ABSTRACT
In May 1884 Marie Bashkirtseff was dying of consumption. She knew she was gravely ill: in July 1881, 'les apparences du mal' [the appearances of disease] 2 had begun refiguring the body whose perfection had been such that, according to Bashkirtseff herself, it ought to have been sculpted naked. In January 1881, she had already made a first attempt at composing a preface to her journal; following her diary entries of this period are two pages of non-dated writing, preceded by the directive: 'A placer en tête de mon journal: Préfaces et explications nécessaires' [To be placed at the start of my diary: Prefaces and necessary explanations]. 3 Yet for all that Bashkirtseff certainly makes an effort to convince future readers of the interest of her diary in this version of the preface, she does not explicitly stake her desire for posthumous fame upon publication of it. It is not until December 1882, less than two years before her death and still far from having made her mark on the collective consciousness of her contemporaries, that it finally occurs to Bashkirtseff to wonder if it might not after all be her diary that procures her the fame that she so desires: 'Il serait curieux,' she muses, in terms that point clearly to both the irony inherent in the situation and the pathos to be derived from it, 'si le récit de mes insuccès et de mon obscurité allait me donner ce que je cherche et chercherai encore. Mais je ne le saurai pas ... et d'ailleurs pour qu'on me lise et se débrouille dans ces milliers de pages ne faut-il pas que je devienne quelqu'un?' [It would be curious if the tale of my failures and my obscurity were to give me what I seek and shall go on seeking. But I shall never know ... and anyway for someone to read me and not get lost in these thousands of pages, won't I have to become somebody?] 4 On 27 December 1882, she names her illness in her diary for the first time: 'Poitrinaire. Le mot et la chose.' [Consumptive. The word and the thing]. 5 By May of 1884, time is running out. Bashkirtseff has displayed works at four Salons but received only one Mention. Her body has weakened to the point where even dressing can be difficult. She realizes that she may not live to complete the painting, 'Les Saintes Femmes', upon which she is pinning her hopes for consecration as an artist. And so she composes another preface, this time in a separate carnet on the front cover of which she inscribes the single word 'préface'. It is this version that has been placed at the beginning of the first volume of the unabridged edition of the diary published by the Cercle des amis de Marie Bashkirtseff. It is also this version — albeit in a truncated 26and slightly modified form — that André Theuriet placed at the beginning of the 1887 edition. In both editions, the first paragraph is the same. It is for this reason that in what follows, I will concentrate on this paragraph.
