Brancusi: The kiss of death

Brancusi: The kiss of death

The "Le Baiser" monument, in Montparnasse, hides a tragic love.

Le Baiser, by Brancusi, which rises over the grave of a Russian girl, is the most visited monument in Montparnasse graveyard. The place is so tight that the figure of the "kiss", seems very high.

Behind, the horizon is cut by the graveyards’ stone wall. In front of it you can see the wall of a block of flats with bars on the windows.

Suicide by love

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One of Brancusi’s friends from Paris, who stood by him until the end, was Doctor Solomon Basile Marbe. A Russian student falls hopelessly in love with the doctor. Tatiana Rachevskaia, born on 6th of April 1887, commits suicide at 23, because of her unfulfilled love. 

She took her love with her into the grave, as nobody could know about it in those times of social conventions. Brancusi is hired to make the funeral monument. He approaches the theme of the kiss, as it seems the most representative for the endless love, but the family wanted a classical bust as a funeral stone.     Seeing the documents that the remaining members of the Rachevskaia family have consulted in Brancusi’s personal archive in Paris, you might think that "the kiss" will be claimed by the family.

Because of Brancusi’s sculpture, the cemetery has become a free entrance museum. If the monument were to be claimed, the harmony of this mythical would be destroyed.