Aleksey Apukhtin: Homosexual, Poet, and Friend of Tchaikovsky

Thu, 02 Apr 2026 12:00:00 +0300

Aleksey Nikolayevich Apukhtin is known as the author of poems that became popular romances: “Frenzied Nights, Sleepless Nights” (Nochi bezumnye, nochi bessonnye), “A Pair of Bay Horses” (Para gnedykh), “Does the Day Reign?” (Den li tsarit). Set to music, these texts eventually overshadowed the rest of the poet’s work.

Homoerotic Themes in Taşlıcalı Yahya Bey’s Ottoman Poem “Shah and the Beggar”

Tue, 04 Nov 2025 22:45:37 +0700

More than 480 years ago in the Ottoman Empire, the poet Taşlıcalı Yahya Bey wrote a poem about love between two men — a story of a poor man’s passion for a noble, beautiful youth. In the sixteenth century, when people in Europe were persecuted and executed for similar themes, Yahya described male love in an elegant allegorical verse form — and, as far as we know, he was not punished for it.

Poetry on Uránia

Aleksey Apukhtin: Homosexual, Poet, and Friend of Tchaikovsky

Homoerotic Themes in Taşlıcalı Yahya Bey’s Ottoman Poem “Shah and the Beggar”