A nervous wreck (a modern diagnosis might be “borderline personality disorder”) certainly can enjoy moments and even long periods of happiness, but it would be quite a stretch to call him happy. A similar stretch is calling the attitude toward homosexuality in Tchaikovsky’s Russia tolerant.
Let’s look at the case of Prince Meshchersky, the favorite example of the modern-day Tchaikovsky “revisionists.” Yes, the Romanovs tolerated the openly homosexual Meshchersky (who, according to Alexander Poznansky, was Tchaikovsky’s “intimate friend”)20 and supported his ultra-conservative publication, The Citizen, with generous government grants. But the Russian political elite seethed and kept looking for ways to open the eyes of Alexander III and then Nicholas II about Meshchersky.
Yevgeny Feoktistov, chief of the department overseeing press and publishing under Alexander III, recorded in his diary that Prince Meshchersky made “a very depressing impression on all decent people; his newspaper is considered the tsar’s; they said that it should serve as the mouthpiece of the Sovereign himself, and just as if on purpose, the disgusting story with some flutist or drummer came to light … How could I not mourn that the Sovereign, distinguished by an instinctive disgust for everything base and perverted, has given a man shamed in public opinion the chance to abuse his name?”21
Such diary entries, made by some of the most influential figures of the period, were quite common.22 Their hostile or mocking tone makes it clear: in a situation when sodomy was considered a crime (the Criminal Code read: “Anyone guilty of the unnatural act of sodomy is subject to being stripped of all rights and exiled to Siberia”), accusing someone of homosexuality was a potent weapon and was routinely used to discredit political enemies and for blackmail.
Homosexuals were under tight police surveillance in this period, as evidenced by an official memorandum of 1894 found in the archives of the minister of state property, Mikhail Ostrovsky (brother of the dramatist Alexander Ostrovsky, who was a friend of Tchaikovsky’s), which lists and describes the most notorious homosexuals in St. Petersburg (approximately seventy men), based on agent reports.23 It says about Prince Meshchersky, “He uses young men, actors, and cadets and becomes their patron for it … To determine the qualities of the rear ends of his victims, he uses a billiards table.”24
The author of the memorandum insisted that the government increase its war on homosexuality: “The consequences of this evil, which has apparently set deep roots in the capital, are varied and harmful to a high degree. Besides perverting public morality and public health, it is a particularly harmful influence on the family situation of young men, students of almost all educational institutions, and the discipline of the troops.”25
The idea that society and law in Russia were easy on homosexuals is a myth. We also have to bear in mind the specific nature of laws in Russia—in every period. Public life there is based not on laws but on “understandings.” That means that formally existing laws are applied or ignored depending on the position and wishes of the authorities. An unknown peasant “sodomist” could be herded to Siberia in leg irons, but a member of the elite, like Prince Meshchersky, under the patronage of the emperor, could slip out of any dangerous situation.
No one could feel confident of the future in those conditions (which is one of the goals of a society built on “understandings”). That life—and not just for homosexuals—could not be called “happy.” That is why Herzen, Turgenev, Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, and Mussorgsky (and many other contemporaries of Tchaikovsky from the artistic world) could hardly be described as “happy” people.
Tchaikovsky’s sense of a troubled existence, shared with the Russian intelligentsia as a class, was exacerbated by his mental instability and, of course, belonging to an ostracized sexual minority. In other words, Tchaikovsky was unhappy not because he was homosexual but because he was a neurasthenic Russian intellectual at a critical juncture in history, and a homosexual to boot.
This is clear from Tchaikovsky’s letter of January 1878 to Nikolai Rubinstein, in which he declines a flattering invitation to travel to the World’s Fair in Paris as a representative of Russia. “In Paris, I would start to suspect every new acquaintance, and I would have many there, of knowing about me what I have been trying to hide so hard for so long. All right, I’m sick, I’m crazy, but now I can’t live anywhere where I have to appear, be prominent, or call attention to myself.”26
Tchaikovsky’s hasty marriage to Milyukova represented, in fact, a way out and a cover—as it has been before and since for countless gay men who were forced to adjust to a hostile society. What complicated the situation for Tchaikovsky was that, even though he had a mind “with a large dose of humor and not without sarcasm,” he was still first and foremost a hyperexcitable composer of genius.
He could not just conveniently take a wealthy wife, as did one of his gay friends, Vladimir Shilovsky. (Yet even the bon vivant Shilovsky had difficulties with the marriage, as Tchaikovsky informed his brother Modest: “Shilovsky’s wedding has taken place. He boozed with no sleep, bawling and fainting all the time. Now he is completely happy and satisfied. He penetrated his wife [that is the complete truth] and he spends his days calling on aristocrats.”)27
Tchaikovsky sublimated his emotions in music. It was his curse and his blessing, as it usually is with every creative personality, regardless of sexual orientation. Unable “to penetrate” Milyukova (from another letter to Modest: “The deflowering did not take place … But I have set myself up in such a way that there is no need to worry about that”)28, the composer wrote Eugene Onegin.
The autobiographical nature of the opera in view of Tchaikovsky’s circumstances seems obvious. But it manifests itself not where earlier scholars had sought it, naively assuming that Tatiana was inspired by Milyukova, who had written love letters to Tchaikovsky. In fact, Tatiana is Tchaikovsky himself.
Freud believed that the hysterical personality is constantly playing out a role of the other—woman as male and man as female. The borderline personality is always breaking out of the framework of its gender. In Tchaikovsky’s case, this was heightened by his creative impulse and also his homosexuality.
Expanding the gender field for his self-expression, Tchaikovsky appropriated Milyukova’s behavior and letters. (Sokolov points out that even after he left Milyukova, Tchaikovsky continued using her letters as material for his work: the lyrics of at least one song in his vocal cycle op. 60 are a paraphrase of her words.) It was no accident that he began working on the opera with the episode in which Tatiana writes to Onegin. That scene is one of the opera’s emotional and musical peaks. Tatiana’s “gasp” as she anxiously awaits Onegin’s response—“O my God! How miserable, how pathetic am I!”—is Tchaikovsky’s emotion.
Tchaikovsky’s strategy in Eugene Onegin is complex: his autobiographical “I” is divided into the shy but strong Tatiana and the fiery but elegiac young poet Lensky.29 Turgenev was the first to note that Lensky in the opera is a much more formidable presence than in the work by Pushkin, who treated Lensky sympathetically but with irony. Tchaikovsky, contrary to widespread presumption, could be ironic in his music. But there isn’t a trace of irony in his attitude toward Lensky. He admires him. Where Pushkin saw reason for mockery, Tchaikovsky elevates Lensky to a tragic pedestal.