Important group of four autograph letters signed, various sizes, 11 pp, Moscow, 1951-1969, to her old friend ballerina Aleksandra Dorinskaya [Pasen'ka]. WITH: photographs L. Brik, Osip Brik, V.V. Mayakovsky and others mounted on front and verso of card, apparently removed from from a photo album. Lilya Iuryevna Brik was Vladimir Mayakovsky's mistress while she was married to his friend Osip Brik. She was the subject of many of his greatest love poems including Pro eto [About That] (1923). After he killed himself over an affair with another woman, Brik devoted her life to his memory. She famously wrote Josef Stalin in 1935, complaining that Mayakovsky's work was being neglected. He reportedly replied, "Indifference to his cultural heritage is a crime." Later in life she (then married to her last husband, writer Vasilii Katanyan) was accused of being the cause of Mayakovsky's suicide in 1930. This cache of letters served in part as her defense against the unsubstantiated charges against her. On August 25, 1957, Brik writes Dorinskaya: "I am writing and already wrote 300 pages during 2 months. Those are not memoirs but more like 'notes in the margins' for [Viktor Osipovich] Pertsov's book. There was a vile book published [Life and Work of Mayakovsky]- a false and botched one. This book made me write 300 pages and I even typed them myself." On May 4, 1965, Brik quotes from an article by B. Bialik intended as part of a book on Konstantin Fedin that touches on the accusation that Brik destroyed Mayakovsky: "'I know that many serious people will not agree with me, people who do not forgive the artist his even most little mistakes, not just in literature but in personal life as well. Those people even want to decide for artist with whom he should or should not have been in love. They do not forgive Pushkin his marriage to Natalie Goncharova and perceive as personal victory when Lev Tolstoy left Sofia Andreevna. They will not stop (after the death of the poet) to repeat that his memory is saint, but in the same time they allow themselves to speak disrespectfully of the woman who was the love of his life. The woman to whom he dedicated many inspired works and whom he mentioned in his last letter. It's hard to think that only the death of the poet allows those people to do those things. If poet suddenly came alive - they would have had to run away not to meet with him.'" On May 5, 1969, she writes from her dacha in Peredelkino of her wish to pass her archives on to the Central State Archive of Literature and Art. She herself committed suicide later that year at the age of 87.
Important group of four autograph letters signed, various sizes, 11 pp, Moscow, 1951-1969, to her old friend ballerina Aleksandra Dorinskaya [Pasen'ka]. WITH: photographs L. Brik, Osip Brik, V.V. Mayakovsky and others mounted on front and verso of card, apparently removed from from a photo album. Lilya Iuryevna Brik was Vladimir Mayakovsky's mistress while she was married to his friend Osip Brik. She was the subject of many of his greatest love poems including Pro eto [About That] (1923). After he killed himself over an affair with another woman, Brik devoted her life to his memory. She famously wrote Josef Stalin in 1935, complaining that Mayakovsky's work was being neglected. He reportedly replied, "Indifference to his cultural heritage is a crime." Later in life she (then married to her last husband, writer Vasilii Katanyan) was accused of being the cause of Mayakovsky's suicide in 1930. This cache of letters served in part as her defense against the unsubstantiated charges against her. On August 25, 1957, Brik writes Dorinskaya: "I am writing and already wrote 300 pages during 2 months. Those are not memoirs but more like 'notes in the margins' for [Viktor Osipovich] Pertsov's book. There was a vile book published [Life and Work of Mayakovsky]- a false and botched one. This book made me write 300 pages and I even typed them myself." On May 4, 1965, Brik quotes from an article by B. Bialik intended as part of a book on Konstantin Fedin that touches on the accusation that Brik destroyed Mayakovsky: "'I know that many serious people will not agree with me, people who do not forgive the artist his even most little mistakes, not just in literature but in personal life as well. Those people even want to decide for artist with whom he should or should not have been in love. They do not forgive Pushkin his marriage to Natalie Goncharova and perceive as personal victory when Lev Tolstoy left Sofia Andreevna. They will not stop (after the death of the poet) to repeat that his memory is saint, but in the same time they allow themselves to speak disrespectfully of the woman who was the love of his life. The woman to whom he dedicated many inspired works and whom he mentioned in his last letter. It's hard to think that only the death of the poet allows those people to do those things. If poet suddenly came alive - they would have had to run away not to meet with him.'" On May 5, 1969, she writes from her dacha in Peredelkino of her wish to pass her archives on to the Central State Archive of Literature and Art. She herself committed suicide later that year at the age of 87.
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.jpg "Source: Christie's")
.jpg "Source: Christie's")
