Отрывок из фильма Кена Рассела, снятого по мотивам знаменитой пьесы Оскара Уайльда. Обратите внимание на многочисленные гомоэротические намёки, разбросанные по всему фильму. Годами ранее Кен Рассел также снял биографический фильм о гее Чайковском, а ещё два фильма посвятил Густаву Малеру и Ференцу Листу. Все эти фильмы отличаются весьма барочной эстетикой.

Нуреев бежал из СССР прямо в аэропорту, Козин пел на Колыме, Клюева расстреляли, а рисунки Эйзенштейна полвека прятали в закрытых папках. Десять знаменитостей Советского Союза, которым пришлось скрывать личную жизнь, и одна история, которую выдумали от начала до конца.

В этом видео мы рассказываем о тайной жизни советских звёзд: артистов, режиссёров, поэтов и певцов, для которых любовь могла обернуться уголовной статьёй, лагерем или многолетним молчанием. Вы узнаете, как устроено было преследование за отношения между мужчинами в СССР, почему ЛГБТ-тема десятилетиями оставалась под запретом и как советская цензура переписывала биографии знаменитостей. Мы разбираем судьбы Рудольфа Нуреева, Сергея Параджанова, Вадима Козина, Сергея Эйзенштейна, Михаила Кузмина, Николая Клюева, Евгения Харитонова, Юрия Богатырёва, Геннадия Бортникова и Георгия Милляра. Мы честно отделяем подтверждённые документами факты от слухов и мифов, которые до сих пор гуляют по интернету. Это история советской эпохи, рассказанная через запретные судьбы, сломанные карьеры и скрытые чувства великих людей.

Если вам интересны настоящие истории без прикрас, подписывайтесь на канал: впереди ещё много судеб, о которых не писали в учебниках.

Пётр Ильич Чайковский — не только великий русский композитор, автор «Лебединого озера», «Евгения Онегина» и Шестой симфонии. За привычным образом национального гения скрывается гораздо более сложная и противоречивая человеческая история.

В этом видео мы поговорим о том, о чём обычно предпочитают говорить гораздо меньше: о близких друзьях и возлюбленных Чайковского, о его отношениях с Алексеем Апухтиным, Владимиром Герардом, Алексеем Софроновым, Иосифом Котеком и Владимиром Давыдовым.

Особое место занимают собственные письма композитора — иногда нежные, иногда отчаянные, а порой поразительно откровенные. Чайковский прекрасно понимал, что его влечение к мужчинам противоречит общественным нормам его эпохи, и пытался бороться с собственной природой, надеясь изменить свою жизнь. Но письма показывают, насколько трудно ему было это сделать.

Мы также поговорим о его несчастливом браке с Антониной Милюковой, о страстной привязанности к Иосифу Котеку, о сложных чувствах к племяннику Владимиру Давыдову и о загадочных обстоятельствах смерти композитора во время эпидемии холеры в 1893 году.

Это история не только о музыке. Это история человека, который всю жизнь пытался примирить свои чувства, общество, репутацию и собственное представление о том, каким он «должен» быть.

И главное — здесь звучат не современные домыслы, а слова самого Чайковского из его писем.

Кем же на самом деле был Пётр Ильич Чайковский за пределами официального портрета великого композитора? Смотрите видео и решайте сами.

En feuilletant le dernier livre d'Alexandre Tharaud, Touché, je tombe sur un passage où il évoque son amitié avec le pianiste Noël Lee, dont il révèle l'homosexualité. Les révélations vont encore plus loin, car Noël Lee était quant à lui proche de Jacques Février, autre pianiste homosexuel, qui avait travaillé avec Maurice Ravel. Voici le verbatim :

"Il s’amuse de ses propres histoires, souvenirs coquins, décrit le gay-Paris des années 60. Ses récitals parcouraient alors les pays scandinaves, d’Amsterdam à Copenhague, il récoltait le triomphe sur scène... et dans la rue. En retour, les petits blonds du Nord affluaient vers son appartement parisien, dénommé affectueusement par ses amis Le Petit Danemark. Noël me parle de Jacques Février dont il fut proche et dont il a gardé les incroyables confidences sur Ravel. Février avait accompagné le compositeur français dans sa tournée américaine. Une myriade d’anecdotes dont Noël n’a rien perdu, faisant taire de manière assez convaincante toute certitude sur la présumée hétérosexualité du compositeur. Je presse Noël d’écrire un livre sur sa longue vie, sa modestie le refuse."

The article published by Village Magazine on 7 July 2023, under the striking headline “Casement was straight and not a paedophile,” presents itself as a defence of Roger Casement against one of the most damaging accusations associated with his name. Its argument, however, goes considerably further than rejecting allegations of sexual abuse of minors. The article attempts to erase the homosexual interpretation of Casement altogether.

That distinction matters.

Roger Casement (1864–1916), the Irish diplomat, humanitarian and nationalist, became one of the most controversial figures in modern Irish history. During the campaign surrounding his 1916 trial for high treason, the British authorities circulated extracts from what became known as the Black Diaries—journals attributed to Casement containing explicit descriptions of sexual encounters with men, including some very young men.

The political context is crucial. Casement had become an international symbol of the exposure of colonial atrocities, and his conversion to Irish nationalism made him an important figure in the struggle surrounding the Easter Rising. The revelation of the alleged contents of his diaries was therefore extraordinarily damaging to his reputation and to the campaign for clemency.

There is a perfectly legitimate historical question here: were the Black Diaries authentic, manipulated, or fabricated?

But the Village Magazine article makes a much more ambitious claim.

From rejecting paedophilia to erasing homosexuality

The article argues that the Black Diaries were fabricated and that the British authorities deliberately used sexual allegations to destroy Casement's reputation.

Even if that argument were accepted, it would establish only one thing: that the Diaries could not be used as reliable evidence of Casement's sexual behaviour.

It would not establish that Casement was heterosexual.

Yet this is precisely where the article goes too far.

Its title does not say merely that the allegations of paedophilia were false. It says:

“Casement was straight.”

That is a completely different historical proposition.

If a source is demonstrated to be unreliable, the correct historical conclusion is that the source is unreliable. One cannot logically move from “this evidence is false” to “the opposite is therefore true.”

The absence of reliable evidence for homosexuality does not constitute evidence of heterosexuality.

In other words:

“The Diaries are forged” ≠ “Casement was straight.”

That elementary distinction is repeatedly blurred in the article.

The particularly problematic association of homosexuality and paedophilia

There is another problem.

The article presents itself as rescuing Casement from accusations of paedophilia, but it simultaneously constructs its argument around the rejection of both paedophilia and homosexuality.

That is problematic because these are obviously not synonymous concepts.

A homosexual adult relationship and sexual abuse of children are entirely different matters. Treating the two as though disproving one necessarily requires disproving the other reproduces precisely the conceptual association that LGBT historians have spent decades challenging.

The article could have made a perfectly legitimate argument:

>

Instead, it goes considerably further:

>

That is where the article becomes much more revealing.

“There is no evidence” is not the same as “he was straight”

The article repeatedly emphasizes the absence of independent evidence for Casement's homosexuality and the absence of contemporary people who apparently knew him as homosexual.

But this argument needs to be placed in its historical context.

Casement lived in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, when male homosexual activity was criminalised in Britain and Ireland and could have devastating social and professional consequences.

That makes the survival of explicit documentary evidence highly significant—but it also means that absence of evidence cannot automatically be interpreted as evidence of heterosexuality.

Private correspondence can disappear. Diaries can be destroyed. Archives can be censored. Friends and lovers can remain silent. And individuals living under criminalisation had very good reasons not to leave an explicit documentary record.

This is not an argument that Casement must have been homosexual. It is an argument against the article's unwarranted certainty.

The Diaries remain a contested historical question

The authenticity of the Black Diaries is not a trivial matter, and it would be wrong simply to present one side of the controversy as settled fact.

There have been serious arguments for both positions.

Some historians have argued that the Diaries are forgeries or that their contents were manipulated. Paul R. Hyde's Anatomy of a Lie, for example, is central to the case presented by the Village Magazine article.

On the other side, forensic examinations have supported the authenticity of the manuscripts. A 2002 investigation concluded that the documents were genuinely written in Casement's hand, a conclusion subsequently cited by institutions and historians who regard the Diaries as authentic.

The Dictionary of Irish Biography, for example, treats the Diaries as authentic while acknowledging the controversy surrounding them.

This is precisely why the categorical statement “Casement was straight” is so problematic.

The historical evidence is contested. The conclusion is not.

Jeffrey Dudgeon and the politics of historical memory

The article also engages with the work of Jeffrey Dudgeon, the gay rights activist and historian who played an important role in bringing Casement's sexuality into the public historical record.

This is particularly significant because Dudgeon's interpretation represents precisely the historical perspective that the Village Magazine article seeks to reject.

The issue is therefore not simply whether every entry in the Black Diaries should be believed.

The deeper question is:

Why is it considered necessary to establish that Casement was heterosexual at all?

If the evidence concerning his sexuality is disputed, the historically responsible position would be to acknowledge the uncertainty.

Instead, the article chooses the strongest possible formulation: Casement was straight.

That is not historical neutrality. It is a conclusion.

A strange asymmetry

There is an important asymmetry in the article's reasoning.

When evidence supporting Casement's homosexuality is questioned, the article demands extremely high standards of proof.

But when evidence supposedly supporting his heterosexuality is presented, the standards suddenly become much lower.

Evidence against the Diaries becomes evidence for heterosexuality.

That is methodologically backwards.

A historian should distinguish between:

• evidence that something happened;
• evidence that something did not happen;
• evidence that a particular source is unreliable;
• and complete absence of evidence.

These are not interchangeable.

The deeper problem: historical “dehomosexualisation”

What makes the article particularly interesting from an LGBT historical perspective is that it participates in a much broader phenomenon: the dehomosexualisation of historical figures.

When a historical figure is associated with homosexuality, particularly when the evidence is complicated or incomplete, there is often a temptation to rescue the person's reputation by insisting that the homosexuality itself was invented.

The pattern is familiar:

The evidence is controversial → therefore the homosexual interpretation is false → therefore the person was heterosexual.

But this is not a neutral historical method.

It risks reproducing an older cultural reflex: homosexuality is treated as something that needs to be disproved, removed, or explained away, whereas heterosexuality is treated as the default.

The irony is that the article itself acknowledges the extraordinary political circumstances surrounding the publication of the sexual allegations against Casement. Yet it does not sufficiently distinguish between exposing a political campaign against Casement and proving that Casement was heterosexual.

Those are two completely different historical tasks.

The most important conclusion

It is entirely possible that the British authorities exploited Casement's sexuality for political purposes.

It is entirely possible that some of the most sensational claims concerning the young men mentioned in the Diaries were exaggerated, manipulated or fabricated.

It is also entirely possible that the Diaries themselves contain material whose authenticity remains genuinely disputed.

But none of these propositions establishes that Casement was straight.

That is the fundamental weakness of the Village Magazine argument.

The article succeeds in demonstrating why Casement's sexual history must be treated critically. It does not succeed in demonstrating that the homosexual Casement is a complete invention.

And that is why the headline “Casement was straight” is much more revealing than it first appears.

It does not merely challenge one source.

It attempts to replace one contested sexual identity with another.

The problem is not that the article questions the evidence. The problem is that, after questioning the evidence, it claims to know the answer.

And when the historical record is ambiguous, declaring a gay historical figure “straight” is not scepticism.

It is historical erasure.

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I'm very interested in Frederick the Great as a historical figure, and I'm looking to find some good books to read to get even deeper in the topic. I'm particularly interested in his personal life and childhood, both of which his sexuality is very important to, and I know that isn't always exactly acknowledged or explored in historical sources. Does anyone know any book recommendations that openly discuss/include a good exploration of his queerness?