A Voice From The Tomb

1901

More of Marie Bashkirtseff's Interesting Confessions Printed.

Once more Marie Bashkirtseff and her "confessions" are leading topics of interest in the literary world. The last of the "confessions" have just been issued in book form, and they are attracting almost if not quite as much attention as those which preceded them several years ago.

Readers familiar with the literary ideas of 12 or 15 years ago scarcely need be told who Marie Bashkirtseff was. To younger readers the name of the brilliant, erratic young Russian artist, scholar and authoress is not, however, very well known. Although she left no permanent impress on the world of art or letters, her diary, which reveals with fidelity the workings of her heart and mind, will always possess an interest for the student of human nature.

Marie Bashkirtseff was born in Russia in 1860 and died in Paris on Oct. 31, 1884. She was well born and well educated, possessing a knowledge of Greek and Latin as well as of the more important modern tongues. She was a talented painter and in 1878 went to Paris to study. In 1880 she exhibited a picture at the Salon, and from then until her untimely death she worked eagerly at her art. One of her pictures was purchased by the French government.

During her brief career in Paris Marie Bashkirtseff mingled with the brilliant life of that period and numbered among her acquaintances many famous people. She frequently wrote anonymous letters to famous literary men, and the charm and brilliance of the epistles induced those to whom she wrote to sustain the correspondence. The letters which passed between her and Guy de Maupassant, the brilliant romancer, form the most interesting phase of the last "confessions."

Marie Bashkirtseff was a genius in many ways, a painter, a musician, a writer and, above all, a woman of the most intense emotion. It may well be held, as it is by some, that the world lost much by her premature death.