Elsa Triolet in 1925.
Key data Birth name Элла Каган Ella Kagan A.k.a Laurent Daniel Birth September 12, 1896 ( September 24 , 1896 in the Gregorian calendar ) Moscow Death June 16 , 1970 (at 73) Moulin de Villeneuve , Saint-Arnoult-en-Yvelines Main activity Writer, resistant Awards Goncourt Prize 1944
Author Writing language French, Russian
Primary works
Good evening Therese (1938) The first hitch costs two hundred francs (1944) The Red Horse (1953) Roses on Credit (1959) Complements
Spouse of Louis Aragon Sister of Lili Brik to modify
Elsa Triolet , born Ella Yourievna Kagan (in Russian : Элла Юрьевна Каган ) on September 12, 1896 ( September 24 , 1896 in the Gregorian calendar ) in Moscow and died on June 16 , 1970 in Saint-Arnoult-en-Yvelines , is a French woman of letters and resistance fighter of Russian origin, born of Jewish parents. The first woman to win the Goncourt Prize , she is also known under the pseudonym Laurent Daniel .
She is the sister of Lili Brik and the companion of Louis Aragon .
Biography [ edit | modify the code ] Born into a well-to-do family of Russian Jewish intellectuals, Ella Kagan (then Triolet after her first marriage, a name she will keep throughout her life) is the daughter of Elena Yourievna Berman, a very talented pianist, and of the lawyer Yuri Alexandrovich. Kagan specializes in publishing contracts for artists and writers 1 . She has a sister, Lili , five years her senior, who fascinates her but whom she is jealous of. She will write from her childhood memories one of her first novels in Russian Strawberry of the woods ( Ziemlianika , nickname given to her when she was a child), largely imbued with the feeling of not being loved 2 .
She made brilliant studies, learned to play the piano, learned German from her parents who spoke that language, as well as French from the age of six 1 . She finished high school with a "gold medal", then obtained an architectural diploma in June 1918 3 . She travels to Europe with her sister and her mother, for whom the arts, and music in particular, hold a great place 4 .
Lili joined the Russian revolutionaries in 1905, including her future husband Ossip Brik . The couple introduce Ella into their circle of friends which includes Boris Pasternak , Victor Chklovski and linguist Roman Jakobson , in love with her and who will always remain her friend. In 1911, she met the poet Vladimir Mayakovsky , her first great love 4 .
After the death of her father in 1915, she lived with her mother in financial difficulties. In 1917, she met André Triolet, a French officer stationed in Moscow, heir to a wealthy family from Limoges. She left Russia with him and married him in Paris in 1919. The couple stayed in Tahiti for a year 5 . She who had wished to leave Revolutionary Russia, whose ideas she embraced, but hated the consequences on living conditions: civil war, misery, famine, etc., languishes in the indolence of an island where she cultivates nostalgia for his dear literary circle in Moscow. Unhappy in her marriage, Elsa left her husband in 1921.
Knowing a time of wandering, she goes first to London , then to Berlin in 1923 where Victor Chklovski, very in love with her and seeing her depressed, insists that she write. He publishes the epistolary exchange they had under the title of Zoo, Letters Which Do Not Speak of Love or the Third Heloise . This collection of letters is read by Maxim Gorky who, having particularly appreciated Elsas letters, asks to meet her. During their interview, Gorky encouraged the young woman to concentrate on writing 6 .
Plate 5 rue Campagne-Première ( 14 th arrondissement of Paris ), where she lives with Louis Aragon from 1929 to 1935.
Plate 56 rue de Varenne ( 7 th district), where the couple also lived. Back in Paris in 1924, she stayed at the hotel at 29 rue Campagne-Première in the Montparnasse district where surrealist writers and artists like Marcel Duchamp , Francis Picabia and Man Ray live . She wrote in Russian her first book À Tahiti (published in Leningrad in 1925), in which she reflected on writing, then Fraise-des-Bois (Moscow, 1926), drawing inspiration from her childhood diary, and Camouflage (Moscow, 1928) 6 .
With Louis Aragon at their friend Pierre Seghers house in Villeneuve-lès-Avignon in 1941. She met Louis Aragon in 1928 in Paris 7 , at the café La Coupole , frequented by many artists. He becomes the man of her life, the one through whom she can finally take root in French society. She becomes his muse. In 1929-1930, Elsa created necklaces for haute couture to support herself, and wrote reports for Russian newspapers. In the following years, she translated French authors into Russian : Voyage au bout de la nuit by Louis-Ferdinand Céline , in 1934; The Bells of Basel (1937) and Les Beaux Quartiers (1938) 8 , the first two novels of the cycle The Real World of Aragon. She will also translate, during her life, many Russian authors in French, of which in particular Chekhov and Mayakovsky . She collaborates with numerous texts 9 in the daily Ce soir , directed by Louis Aragon and Jean-Richard Bloch . In 1937, she began to write her first novel in French, Bonsoir Thérèse , published in 1938 by Editions Denoël .
She married Louis Aragon on February 28, 1939 . She participated with him in the Resistance , in the South zone (in Lyon and in the Drôme in particular) and helped to publish and distribute the newspapers La Drôme enarmes and Les Étoiles . She continues to write short stories and the novel Le Cheval Blanc . Entering underground with Aragon, his short story Les Amants dAvignon was published by Éditions de Minuit in October 1943 under the pseudonym Laurent Daniel, in homage to Laurent and Danielle Casanova 10 , 11 . This news and three others 12 are united under the title The first hitch costs two hundred francs (a phrase which announced the landing in Provence ) and obtained the 1945 Goncourt Prize for the year 1944. Elsa Triolet is thus the first woman to obtain this literary prize 13 , 14 .
In 1946, she attended the Nuremberg trials on which she wrote a report in Les Lettres Françaises .
The period of the war inspired him the novel The Inspector of the ruins , then the atomic threat, at the time of the cold war , The Red Horse . Belonging to the steering committee of the National Committee of Writers (CNE), it endeavors to promote the reading and sale of books in the 1950s and actively participates in a movement launched by the French Communist Party in 1950-52: “Les Batailles of the Book ” 15 . She travels extensively in the socialist countries with Aragon and, although critical of Stalinism and indignant at anti-Semitism which raged in the USSR in 1952, also affecting her sister, she did not make a public statement 1 . She expressed her criticism of the regime in the novel Le Monument published in 1957. She resigned the same year from the CNE steering committee, then wrote the three novels in the cycle LÂge de nylon . She actively intervened in 1963 to translate and publish in France the story of Alexandre Soljenitsyne Une Journée dIvan Denissovitch . The way in which Vladimir Mayakovskys biography was falsified in the Soviet Union is one of the reasons that led him to write the novels Le Grand Jamais (1965) and Listen-voir (1968).
Tomb of Elsa Triolet and Louis Aragon in the park of the Moulin de Villeneuve in Saint-Arnoult-en-Yvelines . In 1965, she prefaces Dominique Oriata Trons first book , Stéréophonies , published by Pierre Seghers . In 1966, Agnès Varda directed a short documentary, Elsa la rose , on her love affair with Louis Aragon.
After having published La Mise en mots (“Les Sentiers de la Création” collection, Skira editions , 1969) and Le Rossignol is silent at dawn (1970), Elsa Triolet died of a heart attack on June 16, 1970 in the property it owns with Louis Aragon, the Moulin de Villeneuve , in Saint-Arnoult-en-Yvelines 16 . The calendar hung in the house still displays this date, Louis Aragon having symbolically ceased to count the days after the death of his beloved. This act recalls the verses of their friend Paul Éluard after the death of their loved one (see "Last love poems: We will not grow old together, Here is the day too much: Time is overflowing") Elsa rests alongside Aragon, in the six hectare park surrounding this old mill. On their graves, we can read this sentence by Elsa Triolet:
"When side by side we will finally be recumbent, the alliance of our books will unite us for better or for worse, in this future which was our dream and our major concern to you and to me. Death helping, we might have tried, and succeeded in separating us more surely than the war in our lifetime, the dead are defenseless. Then our crossed books will come, black on white hand in hand to oppose our being torn from each other. ELSA "
Decoration [ edit | modify the code ] Medal of the French Resistance by decree of March 11, 1947 11 . Posterity and tributes [ edit | modify the code ] Many towns have given the name of Elsa Triolet to one of their streets, alleys, squares or squares, in particular:
Amiens , Argenteuil , Aubervilliers , Avignon , Brest , Chalon-sur-Saône , Cherbourg , Dijon , Grenoble , La Chapelle-sur-Erdre , Le Mans , Lille , Mâcon , Marseille , Massy , Montbard , Montigny-lès-Cormeilles , Montreuil , Morsang-sur-Orge , Les Mureaux , Nantes , Niort , Noisy-le-Sec , Noisy-le-Grand , Orly , Ozoir-la-Ferrière , Poitiers , Rennes , Rezé , Roquevaire , Saint-Brieuc , Saint-Denis , Saint-Martin-dHères , Sallaumines , Seclin , Tours , Trappes , Trith-Saint -Léger , Valenton , Vierzon , Vitry-sur-Seine , etc. Colleges and high schools bear his name in Paris 13 th , Champigny-sur-Marne , Le Mée-sur-Seine , Lucé , Marseille , Saint-Denis , Venissieux , Varennes-sur-Seine , etc.
Media libraries and libraries, at:
Bobigny , Fleury-Mérogis , LÎle-Saint-Denis , Pantin , Pierre-Bénite , Ris-Orangis , Sevran , Villejuif , Villeparisis . Several schools (nursery or primary) are also named in his honor, among others:
Échirolles , Feignies , Frouard , Gardanne , Givors , Grigny , Guesnain, Guyancourt , La Ciotat , Lillebonne , Mitry-Mory , Montceau-les-Mines , Montluçon , Nanterre , Neuville-lès-Dieppe , Roubaix , Rouvroy , Saint-Étienne-au -Mont , Saint-Pierre de La Réunion, Sorgues , Stains , Talant , Toulouse , Tremblay-en-France , Vitry-en-Artois, etc. as well as a school in Saint-Donat-sur-lHerbasse , where she stayed with Aragon during the war . On his death, a tower of the Cité du Coq de Jemappes (entity of Mons ) bears his name, the other being called Flora Tristan .
the June 14, 2021 The French Post office issues a postage stamp with his effigy 17 .
Works Novels, stories and essays À Tahiti (1925) in Russian, translated into French by Elsa Triolet in 1964. Wild strawberry (1926) in Russian language Camouflage (1928) in Russian, translated into French by Léon Robel in 1976. Good evening Therese , Denoël , 1938 Mayakovsky , ESI , 1939 Monster 42 , Poetry 42 n o 2, Seghers , 1942 Moonlight , Poetry 42 n o 4, Seghers, 1942 A thousand regrets (1942) The White Horse , Denoël, 1943 The Lovers of Avignon . Published under the name Laurent Daniel, which was his pseudonym, underground, by Éditions de Minuit , 1943. Who is this stranger who is not from here? or the myth of Baroness Mélanie , Éditions Seghers, 1944 Le Premier Accroc costs two hundred francs , Denoël, 1944, Prix Goncourt in 1944 Nobody Loves Me , The French Library , 1946 Armed Ghosts , The French Library, 1947 Cartoons , with the assistance of Raymond Peynet, Bordas, 1947 The Inspector of the ruins , Denoël, 1948 The Red Horse or Human Intentions , Reunited French Publishers (EFR), 1953 The History of Anton Tchekhov , preface to the complete works, EFR, 1954 The Meeting of Foreigners , Gallimard , 1956, prize of the Fraternity 2 , 18 The Monument , Gallimard, 1957 LÂge de nylon (1): Roses on credit , Gallimard, 1959 The Nylon Age (2): Luna-Park , Gallimard, 1959 The Shenanigans , Gallimard, 1961 LÂge de nylon (3): LÂme , Gallimard, 1962 Le Grand Jamais , Gallimard, 1965 LISTEN TO SEE , Gallimard, 1968 The Wording , Skira , 1969 The Nightingale is silent at dawn , Gallimard, 1970. Translations From French to Russian [ edit | modify the code ] Journey to the End of the Night , Céline, 1934 19 The Bells of Basel , Aragon, 1937 Les Beaux Quartiers , Aragon, 1938 From Russian to French The Mountain and the Men , M. Iline, ESI, 1936 La Jeune Fille de Kachine , Ina Konstantinova (en) , Reunited French Editors (EFR), 1950 The Portrait , Nicolas Gogol , EFR, 1952 Works. Theater , Anton Chekhov , vol 6, EFR, 1954 Works. Theater , Anton Chekhov, vol. 19, EFR, 1962 Mayakovsky. Verses and proses , chosen and translated by Elsa Triolet, EFR, 1963 Russian Poetry , bilingual edition (direction), Seghers , 1965 Captain Fédotov , Victor Chklovski , Gallimard, 1968 Poems , Marina Tsvetaïeva , Gallimard, 1968 
Medal of the French Resistanceby decree of