Bashkirtseff Marie
A Poltava girl who was in correspondence with the prominent French novelist of the nineteenth century Guy de Maupassant. A Poltava girl who was recognized as a outstanding painter by Jules Bastien-Lepage, Anatole
France and Émile Zola, which the then Paris Salons also testified. A Poltava girl who was adequately appreciated by Ada Negri, Velimir Khlebnikov and Lesya Ukrainka. A Poltava girl whose name was posthumously mentioned in the dedication of the first book “Night album” by Marina Tsvetaeva. The girl in whose life story three countries were combined: Russians can take her for their fellow countrywoman due to nationality, Ukrainians by place of birth and the first twelve years of such her short lifetime and the French because she spent her last twelve years in their homeland exactly. The latter ones even created the Circle of Friends of Marie Bashkirtseff that has existed till now, and in Nice there is her exhibition in the Cheret Museum, a plaster statue of quite young Mary in the long strict dress sitting on the bench with book in her hand set up in the Massena Museum, one of the streets of Nice named after her and a fountain was built in memory of her. However, the French wonderfully gifted painter having also a remarkable ability to sing and rare musicality has gained a worldwide fame not owing to art or music but due to his famous diary that became the first bestseller of the twentieth century.
All of that is told about Marie Bashkirtseff, a native of Gogol’s land, a girl from the village of Gavrontsi near Dykanka where she came into the world on November 24, 1858 at the estate of a large landowner Konstantin Bashkirtseff, the leader of the nobility of Poltava Governorate.
“Diary” by Bashkirtseff published in 1887 first in French and later in almost all the European languages immediately became a sensation, the most popular book on the border of two centuries, which has evolved into a real worldwide “bashkirtseffmania”. This confession poured onto paper caused both joy and anger, drew fierce criticism and even was subjected to doubt about its authenticity. Meanwhile, her foremost masterpiece came out in a tremendous press run and postcards with images of the authoress and her maxims on the back were bought up better than pictures of Sarah Bernard or Eleonora Duse. And all this was in conditions of the deep-rooted tradition to keep diaries! You see, almost all the educated people from emperors through artists and scientists to vendors and excited grammar-school girls then recorded their life.
So what has surprised? Something that suprises today. Epatageus, unprecedented frankness trenching on insolence and shocking, and ruthless self-criticism, as well. The authoress shamelessly poured out all the thoughts, feelings, emotions and all her intimate experiences on the diary pages by savoring them with emotional nakedness which only show and movie stars can now decide for, furthermore, solely at their producers’ request. Or the politicians driven to bay who are going to make the plebs have sympathy for them and to correct their reputation.
Marie Bashkirtseff was neither any descending show-star nor the disgraced politician. Just a young lass having unprecedented inborn thirst for life and for self-improvement. But this was the thought of the complete oblivion to be after her death that was burning her most of all.
The father’s family was not only noble and well-to-do: it could compete with the dukes of Kochubei who lived next to the famous Dykanka by its splendor and lifestyle. Her mother Maria Babanina, native of Kharkov was the daughter of a colonel - aristocrat, bibliophile and connoisseur of arts. But besides being rich and of a noble descent the family had also their skeletons in the closet which ones they saw no reason to conceal from their little daughter. And Marie Bashkirtseff would be carrying the cross unto death. Since childhood she knew that her daddy was playboy and lecher while her mommy had already been pregnant when marrying him. In addition, the father had “shared” a veneric disease with his wife. That the mum's brother Uncle George was gamester, drunkard and trickster, who scarcely got rid of imprisonment. That her mother's sister Nadine made a moronic rich man marry her and he gave up the spirit very soon whereupon his kin appealed to the court as if his will had a forged signature. Thus when the rest of the family went abroad in summer 1870 it looked like an escape and they seemed to be refugees.
The family of the exiles consisting of the mother, aunt Nadine, uncle George, her mother’s father, the younger brother Paul and mademoiselle Marie herself wandered through Europe: Vienna, Baden-Baden, Geneva, Rome, Naples, Capri, London, Paris - until they finally settled in Nice, the capital of the French Riviera coast by renting a luxurious villa. Later they bought another not less luxurious one. Sometimes the family visited Monte Carlo to play at the casino - Marie always won. They used to travel along the coast by their own carriage omitting no paid ball or masquerade ball anywhere. As well as no first night in Paris theatres. They also ordered elegant garments and decorations for arguable aunt’s money in that city. Rumors of such litigation spread out of Poltava reaching France. Therefore the family was not invited to routs and dinner parties of high society. Adults were angry but it was a real tragedy for Marie. However, she was not one who easily gives up.
To claim her belonging to high life, the girl resorted to child’s riots and risky escapades. She arranged improvised concerts just on the streets. She delivered ardent speeches for women’s rights on the local marketplace, being under the influence of newspaper reports about the suffragette movement. Marie scrutinized herself in the mirror, and after being sure of her own attractiveness she put on all her mother’s and aunt’s jewels to walk along the quay at noon...
Just then she also started to keep a journal but did not secretly, not for herself, as usual. Marie cried from the pages to all her readers: “Read, gentlemen, and learn! This diary is the world’s most useful and most instructive stuff to read as compared to all those being in past, in present and in future. Here is the life with all its smallest details; here is a woman with all her thoughts and hopes, disappointments, messes, delights, sorrows and joys. I'm still not quite a woman, but I’ll grow up. My life without the least decoration and deception can be traced from childhood to death...“
A fourteen-year-old Marie set the goal for herself to complete a lyceum course as soon as possible, which caused the family be surprised when taking in account their financial status. But she was hard to argue, and very soon the best teachers have been invited to teach the girl for nine hours a day. Simultaneously, Marie looked for a groom from the great world, which the family certainly welcomed. Despite all her tricks of coquetry and seduction the girl really fell in love and really suffered. But everything was in vain. As to the Ukrainian rich people, the girl tried to conquer them with her 30 Parisian attires brought to Poltava. Although the marriage was long-awaited for her, she didn’t feel like getting married while staying in her native land. She was spellbound with the landscapes she have already forgotten a little, was proud every time the peasants understood her Ukrainian, sang the folksongs together with them, was taught dancing, drew carefully the folk costumes, wore very willingly them and had photographs taken as mementos... After her returning to Nice, there was any hope to conquer the beau monde no longer. She started smoking to fall ill and die sooner.
And all of a sudden Marie made a new study plan by being aware of her education to be unsystematic and chaotic. As in fever, she started reading five or six books in seven languages every day, didn’t almost have a sleep, played piano for a few hours in a row, was taught in singing while dreaming to become an opera diva. “I want to live faster, faster, faster...” The phrases like that were seen in the diary increasingly often. And it frightened her: “I’m afraid that the desire to live at full speed is a symptom of the short life”, then: “I look like a candle sheared into four parts each of which burns from all the ends...”
Marie died of galloping consumption (tuberculosis) on November 13, 1884 when she was 25. She was buried in the Passy Cemetery, Paris. Her last words were as follows: “I so much want some cherries and apples from Gavrontsi”.
Most of 150 paintings made by her have perished in the fire of the Second World War. Anyway, several her canvases can be seen in the Louvre, Museum of Orsay, Luxembourg National Museum, Jules Cheret Museum in Nice, the Russian Museum of St. Petersburg, art museums of Dnipropetrovsk, Kharkiv and Sumy. The full text of “Diary” in French was lately republished in 16 volumes, but no sensation came again.
