Elsa Triolet

Elsa Yur'evna Triolet;Ella Yurievna Kagan

1896 (Moscow) – 1970 (St-Arnoult-en-Yvelines, France)

She was involved as a teenager with Mayakovsky, who proceeded to fall in love with her married sister Lilya Brik (Triolet later translated his work into French). Rodchenko photographed her. She married Aragon, and was a powerful influence on his writing (Cummings, a friend of both, took magazines and perfume to her sister in Moscow). She (and Aragon) met Paz at an anti-fascist writers’ conference. Jakobson was a close friend from childhood, and another who fell for her. The writer and critic Shklovsky, also in love with her, passed her work on to Gorky, who encouraged her to get published.