В книге «На Таити», написанной еще на русском языке, Эльза Триоле – сестра Лили Брик, возлюбленная В. Маяковского и Л. Арагона, муза русской и французской богемы – в свойственной ей непринужденной и импрессионистической манере рассказывает о пребывании в Полинезии, где она жила со своим первым мужем, французским офицером.
Elsa Yur'evna Triolet (September 24 1896 - June 16, 1970) was a French writer.
Born Ella Kagan (Russian: Элла Каган) into a Jewish family of a lawyer and a music teacher in Moscow, she and her sister, Lilya Brik received excellent educations; they were able to speak fluent German and French and play the piano. Elsa graduated from the Moscow Institute of Architecture.
Elsa enjoyed poetry and in 1915 befriended the aspiring futurist poet and graphic artist Vladimir Mayakovsky. When she invited him home, the poet fell madly in love with her older sister Lilya, who was married to Osip Brik. Elsa was the first to translate Mayakovsky's poetry (as well as volumes of other Russian-language poetry) to French.
In 1918, at the outset of Russian Civil War, Elsa married the French cavalry officer André Triolet and emigrated to France, but for years in her letters to Lilya Elsa admitted to being heartbroken. Later she divorced Triolet.
In the early 1920s, Elsa described her visit to Tahiti in her letters to Victor Shklovsky, who subsequently showed them to Maxim Gorky. Gorky suggested that the author should consider a literary career. The 1925 book In Tahiti, written in Russian, was based on these letters.
In 1928 Elsa met French writer Louis Aragon. They married and stayed together for 42 years. She influenced Aragon to join the French Communist Party. Triolet and Aragon fought in the French Resistance.
In 1944 Triolet was the first woman to be awarded the Prix Goncourt.
She died, aged 73, in Moulin de Villeneuve, Saint-Arnoult-en-Yvelines, France of a heart attack.
In 2010, La Poste, the French post office, issued three stamps honoring Triolet.
Первая книжка начинающего автора - и сразу превосходный травелог / колониальные записки. Отлично и живо написано, хоть мало и несколько вразброс, но в этом, надо полагать, и кроется очарование.
Насколько чудесны описания острова и насколько ярок и образен язык, настолько же оставляют неприятный осадок описания таитян. Удивительно.
Остров — крепость ли то или тюрьма — окружен широким, очень широким рвом — морем между берегом и коралловым рифом. Коралловый риф же — крепостной непрерывный и непрерывный вал. За ним океан, по которому тоже пешком не пройдешь. Ров наполнен до краев как бы яркой жидкой краской, очень светло-синей и светло-зеленой. Эти два цвета нигде не сливаются ни на поверхности, ни в глубине, и зеленый остается насквозь зеленым, а синий насквозь синим до самого ясного дна морского. Определенность и чистота этих цветов дает то же ощущение удовлетворения, что вид развернутого куска цветного шелка или свеже-выдавленной на палитру краски.
Elsa Triolet was 23 when she moved to Tahiti, in 1919. This is a story from a century ago, somewhere between fiction and fact, I'm not quite sure. I enjoyed it, it is a journey through the eyes of the author, a vision of things and commentary we would rarely make nowadays.