Letter 3987

Tchaikovsky Research
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Date 18/30 December 1889
Addressed to Pyotr Jurgenson
Where written Saint Petersburg
Language Russian
Autograph Location Klin (Russia): Tchaikovsky State Memorial Musical Museum-Reserve (a3, No. 2664)
Publication П. И. Чайковский. Полное собрание сочинений, том XV-А (1976), p. 221

Text and Translation

Russian text
(original)
English translation
By Brett Langston
18 дек[абря] [18]89]

Милый друг!

Я раздумал устраивать свидание с Ант[ониной] Ив[ановной]. Ей-Богу, не в силах. Боюсь, что она скажет, что-нибудь такое, что я выйду из себя и в пылу ненависти, которую её письмо снова во мне раздуло, — я задушу её. Право это возможно. Уж слишком она мне теперь отвратительна.

Пожалуйста, прочти посылаемое ей мной письмо, и если ничего против него не имеешь, то пошли вместе с билетом на концерт Рубинштейна.

Твой, П. Чайковский

Пошли ей билет какой она просит; прилагаю для сего 3 р[убля].

18 December 1889

Dear friend!

I've decided not to arrange a meeting with Antonina Ivanovna after all [1]. My God I don't have the strength. I'mm worried that she'll say something that will make me to lose my temper, which her letter has inflamed in me again — and I will throttle her. This is truly possible. She is even more loathsome to me now.

Please, read through my letter to her [2], and if you have no objection then send it together with a ticket to the Rubinstein concert.

Yours, P. Tchaikovsky

Send her a ticket just as she asks; I'm enclosing 3 rubles for this.

Notes and References

  1. In a letter to Pyotr Jurgenson dated 12/24 December 1889, Antonina Tchaikovskaya had requested a ticket to the Anton Rubinstein jubilee concert on 6/18 January 1890. Angered by Jurgenson's refusal, she then wrote a long letter of complaint to Tchaikovsky. It appears that the composer had initially decided to speak to her directly, but later changed his mind.
  2. This letter has not survived.