June 16: the day of the death of Elsa Triolet, Mayakovsky's first muse and winner of the Goncourt Prize
Elsa Triolet, a writer, translator, and member of the French Resistance, was born Ella Kagan in Moscow. She was Vladimir Mayakovsky's first muse, Lilya Brik's younger sister, and the first woman to receive the Prix Goncourt. On June 16, 1970, she died in France of heart failure at the age of 73.
"Time has one property - to consume: it burns without leaving ashes."
Moscow, architecture and Mayakovsky
Elsa Triolet was born in 1896 in Moscow. Her real name was Ella Kagan. Her father was a lawyer and a fixture in literary circles, and her mother was a pianist. Ella graduated with honors from the Moscow Institute of Architecture.
In 1913, when she was sixteen, she met Vladimir Mayakovsky.
"Someone unusually large and sweeping paced back and forth, staring past everyone with unseeing eyes, and muttering something to himself. Then, suddenly, he thundered in a huge voice, also past everyone. And for the first time, it wasn't the poems or the person reading them that impressed me, but the whole thing, like a natural phenomenon, like a thunderstorm."
Elsa didn't remain Mayakovsky's muse for long: in 1915, she introduced him to her older sister, Lilya Brik. She remained the poet's only friend for the rest of his life.
"I knew for certain that Mayakovsky needed to be watched, that he wasn't just a poet, but a militant poet; that he wasn't just a man, but a man who carried within himself all human pain; and that from love, happiness, and life, he demanded the impossible, the immortal, the boundless. All my life, I feared that Volodya would commit suicide."
In their correspondence, she called him "dear Uncle Volodya." At first, Mayakovsky ignored her letters, but over time, as he put it, he "became fond of them."
"Dear Elik! I would be glad not to answer your letter, but how could you not answer such a tender one?"
Emigration and first books
Elsa greeted the October Revolution of 1917 with enthusiasm. But in 1919, at the age of 25, she left Russia with her husband, the French officer André-Pierre Triolet. After the marriage broke up, she lived in London, then Berlin and Paris. She worked in an architectural studio and devoted herself to literary work.
At 30, she published her first works in Russian (they were published in the USSR). Her first novel in French, "Good Evening, Therese!", was published in 1938, when Elsa was 42.
Resistance and the Goncourt Prize
Elsa's second marriage was to the French writer and Communist Party member Louis Aragon, who supported the USSR. It is believed that it was Elsa who first attracted him to communist ideology.
With the outbreak of World War II, both joined the French Resistance. Aragon founded an underground publishing house and published the illegal newspaper "Les Étoiles." Elsa continued her literary work.
The title of her collection of short stories, "For Damaging Cloth, a Fine of Two Hundred Francs," a quote from advertisements in French billiard rooms, became a catchphrase for de Gaulle's allies. In 1944, Elsa Triolet received the Prix Goncourt, France's most prestigious literary award, for it.
"Today, in every newspaper without exception, my face is on the front page and there are so many flowers that I can’t stand up or sit down." (from a letter to Lilya Brik)
A cultural bridge between Russia and France
After the war, Elsa remained a supporter of the Soviet regime. She traveled to the USSR with Aragon, where her works were published in large print runs.
She translated Gogol and Chekhov into French, as well as Russian poetry—from Pushkin and Mayakovsky to Voznesensky and Akhmadulina. She organized an exhibition of Niko Pirosmani, then unknown to the French, at the Louvre, and introduced the Parisian public to Maya Plisetskaya, who was on tour.
Protest and oblivion
After the 20th Congress of the CPSU and the suppression of the Hungarian Uprising, Elsa and her husband criticized the Soviet regime. They protested against the trial of dissidents and the invasion of Czechoslovakia, as well as the persecution of Shostakovich, Solzhenitsyn, and Parajanov.
In the late 1960s, when the persecution of Lilya Brik began in the USSR, Elsa publicly declared that Mayakovsky's legacy had been falsified: Brik's name was being erased from his archives. After this, she was forgotten in her homeland.
Elsa Triolet published her last novel, an autobiography, "The Nightingale Falls Silent at Dawn," a few months before her death. It was never published in the USSR.
