“March 12th (24th).
“I see that Kondratiev has been giving you an over-coloured account of my hypochondriacal state. I have suffered all the winter, but my physical health is not in the least impaired.... Probably I wrote to Kondratiev in a fit of depression, and should find my account very much exaggerated if I were to read the letter now. You seem inclined to reproach me for being more frank with Kondratiev than with you. That is because I love you and Anatol ten times more than I love him; not that he does not like me, but only in so far as I do not interfere with his comfort, which is the most precious thing in the world to him. If I had confided my state to you, or Anatol, you would have taken my troubles too much to heart; whereas Kondratiev would certainly not let them cause him any anxiety. As to what you say about my antipathy towards you, I pass it by as a joke. Upon what do you found your supposition? It makes me angry to see that you are not free from any of my own faults—that much is certainly true. I wish I could find any of my idiosyncrasies missing in you—but I cannot. You are too like me: when I am vexed with you, I am vexed with myself, for you are my mirror, in which I see reflected the true image of all my own weaknesses. From this you can conclude that if you are antipathetic to me, this antipathy proceeds fundamentally from myself. Ergo—you are a fool, which no one ever doubted. Anatol wrote me a letter very like yours. Both letters were like a healing ointment to my suffering spirit.... The death of Laub has been a terrible grief to me....”
Following upon these letters, it becomes necessary to give some account of the mental and moral disorder which attacked Tchaikovsky during the course of this season, and gradually took firmer hold upon him, until in 1877 it reached a terrible crisis which nearly proved fatal to his existence.
The desire for liberty, the longing to cast off all the fetters which were a hindrance to his creative work, now began to assume the character of an undeclared, but chronic, disease, which only showed itself now and again in complaints against destiny, in poetical dreams of “a calm, quiet home,” of “a peaceful and happy existence.” Such aspirations came and went, according to the impressions and interests which filled his mind and imagination. If we read the letters of this period carefully, we cannot fail to observe how every fluctuation in his circumstances influenced his spiritual condition. We see it when he separated from Rubinstein and started a home of his own. His independence, his new friendships, once more reconciled him to existence, and his affection for Moscow—or at least for the life it afforded—then reached its climax. For a little while his longings for something better were stifled. But as early as 1872 his dissatisfaction and desire to escape from his surroundings make themselves felt; although only infrequently and lightly expressed.
In November 1873, we find him speaking frankly of his disenchantment with his Moscow friends, and complaining of his isolation and the lack of anyone who understood him. So far, these were only recurrent symptoms of a chronic malady.
We see that in the spring of 1874, when he was away from Moscow and from the friends of whom he had complained, he wished for their society again, wrote to them in affectionate terms, and, during the whole of his visit to Petersburg, as later on to Italy, he was always looking forward to his return to “dear Moscow, where alone I can be happy.”
By 1875 the chronic malady had made considerable progress. It did not return at intervals as heretofore, but had become a constant trouble. According to his own account, he was depressed all the winter, sometimes to the verge of despair. He felt he had reached a turning-point in his existence, similar to that in the sixties. But then the desired goal had been his musical career, whereas now, it was “to live as he pleased.”
Tchaikovsky now resembled those invalids who do not recognise the true cause of their sufferings, and therefore have recourse to the wrong treatment. He believed the reason for his state lay in the absence of intimate friends, and that his one chance of a cure was to be found among “those who were dear to him” and “who alone could save him from the torments of solitude” from which he suffered. I lay stress upon this error of Tchaikovsky’s, because, becoming more and more of a fixed idea, it finally led the composer to take an insane step which almost proved his undoing.
One symptom of Tchaikovsky’s condition was the morbid sensibility of his artistic temperament. Even before the episode of the B♭ minor concerto, he chanced one day to play part of Vakoula the Smith before some of his friends.
“He was too nervous to do justice to the work,” says Kashkin, “and rendered the music in a pointless and spiritless fashion, which produced an unfavourable impression upon his little audience. Tchaikovsky, observing the cool attitude of his hearers, played the opera hurriedly through to the end and left the piano, annoyed by our lack of appreciation.”