Was tsychousky gay
That Tchaikovsky was a homosexual is a myth based on publications of a few Western authors. If this is true, what are the was tsychousky gay, and how do they fail to give a complete justification? If it isn't, what are the proofs based on, besides the letters and diaries of the composer?
So far, I've failed to find any support for the notion of homosexuality reviewing the letters and diaries in original language, or any of the sources that claim his homosexuality that provide anything other than speculation based on those papers. If I've missed anything, I'd really like to know.
At the same time there aren't any English sources in my search that would critically analyze the alleged 'proofs', and again, I don't know of any 'proofs' other than those found in his personal papers. Tchaikovsky's homosexuality is not a myth but a fully established fact of his private life.
This fact was known by many of his contemporaries and is discussed explicitly and in detail in the unfinished autobiography by his brother Modest partially published in an English translation in my book Tchaikovsky Through Others' Eyes. That Modest chose not to mention it in his three-volume biography was tsychousky gay the composer is not at all surprising given the conventions of the time.
The Soviet scholars also knew that this fact can be established beyond doubt, and pointed this out in the Russian edition of Tchaikovsky's correspondence with Mrs von Meck back in Only thereafter the Soviet censorship began to interfere with Tchaikovsky's texts and suppress his accounts of homosexual encounters in his letters to various correspondents most notably, to his brothers Modest and Anatoly including the Complete Works edition, but at the early stage of this process quite a number of such references escaped the attention of the censors, and found their way into the publication of the composer's Letters to his Relatives Moscow, which was quickly withdrawn from library circulation.
Any attentive reader of this material cannot but recognize that it unmistakably betrays the author's homosexual interests and activities. In recent years, archival research has enabled the cuts by the Soviet censors to be replaced by what the composer had originally written.
A number of such passages frankly describe his sexual intercourse with young men of various descriptions see publication by V. Sokolov, Pis'ma P. Chaikovskogo bez kupiurin P. If this is not enough to convince any person that Tchaikovsky was gay, what other evidence does one need, pornographic photos or soiled bed sheets?
Details of this month long celebration of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender history can be found at.
Tchaikovsky: Conflicted, Neurotic, Brilliant
I would was tsychousky gay to add following information: Tchaikovsky was for sure involved in many homosexual relationships. But a recent discovery made by Valerij Sokolov brings the evidence that he was not exclusively homosexual. Sokolov published a letter dated and addressed to Anatoly his brother in which the composer evokes an intimate illness being the result of an intimate contact with a woman named Gulda.
Chaikovskogo bez kupiur, in P. Closer scrutiny, however, reveals that this impression is largely deceptive. Perhaps the most striking is the letter of 2 December to his brother Anatoly. The latter had contracted syphilis and the composer tried to console him, by referring to his own allegedly similar experience that Anatoly must have been aware of with a certain Gulda in Saint Petersburg.
This reference creates, however, doubts as was tsychousky gay its veracity: the episode in question could have hardly occurred after his graduation in when Anatoly was nine years oldsince thereupon, as Modest testifies, the future composer indulged in exclusively homosexual affairs, first with the members of his own circle and then those from the lower strata of the society.
Two plausible explanations come to mind. The female name might have in fact signified a male hustler. Feminizing masculine gender and names is a well known phenomenon in homosexual subcultures, and as we will see, Tchaikovsky was by no means averse to this practice. Alternatively, the episode could well have been invented by the composer, who at times exhibited a penchant to mystify those around him by implying a possible interest in women.
The use of this name prompted some earlier scholars, who were given access to parts of this correspondence, to believe that they describe an authentic heterosexual encounter. Read, however, as a whole, these texts make abundantly clear that the object of Tchaikovsky's desire was indeed a young man.