Marie Bashkirtseff : the journal of a young artist, 1860-1884

Front matter

Class

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copyright deposit.

Preface To The New Edition

A generation has passed since this self-revelation of a unique individuality, recorded with absolute fidelity to truth, was first given to the world. A revelation which, in the words of a reviewer of the Journal, at the time of its first appearance in an English translation in America, "gives one the impression of a soul accustomed to other and higher spheres, which, caught and imprisoned in a human body, is filled with curiosity to investigate its new surroundings, possessed of an explorer's interest in the bound of being and a philosopher's desire to subject to analysis all the tense passions and emotions of which it finds itself possessed."

A genuine human document. The sincerest revealment ever made to the world of the most intimate experiences of a human soul, of the most secret thoughts of a human heart. And pervading all the spirit of eternal Youth, the undying hope of Youth, the dauntless courage of Youth. A great book indeed. An immortal book, which has within itself the assurance of its immortality, the immortality which only Genius can confer. A book without a parallel, indeed, as the great English statesman and scholar, Gladstone, has called it.

So for the present generation, for the young, the ardent, the aspiring, who are entering life eager to achieve fame through the doing of great deeds, and

vii viii PREFACE TO THE NEW EDITION.

for whom Romance throws a glamor over life that makes failure seem impossible, for these and for those graver spirits, those sympathetic students of the human heart and the human soul in whose lives the glamor of Romance still lingers, whose intellectual pleasure is still keen in tracing the windings of the path on which an eager and ardent soul is led by circumstance and for whom, above every other grace of mind, is the grace of sincerity, and above every other grace of soul, the grace of aspiration, this new translation of the Journal of Marie Bashkirtseff — new in that it has been enlarged by important additions from the original French and a complete revision made of the text — is now issued.