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STRAVINSKY, Igor (1882-1971)
Autograph letter signed ('I') to his lover and future wife, Vera de Bosset Sudeikina, n.p., n.d. [Biarritz, 19 November 1921].
In Russian. Three pages, 274 x 215mm. Provenance: Boris Kochno (1904-1990); his sale, Sotheby's Monaco, 12 October 1991, lot 404.
A passionate love letter to his future wife, mentioning work on the comic opera Mavra. Stravinsky sits down to write his second letter to Vera of that day, 'taking advantage of the fact that no one's at home now and I have sufficient peace and quiet ... in the extreme haste and nervousness of my first letter of today ... I didn't answer one of your questions, my Verochka, and this question is so dear to me, so suffused with desire and love, that I've been preoccupied with it for 24 hours, repeating it to myself, and have been carrying your letter with this question in my left pocket, afraid to part with it. So, you want to know just "one small thing": whether I'll love you in spite of everything. Oh, Verochka, how can I answer you in any other way right now than by asking you the same question?...'. Stravinsky is haunted by the fear that Vera will resign herself to remaining with her husband [the painter Sergey Yurievich Sudeikin]: 'Perhaps I shouldn't bother you with this, but when you are in love as deeply and as strongly as I am, it is unthinkable not to mention something which so tortuously affects that love. Verochka, my beloved, tell me that this "coming to terms" won't be a sign that your feelings for me are weakening ... I live only by the smallest of reminiscences, the pain of our separation, and the partial satisfaction of your letters'. In a postscript, Stravinsky adds news of his work on his comic opera, Mavra: 'I haven't begun the love duet. I am now finishing up the duet for Mother and her neighbour. Oh, how I wish you could hear it now!'.
Stravinsky had met the dancer and costume designer Vera de Bosset under the auspices of Diaghilev in February 1921, and they became lovers later that year: the affair would continue until their marriage in March 1940, after the death of Stravinsky's first wife, Yekaterina, the previous year. At the time of the present letter, Vera was playing the Queen in Diaghilev's production of The Sleeping Princess at the Alhambra Theatre in London, where Stravinsky had joined her for a brief period in late October and early November before returning to his family in Biarritz. Diaghilev's secretary, Boris Kochno, appears to have acted as a go-between for the two lovers, and he may have retained the present letter for reasons of discretion. Stravinsky's comic opera Mavra sets a libretto by Kochno, and was premiered in Paris on 3 June 1922 in a production by Diaghilev.
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