COMPLEMENTARY [GxG]

Chapter 3 | Lust for Glory

"In the Studio" by Maria Bashkirtseva (1881)

Tuesday, March 11, 1884.

Its raining. But that's not it. I feel ill. Heaven is crushing me. No one loves everything as much as I. Art, music, painting, books, people, dresses, luxury, noise, calm, laughter, sadness, melancholy, jokes, love, cold, sun, all seasons and weathers, the plains of Russia, the mountains around Naples, the snow in winter, the rain of autumn, spring and its follies, tranquil days of summer, and nights brilliant with stars.

I read over the highlighted quotes from my favorite book, Lust for Glory a.k.a. the Journal of Maria Bashkirtseva—a young, ambitious Russian artist who died from tuberculosis at age twenty-five and in addition to her paintings, left her diary as a legacy.

The first time I read it—I'd originally found a copy of it in French at a used bookstore in Munich where we used to live—I cried. To feel the raw ambition of a girl aching to make her name in the world, to print her name into the stars, for her art to transcend her mortality.

I was once what you would call a child prodigy. I'm sure there's still a few of my interviews on the Internet, a spread in a big art magazine with my prepubescent work—paintings that sold for ten times more than what they do now despite being a tenth as good. But my art wasn't enough to hold people's short attention spans. And now here I am, unable to conquer a competition at a measly California Youth Painters fair.

At least my anguish makes for decent material for my diary. One day it will be a valuable chronicle of my artistic process. Historians will publish it for all to read, just like Maria Bashkirtseva's. If my art doesn't speak to people's hearts, my words will. Someday.

Saturday, December 4, 1875.

I was born to be a remarkable woman; it matters little in what way or how. I shall be famous or I will die. Is it possible that God has given me this gloriae cupiditate for nothing? My time will come!

For now, I'm invisible. I'm eighteen and still haven't eclipsed my child prodigy days. Still haven't escaped from the whispers and rumors regarding my father's mistakes. I've fallen off my own pedestal. I'm no one in the picky eyes of history. And any time I dare express myself in a way that's not through a paintbrush? You're too dramatic, Persephone. You're too angry. You're too much.

So I shut up. I realize no one actually cares to know me. And it doesn't matter... because I know what I want. On the outside, I'll put on the mask everyone—teachers, family, art world snobs—want me to wear. I'll be palatable. Reasonable. Polite. I'll be sufficiently nice for people to tolerate me enough to support my work.

Even with my dad. He's always telling me: Calm down, Persephone. And Fitz: Chill out, Persephone. Only my mother understood, her cold exterior a mask for the passion and ambition within her.