Mind Of Steel And Clay
Page 13
I have been able to think a lot about this diary as I write. I hope that one day it will be used as a compliment to the valuable studies and articles that defend the good name and mastery of Camille Claudel, as the exceptional woman and unrivaled artist she was. I think I will keep it beside the letters that were confiscated from her.
I am not sure if this small homage to the woman who I have had the great honour of sharing almost 20 years with will succeed in purging me of my sins. If the war ends, I have already decided I will forget Montdevergues and everything it has come to mean, if only I can. Two decades is too long in a man’s life, but I still have time to change my course. I want to do the same as my good friend Mathieu, retire in a small quiet town and become a local doctor. The last thing I want is to go back to Paris and take on more responsibility or to run a larger, more prestigious institution. I am just too tired.
There is only one thing left for me to do, something which I had not even thought of until recently, but which has been slowly gaining ground in my mind, eventually persuading me once and for all. I am going to smash up the few dozen pieces that I still have in the little museum in my quarters. This is what Camille would have wanted. I was fixated on taking them from her for years, without her permission or her consent. Figurines whose fate she believed was the skip, but that actually fell into my dirty hands. First I will smash them into little pieces with a hammer, and then I will toss them into the Rhône, where they will sink to the bottom and sleep soundly forever.
In the future, I hope that the name Camille Claudel will occupy a place in the History of Art that it deserves. In the meantime, let her remains rest in peace, protected by the clayey earth she always loved so dearly.
“I have fallen into a bottomless pit. The world I live in is a curious, strange one. My life was a dream, this is a nightmare...”
Camille Claudel
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