Tchaikovsky. The Story of a Lonely Life

Nina Berberova (1901–1993) — prose writer, poet, “the first Parisian lady of Russian literature,” author of the sensational autobiography “My Italics” (1969).
In the 1930s, Berberova wrote a fictionalized biography of Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky. She creates a portrait of a living person, a portrait without a mask, but maintains tact and fidelity to the facts. An eternal outsider, she tells about the Russian composer as if she had never left Russia...

“Music affected Pierre too much, especially when he ‘fantasized’ on the piano. He screamed in his insomnia: ‘Oh, this music, this music!’
— I can’t hear anything, there’s no music, — replied Fanny, holding him close.
— It’s here, here! — he shouted, sobbing and clutching his head. — It won’t give me peace.
But through these childish sleepless nights, through the difficulties of the days, he increasingly found some proud joy, as if he had resolved something about himself, as if he was searching for something, for a long time, for a very long time — searching and found, illuminating some dark corner within himself. He could finally speak about himself in that strange, resonant language — but the main thing was not to be understood, the main thing was to express himself in it.”