January 16, 1916
A 65-year-old man died in Moscow. Modest Tchaikovsky — playwright, opera librettist, translator, theater critic. The composer's younger brother and first biographer Pyotr Tchaikovsky.
What is our life? A game!
Born in 1850 Alapaevsk (Sverdlovsk region), together with his twin brother Anatoly - he became a brilliant lawyer and senator.
Modest also studied law, but devoted most of his life to art. After graduating, he served in the courts in Simbirsk (now Ulyanovsk) and the Kyiv province. He was a teacher of the deaf and taught a deaf boy. Kolya Konradi — I previously completed a special course in defectology in Lyon.
My head is spinning from the mass of faces I see. Musicians, prosecutors, writers… Dante, Dickens, Mérimée, service, theater, and yet I'm bored… I want to do everything at once, be everywhere and know everything.
His older brother, Pyotr Tchaikovsky, urged him not to give in to his passions—he believed that the younger brother was not gifted with talent, but could become a “notable person”:
Modinka, get used to the idea that you have to serve and achieve a career in your service.
In 1874, Modinka finally made his way into literature. His plays enjoyed success—they were staged at the Maly, Alexandrinsky, and other theaters.
I tried myself as a translator of sonnets William Shakespeare, works of French and Italian playwrights. This activity served as a way to "hide" from political events—he believed that "mediocrity and vulgarity" reigned in all parties.
He had a reputation as a theater critic whose opinions were respected. When he and Pyotr Tchaikovsky lived in Rome in 1878, the actors would often ask after performances, "What did Signor Modesto say?"
He had a wonderful relationship with his older brother—from childhood, his brother called the twins "little angels" and "little cherubs." They were 10 years younger. When their mother passed away, Modest and Anatoly were 4, and Pyotr was 14.
The wisest and most experienced teacher, the most loving and tender mother, couldn't replace Petya for us. We could confide everything we had in our hearts and minds to him without a shadow of a doubt. His influence on us was boundless, his word law. And so the three of us formed a kind of family within a family. For us, he was a brother, a mother, a friend, a mentor—everything in the world.
Later, Modest became the first person to whom Pyotr Tchaikovsky told about the idea for the opera Eugene Onegin.
He himself wrote the librettos, including for his brother's last two operas, "Iolanta" and "The Queen of Spades." He put the famous phrase "What is our life? A game!" into Herman's mouth (in his final aria).
On the day Pyotr Tchaikovsky contracted cholera, they were together: after the Alexandrinsky Theatre, they went with a group to a restaurant for dinner. There, in the absence of boiled water, the older brother was brought raw water at his request: the composer explained that he did not believe in superstition. Modest forbade him to drink this water, but Pyotr Tchaikovsky, laughing, managed to down the fatal glass in one gulp and died a few days later.
On the day of Pyotr Tchaikovsky’s funeral, October 28, 1893, the premiere of Modest’s play “Prejudices” took place (the date had been set in advance).
He became his first biographer, one of the founders and the first director of the Tchaikovsky Museum in Klin (I bought the house and, in order to preserve the original furnishings, I built an extension in which I settled).
He outlived Pyotr Tchaikovsky by almost a quarter of a century.
In the 1990s, Peter's letters to Modest were published in Russia "uncensored" (they had been censored during the Soviet era). Their contents became indirect evidence of the composer's homosexual orientation, and most likely that of his younger brother, Modest.
Only you, Modya, in the whole world can fully understand the feelings I experienced yesterday.
I find that our inclinations are for us the greatest and most insurmountable obstacle to happiness, and we must fight with all our might against our nature
