Lilya Brik
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Lilya Yur'evna Brik (Russian: Лиля Брик, 1893 - August 4, 1978) was wife of Osip Brik, muse of Vladimir Mayakovsky and a sister of Elsa Triolet.
Born Lily or Lilya Kagan (Russian: Лиля Каган) into a Jewish family of a lawyer and a music teacher in Moscow, she received excellent education and was able to speak fluent German and French languages and play piano. She graduated from Moscow Institute of Architecture.
Lilya's beauty was famous and her portraits were done by Alexander Rodchenko, Alexander Tyshler, David Shterenberg, David Burlyuk, Lejet and Blumenfeld ("Венера модерн" (Modern Venus), "Лиля в Разливе").
Both sisters enjoyed poetry. In 1912 Lilya married poet-futurist and criticist Osip Brik. In 1915 Elsa befriended Vladimir Mayakovsky and invited him home, but the poet fell in love with Lilya. Despite the calamities of WWI, Russian Civil War and throughout 1920s, their love affair caught and stayed in public attention, possibly because she did not divorce her husband.
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Mayakovsky's poem Про Это (About This)
The main subject of this epic poem was love in itself.
After a brief separation, at a Christmas-time before 1922, Mayakovsky wrote a kind of proto-surrealist poem in which he allegorized the feeling of missing Lilya. Some parts reflect themes akin to what Angelo Maria Ripellino once called the "revolt of the objects". In a telephone conversation, for example, the poet sees himself as a dinosaur that crawls through the line, whereas the entire house shakes as the phone bell rings.
Some authors consider that his passion for Lilya was one of the motives that drove Mayakovsky to suicide in 1930.