Letter 2968a
| Date | 9/21 June 1886 |
|---|---|
| Addressed to | Pauline Viardot |
| Where written | Paris |
| Language | French |
| Autograph Location | Paris (France): Bibliothèque nationale de France, Département des manuscrits |
| Publication | П. И. Чайковский. Полное собрание сочинений, том XVII (1981), p. 237–238 En marge d'une lettre inedité de Tchaikovsky à Edouard Colonne (1990), p. 154 ("14 June") |
Text and Translation
| French text (original) |
English translation By Luis Sundkvist |
Madame,
Je ne saurais Vous exprimer combien je suis malheureux de ne pouvoir venir demain chez Vous. Mais il m'est complètement, tout à fait, absolument impossible de contremander un dîner d'adieu que l'on veut bien donner en mon honneur. Vous ne doutez pas, n'est-ce pas, Madame, que si je le pouvais, – je n'aurais rien de plus pressé que de me dégager et de me procurer le bonheur de pouvoir passer une bonne soirée chez Vous. Je passerai mercredi entre 12 et 2 heures pour tâcher de Vous trouver et de Vous dire adieu, car c'est ce soir-là que je pars. Mais que cela ne Vous gêne en rien, Madame. Si je n'ai pas la chance de Vous voir, permettez-moi de Vous exprimer par écrit combien je suis heureux de Vous avoir connue et combien j'ai été touché de l'accueil bienveillant que Vous avez bien voulu me faire. Je compte revenir pendant la saison prochaine à Paris et espère qu'alors j'aurai plus souvent l'occasion de Vous approcher. En attendant, recevez, Madame, l'expression de mon admiration la plus vive et la plus sincère. P. Tschaïkovsky Je passerai mercredi tout de même. |
Madame,
I do not know how to convey to you how unhappy I am at not being able to come to your place tomorrow [1]. For it is completely, utterly, absolutely impossible for me to call off a farewell dinner which is being kindly organized in my honour [2]. You cannot doubt – is it not so, Madame? – that if I could, there would be nothing more urgent for me than to free myself from this dinner and to secure the good fortune of being able to spend a nice evening at your place. On Wednesday I shall drop by between 12 and 2 o'clock to see if I can find you in and say goodbye, because it is on that evening that I am leaving [3]. However, this must not inconvenience you in any way, Madame. If I do not have the opportunity of seeing you, permit me to convey to you in writing how happy I am to have got to know you, and how touched I was by the gracious reception which you were so kind as to accord to me. I intend to return to Paris during the next season, and I hope then that I shall have more frequent opportunities of seeing you [4]. In the meanwhile, please accept, Madame, this assurance of my most keen and sincere admiration. P. Tchaikovsky I shall in any case drop by on Wednesday. |
Notes and References
- ↑ In a brief note dated Friday, 6/18 June 1886 Pauline Viardot had invited Tchaikovsky and the cellist Anatoly Brandukov to have dinner at her house on the boulevard Saint-Germain the following Monday, 9/21 June. However, on Monday morning Pauline Viardot wrote to Tchaikovsky again, saying that in the afternoon she had to travel to Fontainebleau, just outside Paris, in order to visit a friend of hers who had been taken ill, and that she would not be able to get back home until very late. "I therefore implore you to let me move our little dinner to tomorrow, that is Tuesday. If you are already otherwise engaged, could you please free yourself from that engagement and send me quickly a kind 'yes' which would act like a drop of balsam in my blood. Marsick will be there to play for you some ravishing things you are familiar with. Please do come tomorrow and forgive me for today's mishap". Both these letters by Pauline Viardot have been published in Чайковский и зарубежные музыканты (1970), p. 208–209. While summarizing the events of Monday, 9/21 June, in his diary Tchaikovsky referred to this episode: "Madame Viardot's letter cancelling today's dinner invitation and inviting me for tomorrow. Replied." Quoted from The Diaries of Tchaikovsky (1973), p. 87.
- ↑ Although Tchaikovsky would defer his departure from Paris by one day (see the note below), he recorded in his diary for Tuesday, 10/22 June, that in the evening he had dinner with Prince Aleksey Golitsyn (1832–1901), a society acquaintance of his, as well as with a certain Dr Michelon. It is not clear whether this was the "farewell dinner" that he had referred to in his above letter to Viardot.
- ↑ Tchaikovsky actually postponed his departure from Paris until Thursday, 12/24 June, because of some complications in obtaining the passport for little Georges-Léon—the 3-year-old illegitimate son of his niece Tatyana whom a French family had been looking after—that would enable Tchaikovsky to take him to Russia where he was to be adopted by the composer's older brother, Nikolay, and his wife, Olga. It is not clear whether Tchaikovsky kept his promise to call on Pauline Viardot again before leaving Paris—certainly, no such visit is recorded in his diary for Wednesday, 11/23 June, or Thursday, 12/24 June (his last day in Paris), although on the latter day he did note: "Made certain visits". See The Diaries of Tchaikovsky (1973), p. 87–88.
- ↑ Tchaikovsky did not in fact travel to Paris at all during the winter of 1886/87, and his next visit to the French capital, in the summer of 1887, was very brief (just a few days in August). It seems that he did not see Pauline Viardot again until he came to Paris in February/March 1888 as part of his first conducting tour of Western Europe.
