Tatiana Alexejewna Jakowlewa

The Russian Tatjana Alexejewna Jakowlewa ( Russian Татьяна Алексеевна Яковлева ; * 1906 in Saint Petersburg , † 1991 in New York ) became known as the lover of the Russian poet Vladimir Mayakovsky towards the end of his life. She later married Alexander Liberman , the head of the Condé Nast Alexander Liberman publishing house, and became a New York style icon of the 1950s and 1960s.

Early years

Tatiana Jakowlewa was born in Saint Petersburg in 1906 and came from a family of artists and intellectuals. The father, Alexei Yevgenyevich Jakowlew, was an engineer and architect, the grandfather a ballet master at the state Mariinsky Theater, the aunt, Alexandra Jakowleva, an opera star in Russia. At the age of five, Tatiana and her family moved to Penza, 13 hours south-east of Moscow by train, because her father was commissioned to design a number of state theaters.

emigration

In 1915 the parents divorced, the father emigrated to America, the mother married a wealthy pharmaceutical manufacturer. At the beginning of the October Revolution, he lost all of his fortune and the family went into famine. Shortly afterwards, Tatjana's stepfather died of tuberculosis, which put the women in a precarious financial situation.

Due to the revolution, Tatyana Jakowlewa received very little schooling. However, she possessed a phenomenal talent for memorizing poetry and by the age of 14 was able to recite the great Russian poets Pushkin, Lermontow, Blok and Mayakowski extensively by heart. During the great famine of 1921 , she made a living for the family by reciting Red Army soldiers for a piece of bread on street corners.

In 1922 Tatjana fell ill with tuberculosis, which got worse over the next three years. Her relatives enabled her to emigrate to Paris in 1925. There she recovered and started working as an apprentice in a hat shop.

Tatjana was torn between her life in Paris society, where she soon had the reputation of a femme fatale , and her homesickness for Russia.

The love for Mayakovsky

In 1928 Tatiana and the Russian poet Vladimir Mayakovsky met in Paris. Tatiana became Mayakovsky's lover and inspired him to write several love poems. Mayakovsky explicitly dedicated two poems to her: "Letter from Paris to Comrade Kastrow about the nature of love" and "Letter to Tatiana Jakowlewa".

In December 1928, Mayakovsky's visa expired and the two were separated. The political events of 1929, "the year of great upheaval", made it difficult for Mayakovsky to get a visa and so the couple saw each other again in the spring of 1929, until Mayakovsky had to return to Moscow again. Due to the political repression and difficulties of the time (the correspondence between the two was probably intercepted) Tatjana saw no future in the relationship with Mayakovsky and married the French diplomat Viscount Bertrand du Plessix in December 1929 and moved to Warsaw. Francine was born in September 1930 , the daughter of Tatjana and Bertrand.

In April 1930 Tatiana learned of Mayakovsky's suicide, which plunged her into deep sorrow. Within four years, the couple became estranged from each other. Tatjana began a romance with the later Condé Nast boss Alexander Liberman, whom she married after Bertrand's death in 1940. In 1943 she emigrated to New York.

Tatiana Jakowlewa died in 1991 and bequeathed her correspondence with Mayakovsky to her daughter Francine.

literature

• Francine du Plessix Gray : Mayakowskis last love , Berenberg Verlag 2008. ISBN 978-3-937834-27-6

Web links

• Literature by and about Tatjana Alexejewna Jakowlewa in the catalog of the German National Library