The Intimate Notebooks of Marie Bashkirtseff

The publication of the first volume of the Intimate Notebooks of Marie Bashkirtseff (1), organized and annotated by Pierre Borel, has generated much discussion; and truly, certain pages of these notebooks, previously unpublished, allow us to penetrate the very depths of an extraordinarily and preciously crafted soul, to commune more intimately with this proud Slavic woman who died at the age of 23, in the almost universal ferment of her genius. A radiant energy emanates from these notebooks, permeating beings and things, delineating and marking this cosmopolitan and nomadic civilization that searches in vain for its habitat and its home and knows not where to fix its nostalgia. For the sleeping car is not a homeland. And this is precisely what the trembling Marie dies of, a poignant and unattached nostalgia. Whether in Russia, Paris, Nice, Rome, or Naples, whether at the Veglione or in the studio, everywhere we feel her searching for the homeland of her soul. And with a passion and anguish that cast sometimes blinding illuminations on her surroundings. And it's not indifferent to us Provençals that she almost discovered this homeland in Nice, when, after the din of Carnival and the splendor of social gatherings, she stops in the old town, listens to the children of Malonat sing "lou roussignou que vola," or converses with the fruit sellers and small vendors of the Rue de France, amazed and delighted to find them such purebred souls...
I confess that the great commotion surrounding Marie Bashkirtseff once irritated me a little, finding nothing in her journal or her correspondence that could truly justify the mad enthusiasm of certain people for her.
Since then, I have better understood the marvelous little girl, for I had the good fortune to meet one of her most fervent lovers today, I mean Pierre Borel. What first attracted me to this young colleague was the quality of the enthusiasm and the restrained lyricism he brought to art criticism.
Now, I have always observed that the value of a man, particularly a writer, is in direct proportion to his potential for enthusiasm and his lyrical gifts. I also recognize that these natural riches would produce little if they remained uncultivated, if a firm will, clear-sighted and continuous labor did not bring them to fruition every day.
Labor of every kind: labor of creation, of organization, of dreams, moral labor, material labor.
Pierre Borel is a tireless worker. And then, he is a researcher, an explorer favored by luck. He had already discovered those famous letters from which he transformed Courbet's Novel. The intellectual and cordial passion that he felt since childhood for the memory of Marie Bashkirtseff also enabled him to conquer, at the cost of many setbacks and through many pitfalls, the unpublished treasure, the bulk of which he now publishes, with growing success every day.

Pierre Devoluy.

• Marie Bashkirtseff

• Pierre Devoluy