Quote:
Originally Posted by Jack Pat
Tchaikovsky |
Tchaikovsky's picture was interesting to see, because I never knew or thought about how he looked before.
Although I don't think of him as "hot," he has pretty eyes, really, and a self-contained, calm appearance that makes me think he might have been a sensitive, unassuming, and perhaps even somewhat shy but passionate person.
More pictures of
Tchaikovsky:
Tchaikovsky's photos made me curious to learn more about his life (about which I knew nothing). I learned that he appears to have wrestled with trying to find fulfilling relationships as a gay man in a society that didn't view same-sex love as legitimate, although he accepted his homosexuality; he did feel great passion for some men in his life; he worked very hard as a composer; he died of cholera at quite a young age (53) and in distress.
Quote:
About Tchaikovsky
Tchaikovsky Research : Life (1877)
As far as Tchaikovsky's own attitude to his sexual predicament is concerned, he could not of course fully neglect societal convention and, generally speaking, was rather conservative by temperament. In addition, in his youth he was repeatedly pressured to marry, and at some point he conceived the idea that he could change his sexual orientation and successfully live with a woman in order to ease his own life and mollify his relatives. Even at that stage, however, he considered his homosexual tendencies natural and in no way his own fault.
[He later wrote of himself, after an ill-fated marriage to a woman who loved him but to whom he promised only brotherly love], “Only now, especially after the tale of my marriage, have I finally begun to understand that there is nothing more fruitless than not wanting to be that which I am by nature."
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^ There is great wisdom in that last quote of Tchaikovsky.