A Life She Invented Herself

This book is not just an autobiography, not just a diary, and it’s not even Gala Dalí’s confession. It is an attempt by the wife, the muse, and the main model of the brilliant artist Salvador Dalí to create her own life by her own choice.

Her real name was Elena Dyakonova; her real life is a mystery. The scant lines of official documents do not provide the full picture: she was born in Kazan, was friends with the Tsvetaeva sisters, and left Russia forever in 1916. Her greatest work is her life itself, created with the help of the greatest mystifier of the 20th century—Salvador Dalí. They lived in a world they invented, shaping their own reality, and it was not easy to tell where fiction ended and reality began.

Undoubtedly, she wrote about herself—but presenting herself as she wanted to be, inventing things, offering explanations, and never suspecting that, against her will, the book would make it possible to understand her true self—something she herself did not know. Artists create art without realizing that art creates them.