L.B.] Death and all what caused it was the question that disturbed her imagination always, however young she was. “When I die, people will read about my life which I find most remarkable (which cannot be otherwise). If I die suddenly, being snatched away by some disease… Maybe I’ll never know that I am in danger, for they’ll keep this from me. And after my death, they’ll find this diary in the drawers, and my family will read it, and then they destroy it, and soon nothing will remain after me--nothing, nothing, nothing! That’s what always horrified me! To live, to have the ambition like mine, to suffer, to cry, to fight, and finally--oblivion… oblivion--as though you never existed…” [from her Diary, translation is mine.--L.B.] Maybe, that was the reason why the desire to declare of herself and to develop her talents arose in the heart of the girl, who was surrounded by doctors and their advices as well as with the persistent guardianship of her relatives, the desire to develop gifts of music, singing, drawing and to conquer with their help. To conquer what? The world? Why not?
Many wrote about Bashkirtseva’s strong self-adoration, ambition and pride. But as I think, there was something other. Like all outstanding persons, she quickly outgrew the level of the people, who surrounded her--let the people were so loving and devoted--and she began to live her own life, realizing that she was fated to loneliness.
“For of those to whom much is given, much is required” (Luke 12:48). Her falling-star-like life, short, bright and difficult, has proved this saying.
She never looked like a “blue stocking”. Her gifts and knowledge of literature, music, fine art, chemistry amazed her contemporaries, yet the brilliant entering life, the cascade of delightful perspectives ended so rapidly. The famous critic François Coppe emotionally describes the image of Marie B in the prime of her life and talent, several months before her death:
“At the moment, Mademoiselle Marie came in. I saw her only once in my life, for an hour or so, but I’ll forget her never. Aged 23, she looked younger. She was of mean stature, slim, with a perfect round face and golden hair. Her dark eyes were clever, burning with desire to see and know everything. Her lips expressed strength, looking kind and dreamy at the same time. Her nostrils moved like a wild horse’s. Mademoiselle Bashkirtseff produced uncommon impression at first glance, impression of a strong and tenderness, a latent energy and grace. All in the lovely girl revealed her sublime wit. Despite her female loveliness one felt her firm, purely masculine strength. To my congratulations, she replied in a melodious, pleasant voice, confessing, without prudery, in her proud designs, ambitions and desire for fame. We went upstairs to the studio in order to see other works. My curiosity led me to the darker part of the studio, where I could see volumes standing in thick rows on the shelves. There were all creations of human spirit, and all of them were in originals--French, English, German and ancient Greeks. Russians and Italians. And it was not books for display. Those were books that were read and reread, worn, studied. The open grand piano was beside. Marie’s beautiful hands played all musical authors…” “It was time to take a leave, but oddly enough, at the moments I felt a latent alarm, a fear--I don’t venture to say: a presentment. Seeing the pale, passionate girl, I imagined an uncommonly rich hothouse flower with a warm fragrance, and a secret inner voice as though whispered to me: ‘Too much at once!’ It was too much indeed.”
Let’s listen to the heroine of the essay herself, who had time to describe her own life so brilliantly. Her Diary, first published in French, in 1887, in Paris, caused a sensation. People were possessed by the Diary, were in raptures or renounced it, scorned at it and even doubted in its authenticity, but nobody, who read it, remained indifferent. The Diary is written so candidly, and perhaps this was a reason why it was castigated so furiously. Apropos, in Russia the book has not been republished till 1999, and there was no one exhibition of her paintings, so only few people can know of her as a talented artist.
“It seems to me that nobody can love everything like I love,” Marie writes, “art, music, painting, books, noise, silence, laughter, sadness, languor, jokes, love, cold, the sun, any weather, every season, the plains of Russia and mountains surrounding Naples, the snow in winter, autumn with the rains, springtime with its anxiety, the quietude of summer days and the beautiful nights full of bright stars… I love it all, I adore it all. I want to see all, to embrace all, to have all, to merge with all!” And here is other phrase about her: “I am like a candle, cut in four, with all ends burning.” And this person was accused of cold-bloodedness of her temper by virtue of the fact that she did not fall in love with a man but with the art, being determined to devote her entire life to it. Yes, it was so, otherwise how could the paintings (over 150) be created for a very short period? Those, who said that she had more masculine qualities than female ones, that she was cold as ice, never read her letters to Maupassant, which now are known only in fragments. A few words about this odd epistolary love affair. She never looked for a meeting or a date with the famous, 30-year-old writer, but her letters, talented, emotional, brilliant, written with free references to the ancient and modern authors, latently sensual, effeminate, witty, a little sad, touched Maupassant’s peccant and sophisticated mind, making his heart open. Charmed by the young Slav, he desired for new letters. In his own letters, sensual cynicism mixed with a deep-felt frankness and tenderness to Marie. Perhaps, in order to guard himself from the avalanche of tender feelings, which could overcome him, he wrote the cynically candid letter, which she decided to regard as offensive. Bashkirtseva replies him for the final time:
“You are not the one who I am looking for. But I am looking for nobody, for I believe that men must be only accessories in the life of strong women. You and I scarcely were made for each other. You are not worth me, and I am so sorry for this. I’d love ever so much to have a man who I could talk with.”
The correspondence stopped, and all Maupassant’s attempts to begin it again were vain.
She was alone again. The golden cage of her loneliness shut, and she heard the key turning. She went into her shell, where there are music, painting and books. The book-fever possessed her. The thirst for new knowledge. Being determined to continue her study, she planned this, believing that her education was virtually chaotic and unsystematic. She began reading in Latin, French, English--5-6 books and a dozen newspapers a day. Ignoring the doctors’ advices, she played piano several hours a day--which was forbidden by doctors. She always ignored her own carnal weakness, never talking about her illness, despising a care about the carnal, jesting at her cough, and she agreed to cure her cough seriously, when it was too late. She said that her dream was to give herself to painting entirely. It was the aim which was worth her. In 1877, in Paris, she entered the Académie Julian.
Professor Julian said about her: “I thought that it’s only a caprice of a spoilt child, but I have to say that she does work, that she has will, and she is talented. If it lasts, then in three months her drawings may be submitted to le Salon.” And her drawings were accepted.
It took her only 2 years to go through the 7-year course in the Academy. Half ill, she worked hard 12-14 hours a day, nearly spending night at the easel and canvas. Looking at her professional works, the teachers asked the beginner whether she made the pictures by herself or with somebody else’s help. There was a rumor in the Academy that most of her pictures were made by the artist Bastien-Lepage, the master of realistic landscapes, with whom the “possessed Russian” as though had love affair. Marie wrote in the Diary that as a teacher, Bastien-Lepage could not inspire too long, and that if she seemed to imitate Bastien-Lepage unwittingly in her art, then it was wrong.
A votaress of naturalism in art, she wrote about life, colours and hues, which were real and which sang. She won medals and prizes at exhibitions, she knew her lifetime Fame, but she never was tempted by it: “I don’t feel a victorious joy, because the travail is the cost of my victory, and nothing unexpected is in it. I feel I am on the way to something more sublime and perfect, so all what have been created cannot satisfy me.” Indeed, she was on the way to the sublime, but it was to be heavenly and not earthly. The tuberculosis robbed her of last strength. She has to be lying up, interrupting her study--but in her last, incomplete picture we can see a young woman sitting on the grass in the sunlit garden in springtime.
She died on the rainy 31 of October, 1884.
Her legacy was the thousand page book and several canvases in the museums of Paris and Nice. Her relatives took away the rest her pictures, and the pictures were destroyed in the beginning of WWII at bombing suburbs of Kiev. And yet her name did not pass into oblivion. The French government commissioned the statue of Immortality, and on the scroll, which Immortality hold in hands, her name was inscribed.
The disease robbed her of her voice; most of her paintings bunt down; the survived ones look so unimpressive--so why the name of the woman, who lived in the 19th century and died young, still has a sad, magical charm. Since her time, the fires of 200 great and small wars snatched away 100 or 200 million humans, nameless mostly. But the name of Maria Bashkirtseva has survived in our memory.
P. S.
Author of the blog is the only girl of Revue_Blanche, and the reader has to regard the image of Marie B as my spiritual predecessor. Why not an incarnation? Not complete though, with one difference: Marie B disliked cats in her life (“Men and cats do not deserve of living”).
P. P. S.
I am so glad, if this essay can help those who study Russian literature, though they cannot be many, of course, perhaps some students in China, no more, but I am glad anyway.

with kind regards
Lara Biuts

P. P. S. My collected essays entitled The Jetsam has been published on the Authonomy website:
http://www.authonomy.com/ViewBook.aspx?bookid=8178