Jacques BREL, in the Marquesas Islands, shortly before his death. May 1978.
A moving letter from Jacques Brel, one of the last sent from his Marquesan lands, a few months before his death.
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A moving letter from Jacques Brel, one of the last sent from his Marquesan lands, a few months before his death.
Sold
Jacques Brel (1929.1978)
Autographed letter signed to a lady.
A large quarto page on paper bearing his letterhead.
Autographed envelope bearing Brel's address and a Polynesian stamp.
Hiva-Oa [Marquesas Islands]. May 10 [19] 78.
A moving letter from Jacques Brel, one of the last sent from his Marquesan lands, a few months before his death.
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"Dear Madam, I sincerely thank you for your letter, which touched me deeply. I wish you all the best! J. Brel."
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Having retreated to the peaceful Marquesas Islands in the heart of the Pacific, Brel returned to Paris in September 1977 to record his final album, a testamentary masterpiece entitled Les Marquises . The album was released on November 17, 1977, after more than ten years of musical silence from Brel.
Immediately after the recording, Brel and his partner Maddy returned, after a few stops in Asian cities, to their refuge in Atuona. They did not know that they would spend their last months together there.
On July 7, 1978, two months after the letter presented here, a recurrence of his lung cancer (he had already undergone surgery in 1974) forced him to return to Paris for treatment. The diagnosis was fatal: a tumor the size of a grapefruit had invaded his left lung. Brel left the Marquesas Islands; he would 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 it rests a few meters from Paul Gauguin.