Jacques BREL, in the Marquesas, shortly before his death. May 1978.

Jacques Brel (1929.1978)

Autograph letter signed to a lady.

A large page in-4° on paper with its letterhead.

Autograph envelope bearing Brel's address and a Polynesian stamp.

Hiva-Oa [Marquesas Islands]. May 10 [19] 78.

Moving missive from Jacques Brel, one of the last sent from his Marquesan lands, a few months before his death.

__________________________________________________

“Dear Madam, I thank you very sincerely for your letter which touches me very much. I wish you good luck! J. Brel. »

__________________________________________________

Retired to the center of the Pacific in the peace of the Marquesas, Brel returned to Paris in September 1977 to record his final album, a testamentary masterpiece, entitled Les Marquises . The record was released on November 17, 1977, after more than ten years of musical silence from Brel.

Immediately after recording, Brel and his partner Maddy returned, after a few stops in Asian cities, to their refuge in Atuona. They don't know that they will live their last months together there.

On July 7, 1978, two months after the letter we present here, the recurrence of his lung cancer (he had already been operated on in 1974) forced him to return to Paris for treatment. The diagnosis is fatal: a tumor the size of a grapefruit strikes his left lung. Brel leaves the Marquesas; he will never see them again.

After a few months of treatment, he died of a pulmonary embolism on October 9, 1978 at the Avicenne hospital in Bobigny.

His body was repatriated to Hiva-Oa where he rested a few meters from Paul Gauguin.