Letters in a bottle
2015; Elsevier BV; Volume: 2; Issue: 9 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1016/s2215-0366(15)00398-3
ISSN2215-0374
Autores Tópico(s)Social Issues in Poland
ResumoWhen the pianist and composer Andrzej Tchaikowsky died in 1982, aged 46 years, he left instructions that his skull “be offered…to the Royal Shakespeare Company for use in theatrical performance”. It wasn't until 2008 that he got his cameo: held aloft by David Tennant in Hamlet. Tchaikowsky made the news again in 2013 when his opera The Merchant of Venice was given its premiere, but a frustrating sense of what might have been—had Tchaikowsky lived longer, had he been a different character—seems to be part of his legacy. To his fans, who mourn how little he left behind, the publication of a collection of his letters will be welcome. My Guardian Demon brings together nearly 30 years of Tchaikowsky's correspondence with the Polish writer Anita Halina Janowska. The pair met in 1953 at a Warsaw fancy dress party. Both had neglected to come in costume, so they swapped clothes behind a piano. Shortly afterwards Tchaikowsky—then only 17 years old—asked Janowska if she wanted children. She said she thought she did. “What a pity! I wanted to marry you but now I can't. I will be a great composer, so it has to be quiet at home.” In the three decades that followed, the pair rarely met in person. Janowska remained in Poland, Tchaikowsky settled in Britain. When they did see each other, it often went rather badly. Eventually they agreed that “the best form of our friendship is this present correspondence”. What makes these letters special and singular is the complexity of the relationship they chart. Tchaikowsky was gay and Janowska was married. He had rejected her, yet they wrote to each other with the intensity of lovers. The feel of the letters is far from platonic. Their correspondence endured down the years despite all life's obstacles: despite work commitments; despite the birth of a baby; despite new relationships, sickness and exhaustion, depression and divorce. At least once they seem poised to stop forever—“once and for all…shake yourself free of me”—but they resume. “The only real thing between us is pain—and enormous friendship”, Tchaikowsky tells Janowska. “My feelings for you”, she writes in turn, “are the greatest and saddest thing in my life”. Certainly, sadness pervades the letters. Lovers, Tchaikowsky counsels Janowska, “always leave eventually, even if they continue to lie in the same bed”. Tchaikowsky and Janowska's constancy came at a cost—their writing is sometimes brutal and accusatory—but stands testament to what it really means to love another human being. Even one who doesn't share your bed.
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