Is the story of the colors that Tatyana Yakovleva received after the death of Mayakovsky?

In blogs and glossy magazines, the story is popular about how the lover of the Soviet poet received flowers from him for many years, including after his death. We decided to check how true this is.

Most often, a romantic story is stated as follows: in 1928, Vladimir Mayakovsky, during a trip to Paris, fell in love with the emigrant Tatyana Yakovlev. Then the poet was forced to return to the USSR, and he put his entire fee for Parisian performances in the bank at the expense of the famous Parisian flower company with the only condition: several times a week, Yakovleva should bring a bouquet of the most beautiful and unusual colors. This continued many years after Mayakovsky's suicide in 1930. It is alleged that Yakovleva received bouquets in the 1940s, when Paris was already occupied by the Germans, and that for several years she traded these flowers on the boulevard to escape from starvation. This story can be found in social networks - for example, in Facebook, "VKontakte" And Livejournal. Also, the site wrote about this "Gossip"And the magazine"Grace".

The love story of Mayakovsky and Yakovleva is a well -known episode of the poet’s biography. In October 1928 he He arrived in Paris And I stayed there for two months. In the French capital, he met Tatyana Yakovlev, who emigrated from Soviet Russia in his youth, and fell in love with it. How I wrote Later, the daughter of Yakovleva, Francin du Pless Gray, "two weeks later Mayakovsky offered her hand and heart, but Tatyana answered evasively." The poet dedicated two poems to his Parisian lover: ""A letter to Tatyana Yakovleva" And "Letter to Comrade Kostrov from Paris about the essence of love". In December 1928, Mayakovsky returned to Moscow.

It is precisely to this period that the story with flowers belongs. “He went to Moscow for several months, and all this time I received flowers on Sundays - he left the money in the greenhouse and marked notes. He knew that I did not like cut flowers, and these were baskets or chrysanthemum bushes, ” - told Yakovlev in 1979 to the literary critic and biographer Mayakovsky Vasily Katanyan. Writes The daughter of Yakovleva about this: “Before leaving, Mayakovsky paid the flower grinder so that Tatyana was sent every Sunday to his dozen roses - his visiting card with a note was attached to each bouquet.”

In the spring of 1929 Mayakovsky again He arrived in Paris. He called Yakovlev with him to the USSR, but she refused. “He wanted me to instantly leave him. But I could not tell the relatives who recently put so much effort to take me out of Penza - "Hop! I come back." I loved him, he knew that, we had a novel, but the novel is one thing, and returning to Russia is completely different. <...> I wanted to wait, think about it, when he returned in October 1929, to decide. But here he did not come. <...> Realizing that he would not come, I felt free, ” - I remembered Yakovlev. In the fall of 1929, Mayakovsky was not given a visa, and Tatyana began to arrange her personal life. In December 1929, she married a diplomat of Bertrand, Du Plegessa.

Neither the poet’s lover nor her daughter never wrote that the flowers supposedly came for many years after the death of Mayakovsky, especially since this does not combine with facts from the biography of Yakovleva. She did not always live in Paris: for example, her daughter Francin Born In 1930, in Warsaw, where Du Plessi was with a diplomatic mission. Even more questions to the part of the story, which tells about the 1940s. In the summer of 1940, France was occupied by Nazi Germany, on June 14, German troops Entered To Paris. Not later than 1941, Yakovleva, together with her daughter and her future second husband, Alexander Lieberman, left for the United States through Lisbon. Therefore, she could not spend several years in occupied Paris.

Often in articles devoted to the episode with flowers, Reference The testimony of the poet Arkady Vering, who in the 1970s allegedly saw with his own eyes how flowers with a note “From Mayakovsky” were brought to the Parisian apartment of Yakovlev. Vypolin really has a poem “Flowers from Mayakovsky”, in which he lyrically rethinks the love story of the Soviet poet and the Parisian emigrant. There are lines about the 1940s in the text:

Life breaks.
The wind is cool.
And his bouquets go,
And his bouquets go,
Although Paris is already under the Nazis,
And his bouquets go,
And the petals are trembling.
And to survive, she is still
Sells them - Winter, is it summer!
These black clouds
These white clouds
These red clouds,
What is his name is bouquets!

Most likely, the story about the visit of a jerk is just a free retelling by bloggers of this poem. In the 1970s, Yakovleva lived in the United States, there Vasily Katanyan and ballet historian Gennady Shmakov met her, who asked her about the details of the biography. She did not return to Paris after the war.

Therefore, in the story of colors, in any case, in the form in which it spreads on blogs and in glossy magazines, there are many exaggerations. Mayakovsky was really in love with Tatyana Yakovlev, and for several months 1928-1929, the woman brought flowers from him. However, the story of couriers, which for decades after the death of the poet gave her bouquets, is implausible and does not correspond to either the biography of Yakovleva or famous memories of contemporaries.

Photo on the cover: Wikimedia Commons

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