Marie Bashkirtseff (from Childhood to Girlhood)
Marie Bashkirtseff (from Childhood to Girlhood)
Translated by Mary J. (Mary Joanna) Safford
Marie Bashkirtseff's 'From Childhood to Girlhood' is a collection of personal journals written between 1860 and 1884, chronicling her life from age twelve through adolescence. The diaries reflect her struggles with identity, societal expectations, and her aspirations for love and fame, particularly regarding a young man known as the Duc de H----. Posthumously published in 1887, the work was initially sanitized by her family, but a new translation by Phyllis Howard Kernberger restores the original text, revealing Bashkirtseff's candid thoughts and vibrant imagination, making it a significant portrait of a young woman ahead of her time.
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“I long for the freedom to go out alone: to go, to come, to sit on a bench in the Jardin des Tuileries, and especially to go to the Luxembourg, to look at the decorated store windows, to enter churches and museums, and to stroll in the old streets in the evenings. This is what I envy. Without this freedom one cannot become a great artist.””
— Marie Bashkirtseff
