good morning, Cicely

"Rewind, it's right there on the tape!"

A dragon encircled

Hi Gina!

This could be a concidence, but a few years ago some letters written between young Chopin and his *friend* Tytus Woyciechowski were found, that people interpreted as romantic - now many believe Chopin was bisexual:) And since it's pride month...😊

We’re all a little bit gay. Cheers to Chopin for having a “friend!” 🥂

chopin's letters to woyciechowski were not found a few years ago. they were made public by woyciechowski himself in the mid 1800s, following chopin's death, for the expressed purpose of being used as biographical information for him. they have been a major source in chopin history study since. what weber "found" were these letters meticulously digitized and published on the chopin museum's website in warsaw, where they are available for free to anyone in a convenient searchable database.

weber spent a short time (during covid lockdown, according to him) "researching" these, which amounts to little more than pointing and yelling "gay!" wherever chopin wrote something affectionate to a man.

in chopin's time and culture, affectionate expressions between male friends were socially expected. if you didn't tell your male friend you loved them and missed them in every letter you sent, you would sound rude and cold, and they might think you're a bit stuck up or maybe you're mad at them. today, we're pretty strict about the sorts of things men can say to each other without sounding "gay", so we can't use our social intuition to qualify chopin's letters as romantic or sexual or not. for example, some of the expressions weber identified as clearly romantic can also be found in chopin's letters to family members, including his sister and her husband.

that doesn't change the fact that chopin may have been in love with a man, but no one has ever made a complete argument about it one way or another. weber's work claiming to have done that is very shallow, built entirely on circular arguments, lacks a basic understanding of the language chopin's letters are written in (polish) sometimes to a comical degree, offers mainly inflammatory and emotional discourse a la conspiracy theory, and imho is itself homophobic.