At Tchaikovsky's request, Kashkin made an arrangement of Swan Lake for piano and then worked with the composer to revise and correct it to make it easier to perform.

[12] At the very beginning of his narrative, Kashkin informed his readers that in the pre-revolutionary edition of his memoirs, he, "for various reasons about which there is no need to talk", had to summarize as briefly as possible this episode, which had a fateful significance for the composer's further biography and work.

At the end of September, he appeared "with a distorted face, said that he was immediately summoned to St. Petersburg by E. F. Napravnik, showed us a telegram and hurriedly left, referring to preparations for departure.

He was brought to the nearest hotel, Dagmara, "where after a violent nervous fit he fell into unconsciousness, which lasted about two weeks" (in later publications, there were notes to this fragment: "should read — about two days",[35][36] a term followed by some researchers).

Tchaikovsky himself wrote in July 1877 in a letter to his patroness Nadezhda von Meck about his own spiritual state and the possibility of committing suicide:I fell into a deep despair, all the more terrible because there was no one to support and reassure me.

[39][40]Yuri Davidov, the composer's nephew and close friend, in the book Notes on P. I. Tchaikovsky, published in 1962, wrote only a cryptic phrase about the events of September 1877: "In the life of Pyotr Ilyich this marriage turned into an internal catastrophe, from which he almost died".

[41] In 1889, Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky wrote an autobiography for his former colleague at the Moscow Conservatory, Otto Neitzel, who published it in the German journal Nord und Süd.

My tireless activity, combined with such Bacchic entertainments, could not but have a most disastrous effect on my nervous system: in 1877 I fell ill and was forced to resign my position at the Conservatory for some time.

[36] Valery Sokolov, summarizing the study of the history of the marriage by previous researchers, wrote that the characterization of the composer's wife is usually reduced to two personality traits — "bourgeoisie" "plus madness", and the assumption of two reasons for the marriage: "love blackmail" by Miliukova (a threat of suicide in case of the composer's refusal) and "the hypnosis of Eugene Onegin" (Tchaikovsky was working on this opera, and unexpectedly its plot coincided with the circumstances of his personal life — Miliukova sent him a letter similar in content to Tatiana's letter to Onegin).

[53][55] Modest Tchaikovsky noted that Antonina Milukova, as his brother put it, "acted honestly and sincerely", without consciously deceiving him in anything, and "unwillingly and unconsciously" was the cause of her husband's deepest and strongest misfortune.

[57] British musicologist David Brown, however, described the events at this soiree as follows: "Tchaikovsky's friends were naturally interested in Antonina, and Jurgenson arranged a dinner at his own house so that they could meet her.

[58] The Soviet local historian and biographer Vladimir Kholodkovsky added to the family problem other, in his opinion, no less important causes of the composer's inner crisis: acute criticism of Tchaikovsky's works in the Russian media[59] and the need to destroy "life circumstances" and break with "environment" in order to gain creative freedom.

[63] Nadezhda Tumanina, a student of art history and the author of a two-volume book on the composer's life and work, believed that the suicide attempt was connected with Tchaikovsky's nervous illness.

[68] Alexander Poznansky came to the following conclusion about the composer's possible reaction to the spread of rumors about his sexual orientation: "Tchaikovsky was a mentally insecure, vulnerable person and painfully perceived incidents of this kind."

[68] It was only during his brief marital relationship with Antonina Miliukova that Tchaikovsky realized that he "belongs by nature to a rare type of homosexual exceptional, and any kind of collision with a woman is impossible for him".

It was only then that he began to realize that the plan to strengthen his social position and the stability of his personal life through marriage had failed; moreover, there was a danger not only of exposing the composer's own intimate desires but also of disgracing his family.

From his point of view, she decided during his absence that it was time for Tchaikovsky to start fulfilling his marital duties, and she began actively using "coquetry, all sorts of feminine tricks, entreaties and demands" in the struggle to achieve this goal, eventually going on the "decisive offensive."

[75] Galina Poberezhnaya, doctor of art history, professor, and pioneer of music therapy, pointed out that women played a very important role in the life and ideas of the composer.

[83] The musicologist and biographer of Tchaikovsky, Joseph Kunin, who wrote about the events in Moscow in a book published in 1958 in the series The Lives of Remarkable People, avoided asking the question of the suicide: "Unbearable agony tormented him, death seemed to be a liberation, consciousness began to be confused.

[87] Alexander Poznansky, in his monograph Tchaikovsky in St. Petersburg (2011) and his two-volume biography of the composer, suggested that Kashkin's accounts should be treated critically, writing that they suffer from "obvious chronological confusion and excessive drama."

[88][89] He compared Tchaikovsky's letter from Clarens to Konstantin Albrecht, a professor at the Moscow Conservatory, dated October 25 (November 6), 1877 ("If I had stayed one more day in Moscow, I would have gone mad or drowned myself in the stinking waves of the still beautiful Moskva river")[90][88][91] with Kashkin's memories and concluded that some event might have happened, but more important, from his point of view, is the essential contradiction: The letter refers to the possibility of drowning in the river, not to catching a fatal cold from prolonged exposure.

[93][97] He also pointed out that if, in 1877, by going into the Moskva river, the composer had two options for the development of events: a serious illness or the absence of any significant effect of cold water on the body, then by taking poison in 1893, Tchaikovsky would have condemned himself to an unconditional death.

[31] Poznansky also suggested that the serious mental disorder about which Modest and Kashkin wrote was actually invented by Tchaikovsky in order to obtain a pretext for going abroad and material support from Nadezhda von Meck.

[104] On the other hand, Sokolov also refused to accept Modest Tchaikovsky's version of two weeks of unconsciousness, referring to the existence of a letter dated October 1, in which the composer is quite "conscious".

Both writers were aware of exactly what was required of them: materials where the points of view and conclusions of music and theater professionals are supported by the factual value of the statements of people who interacted closely with Tchaikovsky".

He called their author "a living witness to the works and days of the composer," and some factual errors Kashkin made were explained by the fact that he wrote in fresh traces, relying on his memory and therefore not checking with documents.

In his biography of the composer, published in 1992, he described the suicide attempt as follows: "...late in the evening, unnoticed by anyone, he [Tchaikovsky] left his house, located on Kudrinskaya Square of the Garden Ring, and walked towards the Moskva River, flowing five hundred meters from his home.

She briefly recounted Kashkin's version in the narrative of Nina Berberova's documentary-publicist book ("he was met at home by his wife, whom he told that he had been fishing with fishermen and had fallen into the water").

[122] Andrei Budyakovsky had no doubts about the reality of the situation described by Kashkin, and in his book The Life of Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky (2003), he cited a little-known fact as proof.

He considered this event the key in the composer's work and divided it into two periods—before and after the internal crisis of 1877: "In one of them he became a dramatist of other people's lives and a singer of beauty, continuing to write operas, ballets, romances, concertos and suites, into which he also poured his soul and cultivated them with great love.