Fyodor Dostoyevsky and Peter Tchaikovsky

Fyodor Dostoyevsky and Peter Tchaikovsky

Enamoured expatriates of Florence

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Thu 04 Aug 2005 12:00 AM

While there has always been a tradition of creative English and American expatriates living in Florence, there was also a small Russian contingent, including the brief stays of the writer Fyodor Dostoyevsky (1821-1881) and composer Peter Tchaikovsky (1840-1893). Although most of these foreigners came to Florence seeking sun, inspiring art, and affordable living, it was not always everyone’s cup of tea, as was the case with Dostoyevsky.

Dostoyevsky was a reluctant European. He left St. Petersburg with his second wife, Anna, in 1867 and over the next four years lived in Geneva, Florence, and Dresden. He was at the height of his literary powers at this time and wrote The Idiot, The Eternal Husband, and much of The Possessed while abroad. Although he claimed that living in Europe was an exile “worse than Siberia,” it was this time living in foreign countries that only further heightened his already impassioned patriotism.

Dostoyevsky began planning The Idiot in Geneva, but when his young daughter died the couple left, heartbroken, for Florence in 1868. Dostoyevsky chose Florence not only because of its inspiring art, that drew so many other foreigners, but mainly because of the library that contained Russian periodicals. They rented an apartment opposite the Pitti Palace, at via Guicciardini 22, and here Dostoyevsky completed The Idiot in January 1869, after seventeen months of work. This was his own favourite amongst his works. When the inferno of the Florentine summer arrived, the couple moved north through Italy, visiting Bologna, Venice, and Trieste on their way to Dresden, where they settled when their second child was born.

Despite the unenthusiastic attitude Dostoyevsky had to living in central Europe, Florence’s vast history and strong religious culture must have made an impression on him, compared to the murkiness of Russia’s spirituality and turmoil of the time – Prince Myshkin, the main character of The Idiot, “like a divine messenger in Homer or the Old Testament,” is a Christ figure, and Dostoyevsky’s answer to Russia’s salvation. Being abroad, he captured what was happening to his country in a way that was only possible when looking in from the outside.

Unlike Dostoyevsky, Tchaikovsky adored Florence, calling it his “city of dreams.” Tchaikovsky came to Florence in 1878 to compose quietly in a villa overlooking the city at via di San Leonardo 64, near San Miniato Church. It was here that he wrote his opera Queen of Spades. Like Dostoyevsky, he grew homesick for his native Russia, and he so often found himself thinking and writing about the cold snowy lands at home that the tribute he wrote to Florence, Souvenir de Florence in D minor, an unusually flirtatious chamber music work for six players, was not written until he had returned to Russia in 1890.

Tchaikovsky was attracted to the city for its literature and inspirational atmosphere, but also because it was the home of his generous yet mysterious patron, the wealthy widow Madame Nadezdha von Meck. It was she who rented the villa for Tchaikovsky, as well as giving him a huge yearly allowance so that he could spend his time composing. Strangely, she never wanted them to meet face to face, so they never spoke, only exchanged notes by messenger. Even while both were in Florence, she would send him a schedule of her daily walks to avoid meeting. One day the tone in her letters changed, seeming as if she may be in love with Tchaikovsky, but he responded that the love he felt for her could only be expressed through music. Suddenly, she told him that she was bankrupt and would have to end his allowance, as well as their long friendship. Tchaikovsky never heard from her again.

Tchaikovsky was a lover of great literature and turned many of his favourite works into ballets and operas, including Shakespeare plays, such as Romeo and Juliet (set in Verona); poetry by Lord Byron (who also lived in Italy); and excerpts from Dante. He was a prolific composer, combining a Russian sensibility with the incorporation of western European culture. However, his work has always remained essentially Russian, and actually Stravinsky always believed Tchaikovsky was “the most Russian of us all.”

Within less than half a century of the death of these two Russian greats, their works had conquered the world. Not least among Dostoyevsky’s admirers were those very Europeans that he believed were incapable of understanding his Russia. And for Tchaikovsky, it was the success of his music abroad that helped to confirm him as the first of Russian composers to establish a tradition of Russian music.

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