Anatoly Ilyich Tchaikovsky

Anatoly and Modeste Tchaikovsky were Pyotr’s younger [twin] brothers.  It is clear that the composer adored them both, seeing them raised from infancy as he did. He visited them frequently when they were enrolled and living at the Imperial School of Jurisprudence in Saint Petersburg and could not have missed the obvious fact that while Modeste was showing strong homosexual tendencies (of which they discussed on more than one occasion) Anatoly was decidedly not.  His penchant for the female sex was clear, and in many ways must have provided some comfort to Pyotr. During their teenage years Pyotr was in his mid to late twenties and trying to balance the needs and desires of his own sexuality with a simultaneous shame and disgust of it.  

Of these three brothers, only Anatoly ended up embracing a career in legal theories for which the school had prepared them.  He went on to become a competent attorney is Saint Petersburg and later rose to a moderately powerful position in politics as the Governor of Tiflis.  By the time of his governorship, Pyotr was one of the most celebrated composers in Europe (think near rock-star status) and definitely helped the governorship come about. 

While usually busy with his career, Anatoly found time for his family, attending gatherings at his sister’s estate at Kamenka where various family members would come for days or weeks at a time.  The Tchaikovsky siblings maintained love for one another throughout their lives, undoubtedly influenced by their highly emotional and exceedingly loving father, Ilya.

Readers of my novel will already know that Anatoly eventually took a wife… an event that must have pleased Pyotr very much (that is, until he got to know her.)  Praskovya, was from a well-to-do family and had a pushiness to her personality that had to have been exceedingly off-putting to Pyotr. Even so, Pyotr would have done all he could to get along with her in order to please his younger brother.

If you are interested in the twists and turns of Anatoly’s life and want to learn more, read Fate.  He is definitely an interesting character but I cannot give too much away here!  Best regards, Adin Dalton

[NOTE: I thought it might be helpful if I posted in-depth information about some of the main characters in “Fate.”  Since these characters are based actual living, breathing people in the 19th-century, scholars do know something about their points of view, attitudes, and general personalities.  I had the honor of tweaking these attributes further in my novel of course, and so it will be my take on them that I write about here.  I will do many of these over the coming weeks, continuing on from the last one which featured Yosef Kotek, one of the composer’s more important lovers.]