Title:  Marie Bashkirtseff (From Childhood to Girlhood)

Author:  Marie Bashkirtseff

Release Date:  November 1, 2004 [EBook #13916]

Language:  English

Character set encoding:  ASCII

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MARIE BASHKIRTSEFF

(From Childhood to Girlhood)

TRANSLATED FROM THE FRENCH BY MARY J. SAFFORD

PREFACE

THE SOUL OF A LITTLE GIRL

Marie Bashkirtseff, beginning at twelve years old, wrote her journal ingenuously, sincerely, amusing us by her whims, thrilling us by her enthusiasms, touching us by her sufferings.

We have gone through these note-books bound in white parchment, slightly discoloured, like the winding sheet in which sleeps a memory, and have already gathered a volume, precious, not because it describes such an entertainment or such an event, but because it reveals the mentality of a young girl.

This time we have been especially interested by the first books, written in a large, unformed hand, dashing, variable, following the successive impressions of a changeful, sensitive nature.

Very few documents exist concerning children, in whom the nineteenth century alone began to interest itself.

In fact the real personality of the child is very secret, for it distrusts these comprehensive and authoritative beings, “grown-up people.”  And it hides its ironical observations, its dreams, all the ardour of its little soul.

Children play.  They have built, with sand and twigs, a fantastic world peopled with their familiar toys:  a grey cloth elephant, a multi-coloured duck as big as that white plush bear.  And they are in the jungle, tracking, hunting, killing.  Then they dance round to a secret rhythm.  Stop to look at them, the game will end.  The little mouths will become silent.  The child will always hide the ingenuous observations it makes with its clear eyes.

Therefore it seems to us very interesting to show a little girl’s existence, not told from the distance of past years, but written day by day.  Marie Bashkirtseff was a child of precocious intelligence, ardent will, extreme intensity of life.  Maurice Barres defines it sensibly in saying that she had, “when very young, amalgamated five or six exceptional souls in her delicate, already failing body.”

The nomad life led by her parents, residences in Paris, London, Nice, Rome, hastened the development of a vivid intelligence.