Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky: Difference between revisions

“Yes, my friend! It is better to have to die oneself every day for a thousand years than to lose those whom one loves and to seek consolation in the hypothetical idea that we shall meet again in the other world! Will we meet again? Happy are those who manage not to have doubts about this” (quoted from the article on Dostoevsky in the People section)

On the subject of Tchaikovsky’s views on religion, it is very instructive to turn to his ‘special diary’. On 22 February/6 March 1886, he noted there:

“What an infinitely deep abyss between the Old and the New Testament! Am reading the Psalms of David and do not understand why, first, they are placed so high artistically and, second, in what way they could have anything in common with the Gospel. David is entirely worldly. The whole human race he divides into two unequal parts: in one, the godless (here belongs the vast majority), in the other, the godly and at their head he places himself. Upon the godless, he invokes in each psalm divine punishment, upon the godly, reward; but both punishment and reward are earthly. The sinners will be annihilated; the godly will reap the benefits of all the blessings of earthly life. How unlike Christ who prayed for his enemies and to his fellow man promised not earthly blessings but the Kingdom of Heaven. What eternal poetry and, touching to tears, what feeling of love and pity toward mankind in the words: “Come unto me all ye that labor and are heavy laden.” All the Psalms of David are nothing in comparison with these simple words.” (Quoted from Wladimir Lakond, The Diaries of Tchaikovsky (1945), p. 244)

This contrast between the Old and New Testament and his admiration for the figure of Christ, and, in particular, for Christ’s exhortation: “Come unto me all ye that labour and are heavy laden” (Mathew 11:28)—the underlying idea of which he once tried to set into music—are themes he often returned to in those years. Another interesting diary entry is that which he made in Maydanovo on 21 September/3 October 1887, on the same day that his old friend Nikolay Kondratyev died after a long illness in Aachen (where Tchaikovsky had visited him that summer):

“How strange it was for me to read that 365 days ago I was still afraid to acknowledge that, despite all the fervor of sympathetic feelings awakened by Christ, I dared to doubt His Divinity. Since then, my religion has become infinitely more clear; I thought much about God, about life and death during all that time, and especially in Aachen the vital questions: why? how? wherefore? occupied and hung over me disturbingly. I would like sometime to expound in detail my religion if only for the sake of explaining my beliefs to myself, once and for all, and the borderline where, after speculation, they begin. But life with its excitement rushes on, and I do not know whether I will succeed in expressing that Creed which recently has developed in me. It has developed very clearly, but still I have not adopted it as yet in my prayers. I still pray as before, as they taught me to pray. But then, God hardly needs to know how and why one prays. God does not need prayer. But we need it.” (Quoted from Wladimir Lakond, The Diaries of Tchaikovsky (1945), p. 249)