Refusing to Love. The Paths of Russian Love from Pushkin to AI. Part II – The Silver Age. Yury Tomin

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      Although in fact Dostoevsky himself hoped for the realization in a surprising way in the indefinitely distant future of a synthesis of the broad Russian soul with the rational European one, as a result of which a universal person with a harmonious soul would appear, containing all its natural, but already transformed breadth.

      Leo Tolstoy, as a result of his search for a cardinal remedy for love’s misfortunes, came to the conclusion about the need to free man from the demands of his own animal personality, and he saw the highest stage of this liberation in such a predominance of the rational principle of the soul that the meaning of his whole life becomes clear to a person and romantic love is filled with its own the truly noble and bright quality of love for one’s neighbor.

      Herzen and Chernyshevsky called for new love relationships, freed from conventions and restrictions imposed from outside, based on ideas about human dignity, which alone can be the basis for a fair and reasonable organization of social life, including family relationships of «new people.»

      Turgenev and Chekhov, who examined in detail the quality of the human material of those in whom others saw «new people» capable of resolving fatal love issues, can be attributed to the camp of skeptics, while Turgenev stopped short of the human ability to comprehend the metaphysical meaning of love, and Chekhov nevertheless directed his timid, optimistic glances towards future, albeit distant, generations of new people.

      All this baggage of questions related to the search for ways to find true love, concentrating around the key idea of new people who, with their changed nature, gain the opportunity to overcome all its contradictions, was bequeathed to descendants and forwarded to the next Silver Age of Russian love.

      I

      Excitement time. New energies. A secluded place of passion. Fantastic attitude. common sickness. Passion in the language of music. Information flows of feelings. Storm in «The Tempest». Yet what kind of love? Love in words and music

      The Silver Age located its two outgoing and opening twenties at the turn of the 20th century. The Russian philosopher Berdyaev called this era «a time of great mental and spiritual excitement.» The excitement was associated with the discovery of new energies of the human spirit and the hope of their use for the transformation of man, relationships between people, social order and overcoming all obstacles to harmony, justice and happiness that stretched from the past.

      We will begin our exploration of such promising energies of the human spirit with the story of the undoubtedly high and no less peculiar love of a forty-five-year-old woman, raising eleven children, widowed and managing a million-dollar fortune, for a composer thirty-six-year-old professor of the Moscow Conservatory, Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky, who was just approaching the threshold of his world fame.

      In the life of Nadezhda Filaretovna von Meck, who married early, not glittering beauty and not distinguished by fine taste in clothes and women’s jewelry, but possessing a rare practical mind, there were no full-blooded romantic plots and experiences. But in her soul there was a special secluded place where sublime passionate feelings could manifest themselves in all their diverse palette and depth. And the tuning fork of these intimate romantic experiences was music. In 1874, having heard Tchaikovsky’s symphonic fantasy The Tempest to Shakespeare’s drama of the same name (The Tempest, 1611), she «was delirious for several days, could not free herself from this state» and fell in love with the music of a composer unknown to her. Three years later, having entered into correspondence with the composer and offering him regular financial support, Nadezhda von Meck described her fascination with Tchaikovsky’s music:

      …You wrote music that takes a person into the world of sensations, aspirations and desires that life cannot satisfy. How much pleasure and how much longing this music brings. But you don’t want to tear yourself away from this longing, in it a person feels his highest abilities, in it he finds hope, expectation, happiness, which life does not give.

      In the same letter she confesses that behind the outstanding music she would like to see the composer as a person of high moral qualities, and that she, learning about him different reviews, has brought to him «the most intimate, sympathetic, enthusiastic attitude». It means that «these sounds have a noble, genuine meaning,» they were written «to express one’s own feelings, thoughts, state,» and one can recklessly «surrender to the complete charm of the sounds of your music.» In essence, this statement means the following: your music speaks of love, these images of love are sincere and come from your heart, I share your feelings.

      Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky (1840—1893)

      In their further correspondence that lasted thirteen years, Nadezhda von Meck once failed to stay in this graceful and airy shell of love and stepped onto sinful earth, confessing to Tchaikovsky her love, her jealousy of his fleeting wife and the feeling that he belonged only to her. This episode only confirms the true nature of Nadezhda von Meck’s «fantastic» СКАЧАТЬ